Miss Pink Investigates 3

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘The smell was strong.’

  ‘So I left Ranald there, getting under their feet. Pagan seems eager to find Hamish—almost as if they’ve got him labelled as a suspect. Flora’s going to enjoy this.’

  ***

  The drive south was wet and dismal and she would have turned back had she not agreed to act as cab driver. She passed through Morvern and the sign for Slaggan appeared on the verge. Vaguely recalling past journeys, she continued through a hamlet comprising a hotel, petrol pumps and a few houses to where, a mile beyond, stone pillars stood at the side of the road and a drive took off between sodden rhododendrons.

  Invermarsco House was large, its owner slim and chipper: an elderly Don Juan who insisted on her taking a glass of sherry before starting back. Flora’s big strap bag was in the hall and, thrown over a chair, a fur that looked like a wolf’s skin—oddly exotic for the Highlands. As she was ushered into the drawing room MacLean shouted up the stairs, ‘She’s staying for sherry, Flora; come and have a Coke.’

  When Flora appeared, she looked as if she hadn’t changed her clothes; she was still wearing the Escada top, the baggy pants and trainers. She had a new cropped hairstyle but, despite its sophistication—perhaps because of it—she looked like a child actor playing an adult role. She was saying, ‘It was too bad of Mum to ask you to pick me up.’

  ‘I’d have run her home if I’d known,’ MacLean said. ‘How are they making out in Sgoradale? What’s this about a chap being found drowned? Suicide, was it?’

  ‘I told him what Campbell was like,’ Flora explained. ‘He reckons it’s an occupational hazard if you live on the coast: losing your marbles and committing suicide.’

  ‘It’s too remote up there around Loch Sgoradale,’ MacLean said. ‘Foreigners can’t stick it. They leave, or they stay and go ga-ga. Seen it happen scores of times.’

  ‘Come off it, Buffy,’ Flora jeered. ‘Some crofters stay sane.’

  ‘They’re not foreigners.’

  She sniffed and turned back to Miss Pink. ‘How’s Debbie taking it?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’ Miss Pink went off into a spiel about Campbell’s being an agent for MI6 or MI5, and Debbie’s going home to her mother in Pitlochry, which MacLean received with courteous bewilderment and Flora with impatience. As soon as Miss Pink put down her empty glass, the girl stood up and said it was time they were leaving. Back on the road, the car’s nose turned for home, she said, ‘You didn’t want me to ask any more questions in there, particularly about Debbie. What happened?’

  ‘As I said, she left Campbell. Then he set his place on fire—your mother’s place, rather. Are the newspapers saying he committed suicide?’

  ‘I haven’t seen any today, and Buffy doesn’t have a telly. What else could it have been?’

  Miss Pink hesitated. Flora was only sixteen. Snuggled in her furs, she regarded the older woman steadily. ‘Not suicide?’ she ventured.

  ‘I’m afraid he was murdered.’

  ‘You’re having me on.’ Silence. ‘No, you’re not.’ Another silence. Flora stared through the windscreen. ‘Debbie?’ she asked. ‘Is she all right? And the kids?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They were safely away by the time he … died.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  Miss Pink looked at the girl’s profile. ‘You’ve lost weight.’

  ‘I was too fat?’

  ‘Puppy fat, in the cheeks.’

  ‘This is a red herring. How did Campbell die?’

  ‘He was hit over the head, put in his boat, tied to the painter, and the boat sent to the bottom.’

  Flora sighed, then breathed deeply for a few moments. ‘You’d better tell me everything,’ she said.

  Miss Pink told her what she knew of Campbell’s movements, adding a rider that, with hindsight, one couldn’t tell how much of his own statements was true, ‘Which may account for his downfall,’ she said, and reminded Flora of his propensity for playing games. ‘He could have seen something he shouldn’t, something connected with a crime.’

  ‘What kind of crime?’

  ‘If we knew that, we’d know who the murderer is.’

