by M C Beaton
“That would take a great deal of computer knowledge, wouldn’t it?”
Angus hung his head. “Not these days. It was originally a U.S. government programme, but anyone can buy the software.”
“I can’t turn over that computer – you do still have the computer?” asked Hamish.
“Yes.”
“I should never have tried to let you off the hook. When this case is over, get yourself out of Lochdubh. I’ll neffer, neffer forgive you for trying to steal my dog. Are your e–mails still on the computer?”
“No, I used that programme I was telling you about to delete them.”
“Where did you buy it?”
“I pirated it.”
“So you’re a double thief as well as a dognapper.”
“You’re never there,” protested Angus, “and I thought Lugs liked me.”
“You thought wrong. Now, chust shut your stupid face.”
At Mrs. Dunne’s Hamish waited until Angus was let in; he had taken off the handcuffs and relieved him of the computer. He went back to the police station and fried liver to give Lugs a generous supper. After he had eaten, an exhausted Lugs fell asleep and began to snore.
Hamish sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He had taken risks before but never one as dangerous or stupid as this.
He rose and pulled down the ladder that led to the loft. He climbed up and hid the computer among all the junk he had stored up there, thinking it might come in useful sometime.
Then he climbed back down and began to pace back and forth. Maybe he was becoming obsessive about that script. Maybe he should be concentrating on Patricia Wheeler. Where did she live? What had she been doing on the night John was murdered?
He sighed. He would go back to interviewing the cast in the morning, and this time he would ask them all where they had been on the night of the murder and take their home addresses.
♦
Matthew Campbell walked out to the forecourt of the Tommel Castle Hotel the following morning. Thanks to Elspeth, their story was coming along nicely. She had suggested they write it like an old–fashioned detective story. Famous writer, quiet highland villages, suspicion and fear.
He took a deep breath of the clear air. Elspeth had introduced him to her old boss, Sam, who ran the Highland Times. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Matthew was beginning to wonder what it would be like to be a local reporter in this highland location.
It was a long time since he had felt so energised and healthy. Then there was Freda. He thought about her constantly. They had arranged to have dinner together that evening, and he found his senses tingling in happy anticipation.
Elspeth came out to join him. “What a lovely day,” said Matthew.
“We don’t often get days like this in winter,” said Elspeth. “What should we do today?”
“Let’s see that copper friend of yours and see if he’s got anything for us.”
But when they went down to the waterfront, it was to find a preoccupied Hamish, who said, “I haven’t time just now. Maybe talk to you later.”
Elspeth felt crushed. Hamish didn’t even seem to see her.
♦
Hamish and Jimmy went doggedly from one television person to another, writing down where each one had been on the evening of the murder and taking down home addresses.
Blair appeared at one point, but for once both Hamish and Jimmy appeared to be working so hard that he didn’t have anything to complain about. Police were now searching Lochdubh for John’s computer, and Hamish kept thinking uneasily about the computer lying up in the police station loft.
“I think we’ve got everyone,” said Jimmy at last. “We should go to Strathbane and check around Patricia’s neighbours.”
“I would like to talk to one of those girls again. See if they could maybe get me a copy of the script.”
“Man, you’ve got that script on the brain. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with anything. Let’s check Patricia Wheeler’s address first.”
“Would you mind doing that, Jimmy? I’ll meet up with you in that pub next to headquarters at, say, eight.”
“All right. But you’re buying.”
♦
Hamish – in his uniform this time – waited across the road from Strathbane Television. Kirsty Baxter, the one who looked like a shampoo advertisement, emerged on her own. Hamish quickly crossed the road and waylaid her.
She looked at him in alarm. “You promised that what we told you would be off the record.”
“It still is. Can we walk somewhere? I’d like you to do something for me.”
“There’s a café round the corner.”
When they were seated over cups of coffee, Hamish said, “I really would like to see John Heppel’s original script. Is there any way you could get it for me?”
“I suppose I could take a look in Sally Quinn’s office when she’s out. I wouldn’t like to get caught.”
“Couldn’t you nip in tomorrow when she’s in a meeting? Aren’t there always meetings in television companies?”
“All the time. But Sally’s office is on a different floor. If anyone saw me, they’d ask what I was doing. I could say I was delivering an interoffice memo, but what if they ask to see it?”
“They wouldn’t surely ask to see it when it was meant for someone else!”
“Maybe not. Look, I’ll give it a try.” She smiled at him and tossed her hair. I wish she wouldn’t do that, thought Hamish. “I think you owe me dinner.”
“Just bring me that script and I’ll take you for dinner anywhere you want.”
“I’ve always wanted to have dinner at the Tommel Castle Hotel.”
“Then I’ll take you there.”
♦
Hamish met Jimmy at eight o’clock. “Get anything?” he asked after telling Jimmy that Kirsty had said she would try to get the script.
