Hamish said goodbye and replaced the receiver. He pulled forward a sheet of paper. He would need to start with any villagers who had been on friendly terms with Sean. Top of the list were Mr and Mrs Wellington. Then Angela Brodie had been seen visiting the bus. Then came Nessie and Jessie Currie.
He sat back and looked dismally at the short list. He would need to detach his mind from the sore fact that these people were friends. So what had he?
Mr Wellington: lost his faith after a discussion with Sean and started preaching old sermons.
Mrs Wellington: nervous and agitated and not at all anything like her old, confident, bossy self.
Angela Brodie: acting strangely and buying expensive clothes.
Nessie and Jessie Currie: house up for sale, tetchy and miserable.
Well, forget about the murder, he would have to try to find out what Sean had done to these people. In the meantime, Willie could forgo his visits to the Napoli and keep questioning and asking in case anyone had seen a stranger that day.
∨ Death of a Travelling Man ∧
6
Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes.
—Shakespeare
Despite Blair’s lack of interest, the police were doing a thorough job. The forensic team came back to go over the bus again, inch by inch. The sledgehammer was identified as belonging to the manse, but the bus was also full of items which Sean had borrowed from the Wellingtons. Mr Wellington said the sledgehammer was normally lodged in a shed at the end of his garden. He was not aware that Sean had borrowed it at any time. Hamish had had high hopes for that hidey-hole under the bus, but it turned out to be full of the same bits of rubbish as before. In a neutral voice, he told Harry MacNab and Jimmy Anderson of the women who had been friendly with Sean, relieved in a way that the detectives would be questioning them and not himself. Never before had he been so reluctant to investigate any case. Still, he could not resist asking them at the end of the day how they had got on.
“They’re all white and shaken,” said Anderson, “but that could be because of the shock. I mean, you’ve known all these women for some time now, Hamish, and you can hardly say that any one of them have shown criminal tendencies.”
“Forget about the women; what about the minister?”
“Nice old boy, but odd, really odd. He said something about the hammer of God.”
“He was probably quoting Chesterton,” said Hamish, who had read the Father Brown stories.
“Whoever he was quoting, he seemed smug. He said he’d called on the Lord for help and the Lord had helped, that sort of thing. Was he always that daft?”
“Not that I ever guessed,” said Hamish bleakly. “Did you tell the Currie sisters they would have to stay in the village until the investigation was over?”
“Why? I thought a trip to Inverness was a big adventure for that pair.”
“Their house is up for sale.”
“Not now, it isn’t,” said Anderson.
“So,” said Hamish, “they were going to leave, Sean gets murdered, and they change their minds. Why?”
“Look, Hamish, I know you like these people, but you know more about them than anyone else, and you’re going to have to ask some questions yourself.” Anderson was lying back in a chair in the police station office, with his feet on the desk. Willie came in with a tray of coffee cups, clucked in disapproval, put down the tray, picked up a newspaper and slid it under Anderson’s feet.
“That’s mair like a houseboy than a policeman,” snorted MacNab when Willie had left the room, “but he makes a grand cup o’ coffee.”
“And there was nothing in the bus,” pursued Hamish, “nothing at all.”
“Not a clue,” said Anderson. “No morphine, no hundred pounds, no letters.”
“So what happens to the bus now?”
“Sean’s mither phoned Mr Wellington and said she was too distressed over her son’s death to do anything about it at the moment, and so Mr Wellington said the bus could stay where it was until she felt fit enough to come up and take it away, or any of his belongings. There’ll be no trouble about it. Sean left a will, all right and proper, leaving everything to his mither.”
“Odd,” muttered Hamish. “Any more on his background?”
“Oh, aye, this’ll set you back. He was in the Hong Kong police for about six months but got the push.”
“Why?”
“Downright laziness. Should ha’ been a man after your own heart, Hamish.”
“But this lassie, Cheryl,” pursued Hamish. “Is there any way o’ shaking her alibi?”
“Not with about forty witnesses to say she was in Mullen’s the whole evening.”
“Damn, I’d like a word with her myself.”
“That’d be stepping out of your parish. You cannae shake that alibi.”
“Maybe. But I’d like to try all the same.”
Anderson sighed and poured more coffee. “I think this is one case you’re never going to solve, Hamish Macbeth. I feel it in ma bones.”
♦
And so it seemed, as the days dragged into weeks. The file on Sean Gourlay was not closed, but it might just as well have been. The bus remained up on the field at the back of the manse, a daily mute reminder to Hamish of failure. He had interviewed the Wellingtons, Angela Brodie and the Currie sisters several times, but there was no change in their statements. They had gone out of their way to welcome Sean and Cheryl to the village and then had ceased to see them. They had been nowhere near the bus on the night of the murder.
He decided in despair to risk the wrath of Strathbane and go over on his day off and see if he could talk to Cheryl.
He went to Mullen’s first. A sprawling red brick building with a huge car park, it was open twenty-four hours. A poster advertising various groups that neither Hamish nor possibly anyone else had ever heard of was pasted up on one of the windows.
Hamish pushed open the door and went in. It was a monument to the age of plastic: plastic plants trailed plastic fronds from plastic flower-boxes; plastic-covered chairs crouched beside low plastic tables. Even the long bar was made of plastic painted to look like wood. Hamish asked the barman for an orange juice and was mildly surprised to receive it in a glass tumbler instead of a plastic beaker. It was ten in the morning. A few couples were seated at the tables eating Mullen’s Breakfast Special. Perhaps, thought Hamish, it was livelier in the evenings, with bands and crowds.
“Have you got Johnny Rankin and the Stotters playing here?” asked Hamish. “I don’t see them on the bill.”
“No’ this month,” said the barman. “Maybe next.”
“I’ve never heard of any of the groups you’ve got advertised,” said Hamish.
“Aye, weel, the manager books the cheap acts, that’s why. Some of them are chronic.”
“Could I hae a word with the manager?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Police,” said Hamish patiently, pointing to his uniform.
“Whit, again? Hang on a minute and I’ll see if Mr Mullen’s aboot.”
Hamish waited patiently. One customer shuffled over to the juke-box and dropped in some coins. Soon a pleasant tenor voice filled the room, singing ‘Over the Sea to Skye’, conjuring up Jacobite romance, far from the reality of this plastic road-house.
A small squat hairy man appeared behind the bar. He had very black eyes, like stones, and odd tufts of hair on his face, and hair sprouting from his nostrils and ears. He looked like a troglodyte squeezed into twentieth-century clothing.
“Mullen,” he said curtly to Hamish by way of introduction. “What d’ye want?”
“I want to talk to you about Cheryl Higgins,” said Hamish.
“Oh, her! What can I tell you that I’ve no’ said a’ready? She was here all right from nine till one in the morning, caterwauling away.”