by M C Beaton
She held up a curtain at the back of the shop. Hamish ducked his head and went through. There was a sort of back parlour-cum-kitchen and a glass door leading out into a sunny courtyard.
“We cycle,” she said.
“You’re coming with me?”
“I show you some of Amsterdam, yes? I am Anna.” She held out a small hand.
“Hamish.”
“Haymeesh? What sort of name is that?”
“It’s Highland, Scottish for James.”
“I love the Scots. So we go.”
They wheeled bicycles out into a narrow cobbled street which ran along by a canal. She pedalled off and Hamish, with a feeling of exhilaration, mounted and pedalled after her.
“I do not know what you are talking about,” said Greta, facing the two Glaswegians. “My friend Anna went off with her friend.”
The one called Sammy thrust his face close to Greta’s and said menacingly, “You’d better tell us, hen.”
Greta pressed an alarm button under the counter and took a step back. “I do not know what you are or what you want,” she said. “Get out of here.”
The alarm button was not only connected to the local police station, but lit up a warning light outside the door of the shop, which, unknown to the two Glaswegians, was flashing like a beacon.
So that just as Sammy was about to utter further threats, suddenly there were four very large Dutch policemen in the shop.
Greta spoke in rapid Dutch. The Glaswegians were handcuffed and led off. One policeman waited behind and took a statement from Greta. “It’s Anna,” said Greta ruefully. “I don’t know who the man is she went off with. He was very tall, with flaming-red hair. British.”
♦
Water, water, everywhere, thought Hamish as Anna’s delectable rump bobbed on the bicycle in front of him. They shot down cobbled streets, each one looking remarkably like the other, and then along the banks of yet another canal until Anna stopped in front of a tall building.
“I live up there,” she said. “Coffee?”
Hamish’s spurt of rebellion was beginning to fade. Olivia’s cold and angry face rose in his mind’s eye. But, hey, he was supposed to be in charge of the operation.
Olivia was pacing up and down in front of Pieter. “What do I do now?” she asked. “He’s been gone for ages. They may have killed him.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Pieter. “I’ll go off and check with my contacts with the police.”
Hamish was sitting by a sunny window in Anna’s kitchen, sipping coffee and enjoying the foreignness of it all. The very coffee he was drinking tasted foreign and exotic.
“Hamish!” Anna’s voice calling from another room.
He got to his feet. “Where are you?”
“In here.”
He looked into the living room: heavy carved fruitwood furniture, canary in a cage by the window, tall dresser with thick pottery blue-and-white mugs and plates.
“Hamish!”
He pushed open a door. The bedroom. Anna lying on the bed, naked.
“Come here.” She held out her hand.
“I have n-not the p-protection,” he said, but approached the bed all the same, gazing at the ripe young body as if hypnotised.
She turned away from him and jerked open the drawer of a bedside table. “Help yourself”
Hamish moved round the large double bed and looked down into the drawer. Piles of condoms.
“I d-don’t think…” he began, but she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“We have a little fun…yes?”
♦
How long had he been gone? wondered Olivia. He had left at nine in the morning and it was now approaching two in the afternoon. No word from Pieter. What should she do? She was feeling guilty. She knew she had treated him with unusual coldness. Soon, she would need to phone Strathbane and tell them what had happened. Then Pieter’s discreet inquiries would be no good. There would need to be a full-scale police search for Hamish Macbeth.
There was a knock at the door. “Hamish!” she cried, and ran to open it. But it was Pieter who stood there.
“Any news?”
“Yes.”
“Is he alive?”
“Very much so.”
“What happened?”
“They have video cameras at about every street corner in central Amsterdam. By running back the film of the street corners near the hotel for about the time you said Hamish disappeared, we saw him leave. He went into a souvenir shop. The woman said he had gone off with her friend Anna, who sometimes minds the shop for her. They left by the back way. The two Glaswegians came in and threatened her. She pressed the alarm bell and got them arrested. They have been told they are not welcome in Holland and sent on their way. I told the police at a high level that arresting them would complicate our business here.”
