Death of a Macho Man

∨ Death of a Macho Man ∧

7

Do you think my mind has matured late,

Or simply rotted early?

—Ogden Nash

When Hamish finally got home to his police station, the rain had retun to a damp drizzle. He was immensely tired but he wanted to get in touch with Rosie’s agent before Blair did and he remembered that there had been a home phone number on the card Rosie had given him. Blair could not complain when he found out because he had said Hamish was now officially on the case.

He found the card and went into the police office and pulled the phone towards him. He dialled the home number. The agent’s name was Harriet Simmonds. It rang for a long time and then a sleepy voice answered.

“Miss Simmonds,” began Hamish. “This is the police in Lochdubh, Sutherland. I am afraid I have bad news about your author, Rosie Draly.”

“What? How?” demanded Miss Simmonds. And then, by the sharpening of her voice, he realized she had come fully awake. “Come again,” she said. “You are the police? From Lochdubh? That’s where Rosie lives.”

“Lived,” corrected Hamish gently. “She has been murdered.”

“Murdered? Is this some bad joke? Who are you?”

“My name is Hamish Macbeth, and I am the police constable in Lochdubh. If you do not believe me, I will give you a number to call back.” As he said it, he realized it was a bit silly, because there was only he himself.

“No, no,” said Miss Simmonds, “I’ve got myself together now. It’s the shock. Rosie. Murdered! Why would anyone murder Rosie? How was she murdered?”

“Someone, we don’t know who yet, stuck a knife in her back.”

“Good God! I was expecting to see her today.”

“There is another thing,” said Hamish. “Did she tell you that there had been a murder here?”

“Yes, she did. She said it was interesting because she was going to write a detective story. I tried to dissuade her.”

“Why?”

“It’s a crowded market. I suppose they all are. She was competent, but I didn’t think she could do it. But she said it would be faction.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where an author takes a real-life story and fictionalizes it.”

“The trouble is,” said Hamish, “I think that’s what caused her death. Her discs and papers have been burnt, or rather, there’s evidence of that, and I think the murderer was destroying her evidence. Did she tell you anything about it?”

“No, but she was going to…today. I told her if she knew anything, she should tell the police. But she said it was her chance to make big money. She was tired of being a library author and earning peanuts.”

“What’s a library author?”

“It’s a writer who is well liked enough but never a bestseller. The books are bought by the libraries but hardly ever bought by the bookshops. Do you know there are a legion of writers in this country who never actually see their books on sale? And she was desperate for money.”

“Was she in trouble? In debt?”

“No, but she felt very frustrated every time she read about some writer making a fortune. She wanted to travel. I’m her fourth agent. You see, at first she blamed the agent for her lack of success. I mean, she was always published, but she didn’t earn much. She was always trying to bandwagon.”

“You’ll need to explain that as well.”

“If a certain genre became fashionable – science fiction, spy, the occult, World War Two, that sort of thing – Rosie would try to write whatever she thought would hit the big time. Now when even a competent author tries to write in a field that first of all they haven’t read much of and it isn’t their thing, the writing becomes very bad indeed. That’s what happened to Rosie. But she worked so hard! Always trying. She was so excited about this detective story.”

“I cannae envisage Rosie Draly getting excited about anything,” said Hamish. “She seemed so self-contained, almost colourless.”

“I suppose I’m the only person she ever talked to. She never referred to any friends.”

“Family? Lovers?”

“No lovers. She has a sister. I have the name and address.”

“Can you give it to me? She’ll need to be informed.”

“Wait a moment.”

After a few minutes she came back to the phone. “It’s a Mrs. Beck, 12 Jubilee Lane, Willesden.”

“Any phone number?”

“I don’t have that. But the police down here will no doubt get it.”

“Miss Simmonds, if there is anything you can think of, anything at all, that Rosie might have said about her life up here that might give us a clue to her murder, please let us know.”

