Death of a Sweep

by Beaton, M. C.

  She walked on to the platform to a spattering of applause. Malvin appeared from the other end of the platform to enthusiastic applause and sat down facing her. He was a small thickset man with a fake-bake tan and dyed black hair.

  The master of ceremonies was the hotel manager, dressed in kilt and full regalia. He made a long speech, boasting about the beauty of the hotel and how the literary festival had been his inspiration. He had a high reedy voice and a thin body. A kilt is a very heavy item of dress and his began to slide south, showing a glimpse of white underpants decorated with naked ladies. The audience began to giggle and he hoisted the kilt up again and then decided to leave the stage after a hurried introduction of Malvin and Angela.

  Malvin was in a bad mood. Why had he agreed to attend this hick festival? He had read Angela’s book and found it very sexy and had hopes of a fling with the author but his hopes had died the minute he set eyes on Angela.

  He began with his first question. ‘Do you think you are writing literature?’

  ‘I just write what I can,’ said Angela.

  ‘I’ll just read out this scene from your book where the heroine is in bed with the local bobby.’ He made it sound salacious, and Angela squirmed.

  ‘Now, what we all want to know,’ said Malvin, leering at the audience, ‘is how you did your research.’

  ‘It is all a product of my imagination.’

  ‘But all fiction is autobiographical in some way.’

  ‘Not in this case,’ said Angela.

  ‘Let me read another extract.’

  Angela cracked. She had seen her appearance in a mirror in the green room but it had been too late to do anything about it. She got to her feet.

  ‘It is my opinion that you are nothing more than a dirty old man,’ announced Angela, and she walked from the stage.

  She ran out of the hotel to the car park and drove off. Never again, she thought, will I have anything to do with publicity. But on the road home her mobile rang. She stopped in a lay-by and answered it. Her husband’s frantic voice sounded down the line. ‘What have you been up to? The press are hammering at the door saying you called Malvin Clegg a dirty old man.’

  ‘I’ll hide out somewhere,’ said Angela.

  ‘What about me? And they won’t go away unless you give them something, even if it’s no comment.’

  ‘I’ll come home,’ said Angela wearily.

  The aborted interview was shown on all the TV news stations. Malvin could not sue Angela because she had said that it was her opinion. In Edinburgh, her publisher rubbed his hands in glee and went off to order a large reprint.

  Angela, with a scarf tied over her frizzy hair and her make-up scrubbed off, faced the press on her doorstep. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I have nothing to say.’

  Hamish Macbeth cleared a path for her through the shouting reporters, and she thankfully escaped inside her house.

  Afterwards, Hamish wished he had let her fight her own way into her house as his photo appeared in some newspapers along with descriptions of Angela’s heroine having an affair with the village policeman.

  * * *

  When Tam arrived that evening to pick up his belongings, Ailsa was there with Jock Kennedy and several other men from the village. He asked to speak to Milly but was told she was resting and to take his stuff and leave. As he drove away, Tam began to wonder if he’d not gone a little mad. He and Milly had enjoyed something special and he had ruined it. He wondered if he had subconsciously destroyed it because he had always avoided commitment. And why had he started to drink so much when he took her out for an evening?

  He shook his head sadly. At least there was always work to take his mind off her.

  By dint of thieving passports, Sandra Prosser had made her way to Jensen Beach in Florida. She rented a small flat in a condominium full of old people. After a week, she was bored. The money would not last forever. She did not have the courage to try to open a bank account and get money transferred from the Cayman Islands and also because she had a shrewd suspicion that her husband would have cleared out that account. She hired a car and drove down into the pretty town of Stuart, looking at the shops, and wondering for the first time if it would not be easier to just give herself up.

  She missed her husband. She had not cried when she had learned of his death, but now she remembered the good times they had enjoyed, the expensive trips abroad, and the generous allowance he had given her.

  Sandra went into a bar, sat up on a bar stool, and ordered a vodka and tonic. ‘How much?’ she asked the barman.

