Gently North-West

by Alan Hunter

  ‘It isn’t his style,’ Gently said, frowning. ‘Neither the letter itself nor the extravagant manner. What it suggests is fanaticism – hate – unbalance – a strain of puerility. That isn’t McGuigan. But it sounds very like a person who would plot to stab a man in the back. Have you no ideas?’

  ‘De’il a one,’ Blayne said. ‘I cannot raise a prospect, man. I’ve a pretty guid picture now o’ Donnie’s acquaintance, but there’s never a one you can tie in with this.’

  ‘Mrs Dunglass mentioned a woman he was seeing in Balmagussie.’

  Blayne grinned. ‘Ay – Poppy Frazer. I was havin’ a crack with her this afternoon. She’s, ah – beggin’ Miss Merryn’s pardon – one o’ the quality circuit from Glasgow. Dunglass fetched her up here some weeks since – he’s no’ much use to Poppy dead.’

  ‘Had he any other connections with women?’

  ‘Nave I’ve heard of up to date. But Donnie was a canny laddie, that I’m learnin’. He’s not easy to back-track on.’

  ‘So,’ Gently said. ‘No other prospects – it lies between McGuigan and you-know-who. I don’t like McGuigan, you don’t like the others – and McGuigan agrees with you up to the hilt.’

  ‘It’s a deeficult situation,’ Blayne said, working his shoulders. ‘I ken you’re for McGuigan, in spite o’ his sodjers.’

  ‘I’m for him too,’ Brenda said. ‘Though you can hang his sodjers from the next tree.’

  ‘Still – I canna quite overlook that mannie – and fine the Superintendent kens my position – I’ll be for a session or two wi’ Mr McGuigan – and for clearin’ up the lady’s lees.’

  ‘That’s understood,’ Gently said.

  ‘Ay – and as for the other, I’ve no done wi’ that. An’ you’ll give me credit I’ll have words wi’ McGuigan touchin’ the impropriety of private militia. But – when all’s said and done – there’s not much to go on save the lady’s haverings and maybe the weapon. And on the other hand there’s motive and opportunity – which are powerful factors in court decisions. Och, it’s just the way I was tellin’ you this mornin’. There’ll be small credit in it for Alistair Blayne.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ Gently said. ‘Did you trace that call Dunglass received?’

  ‘The call – ay,’ Blayne said slowly. ‘In a manner o’ speakin’ we did that. One o’ the Forestry boxes had been tampered with – there’s two, you ken, along the braes – the lock was forced with a knife or the like. McMorris, the ranger, drew our attention to it.’

  ‘Where is that box?’

  ‘At the Skilling end – no’ far from where McGuigan would have left his car.’

  ‘Is there a record of the call?’

  ‘Just a local call. We have the misfortune to be automatic up to Lochcrayhead.’

  ‘When was it timed?’

  ‘At 8.22. I’m thinkin’ there’s small doubt it was the call to Dunglass. And to anticipate the natural curiosity of a man like yourself – ay, we have a braw set o’ dabs off the instrument.’

  ‘Do you know them?’ Gently asked.

  Blayne wagged his head. ‘You’d not expect them to be on record. But we have them – and soon we’ll have Mr McGuigan’s – and comparin’ the two will be vastly informative.’

  ‘Oh, what nonsense!’ Brenda exclaimed. ‘You can’t suspect Jamie of making that call.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly say I did, Miss Merryn,’ Blayne said. ‘But there’ll be proof goin’ there of one way or the other. If the dabs do not match we ken fine there was another body about the braes – an’ if they do, well, they do, and Mr McGuigan must tell us why.’

  ‘But meanwhile,’ Gently said, ‘there’s another comparison you can make.’

  ‘Which is that?’

  ‘Between the dabs on the phone – and any dabs you can find on this letter.’

  ‘Ay,’ Blayne said, pausing and hollowing his cheeks. ‘That’s true – very true. A match there would be full of interest.’

  ‘In my book it would mean almost certainly that the owner of the dabs was the murderer.’

  ‘I ken that – I ken that. The mannie was very rash wi’ his letter.’

  He stared for some moments at the letter, which still lay weighted with Gently’s knife; then, using the knife, he folded the sheet and juggled it back into its envelope.

  ‘I don’t need to ask – you didn’t touch it?’

  ‘Not the sheet,’ Gently said. ‘The envelope was handled.’

