Death of a Sweep

by Beaton, M. C.

  Thomas Bromley also waited but in a bar facing Copacabana beach. It was surrounded by a low hedge. Bands played outside and then stretched their hands over the hedge for payment. Little children often sneaked in around the tables, begging for money before being chased off by the waiter. He kept taking out his air ticket and looking at it to make sure it was really there.

  The sun beat down. Tall Brazilian girls wearing the minimum of beachwear strolled past on very high heels. He had noticed that some of them even did their shopping in the town wearing only thongs and tiny scraps of material over their firm breasts.

  He rose at last and found a taxi to take him to the airport. He had left his car in a back street.

  Prosser was wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his face and dark glasses. He had changed his clothes and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts and trainers. Bromley did not recognize him. The flight was called. With a beating heart, he boarded the plane and, with a great sigh of relief, took his seat in first class. He had paid for his seat with cash but at the airport had used his genuine passport. That way, he would be picked up by the police at Heathrow.

  As the flight raced along the runway for takeoff, Prosser in the seat behind Bromley lifted his shirt and ripped off a syringe of morphine he had taped to his body. He had been grateful that new security X-ray machines had not been installed at Rio. The syringe was plastic and so had not been detected. There was no one sitting next to him. He waited patiently during the long journey. As they approached Heathrow for the landing and the airline crew retired to put on their seat belts, Prosser leaned forward. Between a gap in the seats, he could see Bromley’s arm on the armrest. He plunged the syringe into it. Bromley let out a strangled cry that was drowned by the roar of the engines as the plane landed.

  As he left the plane, Prosser glanced down at Bromley. To all intents and purposes, it looked as if he were asleep. It would take several days for them to find out that Bromley had not died of natural causes. It never crossed his mind that Bromley would have used his real passport.

  Angela Brodie found that returning to her old life was difficult. Although she had carefully avoided basing any one of her characters on the people in Lochdubh, the villagers were convinced that this one and that one was really old so-and-so. The villagers were deadly polite to her, a particularly highland way of sending someone to Coventry.

  Her husband was unsympathetic. ‘You should never have done it, Angela,’ he said, but as her eyes filled with tears, he said, ‘Oh, look, let’s go to the hotel for dinner tonight and the hell with the lot of them.’

  Angela felt a wave of great affection for her husband as they sat down for dinner. Not once had he shouted at her. He had been puzzled at first as to why she would do such a thing as use a thinly disguised village of Lochdubh as a basis for her novel, but then had accepted the fact that his surprising wife was a brilliant woman.

  ‘Oh, look!’ exclaimed Angela. ‘There’s Priscilla. I wonder if Hamish knows.’

  The tall blonde figure of Priscilla had just entered the dining room. She saw them and came to join them. ‘And how’s the famous author?’ she asked.

  ‘Being sent to Coventry by the locals,’ said Angela.

  ‘They’ll get over it,’ said Priscilla. ‘There might be a quick way to do it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Give six free writing classes on the theme of How to Write About What You Know. They’ll come along because it’s free. Throw in some tea and cakes as well.’

  ‘It wasn’t a success when that horrible television scriptwriter gave classes,’ pointed out Dr Brodie.

  ‘But he was awful and it turned out he was a plagiarist who couldn’t write.’

  Angela brightened. ‘It might work.’

  ‘What did Hamish think about being portrayed as the local Lothario?’ asked Priscilla.

  ‘He was annoyed, poor man. But you know Hamish. He never bears a grudge.’

  ‘Well …’ Priscilla was about to point out that Hamish was a highlander, a race capable of bearing grudges until the end of time, but decided to say instead, ‘If there’s anything I can do to help set up your classes, let me know.’

  She smiled down at the obviously devoted couple and wondered how she could ever have believed Hamish guilty of having an affair with Angela. She said good evening to them and then drove to the police station.

  Hamish’s face lit up in a glad smile when he opened the door to her, a smile to be quickly replaced with a look of caution. He did not want to be hurt again.

  ‘Come ben,’ he said. ‘What brings you north?’

  ‘A holiday owing.’

  ‘Didn’t the Australian job work out?’

  ‘It was a contract computer job which ran its course. I’ll start again in London when my agency finds me something. Now, let’s sit down and you can tell me all your news.’

  Hamish began at the beginning, telling her the latest disturbing news that Bromley had been found dead on a plane at Heathrow. As he had used a genuine passport, police had figured that he meant to turn himself in – but someone had followed him on to the plane. ‘The UK has a extradition treaty with Brazil so we hope the Brazilian police are rounding up the rest of them.’

  But Sandra had received a call from her husband at Heathrow. ‘Get out of there,’ Prosser had said. ‘Bromley’s taking a plane to London and he’s going to betray all of us.’

  Meaning you, Sandra had thought, numb with shock. The fact that her husband was a serial killer finally hit her. Why should she run like a fugitive? She had access to her husband’s money squirrelled away in the Cayman Islands. She had done nothing wrong. She could hear the others talking on the terrace, wondering where Prosser and Bromley had got to. Why should she care what happened to Castle, Sanders, and their wives?

