the airport.” Harriet, listening, heard the voice at the other end quack indignantly.
“Yes, yes,” said Hamish. “I’ll get the proper authority. Don’t let them get away!”
He put down the phone and said to Harriet. “Let’s go.”
“Whit about paying for the call?” demanded Betty. He handed her a pound note and, dragging Harriet after him, ran out and down the street, looking for a cab. It was Hogmanay, New Year’s Eve, he thought. There would be very few, if any, free cabs about. And then he saw a taxi with its light on rounding a corner and raced for it, with Harriet tumbling after him. He told the cabby to take them to police headquarters.
“How are you going to manage it, Hamish?” asked Harriet anxiously. “You’ve no proof. I mean, you’ve proof that she pinched Heather’s book but no proof she murdered her.”
“I’ll get proof,” said Hamish, leaning forward and willing the cab to go faster.
At Glasgow police headquarters there were more delays while a detective sergeant phoned Strathbane to establish Hamish’s credentials. But Hamish was lucky, Blair was still on holiday, and it was Jimmy Anderson, slightly drunk, who said that Hamish Macbeth was Scotland’s answer to Kojak, and if he said there was a murderer at Glasgow Airport, then there surely was.
Soon Harriet found herself crammed into a police car along with Hamish, two detectives, and a policewoman while a carload of four policemen followed behind. They had only gone a little way when Hamish shouted, “Stop!”
The detectives stolidly watched Hamish Macbeth hurtle into a hairdressing salon called ‘Binty’s Beauty Parlour’.
“Whit’s he daein’?” asked one laconically. “How should I know?” retorted the other. “Them Highlanders are all daft. Ye cannae figure oot the way their minds work. Maybe it’s the mountains. Something tae do wi’ the altitude. It affects their brains. Maybe he wants tae look nice for the arrest and is getting his hair cut.”
Hamish emerged carrying a paper bag and climbed back info the police car. The detective, driving, said with heavy sarcasm, “Any mair shopping you would like to do?”
“No,” said Hamish. “Chust make it quick.”
The detective put on the siren and off they went again. Harriet clutched Hamish’s hand hard as houses streamed past under the winking lights of the Christmas decorations. At one point, they had to swerve wildly to avoid a drunk weaving across the road. Glasgow had obviously started the New Year’s celebrations early.
Hamish gave the detectives an outline of his investigations and Harriet could practically feel disbelief emanating from the square shoulders of the detectives in the front seat, detectives who were used to drunken murders, savage gang fights on the housing estates, but not to sophisticated rigmaroles about books.
Fortunately, it was only a short trip to Glasgow Airport. Harriet blinked in the lights as the detectives, who obviously knew where they were going, led them along a corridor away from the staring passengers and into a room marked ‘Security’.
And there was Jessie Maclean with a tall, weedy man sitting beside her. On a long table in front of them were their suitcases.
Jessie turned white at the sight of Hamish, but she said nothing. “Open the suitcases,” ordered Hamish. Jessie slowly produced the keys. Hamish searched one of Jessie’s pale-blue suitcases carefully after examining the passports. Their passports, which showed they were married, had been issued only a few weeks before.
Then he found the contract for the book and sheets of headed paper, “Jessie Maclean, Literary Agent.” He silently took Jessie’s handbag from her and tipped out the contents. In it was a banker’s draft for the money.
Jessie glared up at him after stuffing everything back into her bag and clutching it tight. “That money’s mine,” she said. “I earned it. I wrote the book.”
Hamish put both hands on the other side of the table and leaned forward.
“What were you doing on Eileencraig the day Heather Todd was murdered?”
“You’re daft!” screamed Jessie. “You all saw me arrive. You can’t keep me. Let me out of here…”
Hamish smiled and slowly straightened up. He turned round and took the bag he had brought out of the hairdressers’ from Harriet. He turned back and opened it and edged out of the bag a handful of red hair, a wig.
Harriet reflected dizzily that she had read of people turning green but had never seen it before that moment. Jessie’s face was an awful colour under the harsh glare of the strip lighting overhead.
She rounded on her husband. “You stupid bastard!” she screamed. “You told me you’d burnt it.” She tried to rake his face with her nails and was dragged off, still screaming, by the detectives to a corner of the room, where she suddenly subsided into noisy sobs.
“Well, Willie Macdonald?” demanded Hamish. “You’d better tell all or you’ll find yourself on a murder charge as well.”
“Don’t tell him,” gulped Jessie between sobs.
“It wisnae anything to do wi’ me,” said Willie, looking down at the table. “Jessie told me the auld bag had written a book but didnae want anyone to know about it in case it got rejected, so she asked Jessie tae type it oot and put her name down as literary agent. Jessie thought it was a right load o’ rubbish. Then she got a phone call frae New York offering her a half a million on behalf of her client. She thought the whole thing up herself. Naethin’ tae dae wi’ me. She telt’ me she killed her. She hid ootside that health farm and watched for the opportunity.”
His thin, weak face suddenly looked up at Hamish in puzzlement. “But how did ye find the wig? I burnt it, like she said, in a bin in the garden at the back o’ her flat.”
“And so you probably did,” said Hamish pleasantly. “This is a wig I bought at a hairdressers’ on the road here.”
“You bastard,” whispered Jessie suddenly. “I could have got away with it.”
One of the detectives read the charges. “We’ll take them back to headquarters and get their statements. We’d better get your statement as well, Macbeth.” He held out his hand. “Detective Sergeant Peter Sinclair, Macbeth. It’s been a pleasure watching ye work. But man, man, ye took a chance buying that wig.”
Hamish shook hands with-him, and then, putting an arm around Harriet’s shoulders, he followed police and prisoners outside to the car.
???
When they finally emerged from police headquarters, all the city bells were ringing. A drunk reeled past, red- eyed under the street lights. “Happy New Year,” he shouted.
“And so it is,” said Hamish. He put his arms around Harriet and held her close and bent his head to kiss her. He finally raised his head and looked down at her curiously. She was stiff in his arms and she had only endured that kiss.
“I think,” said Harriet breathlessly, “that we should call on Diarmuid.”
“Why?” demanded Hamish, made cross by rejection.
“The police’ll have phoned him.”
“Well, it’s New Year’s Eve and I have a feeling he’ll be all alone. Did you notice the times we were there that the phone did not ring once? No one calling to offer their condolences?”
“Very well, then,” said Hamish sulkily. “But I can tell you this, Harriet. I wish he
They couldn’t get a cab, so Hamish went back into the police station and begged a lift in a squad car.
As he rang Diarmuid’s doorbell and waited, hoping that the man wouldn’t answer, he wondered why Harriet had disliked that kiss. She was attracted to him, he was sure of that. He was just about to turn away, relieved, when the hall light went on and then Diarmuid answered the door. He was wearing pale-blue silk pyjamas and a white satin dressing-gown with his initials monogrammed in gold on one pocket.
“Hamish and Harriet,” he exclaimed. “How good of you to come. This is a terrible business. A terrible business. The police told me about it.”
“Have you no one with you?” asked Harriet as they followed him up the stairs and into the sitting-room. Diarmuid litthe gas fire. “No,” he said. “It’s with it being New Year’s Eve. I phoned a few people but they were all busy. Can you tell me about it, Hamish? All I got from the police was that Jessie had murdered my wife and that they would be calling on me in the morning to take a statement.”
Hamish sat down. He looked curiously at Harriet, a question in his eyes. She flushed slightly and looked away.
“It’s like this,” said Hamish in a flat voice. “Your wife wrote a steamy romance…”
“Heather? She never would!”
