Death of a Liar

by M C Beaton

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll leave you,” said Anka quickly.

  Hamish sadly watched her go.

  “Now,” said Christine, “what are you doing involving a villager in the investigation?”

  “I need someone who knows the people here to help me,” said Hamish defiantly.

  “I should report you.”

  “You don’t look the type of lady to do anything so mean.”

  “Not this time, then. Let’s have a look around in the morning. I’m staying down at Kinlochbervie. See you about nine o’clock?”

  “Right,” said Hamish, “if I can find somewhere to stay. My budget doesn’t run to a hotel.”

  Hamish was often amazed at the amount of stuff Dick managed to pack into the Land Rover. A small tent had been erected near the fire.

  “You’ve been away a long time,” complained Dick. “I thought we’d better stay the night.”

  “Grand,” said Hamish happily. With any luck, tomorrow he would see Anka again.

  He took off his uniform of sweater and trousers and hung his trousers up in the Land Rover. He crawled into the tent and eased himself into a sleeping bag. Dick followed him, crept into his own sleeping bag, and promptly fell asleep. Sonsie and Lugs lay together at the entrance to the tent. Hamish lay listening to Dick’s gentle snores with mounting irritation. The man was making Hamish positively claustrophobic. Hamish considered that Dick was blocking him off from any chance of marriage. He had interfered before. Before he finally fell asleep, Hamish vowed that if Dick came between him and Anka, he would get the pest transferred back to Strathbane.

  But it was hard to stay angry with Dick when Hamish woke to the sound of a crackling fire and the smell of brewing tea. He struggled out of the tent in his underwear, stripped off, and plunged into the sea, gasping as the cold waves hit his body. When he came out, it was to find a small group of villagers, standing a little way away, giggling and pointing.

  Dick handed Hamish a towel. He dried himself, got dressed, and advanced on his audience, who melted away before he could reach them.

  “I’ll talk to that lot later,” he said, taking a seat by the fire.

  “I’ve made you a bacon bap,” said Dick. “Man, thae baps are the best I’ve ever tasted.”

  It was a cold, crisp day with sunlight sparkling on the waves. The dog and cat chased each other around the beach like children let out to play. Hamish then ate, and, after fetching a bag from the Land Rover, took out an electric razor and began to shave.

  “Christine, the forensic lassie, is coming back at nine o’clock,” said Hamish. “But I’ll go back to the cottage and have a look at the back in the daylight. Why don’t you knock on a few doors and see if anyone remembers anything?”

  Anka had finished her baking chores and was considering going to bed when there came a knock at the door. She opened it and found Dick Fraser on the doorstep.

  “Not more questions!” said Anka. “I have told Hamish all I can think of.”

  “Just a wee word,” pleaded Dick.

  “Oh, all right. Come in. Take a seat. Coffee?”

  “Grand. Milk and one sugar, please.”

  Dick studied her covertly while she made the coffee. Surely there was something suspicious about such a beauty immuring herself in this remote village.

  A small television was on the kitchen counter. Anka had been watching the news before Dick had arrived.

  “That’s Hamish’s girlfriend,” said Dick.

  She swung round. “Where?”

  “On the telly. Elspeth Grant.”

  “Have they been together long?”

  “Oh, years. They’re just working out the logistics. I mean, Hamish’s work is up here and she’s down there, in Glasgow.”

  Anka put a mug of coffee down in front of Dick and then sat opposite.

  “Anyway,” said Dick, “what I really want to know is can you give me a recipe for thae baps?”

  “Is that all you came about?”

  “Well, yes. I’ve never tasted baps like that before.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Meanwhile, Hamish was at the back of Liz’s cottage, up on the moorland, painstakingly searching the ground. Yet all the time he searched, he racked his brains for an excuse to see Anka again, and as soon as possible. The trouble with heather, he thought, was that it did not break even when a vehicle went over it. He turned and looked back at the cottage to see Christine taking plaster casts of the footprints in the garden. She waved to him and went on with her work.

