Death of a Charming Man

∨ Death of a Charming Man ∧

6

He gave way to the queer, savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a husband twenty years’ married, when he sees, across the table, the same face of his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing it, so must he continue to sit until the day of its death or his I own.

—Rudyard Kipling

Hamish arrived in Inverness in a sour mood. Priscilla had failed to turn up the previous evening and he had been too proud to phone her. “A fine friend she is,” he muttered to himself, forgetting that friends are one thing and people with whom one is emotionally involved quite something else. He would simply have phoned a friend and said, “Where the hell are you?”

An autumn chill was making the smoky Inverness air feel raw. He parked at the station and walked round to the Castle Wynd. Inverness as usual was packed with shoppers. Britain might be lurching along the bottom of a deep recession, but there was little evidence of it in Inverness. Seagulls wheeled overhead as shoppers crammed the pavements. He found the lawyers’ brass plate and went up an old staircase of shallow stone stairs flanked by an iron-and-wood banister with brass spikes on the top, no doubt to stop happy clients from sliding down them. He went into the hush of a Victorian office. Gloomy light filtered through the grimy windows. A tired-looking girl sat at a large wooden desk doing something with her nails.

“Police,” said Hamish. “I want to see one of the lawyers.”

She rose and went to an oak door, rapped on it, and put her head around it. “Polis to see you, Mr. Brand.” There was a mumbled answer and she jerked her head at Hamish. “You’re to go in.”

Hamish reflected that it was the lawyers, not the police, who were getting younger these days. Mr. Brand was a slight young man with thick wavy hair and an ingenuous face. He was holding a collie pup on his lap when Hamish entered. He rose and put the dog in a basket in the corner of the room. “Great little fellow,” he said. “Very good for the battered wives. Puts them at ease. Now how can I help you, Sergeant?”

Hamish explained about Peter Hynd and asked if he had signed the papers. “Yes, a delightful man. I gather from the estate agents that they might have a buyer already. Odd, that, with castles and mansions going for a song these days, and then a run-down croft house with unfinished drains comes on the market and it’s snapped up.”

“What did he look like?” asked Hamish.

“Good-looking fellow. Fair. English. Upper class. Why all the questions?”

“I just wondered if it might have been someone impersonating him,” said Hamish, although, from the description he wondered who on earth it could be. Neither Jock Kennedy nor Harry Baxter, say, could have been labelled either fair, English, or upper class by any stretch of the imagination. “I shouldn’t think so. I mean, when the money comes through, it’s to be paid into his bank in London. The City and London Bank in New Bond Street. What makes you think someone might have been impersonating him?”

“He had caused a lot of ill feeling in the village of Prim and then he disappeared, and no one seems to have seen him go. He left a note with Jock Kennedy at the general store and he had been involved in a fight with Kennedy. The minister would have been a more believable choice. But if, as you say, he signed the papers…”

“Well, we can easily check that. I’ll fax his signature to his bank and ask for confirmation.”

Hamish, looking around the dusty, gloomy old–fashioned office, was amazed that it contained such a modern item as a fax machine, but Mr. Brand went to a file and brought out the papers. “There’s his signature…there and there. I’ll take this sheet and get Jenny out there to send it with a wee note. Care for a dram while we’re waiting? I’ve got to walk the dog.”

Jenny having been given her instructions, they went to a bar in the Castle Wynd and drank whisky and chatted amiably about various cases. “Drink up,” said Mr. Brand at last, “Should be a reply by now.”

They went back to the office, where the laconic Jenny produced a fax from the bank confirming the fact that the signature was genuine. Hamish felt he should have been pleased and relieved that Peter Hynd was obviously alive and kicking, but he felt strangely let down. He went back out into the street and stood irresolute.

“Hullo there!” He found Sophy Bisset smiling up at him.

“What brings you to Inverness?” asked Hamish.

“I had to go to the dentist. Had the most awful toothache,” said Sophy. “What about you?”

Hamish remembered walking into the hotel reception with Priscilla and telling her where he was going while Sophy had leaned on the reception desk, listening to every word, but he said briefly be had been investigating something.

“I was thinking of making a day of it and having lunch and going to a movie,” said Sophy. “Care to join me?”

Hamish hesitated. He had not told Strathbane he was going to Inverness, but he was hardly ever called on the car radio and he had left the answering machine switched on at the police station.