  ‘No kidding. I was talking to Neil—that’s my friend’s father in Edinburgh; he suggested I should go into television—as a journalist. I’d like to specialise in crime. What do you think?’

  ‘What attracts you about criminal work?’

  ‘People’s minds, what makes them tick. OK, so Campbell was eliminated because he knew too much, but what did he know? It’s fascinating. Are there crime reporters in the village?’

  ‘I’m sure there are; the place is swarming with media people. Did your mother tell you about Hamish?’

  ‘Of course, that’s why I had to come home. She’s going up the wall about the ponies.’

  ‘It seems irresponsible going off when you were away, and your mother says he was paid to look after the animals.’

  ‘He’s no good without supervision.’

  ‘Does it surprise you that he’s disappeared?’

  ‘Not really. “Disappeared”? That’s an odd way of putting it.’

  ‘How would you put it?’

  ‘I thought he’d run away—like they do, kids, to Inverness or somewhere. You’re not suggesting there’s something sinister about it, are you?’

  ‘You remember the thefts from cars in the summer?’

  ‘Yes. What’s that got to do with—’

  ‘And the police car in the nurse’s drive?’

  ‘Oh, that!’

  ‘And strange telephone calls: heavy breathers, and anonymous letters.’

  ‘Those are new since I left.’

  ‘They’re not, actually. There’s a feeling that Hamish may be at the bottom of it all.’

  ‘Hamish? Oh, no—’ Flora stopped suddenly and blinked. She started to frown. ‘Hamish,’ she repeated thoughtfully and then, as if she’d thought of it herself: ‘It could be, you know.’ She laughed. ‘Rebelling against his old man? And now he’s been found out and he’s run away. Typical.’

  Miss Pink thought about the intruder running from Campbell’s cottage, and the fire, the big fire—links in a chain that ended in murder. ‘Why should he steal from cars? What did he spend the money on?’

  Flora looked blank. ‘I’ve no idea. What do kids spend money on? Drink, drugs, cigarettes? I don’t know what he did in the evenings with his friends.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have had any.’

  ‘Are you investigating?’ Flora twisted round in her seat. ‘What fun! Can I help?’

  ‘Not me. An inspector called Pagan’s heading the investigation. I’d like to see his reaction to an offer of help from you.’

  ‘I’m not a child.’

  ‘Well, the new hairstyle and the furs are sophisticated enough, but you still look like a child. Are you aware of that?’

  ‘People keep telling me. That’s the point of the new image—trying to look my age.’

  ‘Would a sixteen-year-old buy a wolfskin?’

  ‘This is rabbit. You can get long-haired rabbit fur of any shade nowadays. Actually it’s supposed to be lynx.’ She looked hurt.

  ‘I’m sorry. It looks well on you.’

  They went through Morvern. On the open road again, Flora asked, ‘When did he go?’

  ‘Hamish? On Sunday night, but it was only discovered yesterday morning.’ She told Flora about the dummy in the bed and the reactions of the Knoxes.

  ‘Didn’t he leave a note or anything?’

  ‘Evidently not. His father suggested that he was up to some comparatively harmless prank, with a gang or at least with someone who could drive, and they were stranded a long way from home—an accident perhaps. But he drew a blank with hospitals and other policemen. One can’t help feeling that if Hamish doesn’t communicate it’s because he can’t.’

  ‘Or won’t, is more like it. He’s scarpered. He got cold feet when Campbell was found and he’s run away because he’s got a guilty conscience. He’s not going
to be around when the police start making enquiries about who’s been playing practical jokes.’

  ‘That makes sense except that Campbell’s body was found after Hamish disappeared.’

  ‘Well, he knew it was g—’ In a tense silence she stole a glance sideways at Miss Pink whose attention was on the road, her lips pursed. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Flora asked.

  ‘The point is: are the police thinking it? Unless Hamish comes back soon, they’re going to suspect a connection.’

  ***

  ‘Yes, we want that lad badly.’ Pagan took his cup from Miss Pink. ‘He has a motive; it’s an adolescent motive, but it’s there.’

