The cafe was of the kind with a bewildering array of expensively priced coffee. Hamish ordered an Americana and his companion, a cappuccino.
“What have you got?” asked Hamish, “First of all, your name?”
“Stefan Loncar.”
“So what information do you have for me?”
“That bastard, Timothy, sacked me last week. Says if I talk to the police, he’d cut my balls off. But I’m going back to Zagreb tomorrow. I need money.”
“So what have you got?”
“Those four men and their wives, the ones the police were asking about, they dined that evening in a private room upstairs.”
Hamish felt a flicker of excitement.
“Were they all there?”
“There were the four of them. I recognised the wives. But the men were all wearing funny masks.”
“What! Why?”
“They were laughing and said they’d just come from a fancy dress party.”
“But people who dined in the restaurant on the same night couldn’t remember seeing them. Surely they would remember four men in masks.”
“There’s a back stair leading from the car park which goes up to the private room. The police were happy to take Timothy’s word for it. Thomas Bromley paid for the dinner with his credit card. Timothy showed that to the police as proof but he said nothing about the private room. Where’s my money?”
“Aren’t you worried? One of them could be a murderer.”
“I’m off to Zagreb in the morning.”
Hamish took out a battered wallet and extracted two twenty-pound notes and a ten. Stefan snatched them and ran out of the cafe. Hamish hurried after him but when he got outside, Stefan appeared to have disappeared into thin air.
The four wives got together for drinks that afternoon. “Did you tell your husbands?” asked Sandra.
“Not yet,” said Mary Bromley.
“Don’t let’s,” said Sandra. “It’s not safe. I think we should all keep quiet.”
Reluctantly, the others agreed.
Hamish Macbeth walked round to the back of the restaurant and studied the staircase. There was no CCTV camera. There was now possibly a fifth man involved, one who perhaps took the place of whoever it was had gone to Scotland to murder Captain Davenport.
He experienced a feeling of relief. One of the four must have committed the murder, which left the locals clear of suspicion. Now he had to head north and try to pass on what he had learned without betraying that he had strayed out of his area.
As soon as he got back to Lochdubh, he called Jimmy and told him to come to the police station in the morning. He locked up his sleepy hens, refused to feed Lugs who was getting fat even though the dog banged his feeding bowl on the floor, showered, and went to bed. But he did not fall asleep immediately. If Sandra Prosser told her husband of his visit, then Charles Prosser might complain to the Guildford police, and then one highland police sergeant would be in trouble. But if one of the men was a murderer and the others were hiding the fact and colluding with him, then Hamish doubted the Guildford police would learn anything. What about those masks, though? Britain had more spy cameras on its streets than any other country. Surely the men had been questioned about the masks.
Jimmy arrived at ten in the morning, his blue eyes bloodshot and his clothes looking as if they had been slept in.
“Hard night?” asked Hamish.
“Don’t want to talk about it,” mumbled Jimmy. “What gives?”
Hamish described what he had found in Guildford. Jimmy groaned and clutched his head. “What am I to do with all this?” he demanded. “Poaching on Guildford’s territory.”
“Never mind. I’ve got a nice anonymous letter all written out for you. I want you to phone Guildford and the police at Gatwick airport and stop Stefan Loncar from getting on that plane.”
“He may already have gone.”
“I checked. It’s due to leave at noon today.”
“Right. Give me the letter. I hope there’s no fingerprints and no DNA.”
“Of course not. Your name’s been mentioned in the press so I put it on the envelope. Off you go. Oh, there’s one thing. Why weren’t the police suspicious about those masks the men were wearing?”
“It never came up. The camera focussed on the front of the restaurant wasn’t working. And if, as you say, they went up a back stair, it doesn’t matter anyway.”
When he had gone, Hamish switched on his computer and studied the little information he had about the four men. Thomas Bromley ran a chain of clothing stores. But did he have other businesses? Was Timothy’s one of his? If that was the case, it would explain why Timothy was prepared to lie for him. Timothy had claimed in a statement to Guildford police that he was the owner. Hamish Googled a list of Guildford restaurants, and his hazel eyes gleamed. Timothy’s was not listed, and yet he had a feeling in his bones that it was owned or part owned by one of the men. He needed a business expert to search company directors and find what other companies might belong to the men and if they had any connection with Scotland.
Prosser’s supermarkets were called Foodies but all of them were in the south of England. There was no connection, then, with Scotland.
Hamish had a feeling that the captain had actually got much more money out of one or all of them for some scam, more money than they claimed to have lost. The lawyers’ letters from the four had all been dated last year. Maybe the captain had come up with a get-rich-quick scheme for them. Persuading them that it was so good that they could not only recoup their losses but gain a fortune. From people like Angela and Edie and Caro, he had gathered that the captain had been superb as a con artist.
He went out for a walk and met Angela Brodie on the waterfront. Her thin face was alight with excitement. “Hamish, my publisher thinks my book might be nominated for the Haggart Prize.”
“That’s grand, Angela. What’s it about?”
“Oh, the usual this and that.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, Hamish, literary books are so hard to describe.”
“Try me.”
“Oh, there’s Mrs. Wellington. I must ask her about something.”
Hamish studied her retreating figure suspiciously. He suddenly felt sure that Angela’s novel was based on Lochdubh, maybe a thinly disguised Lochdubh. He was in the clear because writers only brought policemen into detective stories, and detective writers never got literary awards.
He rubbed his face and neck with midge repellent because the day was soft and damp and those Scottish mosquitoes were out in force. A thin line of mist lay across the forest on the opposite bank. Two seals struggled onto a rock by the beach and stared at him with big round eyes. He turned away. A little part of his brain was superstitious and believed the old stories that the seals were dead people who had come back.
He collected his dog and cat and drove to Drim. He let them out on the beach to play and went to Milly’s house.
Hamish frowned when he recognised Tam’s car parked outside. He didn’t quite trust Tam or, for that matter, any other reporter except Elspeth. He wanted to phone Elspeth and ask her if she knew any business expert but— remembering the fate of Betty Close—decided he might be putting her in danger.
Milly answered the door. Her face was flushed and her eyes bright. “Come in, Hamish. You’ll find Tam in the kitchen.”
“I would like a word with you in private. Did your husband leave any business papers? Did the police take them away?”
“Apart for bank statements and bills and things like that, there wasn’t much else.”
Tam appeared in the doorway. Hamish had a sudden idea. “Tam, do you know anyone expert enough to dig