  She had no intention of being dragged off to some smelly Brazilian cell. Her husband would have used one of the new fake passports. She would have to pray the old fake passport still worked.

  Sandra opened the safe in the villa and pulled out wads of banknotes along with several bankbooks. She stripped naked and Sellotaped the money to her body before dressing again. She did not want to risk packing or calling for a taxi. It was going to be a long hot walk into town.

  Chapter Eleven

  A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

  – FRANCIS BACON

  ‘I don’t think Prosser will go back to Brazil,’ said Hamish. ‘I don’t think he cares what happens to anyone other than himself. Keeping those ledgers was an act of supreme vanity. So what’s the next move of a man with supreme vanity?’

  ‘Disappear to some country where they don’t have extradition,’ suggested Priscilla. She was wearing a blue cotton shirtwaister, as blue as her eyes. The shining bell of her hair fell evenly on either side of her calm face. Hamish felt a treacherous tug of attraction but mentally shrugged it off.

  ‘If Prosser thinks the mysterious Diarmuid is me, then he’ll come after me. He will see me as the ruin of his life. He will want to get even before he disappears. There were few passengers in first class, and the one seated behind Bromley answering to the name of Higgins answers the description of Prosser.’

  Priscilla looked alarmed. ‘Have you told Strathbane about your suspicions?’

  ‘I tried. But Blair blocked it. He’s probably praying that I’m right.’

  ‘Take a holiday,’ urged Priscilla.

  ‘No, I think I’ll chust bide here,’ said Hamish, the sudden strengthening of his accent showing he was not so calm as he was trying to be. ‘But there’s one thing you could do for me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Take my dog and cat up to the hotel and get chef Clarry to take care of them for a bit. I don’t want Prosser poisoning them before he comes for me.’

  ‘And you’re just going to stay here like a tethered goat?’

  ‘That’s me,’ said Hamish with a grin and then bleated.

  But an unusually fine sum
mer finally went out in a blaze of glory with purple blazing on the flanks of the mountains and there had been no attempt on Hamish’s life.

  Sanders, Castle, and their wives were still in prison in Brazil, awaiting extradition. They had sung like canaries to visiting detectives from Scotland Yard. The hunt for Prosser and his wife was worldwide. Photographs of what they looked like and what they might look like if they had changed their hair colour and donned disguises had appeared on television and in all the papers.

  Angela’s writing classes had been a great success, and budding authors tapped away at computers. There was the usual weekly ceilidh at the village hall. Lochdubh had returned to normal for everyone but Hamish Macbeth. Priscilla had left to take up a new contract but occasionally phoned Hamish to make sure he was well.

  Elspeth phoned as well and said she might come up on a week’s holiday.

  Hamish diligently checked the background of any visitor to Lochdubh. He was still convinced that Prosser was plotting his revenge. The man might not come in person, he reasoned, but send someone else after him.

  Sandra, by dint of remembering the name of the man her husband was going to see about fake passports, had finally run him to earth in the back streets of Rio. Before that, she had gone to a beauty salon and had her hair cut and dyed black. The forger demanded a lot of money and to his delight, Sandra did not even bother to haggle. She even said she would pay more for a rush job. So she sat and waited while he worked, hoping that her husband had not told any of the others the man’s name in case they found her. She did not want to be encumbered by anyone.

  At last, the passport was ready. She got the forger to give her a lift into the centre of town, where she bought some clothes and a suitcase before catching a cab to the airport.

  Despite the air-conditioning in the airport, she was sweating profusely with nerves as she approached passport control. When her passport was finally stamped after what seemed a terrifying age, she felt limp with relief. She had bought a ticket to Sao Paulo. She studied the destination boards at the airport and then bought a ticket to Santiago in Chile. When she arrived at Santiago airport, she went to a tourist desk and booked a hotel in the city, then picked up a cab.

  The hotel was old-fashioned and somehow very dark. The furnishings were old-fashioned Spanish, and in her room the windows were covered with lace under heavy velvet curtains. She stripped off and laid the notes on the bed. She decided she had to find some other way of carrying them because if she sweated any more, the notes might be damaged. Several packets had actually become detached from the Sellotape and fallen inside her blouse.

  She went out for a walk on O’Higgins Boulevard, feeling lonely and threatened by the crowds. She planned to keep moving from place to place until she felt safe. She bought a small travel bag in a shop and then realized she was hungry.

  Sandra went into a restaurant on the boulevard. There was a list of dishes all in Spanish. A waiter approached her table but did not speak English. Sandra’s stomach rumbled. She had been too nervous to eat anything since she began her flight. A handsome young man at the next table stood up and said in perfect English, ‘May I help you?’

  Sandra smiled at him. ‘I can’t read the menu.’

  ‘They serve very good roast pork here.’

  ‘I’ll have that, and some wine.’ Loneliness bit at Sandra again. ‘Why don’t you join me?’

  He sat down, and soon they were laughing and talking. He said he was a student, studying medicine. His name was Jaime. He had curly black hair, large brown eyes fringed with black lashes, and a slim figure.

