Death of a Liar

by M C Beaton

  “Well, I’m off after I get into something more comfortable,” said Elspeth.

  Hamish bent and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled somehow of clean air and heather.

  He suddenly wished it could have worked out. But she turned away and disappeared into the van just as Hamish’s phone rang.

  “’Member me?” said a hoarse voice. “Scully Baird. I ken who tried to kill ye.”

  Chapter Four

  She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.

  —Sheridan

  “Who?” demanded Hamish.

  “Someone’s coming. Meet me in the Wee Man.”

  “I’m up in Cromish. I can be there in a couple of hours’ time.”

  “Right,” said Scully, and rang off.

  The Wee Man was an unsavoury pub in the backstreets of Strathbane. Jimmy arrived to hear Hamish’s latest news.

  “Could be a trap,” he said. “You stay here and I’ll get someone to pick Scully up and sweat him for a name.”

  “Won’t work,” said Hamish. “He’ll only talk to me. Scully was in with some really bad drug gangs before he cleaned up his act. I’ll go.”

  “Oh, all right.” Jimmy looked round and then leered. “Also, how you can leave the ladies behind is beyond me.”

  Elspeth had just emerged from the van in her travelling clothes and Anka stood at the edge of the scene.

  Was ever a woman put on this earth to scramble up a man’s brains like Anka? thought Hamish. A kitchen goddess who can bake baps and who has the face of an angel.

  He turned away to brief Dick but had to wait while Dick unloaded the vast amount of things he thought he might need from the back of the Land Rover.

  The weather had changed again as he crested the hill leading down into Strathbane. A greasy drizzle was smearing the windscreen, and low clouds lay over the grimy town.

  Hamish had changed into civilian clothes and a disguise. He had posted on a fake moustache and pulled a woollen hat over his flaming hair. He parked the Land Rover outside police headquarters and then set off on foot.

  The Wee Man was a squalid pub. He pushed open the door and went into the dark interior, which was punctuated with blue lights from the electronic cigarettes of the customers. Hamish had given up smoking but often craved a cigarette. He wondered if these fake cigarettes were any good. He ordered a tonic water and then looked around but could not see Scully.

  Hamish chose a table in the corner where he could see the entrance. Time dragged on. He was about to give up when the door opened and Scully came in. Although Scully was only twenty years old, his previous drug taking had aged him and given him a wasted look. He was very thin with large hands and feet.

  “Get me a drink,” said Scully, sitting down and pulling a black woollen cap off his head. “Double whisky.”

  Hamish got it for him, sat down, and said, “Out with it.”

  Scully took a gulp of his drink. Hamish had found him half-dead of drugs a year ago on one of his rare visits to Strathbane. He had rushed him to hospital, and after he was detoxed had taken him back to Lochdubh and locked him in the cell until he was sure the young man was completely clear. He had then put Scully into rehab.

  Scully took a gulp of his drink. “You know the Cameron gang?”

  “Aye,” said Hamish.

  “Well, it was you that led to Cameron being arrested and banged up. But he got out on parole and disappeared. In the gang there’s a newcomer, Wayne Forest. Cameron fancies himself a big-time gang boss like in the movies and so he tells this Wayne he has to make his bones.”

  “You mean Wayne has to kill someone?”

  “Aye. For sure. And he’s told that someone is you. Cameron sees you’re in Cromish from the telly. He pinches a speedboat and gets Wayne a high-powered rifle.”

  “Where did you hear this?” demanded Hamish sharply. “You’re not back on the stuff, are you?”

  “Not me. But that lot never could keep their mouths shut.”

  “But no speedboat was reported missing.”

  “That’s ’cos it was Fergus Fitz’s speedboat.”

  “His rival drug dealer.”

  “Right.”

  “Where’s Cameron holed up?”

  “You know Bevan Mansions?”

  “The tower block down at the docks?”

  “That’s the one. Top floor. Number one hundred and fifty-eight.”

  “Are you going to need witness protection, Scully?”

