Hamish Macbeth 12 (1996) - Death of a Macho Man (21 page)

“Don’t pay any attention,” urged Hamish. “Urgent police business.”

But Hamish expected any minute that there would be a message from the control tower to turn back. When no such call came, he could only assume that the police, determined to catch this Gentleman Jim, had told the airport authorities to let him go. Thanks to Mr. Morton, he would get there quickly, in under an hour; but even so, Strathbane would be there and Blair would be desperate to claim the credit.

§

Blair had phoned the manager of the hotel and told him that John Glover was a dangerous criminal and not to be approached, as he was armed and dangerous. Staff should keep out of his way. They would shortly have the hotel surrounded. But the excited Blair in the race to Lochdubh from Strathbane put on the police siren. Up in the hotel room, John heard that distant wail.

“Trouble,” he said to Betty. “Untie her, ungag her, and let’s get her down the back stairs.”

“We don’t need her,” hissed Betty, her face a muddy colour with fright.

“We may need a hostage. Leave the luggage. Leave the guns. I’ve got my pistol.”

“But there’s a fortune in clothes in my bags!” wailed Betty.

He slapped her so violently across the face that she went staggering across the room. “Do as you’re told,” he said.

Tight lipped, Betty got to work, ripping the gag from Priscilla’s mouth and untying her bonds.

With a pistol shoved into her side, Priscilla was hustled out and along the corridor. Betty’s breath came in ragged gasps. Priscilla heard that wail of the siren in the distance and prayed the police would arrive in time.

Outside the back door, she blinked in the blaze of sunlight. The rain had stopped. “Sit in the back of the car with her,” John ordered Betty. “Here, take the gun and keep her covered.”

Priscilla kept her eyes on the gun now in Betty’s hand. There was no sign of that hand wavering or Betty becoming distracted.

They raced off down the drive and swung out through gates and along the one-track road.

“They’ll have road-blocks,” said Betty.

“I know,” he said calmly. “But while you were romancing that idiot of a copper, I’ve been doing my homework, There’s plenty of places to hide out, and the closer to the hotel, the better.” The car sped up into the hills and then John suddenly slowed. “This is the place,” he said. He turned off to the left along a farm track. “There’s a deserted building along here,” he said. “We’ll wait until dark. I’ve got one of those three-wheel dune-buggy-type vehicles they use for rounding up sheep. We can take off across the hills and avoid the roads.”

“Where to?”

“You’ll find out.”

He stopped finally outside a deserted farm building. “Out,” he commanded.

He urged them into the building. “Now keep her there a minute, Betty,” he said. “I’m going to take a look around outside.”

Betty and Priscilla faced each other across the bare room. Sun slanted through the broken windows.

“Did you really work in that bank?” Priscilla asked. She thought furiously: get her talking and she might drop her guard.

“Oh, yes,” said Betty. “For fifteen years.”

“Fifteen years!” exclaimed Priscilla. “Then that means you weren’t a criminal until this.”

Betty stared at her mulishly.

“Why?” pursued Priscilla. “Why now? You may as well tell me because he’s going to kill me.”

“No, he’s not,” said Betty contemptuously. “He’ll set you free as soon as we decide to move.”

“He’ll kill me, just the way he killed the real John Glover.”

“Jim didn’t kill Glover.”

“Oh, and how did you get his credit cards and bank-book? Ask him to hand them over?”

“Jim got one of his friends to keep a guard on him while we came up here. He’ll be released as soon as we get back to Glasgow.”

“Do you know this for a fact? He killed Duggan. You can’t be naive enough to think he let Glover live, or that he’s going to let me live…or even you!”

Betty laughed. “Don’t try and pull that one on me. Jim and me are an item.”

“But you were engaged to John Glover, the late John Glover,” said Priscilla, hoping to frighten her, hoping to get her angry.

“Stop saying that! Duggan deserved to die. He was nothing more than a common criminal.”

“And your Jim is an uncommon criminal?”

There was a long silence. The wind of Sutherland howled around the deserted farmhouse like a banshee. The police would have reached the hotel, thought Priscilla. Surely they would search the surrounding countryside. But Blair would be in charge and Blair would think only of road-blocks. But surely they would bring dogs.

