Death of a Liar

by M C Beaton

  “Yes,” said Anka. “Listen, Dick. Let’s try Strathbane. Don’t you remember Hamish said something once about the funeral people being frightened?”

  “Right,” said Dick. “Let’s try there.”

  Hamish sat down on a coffin to think. There was an idea at the back of his mind. He had seen something. What was it?

  A dark shape materialised from the shadows of the room and a voice said, “Get your hands up!”

  Hamish rose slowly to his feet. A flash of lightning lit up the coffin store and he recognised Paul Dubois holding a gun, and beside him a small tattooed man.

  “Where’s the stuff?” demanded Dubois.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Hamish.

  “Laurent! Put a coffin on that gurney over there,” ordered Dubois.

  He waited until the coffin was loaded onto the gurney. Then he said, “Get into the coffin. I am going to help you remember.”

  “It won’t do you any good,” said Hamish.

  “We’ll see. Get in.”

  Anything to play for time, thought Hamish.

  He lowered himself into the coffin. Dubois stood over him.

  “Now, mon ami, this is what is going to happen. We will take you to the cliffs. I will ask you again. If you persist in lying, you and this coffin will be thrown over the cliffs and into the sea. Where is my stuff?”

  “I don’t know. I tell you I really don’t know,” shouted Hamish.

  “Screw the coffin down, Laurent,” said Dubois. “Search him first. Take his belt. Xavier has the hearse outside. Load this bastard in.”

  Hamish made a sudden upwards lunge but Laurent brought a heavy pistol crashing down on the side of his head and Hamish slumped back into the coffin.

  Scully parked his scooter some way away from the crematorium. He planned to creep up on the place; if there was a burglar, he would put an anonymous call to the police. He had tried to call Hamish but had not received any reply.

  He assumed someone was maybe trying to thieve the computers or looking for cash. Maybe a drug addict. That would be odd, he thought: an ex-druggie catching a functioning one.

  The storm had raced away to the east. There was a final distant rumble of thunder. A small moon appeared to race high above through the ragged clouds.

  Scully heard a noise and crouched down behind a laurel bush and peered through its branches. Two men were sliding a coffin off a gurney into a hearse while a tall man stood watching.

  “I hope you haven’t killed Macbeth,” he heard the tall man say. “I need him to talk.”

  Scully shivered with fear. If he phoned the police from his mobile, they would trace the call to him.

  Then he heard the tall man say, “We’ll take him to the cliffs outside Lochdubh.”

  “He may not know anything,” said one of the men.

  “Then just throw him into the sea,” said the tall man.

  Scully crept away. He decided to get to the cliffs by a circuitous route and, on the way, he would call the police from a phone box.

  Hamish’s head ached. He could feel the hearse moving at a slow pace. He wondered how soon the air in the coffin would run out. Hadn’t they thought he might die of lack of oxygen? They had taken his duty belt with his stun gun, phone, flashlight, baton, and handcuffs. But he had a Swiss army knife in his pocket. He slowly eased it out and felt desperately for the small saw contained amongst the various knives.

  Hoping the noise of the engine would cover the sound of sawing, he attacked the side of the coffin. He could not turn on his side, but fear and desperation seemed to be lending almost robotic strength to his hand. He finally achieved a small hole. He then selected the strongest knife. He would try his best to kill Dubois.

  Dick was driving the bakery van. He pulled to a stop in front of one of the fallen trees on the Strathbane road. He groaned. “I’d better get out and try to move it. I’ll break this van’s chassis if I try to go off-road.”

  He and Anka were struggling with the tree when they heard a vehicle approaching from the Strathbane side. Anka shielded her eyes against the approaching vehicle’s headlights.

  “It’s a hearse, Dick. I don’t like this.”

  The hearse stopped on the other side of the tree and two men got out. They joined Dick and Anka and together they hauled the tree to the side of the road.

  Dick recognised the tattooed man from identikit pictures that had been posted in all the papers.

  “What’s a hearse doing out this time of night?” he asked.

