Death of a Macho Man

by Beaton, M. C.

‘I’ve my reputation to consider, and after what you’ve been up to –’

  ‘Look here,’ said Hamish furiously, ‘I am here officially on a murder inquiry, and everyone in the village knows that.’

  ‘Everyone in the village knows something else about you now,’ said Annie with a flash of pure Highland malice. ‘Och, come ben.’

  He went into her parlour, took off his cap, placed it on the coffee-table and sat down. She sat down opposite him, tugging her skirt firmly over her sturdy knees in case the sight of them would drive this lecherous policeman into some mad act of passion.

  ‘Now,’ began Hamish, ‘I want you to think carefully about any conversation you had with Randy. Did he mention anywhere in the States in particular?’

  ‘I think he seemed to have been just about everywhere. New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, places like that.’

  ‘Did he mention friends, any he might have known?’

  She shook her head. ‘We didn’t talk much,’ she said with a sudden roguish look, quite awful to behold.

  ‘Did you know he had had plastic surgery?’

  Her amazement looked genuine.

  ‘Why would he do that? I mean, it’s the women who go in for that. Although you wouldn’t catch me getting any of that.’

  ‘We believe he was a criminal who had gone to great lengths to conceal his real identity.’

  ‘A criminal! Oh, you must be mistaken. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with anyone like that!’

  ‘But you didn’t know he was a criminal,’ said Hamish patiently.

  ‘And you don’t either. You’re just clutching at straws.’

  ‘Annie, try to be a bit less defensive. Think. What money did he have?’

  ‘He always had wads of the stuff,’ said Annie. ‘You must have heard that. And he was always flashing it about in the bar.’

  Hamish asked her several more questions but could glean nothing of importance. He left and went up to the mobile unit and read the reports. The whole wrestling fraternity of America and Britain had been rigorously interviewed without success. Police artists in Glasgow were working on pictures of what Randy might have looked like before plastic surgery. Rosie’s sister, Mrs Beck, had been contacted and was travelling up to Lochdubh. The rain was still falling, and through the smeared and misted-up windows of the mobile unit, Hamish could see groups of pressmen huddled together. Some tourists were also standing about, as if waiting for another murder to happen to enliven the tedium of a rain-soaked Scottish holiday.

  Mrs Beck, he learned, was due to arrive from Inverness around five o’clock. She would be staying in Mrs McCartney’s bed and breakfast in the village. Blair was all set to interview her and Hamish wanted to be present at that interview. He knew that if he asked Blair he would be sent about his business and so he decided to wait until she arrived and just turn up.

  He left and went to question Archie Maclean, Geordie Mackenzie and then the barman, Pete Queen. The trouble turned out to be that all had accepted Randy’s hospitality without paying any attention to what he had said. Randy had arrived among them, Randy had bragged, Randy had been murdered, and that was the end of it. When he returned to the police station, bending his head against the now wind-driven rain, he felt tired and dirty and miserable. He wanted to phone Priscilla and explain how he had happened to be in bed with Betty, but could think of no explanation which would appeal in any way.

  He felt, too, that he ought, as a Highland gentleman should, to phone Betty. Although she had taken it well, there had been no reason for him to have been so rude. He phoned the Tommel Castle Hotel. At first he did not recognize the curt voice on the telephone as that of Priscilla and he asked to speak to Betty. And that was when he recognized her voice when Priscilla said coldly, ‘Your lady-love is out in the hills with her fiancé.’

  Cursing the fact that with servants at the castle always going off sick with bad backs or whatever other Highland excuse occurred to them, leaving Priscilla to fill their jobs, Hamish said, ‘That just happened. I woke up and found her in bed.’

  Her voice dripped icicles. ‘Indeed? I will tell her you called.’ The line went dead and he looked miserably at the receiver before slowly replacing it. Why, when he had done the right thing by getting himself out of a cold relationship, did he still get so dreadfully hurt? A psychiatrist would say it pointed to a lack of love in childhood that he should long for the unobtainable, and yet he had had a very loving childhood. Bugger analysis, thought Hamish Macbeth, and geared himself up instead to gatecrashing the interview with Mrs Beck.