  After dropping Flora at the lodge she had reached her cottage to find Pagan’s car parked outside. She’d been indoors only long enough to make a pot of tea when he was at the door; he’d seen her arrive from Esme’s sitting room, he told her. He said nothing of Steer’s whereabouts. He had opened the conversation with the subject of Hamish.

  ‘A motive for what?’ she asked.

  He looked pained. ‘All right, you have to go through the motions’—she remembered that Beatrice had said he was brash this morning—‘but they’ve come clean—’ His gesture implied the whole community. ‘There’s Miss Dunlop: a mine of information, she is, fills any gaps left by the nurse and the postmistress—and anyone else come to that.’ He looked at her meaningly. ‘But you’re the one whose word I can rely on.’

  She was on her guard immediately—but she didn’t know where he’d been all day, what he’d been doing, and she’d had no time to find out. Why should she worry? Because in this small community there were a number of people she liked, and none whose arrest she might view with equanimity.

  ‘You’re quiet,’ he said.

  ‘I was waiting for your questions.’

  ‘I’m here for discussion, not questions.’

  She gave him a cat’s smile; appreciative, knowing. ‘Tell me what you’ve learned that presents Hamish with a motive.’

  He answered obliquely. ‘There were the phone calls, and just one solitary letter—to Miss Dunlop. You were there when she received it; she refuses to divulge its contents.’

  ‘I suspect that it was needling her: jeering at her for a lesbian, and in obscene terms. The accusation would have shocked her to the core.’

  ‘Enough to murder the writer?’

  ‘Oh, come, Inspector: in these days?’

  There was silence, wary on her part, thoughtful on his.

  When he spoke again, he’d changed the subject. ‘This boy came and went as he pleased at night; there’s a flat roof outside his bedroom window and the house is built into a bank. Take the time he put the police car in the nurse’s drive; he’d wait until his parents were watching something noisy on television. Knox says the keys were in the car; I’d have his hide for that, but there are more important issues at stake. The nurse says Hell’s Angels were responsible.’ Miss Pink said nothing. ‘And you?’ he prompted.

  ‘Hell’s Angels wouldn’t have known about village relationships. Those aren’t talked about except within the family, sometimes not then.’ Pagan waited. ‘She thinks it was Hamish,’ Miss Pink said.

  ‘That’s what Miss Dunlop told us.’

  She took his empty cup without a word and held his eye as she returned it. ‘Have the results of the autopsy come through?’

  ‘I should have told you. Campbell’s dentist identified him—or rather, the jaws. There was water in the lungs. He was alive when he went in the loch.’

  ‘He didn’t die of that terrible battering?’

  ‘He would have done, the brain was a mess. We also have the results on those prints from the pans and things in the tent—Campbell’s prints slightly smudged. Could be that on a cold night Campbell was wearing gloves, but you wouldn’t expect it of a man who’s lived here for ten years. And if he had been, his old prints would have been heavily smudged. So someone else was in the tent, and wearing gloves. Ties in with the car thief—you look serious. Something struck you there?’

  ‘A thought hovering at the back of my mind. It’s gone, but it will come back. So, gloves at the camp and the car park, but no gloves when he ran away from the cottage. Why not then as well? Will you have some more shortbread? What have I said?’

  He was staring at her. ‘ “No gloves when he ran away from the cottage”,’ he repeated. ‘You’re right. If it was the same person, why the lapse in precautions on the night of the fire? He didn’t have a car either. Everything points to young Hamish.’

  ‘Surely it’s all circumstantial.’

  ‘Not even that, ma’am; we haven’t got a case. But we want him and we’re going to find him. Although if he’s responsible for something more than petty theft and a few naughty pranks then he’s in Glasgow by now, or even further afield, like London. But he’s a young lad; he doesn’t know his way around. We’ll find him. You look doubtful.’

  ‘I can’t get over his wearing a mask and forgetting gloves. It’s inconsistent. He wiped his prints— Have you been told about the cottage that was broken into: Camas Beag?’