“I will, of course. But Rosie liked secrets. Not that she ever seemed to have anything to be secretive about, but that’s the impression I got.”

“Did you like her?”

There was a startled silence and then she said cautiously, “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead…”

“Oh, please do,” urged Hamish.

“Well, I didn’t like her, and that’s a fact. She had a way of watching me out of the corner of her eye, as if seeing something in me that caused amused contempt. It rattled me. She also kept implying, without actually putting it into exact words, that I was a failure as an agent, although after her failures with her previous agents she must have known that wasn’t true. I feel awful talking about her like this. It seems such a lurid death. What kind of knife?”

“An ordinary big kitchen knife.”

“Oh, poor Rosie! It might at least have been a mysterious South American dagger or something. Still, I suppose the press will all be there and she’ll get the publicity she always craved, but hardly in a way she ever dreamt of getting it. Give me your number. I promise to call you if I think of anything.”

“There’s just one more thing. Rosie had been chatting up the locals for a bit of colour. Two of them seem to have been quite entranced with her.”

“You lot must be stuck for women up there. I am being bitchy. Sorry. But I swear to God, Rosie wasn’t interested in men. I always thought she was a lesbian.”

“Now there’s something. Anything concrete on that?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid. Just an impression. I used to spend as little time with Rosie as was decently possible.”

Hamish felt he had got as much out of her as he possibly could for the time being. He said goodbye and rang off. Then he sat down to type out a statement of what she had said. He had just finished and was looking forward to going to bed when there was a knock at the kitchen door. He went through and answered it.

Betty John stood there, her large black eyes gleaming with excitement. “What a thrilling place this has turned out to be!” she said. “Another murder. Tell me about it.”

“I can’t now,” said Hamish. “I’ve been up all night and now I’m going to bed.”

She pouted. “I was hoping for a cup of coffee.”

“There’s instant in the kitchen. Help yourself, but chust let me go to bed. I’m weary.”

He went into the bathroom, stripped off and washed down, put on his pyjamas, and then, stretching and yawning, went through to his bedroom and climbed into bed. What had Rosie found out? he wondered sleepily. The silly woman must have found out something from Randy. Randy’s plastic surgery pointed to a high-level criminal. He dozed off. Then he awoke with a start. Someone was in the bed with him, someone’s body was pressed against his own. He twisted round on the pillow and found himself looking straight into the lecherous black eyes of Betty John.

“For heffen’s sakes, woman,” groaned Hamish. “What do you think you are doing?”

“This,” she said with a throaty laugh, and her hands became busy under the bedclothes.

Hamish was half drugged with sleep, but he had been celibate a long time. Making love to Betty John seemed part of an exotic dream. When he finally fell completely asleep, she buried her head on his chest and fell asleep as well.

♦

Priscilla headed down to the police station at lunch-time with a basket of food from the hotel kitchen beside her on the seat. She was surprised that she had recovered so quickly from the sight of Rosie’s dead body, but reflected that had Rosie been blasted to death or battered to death, it would have taken her considerably longer to get over it. There had been something so unreal, so theatrical, about that naked body with the knife sticking out of its back.

She planned to make Hamish lunch and discuss the case. As she parked the car and climbed out, she was hailed by the Currie sisters, Nessie and Jessie, and then immediately joined by Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife. While the spinster sisters exclaimed about the murder and wondered volubly what had happened to the normally tranquil life of the Scottish Highlands, Mrs. Wellington boomed, “I want to see Hamish Macbeth and find out just what he is doing about this. This place is getting like New York!”

“He’s probably very tired,” said Priscilla. “He was up all night.”

“It’s his job to be up all night,” said Mrs. Wellington, marching towards the kitchen door, which stood open. The Currie sisters followed, glasses gleaming, rigidly permed hair shining with raindrops. Priscilla reluctantly followed.

Mrs. Wellington looked around the kitchen and then went through to the police office. “Still in bed, the lazy man,”she snorted. “Time he was up.”