Betty gave an involuntary shiver. “I don’t know how anyone can live up here,” she complained. “Nothing for miles and miles, and the weather’s dreadful.”

“It can be just as dreadful in Glasgow,” said Priscilla. “Look, we may as well pass the time until he gets back. Tell me how you got into all this.”

Betty gave a shrug and walked to the window and looked out. The moorland fell away in front of her. Thin curtains of rain were trailing over the mountains in the distance although the sun shone where they were.

She turned back. “As I said, I’d been working in that bank for years. I got engaged to John Glover because I decided I’d better start making provision for my old age. I used to go to a bar near the bank after work. One evening, Jim came up to me and asked if he could buy me a drink. We got talking. He seemed rich and sophisticated, everything John was not. We began to see each other. Then we started an affair. I told him I would tell John the engagement was off. He asked me why I’d got involved with such a dry stick of a man in the first place and I told him, security. He said he’d a proposition to put to me. He said for a start I had to stay engaged to John. He said he loved me and was going to marry me.”

“And you believed him!” exclaimed Priscilla.

“He does love me and he wants to marry me and I love him,” said Betty passionately.

“In fact you love him so much, you end up in bed with Hamish Macbeth!”

“Oh, that! That was Jim’s idea. Tie that copper up, he said, and he’ll look elsewhere for suspects.”

In all her misery and dread Priscilla suddenly wished she could stay alive if only to tell Hamish Macbeth what Betty had said.

“Let me get this straight,” said Priscilla. “You’re a respectable bank clerk for years. This Jim comes on the scene and you agree to his taking the identity of your fiancé and conspire to murder Duggan.”

“His name wasn’t Duggan. He was some rat of a low life called Charlie Stoddart.”

“And that makes it all right?”

“Look, you snotty bitch, you don’t know what it was like working in that bank, year in and year out, handling all that money that didn’t belong to me. Jim said we could have everything I’d ever dreamt of—fancy homes, fancy holidays, visit all the places I’d only seen in the movies.” She turned back to the window. “What’s keeping him?”

§

Jim checked to make sure the three-wheeler was still there and ready to drive. Then he walked away across the moorland, the wind tugging at his thick hair. He did not feel afraid, only felt a rush of adrenaline. He knew in his bones he was going to get away with it. He felt the gods were on his side. Beck confessing to the murder of Duggan had been an amazing bit of luck.

The jealousy that fat pig Blair had for the local Lochdubh copper had been another. There had been no need to try to kill Hamish, but he had felt it would have been a way of tying up loose ends. It had been amazingly simple to leave the crowd at the Cnothan games and climb up that mountain and be ready and waiting when Hamish came into view, finding the rifle he had buried in the heather the night before. So he had missed—so what? No one had believed Hamish’s story, his rifle had not been found, and he had been able to get it back in the middle of the night after the games. It was a pity he’d had to go off and leave the rifle and shotgun in the hotel room, but it was a small price to pay for freedom. He had no intention of heading off during daylight. They would have helicopters up there soon, searching the surrounding countryside. He took a last look around. As he had previously found, the moorland was surprisingly dry and heathery despite all the rain: no sinister peat bogs. He had a man waiting for him in a cottage near Bonar Bridge, complete with a ready disguise for him and a set of fake identity papers. Now to clear up the remaining loose ends.

§

Blair was in a bigger fury than he had ever been before. It was he who had poured scorn on Hamish Macbeth’s belief that Beck had not killed Duggan. But he could have saved the day with the arrest of this man masquerading as John Glover, believed to be the famous Gentleman Jim. But Jim was gone, together with that Betty John. And, worse than that, the staff had been told to keep clear, but a maid watching from one of the upstairs windows had seen the pair forcing Priscilla Halburton-Smythe into a car and driving off. The normally urbane Superintendent Peter Daviot was on the scene, and his language was worse than Blair’s. Radios crackled as orders went out to block every road leading out of Lochdubh.

Colonel Halburton-Smythe, supporting his weeping wife, was shouting that they were all a bunch of dangerous incompetents.

Press cars were beginning to drive up and Blair was howling at his men to ‘get the buggers away.’

Adding to the confusion were the villagers of Lochdubh, who had heard about the trouble at the castle before the police arrived and were huddled in groups in the hotel car park.

“So it wasn’t you, Willie,” said Lucia.