  A tall man loomed up in the headlights. “It is an order from relatives of the deceased at the Tommel Castle Hotel.”

  Hamish heard the voices. If he cried out, then whoever it was would probably be shot.

  Dick and Anka got into the bakery van. “I’ll let them get ahead,” he said. “This road only leads to Lochdubh. I recognised one of them. He’s wanted for murder. I’ll switch off the lights. Don’t worry, I know this road well. Here’s Jimmy Anderson’s home number. Tell him we think the murderers have got Hamish.”

  Scully had already made his phone call. He called Strathbane headquarters instead of dialling 999. The policeman who received it thought it important enough to phone Blair at home. Blair listened. He thought that if it were true, then he would be rid of Macbeth for once and for all. “Forget it, laddie,” he said. “Who called?”

  “Anonymous caller.”

  “There you are. Load of rubbish.”

  “Who was that?” asked Blair’s wife, Mary, when he had rung off.

  “Just some nutcase,” said Blair, and with a happy smile on his face he went back to sleep.

  In the streetlights of Lochdubh, from his vantage point on the bridge leading into the village, Dick could make out the hearse going through the village and out the other side.

  “They’re going to the cliffs,” said Dick. “Phone Jimmy again. I’ll park at the end and we’ll go up on foot.”

  Hamish heard the lid of the coffin being unscrewed. When the lid was lifted, he sat up groggily. His head hurt from where he had been struck. The noise of the great Atlantic waves pounding the cliffs was loud in his ears. The coffin was loaded out onto the gurney.

  “For the last time,” said Dubois, “where is my stuff?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hamish. “I really don’t know. If I knew where your stuff was I’d shove it up your arse.”

  Laurent said something in thickly accented French.

  Dubois replied in English, “No, I don’t think torture would do us any good. I am convinced he really doesn’t know. Xavier, screw the lid down again and throw the coffin over.”

  Scully, lying hidden in the heather, suddenly decided he couldn’t bear it. He owed his life to Hamish Macbeth.

  He stood up and shouted “Stop! I am making a citizen’s arrest.”

  A torch was shone in his face.

  “Get him,” said Dubois. “Throw him over.”

  “Run, Scully!” shouted Hamish.

  But Scully was seized. “Hold him there,” said Dubois. “He can follow Macbeth.” He strolled to the edge of the cliff and looked down into the heaving water.

  Now, even in the rehab where they talked about a Higher Power, Scully was an unbeliever. But there are no agnostics on the battlefield and Scully shouted, “Damn your black soul to hell! God will punish you!”

  And then everything seemed to happen at once.

  A giant wave rose above the cliff. Scully was to say later that it was as if great watery fingers had seized Dubois and dragged him screaming over the edge. Laurent fled across the moors. Xavier was howling because Hamish had stabbed him in the neck. A police helicopter sailed overhead, lighting up the scene.

  Clutching his neck, Xavier started to run down the brae, but Anka and Dick saw him. Dick brought him down with a rugby tackle and Anka sat on him.

  Hamish tried to struggle out of the coffin. Laurent was fleeing away from the direction of the village over the moors. But Hamish’s struggles set the gurne
y in motion. As it hurtled down the hill, he clutched desperately at the sides as a pale dawn broke over the scene.

  Jimmy, driving into Lochdubh at the head of a line of police cars, braked hard as Hamish Macbeth, sitting up in a coffin, sped past him, right over the harbour wall and into the loch.

  Archie Maclean, the fisherman, who had been unable to go out because of the gale, was sitting on a bollard as Hamish shot past into the loch. He detached a life belt from the side of the harbour wall and sent it sailing in the direction where Hamish had gone under.

  Police got out of their cars. Jimmy shouted to them to get up to the cliff. He waited anxiously. He had almost given up hope when Hamish’s head rose above the choppy waters of the loch.

  Hamish clutched the life belt and slowly made his way to the harbour steps, where he was helped up by Jimmy and Archie.

  “Get him into the station,” ordered Jimmy, “and get Dr. Brodie to have a look at him. Can you speak, Hamish? What’s happened?”

