Hamish Macbeth 14 (1999) - Death of a Scriptwriter

by M C Beaton

  Above the general store in Drim, Ailsa Kennedy, wife of the proprietor, Jock, was studying her new hairstyle in the mirror and wondering if that cow Alice MacQueen had gone out of her way to sabotage her chances of appearing on television. Before she went to Alice’s, her fiery red hair had been long, almost to her waist. Now it had been chopped off and framed her face in one of those old·fashioned sixties styles with flicked-up ends. Alice could only manage old·fashioned styles. Ailsa scowled at her reflection. Her husband’s face appeared in the mirror behind her.

  “What have you done to your hair?”

  “Got it cut,” said Ailsa.

  “You look a fright. I thought you said you’d never go near Alice’s. It’s this stupid fillum, and you’re to have nothing to do with it, lass. Did you see thon actress? Near naked, if the minister hadn’t made her cover up.”

  “Oh, go away,” snapped Ailsa. “You give me a headache.”

  Jamie Gallagher heard the beat of music from the community hall and strolled inside. Village women were performing aerobics under the direction of Edie Aubrey.

  He stared at them for a long moment and then went out again to search for Fiona. “You’ll never believe it,” he said when he found her. “There’s a whole time warp o’ women in the community hall. You’ve never seen so many sixties hairstyles.”

  “I’ll have a look,” said Fiona.

  Ailsa Kennedy had just finished washing out the last of the offending hairstyle and was drying her hair into a smooth bob when she heard her latest friend, Holly Andrews, calling from the shop below. “Are you up there, Ailsa?”

  “Coming,” called Ailsa, brushing down her hair.

  She clattered down the steps to the shop.

  Holly was a tubby middle-aged woman who had moved to a little cottage in Drim after the death of her husband. She had lived before his death in a large house on the outskirts of Lairg and after his death had sold up. Her brown hair was done in the same hairstyle that Ailsa had just vigorously washed out.

  “What have you done to your hair?” gasped Holly.

  “What d’you think? I washed it out. I looked like an aging Beatles fan.”

  “They want our hair like this,” shrieked Holly. “It’s so exciting. The film’s set in the sixties, and Alice has turned us out in sixties hairstyles because that’s as far as she ever got in hairstyling, and the film people are wild about it. We’re all to be in crowd scenes.”

  Ailsa clutched her now-smooth hair. “What have I done?”

  “Go round to Alice’s and get her to do it again,” urged Holly.

  Ten minutes later, Alice, with a superior smile on her face, whipped a smock around Ailsa. “I knew what I was doing,” she said. “I knew it was set in the sixties.”

  Ailsa bit back an angry retort. “Just get on with it,” she muttered.

  Jimmy Macleod, a crofter, listened in horror as his wife, Nancy, teetering on high heels across the stone flags of the kitchen floor, announced that she had a part in the film.

  “You’re not consorting with naked women and that’s that,” said Jimmy.

  His wife looked at him contemptuously.

  “I’ll put a stop to it right now.” He seized his jacket from a peg by the door and strode out.

  In her office in Drim Castle, Fiona looked up wearily as Jimmy Macleod was ushered in by Sheila. He was a small man with rounded shoulders, a wrinkled face and an odd crab-like walk.

  “Whit’s this about putting my wife in a fillum?” demanded Jimmy.

  Fiona smiled at him. She had already dealt with two other irate husbands and knew exactly what to do.

  “Wait right here,” she commanded. She made her hands into a square and surveyed the now bewildered Jimmy through them. “Perfect,” she said.

  “What are ye talking about, woman?”

  “You look the perfect Highlander to me,” said Fiona. “A very good face for one of our crowd scenes.”

  Jimmy looked at her, his mouth open and the anger dying out of his face. “You will be paid, of course,” said Fiona. “Yes, we need the nobility of your face. What about a dram, Mr…?”

  “Macleod, Jimmy Macleod.” Jimmy scuttled forward and sat down. His heart was beating very hard. He had gone to as many movies as he could afford when he was a boy. He felt as if some fairy had waved a wand and transformed him into Robert Redford. Fiona poured him a generous measure of whisky.

