Malice in the Highlands

by Graham Thomas

  “In a word, yes. In the mining business you have to spend a lot of money on exploration and development before you know whether or not you have a mine. The promoter's job is to create an audience for the company's story. Promotion is a dirty word in some circles, but it is nothing more than a vehicle for raising capital. Without capital, work cannot be done, and if work cannot be done, there is no way to turn a project's potential into reality. There are literally hundreds of small exploration companies out there competing for the investor's attention. No one is going to beat a path to your door—you have to knock on theirs.”

  “Why then do promoters have such an unsavory reputation?”

  “It's a wild and wooly world out there, Mr. Powell. The mineral exploration business is one of the last refuges of unfettered capitalism and, given the stakes involved, one can see the potential for exaggeration, outright lies, and even fraud. Having said that, however, the majority of promoters in my experience play by the rules.”

  “What about Charles Murray?”

  “He was one of the best.”

  But at what? wondered Powell. “You mentioned that you spoke to Murray recently. What was the subject of your conversation?”

  “Charles called to introduce an acquaintance of his who is in the UK trying to raise some capital for a Canadian diamond project. Naturally, as a favor to Charles, I agreed to see this chap. He's coming in to see me this afternoon, as a matter of fact.” Ritchie shrugged. “Apart from the usual chitchat, that was about it.”

  Powell had to restrain himself from delving into the subject of Oliver Pickens, but he decided that Ritchie was capable of looking after himself. Besides, it was time to come to the point. “Tell me, Mr. Ritchie, in your professional capacity as a stock broker, can you think of any way that somebody might have profited from Charles Murray's death?”

  “You mean apart from his heirs and successors?” He appeared to consider the matter carefully. “I suppose anyone who was short the shares of any of the companies in which Charles had an interest.”

  Once again Powell raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  Ritchie smiled. “Short selling is an investment strategy whereby one can capitalize on a decline in the price of a company's shares. The short seller borrows the shares, in effect, and then sells them in the expectation that the price will fall. He hopes to buy the shares back at a lower price—or cover his position, as we say in the trade—to return them to their owner and pocket the difference as his profit. Of course, if the price of the shares goes up, the shorts lose money. In the case of a junior company, if a high-profile promoter were to, er, suddenly disappear from the scene, it is likely that the share price would plummet, at least in the short term, resulting in large profits for anyone who was short the stock.”

  “But would that really apply in Charles Murray's case? I understood that he was retired.”

  Ritchie smiled expansively. “Men like Charles Murray never really retire, Mr. Powell. Charles still had a few irons in the fire. But more to the point, he was still a major shareholder in a number of exploration companies, which lent an element of credibility to their various projects. Let me illustrate my point.” Ritchie punched something into his computer. “Ah, here it is. Aurora Mining Corporation, Charles's flagship company, is down another quarter this morning. Since the announcement of Charles's death last week, the shares are off nearly thirty percent. Some of the other stocks are down even more.”

  “Would it be possible to determine who was selling a particular stock short?”

  “It should be possible, since just about everything nowadays is stored in a computer somewhere. But you'd have to contact the Canadian securities authorities for that kind of information.”

  “For a start, would you be able to provide me with a list of the companies with which Murray was associated?”

  “I'll see what I can do. Would tomorrow afternoon be soon enough, say three o'clock?”

  “Fine. I'll have my assistant, Sergeant Black, drop by.” Powell hesitated for a moment. “I don't mind telling you that considerable pressure is being exerted on us through diplomatic channels to clear this matter up as quickly as possible. Does that surprise you?”

  Ritchie regarded Powell carefully before replying. “Despite his humble beginnings, Charles Murray was a member of the Canadian establishment. You might even say that he had friends in high places. Some of these people would undoubtedly have had a financial interest in Charles's various ventures. As a result of his death, considerable sums of money have been lost, at least on paper. So the sooner this matter is—if you'll forgive me—laid to rest, the happier everyone will be. Even more than bad news, Mr. Powell, investors abhor uncertainty.”