  Hamish summoned up strength to lie. He could not say he had broken into the crematorium, so he said he had received an anonymous call that there were lights in the crematorium and had gone to investigate.

  “The head man, Paul Dubois, is dead,” he said. “A wave washed him out to sea. The tattooed man has fled. Dick and Anka have got one of the gang, but the other one has escaped.”

  “I’ll get the rest from you later,” said Jimmy.

  Judging that the police car would not get up to the top of the cliffs, Jimmy set off on foot.

  Hamish was surrounded by villagers who had been roused from their beds by the commotion. Mr. Patel wrapped Hamish in a fleecy blanket, and he was led to the police station.

  Dr. Brodie appeared and examined Hamish’s head and then phoned for an ambulance. “It’s off to hospital with you to get that head scanned.”

  Hamish protested weakly that he was fine but Brodie said it was a hard blow and he might have bleeding from the brain.

  Up on the cliffs, Xavier was being taken away to hospital. The cut on his neck had missed the main artery, but Jimmy wanted him fit and well for the interrogation to come.

  Dick told Jimmy how Scully had tried to save Hamish’s life. “It was right weird,” said Dick. “One moment Scully was calling down the wrath of God on that Frenchman, and the next this enormous wave just rose up and snatched him off into the sea.”

  Jimmy turned to Scully. “Did you phone the police?”

  “I phoned the station in Strathbane and spoke to some policeman,” said Scully.

  “I didn’t hear anything about it until I heard that Anka here had phoned.”

  “Well, I did,” said Scully.

  “I want you to come back to headquarters and make your statement,” said Jimmy.

  In hospital later that day, Hamish was relieved to find he would not need an operation. He was suffering from concussion. He had been miserably sick and then he fell into a nightmare-ridden sleep where he was back in the crematorium, his pencil torch flickering around Kenneth Wright’s office. When he woke, he felt better and found Dick by his bedside.

  Dick told him about remembering that Hamish had said the Wright brothers were afraid of something, and about how Elspeth had phoned with news from Priscilla that a man called Dubois had left her alone in a restaurant after she had said that Hamish knew where the goods were stashed.

  “And do you know?” came Jimmy’s voice from behind Dick.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why I said that,” said Hamish.

  “Right, I am here to take your statement. Wait outside, Dick.”

  Jimmy switched on a tape recorder and said, “Begin at the beginning.”

  As Hamish talked, he began to worry about Kenneth and Robert Wright. If they had been involved in any way, then someone had threatened them. Why?

  He stopped talking and gazed vacantly at Jimmy. He was back in his dream, back in Kenneth’s office.

  He sat up suddenly. “Switch that off, Jimmy, and get me out o’ here. I think I do know where the stuff is.”

  “Tell me!”

  “No, I want to see for myself.”

  Blair woke late that morning. It was his day off. He was turning over to go back to sleep when his wife, Mary, came into the room.

  “It’s all over the telly,” she said. “You should see it. Film o’ Hamish Macbeth in a coffin landing in the loch.”

  That enterprising shopkeeper, Mr. Patel, had filmed the whole thing on his mobile phone and sold the film to the networks.

  Blair shot out of bed and padded through to the living room in time to see Scully on the television. “It was the hand of God,” Scully was saying as he stood on the steps of police headquarters. Blair listened appalled as Scully went on to tell how he had been told there were lights at the crematorium where he worked and how he had heard they planned to throw Hamish Macbeth off the cliffs. This was followed by grainy footage of Hamish in his coffin, hurtling down the hill and into the loch.

  Blair began to sweat. Who was that policeman who had called him? He remembered it was that new recruit, Todd Judson. He’d better try to find him and promise him promotion, anything, to keep his mouth shut. If he was on the night shift, he’d be at home now. He phoned the duty officer and got Todd’s home address.

  But Todd had seen the television report while he was having his breakfast, and, determined to be part of it all, even in a small way, he made his way to police headquarters. Also, Blair had told him to forget it and he didn’t want to find himself accused of not passing on vital information.