  A furiously rolling eye in his direction was the only sign of Blair’s displeasure when Hamish quietly followed the detectives into the bed and breakfast. Mrs Beck was sitting in the front parlour under a sign which warned guests that the terms were bed and breakfast and no matter what the weather, they were expected to make themselves absent from the house immediately after breakfast was over.

  Mrs Beck did not look at all like her sister. She was small and plump with that brisk, no-nonsense look about her which often betrays a total lack of humour. We all adopt masks, thought Hamish dreamily. Somewhere along the line, Mrs Beck had decided on the role of capable housewife who did not suffer fools gladly and would probably play it to the end of time. Did he have a mask? he wondered. Did he . . .?

  ‘Sit down, Macbeth, and stop gawping like a loon,’ snapped Blair. Hamish hurriedly retreated to a small chair in the corner of the parlour.

  ‘Now, Mrs Beck,’ crooned Blair, adjusting his truculent features into the oily expression he wore when facing the recently bereaved, ‘we are all shocked and saddened by your loss.’

  ‘Enough of that,’ said Mrs Beck, clutching a large battered leather handbag on her knees. ‘You don’t give a damn, so let’s not waste any time.’

  Her accent was Scottish, which surprised Hamish. Rosie had had an almost accentless voice and he had assumed her to be English.

  ‘Then we won’t waste time,’ said Blair, returning to his usual bad-tempered character. ‘We believe your sister found out something about a man who was murdered here, Randy Duggan. We believe she wanted to use the information about this man, who was possibly a criminal, in one of her books, and that is the reason she was killed.’

  ‘She probably knew nothing about him at all,’ said Mrs Beck. ‘Does it always rain here?’ She shifted her bulk in her chair and glared towards the window, where fat raindrops chased each other down the glass.

  ‘And what makes you say that?’

  ‘Rosie always liked to hint she had secrets, that she knew something about you. It made her very unpopular at school, but she never really knew anything about anyone. She was too wrapped up in herself.’

  ‘Then let’s begin at the beginning. Where were you brought up? Where did you go to school?’

  She gave a crisp outline in an unemotional, flat voice. They had been brought up in Dumfries. Both their parents were dead. There had been no other children, only she and Rosie.

  After school, she had married and left for the south. Rosie had gone to university and then become a teacher. They had never liked each other, and so, apart from exchanging cards at Christmas and on birthdays, there had been little communication between them over the years. She had seen Rosie last year when she had arrived unexpectedly to say that she had bought a house in Sutherland. Before that she had been living in Glasgow. She supplied the Glasgow address.

  ‘What did you think of her books?’ the quiet Highland voice of Hamish Macbeth came from the corner of the room.

  Blair glared at him.

  Mrs Beck sniffed. ‘I never read any of them. I haven’t time to read.’

  ‘You must have been verra jealous of her.’ Hamish again.

  ‘What!’ Mrs Beck looked at him wrathfully. ‘What was there to be jealous of? I am married, she wasn’t. What had she ever done with her life except write trash?’

  ‘You not only were jealous of her,’ pursued Hamish, ‘you actually hated her. Why?’
r />   ‘What is this? What kind of policeman are you?’

  ‘Did she try to take your husband away from you?’ Hamish’s voice was suddenly sharp.

  ‘How did you find out about that?’

  Hamish remained silent. The wind began to rise outside with a low, keening, moaning sound which meant even worse weather to come. A puff of smoke belched out from the dismal little peat fire which was doing little to warm the room.

  Blair, for once, had the wit to remain silent. ‘It was just after Bob and me were married,’ said Mrs Beck. ‘She came on a visit. Bob was an overseer at an electronics factory and he was made redundant. I took a job in a shop because although he had his redundancy money, I knew it wouldn’t last forever. So I was out all day. And then I found out they had been going to the movies in the afternoon when I was out and to lunch as well, spending that precious redundancy money while I slaved away selling women’s underwear. There was a big scene. I gave Rosie her marching orders, and Bob said he was going with her. But I’d found out the night before from the doctor that I was pregnant. So I told him that and he stayed and Rosie went. That’s all.’

