by M C Beaton
“I’m telling you, I’ll sue you!”
“Go ahead,” said Hamish. “I’d enjoy seeing the sort of publicity that would get you. When I arrived at your place last night, your coat was still wet. You’d been out. Any more publicity stunts like that and I’ll have you.”
♦
“I hate that sort of person,” said Hamish to his dog as he drove off. “Now, what do I do, Lugs? Do I tell the villagers? Och, it’s chust a storm in a teacup. He won’t try anything like that again. But I will have a word on the quiet with Mr. Patel.”
Mr. Patel’s eyebrows shot up into his hair when Hamish took him outside his shop and quietly explained his suspicions about the writer.
“Are ye sure?” asked Mr. Patel. “I’ve signed up for one o’ his classes.”
“You want to be a writer?” asked Hamish, momentarily diverted. “What kind of book?”
“I was thinking I might write my life story. You know, how I started off selling stuff out o’ a suitcase round the Hebrides until I had enough to start a shop.” His brown eyes took on a dreamy, unfocussed look. “I’ll call it An Indian’s Life in the Far North of Scotland.”
“Maybe you should try for something snappier.”
“Like what?”
“Cannae think of anything.”
“There you are! That’s why I need to go to a writing class.”
“Anyway,” said Hamish, “I’ve no actual proof he did it, and in order to prove it, I’d need a warrant to search his house and I can’t see me getting it. So we’ll keep this between ourselves.”
“So you’re not sure he did it?”
“Pretty certain. I mean, he turned up with make-up on.”
“Maybe he’s…well, you know…that way inclined.”
“He’s inclined to getting his stupid face on television, that’s all.”
“Hey, Hamish!”
Hamish turned round. Callum McSween, the dustman, stood there. “I found a book inscribed to you in the bin. Here it is.”
“Oh, thanks,” mumbled Hamish. He wanted to say he had put it there deliberately but suddenly wanted to forget all about John Heppel.
He nodded goodbye to both of them. He drove to the police station, got down, and helped Lugs out because the dog’s legs were too short to enable him to jump down from the Land Rover. He looked at the book in his hand.
He glanced along the waterfront. It was now the dinner hour – Lochdubh residents still took dinner in the middle of the day – and the waterfront was deserted.
He hurled the book so hard that it flew straight across the waterfront and over the sea wall.
♦
Hamish was just frying some chops when there was a knock at the kitchen door. The locals never came to the front door. He opened it. In the days when Hamish was a police sergeant, his caller, Clarry Graham, had worked for him – or, rather, had not worked, Clarry finding that his talents lay in being a chef.
To Hamish’s dismay, he was clutching That Book.
“It’s quiet up at the Tommel Castle Hotel at the moment,” said Clarry plaintively. “I was out fishing in the loch when this book fell out o’ the sky and right into my boat. It’s inscribed to you.”
“Thanks,” said Hamish.
“Must’ve been kids,” said Clarry.
“Come in.”
“You don’t want to be reading something like that anyway,” said Clarry. “Full o’ nasty words. I’m telling you, there’s an eff in every line.”
“That’s the fellow who’s going to be giving those writing classes.”
“Oh, I’d signed up for those.”
“You, Clarry? A book? I mean, what about?”
“I’m going to call it From Police Station to Kitchen.”
“Look, Clarry, it iss awry hard to get a book published these days. Particularly a life story. You really have to be some kind o’ celebrity. Besides, this John Heppel seems to write the sort of stuff you wouldn’t want to read.”
“He’s going to tell us about publishers and agents,” said Clarry stubbornly. “I’d like to make a bit o’ money. Just look at what J.K. Rowling earns.”
“Didn’t it dawn on you that J.K. Rowling can write! Clarry, only four and a half per cent of the authors in this world can afford to support themselves. I ‘member reading that.”
Clarry’s round face took on a mulish look, and Hamish suppressed a sigh. Clarry obviously thought he was destined to be one of the four and a half per cent.
