M.C. Beaton - Death of a Bore

“Good. I’ve got his lordship’s permission.”

They drove in their separate vehicles to Strathbane after Hamish had left Lugs at the police station. I wish the light days would come back, thought Hamish. It’s like living in one long dark tunnel. Were night shots more expensive than day shots? A lot of the filming when he had left seemed to be going ahead, floodlit.

They parked at Strathbane Television and got out. “I should have told you to wear plain clothes,” said Jimmy. “It’s hard to have a friendly wee chat with a long drip like you in uniform.”

“I’ve got clothes in the Land Rover, in the back.”

“Put them on.”

Hamish emerged after some minutes, wearing a thick fisherman’s jersey and jeans.

“Right now,” said Jimmy, “we hover on the other side of the road and look for a likely target. What’s the time?”

“Coming up to five-thirty.”

“The common folk should be finishing work any minute now.”

Four young women came out, laughing and chattering. “There we go,” said Jimmy. “We’ll follow them. Let’s hope they all go for a drink or a coffee.”

The girls turned in at a pub, and Hamish and Jimmy followed them in.

Hamish heard one of them say, “Let’s take this table. Whose turn is it to buy the drinks?”

“Mine,” said Jimmy, moving in on them.

The girls looked from Jimmy with his foxy face and bright blue eyes to the tall figure of Hamish. “All right,” said a dark-haired one, tossing her hair in the manner of a shampoo advertisement.

They all ordered alcopops. Jimmy and Hamish went to the bar. “I think we’d better tell the truth about who we are,” said Hamish as Jimmy paid for the drinks.

“Why?”

“I think they’ll find it exciting. I mean, there’s now two murders and the press wouldn’t bother interviewing secretaries, which is what I think they are.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

When they were seated at the table, Hamish began. “I’m Police Constable Hamish Macbeth, and this is Detective Inspector Jimmy Anderson. And you are?”

The dark-haired one said she was Kirsty Baxter, and she introduced her friends as Sally Tully, a petite blonde; Kate McCulloch, a thin sallow girl; and Robin Sorrell, a small quiet creature with gelled hair in four colours.

“Are you investigating the murder?” asked Kirsty excitedly.

“Yes, we are,” said Jimmy. “Are you all secretaries?”

Kirsty said, “I am and so’s Sally. Kate works in the costume department and Robin’s a researcher.”

“Did any of you know John Heppel?”

“I did,” said Robin. “Last time he wanted to go on location up at Betty Hill, I had to go ahead and find a hotel for him. He kept complaining about the service, so I was sent to see what I could do. He seemed very pleasant and asked me to join him for a meal. Then at the end of the meal he suggested we go to his room. I asked why. He leered at me and said, ‘You know.’ I told him flat, I’m not that sort of girl. He went apeshit. He said he’d spent money on a meal for me. I pointed out the television company was footing his bills.

“He said he’d have me fired. I thought he was mad. I put in a report of sexual harassment. The big cheese called me in.”

“Harry Tarrant?”

“Yes, him. He told me I didn’t understand the artistic temperament. He said great writers were often great womanisers. He told me to ignore it. I didn’t want to lose my job, so I did.”

“What about Patricia Wheeler?” asked Hamish. “She had a fling with him.”

Sally giggled. “Talking about flings,” she said, “I was working late one night because there were urgent letters to be typed. I work for Mr. Southern, one of the directors. I’d delivered the letters and got them signed. I was making my way to the cloakroom to get my things when a cup of coffee flew past my head and crashed on the wall opposite.

“A door to one of the offices was open and Patricia and John were there and she was screaming at him.” She fell silent.

“What did she say?”

“Can this be off the record, please?” begged Sally.

Jimmy and Hamish exchanged glances. Jimmy nodded.

“She was shouting, ‘I’ll kill you. Who the hell do you think you are to tell me you don’t want to see me any more?’

“He said, ‘Oh, shut up, you old hag. Look on it that I was doing you a favour.’ She screamed, and then there was the sound of a blow and a crash. Mr. Tarrant came along then and said, ‘Why are you standing there?’ I hurried off.”

Kirsty chimed in, “And next day Alice Patty had a big bouquet of roses on her desk. I took a squint at the card. It said, “Forever yours, John.” Don’t tell anyone what we said, because Mr. Tarrant was a great friend of John’s.”

“Did any of you see the script John wrote for Down in the Glen ?” asked Hamish.

They all shook their heads, but Kirsty said, “I did overhear Mr. Tarrant say that the script was brilliant and it would show people down south that in Scotland we could raise a soap up to literary standards.”

Hamish and Jimmy asked more questions before deciding they had elicited as much information as they were going to get.

They walked out and at Jimmy’s insistence went into another pub. “Maybe we should have taken them over to police headquarters and made it official,” said Jimmy.

“They might just have denied everything.” Hamish looked gloomily down into yet another glass of tonic water. He was getting sick of the stuff. He thought about Angus at the police station. “I suppose it’s easy for an expert to recover material from the hard drive of a computer.”

“They got some sort of forensic hard drive detection machine down in Glasgow. They just plug the hard drive into it, download the stuff onto a disk, put it into another machine, and the contents come up on a screen.”

“But an amateur could do it?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Got to go.” Hamish dashed out of the pub, leaving Jimmy staring after him.

He drove fast all the way to Lochdubh. He parked at the police station. The door was locked. He fumbled with his new ring of keys until he got the right ones and unlocked the door.

The door to the police office was standing open. There was no sign of Angus and, worse than that, no sign of John Heppel’s computer.

He rushed along the waterfront to Sea View. Mrs. Dunne said that Angus had packed up and left.

“I’m a fool!” said Hamish, and she stared at him in amazement.

It was only when he was walking back to the police station that he realised there had been no welcome from Lugs. With a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach, he went back into the police station calling for his dog. No Lugs.

Angus didn’t have a car. Angus would have to have taken the bus.

Hamish drove back to Strathbane with the siren on and the blue light flashing. He went straight to the bus station. He questioned the clerk at the ticket office and was told that a young man with a dog had booked a ticket on the Inverness bus.

He headed off for Inverness. Angus knew that Hamish could not report him to the police.

In Inverness he checked first at the bus station and found that so far no one of Angus’s description had been booked on a Glasgow or Edinburgh bus. He then called at bed and breakfasts, one after the other, without success, until he remembered there was a YMCA.

The man who ran the hostel said that someone of Angus’s description with a dog had called in looking for a room about half an hour ago. He told him they couldn’t take the dog as well.

He might be walking the streets, thought Hamish, running back to where he had parked the Land Rover.

♦

“Come on, Lugs!” said Angus, dragging on the leash. He had taken a great liking to Lugs and had got the dog to come with him by saying, “We’re going to see Hamish,” something that Lugs had seemed to understand. Now the dog kept sitting down and looking at him balefully out of those odd blue eyes of his.