“You know where the bottle is. Help yourself.” Jimmy scurried off into the police office, rubbing his hands. Hamish followed him in. “And don’t take all day about it.”
Jimmy took bottle and glass out of the bottom drawer and examined the bottle with a critical eye. “Getting low,” he commented, pouring a large slug. “You’ll need to get more.”
“I’ll see,” said Hamish. “So what’s the latest on Rosie?”
“Dead. Knife in the back. Won’t know about chloral hydrate till the results of the autopsy are through, but she certainly didn’t have a peaceful expression on her face when she died.”
“And what’s happening down in Glasgow, for God’s sake? They’re looking through the mug shots, aren’t they?”
“Sure. But the man had plastic surgery and we’re pretty sure he changed his name.”
“I would like to get down there and hae a look myself.”
“Blair won’t let you go and you must have run out of fictitious dead relatives.”
“I’ll think of something. You’ve just finished that bottle, so why don’t you go off and keep Blair quiet while I see what I can dig up.”
When Jimmy had left, Hamish plugged in the electric kettle and made himself a quick cup of coffee. He took a mouthful of it and shuddered. It was called Kenyan Delight and was being sold very cheaply at Patel’s. Now he knew why it was being sold cheaply. He poured the rest down the sink. His stomach rumbled but he could not face the idea of making anything to eat. He straightened his peaked cap, braced his thin shoulders, and marched out to face the population of Lochdubh.
To his amazement and relief the waterfront was deserted, apart from a harassed tourist mother dragging along a screaming child and shouting, “I brung you here tae enjoy yourself, and enjoy yourself you will!”
Amazing, thought Hamish. Parents always say the same stupid things. He stopped by the woman and said mildly, “Don’t be too hard on the wean, missis. It’s all this rain.”
“I wish I’d gone tae Spain,” said the woman. She was fat and blowsy, with raindrops shining in the black roots of her bleached hair. Hamish crouched down in front of the screaming child, a small boy with a red nose and streaming eyes. The child stopped screaming and stared at him. “Now, laddie,” said Hamish, “what’s the matter? You can tell me. I’m the police and you’ve got to tell me the truth.”
“I’ve peed my pants,” said the boy dismally, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“Why didn’t you tell your ma?”
“She’d wallop me.”
Hamish straightened up and looked at the woman severely. “You heard that,” he said, “and you will not be hitting the boy.”
The woman looked frightened. “Och, you’ll no’ be reporting me to the Social.”
“Take him away and let him get changed.” Hamish fished a fifty-pee piece out of his pocket. “Here, laddie, buy yourself an ice-cream.”
He stood and watched them as they went off, the woman now cooing affectionately to her small son and flashing nervous little smiles back at Hamish.
He walked along, turning over the names of the suspects in his head. He decided to have another talk to Annie Ferguson.
She greeted him with, “Oh, Hamish. It’s yourself. I don’t think you should come here. I shouldn’t be seen talking to you.”
“Why?” he demanded crossly.
“I’ve my reputation to consider, and after what you’ve been up to – ”
“Look here,” said Hamish furiously, “I am here officially on a murder inquiry, and everyone in the village knows that.”
“Everyone in the village knows something else about you now,” said Annie with a flash of pure Highland malice. “Och, come ben.”
He went into her parlour, took off his cap, placed it on the coffee-table and sat down. She sat down opposite him, tugging her skirt firmly over her sturdy knees in case the sight of them would drive this lecherous policeman into some mad act of passion.
“Now,” began Hamish, “I want you to think carefully about any conversation you had with Randy. Did he mention anywhere in the States in particular?”
“I think he seemed to have been just about everywhere. New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, places like that.”
“Did he mention friends, any he might have known?”
She shook her head. “We didn’t talk much,” she said with a sudden roguish look, quite awful to behold.
“Did you know he had had plastic surgery?”
Her amazement looked genuine.
“Why would he do that? I mean, it’s the women who go in for that. Although you wouldn’t catch me getting any of that.”
“We believe he was a criminal who had gone to great lengths to conceal his real identity.”
“A criminal! Oh, you must be mistaken. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with anyone like that!”
“But you didn’t know he was a criminal,” said Hamish patiently.
“And you don’t either. You’re just clutching at straws.”
“Annie, try to be a bit less defensive. Think. What money did he have?”
“He always had wads of the stuff,” said Annie. “You must have heard that. And he was always flashing it about in the bar.”
Hamish asked her several more questions but could learn nothing of importance. He left and went up to the mobile unit and read the reports. The whole wrestling fraternity of America and Britain had been rigorously interviewed without success. Police artists in Glasgow were working on pictures of what Randy might have looked like before plastic surgery. Rosie’s sister, Mrs. Beck, had been contacted and was travelling up to Lochdubh. The rain was still falling, and through the smeared and misted-up windows of the mobile home, Hamish could see groups of pressmen huddled together. Some tourists were also standing about, as if waiting for another murder to happen to enliven the tedium of a rain soaked Scottish holiday.
Mrs. Beck, he learned, was due to arrive from Inverness around five o’clock. She would be staying in Mrs. McCartney’s bed and breakfast in the village. Blair was all set to interview her and Hamish wanted to be present at that interview. He knew that if he asked Blair he would be sent about his business and so he decided to wait until she arrived and just turn up.
He left and went to question Archie Maclean, Geordie Mackenzie, and then the barman, Pete Queen. The trouble turned out to be that all had accepted Randy’s hospitality without paying any attention to what he had said. Randy had arrived among them, Randy had bragged, Randy had been murdered, and that was the end of it. When he returned to the police station, bending his bead against the now wind-driven rain, he felt tired and dirty and miserable. He wanted to phone Priscilla and explain how he had happened to be in bed with Betty, but could think of no explanation which would appeal in any way.
He felt, too, that he ought, as a Highland gentleman should, to phone Betty. Although she had taken it well, there had been no reason for him to have been so rude. He phoned the Tommel Castle Hotel. At first he did not recognize the curt voice on the telephone as that of Priscilla and he asked to speak to Betty. And that was when he recognized her voice when Priscilla said coldly, “Your lady-love is out in the hills with her fiance’.”
Cursing the fact that with servants at the castle always going off sick with bad backs or whatever other Highland excuse occurred to them, leaving Priscilla to fill their jobs, Hamish said, “That just happened. I woke up and found her in bed.” Her voice dripped icicles. “Indeed? I will tell her you called.” The line went dead and he looked miserably at the receiver before slowly replacing it. Why, when he had done the right thing by getting himself out of a cold relationship, did he still get so dreadfully hurt? A psychiatrist would say it pointed to a lack of love in childhood that he should long for the unobtainable, and yet he had had a very loving childhood. Bugger analysis, thought Hamish Macbeth, and geared himself up instead to gate-crashing me interview with Mrs. Beck.
¦
A furiously rolling eye in his direction was the only sign of Blair’s displeasure when Hamish quietly followed the detectives into the bed and breakfast. Mrs. Beck was sitting in the front parlour under a sign which warned guests that the terms were bed and breakfast and no matter what the weather, they were expected to make