When Clarry had left, Hamish began to think uneasily about John’s writing classes. John, he was beginning to feel, was some sort of dangerous foreign body introduced into the highland system.
He decided to attend the first class. It would upset John to see him there, and Hamish looked forward to upsetting John. He flicked open John’s book and began to read. It was one of those pseudo-literary stream-of-consciousness books set in the slums of Glasgow. The ‘grittiness’ was supplied by four-letter words. The anti-hero was a druggie whose favourite occupation seemed to be slashing with a broken bottle anyone in a pub who looked at him the wrong way. The heroine put up with all this with loving kindness. Hamish flicked to the end of the book, where a reformed anti-hero was preaching to the youth of Glasgow. No one could accuse the book of being plot-driven. Hackneyed similes and metaphors clunked their way through the thick volume.
Maybe it was all right, he thought ruefully. Like all Highlanders, he was quick to take offence and loathed being patronised. The inscription still rankled, however.
There was another knock at the door, very faint. Hamish opened it and looked down at Dermott Taggart, the small boy who had thought his father might be responsible for the graffiti.
“Come ben,” said Hamish. Then he cursed. Black smoke was rising from the frying pan. He’d forgotten about the chops.
“Sit down, laddie,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll just put this mess in the bin. I havenae any soft drinks, but I could make you some tea.”
“I don’t want anything,” said the boy in a whisper.
Hamish got rid of the chops. “Sit,” he ordered. “You didn’t really think your da was responsible for the graffiti?”
Dermott hung his head.
“I think,” said Hamish gently, “that something at home is bothering you. I think you want a policeman to call. What’s going on at home?”
The child began to cry. Hamish fished a box of tissues out of a cupboard and handed it to him, then waited patiently.
At last the crying ended on a hiccupping sob. “Dad’s hitting Ma,” he choked out.
“Does he drink?”
“A lot.”
“It’s hard for me to do anything unless your mother puts in a complaint.”
“You won’t tell the Social?” gasped the boy in sudden alarm.
“No, I won’t do that,” said Hamish, knowing that no matter how bad the parents, abused children still lived in terror of being snatched from their homes by the Social Security. “Leave it with me. I’ll think of something.”
When the boy had gone, Hamish turned over in his mind what he knew about the boy’s father. Alistair Taggart took occasional building jobs down in Strathbane. Hamish couldn’t remember seeing him drinking in the village pub. Perhaps he did his drinking in Strathbane and drove home.
He was almost relieved to have an ordinary, if unpleasant, village problem to cope with instead of fretting that John Heppel would somehow bring trouble to the area.
∨ Death of a Bore ∧
2
O! he’s as tedious
As a tired horse, a railing wife;
Worse than a smoky house. I had rather live
With cheese and garlic in a windmill far,
Than feed on cotes and have him talk to me
In any summer house in Christendom.
—William Shakespeare
It was one of those odd springlike November days you occasionally get in the Highlands where a balmy wind blows in off the Gulf Stream. Hamish long
ed to go fishing, but Wednesday had come around, the evening of John’s first class, and he had not yet dealt with Dermott’s problem.
He found out which building site Alistair Taggart had been working on, phoned, and found he had been laid off. He set out for the Taggart cottage, which was at the end of the village where a large hotel had once operated and now stood empty.
Taggart’s wife, Maisie, answered the door. She put a hand to her throat when she saw him. “What is it, Hamish? Not my boy?”
“No, no,” he said soothingly. “I’m asking everyone in the village if they saw anyone put that graffiti on Patel’s wall.”
Maisie Taggart had the faded remains about her of what had once been a pretty woman. There was an ugly bruise on one cheek.
“Who is it?” shouted a man’s voice. “Another of your fancy men?”
“That will be your man,” said Hamish equably. “I’ll speak to him.”
She looked frightened and flustered. “Now’s no’ the good time.” And then she was thrust aside, and Alistair loomed in the doorway.
