by M C Beaton
“You’re a clever bastard, Hamish. Someone hacked into Blair’s records during the night and it wisnae Blair.”
“Look around for a computer buff, Jimmy, but don’t come bothering me. Blair’s off his trolley. You know what he’s like. One sniff of trouble and he decides it must be coming from me.”
Jimmy sat down behind the desk and opened the bottom drawer. “Where’s the whisky?”
“I don’t think I should tell you,” said Hamish crossly. “You chust go back and tell Blair to spend his time looking for criminals instead of bothering innocent policemen.”
“Don’t be so sour. It was a way of getting away from the big grump.”
“All right. You can have a dram and then off with you.”
Hamish went through to the kitchen and found a bottle in the cupboard with the groceries. He collected a glass and then walked back through to join Jimmy.
“Great, man, pour it out.”
“You’ll be getting as much o’ a problem wi’ the booze as Blair,” commented Hamish, pouring a measure of whisky into the glass.
“Not me. I can take it or leave it. The only problem I’ve got wi’ booze these days is that I don’t get nearly enough o’ it.”
“So what’s Blair doing about this mysterious hacker apart from wasting time sending you over here to annoy me and drink my Scotch?”
“He says someone found out his password and he never told anyone what it was.”
“Probably told someone in a bar at the top of his voice. What was the password? I assume he’s changed it.”
“Crap.”
“No, seriously, Jimmy, what was the password?”
“I’m telling you. Clean your ears. The password was CRAP.”
And how did a nicely brought up lady like Sarah think of that, marvelled Hamish.
“So what’s new?” he asked aloud.
“Maggie Bane was having an affair wi’ Gilchrist and so when she said she wasn’t, she was lying in her teeth, so it stands to reason that she was lying about everything else. She says she didn’t want to lose her good name. Can you believe it? Like a Victorian novel. But, by God, she sticks to everything else and Blair howled and howled, but he couldnae move her.”
“So who else is there? And what did Gilchrist die of?”
“Nicotine poison.”
“Now there’s a thing. And the man didnae smoke.”
“How did you know that?”
“There were no cigarettes or ashtrays anywhere and a big NO SMOKING sign on the surgery wall.”
“Come on, Hamish. Every doctor and dentist has a NO SMOKING sign up these days.”
“But he had two posters in the reception about the evils of smoking. A smoker wouldn’t have put them up.”
“Far-fetched to me. Maggie Bane could have put them up.”
“But she didn’t. She smokes herself.”
“So she says. Oh, well, nobody saw Gilchrist puff a cigarette and anyway, even if he had, it wouldn’t have given him nicotine poisoning enough to kill him like that.”
“So who’s the favourite suspect apart from Maggie?”
“Blessed if I know.”
“And what about thon burglary?”
“Johnny King had done time for two counts of drunken driving.”
“Time?” Hamish looked puzzled. “I thought they would just take his license away.”
“The second time was when he drove into the front of a police station. Peter Sampson has no record. Family boy. Clean living.”
“And what of Macbean?”
“Now let me think. Any more whisky?”
Hamish sighed and pushed the bottle across to him.
Jimmy poured a generous measure, sat back in his chair and put his feet on the desk.
“Macbean’s never been in trouble. I mean, he’s never been arrested. He was running a hotel in Selkirk for a long time and then suddenly got fired. Owners just say that the profits were going down and down but they admitted that they could not pin anything on Macbean.”
“And Mrs. Macbean?”
“Nothing there. Born Agnes Macwhirter. Born in Leith. Married Macbean twenty-five years ago. Nasty bit of work. Always in a temper about something.”
“Any reports of her husband beating her up?”
“No, but I hope he does and regularly. If I was married to that one, I’d beat her up myself.”
“I heard on the grapevine that Gilchrist and Maggie Bane had a bit o’ a scene in a pub in Inverness. If they broke up, it stands to reason that there might be a new woman on the scene.”
“If there was,” said Jimmy, “something’ll come up sooner or later.”
