Death of a Macho Man

by Beaton, M. C.

  Mrs Wellington ignored him and went on, ‘It’s all the fault of this hotel, letting rooms to murderers. Money greed, that’s what it is. I shall tell my husband on Sunday to preach a sermon on the subject. They would let rooms to apes here provided the apes had enough money.’

  ‘Shut up, you old bag,’ screamed the colonel, beside himself with worry and fright. ‘What are all these policemen doing here, for God’s sake? Why aren’t they out looking for my daughter?’

  Mr Daviot approached him. ‘We have men blocking every road,’ he said soothingly.

  The colonel clasped his trembling hands. ‘And if they take to the hills?’

  ‘We’re waiting for the dogs,’ said Mr Daviot and turned away.

  ‘Nearly there,’ said Mr Morton. He was not piloting the helicopter, which had collected them from Inverness airport, as he had done the Learjet. ‘We’ll set you down in the car park at the Tommel Castle Hotel.’

  In that moment, Hamish looked down at the moorland below, purple with heather. He saw the little figure of a man and then saw that figure plunge into the heather for cover.

  ‘Put me down in the nearest field,’ shouted Hamish above the noise of the helicopter. The helicopter began to heel and go downwards. ‘Have you a gun?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘My deer rifle’s behind you,’ said Mr Morton, who was beginning to feel he was beyond being surprised at anything. Hamish took the gun from its case, then found the bullets and loaded it. When the helicopter landed he was off and running again, the gun slung over his shoulder, heading to where he had seen that figure. Buckie’s farmhouse, he thought. Empty. He was close to it.

  Jim stumbled to his feet and ran towards the farmhouse. He was sure he hadn’t been seen, but, just in case, he would need to change his plans and make his escape in daylight.

  Betty gave him a relieved smile. He walked over and took the gun from her. ‘Outside,’ he said.

  ‘He’s going to kill me,’ said Priscilla to Betty. ‘Don’t let him do this.’

  ‘Silly fool,’ said Betty. She said to Jim, ‘She thinks you’re going to kill her.’

  Jim jerked his head at the doorway. ‘Outside,’ he repeated. He jabbed the gun in Priscilla’s side.

  They stood in the sunlight in the deserted farmyard. Jim had moved away from them, keeping Priscilla covered.

  The smile had left Betty’s face and she looked at Jim anxiously. The wind soughed through the skeletal branches of a dead ash tree over their heads, a curlew piped from the heather. The wind had dropped in that uncanny way of Sutherland winds, and all was still.

  Jim pointed the pistol directly at Priscilla’s heart. ‘Goodbye, Miss Toffee-Nose.’

  ‘NO!’ screamed Betty and stood in front of Priscilla with her arms spread wide.

  Priscilla in that split second should have tried to escape, but she seemed rooted to the spot, staring at Betty’s dead body, spread-eagled at her feet.

  She looked up and across at Jim. ‘You meant to kill her anyway.’

  ‘Well, well, Miss Clever-Clogs, how right you are.’ He raised the pistol again.

  * * *

  Hamish Macbeth raised the deer rifle to his shoulder. He knew, as any policeman should, that he should shout a warning. He saw Jim’s grinning face in the telescopic sight and took careful aim.

  Priscilla had decided to run for it. She darted to the side, tripped on a rusting piece of farm machinery, and fell panting on the ground. She heard a shot. She twisted round and looked at her tormentor. He was standing, swaying, his face a mask of blood.

  And then he fell headlong and lay still.

  Priscilla tried to stand up. But her legs would not hold her. Hamish found her kneeling on the ground, retching miserably.

  He passed her a handkerchief. She finished vomiting and looked at him, her eyes widening. ‘Hamish?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Black hair doesn’t suit you.’ She began to giggle weakly and then she began to cry. He took her in his arms, talking softly as he would to a hurt child.

  ‘There now, there now. Hamish is here. It’s over. You’re safe. It’s all over.’

  Police sirens wailed from the road in the distance. The shots had been heard.

  ‘Listen tae me,’ said Hamish urgently as he heard cars start to bump down the long rutted road that led to the deserted farm, ‘you heard me shout a warning. Right? Got that? You heard me shout a warning.’

