The Complete McAuslan (70 page)

‘Switch them on again, Cameron, godammit!′ cried the Admiral. ‘Sergeant! Where are you?’ Drowning, by the sound of it, for in that sudden blackness he had evidently taken the wrong direction, and was wallowing in the shallows. ‘Come out of that, you fool! Cameron, will you put on those blasted lights?’ I could hear the driver cursing as he scrabbled at the dashboard, and for no apparent reason the Admiral blew his whistle again. He was stumping about in the dark, and presently there was a sharp musical sound as of metal meeting bone. ‘God damn the thing! Sergeant, what the hell are you doing? Where are you, man?’

‘I’m here, sir, and I’m drookit!’ cried the Sergeant, but they’re made of fine stuff, these Perthshire policemen, for after a few hippo-like squelches in the gloom he bawled:

‘McLaren, do you hear me? The jig is up! You are surroonded on aall sides! Chust you bring in your boat this minute and surrender! We have a warrant! Do you hear me, McLaren?’

‘Away you, Rory, and polish your pluidy handcuffs!’ came the answer. ‘Have you nothing petter to do than spoil sport, you and that merchant skipper wi’ the pot belly?’

‘Damn him!’ cried the Admiral, enraged. ‘Damn his insolence! Give yourselves up, you scoundrels, or it will the worse for you!’

‘Ach, go and torpedo yourself!’ laughed the voice. ‘You should be in your bed, you silly sailor!’

‘Now, you listen to me, McLaren!’ shouted the Sergeant. ‘You chust give up this nonsense like a good laad, and maybe when it comes to the charges we’ll be going easy on you -’

‘We’ll do nothing of the dam’ sort!’ bellowed the Admiral. It struck me that perhaps he and the Sergeant had worked out the routine of Hard Man and Soft Man used by clever interrogators, but if they had it was wasted effort. The response from the boat was an indelicate noise, and in his fury the Admiral shouted, most unreasonably: ‘Sergeant! Arrest that man!’

Knowing Rory’s devotion to duty I half-expected him to strike out for the middle of the loch with his handcuffs in his teeth, but at that moment the headlights came on again, and in their glare the boating trio were seen to be on their feet, manhandling a large contraption which looked like an oil drum with metal curlicues and other interesting attachments. The Admiral let out a neighing scream.

‘It’s the stilll Don’t let them jettison it! Get a boat, Sergeant! It’s no use, you villains, we’ve seen it! Sergeant, you’re a witness! Oh, my God, it’s gone!’

There was an almighty splash, the boat rocked, and a small wave rippled across the face of the loch. The Admiral actually shook his fist, the Sergeant strode into the shallows and cried: ‘I arrest you, Aeneas McLaren, alias the Dipper, for illicit distillin’, you godless hound of hell, you!’ The headlights blinked, dimmed, and went out again, and I climbed into the back of the car for a quiet cigarette. These big co-ordinated police operations are too much for mere military nerves.

What they would have done if the Dipper and his companions had chosen to stay where they were, I can’t imagine. Stood around the loch until they grew moss, probably. But the Dipper was considerate; he and his friends rowed slowly in, singing some Gaelic boat song, and when Rory laid hands on him and said that anything you say will be taken doon and may be used in evidence against you, and haud your tongue, Dipper McLaren, and the Admiral announced triumphantly that he could expect a jail sentence without the option, the Dipper smiled on them tolerantly and asked: ‘And what for, skipper? Fushin’?’

‘You know damned well what forl’ cried the Admiral. ‘For illicit distilling! What was that you threw over the side, hey?’

‘Bait,’ said the Dipper, and laughed softly with the whole length of his lean body. The Admiral laughed, too, on an unpleasant note, and said he would sing a different tune when they’d dragged the loch, but I noticed the gadgers weren’t smiling as they surveyed that black surface, and Rory was oddly hesitant about clapping the darbies on the prisoners, as the Admiral demanded.

‘We know where to put our hands on them, sir, when required,’ he said, scowling on the Dipper, and although the Admiral got quite purple about it, he couldn’t get Rory to go beyond charging the trio, and finally letting them go – for, as the Sergeant fairly pointed out, we simply didn’t have room in the vehicles to carry them back. The Dipper listened with amiable attention, touched his hat to the Admiral, flung his old coat about his shoulders like a musketeer, and with his two friends simply wandered off into the darkness.