  ‘Then I’ll just away back with it to Balma’ and give it the benefit o’ Purdy’s science. You’ll be wanting to know the result, I’m thinkin’.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘Ring me at the Bonnie Strathtudlem.’

  ‘The Bonnie Strathtudlem.’ Blayne’s face twisted. ‘I nearly forgot – I must talk to the lady.’ He sighed, tucking the envelope into a shabby wallet. ‘This is not an auspicious occasion,’ he said. ‘You cannot well make a right impression by pokin’ into a lady’s private business. An’ Mattie Robertson – I don’t ken – she’s as handsome a female as the next. I’d sooner be callin’ her to a private interview on some other subject than bloody murder.’

  They accompanied Blayne back to the Bonnie Strathtudlem and watched him accost the handsome Mrs Robertson, then Gently proposed a walk up the back road to look for the spot where McGuigan had parked. The bar was crowding with Saturday trade, so Bridget graciously gave her consent, and the four of them set out across the bridge and turned right towards Glen Skilling.

  They passed the Lodge, where a glimpse of a blue Sunbeam Alpine indicated the return of Mary Dunglass from Glen Knockie, and soon were climbing a steady gradient through silent stands of oak and ash. Rightward the trees were spaced thinly, giving some views across the strath, but leftward, where they climbed the braes, they were densely massed and filled between with hazel bush. There was an air of moistness and growth. All along the track small rivulets were crossing and flooding the hollows. Huge black slugs, mostly in pairs, were gliding confidently on the wet surfaces. At length the road levelled out, while at the same time becoming rougher and muddier; and began to display that penchant for endlessness which is the hallmark of Highland roads.

  ‘Must we go on much farther,’ Bridget wanted to know. ‘There really is a great deal of sameness about it. And I don’t think George knows what he’s looking for anyway – and I’m certain he won’t find it.’

  ‘Bear up, old dear,’ Geoffrey said. ‘It’s only five miles to Glen Skilling.’

  ‘But I didn’t offer to walk to Glen Skilling,’ Bridget said. ‘And if it’s only five miles, we’ve probably passed it.’

  ‘I think we can’t be far off now,’ Gently said. ‘What we’re looking for is a gate or driveway – anywhere you could run a car in out of sight. We know it isn’t very far from the road.’

  They turned a bend by a big outcrop and the twilight of the trees suddenly lightened. A short distance ahead they could see a great crag slanting up nakedly from the track. The trees hung back from it; to the side of the crag was a steep incline of crumbled rock. It seemed to flow out from behind a low rockrim that guarded the flank of the crag.

  ‘Aha!’ Gently said. ‘This could be it.’

  He hurried up the incline to peer behind the rockrim. It concealed a space about twenty feet long with a floor of thin, fawny turf. The rockrim was only a few feet high but it was a yard or two in width. A car, placed carefully behind it, would be invisible from the road.

  ‘But could he have got it up here?’ Brenda queried, joining Gently. ‘I’m darned if I’ll try it with my 1100.’

  ‘Oh yes, he got it up here,’ Gently said, pointing to some oil spots. ‘And he’s right about the road – you can see it through that crevice.’

  ‘So what do we know now?’

  ‘We know McGuigan was telling us the truth about this. But what I’d like to know is where the person was hidden who shopped McGuigan to Dunglass.’

  He stared about the spot. The flank of the crag me
rged precipitously into the trees, which, with their stockades of blunt-leaved hazels, presented an unbroken and close-knit front. The road was hemmed by a similar screen, and was here a short stretch between sharp bends. There was no indication of an entry having been forced through the skirts of the trees.

  ‘He’d have to be in there somewhere,’ Brenda ventured.

  Gently shook his head. ‘It doesn’t seem likely. He’d have to be too close if he was to see anything, and he couldn’t have got away again without some noise. It would help if we knew where that Forestry box was.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask the lady?’ Bridget said.

  ‘What lady?’ Gently asked, turning.

  ‘The lady who’s watching us – up there!’

  They looked where she was pointing. Above the crag, where it rounded off into the brae, a tall girl with a large dog stood silhouetted against the sky. She was dressed in faded jeans and a sloppy sweater and lounged there with an easy, masculine negligence. She was looking down at them scornfully, her tanned face framed by short, bushy hair.

  ‘Glory!’ Brenda whispered. ‘She’ll be the original mountain hizzie.’

