Hamish Macbeth 09 (1993) - Death of a Travelling Man (2 page)

“A correspondence course in psychiatry,” corrected Hamish, who always felt he was fighting a losing battle against Willie’s mistakes and malapropisms.

“Didn’t I just say that?” demanded Willie, aggrieved. “Well, I would say from my experience that Sean Gourlay is just a regular, normal fellow.”

“Never mind. Check up on him anyway,” said Hamish. “And by the way, we’re invited up to the castle for dinner tonight by Miss Halburton-Smythe.”

“But we cannae dae that, sir,” said Willie patiently. “That waud mean two of us off duty.”

“We leave a note on the door o’ the police station to say where we are,” said Hamish, striving for patience. “What’s going to happen in Lochdubh? The same as all the nights since you’ve been here…nothing at all.”

“Well, I suppose…” Willie’s voice trailed away and his mouth fell open. They had arrived outside the Italian restaurant and the beauty Hamish had seen earlier was down on her knees scrubbing the restaurant steps, her bottom waggling provocatively with each movement of the scrubbing brush. “That’s something you dinnae say these days,” said Willie, staring in admiration.

“What? A bum like that?” asked Hamish.

“No, a woman down on her knees scrubbing. I thought they were exstinked.”

“Nice day,” said Hamish loudly, raising his cap. The girl turned and looked up and then got to her feet, wiping her soapy hands on her apron.

“Just arrived?” pursued Hamish.

“Yes. Mr Ferrari send for me last month.”

“But you knew English already?”

“My mother, she is from Edinburgh. She go back to the village to get married. The village is outside Naples.”

She held out a small work-reddened hand. “I am Sergeant Hamish Macbeth and this is PC Willie Lamont,” said Hamish, “and you are…?”

“Lucia Livia.”

“And what do you think of Lochdubh, Miss Livia?”

“It is…very quiet,” she said, her eyes looking beyond them to the still loch.

A group of fishermen and forestry workers came along and stopped short, all of them staring at Lucia in silent admiration.

“I feel it is the duty o’ the police tae look after newcomers to the village,” said Willie suddenly. “Perhaps you waud allow me to show you around the place, Miss Livia?”

“I am not sure,” she said cautiously. “I would have to ask Mr Ferrari. I work every evening.”

“Aye, well, just you ask him,” said Willie. “You’ve left the corners o’ the steps dirty. That’ll no’ do. Wait and I’ll show ye.”

“For heffen’s sake,” muttered Hamish, his Highland accent becoming more sibilant. But Willie was already down on his knees, scrubbing busily at the step.

“I’ll say good day to you, Miss Livia,” said Hamish stiffly. “Some of us haff the police work to do.”

Willie scrubbed on, unheeding.

Hamish walked gloomily back to the police station. In the small kitchen, everything gleamed and shone and the air smelled strongly of bleach and disinfectant. He made a cup of coffee and carried it through to the police station and sat down at the desk. He phoned Strathbane and spoke to Detective Jimmy Anderson, giving him the names of Cheryl and Sean. The address on Sean’s driving licence had been a Glasgow one and Hamish remembered it clearly, Flat B, 189, Lombard Crescent. Anderson said he would check up on it and get back to him as soon as possible.

Hamish then went out again and along to the manse. The minister was alone in his study. “Oh, Hamish,” he said, pushing away the sermon he had been working on, “what brings you here?”

“It’s those layabouts and their bus.”

“They are doing no harm, Hamish. The field is not used for anything. It’s a small patch of weedy grass and nettles. Why shouldn’t these young people have the use of it?”

“There’s something about them I don’t like. Besides, I’m surprised at you, Mr Wellington, for encouraging that kind of layabout.”

“Now, Hamish,” said the minister mildly, “you know jobs are few and far between.”

“So why don’t they go somewhere where there are jobs?” demanded Hamish, exasperated.

The minister chewed the end of his pencil in an abstracted way and then put it down. “There is something appealing about their way of life,” he said. “I sometimes think it would be wonderful to just take off and travel around without any responsibilities whatsoever.”

“And then who would pay the taxes?”

“They’re both young,” said Mr Wellington comfortably. “Time enough yet for them to grow up and become responsible.”

“Sean Gourlay is, I should guess, in his late twenties,” pointed out Hamish, “and the girl has a gutter mouth.”