  I might have fancied her if I hadn’t met Anka, thought Hamish. At the top of the braes, he found a discarded cigarette packet and, beside it, the stub of a cigarette. He took out a forensic bag and put both items into it.

  Whoever it was, he thought, would stay well clear of the village. He wouldn’t want folk to hear the sound of the engine. On the other hand, he could switch off the lights and the engine and cruise down the brae to the back of the garden. Hamish continued on, bent double, searching the ground. If the driver came in a four-by-four, he would circle around over the moorland in a wide arc and join the road well away from the village. He finally hit a boggy patch and saw tyre tracks and hurried back to Christine to tell her to make a cast of them.

  “Show me where,” said Christine. “I don’t hold out much hope. If it were one of those American CSI programmes, I would say, aha, this belongs to a long-wheel-base Discovery Land Rover, or something. But it’s not like that, particularly with the team I’ve got.”

  “Aren’t any of them coming to join you?” asked Hamish.

  “Not them. They had a rugby match last night against the Strathbane Diamonds and lost. I phoned up and most of them seemed to have gone off sick, which means monumental hangovers all round.”

  “And the pathologist is a useless drunk, I think,” said Hamish bitterly. He waited while Christine took the cast, and then they walked back up to the top of the brae.

  “You can get a good look at the village from here,” said Christine.

  “Aye,” said Hamish, his eyes sharpening as he saw Dick leaving Anka’s cottage. “Now, what has that interfering little sod been up to?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I wonder where Jimmy has got to. He’s supposed to be here.”

  “And that’s another drunk.”

  “He’s a good detective,” protested Hamish, who did not like to hear Jimmy criticised. “I’ll leave you now and go talk to a few people.”

  “Shouldn’t take you long,” said Christine. “It’s more of a hamlet than a village, although there seem to be a good few cars outside the shop.”

  “That’s an example of the great bap hunt,” said Hamish. “There’s a Polish girl does the baking and they come from all over. Now, there’s a thing. They all say that no strangers have been seen in the village. But what about that lot? I’d better get down there.”

  Jimmy was just arriving when Hamish reached the shop. He had two policemen with him.

  Hamish rapidly told him about the fame of the shop’s bakery and how it attracted people from all over. “Easy for someone to mingle with the crowd and suss out the place,” he said.

  But diligent questioning by Jimmy, Hamish, and the police officers only elicited the fact that there had been strangers to the village, but no strangers to the Highlands. They were told that people from Lochinver and villages north and south of Cromish had all been recognised, which was what Hamish had previously feared.

  “How is the investigation into the Leighs’ murders going?” Hamish asked Jimmy.

  “That’s at a dead end,” said Jimmy. “Daviot is fretting. He’s thinking of sending Blair up here while you go back down there. He says it’s your village and you’ve got a better chance of digging something up than Blair.”

  “Bad idea,” said Hamish quickly. He did not want to leave Cromish and maybe not see Anka again.

  “What! I would ha’ thought you’d be desperate to get back to your sheep
and hens and rural boredom.”

  “Tell you what,” said Hamish, “there’s no need for me and Dick to be up here. When you leave, take Dick with you.” He told Jimmy about finding the cigarette packet, the discarded cigarette, and the tyre tracks.

  “Well, now I’m here,” said Jimmy, “I may as well go round the village and see if I can dig up anything. Damn! Where did all those black clouds come from? To add to my misery, it’s going to rain. I’ll give it the whole day and then I’ll take Dick Fraser off with me.”

  Questions, questions, questions, thought Hamish later that day, and no answers. The wind had risen, sending squalls of lashing rain into his face. Dick had greeted the news that he was returning to Lochdubh with delight. He said he would take Sonsie and Lugs with him.

  Hamish waited until Dick was entertaining Jimmy and the policemen with sandwiches and beer from Sophie Mackay’s shop and hurried off to see if Anka was at home.

  His heart gave a lurch when she opened the door to him. He privately chided himself that he knew nothing really of her character.

