by M C Beaton
♦
Hamish drove back to the police station. He fed Lugs and then set out for Strathbane. He was anxious to talk to Miss Patty again.
As he left Lochdubh, he saw the door-to-door salesman, Hugh Ryan, leaving the Currie sisters’ cottage. He stopped and called to him. Ryan walked over. “They’re polite here,” he said. “I’ll give you that. But I cannae even sell a duster.”
“I’m off to Strathbane. Why don’t you try some of the housing estates there?”
“Maybe.”
“Or try the Tommel Castle Hotel. Tell the manager I sent you. They always need more cleaning stuff.”
Hamish drove off. A rising wind had moved round to the north-east, and little pellets of snow were beginning to dance crazily in the air.
Hamish swore under his breath. No snow had been forecast, and the gritters hadn’t been out to lay salt. He hoped they’d get to it soon, or he would have an evening of being called out to road accidents.
But as he drove down into Strathbane, the snow changed to sleet and then rain. A wet mist was beginning to blanket the town, a mist made hellish orange by the sodium light of the street lamps.
He parked at Strathbane Television and asked at the desk to speak to Miss Patty.
While he waited, he tried to sort out in his head the complexities of the case. It couldn’t have been anyone in Lochdubh, could it? But Highlanders are ultra-sensitive creatures, and John had wounded so many egos. It had been a hate crime.
Miss Patty appeared, flustered and nervous.
“I would like to talk to you,” said Hamish. “Is there anywhere we can go that’s private?”
She hesitated and then said, “Mr. Terrent is out this efternoon. There is a keffy next door. Perheps…”
“Yes, that’ll do. Do you want to get your coat?”
“No, it’s right next door.”
To Hamish’s relief, the café was run by Italians, which meant hot coffee and clean tables. He bought them both coffee and then they sat down.
“Miss Patty,” he began, “I noticed you were extremely upset at the news of the murder of John Heppel.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Was he more to you than just a scriptwriter?”
She flushed an ugly red. “No.”
“Are you from Strathbane?”
“No.” Her thin ringless hands wrapped themselves round the coffee cup for comfort.
“Where are you from?”
“Glesgow.”
“Glasgow! Which part?”
The genteel accents suddenly left her, and she demanded harshly, “Why? What’s it got to do with you where I come from?”
“I thought you might have known Mr. Heppel years ago.”
“No.”
“If you are lying, Miss Patty, I can find out. What is your first name?”
“Alice.”
“Right, Alice. When did you get the job up here?”
“Two years ago.”
“That would be after the last takeover. Was the job advertised in the Glasgow papers?”
“Yes.”
Hamish leaned back in his chair and surveyed her. Never lie to a Highlander, lassie, he thought cynically. We’ve all got master’s degrees in bullshit.
“I think you knew Harry Tarrant in Glasgow. I also think you knew John Heppel. I think you met them when you were a member of the Trotskyites.”
“I have nothing more to say to you.” She banged down her cup and jumped to her feet. “I’ve got to get back.”
“Sit down,” barked Hamish, “or I’ll have you for obstructing a police investigation.”
She sat down again. All traces of refinement had gone. Her face had hardened, and her mouth was set in a stubborn line. “Give me your home address,” he ordered.
“I don’t see – ”
“Address! Now!”
“Ten Swan Avenue. I’m off, and next time you want to talk to me, pig, you can do it through my lawyer.”
She stormed out, and this time Hamish let her go.
He went back to his vehicle and took out a map of Strathbane and looked up Swan Avenue. It was in one of the better residential districts, out towards the Lochdubh Road.
He drove out there and turned onto Swan Avenue and found number 10. It was a trim little villa. He noticed there were two bells. She must rent either the upstairs or the downstairs.
He went to the door and pressed both bells. A small elderly man answered. “What’s happened?” he asked, staring at the uniformed policeman.
“Does Miss Patty live here?”
“Yes, she rents upstairs, but she’s at work at the moment.”
“May I come in? I would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Yes, come in. The place is a bit of a mess. I live here alone and I never was one for housekeeping.”
The living room he led Hamish into was impeccable. Hamish wondered what his idea of a mess was.
“Your name, sir?” said Hamish, taking off his cap and laying it on one of those knee-high tables which must be the cause of more bad backs than anything else, people having to stoop every time they reached for a cup of something.
“Barry Fraser. What’s all this about Miss Patty?”
“I’m investigating a murder. Miss Patty is not a suspect. We merely like to get background on everyone. Does she have any men friends?”
“Not lately.”
“But she did have?”
“There was this one chap who came a couple of times. Wee man with a black beard.”
Harry Tarrant, thought Hamish.
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t know. She had a hell of a row with some fellow about two months ago. At first I didn’t think it was her because she normally speaks in that prissy voice of hers. She was shouting, ‘You used me, you bastard. I’ll tell Harry.’ Then the man shouted back, ‘He won’t do anything. You’re a rotten lay.’”
“I’ll kill you,” she shouts, and then she throws a vase at him as he was leaving by the front door.
