“I wanted a quiet life. I like it here. I could afford a house this size in such a remote place where I could not afford it in the city. Now, if you don’t mind…”
Hamish decided to drive to Lochdubh with this information rather than phone it over. That way, he might find out what else was going on.
He was climbing into the Land Rover when his phone rang. It was Elspeth.
“Good news, Hamish. Shona was working on the background of doctors who had been sued for malpractice, and one of the subjects was Dr. Renfrew. He had told a woman that the rash on her breast was merely caused by an allergy to her bra. He prescribed ointments. This went on for months. It got worse. By the time the woman decided to get a second opinion, it was found she had invasive cancer and it was well advanced. The fact that she didn’t lose her life was a miracle, but she sued Dr. Renfrew for malpractice. He was not struck off the medical register and he was heavily insured against malpractice suits, so he got away with it. He wouldn’t give an interview, but there were television shots of him leaving his house and shouting at the reporter. He came up to Braikie Hospital last year.”
“Elspeth, I’ll go and talk to him. If I phone this in, they’ll send a detective and I’ll end up never getting an idea of who was guilty.”
So Hamish phoned over a report of Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson’s alibi to the mobile police unit, saying he would type it up and deliver it later with the receipt.
The policeman who answered the phone said, “Wait a minute. The inspector’s just coming.”
“Talk to her later,” said Hamish, and rang off.
Now for Dr. Renfrew.
¦
At the hospital, he was told it was Dr. Renfrew’s day off. He got his address, which was some way out of Braikie.
The doctor’s home was a square Scottish Georgian house, a relic of the days when army officers were quartered in the Highlands after the Battle of Culloden.
It looked a dark forbidding sort of place, and the garden was unkempt with a small square of shaggy lawn and straggly bushes.
He rang the doorbell. It was answered by a harassed-looking woman.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Mrs. Renfrew?”
“Yes.”
“Is your husband at home?”
“Is this necessary? He’s already been interviewed by the police.”
“Something else has come up. I would really like to speak to him.”
“Don’t be long about it.”
She turned away, and Hamish followed her into a dark, stone-flagged hall. She pushed open a door and said, “Darling, it’s the police again.”
Dr. Renfrew was sitting in an armchair beside a smouldering fire. The day had turned warm, but the house was cold.
The doctor threw down the newspaper he had been reading and got angrily to his feet. “This is too much. I shall put in a complaint.”
Hamish turned round. Mrs. Renfrew was standing in the doorway.
“I think it would be better if we were alone, Dr. Renfrew.”
He hesitated only a moment and then said, “Elsie, go and do something or other and shut the door behind you.”
Elsie shut the door with unnecessary force.
“So what is it now?” demanded Dr. Renfrew. “I have already been asked to account for my movements the night that researcher was murdered, which, I may add, I consider the highest degree of impertinence.”
“Did you tell the police you had met Shona Fraser before?”
“What!”
“When she was working as a researcher for a London-based television company, she must have interviewed you for their programme on medical malpractice.”
His face turned a muddy colour. “I never saw her. Yes, they tried to interview me, but I either refused to answer the door or ran past them when I left the house or surgery. It was a genuine mistake. It’s all over now.”
“Except,” said Hamish slowly, “when Mrs. Gillespie recognised you from the programme and blackmailed you. What did she want?”
All the bluster had gone out of Dr. Renfrew. He said in a low voice, “A bit of money, here and there, not much. And drugs.”
“Drugs!” exclaimed Hamish. What was happening in the Highlands, he marvelled, when middle-aged charwomen turned out to be drug addicts? “What was it? Cocaine? Heroin?”
He gave a bleak smile. “No, nothing like that. Hyperex.”
“What on earth is Hyperex?”
“She had osteoarthritis. Hyperex was a drug for sufferers, but it was considered dangerous and we were told to withdraw all supplies. But we still had some at the hospital. She insisted it was the only thing that helped and said if I didn’t give it to her she would broadcast my malpractice suit all over Braikie. I’m glad she’s dead, but I didn’t kill her.”
“I’m sorry,” said Hamish. “But I’ll need to ask you to come with me to make a statement.”
He looked completely defeated. “I’ll get my jacket,” he said.
¦
At the mobile police unit, Blair was nowhere in sight, but Inspector Cannon was there. Hamish briefly explained what he had found out, not mentioning Elspeth’s name but saying instead that he had remembered seeing the documentary on television.
“Good work,” she said. “There’s been a burglary at a croft on the Strathbane road. It’s just come in. I want you to get over there and do the initial interview, and I’ll send along some fingerprint men if we can spare them. Here’s the address. Off you go while I get down to getting a statement from the doctor.”
Hamish opened his mouth to protest and then shut it again, quickly deciding any protest would be futile. But he felt very angry with her. He had given her the first real breakthrough in the case, and he was being sidetracked. They could easily have sent out a policeman from Strathbane.
He walked to his Land Rover and looked at the name and address. Geordie McArthur, The Sheiling, Strathbane Road. It was several months since he had called on Geordie. He liked to occasionally check up on people in the outlying crofts.
¦
As he approached, Hamish reflected it was a typical croft house. Outside were two rusting cars, an old television set, and a fridge.
Other people might decorate the outside of their houses with flower gardens, but your true crofter used it as a dump for discarded machinery and household goods in the dim hope that some bits might come in handy some day.
Geordie’s wife, a thin, leathery woman with a face set in perpetual lines of discontent, invited him in. She said Geordie was asleep and went to wake him.
Sutherland boasts some of the tallest men in the British Isles. Geordie’s head scraped the low ceiling when he came into the living room.
“So what was taken, Geordie?” asked Hamish.
“My Land Rover. Two nights ago.”
“And you’ve only got around to reporting it now! I’ll need the registration number and a description.”
“You can see for yourself. It’s parked round the back of the house.”
“Geordie. This is right daft. It’s been stolen or it hasn’t been stolen.”
“Look, I havenae used it for three days, right? Well, I checked the mileage, and there were miles on it that werenae there before. I always check the mileage because herself sometimes takes it out when I’m asleep.”
