Death of an Addict

by Beaton, M. C.

  He straightened up slowly and turned round. A woman of about his own age, thirty-something, stood there. She had thick black hair tied at the nape of her neck with a black ribbon. She was wearing a tailored suit and flat shoes. She had an oval face, large brown eyes and a generous mouth.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ asked Hamish.

  The woman looked around. ‘Can we get out of here for a bit? We need to talk somewhere private.’

  Hamish glanced at his watch. ‘It’s just about lunchtime.’

  ‘Then we’ll have lunch.’

  They walked a good bit away from the church before she stopped by a small car. ‘Get in,’ she said, ‘and we’ll go into the centre of town.’

  They had driven a few streets when she said, ‘I gather you will have guessed I am here to brief you.’

  ‘Are you somebody’s secretary?’

  ‘I am Detective Inspector Chater.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

  ‘And that was a sexist remark if ever there was one.’

  ‘This,’ said Hamish, waving an expansive hand, ‘is sexist country. You cannae be from Strathbane.’

  ‘I have been brought up from Glasgow. Don’t talk until I negotiate this bloody awful one-way system.’

  She parked at last in the private car park of the Grand Hotel. Any hotel called the Grand conjures up visions of Victorian or Edwardian elegance, but this one was pure Strathbane: a square, modern building decorated in the height of geek-chic, plastic and vulgar and pretentious.

  The dining room was fairly empty. She demanded, and got, a table in a secluded corner.

  They ordered from a huge menu filled with glorious descriptions of crackling this and fresh that, and sizzling the other. Hamish ordered fish and chips – ‘Sea-fresh haddock in golden crispy batter and pommes frites’ – and she ordered steak and a baked potato – ‘Prime cut of Angus with floury baked potato and lashings of fresh Scottish butter.’

  Detective Inspector Chater surveyed Hamish curiously. ‘You are a little better than I expected.’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘You don’t look as stupid as I expected.’

  Hamish raised his eyebrows

  She clasped neat little hands with well-manicured and unpolished nails on the table.

  ‘These are the facts as they were given to me. You suspect there is something fishy in the death of a junkie, even though it seems a perfectly straightforward overdose. So you take leave, take a job in some weird church and then go calling on two of the dead man’s former flatmates. Once there, for God knows what mad reason, you pose as a drug baron and say you’ve got fifty thousand pounds to pay for heroin. Instead of sticking a knife in you or saying they didn’t know what you were talking about, this unlovely pair – we’ve checked on them – who do not even have a record, promptly play your game.’ Her eyes took in his outfit of old sweater, frayed shirt and paint-stained trousers. ‘My guess is that they were playing games with you. How on earth could anyone take you for a drug baron?’

  Hamish leaned back in his chair and his face suddenly became a mask of sneering arrogant insolence and his eyes stone-hard. ‘Why not?’ he drawled.

  ‘If you looked like that, they might just have fallen for it, but I doubt it. Anyway, I’ve been dragged up from Glasgow to play this comedy through to the end.’

  ‘Have you got the money?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘No, I haven’t got the money. Are you mad? We both go to Lachie’s for the meet and take it from there. What we want to find out is not if Lachie is dealing but where the supplies come in. The west coast of Scotland is such a maze of sea lochs and creeks, it could be anywhere.’

  ‘And who are you supposed to be?’

  She gave a little sigh. ‘I am supposed to be your wife. They’ve got a house for us.’

  ‘And who are we?’

  ‘I will give you the big names in one of the main Glasgow syndicates and brief you on what to say. You are Hamish George – I believe that’s the name you were using at the church.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘We have our methods, Watson.’

  ‘I’ll need to know your first name. I cannae call you ma’am the whole time.’

  ‘It’s Olivia.’

  Hamish smiled. ‘A pretty name.’

  ‘Don’t get any ideas, Constable, and remember at all times when we are not on the job that I am your superior officer.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Hamish meekly.

  ‘You may as well start calling me Olivia and get into the act. Here’s our food.’