  ‘Lady MacKay told us. She said you thought the place was too clean. I’ll send Steer over there, but there’s little point in printing it; too many people have been in since, and then there were all the visitors before. It’s a pity because if he had left a print at that cottage, it could be the one that would nail him.’

  ‘Really? What have you got to tie that intruder to anything else that’s happened, least of all the murder? What puzzles me is why anyone should break into Camas Beag. The beds hadn’t been slept in, no food had been taken, yet the surfaces must have been wiped because they were so clean under the broken window. So what did the intruder want?’

  ‘There’s no knowing how their minds work.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Killers, criminals, they’re all mad.’

  ‘Even madmen have motives that make sense to them.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  By Wednesday morning rain had been falling for sixty hours, but Sgoradale was fortunate; with the deep cut of the river to carry off storm water there were no floods, although the river itself was an awesome sight. When the rain stopped, around eleven o’clock, it was possible to hear through the thunder of the torrent the muffled rumbling of boulders being carried down the bed. Miss Pink, looking at the amber rapids from Feartag’s sitting room, swore that she could feel the house vibrating.

  ‘It does,’ Beatrice said. ‘It’s built on rock, so the vibrations can be felt quite distinctly. It worried the police too, and it wasn’t so bad yesterday morning. Wasn’t it odd that they should want to see Robert’s guns?’

  ‘I don’t know what was in their minds. The autopsy didn’t turn up a bullet wound. I noticed a difference in Pagan’s manner when he came to me yesterday: almost conspiratorial, as if he suspected I was considering Hamish as the killer although I wasn’t yet ready to admit it openly.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Beatrice spoke as if she’d been giving the matter a lot of thought. ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up. His nerve broke and he ran away.’

  ‘That’s what Flora says, but he ran away before the body was found.’

  ‘But not before Campbell was murdered, if the body had been in the water for longer than a day.’

  ‘So you have come round to thinking that Hamish was responsible. It’s as well you haven’t given any interviews to the Press. Do you think I might have another cup of coffee?’

  ‘There’s no milk. Come to the shop with me; I’m still very wary of the reporters. You can deal with them.’

  Overnight the gale had moderated and by the time they turned into the street the wind had died to a zephyr and there were splashes of sunshine on the water. A little East Coast fishing boat was coming up the loch on the tide.

  ‘Where’s she been?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘She was never fishing in those gales.’

  ‘She could have put in for shelter to some remote cove and the crew have
eaten all their stores. Or maybe they have some fish they caught before the gale and need to get it to market.’

  She was wrong. The first inkling they had of anything untoward was when they realised that the street was empty but the quay was a jumble of cars. ‘There’re a lot of people in front of the hotel,’ Miss Pink said. ‘What can they be doing?’ The fishing boat had slowed down and was coming round to the quay. ‘Those people have to be the Press,’ she continued. ‘So there’s another story, and it must be connected with the boat. Could they have picked up someone who was in trouble?’

  ‘There was nothing on the radio.’

  They were standing on the turf in the vicinity of the police house and now Joan Knox emerged from her drive and crossed the road towards them. Her hair was uncombed, she wore a shabby brown dress and bedroom slippers. She looked at them bleakly, not returning their greeting.

  ‘What’s happening, Mrs Knox?’ Beatrice asked.

  ‘They’re bringing in a body.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She looked across the water and only her lips moved. ‘The captain radioed ashore.’

  ‘Where’s Mr Knox?’

  ‘With the others on the quay. Waiting.’

  Beatrice looked from her to Miss Pink, then everyone stared across the loch, two of them refusing to speculate because they felt that Joan Knox had known all along that her son would not return of his own accord nor with the police, but in some fashion like this: coming in with the tide and caught up in a fishing net.

  ***

  ‘How would I know?’ Rose Millar said. ‘All I know was the shop was full of people and suddenly they were all gone. A body? It’s not unusual after a big blow.’ But she licked her lips and her eyes were uneasy.