  “Here’s to a successful show,” said Fiona.

  “Aye,” said Jimmy, a smile cracking his walnut face. “Here’s tae the fillum business.”

  “Film business,” said Fiona, “of which you are now a member.”

  And Jimmy thought his heart would burst with pride.

  Jamie Gallagher was swollen up with vanity and whisky. He felt he could have turned out the whole television series on his own. Had he not told the director which camera angles should be used? But going over the day’s rushes, Fiona had objected to several of his choices, although the final choice would lie with Harry Frame.

  Jamie left the bar of the Tommel Castle Hotel and went up to his room, where he phoned Harry Frame.

  “We’ve a good team up here, Harry,” he said. “But there’s one person I cannae get along with and that’s Fiona. She’ll have to be replaced.”

  Harry’s voice squawked objections at the other end. The publicity had gone out with Fiona’s name on it. Jamie finally threatened to pull out of the series, and Harry capitulated.

  Fiona listened to Harry ten minutes later on her mobile phone. “You can’t do this to me, Harry,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I have to, luv. I’ll find something else for you.”

  “I’ll kill Jamie,” said Fiona.

  “I’ll come up myself tomorrow,” said Harry.

  “What’s the point?” Fiona snapped her mobile phone shut and stared coldly into space.

  The following morning Patricia sat down to read her daily copy of the Scotsman. She felt calmer now. She would just stay away from the film location, wait until her book was published and then the reviewers would surely point out how superior it was to the television production. Then she came across an interview with Jamie Gallagher, famous scriptwriter of Football Fever. In the interview, Jamie described how he had created The Case of the Rising Tides and the character of Lady Harriet. There was no mention of Patricia or that the television series had been adapted from one of her books.

  “I’ll kill him,” hissed Patricia. Then she ripped the newspaper to shreds.

  Angus Harris sat sadly in the Glasgow flat of his late friend, Stuart Campbell, sorting through his effects. Angus had been away in the States and had only just discovered that his friend had died of AIDS during his absence and had left him his flat and effects in his will.

  Stuart had been a struggling writer. A trunk was full of manuscripts. Angus did not know what to do. Perhaps he should find some literary agent and send off all these manuscripts in the hope that at least one would get published. He pulled them out one by one, stopping when he came to one entitled Football Fever.

  He slowly opened it. It was the script for a television documentary. He frowned. It had been shown in the States on PBS, but he was sure Stuart’s name hadn’t been on it. It had originally been produced by BBC Scotland.

  And then he remembered seeing something about it in that day’s Scotsman. He went and got the paper and came to the interview with Jamie Gallagher.

  It all clicked into place in his mind as he read the interview with Jamie. Stuart had written to him, saying that a scriptwriter called Jamie Gallagher was running an evening class to teach writers how to prepare a script for television.

  “The bugger must have stolen it,” said Angus.

  He set out to investigate. He called at BBC Scotland, but they had never heard of Stuart. He tried to find out names of any people who had attended Jamie’s classes, which had been held in the basement of a church. But there were no records, and no one could remember anything.

  Ang
us knew his own violent temper was his weakness. But the thought that poor Stuart had died and someone had used his script to get international fame and glory was past bearing. This Jamie Gallagher was in Drim.

  He would drive up there and confront him.

  Josh Gates, hungover, ate his bacon and eggs in a bed-and-breakfast outside Perth as he read the interview with Jamie. Here was the man who was behind making his wife flaunt herself on television.

  “He’ll have me to reckon with!” howled Josh.

  The other diners averted their eyes. This must be the madman whose drunken retching had kept them awake during the night.

  Fiona moved through the next day as if walking in a nightmare. She could hardly bear to look at Jamie and at the triumphant little smirk on his face.

  Harry Frame arrived, having flown to Inverness early in the morning and taken a taxi up to Drim. Typical, thought Fiona.

  I have to watch out for every penny, and he spends about a hundred and fifty pounds on a cab fare.