  But most of the force were out in the search for Laurent. Todd wanted to share a little bit of the excitement, so when he saw Daviot striding in, he waylaid him and said, “Should I put in a report about my call to Mr. Blair?”

  “What call?”

  “I got an anonymous call last night that some villains at the crematorium had loaded Hamish Macbeth into a coffin and were going to throw him into the sea.”

  “Good lad. But I am surprised Mr. Blair did not go to the cliffs himself.”

  “He told me to forget it,” said Todd. “He said it was probably some nutter. Should I put in a report, sir?”

  At that moment Blair came rushing in. He saw Todd with the superintendent and turned to flee. But Daviot shouted, “Blair! My office. Now!”

  At the crematorium, Kenneth and Robert Wright were standing outside, complaining that a forensic team had refused them admittance.

  “Are you sure about this?” Jimmy asked Hamish.

  “I’d better be,” said Hamish.

  Jimmy went in, followed by Hamish. As he made his way to Kenneth’s office, Christine appeared and said, “You can’t go in there. We haven’t processed it yet.”

  Hamish brushed past her. “This is important.”

  He stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the line of urns on the shelf behind Kenneth’s desk.

  He walked forward and took one down. The top of the urn had a waxed seal. Hamish took out a penknife and sliced the seal.

  “I hope to God you’re right!” said Jimmy.

  Hamish carried the urn forward. “Look at this!”

  “White powder. I’ll be damned.” Jimmy stuck a finger in the powder and tasted it. “If I’m not mistaken, this is pure cocaine. I’ll get the brothers in here.”

  He returned with Kenneth and Robert. They looked at the opened urn.

  “He made us do it,” cried Kenneth. “He said he’d kill us if we said anything. He said he’d kill my granddaughter as well.”

  “Who?” demanded Hamish. “Was it Gaunt?”

  Kenneth and Robert nodded their old heads in unison.

  “But when you learned of his murder,” said Jimmy, “why didn’t you come forward?”

  “He said he was the head of an international gang,” said Robert. Tears began to run down the wrinkles on his face. “I thought the others would come for us. Is it all over now?”

  “Are all these urns full of the drugs?” asked Hami
sh.

  “Yes,” said Kenneth. “Will we go to jail?”

  “No,” said Hamish. “It’s all over now.”

  Jimmy phoned Daviot with the news. “Brilliant work,” said Daviot. “I will inform the press.”

  He turned to the cringing figure of Blair. “I will decide what to do with you later. Anderson and Macbeth have just found an enormous haul of cocaine.”

  He swept from the room. Blair hurried after him.

  Daviot knew the press were massed outside headquarters. He smoothed back his hair and went outside to make an announcement, unaware that Blair had followed him.

  Flashes went off and cameras rolled as he told the media about the find of the cocaine.

  “I am very proud of our officers,” said Daviot at the end of his speech. “But one of the men is still at large. We only know him by the name of Laurent. You have the identikit picture and I would be grateful if you could feature it again.”

  A reporter called out, “Have you anything to add, Chief Inspector Blair?”

  Daviot swung round. Blair gave him an oily smile.

  “It was all down to the organising genius of Superintendent Daviot,” he said. “He is the hero of the day.”

  And that was how Blair kept his job. Daviot had been about to give Hamish Macbeth the credit. But, he thought quickly, Macbeth was a maverick. It was in the interests of the police force that he should take all the credit.

  Chapter Twelve

  The bright face of danger.

  —Robert Louis Stevenson

  If I were starring in a television detective drama, thought Hamish Macbeth sourly, the credits would be rolling and that would be that. But here I am, writing out reams and reams of reports. Begin at the beginning, Macbeth. What happened when you went to the crematorium? How did you guess where the cocaine was hidden? Please submit all reports in triplicate. And while he typed and typed at the police station computer, he felt sourly that he was being kept out of the loop. There was bad news. Xavier had got ahold of drugs in hospital and had committed suicide, so Hamish had to send report after report as to why he had stabbed the man.