  And what a wealth of bitterness ‘that’s all’ covered, thought Hamish. Rosie had probably not fancied Bob in the slightest but was determined to prove to her sister that she could do anything better, and Mrs Beck had probably crowed over Rosie about being married.

  ‘Where were you when Rosie was murdered?’ demanded Blair sharply.

  ‘I was at home.’

  ‘With your husband?’

  ‘He only comes home at the weekends. He works in Birmingham.’

  Again Hamish’s voice. ‘Do you know if he saw your sister at any time?’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘He wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘But then you wouldnae know,’ said Hamish, almost as if talking to himself. ‘He was away all week. He could take time off from work and go where he liked. Where was he the night of Rosie’s murder, for example?’

  She looked at this Highland tormentor with a slight air of triumph. ‘He phoned me from Birmingham that very evening.’

  ‘How did you know he was phoning from Birmingham?’

  ‘Aye,’ put in Blair. ‘He could have been phoning from up here.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong! Bob’s digs are next to the railway line. He always phones at nine in the evening and at nine a train always goes past on the line outside and shakes the very place. I heard it.’

  ‘That seems conclusive enough,’ said Blair heavily. ‘Mrs Beck . . . or may I call you Beryl?’

  ‘You may call me Mrs Beck.’

  ‘Just write down your husband’s address. That will be all for now. PC Black will take you to Strathbane now to formally identify the body. Do you know if Miss Draly made a will?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘We’re still sifting through her papers. If we find anything, we’ll let you know.’

  They all left and Hamish went back to the police station, made a cup of coffee and sat down and stared at the kitchen wall.

  Here was a new scenario. What if the murders of Duggan and Rosie were not connected? He listened to the now screaming wrath of the wind outside and rose and went to light the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. When it was crackling merrily, he sat down again. He had come across many cases of sibling rivalry before, although none of them had amounted to murder. Here were two sisters – one bossy and sure of herself, and then there was the unknown quantity of Rosie. What did he know of Rosie? Possibly lesbian, but liked to get attention from men. Liked power. Perhaps that was it. Would she let Bob go just like that, or would she, over the years, try to keep him on a string? He thought of his past burning sexual frustration over Priscilla. He thought of the times he could cheerfully have murdered her. What if Rosie had never gone to bed with Bob, but had kept tugging his leash? Exciting secret meetings, always with the promise of sex held out. Did she do that? Had she done that? Was that what she did with Randy, and when he came on to her was that what had prompted the row? He suddenly wanted to see Archie Maclean. The fishing boats would not be out in such weather.

  He went out and fought his way against the gale to the bar, but Archie was not there, so, with a certain reluctance, he called at his cottage. Hamish, like everyone else in Lochdubh, found Mrs Maclean terrifying.

  Mrs Maclean was working ferociously over at the sink, scrubbing at a pot. Archie was sitting gloomily on a hard chair in the middle of the kitchen in his tight clothes. The floor had been recently washed and Archie’s highly polished boots were resting on a square of newspaper.

  ‘Like a dram, Archie?’

  Archie brightened. ‘That would be grand.’

  Mrs Maclean whipped round and brandished a pot-scrubber like a weapon. ‘You are not to be wasting good money on the drink.’

  ‘I’m paying,’ said Hamish mildly.

  ‘Well, don’t be long,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It’ll give me a chance to wash that floor again. You should hae left your boots at the door, Hamish Macbeth. This is a clean house.’

  ‘Cleanest in Lochdubh,’ agreed Hamish.

  ‘Wait!’ she screeched as her husband got to his feet. She picked up a newspaper and, separating the pages, spread them out across the floor in front of him like stepping stones.

  Archie took down a crackling black oilskin from a peg and shrugged himself into it, and together both men escaped into the howling night. Conversation on the road to the Lochdubh bar was impossible because of the vicious screaming of the wind.

  The bar was quiet that evening, to Hamish’s relief. Archie asked for a whisky and went to prop up the bar in his usual way but Hamish led him to a small table in the corner.

