women at the hand basins let out a screech of protest. Hamish flashed his warrant card before checking the cubicles. Then he noticed a blast of cold air. The room was L-shaped. He turned the corner. A window was standing open. He leaned out. There was a fire escape to the car park. As he watched, a black BMW went roaring off.
He returned to the signing and picked up a copy of Simon Swallow’s book. There was now only one woman in front of him. When it was his turn, Simon asked, “Who’s it to?”
Hamish showed his warrant card. “Who was that girl who was opening the books for you?”
“Oh, Sonia. Where’s she gone and what do you want with her?”
“Just a wee chat.”
“She’s probably gone to the toilet.”
“Sonia took one look at me and ran off and escaped out the toilet window. How do you know her?”
“We met up in a pub this lunchtime and she offered tae come along.”
Hamish retreated to a corner of the room and phoned John McFee. “Concentrate on a firm called Scots Entertainment,” he said. “There’s something fishy about it.”
“Will do.”
“And get back to me as soon as possible.”
He waited until Angela had signed her last book. “They’ve booked rooms here for us for the night,” said Angela, “but I must get home.”
“All right. But I’ll drive.”
In the car, as he drove off out of Edinburgh and took the long road north, Hamish said, “Angela, I don’t want to add to your distress, but have you any idea what’s waiting for us in Lochdubh? You wrote about a doctor’s wife having an affair with a policeman. You’re going to be damned as the whore of Lochdubh.”
“But they all know me!” wailed Angela. “They cannot possibly think—”
“Oh, yes they can. Oh, dinnae greet. You must have cried a bucketful already,” said Hamish heartlessly.
Angela snivelled, blew her nose, and said, “I must have gone mad. What’s it like, Hamish, to have no ambition whatsoever?”
“It makes a man enjoy the day. Ambition can cause envy and resentment. Chust look at the mess you’re in. Try to get some sleep.”
As Hamish drove up the steep road which wound through the hills towards Lairg, he glanced in dismay at the petrol gauge. He hoped there was just enough fuel to get them home.
Then he saw the lights of a car coming up fast behind them. He had a sudden premonition of disaster before the car struck them and sent them crashing over the side of the road and down a steep brae. Angela’s little car hit a rock, somersaulted, and landed on its roof. Cursing, Hamish unfastened his seat belt and managed to get the door open. He heard his attacker roar off into the distance. He rolled out into the heather. He could hardly believe that he hadn’t broken anything. He went round to the passenger side and wrenched open the door. He unfastened Angela’s seat belt and eased her out. “What happened?” she asked.
“Have you broken anything?”
“I think I’m all right. I feel so sick.”
“Chust lie down in the heather away from the car. I don’t think it’s going to burst into flames but you never know.”
He phoned the police emergency number and demanded all the services fast: police, fire, and ambulance.
Then he phoned Jimmy Anderson’s mobile number and told a sleepy Jimmy all about the girl at the book signing and the attack on them. “Get the Edinburgh police to check immediately on Scots Entertainment and find that girl, Sonia,” said Hamish. “Someone tried to kill us.”
“Saw you on the telly at the awards hugging Angela. You sure it wasn’t Dr. Brodie?”
“He’s in bed sick and why would it be him?”
“There was talk about the book. Seems your pal has written about a highland policeman rogering the doctor’s wife.”
“Drop it, Jimmy. I swear to God it’s one of those four bastards. Any sign of Stefan Loncar?”
“Not a one. His permit was about to run out so we think he may have gone into hiding.”
“I think you should be looking for a body,” said Hamish.
Hamish rang off when he heard sirens in the distance. First on the scene was the Lairg volunteer fire brigade. Hamish told them to leave the car where it was, as the Scenes Of Crimes Operatives would need to examine the whole place first. He was just about to ask them to take Angela to hospital when two police cars arrived and then a mountain rescue helicopter. Hamish insisted that Angela go to hospital as she was now feeling sick and was plainly in a state of shock. After she had been borne off, he made a full statement to the police and asked to be driven to Lochdubh. The scene was suddenly floodlit as a television team arrived.
Oh, the magic of television, thought Hamish bitterly as some of the police began obviously posing for the camera. He was glad to see the formidable figure of Police Inspector Mary Benson climbing out of the car. She shouted at the television crew to get back up on the road and stop compromising a crime scene or she would have them all arrested.
Hamish had to tell his story all over again. “And how come you recognised this girl and how did you know she worked for Scots Entertainment?”
Cautiously, Hamish explained that he had been escorting Angela to her publisher and he decided to pass the time by interviewing the neighbours in a close in the Canongate where Betty Close might have been last seen. The one neighbour in the flat under where a prostitute had been murdered had said he worked for Scots Entertainment so he had gone to have a look at their offices and it was there that he had seen Sonia.
“I can’t understand all this and what led you to think that the death of a prostitute in an Edinburgh tenement should have anything to do with the murder of Captain Davenport. Give me a full report tomorrow.”
After she had read the news bulletin the next day, Elspeth went to her dressing room. What on earth was Hamish Macbeth doing? Was he having an affair with Angela? They had always been very close. Surely not. The door of her dressing room opened, and her boss walked in. “You’d best get up to Lochdubh,” he said. “You know this copper. Great stuff.”
“It’s hardly a great Hollywood-type scandal,” protested Elspeth.
“Come on. Madame Bovary in a wee highland village? Get going.”
Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, sitting at her computer desk in a London office, got a call from her father. “Heard the latest about Hamish Macbeth?” he demanded and, without waiting for her reply, gave her a highly embroidered account of the scandal, ending with, “It was the best thing that ever happened when you broke off your engagement to Macbeth.”
“He broke it off,” protested Priscilla.
“Thank goodness you’re well out of it,” remarked her father.
Hamish was ordered by Daviot to stay locked inside his police station until headquarters drafted out a statement to defuse the scandal. Still shocked after the accident, Hamish stayed in bed, only rousing himself when he heard Jimmy’s voice on his answering machine saying he was outside the police station door.
Hamish let him in and slammed the door in the faces of the press.
“You look like shit,” he said cheerfully, “but things are moving. Edinburgh police said the offices of Scots Entertainment were closed down. The man you took a photo of had been identified as Nick Duke, a villain who now seems to have disappeared. They raided the offices of Scots Entertainment and found it was a front for a brothel, but no girls were to be found and the safe was empty. That chap John Dean, who lived under where yon prostitute was killed, has vanished as well.”
“Not much farther forward,” said Hamish gloomily.
“It showed you were right. It all ties together. So what the hell have you been up to?”
“Nothing. Angela’s a dear friend. I could wring her neck for landing me in this mess.”
“Cheer up. There’s good news.”
“I could do with some.”
“Angela Brodie woke up in the Raigmore Hospital in Inverness and who does she find sitting by her bed but Blair.”
“What?”