“Then there’s the ex,” said Hamish, thinking aloud. “She was married to him. She seems a nice woman but you can never tell from the outside, can you? She might have hated him like poison.”
“She’s got clear of him so she had nae reason to bump him off.”
Hamish picked up the whisky bottle and replaced the top. “I don’t want to keep you, Jimmy. I’ve got the work to do.”
“Oh, aye, forgot to feed the hens, did you?”
When Hamish had finally seen a reluctant Jimmy on his way, he ran into the police office, seized the phone and dialled the Tommel Castle Hotel and asked for Sarah.
When she came on the line, he asked, “How did you guess Blair’s password?”
Her voice sounded amused. “I maintain there are about twenty variations on passwords. From what you told me about Blair, I was sure it would be some sort of swear word. Is everything all right? They will know someone used Blair’s password, but if he has trouble with drink, then he’ll begin to wonder who he actually told and he won’t be able to remember. I wouldn’t worry about it. What are you doing now?”
“I’m going to interview a couple of people. Do you feel like doing some amateur investigation?”
“You want me to come with you?”
“No, I wondered if you would like to go over to The Scotsman Hotel today and listen to what’s going on. They won’t talk if they see me, but they might not guard their mouths in front of a tourist.”
“Good. I’d like to do that.”
Hamish gripped the receiver hard. “And maybe we could meet up later? I could pick you up.”
“Seven o’clock will be fine, if you’re through by then.”
“That’s chust grand…grand. I’ll see you then. Bye.”
Hamish put down the receiver and stood for a moment smiling idiotically at the phone. Then he pulled himself together and decided it was time he visited the Smiley brothers.
Small fine pellets of snow were beginning to be whipped down the loch on an icy wind. He gave a little sigh. Then he thought of Sarah. He hoped the snow would not get worse. He did not want to think of her skidding into a ditch on the Lairg road. But ahead of him loomed a large yellow truck. The Sutherland road glitters were already on the job. He passed the truck and headed off into the thickening snow. By the time he reached the Smiley brothers’ croft, the snow had suddenly stopped and pale yellow sunlight was flooding the whitened fields and the low croft house.
He noticed there was a new extension at the back of the croft house: a long low building with a corrugated iron roof and with steel shutters over all the windows.
He was just getting out of the Land Rover when the door of the cottage opened and Stourie Smiley came out to meet him, followed by his brother, Pete. Hamish knew both of them slightly, but he was taken aback again by their appearance. They looked living proof that trolls still walked the earth. Both were squat and barrel-chested and hairy. Thick mats of hair covered both their heads, and hair sprouted on their cheekbones, and tufts of hair poked out of their ears. Both had small, gleaming wet eyes and red faces. Both had very long arms.
“It’s yoursel’, Macbeth,” said Stourie. “What brings ye? Ye’ve got the sheep dip papers.” A visit by the police to a croft in the Highlands did not usually mean a report of death or accident, but merely a demand for sheep dip pap
ers.
“Can we go inside and sit down for a minute?” asked Hamish. “I need your help.”
“Okay,” said Pete, “but don’t take too lang ower it. We’ve got work to do.”
He led the way into the croft house kitchen, a bleak stone-flagged room with a plastic-covered table in the centre and a few hard upright chairs.
Hamish sat down, took off his cap and put it on the table. “It is my belief you are running an illegal still.”
“Whit?” demanded Stourie. “Who tellt you that?”
The two trolls bristled at Hamish and the cold air of the kitchen was suddenly full of menace.
“Before you get your lies ready,” said Hamish, “listen to me. Thon dentist, Gilchrist, was poisoned with nicotine. Anyone who had a still could have extracted the nicotine by means of a still. Now, either you cooperate or I’ll get a team over from Strathbane with a search warrant and right behind them will come the Customs and Excise. If you give me a dram of your stuff and I consider it safe and not liable to kill anyone, I’ll not be booking you. But I need to know if either of you had a grudge against Gilchrist, and then since I’m pretty sure you know your competitors, I’ll need some names.”