  ‘The gentleman over there wishes to pay for it.’

  Sandra swung round. A man dressed in expensively casual clothes raised his glass to her. Sandra picked up her own glass and went to join him.

  ‘I’m Vic Faziola,’ he said. ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Visiting for a bit,’ said Sandra. He was about her own age with thick brown hair greying at the temples. He had a sallow face and small black eyes. ‘What does one do around here?’

  ‘People go swimming or surfing. I own this tavern so it keeps me busy. You English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What brings you to Florida?’

  ‘Just a holiday. I thought some sun would be nice.’

  ‘Why don’t you meet me here at eight this evening and I’ll take you for dinner. I like getting to know the visitors.’

  Sandra went back to her flat, feeling happy. It was nice to know she still had pulling power. But the afternoon stretched out ahead. She decided to go swimming and then find a hairdresser.

  She put her swimsuit on under a blouse and jeans, stuffed underwear into a bag, drove back to Stuart, and headed for the beach.

  Great glassy waves curled on to the beach. The sun beat down. It was very hot. Sandra had left her wallet and the bag with the dwindling money in her flat.

  She left her clothes on the beach and plunged into the water. She was a powerful swimmer. With steady strokes, she headed out to sea and then turned on her back and floated, dreaming that her new companion would turn out to be her escape from looming poverty.

  A log floated past and scraped her arm. Sandra cursed and decided to head for shore. She turned on her front. As she raised her head, she saw the figure of a lifeguard shouting something through a loud-hailer, but the wind had risen and she could not hear what he was saying. Probably a storm coming. She raised her head again. Now he was running towards the water, pointing frantically.

  Maybe a boat was coming up on her. She twisted her head around and that’s when she saw it – a dorsal fin cutting through the waves in her direction. Sandra began to swim as hard as she could. But she was too late.

  Great teeth plunged into her leg. She let out a scream of pure terror. Then she disappeared under the waves and a red stain spread out over the blue water.

  It took a long time to recover the bits of Sandra from the sea and put them together with a woman who was missing from the condominium. Her flat was searched and several stolen passports recovered. It was unclear how she had managed to pass through passport controls at airports, where she would get fingerprint and retina scrutiny. But Sandra had driven to Mexico, picking out-of-the-way border controls, and once she was in Mexico had bribed a trucker to take her across the border into the States.

  From fingerprints found in her flat, Interpol identified her at last as the missing Sandra Prosser.

  Hamish Macbeth had to read about it in the newspapers, angry that neither Jimmy nor anyone at Strathbane had taken the trouble to tell him. Normally lazy and unambitious, and usually glad of a chance to go fishing, he nonetheless could not shake off his irritation. He finally drove to Strathbane and ran Jimmy to earth in the detective’s favourite pub.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me Sandra Prosser had been found?’ demanded Hamish.

  Jimmy grinned. ‘You mean, what was left of her? A fitting end. She lived with a shark and got killed by one.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’r />
  ‘Stop glaring at me. I’ve been right busy. I somehow thought you’d hear. Sorry. Have a real drink.’

  ‘I’m driving,’ said Hamish huffily.

  ‘Well, now you’re here, I’ll give you the latest horror story in the Prosser saga. Someone in Jensen Beach took a photo of her. Some woman taking a picture of her child but there’s a clear shot o’ Sandra in the background. They start backtracking through her travels. Found she had been staying in a hotel in Santiago and had spent the night with a young man called Jaime Gonzales, subsequently reported missing. He worked at a clothing firm. He handed in his notice the day after his fling with our Sandra – who had been trying to find him, and paid a girl at the hotel to interpret for her. Next thing, Jaime’s mother reports him missing. As they live in a shantytown, the police don’t care much. The interpreter said that Sandra was very angry. I think this Jaime stole money from her. The safe in the villa in Rio had been cleaned out. I think she caught up with him and killed him to get the money back. Of course, she must have been really tough to live with a psycho like Prosser.

  ‘Cheer up, Hamish. It’s the final chapter. You can write The End and get back to poaching.’