  ‘That’s your question answered, George,’ Geoffrey murmured. ‘The one above sees all.’

  ‘I wonder if she bites,’ Brenda whispered. ‘The way she’s looking at us I think she would. She’s taken against us, that’s plain. We’re just four more slugs in her evening landscape.’

  The girl now drew herself up stiffly and took two steps nearer the edge.

  ‘D’ye hear me, down there!’ she called, her voice echoing and sharply clear.

  ‘We hear you,’ Gently called back. ‘Please, can you tell us where the Forestry keeps its phone-box?’

  ‘Ay I can,’ her voice rang down. ‘But you’re no’ a Forestryman, southron. Gae hame – gae home, that’s a’ I’ve to tell ye – we need no English up the glens. Take your bonnie leddies an’ your braw cars and point them south. Gae hame!’

  ‘Somebody should warn MacBraynes,’ Brenda said. ‘This female will ruin the tourist trade.’

  ‘Wait!’ Gently called. ‘What’s your name?’

  The girl threw back her head and laughed. ‘Ye ken I’m Scots, I ken you’re English – that’s a’ the introduction needed. An’ ye hear me tell you – Scots to English – awa’, back to the land o’ the serpent!’

  Then she spoke a word to the dog, and the two of them turned and moved away. In a moment they had jumped down into some hollow and disappeared from view.

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Bridget indignantly. ‘If that’s all the Scots think of us!’

  ‘I get the impression she was a shade ultra,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I imagine she was one of the silver dirk brigade, George.’

  ‘She’s a nut-case,’ Brenda said. ‘She was aaacting her uncombed head off. Really, someone should civilize these wild Highlanders.’

  Gently stared at the vacant crag. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  If you don’t know the course, follow Madie.

  Yacht Club proverb

  BLAYNE HAD RUNG back shortly before closing time to tell Gently the dabs matched, and Gently had smoked a silent pipe over this information before turning in along with Geoffrey. He slept poorly. Geoffrey snored, and Gently was troubled by a recurring dream. In this dream he was clinging to a perpendicular rockface, with nothing but a glassy surface above him. Below him, with dirks clutched between their teeth, climbed Hamish, Dugald and the ‘Sons of Ivor’, while the sweater-girl with her slavering wolf-hound urged them on from a convenient eminence. At the foot of the rock-face stood Blayne, McGuigan, Mary Dunglass and Mattie Robertson, drinking whisky from cut-glass tumblers and speculating if he would fall or be cut to pieces. In effect, Gently fell, because the rockface always concluded by tilting outwards, and he descended sickeningly to find his bed thrusting up into his back. It was an unpleasant dream. Each time he woke with sweat standing on his brow. Though he knew how it would end, the relief of the knowledge was always witheld till the waking moment.

  He rose in the morning feeling dull-eyed and staring sourly at the new-made sunlight. Bridget was already bustling about preparing the picnic they were to take up Glen Skilling. Mrs McFie, dressed in a sepulchral two-piece and a ruffled blouse, and smelling of lavender, seemed almost snappish as she got the breakfast, perhaps due to her early-kirk attendance. Gently ventured an inquiry about the sweater-girl, but Mrs McFie was determinedly unhelpful. She kent one or two o’ that description, she said, but apparently little in their favour.

  ‘They’re a sinful an’ scornful generation, Mr Gently, wi’ their indecent clothes an’ clarty habits – they’ll come to no guid – the Buik has a word for ’em – I’m glad to report there are none in Tudlem.’

  ‘This one was very tall,’ Gently persisted. ‘She was taller than most men.’

  ‘That would be no disteenction,’ Mrs McFie said. ‘They come lang an’ rough about the hills. There’s Jeanie Dinwhiddy – she’s a lang ane – but she’s up to no guid down in Glesca. An’ Meg Macready – she’d suit – but she wouldna be rovin’ the braes with a dog. No, I canna just say exactly who your fleerin’ lassie would be, but this I’ll give ye for Gospel truth – she wasna at the kirk this mornin’.’

  ‘Which surprises me,’ Brenda put in. ‘Because she had a pulpiteering manner.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Mrs McFie said. ‘But it wasna contracted by huggin’ a pew.’

  When she’d gone – the Major, she told them, expected no washing-up from her on the Sabbath – Gently watched for a while as Bridget cut neat, slim ham-and-tongue sandwiches. Then he sighed and knocked out his pipe.

