“I hope she’s not in any trouble. I mean, apart from that one incident, she’s been an ideal tenant.”
“I’m sure you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Hamish left and climbed into the Land Rover. He could not put in a report about Miss Patty because Blair would start howling about him being on Strathbane turf.
He phoned Jimmy Anderson and told him all he had found out. “Great stuff, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “Do you think the man she was shouting at could have been John Heppel?”
“Could have been. Don’t tell Blair I’ve been in Strathbane.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take all the credit for this. I’ll get her in for questioning. I’d better go and see this neighbour myself and start from there.”
∨ Death of a Bore ∧
7
But to us, probability is the very guide of life.
—Bishop Joseph Butler
Hamish had a leisurely breakfast the following morning, and then he took Lugs for a walk. He could not see any police about the village, and he was puzzled by their absence. Surely Blair had not decided to leave a murder investigation to the local copper.
At ten o’clock, just after he had returned to the police station, Callum, the dustman, knocked at the door and presented Hamish with one of the sealed boxes of rubbish he had collected that morning from Dimity Dan’s.
“Come through to the office,” said Hamish. “I’ll type up a statement for you to sign, saying that you thought the method of garbage disposal suspicious and decided to take one of the boxes to the police station. I’d like another witness when I open the box.”
There was another knock at the door. When Hamish answered it, he saw Freda there.
“Come in,” he said. “I’m going to need another witness.”
“What for? I came to ask you if you were going to Inverness this evening.”
“Let’s see how we get on with this. I think Dan Buffort at Dimity Dan’s is dealing drugs. He aye wraps up his garbage in sealed boxes. I’ve got Callum to bring me one, and I’d like you to witness the contents. Make yourself a coffee while I type out something for Callum to sign first.”
Freda put a kettle on the stove and looked around. The kitchen was warm and neat. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she wandered into the living room. It had a bleak, little-used air. She guessed that Hamish spent most of his time in the kitchen. While she busied herself making coffee, she wondered what it would be like to be a policeman’s wife. The police station was built like a croft house – one-storeyed, whitewashed, and with a slate roof. Freda wondered why Hamish did not make use of the loft space. Most crofters made the bedrooms up there, leaving extra space downstairs.
She made herself a coffee, sat down at the kitchen table, and mentally redecorated the house. The kitchen for a start. That old–fashioned wood-burning stove was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if it even had an oven. It surely had been there for over a hundred years. There was a gas cooker with four jets and an oven, but it looked as if it had been little used. She was just mentally hanging bright curtains at the kitchen windows when she heard Hamish call her.
“Now we open this box,” he said. He took out a penknife and slit the tape which sealed the box.
“Pooh!” said Freda as a rancid smell floated up from the box. Hamish spread newspapers on the floor and tipped out the contents of the box. Amongst the potato peelings, sandwich wrappers, old cooked vegetables, two dead mice, and bits of meat he found several little empty cellophane packets. He picked one up and sniffed at it. There was a little powder in one. He stuck a gloved finger in, then raised it to his nose.
“That’s heroin. What else do we have?”
Freda’s stomach was heaving from the smell. She was beginning to think that the lot of being a policeman’s wife might not be a happy one, after all.
“Aha!” said Hamish. He carefully took out a little pill packet. There was one pill left in it. “Got him!” crowed Hamish. “Ecstasy!”
He carefully put all the rubbish back in the box apart from the ecstasy packet and the cellophane packets.
Hamish sat down at his computer and began to type. “You two can wait in the kitchen,” he said, much to Freda’s relief.
When he had finished a statement to the effect that the opening of the box had been witnessed by Callum McSween and Freda Garrety, he called them in to sign it.
“Are we going to Inverness tonight?” asked Freda.
“Not now this has come up,” said Hamish. “The place will need to be raided. Thanks, both of you.”
When they had left, he phoned Strathbane. He spoke to Jimmy, who said that Blair was questioning Alice Patty.
“Oh, Lord!” said Hamish. “She’ll clam up.” He told Jimmy about the evidence of drugs.
“Great,” said Jimmy. “I’ll get back to you and tell you when we’re going to raid the place.”
Hamish waited and waited. At lunchtime he went out to the shed where the freezer was and fished out a packet of lamb chops, which he defrosted by soaking them in hot water. Then he fried them up and gave half to Lugs and ate the other half himself.
He washed the dishes and stared at Lugs, who grinned back – or who looked in his doggy way as if he were grinning.
“It iss no laughing matter,” said Hamish, the sibilance of his accent showing just how annoyed he was. “They should haff called by now.”
He went through to the office and phoned Strathbane and demanded to speak to Jimmy. He had to wait a long time, and then Jimmy’s breathless voice came on the line.
“Sorry, Hamish. Blair’s just coordinating a raid for tonight.”
“What time?”
“Ten o’clock. But Blair doesn’t want you to be there.”
“What!”
“Daviot seemed to think it was Blair who had done the detective work, so he doesn’t want you getting any credit. He’s very excited and wants to go on the raid.”
“Daviot, you mean?”
“Aye, the big cheese himself.”
“Blair’s a bastard.”
“Well, it’s your own fault, Hamish. You could have been down here with us ages ago if you weren’t so hellbent on staying in the peasants’ paradise.”
Hamish slammed down the phone and stared at it. Then he picked it up and dialled Freda’s number. “I’ll be free to go to Inverness, after all.”
♦
Elspeth Grant stole a sideways look at Matthew Campbell, who was driving. He wasn’t bad-looking, she thought. He had a shock of sandy hair and a round, cheerful face. The only problem was he enjoyed the sort of reporting they had been doing and Elspeth was beginning to hate it.
The last story they had worked together concerned the odd case of a Glasgow man charged with the rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl, although no body had been found. Matthew and Elspeth had been told to work on the background before the case came up in the High Court. Their job was to keep the Crown witness, the accused man’s wife, away from the other press and the police. The trouble was the wife, Betty McCann, worked in a brothel. Elspeth’s first introduction to a Glasgow brothel was an unpleasant one. It was housed in an old Victorian tenement flat. Betty was thirty-five and looked fifty-five with her toothless mouth, raddled face, and two inches of black showing on her dyed-blonde hair.
Matthew and Elspeth had been instructed to keep her away from the other press by taking her out to a hotel on Loch Lomond. The hotel was rather grand, and the manager protested bitterly about the filth Betty had left in the bath and the head lice she had left on the bed.
Then on the day of the trial, as they arrived with Betty outside the High Court, a frustrated reporter from the opposition punched Elspeth in the face and Matthew leapt out and gave him the Glasgow kiss – butting him on the face with his forehead.