She pushed open the bedroom door and then let out a squawk of horror. The Currie sisters peered around her tweedy bulk and Priscilla, taller than the rest, looked over them. The naked bodies of Hamish Macbeth and Betty John lay tangled on the bed.

Hamish awoke, as if conscious of all the horrified stares directed at him. “Get out of here!” he shouted.

“Disgraceful,” said the sisters in unison. They looked absolutely delighted.

The women retreated to the kitchen. “That man is not only immoral, he is amoral, Priscilla,” said Mrs. Wellington. “Priscilla?”

But the slamming of the kitchen door was the only reply.

♦

Hamish, in a most unloverlike way, told Betty to get lost. She took it with good humour, unselfconsciously pulling her discarded clothes over her sturdy, naked body. When she had left he turned his face into the pillow and groaned aloud. What a disgrace! That he had been found in bed with Betty would be all over Lochdubh. He waited until he heard Mrs. Wellington and the Currie sisters, exclaiming their way out of the police station. And Priscilla! What did that chilly lassie expect him to do? Live like a monk?

He gloomily took a scalding bath, reflecting that he was behaving like a girl who had just lost her virginity.

He had just dressed in his uniform when Jimmy Anderson arrived. “How’s the Don Joon o’ the hills?” he greeted Hamish, a leer on his foxy features.

“You heard already?”

“Man, if you stick your nose out o’ the police-station door, you’ll see wee groups of people all along the waterfront and they’re talking about nothing else.”

“Damn this place,” said Hamish savagely. “There’s been two brutal murders and all they’ve got to gossip about is my private life!”

“Well, next time, lock your doors. Blair wants your report and your presence.”

“He’ll get both. Where is he?”

“Up at the mobile unit. Any whisky?”

“How you can drink at this time of day beats me.”

“Come on, Hamish. The sun is over the poop deck, or whatever.”

“You know where the bottle is. Help yourself.” Jimmy scurried off into the police office, rubbing his hands. Hamish followed him in. “And don’t take all day about it.”

Jimmy took bottle and glass out of the bottom drawer and examined the bottle with a critical eye. “Getting low,” he commented, pouring a large slug. “You’ll need to get more.”

“I’ll see,” said Hamish. “So what’s the latest on Rosie?”

“Dead. Knife in the back. Won’t know about chloral hydrate till the results of the autopsy are through, but she certainly didn’t have a peaceful expression on her face when she died.”

“And what’s happening down in Glasgow, for God’s sake? They’re looking through the mug shots, aren’t they?”

“Sure. But the man had plastic surgery and we’re pretty sure he changed his name.”

“I would like to get down there and hae a look myself.”

“Blair won’t let you go and you must have run out of fictitious dead relatives.”

“I’ll think of something. You’ve just finished that bottle, so why don’t you go off and keep Blair quiet while I see what I can dig up.”

When Jimmy had left, Hamish plugged in the electric kettle and made himself a quick cup of coffee. He took a mouthful of it and shuddered. It was called Kenyan Delight and was being sold very cheaply at Patel’s. Now he knew why it was being sold cheaply. He poured the rest down the sink. His stomach rumbled but he could not face the idea of making anything to eat. He straightened his peaked cap, braced his thin shoulders, and marched out to face the population of Lochdubh.

To his amazement and relief the waterfront was deserted, apart from a harassed tourist mother dragging along a screaming child and shouting, “I brung you here tae enjoy yourself, and enjoy yourself you will!”

Amazing, thought Hamish. Parents always say the same stupid things. He stopped by the woman and said mildly, “Don’t be too hard on the wean, missis. It’s all this rain.”

“I wish I’d gone tae Spain,” said the woman. She was fat and blowsy, with raindrops shining in the black roots of her bleached hair. Hamish crouched down in front of the screaming child, a small boy with a red nose and streaming eyes. The child stopped screaming and stared at him. “Now, laddie,” said Hamish, “what’s the matter? You can tell me. I’m the police and you’ve got to tell me the truth.”