  ‘I’ll have to take a rain-check on that,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have to what?’ Bridget said, glaring.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve figured a fresh angle on the Dunglass business.’

  ‘A fresh angle! But it isn’t your case.’

  ‘I know,’ Gently said. ‘But I’m in it all the same. And because I’m in it I can’t stop thinking about it, and when I think about it I come up with angles.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness!’ Bridget groaned. ‘Why does one ever go on holiday with this man? George, I’ve cut your sandwiches, and that’s that – you’re coming on this picnic, and you’re going to like it.’

  Gently shook his head. ‘Sorry, Bridgie. The angle I’ve figured won’t wait.’

  ‘Then tell it to Blayne!’

  ‘Blayne might not appreciate it. And he might not handle it right if he did.’

  ‘May we know what it is?’ Geoffrey inquired from the kitchen, where he was wiping while Brenda washed. ‘I’ve been giving the case some thought myself, but I haven’t come up with anything bright.’

  ‘This,’ Gently said, ‘is just a . . . hunch. It may mean only my wasting a day. But when you put a ferret in one end of a burrow it’s usually worth watching what comes out the other.’

  ‘Go on,’ Geoffrey said. ‘It sounds promising.’

  ‘Blayne is the ferret,’ Gently said. ‘He’ll be going into Knockie first thing this morning and showing his sharp little teeth to McGuigan. I don’t think he’ll arrest him – not now, after those two sets of dabs checked out; but if he’s worth his salt he’ll make McGuigan believe he’s in imminent danger of being arrested.’

  ‘You don’t think McGuigan will bolt,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘No,’ Gently said. ‘He’ll hardly do that. But he won’t sit pat either and wait for Blayne to arrest him. He’ll do some hard thinking – perhaps make a move. McGuigan knows the set-up. He can guess better than anyone who could have been involved in killing Dunglass. If it’s a Nationalist affair he may not want to divulge it, but he can’t afford not to be able to.’

  ‘Subtle,’ Geoffrey said. ‘So he could lead you to the murderer.’

  ‘He’ll follow his hunches, no doubt,’ Gently shrugged.

  ‘And you want to watch him.’

  ‘I want to watch him. If anyone knows where
to look it’s McGuigan.’

  Brenda came out of the kitchen, stood leaning, looking. ‘Ah well,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t grieve for me, Bridget. I’m beginning to get the hang of being George’s girl-friend.’

  ‘I’ve said it before,’ Bridget said. ‘And I’ll probably be saying it all my life – he’s the most infuriating of men.’

  ‘One day I’ll tame him,’ Brenda assured her.

  It was a long time since Gently had last been employed on a stake-out, and he went about the details of this one with a boyish sort of pleasure. First, he needed a fresh car, the Sceptre by now being too well-known. Geoffrey offered him the Hawk, but Gently turned it down on the grounds that people always look twice at a large car. Instead, he visited the garage across the road, where they offered him a Series V Minx – not perhaps the car of all others for shadowing a hot Cortina, but ideally inconspicuous in the Hillman-minded Highlands.

  ‘I’m expecting a friend to drop in,’ Gently lied to the garage-proprietor. ‘He’s on a cycling tour. We’re leaving a car behind so he can drive out to join us up Glen Skilling.’

  ‘Ay, an’ a braw day for ye, too,’ the man replied unsuspiciously. ‘Ye winna see a finer sight than the Braes o’ Skilling in June.’

  So the Minx was chartered and fuelled and drifted back to the cottage. Bridget’s picnic was divided in two and one half packed in the Minx’s boot. Then, at Gently’s instance, the Minx and the Hawk set off together, and paused at the store to buy chocolate and spread the gospel of the cyclist and the picnic.

  ‘So much for the cousins,’ Gently grinned, as the two cars continued in convoy out of the village. ‘That should take care of any message going Knockie-way. All we have to worry about now is that sheep-farmer on the track, but we’re hardly likely to run into his confounded sheep again.’

  ‘What about the boy-soldier,’ Brenda said. ‘How do we know he won’t be up there.’

  ‘We don’t,’ Gently said. ‘But I think it’s unlikely – after Blayne has done his job. I think the Knockie Irregulars will be lying low, and that goes for their sentry too. A proper Sabbath peace and calm will be the order of the day at Knockie.’