Death of a Bore (18 page)

Hamish diligently questioned members of the cast, technicians, make-up girls, and actors for the rest of the day without managing to make a crack in their statements of
goodwill to all.

Perhaps away from the location, he might have better luck. Surely there was some typist or gofer or some sort of menial who might be able to give him a different picture.

He joined up with Jimmy and outlined his plan. ‘I’ll run it past Blair first,’ Jimmy said.

‘Must you?’

‘I’ll put it up as my idea and you can come along. If I say it’s your idea, you know what he’s like: he’ll tell you to go back to your local duties.’

Jimmy walked away and phoned. He came back with a grin on his face.

‘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 womanizers. 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 on to 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 realized 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.

‘I’m going to leave you,’ said Angus furiously. He dropped the leash and walked on. Lugs stared after him and then pricked up his huge ears. Just as the police Land Rover
rounded the corner of the street, Lugs darted forward and sank his teeth into Angus’s trousers.

‘Get off!’ howled Angus. There was a tearing sound as the seat of his trousers came away in Lugs’s teeth.

The next thing Angus knew, a furious Hamish Macbeth was climbing down from the Land Rover. Angus began to run, but Hamish, who had won cups for cross-country running, brought him down with a
rugby tackle, jerked him to his feet, and shook him till his teeth rattled.

Then he handcuffed him and shoved him in the back of the Land Rover. He tenderly lifted Lugs on to the passenger seat.

‘You are going back to Lochdubh,’ he shouted at Angus. ‘You are going to check back in at Mrs Dunne’s and go on as if nothing has happened, or I will beat the pulp out of
you. You couldn’t get into the hard drive, could you?’

‘No,’ whimpered Angus.

‘Why not?’

‘It wasnae my fault. Man, nobody in the country could get into that hard drive. Someone used a programme that doesnae just delete the files but overwrites them with random garbage, maybe
seven times.’

‘That would take a great deal of computer knowledge, wouldn’t it?’

Angus hung his head. ‘Not these days. It was originally a U.S. government program, but anyone can buy the software.’

‘I can’t turn over that computer – you do still have the computer?’ asked Hamish.

‘Yes.’

‘I should never have tried to let you off the hook. When this case is over, get yourself out of Lochdubh. I’ll neffer, neffer forgive you for trying to steal my dog. Are your e-mails
still on the computer?’

‘No, I used that program I was telling you about to delete them.’

‘Where did you buy it?’

‘I pirated it.’

‘So you’re a double thief as well as a dog-napper.’

‘You’re never there,’ protested Angus, ‘and I thought Lugs liked me.’

‘You thought wrong. Now, chust shut your stupid face.’

At Mrs Dunne’s Hamish waited until Angus was let in; he had taken off the handcuffs and relieved him of the computer. He went back to the police station and fried liver to give Lugs a
generous supper. After he had eaten, an exhausted Lugs fell asleep and began to snore.

Hamish sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He had taken risks before but never one as dangerous or stupid as this.

He rose and pulled down the ladder that led to the loft. He climbed up and hid the computer among all the junk he had stored up there, thinking it might come in useful sometime.

Then he climbed back down and began to pace back and forth. Maybe he was becoming obsessive about that script. Maybe he should be concentrating on Patricia Wheeler. Where did she live? What had
she been doing on the night John was murdered?

He sighed. He would go back to interviewing the cast in the morning, and this time he would ask them all where they had been on the night of the murder and take their home addresses.

Matthew Campbell walked out to the forecourt of the Tommel Castle Hotel the following morning. Thanks to Elspeth, their story was coming along nicely. She had suggested they
write it like an old-fashioned detective story. Famous writer, quiet highland villages, suspicion and fear.

He took a deep breath of the clear air. Elspeth had introduced him to her old boss, Sam, who ran the
Highland Times.
Somewhere at the back of his mind, Matthew was beginning to wonder
what it would be like to be a local reporter in this highland location.

It was a long time since he had felt so energized and healthy. Then there was Freda. He thought about her constantly. They had arranged to have dinner together that evening, and he found his
senses tingling in happy anticipation.

Elspeth came out to join him. ‘What a lovely day,’ said Matthew.

‘We don’t often get days like this in winter,’ said Elspeth. ‘What should we do today?’

‘Let’s see that copper friend of yours and see if he’s got anything for us.’

But when they went down to the waterfront, it was to find a preoccupied Hamish, who said, ‘I haven’t time just now. Maybe talk to you later.’

Elspeth felt crushed. Hamish didn’t even seem to see her.

Hamish and Jimmy went doggedly from one television person to another, writing down where each one had been on the evening of the murder and taking down home addresses.

Blair appeared at one point, but for once both Hamish and Jimmy appeared to be working so hard that he didn’t have anything to complain about. Police were now searching Lochdubh for
John’s computer, and Hamish kept thinking uneasily about the computer lying up in the police station loft.

‘I think we’ve got everyone,’ said Jimmy at last. ‘We should go to Strathbane and check around Patricia’s neighbours.’

‘I would like to talk to one of those girls again. See if they could maybe get me a copy of the script.’

‘Man, you’ve got that script on the brain. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with anything. Let’s check Patricia Wheeler’s address first.’

‘Would you mind doing that, Jimmy? I’ll meet up with you in that pub next to headquarters at, say, eight.’

‘All right. But you’re buying.’

Hamish – in his uniform this time – waited across the road from Strathbane Television. Kirsty Baxter, the one who looked like a shampoo advertisement, emerged on
her own. Hamish quickly crossed the road and waylaid her.