Willie looked at her in amazement. “You mean you thought I might have murdered Duggan! Why, for God’s sake?”

“You’re such a tiger when you’re angry.”

And Willie promptly forgave her everything.

Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife, was addressing some of her husband’s parishioners, her booming voice reaching Blair’s infuriated ears. “We should have listened to Hamish Macbeth. Did he not say that. Beck had not done the murder?”

“Yes, but how do we know this armed man here did it, tell me that?” cried Geordie Mackenzie.

Mrs. Wellington gave him a withering look. “Use your brains. We may be getting a reputation here, but it’s hard to believe we have two murderers in Lochdubh.”

“If you’re right, then we have,” said Geordie triumphantly. “Beck murdered Rosie and this fellow murdered Duggan.”

Mrs. Wellington ignored him and went on, “It’s all the fault of this hotel, letting rooms to murderers. Money greed, that’s what it is. I shall tell my husband on Sunday to preach a sermon on the subject. They would let rooms to apes here provided the apes had enough money.”

“Shut up, you old bag,” screamed the colonel, beside himself with worry and fright. “What are all these policemen doing here, for God’s sake? Why aren’t they out looking for my daughter?”

Mr. Daviot approached him. “We have men blocking every road,” he said soothingly.

The colonel clasped his trembling hands. “And if they take to the hills…”

“We’re waiting for the dogs,” said Mr. Daviot and turned away.

§

“Nearly there,” said Mr. Morton. He was now piloting the helicopter, which had collected them from Inverness airport, as he had done the Learjet. “We’ll set you down in the car-park at the Tommel Castle Hotel.”

In that moment, Hamish looked down at the moorland below, purple with heather. He saw the little figure of a man and then saw that figure plunge into the heather for cover.

“Put me down in the nearest field,” shouted Hamish above the noise of the helicopter. The helicopter began to heel and go downwards. “Have you a gun?” asked Hamish.

“My deer rifle’s behind you,” said Mr. Morton, who was beginning to feel he was beyond being surprised at anything. Hamish took me gun from its case, then found the bullets and loaded it. When the helicopter landed he was off and running again, the gun slung over his shoulder, heading to where he had seen that figure. Buckie’s farmhouse, he thought. Empty. He was close to it.

§

Jim stumbled to his feet and ran towards the farmhouse. He was sure he hadn’t been seen, but, just in case, he would need to change his plans and make his escape in daylight.

Betty gave him a relieved smile. He walked over and took the gun from her. “Outside,” he said.

“He’s going to kill me,” said Priscilla to Betty. “Don’t let him do this.”

“Silly fool,” said Betty. She said to Jim, “She thinks you’re going to kill her.”

Jim jerked his head at the doorway. “Outside,” he repeated. He jabbed the gun in Priscilla’s side.

They stood in the sunlight in the deserted farmyard. Jim had moved away from them, keeping Priscilla covered.

The smile had left Betty’s face and she looked at Jim anxiously. The wind soughed through the skeletal branches of a dead ash tree over their heads, a curlew piped from the heather. The wind had dropped in that uncanny way of Sutherland winds, and all was still.

Jim pointed the pistol directly at Priscilla’s heart. “Goodbye, Miss Toffee-Nose.”

“NO!” screamed Betty and stood in front of Priscilla with her arms spread wide.

Priscilla in that split second should have tried to escape, but she seemed rooted to the spot, staring at Betty’s dead body, spread-eagled at her feet. She looked up and across at Jim. “You meant to kill her anyway.”

“Well, well, Miss Clever-Clogs, how right you are.” He raised the pistol again.

§

Hamish Macbeth raised the deer rifle to his shoulder. He knew, as any policeman should, that he should shout a warning. He saw Jim’s grinning face in the telescopic sight and took careful aim.

Priscilla had decided to run for it. She darted to the side, tripped on a rusting piece of farm machinery, and fell panting on the ground. She heard a shot. She twisted round and looked at her tormentor. He was standing, swaying, his face a mask of blood.

And then he fell headlong and lay still.

Priscilla tried to stand up. But her legs would not hold her. Hamish found her kneeling on the ground, retching miserably.

He passed her a handkerchief. She finished vomiting and looked at him, her eyes widening. “Hamish?”