  “Hang on for another week and be sweet to Jamie,” urged Harry. “It might blow over.”

  “No scriptwriter should have this amount of power,” said Fiona.

  “Well, he hasn’t done anything since Football Fever, but everyone still talks about that.”

  Fiona picked up a script. “But Football Fever was clever and witty, and this is just crap.”

  “Jamie knows what he’s doing,” said Harry.

  “Well, let’s take this location of Drim for a start. The Case of the Rising Tides. It’s on a sea loch, but the tides don’t rise and fall the way they would do at the seaside. Also, the climax of the book is based on the flooding of the spring tide, and this is summer and the tide doesn’t flood.”

  “I thought we weren’t going by the book,” said Harry. “What is it, Sheila?”

  “There’s an Angus Harris here, breathing blood and fire,” said Sheila. “He says his friend Stuart Campbell wrote the script for Football Fever and Jamie pinched it.”

  “Show him in,” said Fiona quickly.

  Angus Harris was a good-looking young man with blond hair and a tanned face.

  “What’s this all about?” asked Fiona.

  “This!” Angus held out the script of Football Fever he had discovered. “My friend Stuart Campbell died when I was in the States. He left me his flat and effects. I was going through his stuff and I found this. Now Stuart attended a scriptwriting class given by Jamie Gallagher, and as I remember, the people in this class submitted various scripts to Gallagher for his opinion. The bastard must have copied Stuart’s script and, hearing he was dead, submitted it as his own.”

  “Do you have any proof of this?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll get it. I’ll go the newspapers with this. I’m sure someone who was in the same class will read it and come forward.”

  “Get Jamie in here,” Harry ordered Sheila.

  They waited in silence until Jamie came in. With a certain amount of relish, Fiona described the reason for Angus’s visit.

  Jamie went off into full rant. “How dare you!” he gasped. “That was my script and no one else’s. I gave up that class because they were a bunch of losers. I was wasting my time and talent on a bunch of no-hopers and wannabes. Och, I remember this Stuart Campbell. Useless wee faggot.”

  Angus punched him on the nose, and Jamie reeled back, blood streaming down his face. “Get the police!” howled Jamie, and Fiona picked up the phone.

  Hamish Macbeth, arriving half an hour later, listened carefully, trying to sort out accusations from the babble of voices that greeted him. Jamie’s voice was loudest, “I’m charging this bastard with assault!”

  “Wait a bit,” said Hamish soothingly. “Now Mr. Harris, as far as I can make out, the situation is this. You found a script of Football Fever amongst your dead friend’s effects and came to the conclusion that he had written it.”

  “I know he wrote it,” said Angus. “It was his style.”

  “Charge him,” said Jamie.

  “In a moment,” said Hamish mildly. “We’ll deal with this business o’ the script first. I’ll phone Glasgow police and we’ll take the matter from there. It should be easy to find someone who was at that class.”

  The anger drained out of Jamie. “Let’s just leave it. I’m sorry I called Stuart a faggot. I don’t feel like wasting my time appearing in a sheriff’s court. I’ve got work to do.”

  “But I think the matter should be investigated,” said Fiona sweetly. “Plagiarism is a serious business.”

  “You bitch!” snarled Jamie. “You’ve just got it in for me because you’re out of a job.”…

  “Now I’ve met you,” said Angus to Jamie, “I can’t believe for a minute that you wrote anything as intelligent and amusing as Football Fever. You’re a dead man.”

  “I’ll look into it,” said Hamish. “Although I gather the provocation was great, Mr. Harris, don’t go around hitting people.” He turned to Harry Frame. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  Over in Lochdubh, Dr. Brodie received a distress call from the minister’s wife at Cnothan. “It’s Miss Martyn-Broyd. She’s wandering around shouting something about killing someone, and our Dr. MacWhirter is on holiday.”

  Dr. Brodie drove over to Cnothan. The first person he saw in the bleak main street was Patricia, striding up and down, clenching and unclenching her fists.

  The doctor got out of the car. “Miss Martyn-Broyd? I’ll just be getting you home.”