“I’ve peed my pants,” said the boy dismally, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“Why didn’t you tell your ma?”

“She’d wallop me.”

Hamish straightened up and looked at the woman severely. “You heard that,” he said, “and you will not be hitting the boy.”

The woman looked frightened. “Och, you’ll no’ be reporting me to the Social.”

“Take him away and let him get changed.” Hamish fished a fifty-pee piece out of his pocket. “Here, laddie, buy yourself an ice-cream.”

He stood and watched them as they went off, the woman now cooing affectionately to her small son and flashing nervous little smiles back at Hamish.

He walked along, turning over the names of the suspects in his head. He decided to have another talk to Annie Ferguson.

She greeted him with, “Oh, Hamish. It’s yourself. I don’t think you should come here. I shouldn’t be seen talking to you.”

“Why?” he demanded crossly.

“I’ve my reputation to consider, and after what you’ve been up to – ”

“Look here,” said Hamish furiously, “I am here officially on a murder inquiry, and everyone in the village knows that.”

“Everyone in the village knows something else about you now,” said Annie with a flash of pure Highland malice. “Och, come ben.”

He went into her parlour, took off his cap, placed it on the coffee-table and sat down. She sat down opposite him, tugging her skirt firmly over her sturdy knees in case the sight of them would drive this lecherous policeman into some mad act of passion.

“Now,” began Hamish, “I want you to think carefully about any conversation you had with Randy. Did he mention anywhere in the States in particular?”

“I think he seemed to have been just about everywhere. New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, places like that.”

“Did he mention friends, any he might have known?”

She shook her head. “We didn’t talk much,” she said with a sudden roguish look, quite awful to behold.

“Did you know he had had plastic surgery?”

Her amazement looked genuine.

“Why would he do that? I mean, it’s the women who go in for that. Although you wouldn’t catch me getting any of that.”

“We believe he was a criminal who had gone to great lengths to conceal his real identity.”

“A criminal! Oh, you must be mistaken. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with anyone like that!”

“But you didn’t know he was a criminal,” said Hamish patiently.

“And you don’t either. You’re just clutching at straws.”

“Annie, try to be a bit less defensive. Think. What money did he have?”

“He always had wads of the stuff,” said Annie. “You must have heard that. And he was always flashing it about in the bar.”

Hamish asked her several more questions but could learn nothing of importance. He left and went up to the mobile unit and read the reports. The whole wrestling fraternity of America and Britain had been rigorously interviewed without success. Police artists in Glasgow were working on pictures of what Randy might have looked like before plastic surgery. Rosie’s sister, Mrs. Beck, had been contacted and was travelling up to Lochdubh. The rain was still falling, and through the smeared and misted-up windows of the mobile home, Hamish could see groups of pressmen huddled together. Some tourists were also standing about, as if waiting for another murder to happen to enliven the tedium of a rain soaked Scottish holiday.

Mrs. Beck, he learned, was due to arrive from Inverness around five o’clock. She would be staying in Mrs. McCartney’s bed and breakfast in the village. Blair was all set to interview her and Hamish wanted to be present at that interview. He knew that if he asked Blair he would be sent about his business and so he decided to wait until she arrived and just turn up.

He left and went to question Archie Maclean, Geordie Mackenzie, and then the barman, Pete Queen. The trouble turned out to be that all had accepted Randy’s hospitality without paying any attention to what he had said. Randy had arrived among them, Randy had bragged, Randy had been murdered, and that was the end of it. When he returned to the police station, bending his bead against the now wind-driven rain, he felt tired and dirty and miserable. He wanted to phone Priscilla and explain how he had happened to be in bed with Betty, but could think of no explanation which would appeal in any way.