  Hamish picked away at a truly dreadful plate of fish and chips while Olivia sawed her way through a tough steak.

  ‘Tell me, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I mean Olivia, are you going to be dressed like that?’

  ‘No, I shall look the part. What about you?’

  ‘I’ve got a good suit,’ said Hamish proudly, who had bought a Savile Row one in a charity shop.

  ‘We’ll lend you some accessories. A gold Rolex, few bits like that.’

  ‘I’ll go home this evening and get my suit.’

  ‘That’s the last time you’ll go near that police station of yours until this is all over. What will you tell them at the church?’

  ‘I don’t need to tell them anything,’ said Hamish with a grin. He told her about the loan sharking.

  ‘Good. We’ll pull them in today and keep them in. No bail for them.’ She took out a notebook and wrote in it and tore off a leaf. ‘That’s our address. Be there at seven this evening. I’ll go and tell headquarters about the church. Get back there and pack up your stuff. If they’re around, pick a quarrel with them and walk out.’

  ‘Want coffee?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘No, I’ll be off. See you later.’

  Olivia made her way briskly out of the restaurant. It was then that Hamish realized he did not have enough money on him to pay the bill and that he had left his chequebook and bank cards back in Lochdubh, not wanting to take them to the church in case the Owens searched his belongings.

  The dining room was empty apart from four other diners. Hamish’s waitress appeared to be the only one on duty. She was standing looking out of the window.

  ‘Here, you!’ called Hamish rudely. ‘What about bringing some coffee?’

  She threw him an outraged look and stalked off into the kitchen.

  Hamish slid out of his seat and was out of the restaurant and out of the hotel door as fast as he could.

  He could not afford a cab and so had to walk all the way back to the church. To his relief, there was no sign of the Owens.

  He packed up his few belongings and put them into Sean’s old car and drove off.

  He stopped at Sean’s to pick up the police Land Rover and tried to persuade the old man to give him a refund because he hadn’t had the car all week.

  ‘Away with ye,’ said Sean. ‘That’s a valuable car and twenty-five pounds was a damn cheap price for a week’s rental. I should’ve charged you more.’

  Hamish had a fleeting, treacherous thought that maybe he should have taken Tommy’s parents’ money.

  He drove back to the police station.

  Lochdubh lay spread out under a sunny, breezy sky. Wind whipped up the sea loch into waves. Washing on lines flapped gaily like flags welcoming him home. He felt he had been away for years instead of a matter of hours. Inside him, he felt a little twinge of dread. What if he could not pull it off? What if his cover was blown? What if it came to the crunch and he was asked for the money? He could not envisage Strathbane police headquarters handing over fifty thousand pounds.

  He let himself into the police station. He wished he could confide in someone, share the burden. But even if Priscilla should suddenly arrive back from London, he knew he could not even tell her.

  He began to pack his one and only good suit and his few respectable shirts. He also packed several paperbacks. There might be long periods of waiting. He wondered about Olivia. Was she married? She m
ust be tough and competent to have reached the rank of detective inspector.

  The police station was so comfortable, so familiar, so safe. It was tempting to manufacture some illness and beg off the job. With a sigh, he finished his packing, carried the suitcase out to the police Land Rover. He would drive it to headquarters, leave it there and walk along to his new address.

  He drove to the doctor’s and told Angela he was going to visit his parents in Rogart and stay with them for a bit. To his embarrassment, Angela made him wait while she took a cake out of the oven, let it cool and then boxed it up. ‘It’s lemon sponge,’ said Angela. ‘A present for your mother. Let me know how she likes it.’

  Feeling guilty, Hamish took the cake and said his farewells.

  Some time later, Olivia opened the door to him. Their ‘new home’ was a bungalow furnished in dreadful taste: fake log fire, velvet three-piece suite, noisy wallpaper, horrible oil paintings of hills and glens, glass coffee table and a giant television set.

  ‘Who usually lives here?’ asked Hamish, putting down his suitcase and placing the cake box on the coffee table.

  ‘Some friend of Superintendent Peter Daviot who’s letting us have the use of it. You brought cake?’