“Neighbours confirm that a man of Heppel’s description was seen coming and going. I called in at headquarters. A van which sounds like the one seen on the Cnothan Road has been found in the municipal car park. It was stolen a day before the murder. Belongs to a plumber and, yes, he reported it stolen. Forensics have taken it in and they’re going over it. But they say it had been cleaned inside and out. Blair’s got people checking all the car washes. But back to Patricia. She lives in a block of flats with a private car park. On the day of the murder, in the late afternoon, one of the neighbours saw her get into her car and drive off. Now, she said they’d finished early on location and she’d gone straight home and spent the rest of the day at home.”
“Is she home now?”
“I saw her driving up when I left. I thought we’d go round and see her together.”
♦
Patricia opened her door as far as the chain would allow. “I’m not talking to you any more without my lawyer,” she said.
“You can talk to us here or talk to us down at the station,” said Jimmy.
She hesitated and then reluctantly unhooked the chain and opened the door wide.
The walls of her living room were decorated with photographs of herself in various stage and television productions. The furniture looked as if it came from.
Ikea. Jimmy and Hamish sat side by side on a white sofa. Patricia sat in an armchair opposite.
Jimmy flipped open his notebook. “In your statement,” he said, “you claim that on the day of the murder, you finished on location up on the moors outside Strathbane at four o’clock and went straight home and spent the rest of the evening indoors.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“But one of your neighbours saw you driving off in your car in the late afternoon.”
“He must be mistaken.”
“Come on. Where did you go?”
She gave a well-manufactured start of surprise. “Oh, how silly. I went out to get a take-away.”
“Where from?”
“Some Chinese place.”
“Which one?”
“I can’t re
member.”
“We happen to know you went to John Heppel’s cottage,” said Hamish.
Jimmy looked at Hamish in surprise, reflecting that one never knew when Hamish Macbeth was lying or telling the truth.
She stared at Hamish for a long moment. Then she gave a shrug. “So what if I did?”
“What if you did!” echoed Jimmy. “This is looking bad for you. You were at the cottage of a man on the day he was murdered, and yet you lied to the police!”
“I was frightened,” she cried.
“Just tell us what happened,” said Hamish.
She seemed to crumple. “I just wanted to talk to him,” she said in a low voice. “That’s all. We had been so close. He said he had written in a big part for me. It would have given me a chance to really act. I drove up to the cottage. I got there just before seven o’clock. The lights were on. I hammered on the door but no one answered. His car was there. I tried the door but it was locked. I shouted through the letter box. He didn’t answer. So I came away and drove straight home.”
“Was there any other vehicle there?”
“There was a dirty little van parked at the end of the road leading to the cottage. I thought it had been abandoned.”
“Get your coat,” said Jimmy. “You’re going to have to come to headquarters with us now and make an official statement.”
“Have you still got a big part?” asked Hamish.
“No, it was cut.”
“Whose decision was that?”
“Harry Tarrant’s.”
“Why was it cut?”
“Paul, the director, said it was because it just didn’t work. I wasn’t ever one of the main characters, and he wanted to keep it that way.”
♦
At police headquarters Detective Chief Inspector Blair accosted Jimmy and asked him what was going on. His eyes gleamed when Jimmy told him. “You and I will interview her,” he said. “Macbeth, get back to your village.”
♦
Elspeth was feeling lonely. Matthew had gone to take Freda to dinner. She decided to go to John Heppel’s cottage just to get a feel for the place. The newspaper had given them two more days in case anything else happened. The feature was written, and there didn’t seem much more either of them could add to it. Still, the cigarette smuggling story had justified their trip and expenses.
She borrowed one of the hotel cars and set off.
The roaring winds of Sutherland were screeching down from the mountains and whistling through the heather. She drove up to John’s cottage, parked, and got out. Elspeth remembered her childhood in the Highlands, running before the wind with her friends like deer.
The great oak tree outside the cottage tossed its branches up to the ragged clouds streaming across the sky as if pleading against the ferocity of the wind.
She stood looking at the cottage, dark and secretive. Elspeth suddenly got a feeling she was not alone. There was malice and danger in the air. She got into her car and drove off to the end of the grassy track that led to the cottage, and stopped.
Had it been her imagination? Violence had taken place in that cottage. She thought she had lost her psychic abilities, but maybe they had come back now she was home again. Perhaps all she had sensed was the violence of the murder that had taken place in the cottage. She looked in the rear-view mirror, back along the track to the cottage, and as she did so, she saw a red light at the living room window.
Elspeth reversed, turned, and headed back.
Fire!
As she reached the cottage again, the living room window exploded with the heat of the fire, and the wind rushed in, fanning the flames to an inferno.
She pulled out her mobile and dialled the fire brigade. Then she phoned Hamish. She only got the answering machine at the police station, so she phoned his mobile.
“Hamish! John Heppel’s cottage is on fire.”
“I’m nearly at Lochdubh,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
Elspeth got out her camera and photographed the blaze. Then she phoned the Italian restaurant and told Matthew what had happened.
While she waited for the fire brigade, she watched in fascinated horror as the blaze grew even more ferocious and the roof caved in.
When the fire engine raced up, she moved her car well to the side to give them room.