He felt, too, that he ought, as a Highland gentleman should, to phone Betty. Although she had taken it well, there had been no reason for him to have been so rude. He phoned the Tommel Castle Hotel. At first he did not recognize the curt voice on the telephone as that of Priscilla and he asked to speak to Betty. And that was when he recognized her voice when Priscilla said coldly, “Your lady-love is out in the hills with her fiancé’.”

Cursing the fact that with servants at the castle always going off sick with bad backs or whatever other Highland excuse occurred to them, leaving Priscilla to fill their jobs, Hamish said, “That just happened. I woke up and found her in bed.” Her voice dripped icicles. “Indeed? I will tell her you called.” The line went dead and he looked miserably at the receiver before slowly replacing it. Why, when he had done the right thing by getting himself out of a cold relationship, did he still get so dreadfully hurt? A psychiatrist would say it pointed to a lack of love in childhood that he should long for the unobtainable, and yet he had had a very loving childhood. Bugger analysis, thought Hamish Macbeth, and geared himself up instead to gate-crashing me interview with Mrs. Beck.

♦

A furiously rolling eye in his direction was the only sign of Blair’s displeasure when Hamish quietly followed the detectives into the bed and breakfast. Mrs. Beck was sitting in the front parlour under a sign which warned guests that the terms were bed and breakfast and no matter what the weather, they were expected to make themselves absent from the house immediately after breakfast was over.

Mrs. Beck did not look at all like her sister. She was small and plump with that brisk, no-nonsense look about her which often betrays a total lack of humour. We all adopt masks, thought Hamish dreamily. Somewhere along the line, Mrs. Beck had decided on the role of capable housewife who did not suffer fools gladly and would probably play it to the end of time. Did he have a mask? he wondered. Did he…?

“Sit down, Macbeth, and stop gawping like a loon,” snapped Blair. Hamish hurriedly retreated to a small chair in the comer of the parlour.

“Now, Mrs. Beck,” crooned Blair, adjusting his truculent features into the oily expression he wore when facing the recently bereaved, “we are all shocked and saddened by your loss.”

“Enough of that,” said Mrs. Beck, clutching a large battered learner handbag on her knees. “You don’t give a damn, so let’s not waste any time.”

Her accent was Scottish, which surprised Hamish. Rosie had had an almost accentless voice and he had assumed her to be English.

“Then we won’t waste time,” said Blair, returning to his usual bad-tempered character. “We believe your sister found out something about a man who was murdered here, Randy Duggan. We believe she wanted to use the information about this man, who was possibly a criminal, in one of her books, and that is the reason she was killed.”

“What is this? What kind of policeman are you?”

“Did she try to take your husband away from you?” Hamish’s voice was suddenly sharp.

“How did you find out about that?”

Hamish remained silent. The wind began to rise outside with a low, keening, moaning sound which meant even worse weather to come. A puff of smoke belched out from the dismal little peat fire which was doing little to warm the room.

Blair, for once, had the wit to remain silent. “It was just after Bob and me were married,” said Mrs. Beck. “She came on a visit. Bob was an overseer at an electronics factory and he was made redundant. I took a job in a shop because although he had his redundancy money, I knew it wouldn’t last forever. So I was out all day. And then I found out they had been going to the movies in the afternoon when I was out and to lunch as well, spending that precious redundancy money while I slaved away selling women’s underwear. There was a big scene. I gave Rosie her marching orders, and Bob said he was going with her. But I’d found out the night before from the doctor that she was pregnant. So I told him that and he stayed and Rosie went. That’s all.”

And what a wealth of bitterness ‘that’s all’ covered, thought Hamish. Rosie had probably not fancied Bob in the slightest but was determined to prove to her sister that she could do anything better, and Mrs. Beck had probably crowed over Rosie about being married.

“Where were you when Rosie was murdered?” demanded Blair sharply.

“I was at home.”

“With your husband?”

“He only comes home at the weekends. He works in Birmingham.”