“But this Anna…?”
“She’s a prostitute. Friend Greta tried to claim she was just a girl who likes a good time. But she’s on the books. She does have a good time but she takes money for it. I wonder what excuse our friend Hamish will have when he eventually shows up.”
Hamish Macbeth awoke from a deep sleep. He felt marvellous. Then he looked at the clock. Two in the afternoon?
He hurriedly got into his clothes. He shook Anna awake. “I’ve got to go.”
She smiled up at him. “I’ll have another sleep. Just leave the money on the table.”
Hamish’s mouth dropped open.
“I take sterling,” she said cheerfully. “Fifty pounds.”
Hamish fished out his wallet. Anna had closed her beautiful eyes again.
Vanity, vanity, he thought dismally. And I thought you fancied me. At least he was carrying around enough money in his role of drug baron. He peeled off the money and put it down on the table.
He made his way down the narrow dark staircase and stood outside blinking in the sunlight. He didn’t know where he was. How on earth was he going to explain his absence? Perhaps he could say that he had given the Glaswegians the slip and then turned and followed them, to see if they contacted anyone. That would do.
He walked and walked down cobbled streets and along by canals until he saw a taxi and hailed it. “Hilton,” he said, and lay back in the cab, thinking all the while of Olivia’s angry face.
He used his own key to let himself into the hotel room.
Pieter and Olivia were sitting in armchairs. They looked up at him, waiting, waiting, and with that Highland sixth sense of his, he all at once knew that somehow they knew not only where he had been but what he had been doing.
“Where have you been?” asked Olivia.
Hamish pulled up another chair and sat down. Nothing but the truth would serve.
“I’ve been making a fool of myself.” He sighed. “It was like this. I felt confined in here. I’ve never been abroad before and I thought the only part of Amsterdam I’m going to see is this hotel room and maybe the odd restaurant or nightclub. I only meant to walk around for a bit. I went into a souvenir shop around the corner and I met this girl. I could see the Glaswegians across the road and wanted to give them the slip. She led me out the back way, lent me a bicycle and asked me to follow her and I did. We went to her flat. I didn’t know she was a prostitute until she demanded payment. I paid her and came back.”
“And this is what I’m supposed to be working with,” said Olivia to Pieter. “The village idiot abroad. I’d better phone Strathbane and abort the whole business. This man”—she jerked a contemptuous thumb at Hamish—“is going to get us all killed.”
Pieter repressed a smile. He had expected Hamish to tell some highly embroidered lie. The fact that Hamish had told nothing but the truth amused him. Also Pieter found Olivia’s dictatorial manner irritating. Men must stick together against bullying women. Poor Olivia, had she been a man, Pieter would have backed her all the way.
“I think that Strathbane would be furious with you for aborting an already expensive operation
,” said Pieter smoothly, “and as you are in charge of this case, it is you who would look bad, not Hamish here.”
Olivia felt suddenly weary. Oh, what it was to be a woman.’ Hamish would emerge as a bit of a lad and she would emerge as a carping bitch.
“I shall never forgive you for this,” she snapped at Hamish. “But Pieter has a point. A lot of money has already been paid out on this. But from now on you will obey orders and do as you are told.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Hamish meekly.
Pieter took his leave and said he would collect them later for the nightclub.
“Don’t you know a prostitute when you see one?” demanded Olivia. “What kind of copper are you?”
Hamish had suffered enough. He rose to his feet.
“If you will excuse me, ma’am, I will go to my room.”
He walked stiffly past her, his face flaming as red as his hair, and, ignoring her shout of “It’s my room, too,” he went into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.
