“I had a coffee with my wife and we watched a quiz programme on television and then I took Suky out for his usual evening walk.”
“Where did you go?”
“Just up to Brady’s field at the end of the houses. Suky likes to run about the field looking for rabbits. He disappeared for quite a time and I had the devil of a job getting him back.”
“I thought Suky was a girl’s name,” said Hamish.
“Oh, well, we call him that,” said the pharmacist, pressing his hands together. “This has been a great shock. I did not know the man…what was his name?”
“Sutherland. Fred Sutherland. There is no other pharmacist in Braikie, surely.”
“No, I’m the only one.”
“I noticed Mr. Sutherland had several medicine bottles in his flat. I am sure if I go back and look at the labels, I will find the name of your shop on them.”
Mr. Cody coloured up. “You are making me feel guilty when I have no reason to feel guilty. Kylie hands me prescriptions and I make up the bottles and pills and paste labels on them. I cannot remember every name.”
“But a resident of Braikie who had probably been going to you for years!”
“I am afraid my memory is not what it was.”
“So there is nothing more you can tell us about Kylie? She did not confide in you?”
“No, of course not. We were employer and employee. She would hardly giggle to me about her boyfriends.”
“Did you know she had gone out with Gilchrist? That she claims he came on to her and that he slapped her face? She threatened to tell everyone and he said if she kept quiet he would buy her a car. But he subsequently told her that since it was her word against his, everyone would believe him.”
“This is what comes of employing a girl like that,” said Mrs. Cody. “She’s not our sort. This is what comes, Charles, from associating with a low-life creature like that.”
“It is very hard to get staff,” said Mr. Cody furiously. “Kylie has stayed longer than anyone else. The young people here prefer to stay on the dole and do a bit of moonlighting. I am sorry I cannot help you further, officer, but I know very little about Kylie.”
“I must warn you that you will be subjected to more questioning,” said Hamish.
He said goodbye to them and then drove as fast as he could to Strathbane. He was anxious to sit in on the questioning of Kylie.
He was lucky in that the detectives sent to get her had not found her at home and had finally run her to earth in the pub and that Blair had radioed them by that time with instructions not to say anything to her. Ignoring a filthy look from Blair, he took a chair in the corner of the interrogation room, just in time to hear Kylie, who was fed on a regular diet of American movies, plead the Fifth Amendment.
“This is Scotland,” growled Blair, “and no’ Chicago.”
“What’s it about?” asked Kylie, her eyes flickering to where Hamish sat in the corner.
“Fred Sutherland has been murdered.”
“What! Thon auld fellow what lived above Gilchrist?” Her face went white under her makeup. “What’s that to do wi’ me?”
“Mr. Sutherland left a message on PC Macbeth’s answering machine tonight, saying that he had found out something about you. When PC Macbeth went to see him, he found he had been brutally murdered.”
“But I was in the pub all evening. Ask anyone. Ask the barman.”
“We will. But we hae a fair idea what it was that Sutherland wanted tae tell Macbeth. You had a fling wi’ Gilchrist.”
He shouted this last accusation in her face.
To Hamish’s surprise, the colour began to come back into Kylie’s cheeks. She gave a resigned little shrug. “Well, you knew about that.” She jerked her head in Hamish’s direction. “He knew about that.”
Blair took her all through her date with Gilchrist, about the promise of the car. He accused her of having got some of the young hoodlums she hung out with to murder the dentist. He ranted and raved, but Kylie remained immovable. She had a cast-iron alibi for the whole evening and that was that Sutherland had probably found out about her going down to Inverness with Gilchrist and that was what he wanted to tell Hamish. Why he had been murdered, she had no idea. It was up to them to find out who did it. In fact as the wearisome questioning continued, Kylie became more relaxed as Blair became more furious and frustrated.
At last she was warned to keep herself in readiness for more questioning and a policewoman was told to escort her back to Braikie.
Hamish went wearily back to Lochdubh to type up his reports – first the one on Kylie and Gilchrist which he had said he had already done, and then of his interview with Mr. Cody.
He finally went to bed and fell asleep and dreamed guilty dreams of a dead Fred Sutherland reaching up from an open grave and crying, “You could have saved me. It’s all your fault, Hamish Macbeth.”
¦
His first thought the next morning was that he should start off at the Old Timers Club that Fred had talked about. He had said he would ask questions there. Perhaps he had a particular friend he had confided in.
His heart was heavy as he took the road to Braikie. He stopped abruptly outside the road leading up to the Smiley brothers’ croft A troll-like figure was repairing the fencing. He got down and walked up, wondering if Blair had gone mad and released the brothers.
But as he drew closer, he saw the man was neither Pete nor Stourie but of similar build and appearance and just as hairy.
“Who are you?” asked Hamish.
The man glowered at him. “I’m Jock Smiley, their cousin. Are you the bastard what put them away?”
“Me and others,” said Hamish, “and they were prepared, to murder me.”
“They neffer harmed a fly in their lives. All they did was make a wee bit o’ whisky which is every Highland- man’s right.”
“Oh, come on. Pull the other one. They had a major business. This was the bootlegging on a grand scale.”
“It’s got nothing to do with me anyway,” said Jock. “Bugger off.”
Hamish walked back to the Land Rover. What a pity there had not been proof that the Smileys had killed Gilchrist. They were the only suspects who had the strength, character and expertise to do it.
¦
The Old Timers Club was in a smart new community centre opened, said a plaque on the front, by Princess Anne in 1991. Marvelling not for the first time at the energy of the Princess Royal, Hamish pushed open the door and went in.
Various people were sitting around, watching television, playing cards, or gossiping.
An elderly woman came forward to meet him. “Can I help you, officer?”
“I would like to talk to someone who knew Fred Sutherland well.”
“Oh, poor Fred. That’s young people for you these days. They would kill a man for twopence.”
Hamish reflected that as far as anyone had been able to judge, nothing had been stolen from Fred’s flat.
“But Mr. Tarn Carmichael was a great friend of Fred’s,” she went on.
“Is he here?”
“No, it’s a wee bit early for Tarn. But I can give you his address. He lives above the bakers just along from the chemists in the main street.”
Hamish thanked her and left. He walked along to the bakers and up a stone staircase at the side of the shop. MR. T. CARMICHAEL was on a neat name plate outside the door of a first floor flat. He knocked and waited. A little gnome of a man answered the door wearing a dressing gown over striped pyjamas. Tufts of grey hair stuck up on his head. His nose was very large and his eyes very small and sharp.
“You’ve come about Fred,” he said heavily. “Come in. You’re Macbeth.”
Hamish followed him into a cosy little living room where a coal fire blazed on the hearth.
They both sat down. “Last night,” began Hamish, “Mr. Sutherland left a message on my answering machine saying he had found out something about Kylie Fraser and then he was murdered. Did he tell you what it was?”