He was suddenly weary of the awkward situation with Priscilla. “All right,” he said.

They had lunch in a self-service restaurant and then went round to the small cinema. The film, Blood and Lust, was violent and pornographic. There was nothing, reflected Hamish, like a really pornographic film for making a man feel that celibacy was a good idea. Who liked watching other people making love, apart from perverts? He voiced this thought aloud to Sophy, who burst out laughing and told him he belonged in the Dark Ages. But Hamish felt jaded and grimy. It transpired that Sophy had arrived by bus and train, so he politely offered her a lift home although he longed to be by himself.

As he drove out of Inverness, he switched on the police radio. The crackling voices reminded him of his professional status and he was aware that he should not have been carrying a passenger. Then he heard his own name. A peremptory voice told him to get over to Drim, where a death had been reported.

Cursing, he switched on the siren and headed for the Struie Pass and hurtled over the hairpin bends and down into Sutherland. At Bonar Bridge he saw the local bus, which would eventually call at Lochdubh, and skidded to a halt. “You’ll need to take the bus, Sophy,” he said. “I’m going to be in trouble as it is.”

Again she kissed him on the cheek and Hamish was aware of watching eyes from the bus as he recognized the startled faces of the Currie sisters.

He swung off on the road that would take him over the hills to Drim.

O Village of Death, was his nought as he drove down and saw the huddle of villagers by the black loch, the forensic men in their boiler suits, the flashing blue lights of the police cars.

“Where the fuck were you, laddie?” demanded Blair when Hamish walked up. Hamish briefly explained about Peter Hynd.

“You had no right to go off yer patch an no’ give us a report,” howled Blair. “Start by asking some of these yokels if they know anything.”

Hamish turned his back on him and said to Blair’s sidekick, Jimmy Anderson, “Who’s dead?”

“Betty Baxter.”

“Where’s the child, Heather?”

“Being looked after at the manse. Mrs. Baxter was found face-down beside the loch, behind that clump of rock. It could be an accident. It looks as if she might have tripped and fallen so hard that she broke her neck.”

Hamish walked forward. The tent which had shielded the body had been taken away. The pathologist was stripping off his gloves and packing his bag. A police photographer was taking shots of the body.

Betty Baxter lay in an ungainly pose, diminished by death. Hamish noticed that her hair had been recently blonded, no dark roots, and that she was wearing those silly high heels.

“Accident?” he asked the pathologist.

He shook his head slowly. “I’ll have a better idea when I get the body back to the mortuary.” He bent over the body. “See here, she’s got a huge bruise on her forehead. Looks at first as if she tripped on those silly heels and fell heavily. She’s a big woman. But here at the back of the neck there’s a big bruise under the hair. Someone came up behind her and struck her hard, a powerful blow with something like a blackjack or lead pipe.”

“A man?”

“A woman could have done it with the right weapon.”

Hamish walked back to Jimmy Anderson. “No clues?”

“None so far. Ye cannae get footprints from the pebbles on thon beach.”

“What about the husband, Harry?”

“No time of death yet. But he was out at the fishing all night, and then this morning, which is when it was guessed she was killed, Harry was in the bar at Lochdubh, seen by God knows how many of your neighbours. We’ve been over to Lochdubh. Blair’s setting up interviews in the community hall. What do you know about the situation here, Hamish?”

Hamish rapidly told him about his seemingly unfounded suspicions about the absent Peter Hynd.

“Well, he cannae be a suspect,” said Anderson, “for no one’s seen hide nor hair of him since he left that note with Jock.”

“How do you know about the note he left with Jock?”

“I asked around if there had been any trouble in the village and some fellow told me that this Hynd and Jock had had a fight.” Blair called Anderson sharply.

Both men, followed by Blair’s other sidekick, MacNab, and several policemen, headed off to the community hall.

Hamish walked along to the manse. Annie Duncan answered the door. “I don’t want Heather pestered,” she said quickly. “Just a few words,” said Hamish soothingly. “Where’s Harry?”

“I gather her father is at home. Could you not leave it to another day? I don’t think Heather is up to this.”

The small figure of Heather materialized at Annie’s elbow. “I will speak to Mr. Macbeth,” she said.

