Evil for Evil by Aline Templeton

said?’
    Donaldson grunted. ‘Oh, I’ll go with anything that gets that bugger off the land I should be farming, by rights.’
    It wasn’t what the lawyers had said – the lease agreement had lapsed, and Donaldson hadn’t been working the farm with his father – but Sorley knew better than to remind him.
    ‘If the plan works, I’m sure he’d be glad for you to take a lease afterwards.’
    That only seemed to provoke further rancour. ‘Aye, and I’d be expected to be grateful to him. “Yes, sir, thank you sir!”’ He put on an affected voice, then added savagely, ‘And get back where you came from, you Sassenach bastard!’
    Sorley, who now considered himself an authority on Celtic culture, interrupted him. ‘Ah now, that’s not quite right. The Gaelic
sasunnach
doesn’t mean English, it means lowlander, non-Gaelic speaker. To a highlander, you’d be one.’
    The dangerous look on his companion’s face brought him up short. ‘Ah, well.’ He saw with some relief the pub door opening. ‘Look – there she is now. The other thing – I’ll come round this afternoon and we’ll talk about it.’
    Donaldson grunted and moved on ahead. To his further annoyance he found he wasn’t first to the bar; the sergeant, MacNee, was sitting on a stool there already with a woman beside him.
    ‘That’s nice,’ he sneered. ‘One law for the polis and another for the rest of us, eh?’
    MacNee held up his china mug in a mock salute. ‘Not really, pal. Just a wee fly cuppa.’
    Georgia Stanley bristled. ‘I don’t serve alcohol to anyone before twelve o’clock. Since it’s that now, I’m ready to take your order. The usual?’
    She pulled pints for the two men. Once they had carried them to a corner table she returned to the other end of the bar, pulling a face.
    ‘Sorry about that. Not two of my favourite people,’ she confessed, then as the door opened again and an elderly man appeared, groaned quietly. ‘And there’s another – Steve’s father. I always make sure I’ve got the counter between me and him.’
    MacNee and Fleming turned to look. Donaldson senior looked to be in his seventies, shorter than his son but not unlike him in appearance. His sagging jowls had tufts of an old man’s weak, greying stubble after a careless shave and the leer he gave her from his watery eyes explained Georgia’s reaction.
    ‘Pint. Bring it over to me, pet, will you?’ he said with a smile revealing broken and discoloured teeth.
    A little knot of people coming in gave her the excuse to say, ‘Hangon, Hugh. You’ll have to take it yourself – I’m going to be serving.’
    There was a lot of interest in Innellan’s most sensational event since a summer visitor trying to launch his boat had beached his new Jaguar below the high tide mark two years ago, and the buzz of talk rose.
    Fleming heard a woman say, ‘Well, it’s just a skeleton, isn’t it? Not like a
body
, or anything.’ Her friends laughed comfortably.
    She was wrong. It was exactly the same as a body – a body whose identity had been ruthlessly stripped away, right down to the very flesh on its bones.
     
    ‘That’s it,’ Matt Lovatt said, closing the gate on the last of the stags. ‘Nothing more to do, except leave them to get worked up for the next couple of weeks. I can smell them already.’
    And Christie could too, now she thought about it. There was a taint on the air, rank and pungent.
    ‘Smells a bit like goats,’ she said.
    ‘A bit – stick around! They really start to stink. Gets the hinds excited – sort of like guys putting on aftershave when they’re going out on the pull.’
    ‘Takes more than that to do it for me,’ Christie said saucily, which made Matt laugh as they headed towards the farmhouse. She loved making him laugh – he didn’t laugh often enough.
    ‘What else is there today?’ she asked. ‘Kerr’s gone into Kirkcudbright.’
    ‘I know. But there’s not much – concentrate to take out later and