“So might any of the other patients. All you have to do, surely, is pick out all the names and addresses from the dentist’s files and go through them one by one.”
“The headquarters at Strathbane will be doing that. I just interview who I’m told to interview.” And please God, Blair doesn’t find out about that visit to Inverness. “I’ll go over first thing in the morning.”
They moved to other subjects. She told him about working in London but nothing about her personal life. She did not mention Priscilla again and Hamish was damned if he would ask about her. He did not want to spoil this pleasant evening with this glorious girl.
After dinner, which he insisted on paying for, despite her protests, she disappeared back to the toilet to put her ski suit on, then with Hamish carrying her rucksack, they left the restaurant. “Just wait here and I’ll get the Land Rover,” said Hamish. He wasn’t supposed to drive passengers around in it unless they were suspects, but he would be safe from Blair for the rest of the night.
At first, he thought she had gone and felt quite dismal, but then she stepped out of the shadows at the side of the restaurant. He helped her in and then drove off. She was wearing some sort of exotic perfume which she certainly had not been wearing earlier. He hoped she had put it on for him.
At the hotel, he introduced her to Mr. Johnson and begged for a cheap room for her.
“Miss Hudson, Macbeth is the village moocher,” said Mr. Johnson, “but he says you’re a friend of Priscilla’s so we’ve got a wee room which is reasonable.”
“I’ll be on my way then,” said Hamish awkwardly. He desperately wanted to ask her when he could see her again, but felt suddenly shy.
“My turn to take you for dinner tomorrow, Hamish,” said Sarah. “Eight o’clock?”
His hazel eyes lit up. “Aye, that would be grand.”
She kissed him on the cheek and said good night. He walked out in a happy dream, a silly smile on his face.
The frost sparkled on the ground and the stars sparkled overhead and it was like Christmas. He had not felt quite so happy or elated in ages.
¦
He awoke next morning with a feeling of anticipation. Then he remembered that dinner date. But work first. He set out on the Lairg road for The Scotsman Hotel. It had the deserted, shabby air of a second-rate Scottish hotel in winter. The wind was blowing again, sending the clouds racing across the sky, but it was unusually mild. The air felt damp against his cheek heralding the advance of rain.
He went into the hotel. The barman, Johnny King, was unloading crates of beer.
“Where’s Mr. Macbean?” asked Hamish.
Johnny jerked his head in the direction of the office. Macbean was sitting at his desk.
“Where’s the safe?” asked Hamish.
“Your boys took it away,” said Macbean. “Fat lot o’ good that’ll do.”
“You couldn’t have been thinking of repairing the back and using it again!”
“No,” said Macbean shiftily. “But I’m going down to Inverness tomorrow to get a new one. What do you want? I’ve been answering questions till I’m sick o’ them.”
Hamish removed his hat and put it on the desk and sat down on a chair opposite Macbean. “I’ve really called in the hope of seeing your wife and daughter.”
“Why?”
“Did you hear about this murder over at Braikie?”
“Aye.”
“Your wife and daughter went to see Gilchrist. I would be interested to hear what they thought of him.”
“They’re somewhere about. They cannae tell you anything.”
“I chust want an idea of what sort of man Gilchrist was.”
Macbean snorted with contempt. “When you’re in the dentist’s chair getting a tooth pulled, do you sit there and wonder what kind of man he is?”
“Yes,” said Hamish Macbeth, whose Highland curiosity prompted him to speculate on the character of everyone he came across.
“I’ll get someone to find them for you.”
“About the money,” said Hamish. “Were you insured against theft?”
“Yes.”
“To the tune of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds?”
“Yes, I made a point of paying heavy insurance to cover any possible theft of the bingo money.”
“So that means you’ll be able to have the big night after all?”
“Sometime or another when the insurance company finishes its investigations and gets around to paying.”
“I should think,” said Hamish, “that they might consider a safe with a wooden backing an invitation to crime. Are you sure you’ll get your money?”
Macbean’s eyes blazed with anger. “I’d bloody well better get it. How will the insurance company know the safe had a wood back anyway?”
Was he really this stupid, wondered Hamish.
“They’ll get all the police reports and then they’ll send their own investigators. Then the company who owns this hotel will want to know why you had such an unsafe safe.”
The anger left Macbean’s eyes and he groaned. Then he said, “Look, if you want to talk to the wife, run along and do it, and stop worrying me with these questions. Ask Johnny to find them.”
Hamish rose and picked up his cap and put it under his aim and went out of the office to where Johnny was still unloading bottles of beer.
“I want to talk to Mrs. Macbean and her daughter,” he said.
“I’ll get them.”
The barman picked up a phone on the bar and dialled an extension number. “Police tae see you, Mrs. Macbean, and Darleen,” he said. The voice quacked on the other end of the line.
The barman replaced the receiver. “Give her a few minutes.”
“Any ideas about who might have stolen the money?” asked Hamish.
“Naw. Why shoulda?”
“You surely must have discussed it with the other members o’ the staff.”
“Let me tell you somethin’,” said Johnny, lifting a crate with strong tattooed arms, “I keep masel’ tae masel. You can ask the others if you want any gossip.”
He turned his back on Hamish and walked off to the nether regions, carrying the crate.
It was an odd place for a bar, thought Hamish, placed as it was along one wall of the reception area like a theatre bar.
There was a clack of heels and Mrs. Macbean and her daughter, Darleen, came in. Mrs. Macbean was wearing yellow plastic rollers in her hair this time. Hamish wondered wildly if she ever took them out and if they were colour coordinated to match her clothes, for she was wearing a sulphur yellow blouse. Darleen was in jeans with frayed slits at each knee, a satin pyjama jacket, but no makeup, which made her look much younger.
“I’m sick o’ the police,” began Mrs. Macbean. “Questions, questions, questions.”
“This will not take long,” said Hamish soothingly. “Is there somewhere we can sit down and talk?”
She led the way through a pair of double doors leading off the main reception area. He found himself in a rather sleazy dining room with the residue of breakfast still lying about on three tables. “I see you have guests,” said Hamish. “I assume the police have questioned them?”
“They’ve questioned everyone in the whole bloody place.”
She sat down at a table. Darleen sat down next to her, crossed her long legs and winked at Hamish. Hamish took out his notebook and sat down as well.
“Now the morning of the burglary, you and Darleen had been over at the dentists in Braikie. You know the dentist has been found murdered. So I am trying to get a picture of what sort of man Gilchrist was. Had you been to him before?”
“Ma got her dentures from him,” said Darleen and Mrs. Macbean glared at her daughter.
“A dentist is just a dentist,” she complained. “You don’t wonder about anything but getting your teeth