  ‘Aye, one of my friends thought I was going to see my mother and gave me a cake for her.’

  ‘We may as well have some. I’ll make some tea. Your bedroom’s second on the right down the corridor. Put your things away.’

  She was wearing a shirt blouse tied at the waist and jeans. They should have put a man on the job, thought Hamish. It didn’t matter how liberated the decade, women aroused protective feelings which could get in the way.

  When he had put his things away, he returned to the living room. The sponge was on a plate with the tea things on the table.

  ‘Your friend’s sponge seems to have fallen in the middle,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Oh, well, that’s Angela,’ said Hamish. ‘Heart of gold and the worst baking in the Highlands.’

  ‘Maybe if we eat the outside and leave the soggy bit in the middle, it’ll be all right.’

  But it tasted as bad as it looked. Angela had used so much lemon and so little sugar that the sponge actually tasted sour.

  ‘Don’t let’s bother with it,’ said Olivia. ‘Let’s get down to business. You are a headman for Jimmy White’s syndicate in Glasgow. You want to do business in the Highlands.’

  ‘And what do the Highland lot think of that?’

  ‘We’ll find out. According to DC Sanders, who will be joining us shortly, they are a small outfit suddenly getting larger. Somehow, they are getting shipments of drugs into the country, undetected. Our job is to somehow find out where on the coast the supplies are coming in. Glasgow CID recently seized two shiploads so it’s feasible that someone from Glasgow would come up here to purchase drugs.’

  ‘Fifty thousand pounds is not going to impress them.’

  ‘They’re still not that large an outfit.’ The doorbell rang. ‘That’ll be Sanders,’ she said, going to answer it.

  DC Sanders came in, looking more like a picture on a cornflakes packet than ever.

  ‘Sit down, Sanders,’ said Olivia. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yes, milk and two sugars, please.’

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Olivia curtly, as if to say it was not a senior officer’s job to pour tea just because that senior officer happened to be a woman.

  ‘Tell Hamish what you know about the drug situation in Strathbane,’ she commanded. ‘I am getting in the way of calling him Hamish because we need to pose as man and wife.’

  ‘It’s like this,’ said Sanders. ‘We raided houses and arrested pushers. The pushers are usually small fry who are on drugs themselves. Through them we sometimes get one of the middlemen but never anyone at the top. Lachie’s has been raided several times. We found some of the young people with ecstasy tablets but that was all.’

  ‘What about Lachie’s? Who owns it?’

  ‘John Lachie. Up from Glasgow. Opened the disco a year ago,’ said Sanders.

  ‘Any record?’

  ‘Early record. Robbery with violence. Did a stretch in Barlinnie Prison. That was ten years ago. Nothing since then.’

  ‘What sort of man is he?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘Middle-aged, likes the high life, flashy car, flashy clothes. His disco’s very popular. Young people come from all over the Highlands. There’s not much else for them. If Lachie’s the kingpin, then it’s Lachie you’ll meet tomorrow night. Could be someone else we don’t know about.’

  ‘What if Lachie gets on to Jimmy White?’ asked Hamish uneasily. ‘What if Jimmy White says he’s neffer heard of me?’

  ‘That’s something we will deal with when the time comes,’ said Olivia briskly. ‘You will be issued with a gadget with an alarm button. You just press it and the place will immediately be flooded with police.’

  ‘Meaning they will be on standby in the streets round about?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sanders.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Why?’ demanded Olivia.

  ‘If they are dealing in hard drugs, they will be alert to any sign of police surveillance.’

  ‘The men will be in plain clothes,’ said Olivia testily.

  ‘I can tell a Strathbane copper a mile off,’ said Hamish, ‘and I’m sure they can, too.’

  Olivia looked at him impatiently. ‘Then what do you suggest?’

  ‘I suggest we take our chances. Headquarters isn’t far from Lachie’s. Why can’t they wait there?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Olivia uneasily, thinking of Superintendent Daviot’s enthusiasm and of the maps he had pinned up on his office wall, of the fun he had had briefing the ‘troops’ personally. ‘Wait here.’

