M Beaton - Death of a Valentine

Hamish left the bakery and got into the Land Rover. He looked wearily at Josie. “Policing in the Highlands,” he said, “is not like a hard-cop American TV series. You deal gently wi’ people and you’ll get more out of them.” He let in the clutch. “We’re going back to the Flemings’ house. Maybe something from the blast ended up in the garden and SOCO might have missed it.”

Josie felt near to tears. It seemed she couldn’t do anything right. She sat in brooding silence until they reached the Flemings’ home.

It was still cordoned off with police tape. They both got out. “We’ll go round the back,” said Hamish. “As the blast was in the kitchen, there might be something blown outside.”

The back garden consisted of a drying green with tattered washing still hanging on the line. There were a few bushes in the narrow flower beds that formed an edging around the green.

Hamish began to search carefully in the bushes by the kitchen door, and Josie began to look through the bushes on the left-hand side. As she worked her way round the garden, she grew cold and bored. The sun shone on the tattered washing. One of the items not too damaged was a serviceable pair of knickers. Josie suddenly noticed that there was something stuck inside the knickers. She went over to the washing line. The clothes were just beginning to thaw out. She unpegged the knickers. Hamish came over to her. “Found something?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Josie. “But when the sun shone it looked as if there was a bit of paper stuck inside.”

Hamish put on a pair of latex gloves and told Josie to do the same. He opened up the knickers gently. Sure enough, there was a scrap of paper. “We’d best take this down to the forensic lab in Strathbane,” he said. “We don’t want to risk damaging it.”

Hamish’s heart sank when he saw forensic scientist Lesley Murray, formerly Lesley Seaton. She had pursued him at one time and was now married to her boss, Bruce Murray.

“You can leave it with me,” she said.

“If you don’t mind, we’ll hang around and see if there’s anything important,” said Hamish.

Josie looked about in disappointment. It was hardly a scene out of CSI Miami. The room was dingy with frosted-glass windows. A faulty fluorescent light buzzed overhead like an angry wasp. There was a cup of coffee on Leslie’s desk with a skin of milk on the top. She had imagined the underwear being subjected to forensic scrutiny under high-tech machines, but all Lesley did was snip open one side of the knickers and with tweezers carefully extract a piece of scorched cardboard.

“There’s some writing on it. Typewritten,” she said. “It looks like part of a valentine card.”

Hamish leaned over her shoulder and read:

“Rose are re…

“Violets…

“You’re going t…

“Just what’s coming to you.”

“I’ll telephone Mr. Blair and tell him about this,” said Lesley.

“You better telephone Jimmy,” said Hamish. “He’s in charge o’ the case.”

“Right. You can go,” said Lesley. “I’ll see if I can get anything more out of this.”

“We’ll wait,” said Hamish.

“I have other things to do,” said Lesley crossly. “And may I remind you, you are nothing more than a village bobby and not in charge of this case.”

Josie opened her mouth to make an angry retort but received a quelling glare from Hamish.

Outside, she asked, “Is she always like that?”

“Pretty much. Nothing sinister about thon underwear because that piece o’ cardboard was obviously blasted there, but the bit o’ message is something.”

I wonder if he jilted Lesley, thought Josie, her senses sharpened by jealousy. Lesley was pretty. Priscilla Halburton-Smythe looked like a model from Vogue. It was all very lowering.

In the very north of Scotland, night falls around three or four PM in winter. Hamish wanted rid of Josie. She had certainly found that important clue. But there was something about her, a sort of cloying neediness, that got on his nerves. He was bewildered by the growing list of suspects. There are so many, he thought gloomily, it’s beginning to look like the local phone directory.

After he reached Lochdubh, he dropped Josie off at the manse and then drove to the police station. He helped the dog down as the cat sprang lightly onto the ground with her large paws.

“You haven’t had much exercise,” he told them. “We’ll go for a wee dauner along the waterfront.”

Halos of mist were encircling the lamps, leaving black areas of shadow in between. He had a sudden feeling of being watched. He whipped round but there was no one there. When he turned back, the Currie sisters, Nessie and Jessie, stood facing him as if they had just been conjured up out of the ground.

The twins were spinsters of the parish, still alike in their sixties, both having rigidly permed white hair and thick glasses.

“Awful, her turning out to be a tart,” said Nessie.

“Tart,” echoed her sister, who always repeated the end of what her twin had been saying.

“How did you hear?” asked Hamish.

“It was Mrs. Baxter, the councillor’s wife,” said Nessie. “Herself was down at Patel’s this afternoon. He’s got a special on tinned salmon. She bought ten cans! I said, ‘That’s not very fair. You should leave some for us locals,’ but she paid me no heed at all. So then I says, poor Annie Fleming, and herself whips around and says, ‘Annie Fleming was a whore.’ Just like that!”

“Just like that,” echoed Jessie.

“Mind you, I did always think she flaunted herself a bit. When are you getting married?”

“Getting married,” put in the Greek chorus.

“I have no intention of getting married,” said Hamish. He stalked off.

Mark Lussie was not a baker. He worked in the bakery as a sort of odd-job man, carrying out trays of cakes, bread, rolls, pies, and buns to the shop from the back. He cleaned the windows, swept the floors, and cleaned the baking trays and the ovens, and all the time he dreamed of greater things. He no longer went to church. He had prayed to be married to Annie and God had let him down so God didn’t exist. He wanted to get out of Braikie and go to Glasgow or Edinburgh, or even London. He had very little in his bank as he had begun to find comfort in drink ever since Annie had introduced him to alcohol.

He turned over and over in his mind everything Annie had said to him. And then like a lightbulb going on over his head as it did over the heads of the characters in the comics he liked to read, he remembered all of a sudden that Annie had said someone had threatened her and he remembered exactly who that someone was.

At first, he saw himself standing up in court in his best suit, giving evidence and being photographed by the newspapers when he left the court.

Then it dawned on him that such knowledge was money and money meant escape.

When he finished work, he went out into the yard at the back of the bakery and lit a cigarette, a new vice. He took out his mobile phone and, looking around to make sure no one was about, dialled a number he had looked up in the phone book in the bakery.

When the phone was answered, he asked to be put through to the person he wanted to speak to. “I know you killed Annie. She said you threatened her. Pay me two thousand pounds or I’ll go to the police. You know the war memorial on the hill above Braikie? Well, be there at midnight with the money or I’ll go straight to the police.”

The voice answered in the affirmative and rang off. Mark stood there, his heart beating hard. He would go to London! Maybe he would be in a bar and this film star would chat him up and take him back with her to Hollywood. He would get away from his home where the new baby cried all night. What was his mother thinking about to go and have another child? And who was the father? She wouldn’t say. Mark’s own father had left his mother shortly after he was born. The church had been a comfort for a while on the long Scottish Sabbath days, but it had let him down in the presence of Annie and her father.