  She nodded dumbly.

  Cars screeched to a halt. Blair’s thick Glaswegian accent shouted, ‘You there! Leave the woman alone and walk towards us with your hands on your head.’

  Hamish stood up. ‘It’s me . . . Hamish Macbeth,’ he said. ‘Ower there’s your Gentleman Jim. I had tae shoot him. I gave him a warning.’

  Blair’s face was purple and thick veins stood out on his forehead. Hamish stood swaying on his feet with fatigue. There he was with his dyed-black hair and his scraggly black moustache and Blair suddenly saw him through a red mist. Macbeth had caught the most wanted criminal in Scotland, Macbeth had found the murderer of Duggan.

  He stumbled forwards, his thick hands groping blindly for Hamish’s neck. It took the full efforts of MacNab and Anderson to stop Hamish Macbeth being strangled by a superior officer.

  Chapter Eleven

  We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to

  the shape of a surplice peg,

  We have learned to bottle our parents twain

  in the yolk of an addled egg,

  We know that the tail must wag the dog, for

  the horse is drawn by the cart;

  But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old:

  ‘It’s clever, but is it Art?’

  – Rudyard Kipling

  Hamish Macbeth was on sick leave – by orders. He was told not to talk to the press. Strathbane was wondering what to do with this maverick policeman.

  He was so tired, he did not care. He was also suffering from delayed shock. He knew that if he had shouted a warning to Jim, the man might have swung that gun away from Priscilla, but that had been a chance he had not been willing to take. He had killed a man who had murdered without conscience, and yet the dead face of Gentleman Jim haunted his dreams.

  There was a sign on the police-station door referring all calls to Cnothan, and yet the press, knowing that he was in there, rang the doorbell and telephoned constantly. He began to feel he was under siege. During the night, under cover of darkness – for the light nights of mid-summer were over – he put out food for his hens. Then, packing up a bag, he began to walk along the deserted waterfront. His police Land Rover would be delivered back to him the next day. He knew that he was shortly about to be tangled up in miles of red tape. He would need to explain why he had taken off for Glasgow on his own, why he had not told Strathbane what he was doing, why he had spoken to a reporter, and why and how he had shot a man, not with a gun issued by the police but with a deer rifle.

  He still felt incredibly weary and his bones ached from all the running he had done. His dyed hair was showing glints of red at the roots and there was a sore mark on his face above his mouth where he had ripped off the moustache which Josie had helped him to stick on so well.

  He walked towards the humpbacked bridge. The cottages of Willie and Annie Ferguson were in darkness. He wondered if his friendship with Lucia and Willie would ever be the same again.

  He stood for a moment on the bridge and stared down at the rushing waters of the river, swollen with all the recent rain. For the first time, he wondered if he was really suited to the police force. His pig-headed desire to do things on his own was not what was expected of a good policeman. But it was a life he loved, a life he was used to. He turned and looked back at the sleeping village strung out along the waterfront. Had he been born with some sort of ambition by-pass? He had not travelled very much, had not really wanted to. He was an armchair traveller, content to watch exotic countries from the comfort of his armchair. By modern-day standards, he was a failure, a drop-out.
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  He trudged on up the hill. Priscilla would not be awake, but there would be the night porter on duty and he would ask for a room for the night and be able to rest up away from the press, and gear himself up for the horrendous amount of paperwork that lay ahead of him.

  Priscilla awoke with a cry. In her dream, Jim was once more facing her with the gun, but this time he had shot her, and when she awoke, her heart thudding against her ribs, she could still feel the impact of that dream bullet.

  She climbed out of bed and went and stood by the window, hugging her shivering body. As she looked down from the castle window, she saw the weary figure of Hamish Macbeth trudging up the drive.

  She scrambled into a sweater and jeans and ran down the stairs to find Hamish arguing with the night porter, a surly individual, who was telling him he would need to return the next morning to get a room.

  ‘Never mind him,’ said Priscilla ‘Come with me, Hamish. I’ll find you something. Would you like coffee or a drink?’