Again Hamish’s voice. “Do you know if he saw your sister at any time?”

Her eyes flashed. “He wouldn’t dare.”

“But then you wouldnae know,” said Hamish, almost as if talking to himself. “He was away all week. He could take time off from work and go where he liked. Where was he the night of Rosie’s murder, for example?”

She looked at this Highland tormentor with a slight air of triumph. “He phoned me from Birmingham that very evening.”

“How did you know he was phoning from Birmingham?”

“Aye,” put in Blair. “He could have been phoning from up here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong! Bob’s digs are next to the railway line. He always phones at nine in the evening and at nine a train always goes past on the line outside and shakes the very place. I heard it.”

“That seems conclusive enough,” said Blair heavily. “Mrs. Beck…or may I call you Beryl?”

“You may call me Mrs. Beck.”

“Just write down your husband’s address. That will be all for now. PC Black will take you to Strathbane now to formally identify the body. Do you know if Miss Draly made a will?”

She shook her head.

“We’re still sifting through her papers. If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”

They all left and Hamish went back to the police station, made a cup of coffee and sat down and stared at the kitchen wall.

Here was a new scenario. What if the murders of Duggan and Rosie were not connected? He listened to the now screaming wrath of the wind outside and rose and went to light the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. When it was crackling merrily, he sat down again. He had come across many cases of sibling rivalry before, although none of them had amounted to murder. Here were two sisters – one bossy and sure of herself, and then there was the unknown quantity of Rosie. What did he know of Rosie? Possibly lesbian, but liked to get attention from men. Liked power. Perhaps that was it. Would she let Bob go just like that, or would she, over the years, try to keep him on a string? He thought of his past burning sexual frustration over Priscilla. He thought of the times he could cheerfully have murdered her. What if Rosie had never gone to bed with Bob, but had kept tugging his leash? Exciting secret meetings, always with the promise of sex held out. Did she do that? Had she done that? Was that what she did with Randy, and when he came on to her was that what had prompted the row? He suddenly wanted to see Archie Maclean. The fishing boats would not be out in such weather.

He went out and fought his way against the gale to the bar, but Archie was not there, so, with a certain reluctance, he called at his cottage. Hamish, like everyone else in Lochdubh, found Mrs. Maclean terrifying.

Mrs. Maclean was working ferociously over at the sink, scrubbing at a pot. Archie was sitting gloomily on a hard chair in the middle of the kitchen in his tight clothes. The floor had been recently washed and Archie’s highly polished boots were resting on a square of newspaper.

“Like a dram, Archie?”

Archie brightened. “That would be grand.”

Mrs. Maclean whipped round and brandished a pot-scrubber like a weapon. “You are not to be wasting good money on the drink.”

“I’m paying,” said Hamish mildly.

“Well, don’t be long,” she said reluctantly. “It’ll give me a chance to wash that floor again. You should hae left your boots at the door, Hamish Macbeth. This is a clean house.”

“Cleanest in Lochdubh,” agreed Hamish.

“Wait!” she screeched as her husband got to his feet. She picked up a newspaper and, separating the pages, spread them I out across the floor in front of him like stepping stones. Archie took down a crackling black oilskin from a peg and shrugged himself into it, and together both men escaped into the howling night. Conversation on the road to the Lochdubh bar was impossible because of the vicious screaming of the wind.

The bar was quiet that evening, to Hamish’s relief. Archie asked for a whisky and went to prop up the bar in his usual way but Hamish led him to a small table in the corner.

“Did you mourn Rosie?” asked Hamish.

Archie smoothed the sparse hairs over his head with a gnarled hand. “I’m right sorry she’s dead,” he mumbled.

“But you did not cry?”

“Och, come on, Hamish. Greetin’s for bairns.”

“Try to think clearly, Archie. This is important. Were you fond of her?”