“When I went out, the man had gone, she was sitting at the top of the stairs crying, and there were bits of a glass vase in the hall where it had crashed against the door. I gave her a warning. I told her to clean up the mess and if she ever created a scene like that again, I’d tell her to leave. Nothing bad happened after that, and she pays her rent regularly.”
“Thank you,” said Hamish. “I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention my visit to her.”
“I hope she’s not in any trouble. I mean, apart from that one incident, she’s been an ideal tenant.”
“I’m sure you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Hamish left and climbed into the Land Rover. He could not put in a report about Miss Patty because Blair would start howling about him being on Strathbane turf.
He phoned Jimmy Anderson and told him all he had found out. “Great stuff, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “Do you think the man she was shouting at could have been John Heppel?”
“Could have been. Don’t tell Blair I’ve been in Strathbane.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take all the credit for this. I’ll get her in for questioning. I’d better go and see this neighbour myself and start from there.”
∨ Death of a Bore ∧
7
But to us, probability is the very guide of life.
—Bishop Joseph Butler
Hamish had a leisurely breakfast the following morning, and then he took Lugs for a walk. He could not see any police about the village, and he was puzzled by their absence. Surely Blair had not decided to leave a murder investigation to the local copper.
At ten o’clock, just after he had returned to the police station, Callum, the dustman, knocked at the door and presented Hamish with one of the sealed boxes of rubbish he had collected that morning from Dimity Dan’s.
“Come through to the office,” said Hamish. “I’ll type up a statement for you to sign, saying that you thought the method of garbage disposal suspicious an
d decided to take one of the boxes to the police station. I’d like another witness when I open the box.”
There was another knock at the door. When Hamish answered it, he saw Freda there.
“Come in,” he said. “I’m going to need another witness.”
“What for? I came to ask you if you were going to Inverness this evening.”
“Let’s see how we get on with this. I think Dan Buffort at Dimity Dan’s is dealing drugs. He aye wraps up his garbage in sealed boxes. I’ve got Callum to bring me one, and I’d like you to witness the contents. Make yourself a coffee while I type out something for Callum to sign first.”
Freda put a kettle on the stove and looked around. The kitchen was warm and neat. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she wandered into the living room. It had a bleak, little-used air. She guessed that Hamish spent most of his time in the kitchen. While she busied herself making coffee, she wondered what it would be like to be a policeman’s wife. The police station was built like a croft house – one-storeyed, whitewashed, and with a slate roof. Freda wondered why Hamish did not make use of the loft space. Most crofters made the bedrooms up there, leaving extra space downstairs.
She made herself a coffee, sat down at the kitchen table, and mentally redecorated the house. The kitchen for a start. That old–fashioned wood-burning stove was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if it even had an oven. It surely had been there for over a hundred years. There was a gas cooker with four jets and an oven, but it looked as if it had been little used. She was just mentally hanging bright curtains at the kitchen windows when she heard Hamish call her.
“Now we open this box,” he said. He took out a penknife and slit the tape which sealed the box.
“Pooh!” said Freda as a rancid smell floated up from the box. Hamish spread newspapers on the floor and tipped out the contents of the box. Amongst the potato peelings, sandwich wrappers, old cooked vegetables, two dead mice, and bits of meat he found several little empty cellophane packets. He picked one up and sniffed at it. There was a little powder in one. He stuck a gloved finger in, then raised it to his nose.
“That’s heroin. What else do we have?”
Freda’s stomach was heaving from the smell. She was beginning to think that the lot of being a policeman’s wife might not be a happy one, after all.
“Aha!” said Hamish. He carefully took out a little pill packet. There was one pill left in it. “Got him!” crowed Hamish. “Ecstasy!”
He carefully put all the rubbish back in the box apart from the ecstasy packet and the cellophane packets.
Hamish sat down at his computer and began to type. “You two can wait in the kitchen,” he said, much to Freda’s relief.
When he had finished a statement to the effect that the opening of the box had been witnessed by Callum McSween and Freda Garrety, he called them in to sign it.
“Are we going to Inverness tonight?” asked Freda.
“Not now this has come up,” said Hamish. “The place will need to be raided. Thanks, both of you.”
When they had left, he phoned Strathbane. He spoke to Jimmy, who said that Blair was questioning Alice Patty.
“Oh, Lord!” said Hamish. “She’ll clam up.” He told Jimmy about the evidence of drugs.
“Great,” said Jimmy. “I’ll get back to you and tell you when we’re going to raid the place.”
Hamish waited and waited. At lunchtime he went out to the shed where the freezer was and fished out a packet of lamb chops, which he defrosted by soaking them in hot water. Then he fried them up and gave half to Lugs and ate the other half himself.
He washed the dishes and stared at Lugs, who grinned back – or who looked in his doggy way as if he were grinning.
“It iss no laughing matter,” said Hamish, the sibilance of his accent showing just how annoyed he was. “They should haff called by now.”
He went through to the office and phoned Strathbane and demanded to speak to Jimmy. He had to wait a long time, and then Jimmy’s breathless voice came on the line.
“Sorry, Hamish. Blair’s just coordinating a raid for tonight.”