  “You know how it is. You go into the witness protection and the police aye house you in the equivalent to what you’re living in. You live in a slum, so they put you in another slum. I’d best clear off.”

  “Thanks, Scully. I’ll see if I can get you some sort of award.”

  “Don’t,” said Scully. “Cameron’s got feelers everywhere and I bet that includes the police.”

  “Okay,” said Hamish. “But keep off the booze or I’ll have to put you back into rehab.”

  “Booze isnae drugs.”

  “Same difference,” said Hamish.

  By rights, Hamish should have reported to Blair. But instead he called Jimmy.

  The first thing Jimmy said was, “Have you told Blair?”

  “He’ll mess it up. He’ll shoot his mouth off all over headquarters and we might have a policeman who’s in Cameron’s pay.”

  “Can’t get round it, Hamish. Try to report direct to Daviot. Cameron will be armed and we’ll need permission for armed police. I’ll get down there myself and we’ll go in about two in the morning. I’ll pick you up at headquarters.”

  As Hamish entered headquarters, he asked a policeman if Blair was around and heard to his relief that the detective inspector was off sick. Probably a hangover, thought Hamish as he made his way up to Daviot’s office.

  “He is not to be disturbed,” snapped Daviot’s secretary, Helen, who loathed Hamish.

  “This is a national emergency,” said Hamish.

  He opened the door to Daviot’s office and walked in. The chief superintendent was slumbering in the chair behind his desk.

  Hamish went out again and shut the door. Then he banged on it loudly and walked in again.

  Daviot was now studying a sheaf of papers. He looked up. “What is the reason for this intrusion, Macbeth? I did ask not to be disturbed.”

  Hamish put his cap on the desk and sat down, and before Daviot, who expected inferiors to stand in his presence, could complain, he rapidly outlined what he had found out about the attempt on his life.

  Daviot began to look excited. “This is wonderful news, Hamish. Has Mr. Blair started organising things?”

  “Well, the poor man is off sick,” said Hamish. “Anderson is heading back down to arrange everything. We’re going in at two in the morning.”

  “Good, good. Really, this demands a celebration.” He pressed a buzzer on his desk and, when Helen came in, asked her to fetch tea and cakes.

  The Highlands is the place to be, thought Hamish amused. Any other police station, they’d be pouring out whisky, but up here, it’s tea and cakes.

  “So that means,” said Daviot, “if your informant is correct, the attempt on your life has nothing to do with our murder cases?”

  “Seems that way, sir.”

  “Ah, Helen, what have we here? Eccles cakes! How splendid. I am very partial to Eccles cakes, and Dundee cake, too! My Helen can’t be beaten.”

  “Maybe,” said Hamish as Helen deliberately slopped tea into his saucer. “But there’s a lassie up in Cromish that bakes baps like baps should be and usually never are.”

  “Do you hear that, Helen? You must get me some, Hamish.”

  Helen went out and slammed the door.

  “And how is Fraser getting on up there?” asked Daviot.

  How Hamish longed to put the boot in and ask that Dick be transferred to Strathbane. Daviot was so happy that he would allow it. But Dick had saved his life.

  “Just grand,” said Hamish. “Works very hard.”
Cleaning, polishing, and dusting, he thought bitterly.

  “I would suggest, sir,” said Hamish as Daviot was about to pick up the phone, “that you arrange the armed squad but do not tell them where they are going or why until the very last minute.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because one of them might talk to a wife or girlfriend who might talk to her friends and before you know it, news of the raid will be all over Strathbane.”

  “Just what I was thinking,” said Daviot crossly. “You must not try to tell me how to do my job, Macbeth.”

  Hamish returned to Lochdubh to get an hour’s sleep and savour having the place to himself.

  He arrived back at police headquarters an hour earlier than he had been instructed to report there. Jimmy had been told to head the raid. Hamish knew that Jimmy, who sometimes had a fit of what Hamish privately damned as the Blairs, might try to go without him.

  Sure enough, they were just setting out. He jumped back into his Land Rover and followed them. Policemen, detectives, and SWAT team members gathered in a vacant lot near the tower block.