There was a long silence while the fisherman struggled for words. At last he said: “The fact is, I was a wee bit flattered. Her being a writer and all. She told me I wass a highly intelligent man. But with her gone, it iss as if she neffer existed. Do you know what I mean?”

“But while she was flattering you and making you cups of tea, did you ever think of having an affair with her?”

Archie blushed deeply. “Och, Hamish, the thought neffer crossed my mind and that’s the truth. I’ve only got to look in the mirror.”

“You’re a modest man, Archie, but you must have wondered why she flattered you and cultivated your company.”

The little fisherman’s eyes were suddenly shrewd. “I think she wanted me to fall in love with her,” he said.

“And why would that be?”

“The ladies like the men to fall in love with them even when they’re not interested. It’s the way they are. Makes them feel good.”

“She was right about the one thing, Archie. You are an intelligent man. I’ll buy you another and then I’ve got to go. I’ve got a phone call to make.”

♦

Back in the police station, Hamish got through to Birmingham CID. He was lucky in that he got a clever and bored detective who was anxious for action. He was Detective Sergeant Hugh Perrin.

Hamish outlined the details of the murder of Rosie Draly and then said, “I was just wondering whether it would be possible to get a search warrant for Bob Beck’s apartment. You see, when he made that phone call to his wife, she said he must have been down in Birmingham because she heard the nine-o’clock. Now all he had to do was make a tape recording of that train, take it up to Sutherland and play it.”

“You’ve got a point there. But you say there was evidence that papers and computer discs had been burnt in the fireplace? Doesn’t that point to the murderer of Duggan?”

“Beck could ha’ been burning evidence of letters from him and letters back to him.”

“Bit far-fetched. If that was the case, why didn’t he just chuck this tape of the train going past in the fire as well?”

“I think when he murdered her, he might have got rid of any evidence of letters. Then he would sit down and phone his wife. Wait a bit. He wouldn’t phone her from Rosie’s because we checked the calls for that evening. Damn, we should have been checking back through the past few months. Think o’ this. He needs a phone. He can hardly stand in a phone box and operate the tape recorder properly. He might be pressed for time. So he would go to some hotel or motel, on the road south and phone from there, not too far from Lochdubh.”

“There’s your answer then,” said Perrin. “You get evidence he was anywhere near the scene and we can haul him in…easy. I’m going to be here all night.”

With a fast-beating heart, Hamish said goodbye and reached for the battered phone book. He began to phone hotels and boarding-houses in the immediate area, asking if any stranger had checked in on the evening of the murder for one night and if there had been a London phone call on the bill. He gave Mrs. Beck’s number. And then, just when he was about to give up, he remembered the new Cluny Motor Inn on the A9 and phoned there. He could not believe his luck. Not only was there a clear record of Bob Beck’s having phoned home but he had even used his own name.

He phoned Detective Sergeant Perrin with the news. “We’ll get him in,” said the detective triumphantly. “But surely he hasn’t still got that tape? Surely he chucked it out the car window or something.”

“If you pull him in,” said Hamish, “I’ll go out to the Cluny Motor Inn and go through the trash. With any luck it hasn’t been collected.”

He stopped only to pick up his radio, which had a tape deck, from the kitchen table before driving off into the wild night. Sheets of rain battered against the windscreen and he thought bleakly of sitting in the Land Rover with Priscilla waiting for Blair and the others to arrive and experienced a stabbing pain of hurt and loss in his gut. He marvelled that the pain could still be so intense. He didn’t feel like a drink or a pill to ease it, but rather thought of taking a shotgun and blasting a big hole in his stomach, not to kill himself, but, like a cartoon animal, to leave a nice clean round hole where the hurt had been.

At last he reached the motor inn and eagerly asked the manager if he could search through the hotel rubbish, “Suit yourself,” said the manager. “It gets collected tomorrow. It’s all round the back.”