He threw himself down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Prostitutes in Strathbane were raddled middle-aged women or pallid young girls with so many needle marks on their arms they looked like pincushions. And even that damns me as a fogy, thought Hamish. When did anyone last see a pincushion? How was he supposed to know that a fresh-looking young girl who was helping out in a souvenir shop was a prostitute? She had been warm and generous and loving. He had thought his dreams had come true. He remembered that just before he fell asleep, he had imagined her in the kitchen of the police station in Lochdubh, busy among the cooking pots, her canary singing in a cage by the window. He felt almost tearful with shame.
Olivia was on the telephone to headquarters in Strathbane, using the mobile phone. Much as she would have liked to shop Hamish, to put in an official complaint, she was well aware that it would be the end of the operation. She would save the gem about Hamish and the prostitute for her final report. Mr. Daviot listened to her report about how they had laid the ground, that they were going to a nightclub tonight to set the scene. Then she said, “We were followed by two of Jimmy White’s goons but they got arrested for harassing some woman in a shop. So I do not see any reason why we should stay here any longer than tonight, running up expensive hotel bills.”
“I will rely on your judgement,” said Daviot, who had a slight crush on Olivia. “So we can expect you back tomorrow?”
“Yes, I’ll make the travel arrangements.”
She said goodbye and then collected her own and Hamish’s airline tickets from her bag and phoned the airline and booked them both out on an early flight in the morning. Hamish Macbeth would be easier to control on home ground.
♦
“Good morning, sir,” said Chief Inspector Blair as he met Mr. Daviot in one of the long dreary lime-green corridors of police headquarters in Strathbane.
“Ah, good morning. Mrs. Daviot thanks you very much for the flowers. Fancy you remembering her birthday.”
“Just a little something. Everything going well over there?”
“Things seem to be running smoothly so far. I hope Macbeth realises at last that he has potential. He’s too bright to be locked away in a Highland village.”
Blair nodded and walked on. He had a pounding headache, having drunk too much the night before. He seethed at the idea of Hamish Macbeth getting any glory at all. Would it be so terrible to drop a word in the wrong quarters? They wouldn’t kill Hamish, just probably disappear back to Glasgow. It would not be as if he, Blair, would be thwarting the police and Customs and Excise from seizing a valuable cargo. The cargo was a scam.
He would never be found out. All it would take was one little whisper.
♦
Hamish received the news of their impending departure calmly. He had lost all his resentment to Olivia. He was so ashamed of himself that he actually now welcomed her cold, brisk efficiency.
Olivia had put on less makeup that evening. She was wearing a brief black evening dress with gold jewellery. Her hair was down on her shoulders, smooth and shining.
“You look very well,” said Hamish awkwardly as he helped her into her coat.
She threw him a brief smile. “I thought I was beginning to look a bit too vulgar.”
Pieter called to collect them and they all set off for the nightclub.
The nightclub was dark, with candles on the tables. “I don’t know how anyone’s even going to see us here,” he murmured to Pieter.
“The cabaret’s about to begin,” said Pieter. “We’re near the front and the lights from the stage will show us clearly. We’ll just need to hope your Glaswegians have been replaced.”
“There was that chap with them, the one I saw in Lachie’s office, the one I call the Undertaker,” said Hamish. “He’ll still be around. If he’s not here himself, he’ll send someone else.”
Suddenly the stage was lit up and the compere dashed on. He spoke in rapid Dutch and then German and English. Lola was to be the first turn, a lady of renowned international beauty. The audience laughed and Hamish wondered what was so funny about that.
Then Lola came on, a statuesque blonde with enormous breasts and high cheekbones. In a Marlene Dietrich voice, she started to sing “Falling in Love Again.” Hamish realised with a little shock that Lola was a man. The wrists and ankles were always a giveaway.
“That’s a man,” whispered Olivia to Hamish.
“I know,” he said crossly, thinking she really must consider him some sort of dumb hayseed, and then he remembered she had every reason to consider him an innocent abroad.
After Lola had finished, the lights blazed out from the stage as she began to sing “I Will Survive.”