  ‘Did you mourn Rosie?’ asked Hamish.

  Archie smoothed the sparse hairs over his head with a gnarled hand. ‘I’m right sorry she’s dead,’ he mumbled.

  ‘But you did not cry?’

  ‘Och, come on, Hamish. Greetin’s for bairns.’

  ‘Try to think clearly, Archie. This is important. Were you fond of her?’

  There was a long silence while the fisherman struggled for words. At last he said. ‘The fact is, I was a wee bit flattered. Her being a writer and all. She told me I wass a highly intelligent man. But with her gone, it iss as if she neffer existed. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘But while she was flattering you and making you cups of tea, did you ever think of having an affair with her?’

  Archie blushed deeply. ‘Och, Hamish, the thought neffer crossed my mind and that’s the truth. I’ve only got to look in the mirror.’

  ‘You’re a modest man, Archie, but you must have wondered why she flattered you and cultivated your company.’

  The little fisherman’s eyes were suddenly shrewd. ‘I think she wanted me to fall in love with her,’ he said.

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘The ladies like the men to fall in love with them even when they’re not interested. It’s the way they are. Makes them feel good.’

  ‘She was right about the one thing, Archie. You are an intelligent man. I’ll buy you another and then I’ve got to go. I’ve got a phone call to make.’

  Back in the police station, Hamish got through to Birmingham CID. He was lucky in that he got a clever and bored detective who was anxious for action. He was Detective Sergeant Hugh Perrin.

  Hamish outlined the details of the murder of Rosie Draly and then said, ‘I was just wondering whether it would be possible to get a search warrant for Bob Beck’s apartment. You see, when he made that phone call to his wife, she said he must have been down in Birmingham because she heard the nine o’clock train. Now all he had to do was make a tape recording of that train, take it up to Sutherland and play it.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there. But you say there was evidence that papers and computer discs had been burnt in the fireplace? Doesn’t that point to the murderer of Duggan?’

  ‘Beck could ha’ been burning evidence of letters from him and letters back
to him.’

  ‘Bit far-fetched. If that was the case, why didn’t he just chuck this tape of the train going past in the fire as well?’

  ‘I think when he murdered her, he might have got rid of any evidence of letters. Then he would sit down and phone his wife. Wait a bit. He wouldn’t phone her from Rosie’s because we checked the calls for that evening. Damn, we should have been checking back through the past few months. Think o’ this. He needs a phone. He can hardly stand in a phone box and operate the tape recorder properly. He might be pressed for time. So he would go to some hotel or motel, on the road south and phone from there, not too far from Lochdubh.’

  ‘There’s your answer then,’ said Perrin. ‘You get evidence he was anywhere near the scene and we can haul him in . . . easy. I’m going to be here all night.’

  With a fast-beating heart, Hamish said goodbye and reached for the battered phone book. He began to phone hotels and boarding-houses in the immediate area, asking if any stranger had checked in on the evening of the murder for one night and if there had been a London phone call on the bill. He gave Mrs Beck’s number. And then, just when he was about to give up, he remembered the new Cluny Motor Inn on the A9 and phoned there. He could not believe his luck. Not only was there a clear record of Bob Beck’s having phoned home but he had even used his own name.

  He phoned Detective Sergeant Perrin with the news. ‘We’ll get him in,’ said the detective triumphantly. ‘But surely he hasn’t still got that tape? Surely he chucked it out the car window or something.’

  ‘If you pull him in,’ said Hamish, ‘I’ll go out to the Cluny Motor Inn and go through the rubbish. With any luck it hasn’t been collected.’

  He stopped only to pick up his radio, which had a tape deck, from the kitchen table before driving off into the wild night. Sheets of rain battered against the windscreen and he thought bleakly of sitting in the Land Rover with Priscilla waiting for Blair and the others to arrive and experienced a stabbing pain of hurt and loss in his gut. He marvelled that the pain could still be so intense. He didn’t feel like a drink or a pill to ease it, but rather thought of taking a shotgun and blasting a big hole in his stomach, not to kill himself, but, like a cartoon animal, to leave a nice clean round hole where the hurt had been.