Death of a Sweep - M. C. Beaton [61]
‘I wasn’t,’ said Tam desperately. ‘I do love you, Milly, but I’ve got to keep up a front with the editor that I’m a hard-nosed reporter. If I told him the truth, he’d have stopped me spending so much time with you.’
‘It’s too late now,’ said Milly. ‘Go away. Don’t make trouble for me.’ And then she shut the door.
Prosser lay up on the moors. With a pair of powerful binoculars, he picked out the press card on the windscreen of Tam’s car. Bloody reporters. But whoever that man was who was staying with Milly had to be got rid of. Then he would deal with Hamish Macbeth. After that, he would sweat Milly to find out where the missing money was. Davenport had been paid in cash. He would tie her up and take the house apart from top to bottom if she really didn’t know where the money was.
He had seen the man drive off from the house. He swallowed a couple of painkillers. His head ached abominably these days.
Prosser picked up his rifle and made his way down to the one-track Drim road.
Giles Brandon was feeling mellow. He considered Hamish Macbeth an overanxious fool, but a hospitable one at that. Seemingly not caring about the laws of drinking and driving, Hamish had plied him with a very fine old malt and deferred to his army experience. Brandon had told him that he had recently retired. He had been a colonel and had done time in Iraq.
He was halfway to Drim when he was stopped by a flock of sheep across the road. He peered around angrily looking for a shepherd but could see no one. The fine day had gone, and a damp drizzle was whipping across the heather. His pleasant mood gone, he slammed his hand impatiently on the horn. A few sheep scattered, but the rest looked at him with mild eyes.
Brandon got down from the car and waved his arms. ‘Shoo!’ he yelled. ‘Bugger off!’
Abullet took him in the back of the head and he fell face-down amongst the sheep. Prosser stepped forward and fired another two bullets into the back of his head.
Unaware that he was, in a way, imitating his wife, he dragged the body and dumped it into the back of Brandon’s Land Rover. He got into the driver’s seat and drove off across the heather, bumping along until he came to a heathery track. The sun had come out again, and everything glittered in the light. He went on up to the lip of a tarn, one of those little round lochs of Sutherland. Leaving the handbrake off, he got down, went round the back of the vehicle, and began to push with all his might. At last, the Land Rover began to move. Over the edge it went, straight down into the water. There was an almighty splash and then silence. He leaned over the edge. Nothing now to be seen but a few ripples.
He was tired of sleeping rough. He was determined to find some shelter and wait until dark.
Milly waited and waited for Brandon to come back and, as the light began to fade, she phoned Hamish.
‘I’m sure he’ll be all right,’ said Hamish. ‘Give it a bittie longer.’ But when he rang off, he thought guiltily of all the whisky he had given Brandon. He drove off towards Drim very slowly searching to right and left in case the man had driven off the road. Halfway along the road, a shepherd, Terry McGowan, called on him to stop.
‘What’s up?’ asked Hamish.
‘Some bastard’s cut my fences and I found my sheep all ower the road.’
Hamish climbed down from the Land Rover. It was not unknown for a rival crofter to cut another’s fences, although it hadn’t happened for a long time. Could it have been done to make Brandon stop? And if so, why? Was he connected in any way to Prosser? ‘I’ll look into it,’ he said. He walked along the road for a bit, scanning the ground for any signs of an attack. But it was getting dark and although he shone a powerful torch this way and that, he could not see any signs of anything sinister.
He got back into his vehicle and went on to Drim. Milly had seen him coming and came out to meet him.
‘Can’t see him anywhere,’ said Hamish. ‘You go back in the house. I’m just going to put a call through to headquarters.’
He reported the missing Brandon and said he would need some men