  “Quietly, lads,” said Jimmy. They all spread out, policemen covering back and front entrances of the tower block while the SWAT team went in.

  Hamish approached Jimmy. “Were you trying to keep me out of this?”

  “Yes, I was,” said Jimmy. “It was for your own good. I didn’t want one of them trying to kill you.”

  “Havers,” said Hamish bitterly.

  The very air around the dismal tower blocks was foul, smelling of sour earth, urine, and beer.

  Suddenly they could faintly hear shouts and yells coming from the top of the tower block where Hamish had been told Cameron lived.

  He silently prayed that Scully was right.

  He heaved a sigh of relief when a handcuffed procession escorted by the SWAT team finally emerged. He recognised Percy Cameron and wondered illogically whether being named Percy had driven him to a life of crime. Three other men were with him, along with a spotty youth.

  Jimmy had a quick consultation with the leader of the SWAT team and then returned to Hamish. Pleased with the success of the raid, Jimmy was now feeling guilty about trying to keep Hamish out of it. “Drive me back, Hamish,” he said, “and I’ll fill you in.”

  As they headed back to police headquarters, Jimmy said, “The forensic lot are on their way. Masses of every type of class A drug in that flat and a wee laboratory for making crystal meth. They’ll all go away for a long time. Do you want to sit in on the interviews?”

  “I’d like to interview Wayne Forest first to make sure he got his orders from Cameron,” said Hamish.

  “Right,” said Jimmy. “I’ll arrange it.”

  But Jimmy experienced a sharp pang of jealousy when they were met by Daviot, saying, “Well done, Hamish. We need more men like you in Strathbane.”

  Wayne started by demanding a lawyer and was told sharply that under Scots law, he would only get a lawyer when the police decided to let him have one.

  He was an unsavoury youth with lank greasy hair and prematurely bent shoulders, probably from slouching from an early age.

  Wayne stared at them defiantly as the questioning began in earnest once the preliminaries were over.

  “Did Cameron order you to shoot me?” asked Hamish.

  Wayne smirked. “No comment.”

  Hamish was normally a placid, easy-going man. But he saw red. This useless piece of garbage had caused Dick to save his life, trapping Hamish forever after, amen, in the police station with him.

  “You useless piece of shit,” roared Hamish. He marched round the desk, picked up Wayne, and slammed him up against the wall.

  “It was Cameron. He tellt me tae do it,” wailed Wayne, and burst into tears.

  Suddenly appalled at his own outburst, Hamish lifted Wayne gently back into his chair and said quietly, “Now be a good wee laddie and write it all down.”

  Later, when Wayne’s confession was secured, and Jimmy and Hamish had retreated to the police canteen, Jimmy said, “It got a good result. But what came over you, man? I’ve never seen you lose your cool like that before.”

  Hamish shrugged. “I wanted an end o’ it. There are still two murders to solve.”

  “When we’ve finished our coffee, we’d best get back downstairs, see what they’ve got on the Leighs. Then you’d better get back to Cromish,” said Jimmy.

  But there was very little to learn as there had not been any documents, passports, or credit cards found in the old school. The sale had been handled by an estate agent in Dingwall, employed by Strathbane’s schools department. The full amount had been paid by a cheque from a bank in Luxembourg and signed by an H. J. Story. Luxembourg banks were notoriously secretive but had finally told Interpol that the mysterious Mr. Story had cleared out the account and closed it down once the cheque for the sale of the schoolhouse was through. Mr. Story had initially opened the account six months before the sale by depositing two million euros. And for a deposit of two million euros, the bank had not studied his paperwork very closely. They produced a copy of his passport and an address in Luxembourg. Police went to the address to find that Mr. Story had only rented the apartment; there was no sign of him. The apartment was now rented to a couple with three small children and there seemed not to be any hope of getting DNA or fingerprints.

  “Daviot’s not satisfied,” said Jimmy. “He’s sending me and Blair over to Luxembourg in a couple of days’ time to see if we can dig up anything.”