  “The same can be said of policemen,” Powell replied dryly. He rose to leave. “I won't keep you any longer, Mr. Ritchie. You've been most helpful.”

  “Not at all. You know, Mr. Powell, it occurs to me that your job is not unlike mine.”

  “How is that?”

  “The main problem in both instances is to separate the wheat from the chaff, is it not?”

  Powell smiled. “Oh, there is one more thing …”

  Ritchie looked up from the monitor to which his attention had already returned. “Yes?”

  “I think I'll advise my old mum to keep her savings under the mattress.”

  Ritchie laughed good-naturedly, with just the slightest hint, Powell fancied, of the gleaming canine.

  “Very wise, Chief Superintendent, very wise, indeed.”

  CHAPTER 11

  PC Shand was waiting at Aviemore station when the InterCity arrived from London at eight-thirty the next morning. It was obvious that the young constable was fairly bursting with news. While Shand dodged traffic, Powell described in considerably more detail than was absolutely necessary some of the finer points related to the cooling rates of cadavers he had gleaned from Dr. Campbell.

  “Any news on the home front?” he inquired when he had made his point.

  “Well, sir, I interviewed the downstairs contingent at Castle Glyn and was able to confirm that Murray didn't say anything to anyone about expecting another visitor. But there is one thing that came to light. Apparently Murray kept all of the staff on when he came to Castle Glyn, with one exception. Old Ross's mother, the cook.”

  “You mean he sacked her?”

  “Not exactly. According to Ross, she'd been looking forward to retirement for some time, but hadn't wanted to leave the old laird. She's almost ninety, so I gather it was a mutually agreeable arrangement. Still, I got the impression that Ross resented it.”

  Powell grunted. “Anything else?” He was certain there was better to come.

  “Yes, sir. I also questioned the hotel guests. It seems that the night of the murder was an eventful one at the Salar Lodge.”

  “What do you mean?” Powell asked, puzzled, as he had been there himself at the time. Then he remembered that he had retired early that first evening.

  “According to Mr. Preston—you know, the chap from Zimbabwe—there was a terrible row.”

  Powell knew Preston only slightly as an atrocious fly caster who nevertheless managed to catch more salmon every year than the other, more polished members of his regular party combined.

  “Mr. Preston,” Shand continued, “had occasion to be in the front hall of the hotel on his way to the gents at approximately ten-thirty, when a man burst in the front door demanding to see Mr. Whitely, Senior. Mr. Whitely appeared on the scene in due course and escorted this individual into his private office. According to Mr. Preston, there was a loud carfluffle lasting several minutes, after which time the man reappeared and left the premises as abruptly as he had arrived.” PC Shand paused a moment, as if for dramatic effect. “The thing is, Mr. Powell, Preston has identified the man as Charles Murray.”

  Powell showed little reaction. “How does he know it was Murray?”

  “He recognized him afterward from the picture in the newspaper.”

  “Was he able t
o overhear anything that was said?”

  “After making the point that he was not a man to stick his nose in other people's affairs, he did indicate that he heard Murray threaten to put the Salar Lodge out of business, or words to that effect.”

  As it happened, Powell was not particularly surprised by this revelation. To a degree at least, Nigel's behavior was now explicable. “Well, Shand, the plot thickens. Have you been able to confirm Preston's account?”

  “There were a number of other guests in the bar at the time, as well as George Stuart. They all report hearing the disturbance when Murray came into the hotel and again when he left. But none of them actually saw him, nor could anyone confirm Mr. Preston's report of the goings-on in Mr. Whitely's office. I didn't question Mr. Whitely—I assumed that you'd want to do that, sir.”

  Powell lapsed into reverie. Like objects momentarily illuminated in a car's headlamps, new developments in an investigation were often more enigmatic than revealing. It was clear that Murray could have made life very difficult for Nigel by canceling the agreement granting the Salar Lodge's fishing rights, but the really interesting question was: Why would Murray threaten Nigel in the first place? Powell occupied himself for the remainder of the journey mulling over the various permutations and combinations.