  She went off into her bedroom and then they could hear her voice as she spoke into her mobile phone.

  ‘Grand cake,’ said Sanders, eating busily.

  ‘Have all you like,’ said Hamish, thinking the man must have a cast-iron stomach.

  ‘Quite a looker,’ said Sanders.

  ‘Olivia? She makes me uneasy,’ said Hamish. ‘They should have put a man on this job.’

  ‘She’s not a token woman appointment,’ said Sanders. ‘She’s got a reputation of being clever and tough.’

  ‘Is herself married?’

  ‘No, and don’t get any ideas. Some detective came on to her in Glasgow and she poured boiling coffee on him where it would hurt the most.’

  ‘She is safe from me,’ said Hamish. ‘I tell you this, it is the long time since I’ve fancied any woman.’

  ‘Wait till you see some of the nymphets at Lachie’s.’

  ‘I am not the baby-snatcher either.’

  ‘Hamish Macbeth, I think you’re a puritan.’

  ‘How is he a puritan?’ asked Olivia, coming into the room.

  ‘He doesn’t fancy the lassies.’

  ‘Are you gay?’ asked Olivia.

  ‘No, I am not,’ said Hamish. ‘I am chust that wee bit disenchanted with women. What did headquarters say?’

  ‘They’re thinking about it. You know what the trouble is? There’s just too many cop shows on television and Strathbane at the moment seems to be a case of life determined to imitate art. They swear no one will be able to detect their men.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ remarked Hamish cynically. ‘I’ll bet they haff the street sweeper in sort of clean-dirty clothes out on the streets when every other street sweeper has packed it in for the day. Then there will be the ice cream van that doesn’t sell ice cream. Oh, and what about the window cleaner cleaning windows in the dark? And the courting couple.’

  ‘They’re looking into it,’ said Olivia curtly. ‘We’re going ahead with this because you got us into it in the first place. I hope you are not going to go on showing a lack of enthusiasm.’

  ‘He’s got a point, ma’am,’ said Sanders uneasily.

  ‘As I said, they are looking into it.’

  ‘Well,�
� continued Sanders, ‘what we are really looking for is a big shipment of heroin coming in. We’ve picked up whispers.’

  ‘The monster,’ said Hamish suddenly. ‘The monster in Loch Drim.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Olivia.

  He told them about Ailsa thinking she had seen a monster. ‘It could have been the light from a boat,’ he said. ‘Or they could have rigged up something to frighten the locals and keep them away.’

  Olivia sat frowning in silence. Then she said, ‘We’re doing nothing this evening. We may as well drive over and have a look.’

  ‘I’m on duty, ma’am,’ said Sanders. ‘Will I be expected to come with you?’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary. We’ll just have a recce.’

  After Sanders had left, carrying the remains of the cake, Olivia made omelettes for them. After Hamish had washed up the dishes, she said, ‘We’d better put on some dark clothes. You know the villagers there, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Drim is on my beat.’

  ‘How will you explain me?’

  ‘Monster fanatic. There’s a lot of them around.’

  They set out an hour later, Olivia driving. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve never, ever been this far north in Scotland before.’

  ‘No Highland holidays?’

  ‘You know how it is, everyone goes abroad these days. Why spend a holiday in the Highlands of Scotland getting soaked to the skin when you can bask in the sunshine in Spain?’

  ‘It’s good for the complexion,’ said Hamish. ‘Just think of the damage the sun does to your skin.’

  ‘And just think of the damage cold, wet weather does to your temper.’

  ‘Aye, you could be right.’

  ‘Tell me, Hamish, you seem to be an intelligent if unorthodox officer, and yet you’re still only a policeman. Why is that?’

  ‘I’m considered too much of a loose cannon for promotion. Besides, you’ve seen a wee bit of Strathbane. Would you like to work there?’

  ‘It’s not very different from Glasgow. Aren’t you ambitious?’

  ‘Not at all.’