“What is it?” he barked. “I’m just sorting this bitch out.” He jerked a thumb at his quivering wife. “She says she’s going to thon writing class. Wasting my good money so she can see her fancy man.”
Maisie squeezed past her belligerent husband and disappeared inside the house.
“And you can get lost!” shouted Alistair.
“I was chust calling to ask you if you knew anything about the graffiti on Patel’s shop, but now I’m here, you and I are going to have a serious talk.”
Alistair made to slam the door, but Hamish put a hand on his arm and hooked him out onto the waterfront.
“If you hit me,” said Hamish, “you will be charged with assault and go to prison.”
Alistair dropped the fists he had raised and then demanded, “Well, whit?”
“You cannae keep things quiet in a wee village like this,” lied Hamish, reflecting that Alistair’s abuse of his wife had been kept amazingly secret. “We all know you beat your wife.”
“Who’s saying so?”
“Everyone. She’s got a bruise on her cheek.”
“Fell down the stairs.”
“Aw, pull the other one. That excuse is as old as the hills. I’m after you now, Alistair Taggart. Your wife is going to that writing class. Every time now you threaten her, I’ll probably be outside your house with a tape recorder. When you drive back from Strathbane, if you get another job, the traffic cops will be looking for you and they’ll check you for drunk driving. Now, let’s just take a look at that car of yours and your papers.”
“This is harassment!”
“It’ll do you no harm to get a taste of what your wife’s been suffering.” Hamish walked over to where Alistair’s car was parked at the side of his cottage. “Let me see. The front near-side tyre needs to be replaced. Keys?”
Alistair handed them over and waited, sweating in the balmy air as Hamish did a thorough check of car and papers. “You need new brake lights,” said Hamish finally, “and your tax disc is out o’ date.”
The bully in Alistair crumbled. “Look,” he wheedled, “I’ll take Maisie to that class maself and treat her nice. Will you leave me alone then?”
“Probably,” said Hamish. “After you fix your car. Behave yourself.”
♦
Hamish returned to the police station and then set out to patrol his extensive highland beat with Lugs beside him. He had given up leaving Lugs with Angela, the doctor’s wife, because she had complained that Lugs spent more time with her than he did at home.
Lugs was a thoroughly spoilt animal. Hamish sometimes still had a pang when he thought of the death of his old dog, Towser, wondering if he had treated the animal well, wondering if he could have done something, anything, to prolong Towser’s life, and clever Lugs was the beneficiary. He was a greedy dog and could easily stop the diets Hamish tried to put him on by lying down and closing his eyes and whimpering.
As Lugs sat beside Hamish with his large ears flopping and something that looked remarkably like a human grin on his face, Hamish felt, not for the first time, that he was saddled with some sort of possessive wife.
A new pub had opened out on the Lochdubh-Strathbane road called Dimity Dan’s. Hamish had visited it several times since its grand opening a month before. On the first night there had been a stabbing. He suspected the owner, Dan Buffort, of supplying drugs.
The youth of the Highlands who once left for the cities or the army as soon as they had graduated school or college now showed a distressing propensity to stay at home in the villages and slope around, making trouble.
Hamish entered the smoky pub. Two youths were playing snooker, others were propping up the bar drinking Bacardi Breezers. A lot of alcopops, those sweet alcoholic drinks, were lined up behind the bar. The manufacturers had claimed that they weren’t targeting young people with their products, but Hamish did not believe a word of it. They were produced in tempting little innocuous-looking bottles with names like Archers Aqua Peach, Bliss, and Mike’s Hard Lemonade.
Hamish ordered a mineral water. “I hope you aren’t selling to underage girls and boys,” he said.
Dan Buffort was a burly man with thick tattooed arms, ginger hair, and small piggy eyes.
“Wouldnae dream o’ it,” he said with a grin.
“I’ve heard otherwise,” said Hamish. “If I catch you just the once, you’ll lose your licence.”
“I’ve naethin’ tae fear.” Dan polished another glass.
