Death of a Bore Read Online Free

maself and treat her nice. Will you leave me alone then?’
    ‘Probably,’ said Hamish. ‘After you fix your car. Behave yourself.’
    Hamish returned to the police station and then set out to patrol his extensive highland beat with Lugs beside him. He had given up leaving Lugs with Angela, the doctor’s
wife, because she had complained that Lugs spent more time with her than he did at home.
    Lugs was a thoroughly spoilt animal. Hamish sometimes still had a pang when he thought of the death of his old dog, Towser, wondering if he had treated the animal well, wondering if he could
have done something, anything, to prolong Towser’s life, and clever Lugs was the beneficiary. He was a greedy dog and could easily stop the diets Hamish tried to put him on by lying down and
closing his eyes and whimpering.
    As Lugs sat beside Hamish with his large ears flopping and something that looked remarkably like a human grin on his face, Hamish felt, not for the first time, that he was saddled with some sort
of possessive wife.
    A new pub had opened out on the Lochdubh-Strathbane road called Dimity Dan’s. Hamish had visited it several times since its grand opening a month before. On the first night there had been
a stabbing. He suspected the owner, Dan Buffort, of supplying drugs.
    The youth of the Highlands who once left for the cities or the army as soon as they had graduated from school or college, now showed a distressing propensity to stay at home in the villages and
slope around, making trouble.
    Hamish entered the smoky pub. Two youths were playing snooker, others were propping up the bar drinking Bacardi Breezers. A lot of alcopops, those sweet alcoholic drinks, were lined up behind
the bar. The manufacturers had claimed that they weren’t targeting young people with their products, but Hamish did not believe a word of it. They were produced in tempting little
innocuous-looking bottles with names like Archers Aqua Peach, Bliss, and Mike’s Hard Lemonade.
    Hamish ordered a mineral water. ‘I hope you aren’t selling to under-age girls and boys,’ he said.
    Dan Buffort was a burly man with thick tattooed arms, ginger hair and small piggy eyes.
    ‘Wouldnae dream o’ it,’ he said with a grin.
    ‘I’ve heard otherwise,’ said Hamish. ‘If I catch you just the once, you’ll lose your licence.’
    ‘I’ve naethin’ tae fear.’ Dan polished another glass.
    Something was nagging at the back of Hamish’s mind. When he had driven up to the pub, he was sure he had noticed something different. He paid for his mineral water and hurried out of the
pub. He stood back from the building and stared up at it.
    And then he saw it.
    A new CCTV camera had been installed, but instead of pointing down to the pub entrance and the car park, it was pointing directly along the Lochdubh Road.
    Hamish ran back into the pub and through to the toilets. A window was open. He looked out, and there, racing over the moors in the distance, were two small figures.
    He went back into the bar and confronted Dan. ‘You will get that new camera of yours pointed down at the entrance where it should be. You put it there so you’d know when I was
coming.’
    ‘It was those idiots who installed it,’ said Dan, quite unfazed. ‘I’ll get it put right.’
    ‘See that you do. I’ll be watching you closely from now on, day and night. One sight of an under-age boy or girl or one sight or suspicion of drugs and I’ll have you closed
down fast.’
    Hamish left and continued on his long beat. His duties involved calling in on the elderly and the isolated, and he got back to the police station just in time to change into civilian clothes and
attend John Heppel’s meeting at the village hall.
    There were a lot of villagers there. Twin sisters, Jessie and Nessie Currie, were in the front row beside Mrs Wellington and Archie Maclean. Clarry was in the row behind them, and beside him was
Willie Lamont, another ex-policeman who had gone into the