“Won’t forget it,” Hamish said goodbye. As far as he was concerned, Drim and Jamie deserved each other. He had once solved a murder there, but although Drim was on his beat, he went there as little as possible.

¦

“What about Plockton in Ross?” asked Fiona, finally breaking the silence as they drove towards Drim.

“Plockton!” sneered Jamie. “Thon village has been used in two detective series already.”

“I think that’s it down there,” said Sheila.

Drim was a small huddle of cottages on a flat piece of land surrounded by towering mountains at the end of a thin, narrow sea loch. There was a church and a community hall and a general store, and the road down to the village was a precipitous one-track.

“It’ll be hell getting all the stuff here,” muttered Fiona.

Shafts of late red sunlight shone down, cutting through the crevices in the mountains, flooding Drim with a red light. Sheila thought it looked like a village in hell.

“Bypass the village and let’s see this castle before the light fades,” ordered Jamie.

Sheila would have missed the turn had not the major stationed two of his gamekeepers out on the road to direct them. She drove cautiously up a snow-covered drive, stalling from time to time, wheels spinning on the ice, until at last the castle came into view.

The last of the red light was flooding the front. It was a Gothic building, built during the height of the Victorian vogue for homes in the Highlands. It even had a mock drawbridge and portcullis, but no moat, the first owner having run out of money before one could be dug.

The major met them at the door. He was a small, neat man, dressed in old tweeds. He had a pleasant, lined face and faded blue eyes.

“Macbeth phoned me to say you might be calling,” said the major. “Come in.”

He had lit an enormous fire in the huge fireplace in the hall and had arranged chairs and a low table in front of it, on which he had placed a bottle of whisky and glasses.

They introduced themselves. The bullying side of Jamie would have liked to dismiss the whole of Drim as a possible location and make Sheila drive on, but the sight of that bottle of whisky mellowed him. Sheila did not drink because she was driving. Fiona did not drink alcohol. She thought it a dangerous drug. She smoked pot and was part of an organisation to get the use of cannabis legalised. So Jamie had most of the bottle.

The major, who had read Patricia’s book The Case of the Rising Tides, was becoming more and more amused as Jamie waxed enthusiastic over his planned dramatisation of the book.

At last, exhausted by talking and bragging and drinking, he fell asleep and Fiona took over and got down to the nitty-gritty of price. She ended up agreeing to pay more than she had intended because she was weary of travelling and the castle was suitable for film offices as well as a location and the major seemed so eager to help.

At last, business being finished, and when Sheila had taken photographs of all the rooms, he directed them back to Lochdubh and suggested they stay at the Tommel Castle Hotel for the night.

Jamie was roused from his slumbers. He was in a foul temper all the way back to Lochdubh, and once checked into the hotel, he headed straight for the bar.

Fiona phoned Harry Frame in Glasgow. “It’s Drim,” she said wearily.

“Where the hell’s that?” asked Harry.

“It’s at the ends of the earth,” said Fiona, “but Jamie’s happy and it’s right in every way.” She began to enthuse over the castle, deliberately not mentioning the awkward business of getting there.

¦

Major Neal said to his head gamekeeper, “You’ll find a good haunch of venison in the freezer and a side of smoked salmon. Take them over to Macbeth at Lochdubh tomorrow with my thanks. No, forget it. I haven’t seen Hamish in ages. I’ll take them over myself.”

“That’s very good of you,” beamed Hamish when the major arrived on his doorstep half an hour later, bearing gifts.

“Least I could do, Hamish,” said the major, following him into the kitchen. “But, oh my, what’s Miss Martyn- Broyd going to do when she hears how they’re planning to change her book?”

“What are they going to do with it? A dram?”

“Just the one, Hamish.” They both sat down at the kitchen table. “It’s like this…Have you read The Case of the Rising Tides?

Hamish shook his head.

“It’s not bad. Complicated plot. But it’s a lady’s book, if you know what I mean. The main character is a Scottish aristocrat called Lady Harriet Vere.”

“So her father was an earl or something like that?”

“The author doesn’t mention any parents at all. Just this Lady Harriet who lives in a castle in the Highlands with devoted servants. In the TV series, she’s going to drop a few years – in the book she’s around forty, with a stern, handsome face and so on – and be played by Penelope Gates, who is a voluptuous blonde whose recent performances on the box have left nothing to the imagination. Unless she dyes her pubic hair as well, she’s a real blonde.”

“You’d make a good detective,” said Hamish dryly.

“Anyway, in the TV series, she’s going to be a hippie aristocrat who runs a commune in her castle, pot and free love.”

“Bit sixties.”

“It’s set in the sixties.”

“I wonder if Miss Martyn-Broyd knows this,” said Hamish.

“Probably does. Her books have been out of print. Bound to go along with anything. I’ll be glad when the light nights come back again, Hamish. These long northern winters get me down. But thanks to you, once they start filming and I get paid, I’ll be able to take a holiday somewhere far away from Scotland.”

“Nonetheless, I wouldn’t tell Miss Martyn-Broyd about what they’re going to do to her book, in case she doesn’t know. Better to upset her later than sooner. How are things in Drim?”

“Same as ever. A living grave with resident ghouls.”

“This TV thing should spice them up. Did you tell them they’d better cosy up to the minister and the village headmen?”

“Yes, that Fiona woman knew how to go about it.”

“I should think those silly village women will all be seeing themselves as film stars the minute they hear about it.”

“You know how they are up here, Hamish. They’ll be split into two camps. There’ll be those who are trying like mad to get their faces on the telly and the sour ones who stand around the location hoping to register their disapproval on camera.” Hamish laughed. “And no filming on the Sabbath.”

“I didn’t tell them, and I’m not telling them until I’ve got the contract.”

¦

Fiona lay on her bed in a room in the Tommel Castle Hotel and listened to the moaning of the wind outside. Thank God a location had been found! This series could make her name at last. If only she hadn’t to deal with Jamie. She felt uneasy about his work. She had read his ‘bible,’ where he had set out plot, storyline, characters and casting.

If only it had been a regular TV detective series like Poirot or Miss Marple. Despite her acid remarks about the British viewing public, she knew the large viewing figures lay with Mr. and Mrs. Average. Ambition coursed through her veins. She would do her damned best to make it work.

¦

A few rooms away, Sheila Burford was also awake. She had suggested to Fiona that they should phone up Patricia and invite her for dinner. Fiona had snorted and said the less they had to do with writers the better. Sheila felt guilty. She was sure there was going to be the most awful scene when Patricia found out what they were doing with her book.

She had not liked what she had seen of Drim. It was a grim place, and she guessed that was why the policeman had sent her there. Fiona had been right in the first place. There were plenty of pretty locations within easy reach of Glasgow. Her own role had moved from that of researcher to personal assistant to Fiona. For the first

Вы читаете Death of a Scriptwriter
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату
×