Annie reluctantly stood back and Hamish followed them into the kitchen. Heather sat down at the table and Hamish sat opposite her. Annie stood behind the little girl, her hands on her shoulders.

“Do you know when your mother went out?” asked Hamish.

“I got up at seven,” said Heather, “and she’d left me a note on the kitchen table to say she had gone out and to get myself ready for school.”

“Have you got that note?”

“I threw it away.”

“Can you think of any reason why she might have gone out?”

Heather’s grey eyes surveyed him thoughtfully and then she said, “Yesterday morning, before Da came home, she got a phone call. I couldna’ hear what she said. But she went straight to the hairdresser. She neffer went to the hairdresser for my da.”

For a moment it was almost as if Peter Hynd were in the kitchen with them, his eyes dancing with mockery.

“Did you tell the other policemen this?”

“Thon big fat scunner came tae ask me questions. I didn’t like him so I told him nothing.” Heather got up from the table. “Thank you, Mrs. Duncan. I’ll be off home now.”

Annie looked distressed. “But you must stay here. My husband will be home shortly and he will want a word with you.”

Heather suddenly looked as old as the hills. “To pray ower me? There is no God. Mr. Macbeth, perhaps you will come with me?”

“Yes,” said Hamish. He looked at Annie. “I think she will find out what’s best for herself.”

“My da will need me now,” said Heather. “I’ll get my stuff.”

“She is in shock,” said Annie, distressed. “If only she would break down and cry and get it over with. I feel so helpless.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” said Hamish. “I wonder if that was Peter Hynd on the phone. Had Betty been dressed up since he left?”

“No, like the rest of the women, she had begun to let herself go. But Mr. Hynd, Peter, was – is – a very sophisticated young man, and although it amused him to flirt with the village women, he would hardly creep back from wherever he’s gone to meet Betty Baxter. Nor would he murder her.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“He was too easygoing.”

“So who do you think did it?”

“It’s usually the husband, isn’t it?”

“But Harry Baxter evidently has a cast-iron alibi for the time of the murder.”

She gave a weary shrug, “It could yet turn out to be an unfortunate accident. Passions can run high in this village. But murder! Probably some mad hiker came across her.”

“And the phone call?”

“I would be careful about believing anything Heather says at the moment. She is in shock.”

At that moment Heather walked into the kitchen carrying a duffle bag over one thin shoulder. She and Hamish said goodbye to the minister’s wife and walked out and along the side of the loch, which lay black and silent and still. Then they cut off up the hill, both avoiding looking along the shore where the white suits of the forensic team gleamed in the twilight.

“Nights are drawing in,” said Hamish. “It seems to get verra dark all at once.”

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,

Every nighte and alle,

Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,

And Christe receive thy saule.

Her childish voice piping the words of the old Lyke-Wake Dirge gave Hamish a shudder. “Read much?” he asked.

“All the time,” said Heather. “Books are better’n people any day.”

“What have you read recently?”

“I read all Walter Scott’s novels this summer.”

Hamish was amazed to hear that anyone read Walter Scott’s novels in this day and age. “I’ll see if I can bring you over some books tomorrow,” he said.

At Harry Baxter’s house, there was a policeman on duty outside. “Harry home?” asked Hamish.

“Aye, he’s in there. Blair’s coming back to see him.”

Hamish and Heather went inside. Harry was slumped at the kitchen table, his face grey. A glass of whisky stood in front of him.

“That will not do, Da,” said Heather, dropping her bag to the floor. “Food and sweet tea is what you need.” She picked up the glass of whisky and tipped the contents down the sink.

Hamish sat down next to Harry. “Bad business,” he said.

Harry shook his head from side to side. “Who waud have done sich a thing?”

“You’ll need to brace up for Heather’s sake,” said Hamish.

“I’ll manage if you keep that bastard, Blair, away from me,” said Harry wearily.

Heather had put a frying-pan on the stove and was frying bacon and eggs.

There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” said Heather quickly.

Then they could hear Blair’s heavy voice, “I’m just going to have another word with your faither.”

“Begone!” said Heather. “This is a house of mourning and you are harassing and tormenting a poor child.”

“Aw, come on, it’s your da I want tae see.”

“I see the gentleman of the press have arrived,” came Heather’s voice, “and I will be telling them how you victimized a child of twelve!”