  “Oh, Hamish,” she said. “Come in. Not more questions?”

  “Chust wanted to see how you were,” said Hamish, the sudden sibilance of his accent showing his nervousness. He reflected that he had rarely seen such beauty outside the pages of a glossy magazine. Of course, Priscilla Halburton-Smythe was beautiful, but there was a generous warmth and sexiness about Anka that was lacking in Priscilla, he thought disloyally.

  He followed her into the kitchen. “Do you watch a lot of television?” he asked, indicating the set.

  “I keep it on for company. Oh, there’s your fiancée.”

  “What?”

  “That news presenter. Your policeman told me you are getting married.”

  That’s it, thought Hamish bitterly. He’s got to go.

  “I am not engaged to be married to Elspeth or anyone else,” he said stiffly. “We were engaged at one time but it didn’t work out. I don’t know why Dick told you that.” Oh, yes, I do, he thought savagely. And I want to deal with that problem, now.

  “I’ve just remembered something,” he said. “I’ll call later.”

  He marched back to the camping site where Dick was sitting by the fire. “Where’s Jimmy?” demanded Hamish.

  “The shop’s closed and he wanted whisky so he’s gone to Kinlochbervie. He’ll be back to take me to Lochdubh.”

  “And when you’re there,” said Hamish coldly, “you can start packing and you know why. I’ve told you before not to interfere in my private life and I’m sick of you.”

  The rain had stopped, but a high wind was sending ragged clouds flying across the moon. Hamish walked to the beach and stared at the crashing waves, beginning to feel he had been too cruel, and then wondering why.

  Dick sat miserably by the fire. He would have to go back to Strathbane and its dirty drug-ridden streets, and leave the paradise that Lochdubh was to him. He heard the noise of a boat’s engine coming at speed along the coast. To distract himself from his woes, he raised a powerful pair of binoculars and focussed them on the approaching vessel. It was a powerboat. He registered with alarm that a masked man was at the wheel and another masked man was holding a gun.

  Dick hurtled down the beach and flung himself on Hamish and drove him down into the sand as a bullet whined over their heads.

  “Keep down,” shouted Dick. “Someone’s trying to kill you!”

  He lay panting on top of Hamish as the boat roared off into the night.

  “That was close,” he gasped.

  They staggered up from the beach in time to meet Jimmy. When he heard the news, he phoned the coastguard and Strathbane and put out an all-points alert.

  “You’re a lucky man,” he said to Hamish. “Dick saved your life.”

  “Yes, thanks, Dick,” said Hamish, “and let’s forget about what I said before.” This was followed by an uncharitable thought that if Dick kept saving his life, as he had done before, he’d never get rid of him.

  Elspeth Grant sat sulkily in the front of a Winnebago as it headed north from Glasgow on the next day. She had once been a reporter with the local newspaper in Lochdubh, and her connection to Hamish Macbeth was well known to her bosses. So she had been urged to go and do a report on the murders and the attempted murder of Macbeth.

  She did not like leaving her job as news presenter for fear that she might be replaced by someone permanently during her absence. Also, Elspeth told herself, she had got over Hamish and did not want any of her old feelings about him to return to plague her.

  Her team consisted of Bertie Andrews, camera, Zak Munro, sound, and Ellie Waters, researcher.

  Elspeth had not worked with any of them before. None of them had ever travelled to the very north of Scotland before.

  “It’s getting dark already,” complained Ellie as they stopped in Lochinver for a coffee.

  “There’s not much daylight in the winter months,” said Elspeth. As the first stars began to blaze in the sky over the mountains and ever-restless sea, Elspeth began to feel her spirits lift. There was nowhere more beautiful, she thought, than the northwest coast of Sutherland, where the old people still believed in fairies and that the seals were inhabited by the spirits of the dead.

  She wondered whether Hamish was back at his police station or still in Cromish, but she had been ordered to go to the village first and do a colour piece.