  Hamish decided to do just that. When he returned to the police station, he collected his rod and fishing tackle and, with the dog and cat at his heels, walked up over the moors until he came to the upper reaches of the River Anstey.

  Keeping a careful eye out for the water bailiff, because the fishing rights belonged to Colonel Halburton-Smythe, he cast his fly on a glassy pool and felt, for the first time in ages, all the dark worry of the Prosser case fade away.

  He broke off for a picnic lunch and had just opened a thermos flask when Sonsie gave a warning hiss but Lugs wagged his tail.

  Hamish stood up and saw Elspeth Grant coming down the heathery slope towards him.

  ‘You gave me a fright,’ he said. ‘I thought you were the water bailiff. How did you find me?’

  ‘Elementary, my dear Watson. It’s a fine day, the murders are over, and I remembered this was your favourite poaching site.’

  They sat down together on a flat rock by the pool. ‘Coffee?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘Fine. Just black.’

  ‘You look like your old self,’ said Hamish. Elspeth’s hair was frizzy, and she was wearing an old sweater over a pair of jeans. ‘What brings you?’

  ‘Just a holiday.’

  ‘I would have thought they would have sent you back up on the Prosser case.’

  ‘I didn’t want to risk anyone pinching my job as a news presenter so I got a new contract stating that that was my sole job. So, in future, everyone can murder everyone up here and you won’t see me. Tell me all about it.’

  ‘Too fine a day,’ said Hamish. ‘I want to forget it.’

  Elspeth studied him with those silvery gypsy eyes of hers. ‘Prosser evidently knew this territory like the back of his hand,’ she said. ‘Funny him falling down that gully.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it!’ snapped Hamish, and in a milder voice, ‘Sandwich? It’s chicken.’

  ‘Thanks. It won’t be one of your hens, anyway. You just let them die of old age. I’ll take you for dinner tonight. Don’t stand me up. Eight o’clock?’

  ‘I’ll be there. I think maybe I’ll pack up. The fish don’t seem to be biting. I really ought to go over to Drim and see how Milly Davenport’s getting on.’

  Milly had never lived in a house with a cesspool before. So when the sink and toilet started backing up, she phoned Ailsa for help. Ailsa gave her the number of a local man who would come and pump out the cesspool.

  Three men with a truck with a big tank on the back arrived. ‘I mind the drain is somewhere ower here,’ said the boss. He approached the flower bed where the money was buried. ‘Not there, surely,’ shouted Milly.

  ‘No, no, missus. Jist the ither side, covered in the gravel.’ He scraped the gravel away and revealed an iron cover. He wrenched and turned and finally pulled the cover off. A fountain of excrement, fuelled by trapped gases, blasted into the air, spraying everyone with the worst kind of filth.

  It poured down into the flower bed and Milly thought with dread of the case of money buried underneath.

  When the gusher subsided, the boss, seemingly unfazed by the fact that he was covered in brown unmentionable, put the huge hose into the drain and then started a motor in the truck. Milly ran into the house and stripped off her clothes and had a shower. Then she dressed in clean clothes and went outside again.

  The smell was awful. Amused villagers had gathered to watch. A cesspool clearance was regarded as a rare show. When the job was pronounced finished, Jock Kennedy and some of the men asked Milly if she had a hose.

  ‘Yes,’ said Milly. ‘There are some gardening things in a shed at the side there. What are you going to do?’

  ‘We’ll chust be washing this muck off the garden.’

  Milly thought frantically of the buried money. ‘Oh, don’t bother …’ she began, but Jock was already walking to the shed.

  He came back with a long coil of hose. Not bothering to ask Milly’s permission, he went into the house and fed the hose from the kitchen tap round to the front of the house and began to drench the garden.

  Finally Jock stopped and looked up at the black clouds streaming in from the west. ‘Storm’s coming, Milly,’ he said cheerfully. ‘That’ll finish the job.’