  He ran his hand through his dyed hair. ‘I could murder a whisky.’

  ‘Whisky it is.’ Under the disapproving stare of the night porter, she reached under the counter and unhitched the key to the bar, went across to it and unlocked the grille. She poured two fine old malt whiskies. ‘Let’s sit down. Come to escape from the press?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hamish, sinking gratefully into one of the large chintz-covered armchairs in the bar. ‘It’s a wee bittie late for me to start obeying orders, but I may as well try. I think I’ll soon be out of a job.’

  ‘You were very unorthodox,’ said Priscilla. ‘But with all this media attention, I don’t think they would dare fire you.’

  Hamish brightened. ‘I hadn’t thought o’ that.’ Then his face fell. He took a gulp of whisky. ‘I was thinking on the way up here that maybe I am not suited to the force at all. Is there something badly wrong wi’ me that I don’t want promotion or travel or anything like that?’

  Priscilla looked at him with a sudden rush of affection. ‘Oh, Hamish, the number of times I’ve wished you’d get off your Highland arse and do something with your life! But maybe you’ve got something the rest of us could be doing with. Who was it said that a truly happy man is the one who accepts and enjoys what he has?’

  ‘It would be grand to think I was like that. But this last case has shaken me. I suppose I should have given Jim a warning.’

  ‘If you’d followed correct police procedure, I’d probably be dead,’ said Priscilla. ‘Every time I think of giving your career a push, I’ll think of that.’

  There was a companionable silence and then Priscilla said, ‘I wonder what Mrs Beck is thinking now. That her husband was so obsessed with Rosie and hated her, his wife, so much that he was prepared to hurt her further by admitting to a murder he did not commit?’

  ‘I think she’ll get over the shock pretty quickly. She’ll probably sell her story to a tabloid and it’ll appear with screaming headlines after the murder trial and she’ll begin to enjoy the notoriety. Then she’ll marry again, some poor sod who actually likes being bullied, and live happily ever after. She won’t suffer long. Think of the selfishness of keeping a man tied to you even though you know he hates your guts. Maybe if she’s that selfish, she pretended the hatred wasn’t there.’

  ‘And Lucia! She used to be so fond of you, named the baby after you; how could she go around spreading nasty stories about you?’

  ‘Och, the silly lassie thought Willie had done it and it wouldn’t amaze me if I found out that Willie thought she had done it. That’s the terrible thing about murder in a small community, it turns one against the other and everyone starts suspecting everyone else. In the city, where people often don’t know their own neighbours, it would be different, I think. Mind you, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a place and be completely anonymous. I love Lochdubh, but sometimes I feel I’m living under a magnifying glass.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said drily, ‘being found in bed with a woman wouldn’t be such a topic of gossip. Do you know she told me she had done that on instructions from Jim? It was to keep your mind off them?’

  ‘The thing that kept my mind on them was I desperately wanted it to be the fake John Glover. I didnae want it to be one of the villagers.’ His hazel eyes gleamed with malice. ‘You must be feeling better, Priscilla. You enjoyed telling me that.’

  ‘I’ll get us another drink,’ said Priscilla quickly, picking up his now empty glass and walking over to the bar, ‘and then I’ll find you a bed. Oh, something good’s come out of it all – or rather, I suppose it’s good news.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She filled their two glasses with a generous measure and walked back to join him and sat down.

  ‘Geordie Mackenzie and Annie Ferguson are an item.’

  ‘Well, well, hardly love’s young dream, but nice all the same. Has he been married before?’

  ‘Don’t think so. There’s something else . . .’

  ‘What? This whisky is grand.’

  ‘Archie Maclean has rebelled. The worm has turned.’

  ‘Never! What did he do? Throw his wife in the washtub?’

  ‘She found out about his visiting Rosie Draly and called him a silly fool. The thing that evidently hurt Archie most was that she did not think for a moment he had been having an affair with Rosie. So he told her he had just as she was about to hit him with the potato masher. The yells were so loud that a lot of the villagers were crowded at the kitchen door to listen, which is why I got hold of all this. But I think what Archie did next was more shocking in her eyes than any affair.’