“Och, I’ll be back.” Blair’s voice, thick with disgust and anger. “Hamish Macbeth’s in there.”

“Mr. Macbeth is a friend.” Then came the slamming of the door. Heather returned sedately to the cooker and flipped the eggs.

“I think I’d better be going, Harry. You’d best get one of the women to help you with Heather.”

“I don’t need anyone,” said Heather, “Da and I are best left alone.”

Hamish went out, puzzled. He had never met anyone like Heather before. He wondered if Priscilla could make anything of her.

He decided that instead of going to the community hall to interview the villagers himself, he would start off with the hairdresser, Alice MacQueen, and find out if Betty had said anything. Alice MacQueen had already suffered being interviewed by Blair and it took Hamish some time to soothe her ruffled feathers. She was a faded woman with small features and a pinched mouth. Her dark-brown hair was worn in the old–fashioned chrysanthemum style she inflicted on her customers and highlighted with streaks of silver.

Her ‘shop’ was in her converted front-room and smelled of chemicals and hot hair. “What I am trying to find out from you, you being obviously a verra sensitive and noticing sort of lady, is if Betty Baxter, when she had her hair done, seemed any different from usual.”

“Well, she talked a lot, but then she always did.” Alice wrinkled her brow. “But she looked…triumphant. She looked as if there was some secret she was hugging. Maybe found herself another fellow.”

“Not Peter Hynd?”

She snorted. “Him? He’s long gone. Anyway, he wasn’t interested in Betty. She ran after him like a great cow.”

Hamish asked more questions and then gave up. The one satisfaction he had was that this murder investigation would lead to finding out where Peter Hynd was. Although he had left the village, the police would want to ask him if he had any idea who might have killed Betty.

He was about to go up to Jimmy Macleod’s house when Jimmy Anderson came running up just as Hamish was leaving the hairdresser’s. “Looks like an accident after all,” he said.

“What? What about that bruise on her neck?”

“Blair’s jist got that out o’ her man. That wee Heather tells Blair her father has something to say. Seems Harry skelped her one with a half-frozen cod on the back of the neck yesterday when he saw she’d been back to the hairdresser to get blonded.”

“But what broke her neck then?”

“It was a freak accident. It was the way she fell among the rocks. She’s got a broken arm as well. Pathologist made a second examination before they took the body away.”

“Has he gone? I want a word with him.”

“He’s gone and everyone else is packing up.”

“Just like that? Okay, so Harry hit her with a cod, but couldn’t someone have pushed her – deliberately pushed her hard onto the rocks?”

“No use trying to talk me into seeing it as murder. I jist want tae get to the pub afore they close. Try Blair.”

“Have better success talking to Harry’s cod.”

Hamish went up to the row of police cars; Blair was laughing uproariously at something one of the policewomen lad said. His piggy eyes fastened on Hamish and he scowled. “Jist as well it was an accident, Hamish, or there’d be an inquiry about why ye were neglecting your duties and had the radio switched off.”

“You mean like Donan’s inquiry?”

“None of your lip!”

“Look,” said Hamish earnestly, “why are you all so eager to accept the diagnosis of accident? The woman was obviously going to meet someone. She had a phone call, she got her hair bleached, and she was all dressed up.”

“Och, who can tell what goes on in the crazy minds of these teuchters,” said Blair, who hailed from Glasgow and considered all Highlanders barbarians. “I’m telling ye, it was an accident plain and simple.”

“At least find out where Peter Hynd went and ask him some questions.”

“The case is closed. It’s different fur you layabouts. We’ve got murder and mayhem daily in Strathbane.”

Hamish made a disgusted sound and went back to the Baxters’ house. The press had gone, the policeman had gone. He knocked at the door. It was opened a crack and Heather’s grey eyes peered out. She saw Hamish and opened the door wide. “Da’s gone to bed,” she said.

“Heather, I don’t want to distress you further, but what’s all this about your father hitting your mother with a codfish?”

“It wass yesterday,” she said in a singsong voice, and he was forcibly reminded of a good child reciting poetry at a school function. “She wass standing by the cooker and they had a quarrel. That’s when it happened.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Da thought he would get into trouble, but I told him it wass better to tell the truth.”

Hamish eyed her narrowly. “You wouldn’t make up a story to protect your father, would you, Heather, and find you were protecting a murderer instead?”