“What time?”
“Ten o’clock. But Blair doesn’t want you to be there.”
“What!”
“Daviot seemed to think it was Blair who had done the detective work, so he doesn’t want you getting any credit. He’s very excited and wants to go on the raid.”
“Daviot, you mean?”
“Aye, the big cheese himself.”
“Blair’s a bastard.”
“Well, it’s your own fault, Hamish. You could have been down here with us ages ago if you weren’t so hellbent on staying in the peasants’ paradise.”
Hamish slammed down the phone and stared at it. Then he picked it up and dialled Freda’s number. “I’ll be free to go to Inverness, after all.”
♦
Elspeth Grant stole a sideways look at Matthew Campbell, who was driving. He wasn’t bad-looking, she thought. He had a shock of sandy hair and a round, cheerful face. The only problem was he enjoyed the sort of reporting they had been doing and Elspeth was beginning to hate it.
The last story they had worked together concerned the odd case of a Glasgow man charged with the rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl, although no body had been found. Matthew and Elspeth had been told to work on the background before the case came up in the High Court. Their job was to keep the Crown witness, the accused man’s wife, away from the other press and the police. The trouble was the wife, Betty McCann, worked in a brothel. Elspeth’s first introduction to a Glasgow brothel was an unpleasant one. It was housed in an old Victorian tenement flat. Betty was thirty-five and looked fifty-five with her toothless mouth, raddled face, and two inches of black showing on her dyed-blonde hair.
Matthew and Elspeth had been instructed to keep her away from the other press by taking her out to a hotel on Loch Lomond. The hotel was rather grand, and the manager protested bitterly about the filth Betty had left in the bath and the head lice she had left on the bed.
Then on the day of the trial, as they arrived with Betty outside the High Court, a frustrated reporter from the opposition punched Elspeth in the face and Matthew leapt out and gave him the Glasgow kiss – butting him on the face with his forehead.
Then Betty in the witness box had taken against the judge and called him a deaf old bugger when he asked her to repeat an answer.
But surely, Elspeth had thought, it would all be worth it after Betty’s husband had been found guilty, so they typed up all the background to the story and looked forward to seeing their bylines prominently displayed in the morning edition.
Not one word appeared. When they demanded the reason, they were told that the editor had decided their background story was too fish-and-chip – too sordid for a family paper – and had spiked the lot.
Elspeth had never thought she would long for the days when she wrote the astrology column for the Highland Times and covered everything from shinty matches to dried flower arrangement competitions. And her psychic abilities appeared to have deserted her in the city as if blocked out by all the sordidness.
“It’s going to be late by the time we reach Inverness,” said Matthew. “Let’s book into a hotel and have a decent dinner and we’ll go north first thing in the morning.”
“All right,” said Elspeth, thinking it would be nice to have a hot bath and a change of clothes and make-up before she saw Hamish Macbeth again.
As they crossed the highland line and the Grampian mountains reared up on either side of the car, Elspeth’s pulse began to quicken. She was going home again.
♦
Hamish eased back the driver’s seat of Freda’s little car to accommodate his long legs.
“You’re wearing a suit!” exclaimed Freda. “Never tell me you’ve got a suit on under that coat of yours.”
“It iss my best suit.”
“You don’t go clubbing in a suit. You wear casuals. Jeans. Stuff like that.”
Freda was beginning to regret having asked him. What would her friends make of him?
♦
Elspeth and Matthew made good time and reached Inverness much earlier than they had expected to.
But the prospect of dinner beckoned, and so they decided to stick to the original plan of setting out for Lochdubh in the morning.
When dinner was over, Matthew said, “It’s early yet. What’s Inverness got in the way of amusement?”
“There are a couple of clubs.”
“What about dropping into one for a drink? I’d like to see what the local talent looks like.”
“All right. But not for long. We can walk. It’s round the corner from this hotel.”
“Good,” said Matthew cheerfully. “Now I can have a really big drink.”
♦
Hamish Macbeth was not enjoying himself. Although still in his early thirties, he felt old and crotchety. Where was the fun of being jammed on a small dance floor where the music hurt his ears and the air was thick with smoke, cheap perfume, and sweat?
Freda had cast her long winter coat to reveal that she was wearing nothing more than a cropped top and a tiny red leather skirt. Hamish had left his jacket in the cloakroom along with his tie. The dancing came as no problem to him: it seemed to consist of jumping around and waving his arms in the air.
I wish I hadn’t brought him, thought Freda. Her friends, the ones she had made since first visiting the club, were sitting over in the small bar area staring at them.
When the dance number finished, she said, “I would like a drink.”
“I’ve got to go to the men’s room,” said Hamish. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
“What are you drinking?”
“Give me a minute and I’ll get them when I come back.”
Freda’s friends, Cheryl, Sharon, and Mary, moved along the banquette they were sitting on to make room for her.
“Who’s the boyfriend?” asked Cheryl.
“He isn’t my boyfriend. He’s the local bobby.”
“He’s got gorgeous red hair,” sighed Sharon. “I was dancing up next to him. I’d give anything for eyelashes like that.”