He led Hamish out to the back of the hotel, where two giant metal rubbish bins gleamed wetly in the lights from the inn. “You’d best leave me to it,” said Hamish gloomily. “I’ll need to take everything out.”

“I’ll make it easy for you,” said the manager. “The bin on the left is the kitchen waste. The one on the right is mostly other stuff from the rooms, old newspapers, that sort of stuff.”

The bin was so large that, tall as he was, Hamish had to stand on a box to reach down into the contents. The hours went past as he patiently sifted through cartons, newspapers, magazines, cigarette butts, condoms, sandwich wrappings and empty bottles. He threw everything out over his shoulder and then climbed into the bin as the contents grew lower and by the light of his torch ferreted around in the bottom. His hands closed on a cassette and he gave a whoop of triumph. He shouted for the manager, who came running out. “I want you to witness that I am taking this out o’ the bin,” said Hamish. “We’ll take it into reception and play it.”

Together they went back into the warmth of the reception, where Hamish had left his radio. He put the tape in the deck and pressed PLAY. After a few seconds, the throaty voice of Cher blasted around the room.

Hamish did not normally swear, but when he switched off the tape deck, his oaths resounded round the room. “Here! Enough o’ that,” said the manager. “If you’re finished, take yourself off.”

“I’m going for another look,” said Hamish stubbornly.

He went back out into the wind and rain and climbed back into the large green metal bin, concentrating on the refuse from the hotel rooms which was in the small plastic garbage bags used to line the waste-baskets. He opened one at the bottom and shone his torch. An empty half-bottle of whisky, a crushed, empty cigarette packet, several butts, soiled tissues…and a tape.

Once more, he called the manager. “What is it this time?” demanded the manager with heavy sarcasm. “Dolly Parton?”

“I want you to witness I’m taking this out of the bin.”

“Oh, sure.”

Hamish climbed out. Together they went back into the hotel again. Hamish slotted in the tape and switched on the machine. At first there was silence, broken only by the hiss of the tape, and then suddenly the room was filled with the sound of an approaching train. A slow smile broke on Hamish’s thin features.

He listened until the sound of the train had finished. “Is that what you wanted?” asked the manager.

“It’s the very thing.”

“Well, I’m short-staffed at the moment, so get out there and put that rubbish back.”

But Hamish had had enough of ferreting through rubbish.

“It’s all police evidence,” he said. “You’ll need to leave it as it is until the forensic boys get here.”

As he drove back to Lochdubh, Hamish’s feeling of triumph began to ebb. He should have told Blair what he was going to do. Blair would be furious. And sure enough, when he drove towards the police station, he saw the cars parked outside, and in the light of the blue lamp over the front door, swinging wildly in the wind, he made out the truculent features of Blair.

“What have ye been up to, pillock?” shouted Blair. “I got a call frae Birmingham telling me they were pulling in Beck for questioning and I didnae know a thing about it. Daviot’ll get to hear o’this.”

“I’ve got the tape Beck made of the train going past,” said Hamish.

“How? What…?”

While Hamish talked, Blair only half listened to him, his mind working busily. Somehow he had to claim this bit of detective work as his own. He became suddenly conciliatory and smiled horribly. “Aye, well done, lad. You’ll be needing your bed. Just let’s be having that tape.”

Hamish meekly passed it over. He knew what Blair was going to do. Blair would tell Daviot that he, Blair, had instructed Hamish to phone Birmingham and had sent him out to look for the tape.

Which was what Blair subsequently did and was met with heavy suspicion. “What were you about,” demanded Peter Daviot nastily, “to send one lone constable out on the search? And phoning the CID in Birmingham and giving them instructions is your job, not Macbeth’s.”

“I phoned them myself,” howled Blair.

“That’s not what I heard. I heard that Hamish Macbeth phoned.”

“I mean,” said Blair quickly, “like I just said, I told him to phone.”

“Next time, do the job yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” said Blair meekly, and he hated Hamish Macbeth from the bottom of his heart.