  When they arrived at the Salar Lodge, Powell learned from Nigel that Pinky and John Sanders had departed for their beat half an hour earlier. Nigel also indicated, in response to Powell's casual query, that young Bob was off fishing on one of the local hill lochs. After a brief conference with PC Shand, Powell set out in his Triumph with the top down and Van Morrison on the tape deck, but heading not, he suspected, into the mystic.

  A blustery wind was whipping up storm caps on Lochindorb as Powell traversed the desolate moors surrounding the loch. With its ruined island castle that had once been inhabited by a charming character known as the Wolf of Badenoch—whose chief pastimes had apparently been raping and pillaging, and who had ultimately suffered the karmic indignity of having a bar in Aviemore named for him—the loch's black depths seemed quite capable of concealing a monster or two. Much like the problem at hand, Powell thought grimly.

  Leaving the loch behind, the road climbed steeply beside a little burn that cascaded merrily from pool to pool amongst the heather. Soon the road was reduced to a rough track snaking over the moors. After a few jarring scrapes to the undercarriage of his car, Powell pulled off to the side, having decided that it would be more prudent to continue on foot. Small patches of snow still clung to the steep north face of the pass ahead, across which the track could be seen to switchback dizzily. He consulted his Ordnance Survey map. As he was still some distance from the pass, he decided to take a shortcut over the prominent ridge that bounded on the east the narrow glen up which he had just come. Recalling his Cambridge climbing days, he drew a hearty breath. A bit of scrambling would do him good—get the blood pumping to the essential extremities.

  After packing his rucksack with an anorak, a pair of binoculars, some sandwiches, and a small flask for the fortification that was in it, he set off on a long diagonal ascent toward the crest of the ridge. He climbed steadily, breathing hard and sweating profusely. The air was still and stifling. The high corries seemed to reflect and concentrate the intense, unfiltered sunlight, and Powell felt a little like an ant under some malicious boy's magnifying glass. Periodically, the silence was punctuated by a curlew's plaintive cry.

  As he climbed, the heather thinned and eventually gave way to a carpet of wiry grass. The crest of the ridge was now only a few yards above him. He paused to catch his breath. Looking back, he could see the track winding across the green smudge of heather beside the silver thread of the burn, but he could no longer pick out the glint of sunlight off his car. Forming a daunting backdrop across the glen, an austere wall of granite breached only by a near-vertical gulley rose for several hundred feet above its base of scree. Without conscious effort he began plotting a route up the face: a lay back up that crack, an exposed traverse to the right into the main gulley, and then straight up. The overhang just below the top would be the crux, and the thing was, you wouldn't know until you got there whether you'd be able to do it and by then you'd be more or less committed. Who said climbing wasn't a metaphor for life?

  When Powell scrambled onto the broken crest of the ridge a few minutes later, he was greeted by a quenching breeze. He collapsed onto the nearest flattish spot. Before him lay the most fetching prospect. The curve of the valley below was like a great green bowl, rising on the far side to a rocky ridge similar to the one on which he was perched. Hidden behind the ridge lay the valley of the Spey and, beyond that, peak after peak of lighter and lighter blue as far as the eye could see. In the center of the bowl, sunlight gleamed off a small loch. Through the glasses he could make out a white van parked at the water's edge and a small boat plying the surface of the loch. Reluctantly, he got to his feet and began a zigzagging descent, rejoining the track along the shore of the loch.

  The occupant of the boat had spotted him and was rowing smartly toward shore. A few minutes later Powell seized the bow line as the boat slid onto the shingled beach.

  “Hello, Bob. How's fishing?”

  “This is a surprise, Mr. Powell.” If young Whitely was in fact surprised to see him, he didn't seem very pleased about it.

  In the bottom of the boat lay as pretty a basket of trout as Powell had ever seen. Six fish, each about two pounds, with burnished sides and spots as red as rowanberries.