As the firemen played their hoses on the blaze, Matthew and Freda arrived. Elspeth felt irritated at the sight of Freda. This was a news story, and she didn’t like ‘civilians’ cluttering up the scene. Then Hamish drove up.
Elspeth told him what had happened and about her odd feeling when she was standing outside the cottage.
“Did you smell anything?” asked Hamish.
“Like what?”
“Like petrol.”
“The wind was behind me, so it was probably blowing any smell of petrol away.”
“It must have been deliberate,” said Hamish. “The murderer must have wondered if he had left any trace.”
“But why now?” asked Matthew. “Everyone knows the forensics have finished their investigation. Elspeth, do you think you could file the story? Freda and I hadn’t finished our meal.”
Elspeth stared at him in surprise. What had happened to hotshot reporter Matthew? But she said, “All right. You go ahead. I’ll go to the Highland Times and file from there and send the photographs.”
“You’re an angel. Come on, Freda.”
“You know what I think?” said Hamish. “I’m more than ever convinced our murderer is an amateur, and a panicky one at that. I’ve asked for roadblocks to be set up.”
Hamish then phoned Jimmy and told him what had happened.
“I’ve just heard,” said Jimmy.
“How did you get on with Patricia?”
“Nowhere. She won’t speak without her lawyer. We’re waiting for him.”
Hamish fell silent. He was suddenly worried about Angus Petrie. What if Angus were the murderer, after all? Who but the murderer would want that computer? What if it did turn out to be Angus and he was subsequently arrested? The whole story about how Hamish Macbeth had aided and abetted a murderer would not only get him fired, it would land him in court. If only he had not been so focussed on that missing script. It was only a script, after all, but he had become obsessive about finding it. He had, in fact, become so determined to find it was one of the television people that he might have been overlooking the obvious.
♦
The next morning was damp and drizzly. Hamish took Lugs for an early morning walk along the waterfront. Archie Maclean, the fisherman, was sitting on the harbour wall smoking a roll-up. Hamish wondered, not for the first time, whether Archie ever slept. He was out all night at the fishing but could usually be seen around Lochdubh during the day.
But it transpired Archie had not been out the night before. “There were the waves out there as high as houses,” said Archie. “What’s this about a fire at that bastard’s cottage?”
Hamish told him.
“Probably the fires o’ hell where he lives now coming up through the floor,” said Archie.
“I think they’ll find out it was set deliberately,” said Hamish.
“I iss like thon thing on the telly.”
“What thing?”
“On Boys in Blue.”
“I don’t watch it.”
“It wass on the other night. This man murders his wife and makes it look like suicide. He’s got an alibi that he was somewhere else. Then he thinks they might find some of his – that stuff.”
“DNA.”
“That stuff. So he sets fire to their flat while the forensic team are working. Kills them all.”
Hamish walked on deep in thought. Surely even an amateur would know that the forensic team had finished their work. But what about someone in television? It was a closed world, where he often thought they lived in their fantasies rather than in the real world.
He returned his dog to the police station. There was an angry message from Blair tel
ling him to get over to Cnothan and try to find an eyewitness to the fire.
Cnothan was his least favourite place, being a drab village bordering on a man-made hydroelectric dam and loch. If only John had lived in the village itself, there might have been the chance of an eyewitness. He drove out onto the moors and to the blackened shell that was John’s cottage.
There was a small group of sightseers. He went from one to the other, asking them if they had seen anyone near the cottage the night before, but they all swore they had been nowhere near it. A white-suited forensic team were picking their way through the blackened ruins. The Cnothan fire chief was watching. Hamish approached him. “Set deliberately?”
“Aye,” said the fire chief. “They’re saying it looks that way. Two petrol cans found out the back.”
Hamish returned to the police station and checked his messages. Nothing from Kirsty. He wondered whether they were still filming at the Tommel Castle Hotel and headed there.
The vans were all parked outside. He went into the manager’s office. “They’re all in the lounge,” said Mr. Johnson. “It’s evidently the scene where the wicked laird is charged with rape. They’ve got some Scottish actor trying to do an upper-class English accent.”
“I thought it was only American films where they went in for English-bashing. They want a villain, so they get an English actor.”
“Aye. Did you see Braveheart? What a load of bad historical rubbish.”
“Couldn’t bear to. Can I take a peek?”
“Go on. Be my guest.”
Hamish walked to the doorway of the lounge and looked in. An actor playing a detective stood in front of the fireplace. He pointed at the laird. “You followed Morag Mackenzie down to the beach and there you raped her,” he was saying.
“Oh, I say,” said the laird. “What utter tosh.”
“Cut,” shouted Paul Gibson. He said to the actor who was playing the laird, “Can you put a bit more life in your voice? You’ve just been accused of rape. You should be horrified. Right, get set, everyone. Action.”
Hamish moved away and went outside. It was still drizzling, but there was a patch of blue sky over to the west.
He took out his mobile phone and called Jimmy. “I suppose they’ve checked everyone’s background,” said Hamish. “Anyone with a criminal record?”