It seemed a bit of an anti-climax, but although the Admiral was baulked of the satisfaction of bringing back his captives in chains behind his chariot, so to speak, he was grimly cheerful on the way home. They knew where the still was, and when it had been dredged up it would be a case of Barlinnie for three, and no nonsense. And if the Inspector had done his part with comparable efficiency, the Admiral added, that would be one gang of poachers less to trouble the countryside. Not a bad night’s work, young Dand; we’ve earned our nightcap, what?

Any thought of nightcaps vanished from my mind as we drove over the gravel to the hotel. For there, parked outside, was my 15-cwt truck, with the Inspector and a constable standing guard.

The Admiral was out of the car like a salmon going up the Falls of Falloch, demanding information, and the Inspector gave it with disgruntled satisfaction. No, they hadn’t found the deer; no, they hadn’t caught the poachers. Of course, had he been given aa-dequate perr-sonnel –

‘Then where the devil did you find the truck?’ blared the Admiral. ‘And how the devil did you get in that condition?’ For both officers were plastered with mud to the waist, as though they had strayed into a peat-cutting – which, it transpired, they had: obviously it wasn’t the Perthshire constabulary’s night for keeping dry. The Inspector explained with what dignity he could.

He had established road-blocks as instructed, and was driving back towards the hotel with the constable when they had spotted the truck coming towards them along the Tyndrum road ― the one we had taken
en route
to Lochnabee. ‘You hadnae seen it – no, you would be busy up at the loch, no doubt.’ The Inspector’s sniff was eloquent. The truck had pulled up sharply at sight of the police car, and four men had taken to the heather, but although the officers had pursued them vigorously they had escaped in the darkness.

‘Blast!’ exploded the Admiral. ‘But didn’t you get a look at them, dammit? Can you identify them, man? You must have – ’

‘I haff said it wass dark, and we wass undermanned!’ retorted the Inspector. ‘Mind you, wan o’ them sounded like a Glasgow man, for we heard him roaring in the night, and he had an accent.’ He glanced at me. ‘He micht have been wearing a sojer’s tunic.’

‘Half the demobilised men in the country wear soldiers’ tunics!’ snapped the Admiral. ‘What a shambles! The whole thing has been bungled to the hilt!’ He glared at the unfortunate Inspector. ‘Well, you haven’t covered yourself with glory, have you? I send you out, with precise instructions . . .’

I was no longer listening. I knew only one man in the neighbourhood who wore khaki and roared in a Glasgow accent when pursued – but it couldn’t be him, surely? McAuslan, stagpoacher? Impossible; he wouldn’t have known how, for one thing . . . and then I remembered Aunt Alison’s words: ‘Macrae! There’s a name for a Highland midnight . . .’ Macrae the stalker; he would know how. But that wasn’t credible, either . . . we’d only been in the district twenty-four hours; they couldn’t have taken to crime (and highly technical crime, too) in that time. Not McAuslan, anyway – and yet every instinct told me that, however bizarre the explanation, he was out there in the heather somewhere, doing his disorderly impression of Rob Roy, and unless immediate steps were taken he would undoubtedly blunder into the arms of the Law, and . . . It didn’t bear thinking about – McAuslan, court-martialled for killing the King’s deer (well, the Admiral’s, anyway). What could I do?

Fortunately the Admiral and Inspector were too busy upbraiding and making excuses to notice me, and when the Admiral finally made for the hotel, muttering savagely about incompetent bumpkins and the decay of discipline, I followed, a prey to nameless fears. He surged up the steps like an icebreaker, and was heading for my aunt’s office when Robin Elphinstone came out of the passage, started violently at the sight of us, and half-retreated into the passage again, looking furtive.

‘Elphinstone!’ cried the Admiral, scoring a bull for identification. ‘What the blazes are you doing here?’

The aggressive tone seemed to strike fire in Elphinstone. He was normally a bluff, confident character, but emerging from the passage he had reacted like Peter Lorre caught in the act, twitching and glancing sideways. Now he recovered, drew himself up, eyed the Admiral with loathing, and demanded:

‘Why shouldn’t I be here? This hotel isn’t your flagship, is it? Who the dickens d’you think you are – Captain Bligh?’ He snorted and shot his cuffs rather defensively, I thought. ‘If you must know, I’ve been having coffee with Mrs Gordon,’ he added, and the Admiral ground his teeth.

‘Your trousers are wet!’ he said accusingly.

‘So are yours,’ retorted Elphinstone. ‘What would you like to do – form a club?’ He gave a pleased snort, wished me goodnight, and went off, but not without another wary glance back as he reached the door.

‘Damned impertinence!’ fumed the Admiral. ‘Mark my words, that fellow wants watching. Did you see him just now – looked as though he’d had his hand in the till? What’s he been up to, eh? Outsider!’