They looked at him in truculent silence and then Pete’s small wet eyes travelled past Hamish to the fireplace. Hamish swung round. A shotgun was hanging on the wall.
“Don’t even think of it, man,” he said. “That’s another breach of the law. That gun should be locked in a gun cabinet. You have one. Sergeant Macgregor over at Cnothan reported you had one.”
“Aye, well, we’d rather deal wi’ Macgregor than you.” Stourie looked surly.
Had Macgregor really checked, wondered Hamish.
“So let’s not take all day about this,” he said. “Did either of you go to Gilchrist?”
Pete suddenly grinned and so did Stourie. Hamish blinked. Both men were toothless. Pete jerked his head in the direction of the sink. Hamish looked across. There were two tumblers of water by the sink and in each tumbler resided a pair of false teeth, the dentures grotesquely imitating the grins across the table from him.
“We both had all our teeth out in our twenties,” said Stourie. “We don’t need no dentists.”
“So you didn’t know Gilchrist?”
“Didnae even know what the man looked like.”
“That’s strange, you pair being so near Braikie. It’s a small town. Surely someone pointed the man out to you.”
Stourie spat contemptuously on the floor. “We don’t talk to them in Braikie.”
“So who else has a still?”
“We arenae saying we hae one,” said Stourie, “but I guess you could say if we had, we wouldnae want any competition.”
“Meaning you’re the only ones you know about?”
They looked at him in sullen silence.
“All right, I’ll leave it there at the moment. Give me a dram.”
They looked at each other and then Stourie gave a little nod. Pete went over and opened a kitchen cupboard and took down a bottle of whisky, tipped one set of false teeth out into the sink and poured the whisky into the glass.
Oh, well, thought Hamish, the alcohol will probably act as a disinfectant.
He sampled the whisky and then raised his eyebrows. It was pretty good, quite smooth, not as good as a regular legal blend, but certainly not likely to poison anyone. Hamish had a good palate for whisky and knew that they had not given him Johnnie Walker or something like that to pass off as their own.
“I’ll be on my way.” He got to his feet. “That’s a big extension ye’ve built onto the cottage.”
“Lambing shed,” said Stourie laconically.
“Well, now, the poor wee things must grow up fair blind in the dark,” said Hamish sarcastically. “The windows are all shuttered.”
“We aye take the shutters off when we’re lambing,” jeered Pete. “As a crofter yourself, you should hae guessed that.”
“Now, listen here.” Hamish Macbeth turned in the doorway. “I’m turning a blind eye to your practises but only for the moment. I’ll give you a couple of months to pack up. If I hear by then that you’re still making whisky, I’ll report you.”
“It iss no wunner you became a policeman, Macbeth,” said Stourie viciously, “because without that uniform, you’d chust be a lang drip o’ nothing.”
Hamish put his cap firmly on his flaming red hair. “Behave yourselves,” he snapped and went out into the cold day.
It was clouding over again and a few snowflakes were beginning to drift down. Against the black clouds massing to the west curved a glorious rainbow. He stood looking at it, a half smile on his lips, and then he clutched his head and let out a groan as pain stabbed over his left temple. Hamish could not remember when he last had a headache. Could it have been that whisky?
But he belonged to the school of thought which firmly believes that if you pay no attention to physical ailments, they go away. He drove into Braikie and parked in the main street. The pain was now nagging and persistent. He found he was outside a chemist’s shop. He went in and walked through the racks of cosmetics and vitamin pills to the pharmacy counter.
Behind the counter was a plump little girl in her early twenties. Her buxom figure was covered in a tight white coat. She had a piggy little face and a turned-up nose. Hamish had often read that a turned-up nose was supposed to be saucy and attractive. He had never found it so. But he had to admit that despite his headache, he was well aware that this buxom piggy little blonde was exuding a strong air of sexuality, so strong it hung in the air like musk.
“I’ve got a bad headache,” he said. “Can you give me something?”
