M.C. Beaton - Death of a Bore

“He was writing a script for Down in the Glen . If he was as nasty as he appears to have been, he could have riled someone there. Wait a bit. You asked me about the Trotskyites. Harry Tarrant was there at the time. Has he got an alibi for the time of the murder?”

“I don’t think anyone asked him,” said Hamish. “It’s Strathbane’s job, but they always walk on eggshells when it comes to television.”

“We’ll ask him,” said Matthew cheerfully.

“Let me know what he says.” Hamish turned to Freda. “I’ve got to start work early tomorrow. Would you mind if we went home?”

Freda pouted. She had intended to dance until the small hours. But returning with Hamish meant she could get this policeman whom her friends found so attractive all to herself.

♦

On the long road back to Lochdubh, Freda chattered about this and that, but Hamish replied in monosyllables. He was engulfed with an odd longing for Elspeth, and yet he had not thought about her all that much since she had left for Glasgow.

Was Matthew Campbell just another reporter? They seemed very much at ease in each other’s company.

He got outside the car at Freda’s home. She put her face up to be kissed, but he didn’t notice, his thoughts being still focussed on Elspeth.

What a waste of an evening, thought Freda, watching his long figure make its way along the waterfront to the police station.

♦

One of the many faults of Detective Chief Inspector Blair was that as soon as the press lost interest in a case, he was apt to lose interest in it as well. He had put the murder of John Heppel to the back of his mind and the investigation to the back of his workload. He was in a bad mood because although the raid on Dimity Dan’s had been successful – drugs found along with teenage drinkers – his moment of glory had been all too brief.

Hamish Macbeth had sent over a computerised report on how he had asked Callum to deliver the box of rubbish to the police station; it contained a statement from Callum and witness statements from Freda and Callum as well. Somehow the report had found its way to his boss’s desk. Daviot had sent for him the morning after the raid. Fortunately Blair remembered in the nick of tune that it was Peter Daviot’s daughter’s birthday and rushed out and bought a huge box of chocolates and a card.

“That is so kind of you. Sheila will be delighted,” said Daviot, who adored his eldest daughter. “I must say, you’re quite like one of the family.”

And the blistering lecture he had meant to give Blair was modified to a mild reprimand. “I’m surprised you did not mention Macbeth in your report.”

“I’m right sorry, sir,” grovelled Blair. “It must ha’ slipped my mind. I should ha’ given Macbeth the credit. But I think there’s a reason for that. Macbeth insists on being a village bobby, and somehow you don’t think of the village bobby when it comes to a major raid.”

“You have a point there,” said Daviot with a sigh. “How is the investigation into the murder of John Heppel going?”

“We’re still working on it.” Blair was suddenly struck with what he thought of as a brilliant idea. “I was thinking of pulling my men out of Lochdubh,” he said, omitting to say that he already had, “and letting Hamish Macbeth get on with it. Softly, softly approach, sir. He knows the locals.”

“Are the press still interested?”

“No, they’ve given up.”

“Let’s try Macbeth for, say, a week, and see how he gets on.”

♦

The following day Matthew and Elspeth booked in at the Tommel Castle Hotel. Matthew had talked on the road up as the landscape grew wilder about how he loathed the countryside and how he would always be a city boy at heart. But as he walked outside the hotel after a very good lunch, the day was crisp and clear and the sun was shining. He breathed in the pure air and stared up at the soaring mountains. He would never have believed that a part of the overcrowded British Isles could be so deserted.

Elspeth appeared behind him. “Admiring the view?”

“It’s pretty breathtaking.”

“Nowhere else like it. There are Atlantic seals in the harbour, golden eagles on the mountains, and red deer on the moorland. You can find places where you can walk miles and see nothing made by man.”

“You love it here, don’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m ambitious, too. There’s not much up here for the ambitious. We’d better get started. Strathbane Television first.”

“I must say the food at this hotel is cordon bleu standard.”

“That’s Clarry, the chef. When Hamish was a sergeant, Clarry was his sidekick. But he spent all the time cooking until he discovered that was all he really wanted to do.”

“Why did Macbeth get demoted back to constable?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you sometime.”

They got in Matthew’s car and drove off. “How come Sutherland is so empty?” asked Matthew.

“It’s because of the old Duke of Sutherland. At the start of the nineteenth century he owned the biggest private estate in Europe. It amounted to some one and a half million acres and covered a huge part of northern Scotland. He discovered he could get more money from grazing sheep than from the crofters. This caused the brutal removal of up to fifteen thousand people from the Duke of Sutherland’s estates to make way for the sheep. Some were resettled in coastal communities like Lochdubh to take advantage of the herring boom. More were shipped abroad: many to North America. The clearances fundamentally changed the landscape of much of northern Scotland. The tiny settlements were swept away, leaving the occasional ruins you can see dotted about. There’s a row going on still about the duke’s statue in Golspie.”

“What row?”

“There’s a hundred-foot-high statue on the top of Beinn a’ Bhragaidh. It was erected a year after his death by, to quote, “a mourning and grateful tenantry to a judicious kind and liberal landlord.” An awful lot of people want it pulled down.”

“See their point. Do we go straight to Strathbane Television, or do we call at police headquarters first?”

“The television station, I think.”

“I’ve often wondered,” said Matthew, “why you settled working for the Daily Bugle ’s Scottish edition. You could have gone to London. I only heard the other day that the main office had made you an offer.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to be too far away from the Highlands.”

“Glasgow’s far enough away for me. I’ve never been further north than Inverness. It’s a whole different world up here. You know how it is these days. The Scots don’t want to holiday in Scotland any more. They want the sun. It’s cheaper to take a holiday in Spain than book into some of these hotels in Scotland.”

They drove on in silence as the road wound through rocky clefts where tumbling waterfalls cascaded down, across heathery moorland, the one-track road winding in front of them until they crested a hill and Matthew exclaimed, “What’s that doing there?”

“That is Strathbane. Our very own area of pollution.”

The town lay in a valley below them, dark and ugly. The sun was disappearing behind the clouds, and a last ray shone on the oily waters of the deserted docks.

“What do they do for a living?”

“Collect their dole money, spend it on drink or drugs, and then go out and mug people for more money. That’s the tower block lot. There’s a respectable section of the population: small factory owners, lawyers, dentists, doctors, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, people like that.”

“And television people?”

“Apart from the odd secretary or two, I don’t think you’ll find any local people. Make two right turns on Ferry Street and then a left.”