“I don’t lie,” she said fiercely.

Hamish went back to the police Land Rover and sat in it, moodily staring down at the loch. He felt that if he did not investigate this case further, it would nag at him until the day he died. Yes, he was lazy, but the taking of human life was the ultimate crime and he could not believe Betty’s death had been an accident.

He was due a three weeks’ holiday. His bank account was showing a modest sum of money. He had planned to take Priscilla on holiday. He struck the steering wheel. But what would the fair Priscilla say when he asked her? What would she think as a vision of the intimacy of a hotel bedroom rose in her cold mind? But he made up his mind. He would drive back and ask her. If she refused, then he would use the holiday to find Peter Hynd.

He drove out of Drim and straight to the Tommel Castle Hotel. There had been a special reception and dinner for the new guests. When he went in, they were in the bar, Priscilla among them in a flame-coloured silk dress, laughing and talking with two of the men. The men were worldly, expensive-and sophisticated-looking in their evening dress. He felt suddenly gawky and ill at ease. Priscilla looked up and saw him, and the laughter left her face and her eyes took on a guarded look. She walked up to him. “Hamish?”

“Can we talk?”

“I’m very busy,” she said coolly. “Oh, come into the office.”

They walked into the hotel office. “Now, Hamish,” said Priscilla briskly.

“It iss not the business meeting,” retorted Hamish huffily. “I’ve decided to take a three weeks’ holiday, and I thought we could just pack up and go somewhere.”

“Just like that?”

“Why not?”

“What were you doing driving Sophy Bisset back from Inverness? And I gather you had a splendid time having lunch and going to watch a dirty movie.”

“Priscilla, I told you I was going to Inverness. I happened to run into Sophy, that was all. Then I heard about the death at Drim and dropped her at the bus stop at Bonar Bridge. No doubt the Currie sisters reported it all.”

“Not to mention Sophy herself.”

“I’m telling you, there wass nothing to it.” His Highland accent was becoming more sibilant, a sign that he was upset. “Let’s not quarrel. Let’s talk about this holiday.”

“I cannot possibly go off on holiday now. We are too busy.”

“Priscilla, you’ll need to chuck the hotel work when we’re married.”

“Why? We’ll need the money,” she said brutally. “Have you any idea what a dress like this costs?” Priscilla knew she was behaving badly, and like most hurt people was taking a vindictive pleasure in it. “When we are married, if we are married, then I shall get Pa to pay me a salary. I do the work of two, sometimes more. Then there’s the gift shop to run.”

“I have no intention of living off my wife’s earnings,” said Hamish stiffly.

“Why am I so different?” she asked sweetly. “You mooch off everyone else in Lochdubh.”

He looked at her with sudden hatred. “You,” he said evenly, “are a thoroughly nasty bitch!”

Hamish turned on his heel and walked out.

Priscilla stood for a long moment after he had gone and then sat down at the desk and burst into tears.

♦

“Hamish! Hamish!” He turned round in the car-park. Sophy came running towards him. “Everything all right?” she asked. He looked at her with loathing. “Go and jump in the loch,” he said rudely. “Women! They should all be strangled at birth!”

He climbed into the Land Rover and drove off, gravel spurting out from under his wheels.

It was only when he was back in his own kitchen with only the company of Towser that he began to calm down. He could not go over and over what Priscilla had said, picking away at the hurt like a scab. In the morning he would go to Strathbane and make arrangements for his holiday.

And then he would set out to find Peter Hynd.

♦

He went down to Strathbane the next day and obtained permission to take leave. Sergeant Macgregor over at Cnothan would cover Hamish’s beat as well as his own. That finished, Hamish returned to Lochdubh, collected Towser and took the dog over to his parents’ home in Rogart, where he shrugged off questions about his wedding date with, he thought, very clever answers. His mother sadly watched him driving off and said to her husband, “I don’t think our Hamish is going to marry Priscilla or anyone. He always was a picky boy.”

Hamish then returned to Lochdubh and arranged with a neighbour to take care of his hens and sheep. He had already made up his mind to go to London and see if he could trace the origins of Peter Hynd. First he would need some money. As he walked to the bank, he suddenly realized that Peter Hynd must have had some local bank he drew money from. There was no bank in Drim.