  “Once Blair get his hands on the duty-frees,” said Hamish, “you’ll probably spend the time coping with him. What about cameras at the bank?”

  “They say they destroy the tapes after three months.”

  “There must be a huge amount of money involved,” said Hamish. “Money laundering from drugs or arms sales, maybe. Or some big heist. There have been a lot of jewel robberies in France, in Paris and in Cannes. Millions’ worth stolen. Anything there? I don’t think there can be any tie-up wi’ Cameron. He’s too small-time to be in the international league if it turns out to be drugs.”

  “I think Luxembourg is going to be crowded,” said Jimmy. “Interpol is working on it and Scotland Yard are sending experts. Oh, God! What will they make of Blair? Oh, well, off you go. By the way, no one’s had time with all this, but you might like to find more about that Anka female. I mean, what’s someone who looks as if she came off the catwalk doing up in the back o’ beyond?”

  “Anyone contacted the Polish police?”

  “Haven’t had time. I’ll get on it when I get back.”

  “There are Polish people all over the north,” said Hamish. “There are the lot who settled after World War Two. Then, thanks to the European Union, the latest influx is so large that the Inverness Courier now has an insert in Polish and the Catholic Church had to fly a priest in from Poland. There’s the Inverness Polish Association in Albyn House in Union Street. I might drop by tomorrow.”

  Hamish managed to get two hours’ sleep at the station before heading north. It was ten in the morning and a flat disk of a sun had risen low in the sky as if it saw no reason to climb any further, since it would start going down in four hours’ time. The previous night’s frost was still glittering white on the leaves of the ferns bordering the road. Smoke from chimneys rose straight up into the air.

  Hamish’s conscience began to trouble him. There had been many opportunities to get married before Dick had moved into the police station. If he really loved Elspeth Grant, then he would move to Glasgow. But, corrected a nasty little voice in his brain, if she loved you, then she would move to the Highlands. Or was it nothing at all to do with Dick, but the fact that there was always part of him that hankered after Priscilla, despite knowing that her sexual coldness would sabotage any hope of a happy marriage?

  He thought of Anka and put his foot down on the accelerator. What a beauty! And she could bake!

  It was only as Cromish hove into view that he realised he should
have been worrying about the murder of Liz.

  There was no tent on the beach. He asked Mrs. Mackay if she had seen Dick and was told he had taken a room at the doctor’s house. He walked up to Dr. Williams’s villa and knocked at the door.

  A plump woman with a scarf tied around her head opened the door. “You’ll be looking for your colleague,” she said. “He’s ben the hoose, in the kitchen. Doctor’s at his surgery if ye’ll be wanting him. It’s that extension at the side.”

  “I am Police Sergeant Hamish Macbeth, and you are…?”

  “Mrs. Malwhinney. I clean for the doctor.”

  “Did you know Liz Bentley?”

  “Of course. It’s a wee village.”

  “What did you make of her?”

  “Poor wee soul.”

  “You didn’t dislike her because o’ her lies?”

  “I don’t think the woman could help it. I got a sister like that ower in Lairg. If she says the sun is shining, I look out o’ the window to make sure. Come in. You’ll freeze out there.”

  Hamish removed his cap and followed her into a kitchen that looked as if it had not been changed much since the 1950s. It was stone-flagged with a very high ceiling from which hung a wooden pulley with men’s underwear hung up to dry. Shelves with various unmatched plates covered one wall. There was a Belfast sink by the window beside an old green enamelled gas cooker.

  “I’ll get back to my cleaning,” said Mrs. Malwhinney.

  Dick, with his sleeves rolled up and wearing a flowered pinafore, was mixing something in a bowl. He looked up when Hamish entered. “I think she’s been lying to me,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Thon Anka. I cannae get my baps to turn out like hers.”

  “Dick, we’ve got a murder to solve, or had you forgotten?”

  “I thocht I’d wait until you came,” said Dick sulkily.

  “Well, get your pinny off. We’ve got work to do. But first, get me a coffee and I’ll tell you what happened last night.”