“Come now, she was charming to me,”

“Well, I feel you are being conned,” said Hamish. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

§

Hamish and Willie drove up to Tommel Castle Hotel that evening. Hamish climbed down from the Land Rover and sniffed the soft air with pleasure. The light evenings were back. Gone was the long dark tunnel of winter. A faint breeze blew in from the moors, scented with wild thyme. And then one of the castle cars, driven by a young woman, drove up and began to reverse to park next to the police Land Rover.

“Wait a minute,” shouted Willie, moving purposefully forward. “You’re no’ doing it right. Hard left. Now straighten up! Straighten up. Dear God, lassie, how did you ever pass your test? Don’t you know how to straighten up?”

Face scarlet with a mixture of fury and mortification, the woman parked at an angle and then climbed out and slammed the car door.

Willie shook his head. “Women drivers,” he said. “You’ll need to do better than that.”

She gave him an angry look and walked off into the hotel without a word.

“Stop being Mr Know-All,” said Hamish. “She’d probably haff done chust fine if you had left her alone. Now forget you’re a cop, and try to be charming.”

Suddenly nervous, Willie tugged at his tie. “Do I look all right, sir?”

“Yes, yes, just watch that mouth of yours.”

Priscilla met them in the entrance hall. “Doris is waiting for us in the bar,” she said. “I told her to get herself a drink and settle down. Some fool of a man was trying to tell her how to park.”

Hamish groaned inwardly. Doris Ward was a plain young woman with thick glasses and a rather rabbity mouth. She was wearing a blouse and skirt and a tartan waistcoat. She shook hands with Willie and Hamish and then said to Willie, “I should have known you were a bobby.”

“Sorry about that,” said Willie awkwardly after a nudge in the ribs from Hamish’s elbow. “Forgot I was off duty.”

“I am sure you have more to do when you are on duty,” said Doris, “than hector women drivers.”

“You’re English, aren’t you?” said Hamish, desperate to change the conversation. “Thanks, Priscilla, I’ll have any sort of soft drink, but Willie here will have a whisky.”

“Yes, I’m English,” said Doris. “It’s all very remote up here, isn’t it?”

Everyone agreed that, yes, it was remote and then there was a heavy silence.

“Willie here is from the city, Strathbane,” said Hamish at last. “He’s finding it difficult to get used to village ways.”

“Do you have many friends in the village?” Doris asked Willie politely.

“No, not in Lochdubh,” said Willie, “but I have a cliche of friends in Strathbane.”

“Clique,” moaned Hamish under his breath.

“Mind you,” said Willie, becoming expansive, “I have always wanted to travel. I have an aunt in America I could go and see.”

“Which part of America?” asked Doris.

“She lives in a condom in San Francisco.”

Doris sniggered. “Well, in these AIDS-ridden days, that’s a very safe place to live.”

Willie looked at her, puzzled, and then his face cleared. “Oh, aye, them condoms have secured cameras and guards and things like that.”

“Do you want to travel yourself, Doris?” asked Hamish.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Behind her thick glasses, her eyes sent him a flirtatious look. “I might settle for marriage.”

“Quite right too,” said Willie heartily. “I must say, it is refreshing to meet the woman these days who disnae go in for all this fenimist rubbish.”

“You mean
feminist
,” corrected Doris. “If you are going to criticize anything, at least pronounce it properly. Do you mean all women should settle for marriage and babies?”

“Why not?” demanded Willie, giving her a tolerant smile. “That’s what they’re built for.”

“You’re out of the Dark Ages,” said Priscilla smoothly. “Dinner should be ready now. Carry your drinks through.”

“Get her to talk about herself,” hissed Hamish in Willie’s ear as they walked towards the dining room.

But no sooner were they seated and waiting for the first course to be served than Doris selected a cigarette from a packet and lit up.

“Do you know you are ruining your lungs?” demanded Willie. “That stuff’s a killer and bad for the skin, too. I can already see it has—”

“What are we haffing for dinner?” said Hamish, his voice suddenly very loud and strained.

“Scotch broth to start,” said Priscilla, “and then steak. We’ve got a new chef. We had to get rid of the old one,” she said to Doris, “after that murder here, the one I told you about.”

Doris gazed at Hamish with admiration. “I heard you’d solved it,” she said. “Tell me all about it.”