  “You don't know how lucky you are, Bob, living up here like a laird.”

  “It's all right.” He didn't seem altogether convinced of his good fortune.

  “Bob, I'd like to have a word.”

  Whitely clambered out of the boat. “Aye, well, I suppose this is as good a time as any.”

  Powell sat down in the heather and offered his flask.

  Whitely shook his head, sat down himself, and waited.

  “Do you come up here often?”

  “Not often. Only when I want to get away from people.”

  Powell nodded, ignoring the barb. “I know what you mean.”

  “Do you?”

  “Look, Bob, I won't bore you with a long speech about a policeman's duty, because it wouldn't alter the fact that I need to ask you some questions. All right?”

  Whitely nodded, revealing no hint of any underlying emotion. Powell had a hunch, however, that this was only a temporary condition. He took a deep breath and plunged in. “How long have you been romantically involved with Heather Murray?”

  Whitely flushed and clenched his fists. Instinctively, Powell tensed.

  “Who told you?” Whitely whispered hoarsely.

  “Let's just say I put two and two together,” Powell lied.

  “What of it? I've got nothing to hide.” There was defiance in his tone.

  “I sincerely hope not. After all, her father's just been murdered.” Powell suddenly felt weary. “Let's not go all around the houses, Bob. Why don't you tell me about it?” But even as he said the words, he knew that he didn't really want to know.

  Whitely stared out over the loch for a few moments. The wind had picked up and little wavelets were slapping rhythmically against the stern of the boat. Eventually he spoke. “When Heather and her old man came over from Canada last summer, they stayed at the hotel for a few days while the renovations were being completed at Castle Glyn. He seemed all right at first, which just goes to show how misleading first impressions can be. But Heather, she was—” he groped for a word “—something else.” He shrugged. “One thing led to another and we began seeing each other.” His expression suddenly twisted into a mask of pure malice. “Everything was fine ‘til he tried to put a stop to it.”

  “I assume you're referring to Mr. Murray?”

  Whitely spat, “Who else?”

  “I don't understand, Bob. You're both adults—what could he do?”

  “You didn't know him, Mr. Powell. He didn't get where he d
id in life by letting other people have their way.”

  “How did Heather—Miss Murray—react?”

  Whitely shook his head disgustedly. “I don't know. I think she felt some sort of misguided loyalty, a duty to look after him in his dotage or some such rubbish. Because of her mum and all that.”

  “A perfectly natural way for a daughter to feel about her father, don't you think?”

  Whitely scowled but said nothing.

  “Did you and Miss Murray continue to see each other?”

  “No, we—I mean, Heather thought it best not to for a while.”

  “Tell me, did anything happen recently, say in the last month or so, to alter the picture?”

  “I don't know what you mean.”

  “I understand that Murray had been considering returning to Canada.”

  “What gave you that idea?” Whitely said sharply.

  “Is it true?”

  “I think Heather might have mentioned it,” he admitted grudgingly. “What difference does it make?”

  “Do you think Miss Murray would have gone with her father?”

  “You'd have to ask her about that.”

  “I'll do that. Look, Bob, I'm afraid it's my duty to inquire as to your whereabouts last week Monday.”

  “What?” Whitely seemed slightly irritated by the question. “You know I didn't get back from Aberdeen until the next day.”

  “Yes, of course. Did you know that Murray paid a visit to the Salar Lodge on that Monday night, shortly before he was killed?”

  “How could I?”

  “What would you say if I told you that Murray was overheard making certain threats to your father?”

  “I'd say I didn't know a thing about it, but I wouldn't put it past him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I've already told you he was a rotten bastard.”

  Powell sighed. He'd always been fond of the lad, but his patience was beginning to wear a bit thin. “Is there anything else you'd like to tell me, Bob? Anything at all?”

  Whitely shook his head sullenly.

  Powell glanced significantly at his watch. “Well, I'd better be getting back, then. I've a long tramp ahead of me.” He straightened slowly with, he hoped, a discernible creaking of joints.