  ‘Go on. The mind boggles.’

  ‘He pushed through the people watching and ran into the garden and he jumped up and down in the garden until his boots were well and truly muddy and then he rushed back into the kitchen and pranced all over the floor to cheers from the crowd, shouting, “Take that, you auld bitch.” And that’s not all.’

  ‘She must have gone mad,’ marvelled Hamish. ‘That woman would consider mud on her kitchen floor worse than rape.’

  ‘Well, you know how Mrs Maclean always boils and cleans his clothes so they’re tight and shrunken? He rushed over to Patel’s store and bought a pair of loose jogging trousers, a T-shirt and a bright-red polyester jacket with a skull on the back. Everyone had followed him over. He stripped off down to his underwear right in the middle of the shop and put on his new clothes, then he smiled all round and went off to the bar.’

  ‘What on earth did Mrs Maclean do?’

  ‘She rushed round to Dr Brodie, screaming her husband had gone mad and demanding men in white coats with a straitjacket. But Dr Brodie sat her down, evidently, and told her a few home truths, including the fact that he had gleaned from the police that Rosie Draly had probably been a lesbian.’

  ‘And what did she say to that?’

  ‘She said, “Thae Greeks hae no morals.”’

  Hamish laughed, ‘She’ll win in the end. She’ll get these new clothes off Archie’s back soon enough and shrink them.’ Then he stifled a yawn.

  ‘Drink up,’ said Priscilla, ‘and I’ll show you your bed. I don’t suppose you really meant to pay for the room, but in case you did, you don’t have to. It’s comfortable enough, but it’s not being let to any guests until we get it redecorated.’

  She led the way upstairs to the top of the castle. ‘It’s along from mine.’ She pushed open a door. ‘The bed’s made up. All you’ve got to do is fall asleep.’

  He kissed her cheek. ‘Thanks,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ll need all my strength to cope with the wrath o’ police headquarters.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘you won’t be alone. I suppose Blair will be in more trouble than he’s ever been in the whole of his life!’

  Another day dawned sunny and clear with just a hint of early-morning frost in the air. The bracken on the hillsides was beginning to turn golden and the rowan trees were heavy with scarlet berries. Most of the cottages had a row
an tree at the gate. It was supposed to keep the fairies away, and although all would scornfully say that they didn’t believe in fairies, all privately thought it was a good idea to have a rowan tree outside the house . . . well, just in case.

  Mrs Wellington was standing on the waterfront outside Patel’s store with the Currie sisters when Detective Jimmy Anderson sloped along. ‘Day, ladies,’ he said. ‘Where’s Hamish?’

  ‘He’s probably asleep,’ snorted the minister’s wife. ‘That man must be the laziest policeman on the beat.’

  ‘Not to say the most immoral . . . most immoral,’ said Jessie Currie.

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t think you’ll have to put up with him for much longer,’ said Jimmy, lighting a cigarette and puffing the smoke in the direction of Mrs Wellington, who coughed stagily and flapped the air with her hand.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Nessie.

  ‘Our Hamish is all set for the high jump.’

  ‘Do you mean the games over at Lochinver?’ asked Nessie looking puzzled.

  ‘No, fired, sacked, given the boot, that’s what.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ boomed Mrs Wellington. ‘He solved the case, he killed that murderer, he saved Miss Halburton-Smythe’s life; why on earth should he be given the sack?’

  ‘For talking to a reporter,’ said Jimmy, ticking off the offences on his fingers, ‘for investigating on his own and not reporting in when his photo was in the papers and calls on the radio, for hiring a car with a dead man’s driving licence, for having driven a police vehicle to Glasgow without permission, for having borrowed a gun and shot someone without permission, and I think all that’s just for starters.’

  ‘But if he had done everything by the book,’ said Mrs Wellington, ‘you’d never have caught this Gentleman Jim; in fact, you’d probably never have known who he was!’

  ‘Could be, but tell that to Strathbane.’

  ‘This is dreadful, dreadful,’ said Jessie, as much for Hamish now as she had so recently been against him. ‘Something must be done.’