Normally too shy to talk much about himself but frightened of Willie’s gaffes, Hamish told her about it at length, but Priscilla saw to her irritation that Doris was entranced with Hamish and could hardly keep her eyes off him.

The evening went from bad to worse. Hamish had never before seen Willie drink anything stronger than tea or coffee. The whisky before dinner, the wine at dinner and the brandy afterwards went straight to his head. As soon as Hamish had finished talking, Willie began to talk about his cases, which sounded like a dismal catalogue of public harassment. He seemed a genius at finding out cars with bald tyres, cars with lapsed road tax, cars with various other faults, and every parking offence under the sun. He told what he obviously thought were hilarious stories of people who had become angry with him and what they had said. He laughed so hard, the tears ran down his face. Willie had never before enjoyed himself so much. He felt he was the life and soul of the party.

Hamish at last propelled a dreamily smiling Willie out to the Land Rover. “You made a fine mess o’ that, Willie,” he said as he drove down to Lochdubh through the heathery darkness. But there was no reply. Willie had fallen asleep.

What on earth am I going to do with him, thought Hamish wearily. Up on the field behind the manse, lights glowed behind the curtained windows of the bus. He did not like the sight. He did not like the feeling of this alien and dangerous presence in Lochdubh.

He then reassured himself with the thought that they would soon get bored and move on. The ‘travellers’ like to journey in convoys. It was odd to find two of them on their own.

He woke Willie outside the police station and ordered him sharply to go in and go to bed. Then he phoned Strathbane. Jimmy Anderson was working overtime and took the call. He had, he said, found nothing on Cheryl and Sean Gourlay from the Glasgow police except to confirm that Sean had taken his driving test in Glasgow recently, hence the new licence.

“Try Scotland Yard,” urged Hamish. “See what they can come up with.”

“Whit? They’re overworked down there as it is,” complained Anderson. “Whit’s this Sean done?”

“Nothing…yet,” said Hamish. “Look, just try them.”

“Try them yoursel’,” said Anderson. “We’ve got more than enough work here. In my opinion, you’re going a bit ower the top about this Sean character. Wait till he does something.”

Hamish put down the receiver. He felt he had been a bit silly. There was no need to phone the Yard.

Besides, what could he have told Scotland Yard anyway? That he had a bad feeling, an intuition?

Sean would be gone by next week at the latest. And with that comforting thought, Hamish went to bed.

We believe no evil till the evil’s done.

—Jean de la Fontaine

B
ut a week later, the bus was still parked up behind the manse. A much cleaner and quieter Cheryl than Hamish had first met wandered about the village or up on the moors. She and Sean were hardly ever to be seen together. They seemed a popular enough pair with the villagers, who were all Highland enough to admire really genuine laziness when they saw it, and Hamish was irritated to overhear one of the village women saying, “Thon Sean Gourlay can beat our Hamish any day when it comes to the idleness.”

Hamish felt this was particularly unfair, as he had suddenly been beset with a series of small accidents and crimes to deal with. There were frying-pan fires, minor car crashes, lost sheep, lost children, boundary disputes, poachers, and various other things which seemed like dramas at the outset and resolved themselves into minor happenings at the end. Particularly the three reported cases of lost children, who turned out to have been playing truant from school to go fishing. But it still meant a lot of paperwork, and Hamish found that easier to do himself than to spend hours correcting Willie’s prose.

The weather was still unseasonably mild and all the burns and rivers were foaming with peaty water, like beer, as they rushed down from the hills and mountains fed by melting snow. The air was full of the sound of rushing water. Curlews piped on the moors, sailing over their nests, their long curved beaks giving them a prehistoric look. There were vast skies of milky blue and tremendous sunsets of feathery pink clouds, long bands of them, each cloud as delicate as a brush-stroke.

Hamish would have put Sean Gourlay out of his mind had he not found him hanging around the hotel gift shop where Priscilla worked.

Sean gave Hamish his usual mocking look as he strolled out of the shop. Hamish waited until he had gone and then said to Priscilla, “You shouldn’t encourage him.”

“Why not?” demanded Priscilla coolly. “The first time he bought a silver-and-amethyst ring, and the second, a mohair shawl. He’s a genuine customer, Hamish.”

“Where does he get the money?” demanded Hamish. “I happen to know the pair o’ them are drawing the dole from the post office.”