  “Leave me alone,” grumbled Patricia.

  “This is a disgraceful way for a lady to behave,” said Dr. Brodie.

  She looked at him in dazed surprise and then began to cry. “Get in the car,” ordered the doctor.

  He drove her back to her cottage. He had called there once before when the local doctor had been on holiday. Patricia had thought she was suffering from a heart attack, but Dr. Brodie had diagnosed a bad case of indigestion.

  “Sit down,” he ordered when they were in her cottage, “and tell me from the beginning what’s put you in this state.”

  Patricia began to talk and talk. She showed him the book jacket. She told him about her horror at seeing Penelope Gates on the set and finished by wailing, “I’ll be a laughingstock. I’ll kill that man Gallagher.”

  “You’ll only be a laughingstock if you march about Cnothan speaking to yourself,” complained Dr. Brodie. He noticed that Patricia was calm and reasonable now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Have you any friends up here?” asked Dr. Brodie.

  “I know people in the church.”

  “I meant real friends. A shoulder to cry on.”

  “There is no one here I can relate to,” said Patricia with simple snobbery. “They are not of my class.”

  “I would drop that old·fashioned attitude and get out and about a bit more or go somewhere where you think you’ll be amongst your own kind. I’m not giving you a sedative. I don’t believe in them. But if it all gets too much for you again, I want you to phone me or come to my surgery in Lochdubh and talk it over. There is nothing like talking in a situation like this.”

  When Dr. Brodie drove back into Lochdubh, he saw Hamish Macbeth strolling along the waterfront and hailed him.

  “What’s this I hear about Patricia going bonkers?” asked Hamish.

  “News travels fast in the Highlands,” said the doctor. “The poor woman had a brainstorm because of the savaging of her work.”

  “I don’t like this film business at all,” said Hamish. “I want it to work for the people in Drim—they could do with the money—but there’s a bad feeling about the whole thing. I found out that Fiona woman, the producer, got fired because of Jamie Gallagher, the scriptwriter, and now there’s a young man from Glasgow who says that Jamie pinched his friend’s script for Football Fever and used it as his own. There’s already been violence. The young man, Angus Harris, punched Gallagher on the nose. Och, I’m worryin
g too much. Maybe it’s chust the way TV people go on!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I passed through the lonely street. The wind did sing and blow. I could hear the policeman’s feet. Clapping to and fro.

  —William Makepeace Thackeray

  Major Neal, with true Highland thrift, was eating his lunch at the television company’s mobile restaurant set up in the forecourt of the castle. It was another sunny day, and everyone seemed in good spirits. A week had passed since all the fuss from Patricia and Angus Harris.

  Fiona King came in and collected a plate of food and joined him. “Everything all right?” asked the major.

  “It’s all going splendidly because Jamie’s taken himself off somewhere,” said Fiona. “Harry’s furious because he wants some changes to the script and Jamie didn’t say anything about leaving.”

  “Anything to do with that chap who says his friend wrote the script of Football Fever.”

  “Could be. I wish he would stay away forever. If I had my way, I’d have another scriptwriter brought in. His stuff’s pretty lifeless. I don’t like this commune business, although Harry’s all for it. There’s something so trite about it all. Have you seen Ballykissangel on television?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s Celtic whimsy, Irish Celtic whimsy at that, but it’s guaranteed to run forever. It’s soothing, it’s funny and it’s nice.”

  “I thought niceness wasn’t your forte,” said the major, his eyes twinkling. “I’ve heard some of your remarks about Sunday night viewers.”

  “I’ve changed,” said Fiona. “I want a success. Besides, there’s something about it up here. The quality of life.”

  “It’s a sunny day,” said the major cautiously, “and even Drim seems like a nice place. But there are a lot of passions and rivalries here. It can be a difficult place to live in, particularly during the long dark winter.”

  Fiona shuddered. “Don’t remind me of the winter. I thought we were all going to die. Pity Jamie recovered from hypothermia. He’d been drinking a lot, and that put him in a worse state than Sheila or myself.”