village until the investigation was over?”
“Why? I thought a trip to Inverness was a big adventure for that pair.”
“Their house is up for sale.”
“Not now, it isn’t,” said Anderson.
“So,” said Hamish, “they were going to leave, Sean gets murdered, and they change their minds. Why?”
“Look, Hamish, I know you like these people, but you know more about them than anyone else, and you’re going to have to ask some questions yourself.” Anderson was lying back in a chair in the police station office, with his feet on the desk. Willie came in with a tray of coffee cups, clucked in disapproval, put down the tray, picked up a newspaper and slid it under Anderson’s feet.
“That’s mair like a houseboy than a policeman,” snorted MacNab when Willie had left the room, “but he makes a grand cup o’ coffee.”
“And there was nothing in the bus,” pursued Hamish, “nothing at all.”
“Not a clue,” said Anderson. “No morphine, no hundred pounds, no letters.”
“So what happens to the bus now?”
“Sean’s mither phoned Mr Wellington and said she was too distressed over her son’s death to do anything about it at the moment, and so Mr Wellington said the bus could stay where it was until she felt fit enough to come up and take it away, or any of his belongings. There’ll be no trouble about it. Sean left a will, all right and proper, leaving everything to his mither.”
“Odd,” muttered Hamish. “Any more on his background?”
“Oh, aye, this’ll set you back. He was in the Hong Kong police for about six months but got the push.”
“Why?”
“Downright laziness. Should ha’ been a man after your own heart, Hamish.”
“But this lassie, Cheryl,” pursued Hamish. “Is there any way o’ shaking her alibi?”
“Not with about forty witnesses to say she was in Mullen’s the whole evening.”
“Damn, I’d like a word with her myself.”
“That’d be stepping out of your parish. You cannae shake that alibi.”
“Maybe. But I’d like to try all the same.”
Anderson sighed and poured more coffee. “I think this is one case you’re never going to solve, Hamish Macbeth. I feel it in ma bones.”
¦
And so it seemed, as the days dragged into weeks. The file on Sean Gourlay was not closed, but it might just as well have been. The bus remained up on the field at the back of the manse, a daily mute reminder to Hamish of failure. He had interviewed the Wellingtons, Angela Brodie and the Currie sisters several times, but there was no change in their statements. They had gone out of their way to welcome Sean and Cheryl to the village and then had ceased to see them. They had been nowhere near the bus on the night of the murder.
He decided in despair to risk the wrath of Strathbane and go over on his day off and see if he could talk to Cheryl.
He went to Mullen’s first. A sprawling red brick building with a huge car park, it was open twenty-four hours. A poster advertising various groups that neither Hamish nor possibly anyone else had ever heard of was pasted up on one of the windows.
Hamish pushed open the door and went in. It was a monument to the age of plastic: plastic plants trailed plastic fronds from plastic flower-boxes; plastic-covered chairs crouched beside low plastic tables. Even the long bar was made of plastic painted to look like wood. Hamish asked the barman for an orange juice and was mildly surprised to receive it in a glass tumbler instead of a plastic beaker. It was ten in the morning. A few couples were seated at the tables eating Mullen’s Breakfast Special. Perhaps, thought Hamish, it was livelier in the evenings, with bands and crowds.
“Have you got Johnny Rankin and the Stotters playing here?” asked Hamish. “I don’t see them on the bill.”
“No’ this month,” said the barman. “Maybe next.”
“I’ve never heard of any of the groups you’ve got advertised,” said Hamish.
“Aye, weel, the manager books the cheap acts, that’s why. Some of them are chronic.”
“Could I hae a word with the manager?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Police,” said Hamish patiently, pointing to his uniform.
“Whit, again? Hang on a minute and I’ll see if Mr Mullen’s aboot.”
Hamish waited patiently. One customer shuffled over to the juke-box and dropped in some coins. Soon a pleasant tenor voice filled the room, singing ‘Over the Sea to Skye’, conjuring up Jacobite romance, far from the reality of this plastic road-house.
A small squat hairy man appeared behind the bar. He had very black eyes, like stones, and odd tufts of hair on his face, and hair sprouting from his nostrils and ears. He looked like a troglodyte squeezed into twentieth- century clothing.
“Mullen,” he said curtly to Hamish by way of introduction. “What d’ye want?”
“I want to talk to you about Cheryl Higgins,” said Hamish.
“Oh, her! What can I tell you that I’ve no’ said a’ready? She was here all right from nine till one in the morning, caterwauling away.”
“And you’re sure it was her?”
“If you can find another lassie in the Highlands wi’ thon orange hair, it’ll be a miracle. No, it was her all right. Foul-mouthed creature, but then a lot of them are.”
“And she didn’t leave the room at any time during the show?”
“Naw, that lot are like camels. Once they’ve got an audience, they can go on for hours and hours.”
Hamish thanked him and left, feeling depressed.
But he got into the police Land Rover and drove off in the direction of the travellers’ campsite.
As he parked outside the field, he noticed the flurry of activity the sight of him caused. Weird figures were seen scuttling here and there, doors banged shut as children were scooped up and carried inside. It was as if a monster had arrived, but Hamish guessed they were probably hiding drugs or items of petty theft.
Only one woman stayed where she was, stirring something in a cooking pot over an open fire.
Hamish approached her. “Where are the Stoddarts?” he asked. She was a thin, fantastically dressed creature, wearing a heather coronet on her tangled locks. A long Indian cotton dress hung about with beads and brooches was wrapped around her body. She turned pale dim eyes up to him and frowned as if he had asked her to expound Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. “The Stoddarts,” he prompted.
“Ower there,” she said, pointing in the direction of a small caravan painted bright blue.
Hamish walked up to it and knocked on the door. A vague-looking bearded man answered it.
“Mr Stoddart,” said Hamish, “is Cheryl Higgin’s here?”
“Come in,” he said and retreated back into the dimness of the caravan, which still had its curtains drawn closed. The confined space smelled of unwashed bodies. The bearded man joined a slattern of a girl, no doubt his wife, at a table at one end. Both were watching television on a small black-and-white set placed on the table. Hamish looked round. At the other end of the caravan was a bunk with a flaming-orange head poking above the pile of bedclothes. He went over.
“Cheryl,” he said.
She twisted round and looked up at him. Then her mouth opened and a stream of abuse poured out. Hamish waited patiently until she had run dry, guessing correctly that Cheryl’s outpourings were part of a long-established pattern.
When she fell silent, he perched on the end of the bed and said quietly, “Now you’ve got that out of your system, I want to ask questions about you and Sean, not the usual ones.”
She gazed at him sullenly.
“Why did you leave Sean?” asked Hamish.
“It wasnae any kind o’ life,” she said bitterly. “I think he wus screwed in the heid. He would get visits from thae awful old women frae the village and ask me to take a walk and sometimes I couldnae get back to ma bed till after midnight.”