Something was nagging at the back of Hamish’s mind. When he had driven up to the pub, he was sure he had noticed something different. He paid for his mineral water and hurried out of the pub. He stood back from the building and stared up at it.
And then he saw it.
A new CCTV camera had been installed, but instead of pointing down to the pub entrance and the car park, it was pointing directly along the Lochdubh Road.
Hamish ran back into the pub and through to the toilets. A window was open. He looked out, and there, racing over the moors in the distance, were two small figures.
He went back into the bar and confronted Dan. “You will get that new camera of yours pointed down at the entrance where it should be. You put it there so you’d know when I was coming.”
“It was those idiots who installed it,” said Dan, quite unfazed. “I’ll get it put right.”
“See that you do. I’ll be watching you closely from now on, day and night. One sight of an underage boy or girl or one sight or suspicion of drugs and I’ll have you closed down fast.”
Hamish left and continued on his long beat. His duties involved calling in on the elderly and the isolated, and he got back to the police station just in time to change into civilian clothes and attend John Heppel’s meeting at the village hall.
There were a lot of villagers there. Twin sisters, Jessie and Nessie Currie, were in the front row beside Mrs. Wellington and Archie Maclean. Clarry was in the row behind them, and beside him was Willie Lament, another ex-policeman who had gone into the restaurant business, Mr. Patel, Callum McSween, and Freda, the school-teacher. Various other villagers filled the other seats. To Hamish’s surprise, Alistair Taggart was there with his wife, Maisie.
Hamish took a seat at the back next to Angela Brodie, the doctor’s wife. “I’m surprised to see you here,” he said. “Don’t you know the man’s an idiot?”
“Well, he got a book published. I’ve always wanted to write. I need all the help I can get. Where is he? We were due to start at seven-thirty.”
“He’ll want to make an entrance,” said Hamish.
At quarter to eight precisely, John Heppel strode into the room. His coat was slung over his shoulders and he was carrying a large travelling bag. He hung his coat on a hook and then mounted the stage, carrying the bag, and faced the class. He was dressed all in black: black roll-necked sweater, black cords, and black shoes. His face was made up.
“He has the make
-up on, make-up on,” hissed Jessie Currie, who, like Browning’s thrush, said everything twice over.
“Maybe he’s a transferite,” said Willie Lament.
“Transvestite is what you mean,” boomed Mrs. Wellington.
“I have put on my television make-up because they said they would be here,” said John crossly. “Perhaps we should wait.”
“I cannae wait all nicht,” called out Archie. “I’ve the fishing to go to.”
There was a murmur of agreement.
“Very well,” said John. He bent down and opened the bag and lifted a pile of his books onto the table in front of him. “At the end of the class I will be glad to sign one of my books for you. A special price. Ten pounds.”
“Ten pounds!” exclaimed someone. “They’re remaindered for three pounds ninety down at Best Books in Strathbane.”
John ignored the interruption.
“I will tell you all how I got started,” he began. His eyes assumed a fixed look, and his voice took on the droning note of the habitual bore. “I was born into one of the worst slums in Glasgow. We didn’t even have a bath.”
Hamish’s mind drifted off as the voice went inexorably on, and he only snapped to attention after twenty minutes when Mrs. Wellington stood up and said, “You said you would teach us how to write.”
John looked flustered. “I think, then,” he said, “we will start by discussing the novel. Perhaps we will discuss linear progression.”
“Do you mean the plot?” called Hamish.
“Er, yes.”
“Then why not say so?”
“I tell you what I am going to do,” said John. “I am going to ask you all to bring a piece of writing here next week. It can be anything you like – poetry, essays, fiction, anything – and I will give you the benefit of my expert advice. It will be easier for me to assess your work if it is typed and in double spacing.”
“You mean we’ve all got to get computers, get computers?” wailed Jessie.
“Perhaps not right away,” said John. “I will now take questions.”
Archie piped up. “Have you met J.K. Rowling?”
“Ah, yes, a most charming lady. We signed books together in Edinburgh. She was kind enough to congratulate me on my work.”
