there one who dresses as a woman?”
“A transvestite like?”
“Aye, wi’ orange hair, slim, maybe girlish-looking.”
“There’s the one wi’ black hair, or had the last time I saw him.”
“Name?”
“Real name I dinnae ken, for he hisnae been in trouble with us. Time was when we could hae banged him up for dressing like a lassie, but them were the good auld days.”
“Name?” shouted Hamish.
“Bert Luscious, would you believe.”
“Where…where does he live?”
“I don’t know. But he does a turn at a drag club doon by the docks called Jessie’s.”
“A drag club in
“We move wi’ the times, Hamish, laddie, we move wi’ the times. Started up a few months ago. Put a plainclothes man in for a few nights, but he said it was all quiet, no drugs, no mayhem, jist a lot of fellows in lassies’ frocks.”
“Thanks,” said Hamish feverishly.
“Whit fur? Are ye intae the marabou and rhinestones yourself?”
“Maybe,” said Hamish and put down the phone. He scrabbled in his desk and came up with a notebook he had used when Sean and Cheryl had appeared on that scooter. He had taken the number. But if she had sold it, he could not find out the new owner until morning. Damn. He should have phoned immediately after he got back.
He went to the Napoli restaurant. Willie was sitting comfortably at a corner table being waited on by Lucia. “I’m off again,” said Hamish curtly. “You’d best get back to the station in case any urgent calls come through.”
Lucia looked at Hamish as if he were a monster. Then, “Go along,” she said quietly to Willie. “Giovanni will bring your meal and your wine over to you.”
As Hamish left, Mr Ferrari held open the door for him. His thin purplish lips were parted in a smile which did not reach his eyes.
? Death of a Travelling Man ?
9
When gloamin’ treads the heels o’ day
And birds sit courin’ on the spray,
Alang the flower’y hedge I stray,
To meet my ain dear somebody.
—Robert Tannahill
Hamish took Towser with him, frightened that a lovelorn Willie would neglect the dog. He put the dog’s blanket and water bowl in the back of the Land Rover, along with a helping of cold pasta he had found in the kitchen.
As he once more took the long road to Strathbane, he wondered that a drag club could survive anywhere in the Highlands. ‘Jessie’ was the Scottish word for an effeminate man, a shortened version of the old English sneer of jessamy. No doubt that was why the place was called Jessie’s. He did not want to advertise to the customers that he was a policeman, but neither did he want to borrow a frock from Priscilla and dress up. He was not in uniform but in a dark-blue sweater, checked shirt and dark-blue cords. He could only hope that some of the other customers were similarly attired.
He found Jessie’s on the waterfront in Strathbane, housed in what used to be a ship’s chandler’s. Music was thudding out into the acrid air of Strathbane. He locked the Land Rover after filling Towser’s water and food bowls and made his way inside, blinking to accustom his eyes to the darkness.
To his relief, the customers were practically all in conventional dress and included some obviously staid married couples who had simply come to see the show. In order to get in, he had had to pay the club membership of five pounds. He was ushered to a table in a corner by a young man dressed unimaginatively in striped T–shirt and skin-tight black trousers who served him orange juice and charged him two pounds for it.
On the stage someone in low-cut gown and sequins and feathered headdress was belting out ‘Hello, Dolly’. He was obviously the star turn, looking like a glamorous woman compared to the sequinned chorus who looked what they probably were, small Scotsmen with bad legs. As the show went on, Hamish was able to understand the club’s obvious popularity with a respectable section of the population because it mostly consisted of popular numbers from musicals, all quite well staged and mostly well sung. But there was no sign of Bert Luscious.
He signalled to the waiter, told him he was a policeman, and asked to see the owner. After about fifteen minutes, the waiter returned and asked Hamish to follow him to ‘the back o’ the house’.
He pushed open a door and said, “Jessie’ll see you now,” and Hamish went in.
Jessie turned out to be the man who had sung ‘Hello, Dolly’. He was still in costume but had removed his blond wig to reveal a shaven head. The small room was made up like a star’s dressing room in miniature with lights around the mirror and a Victorian chaise longue in one corner.
“What iss up?” demanded Jessie in an accent that Hamish guessed probably hailed from South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, having a soft, whistling sort of sibilancy.
“Nothing up with the club,” said Hamish. “I’m looking for someone called Bert Luscious.”
“Not on tonight, precious.”
“Can you give me his address?”
“And why should I be doing that, officer?”
“Because I am on a murder inquiry and it is your duty to help the police.”
Jessie sighed and then pulled a large book towards him, scattering sticks of grease-paint as he did so. With one large white well-shaped hand, he flicked through the pages. “Aye, here we are. Quite close by, he is. Number 141, Highland Towers, on the estate up back.”
“Thanks,” said Hamish.
Jessie batted his false eyelashes at him. “Enjoy the show, sweetie?”
“Yes,” said Hamish awkwardly, backing towards the door. “Why Jessie?” he asked.
“Because that’s what all those nasty little boys at school used to call me – Big Jessie. My real name is Cyril Crumb, and believe me, anything iss better than that.”
As Hamish drove towards the tower blocks which overlooked the waterfront, he reflected dismally that he could hardly claim this night’s expenses, as he was not even supposed to be in Strathbane.
Bert Luscious’s flat was on the sixth floor but the urine-stinking lift was out of order and so he had to trudge up the stairs and then along a gallery which led outside the flats, listening to the sounds of drunken quarrels, crying babies and television sets coming through the thin walls.
Number 141 was in darkness but he could hear the blast of a stereo coming from inside, thumping out rap. He rang the bell. No answer. He thudded on the door and waited but no one came to answer it. He tried the handle and the door swung open.
A fetid, sweet smell met his nostrils and he groped about the minuscule hallway until he found the light switch. A joss-stick was burning in a milk bottle on a table, hence the smell. The noise of music was coming from behind a door to his right. He opened it.
He found himself looking into a living room, cluttered and messy with dirty clothes strewn about the battered furniture. On a sideboard a large ghettoblaster shattered the air with sound. He crossed the room and switched it off.
Next door a television set mumbled on through the walls, punctuated with an occasional burst of canned laughter. “Anybody home?” he called.
He walked back into the hallway and tried the door opposite. This proved to be a squalid bedroom: unmade bed, dirty stained sheets, posters on the walls of singers with guitars.
He left that and tried the bathroom and then walked into a small kitchen at the back of the hall.
Bert Luscious was seated at the kitchen table, his long orange hair spilling out over a cheap plastic top. Hamish tried to rouse him and then saw the syringe lying beside his head, half covered by his hair. He felt his limp
