They all left and Hamish went back to the police station, made a cup of coffee and sat down and stared at the kitchen wall.
Here was a new scenario. What if the murders of Duggan and Rosie were not connected? He listened to the now screaming wrath of the wind outside and rose and went to light the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. When it was crackling merrily, he sat down again. He had come across many cases of sibling rivalry before, although none of them had amounted to murder. Here were two sisters – one bossy and sure of herself, and then there was the unknown quantity of Rosie. What did he know of Rosie? Possibly lesbian, but liked to get attention from men. Liked power. Perhaps that was it. Would she let Bob go just like that, or would she, over the years, try to keep him on a string? He thought of his past burning sexual frustration over Priscilla. He thought of the times he could cheerfully have murdered her. What if Rosie had never gone to bed with Bob, but had kept tugging his leash? Exciting secret meetings, always with the promise of sex held out. Did she do that? Had she done that? Was that what she did with Randy, and when he came on to her was that what had prompted the row? He suddenly wanted to see Archie Maclean. The fishing boats would not be out in such weather.
He went out and fought his way against the gale to the bar, but Archie was not there, so, with a certain reluctance, he called at his cottage. Hamish, like everyone else in Lochdubh, found Mrs. Maclean terrifying.
Mrs. Maclean was working ferociously over at the sink, scrubbing at a pot. Archie was sitting gloomily on a hard chair in the middle of the kitchen in his tight clothes. The floor had been recently washed and Archie’s highly polished boots were resting on a square of newspaper.
“Like a dram, Archie?”
Archie brightened. “That would be grand.”
Mrs. Maclean whipped round and brandished a pot-scrubber like a weapon. “You are not to be wasting good money on the drink.”
“I’m paying,” said Hamish mildly.
“Well, don’t be long,” she said reluctantly. “It’ll give me a chance to wash that floor again. You should hae left your boots at the door, Hamish Macbeth. This is a clean house.”
“Cleanest in Lochdubh,” agreed Hamish.
“Wait!” she screeched as her husband got to his feet. She picked up a newspaper and, separating the pages, spread them I out across the floor in front of him like stepping stones. Archie took down a crackling black oilskin from a peg and shrugged himself into it, and together both men escaped into the howling night. Conversation on the road to the Lochdubh bar was impossible because of the vicious screaming of the wind.
The bar was quiet that evening, to Hamish’s relief. Archie asked for a whisky and went to prop up the bar in his usual way but Hamish led him to a small table in the corner.
“Did you mourn Rosie?” asked Hamish.
Archie smoothed the sparse hairs over his head with a gnarled hand. “I’m right sorry she’s dead,” he mumbled.
“But you did not cry?”
“Och, come on, Hamish. Greetin’s for bairns.”
“Try to think clearly, Archie. This is important. Were you fond of her?”
There was a long silence while the fisherman struggled for words. At last he said: “The fact is, I was a wee bit flattered. Her being a writer and all. She told me I wass a highly intelligent man. But with her gone, it iss as if she neffer existed. Do you know what I mean?”
“But while she was flattering you and making you cups of tea, did you ever think of having an affair with her?”
Archie blushed deeply. “Och, Hamish, the thought neffer crossed my mind and that’s the truth. I’ve only got to look in the mirror.”
“You’re a modest man, Archie, but you must have wondered why she flattered you and cultivated your company.”
The little fisherman’s eyes were suddenly shrewd. “I think she wanted me to fall in love with her,” he said.
“And why would that be?”
“The ladies like the men to fall in love with them even when they’re not interested. It’s the way they are. Makes them feel good.”
“She was right about the one thing, Archie. You are an intelligent man. I’ll buy you another and then I’ve got to go. I’ve got a phone call to make.”
♦
Back in the police station, Hamish got through to Birmingham CID. He was lucky in that he got a clever and bored detective who was anxious for action. He was Detective Sergeant Hugh Perrin.
Hamish outlined the details of the murder of Rosie Draly and then said, “I was just wondering whether it would be possible to get a search warrant for Bob Beck’s apartment. You see, when he made that phone call to his wife, she said he must have been down in Birmingham because she heard the nine-o’clock. Now all he had to do was make a tape recording of that train, take it up to Sutherland and play it.”
“You’ve got a point there. But you say there was evidence that papers and computer discs had been burnt in the fireplace? Doesn’t that point to the murderer of Duggan?”
“Beck could ha’ been burning evidence of letters from him and letters back to him.”
“Bit far-fetched. If that was the case, why didn’t he just chuck this tape of the train going past in the fire as well?”
“I think when he murdered her, he might have got rid of any evidence of letters. Then he would sit down and phone his wife. Wait a bit. He wouldn’t phone her from Rosie’s because we checked the calls for that evening. Damn, we should have been checking back through the past few months. Think o’ this. He needs a phone. He can hardly stand in a phone box and operate the tape recorder properly. He might be pressed for time. So he would go to some hotel or motel, on the road south and phone from there, not too far from Lochdubh.”
“There’s your answer then,” said Perrin. “You get evidence he was anywhere near the scene and we can haul him in…easy. I’m going to be here all night.”
With a fast-beating heart, Hamish said goodbye and reached for the battered phone book. He began to phone hotels and boarding-houses in the immediate area, asking if any stranger had checked in on the evening of the murder for one night and if there had been a London phone call on the bill. He gave Mrs. Beck’s number. And then, just when he was about to give up, he remembered the new Cluny Motor Inn on the A9 and phoned there. He could not believe his luck. Not only was there a clear record of Bob Beck’s having phoned home but he had even used his own name.
He phoned Detective Sergeant Perrin with the news. “We’ll get him in,” said the detective triumphantly. “But surely he hasn’t still got that tape? Surely he chucked it out the car window or something.”
“If you pull him in,” said Hamish, “I’ll go out to the Cluny Motor Inn and go through the trash. With any luck it hasn’t been collected.”
He stopped only to pick up his radio, which had a tape deck, from the kitchen table before driving off into the wild night. Sheets of rain battered against the windscreen and he thought bleakly of sitting in the Land Rover with Priscilla waiting for Blair and the others to arrive and experienced a stabbing pain of hurt and loss in his gut. He marvelled that the pain could still be so intense. He didn’t feel like a drink or a pill to ease it, but rather thought of taking a shotgun and blasting a big hole in his stomach, not to kill himself, but, like a cartoon animal, to leave a nice clean round hole where the hurt had been.
At last he reached the motor inn and eagerly asked the manager if he could search through the hotel rubbish, “Suit yourself,” said the manager. “It gets collected tomorrow. It’s all round the back.”
He led Hamish out to the back of the hotel, where two giant metal rubbish bins gleamed wetly in the lights from the inn. “You’d best leave me to it,” said Hamish gloomily. “I’ll need to take everything out.”