Aunt Alison was knitting placidly and listening to the wireless in the warm comfort of her room. ‘Home from the wars!’ she said, smiling, exclaimed at the wet state of our feet, rang for coffee and sandwiches, placed us before the fire, dispensed whisky, and listened with soothing attention while the Admiral poured out his troubles from the hearthrug, starting with the insolence and evil cunning of the Dipper (‘which won’t save him, I’m glad to say, once the evidence is recovered’) and ending with a scathing denunciation of the luckless Inspector. He didn’t refer to our encounter with Elphinstone, but I noticed his glance strayed to the muddy tracks on the carpet, as though he were trying to deduce how long his detested rival had spent on the premises.

‘My, it’s the exciting night you’ve had of it!’ said Aunt Alison admiringly, and sighed. ‘And the poor old Dipper’s nabbed at last. Well, I won’t pretend I’m not sorry for the old devil.’

‘Old devil is right. But your sympathy, my dear, is far too precious to be wasted on him,’ chided the Admiral. ‘The fellow’s been a menace for years. Well, now he’s going to pay for it – and so,’ he concluded grimly, ‘are those infernal poachers.’

‘Didn’t you tell me they’d got away?’

‘Thanks to that yokel policeman, yes. But the truck didn’t,’ said the Admiral triumphantly. ‘And if the fingerprints on its steering-wheel belong to anyone named McLaren . . . well, I’d say that was conclusive, wouldn’t you?’

I’d been listening with one ear, preoccupied as I was with visions of McAuslan roaming the Highland night while I sat powerless to rescue or prevent him, but at the suggestion that my truck would be Exhibit A in a poaching trial I was all attention. So was my aunt, only she seemed amused.

‘Conclusive of what? Only about who was driving the truck, and took it away. But that,’ she reminded him, ‘is Dand’s concern, Jacky. Not yours.’

‘Not mine?’ The Admiral went into his halibut impersonation. ‘But . . . but, goodgoddlemighty, they were using it to poach my stag! They were – ’

‘Were they? What stag? You haven’t even found it yet.’ She rose, holding the decanter. ‘And until you do, you’ll be ill-advised to cry “Poacher!” just because you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about the McLarens. More toddy?’

The Admiral gargled, going puce. ‘A bee? In my bonnet? You know as well as I do they’ve got my stag cached out there – ’

‘You’re blethering,’ she said pleasantly, filling his glass. ‘I know no such thing, and neither do you. Fingerprints, indeed! You’ve been seeing too many Thin Man pictures. Well, nobody’s been murdered – ’

‘Alison!’

‘ – and all that’s happened is that Dand’s truck has been taken without his permission – and now he’s got it back . . .’

‘Alison, I – ’

‘. . . And the last thing he wants is a lot of handless bobbies crawling over it with magnifying glasses. Even if every McLaren in Scotland had his pug-marks on it, what could they be charged with except taking it away without the owner’s consent? And I don’t suppose you’ve considered the trouble and embarrassment that would cause my nephew with his superiors? Well . . .’ She gave him her level, blue-eyed look. ’. . . I wouldn’t think much of that, I can tell you.’

She wasn’t alone there: I could think of one Colonel who would hit the roof. And the Admiral, to do him justice, took the point, although it was nothing to him compared to the prospect of incurring her displeasure. That was what took him amidships, and his indignation vanished like May mist; he blinked at her in a distraught, devoted way, and admitted he hadn’t thought about that side of it . . . last thing he’d want to do . . . and no doubt she was right, there was no positive proof . . . yet. But what could he say to the police? If they had reason to believe the truck had been used for criminal purposes, he didn’t quite see how he . . .

‘Och, use your wits, Jacky! Tell them Dand’s satisfied, and doesn’t wish to press matters. Bully them, man, if you have to! Goodness me, the Inspector wants to be a superintendent some day – he’s not going to cross the leading man in the district, is he?’

The leading man looked doubtful. ‘Well, I suppose . . . if you say so . . . it’ll look a bit odd, though, after all the fuss . . .’

‘Havers!’ laughed Aunt Alison. ‘I can just see McKendrick raising objections. A word from you and he’ll be jumping through hoops and saluting.’ She smiled warmly on him and sweetened the pill still further. ‘You can come and tell me about it at dinner, and we’ll talk it all over, the two of us.’

The Admiral cheered up considerably at this, and when he took his leave after a final toddy it was with expressions of good will all round. As the door closed Aunt Alison gave a long, delicate sigh and subsided into her chair, reaching for a cigarette.