  Sandra said grandly that she was travelling the world. He suggested afterwards that they go on to a bar but Sandra wanted to change into something attractive and repair her make-up. She loved the way he smiled into her eyes, banishing her fears of the police, making her feel young again. He escorted her back to her hotel, a supportive hand under her arm, and said he would wait for her in reception.

  In her room, Sandra washed her face and carefully applied make-up. She studied herself critically in the bathroom mirror. Her figure was still good, and her siliconed breasts were holding up. She thought the dark hair suited her. Out of her meagre supply of clothes, she picked out a blue cotton shift dress and slipped on a pair of high-heeled sandals. She had hidden the money under the mattress. She took it out and stuffed it into the travel bag. It was then Sandra hesitated. She really should put it in the hotel safe, but she did not trust the staff.

  She put it on top of the huge old-fashioned wardrobe and went down to meet her date.

  She spent a drunken riotous evening and ended up in bed with Jaime.

  Jaime lay awake while Sandra snored beside him. He planned to ask her for money. He wasn’t a student but worked as a waiter in the evenings and as a deliveryman for a clothing factory during the day. On his odd evenings off, he searched for rich tourists, sometimes being successful enough to get money for his services in bed.

  They had left the lights on. Sandra’s suitcase was lying open. He slid quietly out of bed. It contained very little. He wondered whether to take money from her handbag and then decided it might be more profitable to work on her. If she fell in love with him, she might fund him to go to medical school, which had always been his dream.

  He got back into bed and was about to fall asleep when he noticed the travel bag perched on top of the wardrobe. She had obviously just bought it when he met her in the restaurant. He got up again, stood on a chair, lifted down the bag from the wardrobe, climbed down holding the bag, and placed it on the floor.

  Jaime opened it and suppressed a gasp as he saw all that money. He thought of his ambitions to be a doctor; he thought of his family out in the squalid barrio. He quietly closed the bag, and with his heart thudding so loudly that he was afraid Sandra would wake up, he quickly dressed, let himself out of the room, and then made his escape through a fire door at the end of the corridor.

  Tam Tamworth haunted Drim but there was no sign of Milly. He longed for her to come back so that he could tell her he really loved her.

  The summer was gone and a cold wind was blowing down from the mountains. The restless seagulls wheeled overhead as he trudged away from the house. He knew he should return to Strathbane. He was supposed to be out following up a tip-off about a drug raid. He had found out quickly that it was a fiction from some unreliable informant but had not informed the news desk, using the time instead to search for Milly.

  He decided to go for a walk up on the moors, wondering, always wondering, where she had gone and if she ever thought of him.

  Tam had gone a good way away from Drim. He stood on an outcrop of rock, looking down at the village, thinking it would be marvellous if he could see her car drive up.

  And then he saw a figure, made small by the distance, leaving the back of the house.

  ‘Hey!’ he called, but his voice was whipped away with the wind. He started to run back down to the village, stumbling and cursing. When he reached the house, he checked round it but could not see anyone; nor was there any sign of a break-in.

  He took out his phone and called Hamish.

  ‘I’ll be right over,’ said Hamish.

  ‘I can’t wait for you,’ said Tam. ‘I’m supposed to be at the office. Phone me if you catch him.’

  Hamish drove quickly to Drim. Like Tam, he searched around the house and checked the locks. Then he took out a pair of powerful binoculars and scanned the moors. No one.

  He was suddenly sure it was Prosser at last.

  Sandra awoke in the morning and stretched luxuriously. She turned and felt for Jaime and found the bed empty. She looked up at the wardrobe and saw immediately that the bag was missing.

  Sheer panic gripped her, followed by white-hot rage. She rose and dressed hurriedly. She was relieved to find there was still a wad of notes in her handbag. Sandra felt murderous. She went down to reception and asked at the desk if someone could translate for her for a small fee. A girl was summoned. Her English was
not very good but Sandra felt sure it would be good enough for her purpose.

  They walked together to the restaurant, where Sandra gave the girl a description of Jaime and said they had been dining together the evening before and she wanted to find him.

  She gloomily expected to be told to come back later when the waiter who had served them would be on duty but the girl, after questioning the staff, said that Jaime worked at the Chile Modes clothing company. Sandra asked for the address and waited impatiently. The girl finally came back with a slip of paper with the address on it. Sandra tipped her and walked with her back to the hotel, where she bought a map of the city.

  She then wandered down the boulevard until she found a shop selling tourist souvenirs. Sandra bought a baseball cap and then saw they had a display of souvenir knives. She bought the one with the longest blade.

  Returning to the hotel, she asked the concierge to hire her a car, asking for a four-wheel drive as she said she would like to see some of the country. When she paid for the hire and deposit, she had very little money left.

  In Guildford, Sandra had taken the advanced driving test. She had often driven her husband when they were abroad on holidays. The car had a sat-nav, so she followed the directions and soon found herself in an industrial park on the outskirts of the city.

  Chile Modes was in a low building at the back of the estate. She sat and waited, watching small delivery vans come and go, the new baseball cap pulled down over her eyes. Her heart sank as she realized that Jaime had probably disappeared with the money. He would expect her to have called the police.

  But suddenly she saw Jaime emerge from the building, and he was carrying her travel bag. He was shouting something at a burly man and then gave him the finger.