Hamish glanced covertly around. Just sitting down, a few tables behind him, was Anna, accompanied by a heavy-set businessman.
Pieter followed his gaze. “That’s your lady of today,” he said.
“How do you know?” asked Hamish, raising his voice to be heard above Lola’s singing.
Pieter leaned forward and told him about the street videos.
“I feel a right fool,” said Hamish. “Does she have a pimp?”
“No, she’s a bit of an enthusiastic amateur. But any day now, someone’s going to take her over. She’s only been busted once. She tried to pick up a businessman in a hotel and his wife phoned the police. That’s the only reason she came to their notice. Cheer up, Hamish. It was an easy mistake to make.”
Olivia, who had overheard the conversation, studied Anna. Anna looked as fresh and wholesome as newly baked bread. She could easily have passed for her escort’s daughter. She could all at once understand why Hamish had made such a mistake.
Lola departed the stage in a flurry of ostrich feathers and sequins. She was replaced by a conjuror. The audience promptly ignored what was happening on the stage and the babble of voices rose.
“Our American friends have just come in.” Pieter waved. “And there’s a thin man in a black suit leaning against a pillar at the back. Take a look, Hamish, and see if you recognise him.”
“Which pillar? Where?”
“At the back, to the left of the exit.”
Hamish looked and then looked quickly away. “It’s the Undertaker, Lachie’s man. I wonder why he’s so obvious. He must know I would recognise him.”
“They probably want you to know you’re being checked up on. Good. Then on the road out, we’ll stop at various tables.”
“Surely these drug people will be mighty suspicious of anyone muscling in on their territory.”
“Amsterdam is not their home ground, not the ones you’ll meet. They’re here to see to shipments.”
The conjuror finished his act to a spattering of applause.
“How long do we sit here for?” asked Olivia, ignoring the compère’s patter. “I’m getting bored.”
“Just a little longer,” said Pieter.
“I’m hungry,” complained Olivia. “I haven’t had any dinner.”
“And I didn�
��t have any lunch either,” said Hamish.
“No, you were eating the fair Anna,” said Pieter, and laughed.
“Cut that out, now,” snapped Olivia. “Remember Hamish is supposed to be my husband. I don’t like coarseness.”
“Then don’t look at the stage,” said Hamish.
But Olivia looked. Two men and a woman were engaged in complicated sexual acts.
“Aren’t you enjoying it?” she asked Hamish.
“I’m not a voyeur,” said Hamish, averting his eyes from the stage. Pieter ordered more drinks after the cavorting threesome had been replaced by semi-naked showgirls. Hamish sipped his drink cautiously. He was beginning to feel the effects of champagne on an empty stomach.
“I think we should leave now,” said Olivia, much to Hamish’s relief.
They all rose. As Hamish passed Anna’s table, she looked up at him and gave him a glad smile.
Hamish cut her dead. He was supposed to be with his wife. Also she had left him with a bill for fifty pounds, which he would somehow have to explain away on his expenses. Anna’s face fell. Hamish felt like a heel. But didn’t the silly girl know what an awful sort of existence she was on the threshold of?
Pieter stopped by the Americans’ table. Then he introduced them to a party of Turks and then some Spaniards before leading them towards the exit. There was no sign of the Undertaker.
“Do you know,” said Pieter outside, “how the Spaniards are shipping cannabis into Britain?”
“No,” said Olivia.
“They put the cannabis resin into onions. So when Customs and Excise see a truckload of onions, they simply look for the man with the dart.”
“The dart?” asked Hamish, his eyes roaming up and down the cobbled street.
“A man carrying an ordinary dart, you know, darts? Like in English pubs? Well, he simply stabs this dart into the sacks of onions until he finds the hard onions and he knows he’s got the right sack.”
Olivia shivered. “Let’s eat.”
“I’ll take you back to your hotel. Probably safer for you to eat in your room. I have business.”