“The best thing is aspirin,” she said.
“What about one of those extra-strength painkillers?”
“Just a rip-off,” she said cheerfully. “Aspirin’s cheaper and does the job the same. You smell of whisky. Maybe you shouldn’t drink so early in the day.”
“I was out at the Smiley brothers on a case,” said Hamish stiffly, not liking the implication that he was a drunk.
“Oh, another one of those headaches. It’ll go away all by itself the minute you have another dram.”
Hamish looked at her curiously and she gave him a cheeky wink. Apart from himself the shop was empty of customers. He leaned forward on the counter. “So you know that the Smiley brothers operate a still?”
“I don’t want to get them into trouble, but, yes, everyone knows it.”
“I’m slipping,” thought Hamish. And I forgot Angus’s salmon.
“The pharmacist, Mr. Cody, says there’s migraine and there’s tension headaches and there’s the headache from the Smileys’ hooch. You don’t need aspirin. You need another drink. Works a treat.”
Despite the pain in his head, Hamish smiled. The shop door opened and a small, fussy man came in. “Everything all right, Kylie?” he asked. When she nodded, he said, “You can take a break.”
He went through into the back.
“Come and have a drink with me,” said Hamish.
“Righty-ho. Just get my coat.”
She emerged a few moments later wearing a scarlet wool coat over a thin yellow blouse, tight short jersey skirt and heels so high that Hamish thought she must be very tiny indeed when she took them off, for as they walked in the direction of the pub, she hardly came up to his shoulder.
“What are you having?” he asked when they entered the smoky, dreary barroom of The Drouthy Crofter.
“Same as you. Straight whisky. And make it a couple of doubles.”
He went to the bar, collected their order and carried the glasses over to a corner table where Kylie was already seated. She shrugged off her coat. The yellow blouse had a deep V revealing that Kylie had the sort of cleavage only usually seen in the magazines on the top shelf of the newsagents. He dragged his gaze from it and raised his glass. “Let’s hope mis works.”
And it did, almost immediately. He blinked at her in relief. “Do you always
join customers for a drink?”
She giggled. “Only the sexy ones.”
He was not surprised that despite the fact that the Smileys’ still was obviously pretty well known that no one had come forward to report it. There are some things in the Highlands which would be regarded as crimes anywhere else in Britain that people here regarded as quite respectable. Poaching, provided it was the occasional salmon or deer, was not regarded as illegal. It was every Highlander’s birthright to take a deer from the hill and a fish from the river, no matter who owned the land. And a whisky still was regarded as about as innocent as making homemade cakes.
But as he surveyed sexy little Kylie, he began to wonder if Gilchrist had ever made a play for her. How Gilchrist had been able to attract such a beautiful young girl as Maggie Bane was beyond him. But he had, and so it followed that other women might have found him attractive – young women.
“I’m investigating the murder of the dentist,” he said.
“Oh, him.” She shrugged. “I don’t understand anyone going to that man. I went there once. I knew all I needed was a simple little filling, but he says it had to come out. No thank you, I said, and got the hell out of there.”
“So that was the only time you saw him?”
“You’re looking a me as if I’m the first murderer. Why on earth suspect me?”
“I don’t suspect you. You’re a very pretty girl and Gilchrist liked the ladies.”
“I had nothing to do with him.” But that sexy aura had disappeared. It had been turned off somewhere deep inside her. Her eyes roved restlessly around the bar. “Headache better?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I see some of my friends over there.”
And without waiting for his reply, she got to her feet and went over to join a group of men at the bar.
I’d better ask around about that one, thought Hamish. She was all right until I started asking about Gilchrist.
He left the pub and walked back towards where he had parked the Land Rover. He saw he was passing a fishmongers and stopped. “Special Offer. Fresh Salmon.” The sign in the window caught his eye. Salmon was selling for £1.80 a pound. He decided it would be worth buying one for the seer. He was sure the salmon was farmed rather than wild, but he was equally sure that old Angus would not be able to tell the difference.