  To Milly’s dismay, Ailsa, who had joined the watchers, said cheerfully, ‘I think we could all do with a cup of tea.’

  Milly felt she could not refuse. They would wonder why. Jock, Ailsa, and the villagers gathered in the kitchen. Milly made endless cups of tea and sliced cake. Outside the wind screamed and the rain flooded down.

  After two hours, they left. Milly hurriedly donned a raincoat and rain hat and went out into the garden. The screaming gale lifted her hat from her head and sent it sailing off.

  She went to the shed and took out a spade and began to dig. The excrement had sunk down into her new flower bed, and the smell was awful. She hoisted out the attaché case and carried it into the kitchen.

  She laid it on the table and opened it. The notes inside were brown with the muck from the cesspool and soaking wet.

  Milly found a ball of string and began to put lines of string across the kitchen. Then she began to gingerly sponge each note and pin it up to dry. She stoked up the Raeburn stove and returned to the long, long job of cleaning the banknotes.

  Hamish Macbeth drove up to Milly’s house. He wrinkled his nose at the smell, which had never quite gone away. He knocked at the door. There was no answer, although he could see Milly’s car parked at the side of the house. He thought that she must be down in the village. But after so many scares and murders, he wondered if she was all right. He tried the door and found it unlocked.

  Milly had heard the knock at the door but decided if she did not answer it, whoever it was would go away.

  She was just pinning up a wet note when she sensed a presence behind her and turned round. Hamish Macbeth stood there.

  ‘I see you’ve found the money,’ he said.

  ‘It’s my money,’ said Milly shrilly.

  ‘Oh, aye? And do you often wash it? I’ve heard of laundering money but this is the first time I’ve seen it actually done.’

  ‘It’s mine,’ said Milly desperately. ‘It was my husband’s and now it belongs to me.’

  Hamish sat down slowly at the kitchen table. He took off his hat. If he put in a report, it would show that Milly had every intention of keeping the money. By the mess of it, it must have been buried in the garden. He had heard over in Lochdubh about the cesspool clearance. Prosser had been a criminal, and the money should be impounded.

  Milly stood before him, tears running down her face. What an irritatingly weak woman, he thought savagely, realizing for the first time how easy it would be to bully Milly. Blair, for one, would have a field day.

  ‘How much?’ he demanded.

  ‘Abou
t seven hundred and fifty thousand,’ whimpered Milly, ‘or it was when I first counted. I’ve used some of it.’

  ‘And what do you plan to do with it?’

  ‘I can stay on here. Spend it in the village.’

  Hamish thought again of Blair and of the paperwork involved.

  He stood up. ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘I neffer saw the damn money. Get it?’

  Milly seized his hand. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you!’

  Hamish jerked his hand free and walked out of the kitchen.

  When Hamish returned to the police station, he found the editor of the Highland Times waiting by the kitchen door.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Hamish. ‘I’ve had enough of murders and mayhem to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ said Matthew. ‘It’s a bit o’ news that might interest you.’

  ‘Come ben to the kitchen and let’s hear it.’

  Matthew sat down at the table and took out some notes. ‘You remember that Prosser was conned over some gold mine.’

  ‘Yes, it did seem daft. I kept wondering why he was conned.’

  ‘Well, you know the price of gold is now sky-high?’

  ‘Aye, I read about it.’

  ‘You know where Tyndrum lies, over by the mountains that march eastward along Glen Cononish?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s going to be Scotland’s first gold mine. Chris Sangster – he’s the chief executive of Scotgold and a mining engineer – says that each ton of rock is likely to yield up to ten grams of high-grade gold, worth around two hundred pounds. It was talked about before in the sixties when the British Geological Society found evidence of gold in the Western Highlands, but the price of gold was so low, nothing was done about it.

  ‘They’re all excited over in Tyndrum. I mean Tyndrum is only a straggle of houses along the main road from Perth and Glasgow to Oban and there isn’t much employment. Scotgold expects approval from Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Planning Authority by early summer. So the conning captain might have been on to something.’