He walked in and asked to see the bank manager, a new man called Ian Donaldson. He had to wait twenty minutes.

The recession had reached the north of Scotland in that the banks were calling in loans and managers were besieged by furious customers.

The bank manager rose to meet him. “Well, Macbeth, I hope you havenae come for a loan, for I amn’t giving any.”

“Nothing like that,” said Hamish, “That young chap, Peter Hynd, him that was over at Drim. Did he use this bank?”

“Aye, from time to time.”

“Had an arrangement with you?”

“Nothing like that. Just cashed the odd cheque for fifty pounds and paid the fee. So much plastic around these days, people don’t need cash in hand like they used to.”

“Got any of those cheques?”

“No, he hasn’t been in here for a few weeks, so the cheques will have already been sent on to his own bank in New Bond Street. Why? He isn’t a criminal, is he?”

“Just following tip some inquiries,” said Hamish.

He drew out money and then hesitated outside the bank. It was a glorious early-autumn day. The heather had settled down to a rusty colour and the rowan-trees were heavy with scarlet berries. The fishing boats were mirrored in the loch. Smoke rose in straight lines from chimneys. The air was full of homely noises: women calling to each other as they hung out the washing, snatches of radio, the grinding of a rusty winch down at the harbour, the chanting voices of the children in the schoolroom reciting the multiplication table.

As he surveyed the scene, he had a longing to forget about useless Peter Hynd and stay in Lochdubh and laze the days away, get in a bit of fishing, read, and watch television. But as he viewed the loch, a pleasure launch came into view, the Tommel Castle Hotel’s latest acquisition. It was full of guests and he could make out Priscilla’s blonde hair.

With a little sigh, he went back to the police station and began to pack.

♦

His cousin, Rory Grant, a reporter on a national daily newspaper, was not amused to find Hamish complete with suitcase on his doorstep. “This isn’t a hotel, Hamish,” he said. “I could have had a woman here.”

“But you haven’t,” said the unrepentant Hamish, walking in and putting his suitcase in the middle of the floor. “I’m only here for a wee bit, and if you’re any help to me, I’ll let you in on a good story.”

“Like what?”

Hamish told him about Peter Hynd.

“Sounds a bit far-fetched to me,” said Rory. “If you want free board, just say so.”

“No, I mean it. I really want to find him.”

“Okay, your room’s through here. Look, I think I’m on to a sure thing tonight, Hamish. There’s this woman reporter on the Sun…well, you know how it is. I’m taking her out for dinner and I think I might score. We’re going to a restaurant in South Ken, Bernie’s Bistro. I’ve got to go into the office, so I’ll see if there’s anything on Peter Hynd on file. If you drop in at the restaurant at eight, say, I’ll give you anything I’ve got, but don’t stay, for heaven’s sake. Take yourself off and get some fish and chips or something.”

“I’ll do that,” said Hamish, suddenly feeling more cheerful. “I’ll start off at his bank in New Bond Street.”

“How’s Priscilla?”

“Chust fine.”

“Did well for yourself, Hamish. Wish I could marry into a rich family.”

Hamish paused in the act of opening his suitcase. “I haff no intention of using my wife’s money or her family’s money.”

“Ballocks. Get real, as our American cousins say. Wake up and smell the coffee. Victorian values don’t apply in a recession. I’m telling you, if I get a rich wife, I’ll chuck reporting and sit on my bum pretending to write the great novel while wifie pays the bills without one qualm of conscience.”

“Aye, well, London’s corrupted you. I will do fine if you want to get off.”

“I’ll get your door keys first,” said Rory. “You know where everything is. Don’t forget, Bernie’s Bistro. Come out of South Ken tube, turn right, and it’s a few yards along once you cross the intersection.”

“I’ll find it. And thanks, Rory.”

Rory grinned and with his lanky figure and red hair suddenly looked very much like Hamish. He waved and went out. Hamish hung away his clothes and, still feeling stiff and groggy after a night on the train, went out into the streets of Kensington. Rory’s flat was in a converted building right on the Gloucester Road. The day was crisp and fine and he decided to walk to Bond Street through Kensington Gardens, then Hyde Park, and so along Piccadilly and down Bond Street.

He felt more relaxed than he had for some time.

The hunt for Peter Hynd Bad begun in earnest.