  As they drove into Cromish, she saw there were police and reporters going from house to house.

  “We’ll need to wait until daylight to get some shots of the village,” complained Bertie.

  “Follow me round and get some shots of the locals,” ordered Elspeth. “There might be someone photogenic.” She had been thinking along the lines of something like a gnarled old fisherman but certainly nothing like the beauty that confronted her when Anka opened her door.

  Elspeth’s first thought was, first Priscilla, now this. She could feel her hair frizzing up and wished she had put on some make-up. She never bothered getting made up until she was talking to the camera.

  “I would like to film an interview with you,” said Elspeth after the introductions were over. She knew the other press probably had shots of a beauty like this, and she would never be forgiven if she left such a photogenic subject out of her report.

  “Very well,” said Anka reluctantly. “But as I told the police, I really don’t know anything.”

  “Just take a few minutes,” said Elspeth.

  While the cameraman and the soundman got their equipment ready, she retreated to the van where she put on make-up with a practised hand, took off her warm anorak to reveal a pale-blue woollen trouser suit which hugged her figure, slipped on a pair of high heels, and went out to start the interview.

  Anka felt the interview and filming were going to go on forever. The enthusiasm of the cameraman, Bertie, seemed to know no bounds. First there was the walking shot of Elspeth approaching the door. Then Anka inviting her in. This was followed by the interview—first of how Anka had come to Cromish and then her reaction to the murders.

  “You certainly must wish you were back in Poland,” said Elspeth hopefully.

  “No, I like it here,” said Anka. “The murders have nothing to do with me. You see, at first I thought it was some maniac, but now that they have tried to kill Hamish, it means some sort of gang. Drugs, perhaps.”

  “You know Hamish?” asked Elspeth sharply.

  “Oh, yes. We had a nice chat. So gentle and sympathetic. Not like a policeman at all.”

  “Is he still around the village?” asked Elspeth.

  “Mrs. Mackay at the shop says he’s been called in to police headquarters. Poor man. He must be in shock.”

  “He’ll survive,” said Elspeth curtly. “He’s been shot at before. Don’t record any of that last conversation, Zak!”

  At the end of a long day, Hamish was back at his police station in Lochdubh, but told to go back to Cromish on the following morning. A search for t
he boat had gone on all around the coast without success. But Hamish’s suggestion that maybe the deaths of the Leighs and Liz were somehow tied up was beginning to look as if it might be true.

  As he and Dick drove north, a heavy frost glittered in the headlights. The sun was just rising above the mountains when they headed into Cromish, blazing fiery red on the frost covering the houses and heather. Most of the press had left, but there was one television van parked at the waterfront with the Strathclyde Television logo on the side.

  A little way away, Hamish saw the all-too-familiar figure of Elspeth doing a piece to camera. She was wearing a power suit with a very short skirt and a pair of stilettos.

  She looked across and saw him. A trick of the light made her odd silvery eyes shine red.

  “Hamish,” she said, approaching him. “Is there anything you can tell me? Why would someone want to kill you?”

  “Haven’t a clue,” said Hamish. His red hair blazed with purple lights in the rising sun.

  “Can I do an interview?”

  “Elspeth, you know better than that. Strict instructions from headquarters. No interviews.”

  Dick shuffled his regulation boots. He could not forget that Hamish had nearly married Elspeth. If only all these women would go away, if only the murders would be solved and he could go back to his easy life in the police station.

  Sonsie stared at Elspeth, her fur raised, but Lugs ran forward for a pat.

  “Have you got anything at all that might help me?” asked Hamish.

  “Amazing that no one heard anything at all,” said Elspeth. “I’ve got enough for a colour piece, including an interview with a very beautiful Polish lady.”

  “That would be Anka,” said Hamish, trying to sound indifferent.

  Elspeth looked at him with a certain sadness in her eyes. “Don’t get involved, Hamish. You’ll get hurt.”

  Elspeth came from a Gypsy family and often had psychic experiences. Hamish repressed a shudder.