“Such as what?”
She bridled. “Serving customers, of course, making alterations, and taking inventory of the stock.”
Hamish’s Highland curiosity almost prompted him to ask her when she had last sold anything at all.
“So you haven’t heard anything that might be of help to me?”
“Not really, and I do not see why I should do your job for you, Officer.”
“I’ll leave you to all your customers,” said Hamish with a flash of Highland malice. “I’ll chust be fighting my way to the door through them all.”
He stood outside the shop, irresolute. Then he saw Jimmy Anderson loping down the street.
“Just the man,” hailed Jimmy. “Let’s go for a dram.”
They walked in silence to The Drouthy Crofter. The bar was empty.
Hamish knew Jimmy had to be fueled up with whisky before he could get any information out of him and so he bought him a double and said, “Let’s sit down over there. What’s the latest. Was anything stolen from Fred Sutherland’s flat?”
“No sign of it. He wasnae the type o’ old boy to keep it under the bed either. How did you get on with Kylie’s boss?”
“Not very far. He kept her on because she was a steady worker and the customers liked her. I see his point. The young people up here like to go on the dole and do a bit of moonlighting. They’re hardly the workers o’ the world. This is the second time someone has gone up that stair to commit murder and no one’s seen anyone. Certainly the lights were out on the stair but there was a streetlight outside.”
“I’ll tell you something about Braikie,” said Jimmy. “Has it ever dawned on you how dead it is, even in the middle o’ the day? What am I talking about? Especially in the middle o’ the day. Down south the supermarkets are open the whole time and some o’ the Asian shops are open round-the-clock, but up here everything closes down as tight as a drum at lunchtime. Then any other wee town in Scotland, you’ll aye see groups o’ people standing about talking. Not here. It’s as bad as that other hellhole, Cnothan. I’ve been watching. About nine in the morning, everyone goes to the shops, get what they want and disappear. By ten o’clock, the place is as dead as anything. Around five o’clock, just before the shops close, they all come out again. The young people spend their day in this pub after they awake about two in the afternoon, and the old people go to that club of theirs. A special bus goes round and collects them at nine in the morning. The middle-aged stay at home and watch the soaps. I’m telling you, Hamish, if I had to live in Braikie, I’d cut my wrists.”
“What’s happened to Kylie now?”
“Back at Strathbane for questioning. She’s got a lawyer now.”
“Who’s she got?”
“Mr. Armstrong-Gulliver.”
Hamish raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That’ll cost her a pretty penny. How can she afford him, and where are her parents and who are her parents?”
“Mother. Single mother in Inverness. On the game. Hasn’t seen Kylie for two years. Broken home. Violence.”
“What do you make of Kylie?”
“Sexy little piece, but as hard as nails. I’ve seen strong men crumble before Blair. But not our Kylie.”
Hamish leaned back in his chair. “If Gilchrist were still alive, I would be suspecting him o’ the murder of Fred to keep the old man’s mouth shut about him and Kylie. There’s something verra obvious we’re missing, Jimmy.”
“The fact is,” said Jimmy, “we’re cluttered up wi’ crime and suspects. There’s that robbery at the hotel and Mrs. Macbean being an auld flame o’ Gilchrist. There’s the Smileys and their illegal still. You said they were going to drop you in a peat bog? Do that to a copper and you’ll murder anyone.”
“I don’t know,” said Hamish. “There’s something about that mad couple that belongs to the Highlands long gone. I don’t think mentally that they’d got as far as the nineteenth century let alone the twentieth.”
Jimmy laughed. “They had all the twentieth-century equipment to make the hooch.”
“Aye, but to them that was a Highlander’s legitimate livelihood and a nosy policeman in their minds is the same as a visit from the redcoats in the eighteenth century. Into the bog with them.”
“Sounds daft to me. Anyway, now Kylie’s got her hotshot lawyer, Blair’ll need to treat her with kid gloves. Ach, I’m sick o’ the whole thing. The super says to Blair, “Are you sure Hamish hasn’t come up with something? He usually does,” and Blair oiled and crept and said, “Yes sir, I’ll ask him,” and then went down to the detectives room and took his temper out on all of us.”
“Another drink?” asked Hamish.
“Aye, that would be grand.”
As Hamish stood at the bar ordering the drinks, he noticed the pub was beginning to fill up. Perhaps he, Hamish Macbeth, had too free and easy an approach to law and order. He should have arrested Kylie for trying to entrap him in a rape scene, he should have arrested the seer for buying illegal whisky, or more likely, accepting it from the Smileys, he should have never gone to the Smileys’ on his own that night. He felt he was the muddled, bumbling Highland idiot that Blair often claimed he was.
He took the drinks back to the table, aware of the hostility towards himself and Jimmy emanating from the other customers.
“Look at this lot,” sneered Jimmy. “A good day’s work would kill them.”
Hamish kept his own thoughts. He thought that living on the state was a very seductive situation. Why would anyone want to go out to work when they didn’t have to? The jobs in the Highlands, farmworkers, forestry men, ghillies and gamekeepers, were all too physical for a new generation brought up on alcohol and instant food. He envied Jimmy in a way for he often wished he was not able to see the other point of view.
“So to get back to the case,” said Hamish, “I called on that old bat, Harrison, but she wasn’t at home.”
“She’s in the Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. Had a stroke.”
“When?”
“Last night. She was lucky. There was a local passing just as she keeled over in her living room. The curtains were drawn back and he saw her from the road and he had a mobile phone in his car, too. She could have lain there for days.”
“So we come back again to Maggie Bane,” said Hamish. “That’s the trouble with this latest murder and this Kylie business. We’re forgetting that Maggie Bane was the one with the real reason for hating Gilchrist. What if she knew or overheard his plans to go off with the terrible Mrs. Macbean? Then why did she go off for an hour that morning of all mornings? Damn, I think I’ll go back and have a wee word with her.”
“Better you than me,” said Jimmy. “What an ugly voice that lassie has!”
♦
Hamish found Maggie Bane in the middle of packing up her belongings. “What’s happening?” he asked. “Are you leaving?”
“I can’t stay here after all the scandal,” she said in her harsh voice, that voice which sounded so odd coming out from such a beautiful face. “I’m going home to my parents. I’m putting this place up for sale.”
“Do police headquarters know you are leaving?”
“Yes, I told them and left them my new address.”
“You’ve heard about this latest murder?”
“Yes, I heard it on the radio this morning.”
“And what do you make of it?”
She sat down on the floor beside a packing case as if suddenly weary. “It can’t have anything to do with Mr. Gilchrist’s murder.”
“Well, Mr. Sutherland lived above the surgery and he left a message for me that he had found out something about Kylie Fraser.”
Her face hardened. “That little slut!”
“Did you know Mr. Gilchrist tried to lay her?”