Death of a Bore hm-21

by M C Beaton

  “If you look at your records, sir,” said Hamish gleefully, “I was the one who reported it.”

  “Just get to work, you lazy bastard!”

  ♦

  Some of the villagers were baffled that day by the new lock on the police station door. It had become a handy place from which to borrow things, like a can opener or a carving knife.

  Hamish did not know this and was occasionally puzzled by missing items which would suddenly reappear a few days later.

  Hamish went out and found the television vans and equipment along the waterfront.

  He leaned on the wall and looked down on the beach. He was joined by Jimmy Anderson. “Heard the news?” asked Jimmy.

  “Aye.”

  “It means we’ve got Blair back, and old Iron Knickers has gone back to Inverness.”

  “I know. She was here this morning.”

  “You’d best watch out, Hamish. She was singing your praises.”

  “Oh, well, she’s gone. That’s that.”

  “Don’t be too sure.”

  “Why?”

  “There was a buzz about two years ago that some good-looking copper was trying to accuse her of sexual harassment. Of course, it was all hushed up and the young copper was promptly transferred to a station in the Outer Hebrides.”

  “You know, maybe I should get a spyhole for that kitchen door. Then I’d know who was out there. People just drop in and out as if it’s some sort of hotel. Now, I think we should start with Patricia Wheeler. She was close to John Heppel. I tried her yesterday. Angela Brodie’s come up with the idea that maybe we should be looking for a murderess. I’m pretty sure Heppel was having an affair with Alice Patty. Who knows what other women he was messing around with. Then there’s another thing: the script they’re using and saying was John Heppel’s bears no relation to his writing.”

  “Doesn’t that usually happen?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had a lady friend once who wrote scripts for some hospital series. She wrote draft after draft and still they asked for another. By the time they were demanding a fourteenth draft, she cracked and took the first draft out of the bottom of the pile and sent them that. They said great, we’ll use it. But she said what appears on the screen usually bears no relation to the original script.”

  Hamish gave a disappointed “Oh.” He thought of Angus working away at the computer and the great risk he had taken in not reporting the young man.

  “Is it just you and me?” asked Hamish. “Blair said he was sending a lot of police over with you to cover the television people.”

  “Aye, but he’s decided we should go it alone because he thinks one of the locals nicked that computer of Heppel’s. They’re all over in Cnothan going from house to house with search warrants. If they can’t find anything there, they’ll start on Lochdubh.”

  “I hope they don’t come around the police station.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want them messing up the police computer.”

  “They’d hardly do that. Thon computer’s a big beast and they’re looking for a laptop. Is that a rape going on?”

  “Supposed to be,” said Hamish, “except it’s a fully clothed one. Mr. Wellington, the minister, objected to her having her clothes ripped off.”

  Jimmy shook his head in wonderment. “The things actresses go through. He’s got her head in a puddle.”

  “Let’s go to their café,” said Hamish, “and start with the people there. I hope Patricia’s one of them.”

  Patricia Wheeler was found sitting at a table on her own. She scowled when Hamish and Jimmy sat down opposite her. “I’ve already spoken to you,” she said, looking at Hamish.

  “We’ve just discovered that Alice Patty was murdered,” said Jimmy.

  Her face blanched under her make-up. “That can’t be true. She slit her wrists.”

  “Aye, well, someone drugged her first and cut them for her. Now, was John Heppel having an affair with her?”

  “I don’t know,” said Patricia. “I mean, she did haunt him. She was always turning up on location and bringing him sandwiches and coffee and hovering around him. He was charming to her, I’ll say that, which is more than…”

  She bit her lip.

  “What you’re trying to say,” said Hamish, “is that Heppel was usually rude and nasty to everyone.”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all. John was a dear and I’ll miss him.”

  “Did you have an affair with him?” asked Hamish.

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s best to tell the truth. We can find out, you know, sooner or later.”

  “Well, we did have a bit of a fling. Things like that happen in show business. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

  “Who else was he screwing?” asked Jimmy bluntly. “Apart from you and Alice Patty.”

  “I don’t like your tone. No one, as far as I know.”

  “Who ended your affair?” asked Hamish.

  “It just burned out. We remained friends.”

  “Did he dump you for Alice Patty, or was it the other way round?”

  She got to her feet. “I find your questions offensive. Next time you want to speak to me, call my lawyer!”

  Patricia stormed out.

  Jimmy shook his head. “I’ll never understand women. By all accounts, Heppel was a bully and a bore and yet he managed to get his leg over.”

  “Would you have even considered an affair with a woman like Alice Patty?” asked Hamish.

  “God, no. That awful refeened accent. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind having a go at our Patricia. Still, let’s split up and talk to the luvvies. Give it two hours and I’ll meet you in the pub unless you’ve got anything at the station.”

  “Not a drop. Herself finished it off this morning.”

  ♦

  When they met up in the pub two hours later, both Hamish and Jimmy were feeling depressed. “Did you get the same guff?” asked Jimmy. “Everybody loved everyone else and they’re all one big happy family and they all just adored John Heppel.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Jimmy. “There’s one connection between the village and Strathbane Television.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Alistair Taggart.”

  “No. He’s been cleared, surely, and Heppel was murdered before Alistair had anything to do with television.”

  “Think about it. Heppel had insulted him. He’s got a violent temper. He drinks.”

  “Like you,” said Hamish as Jimmy downed his second whisky.

  “Not like me. I’m as calm as a lamb. He went on television after Blair released him. He could have met Patty then.”

  “He was at the writing class.”

  “Can’t pinpoint the exact time of death. You know that, Hamish. He could have gone back there again, just before the class, and killed him.”

  “He was sober at the class. Anyway, he’s more likely to have beaten John to death than to mess around with naphthalene. He uses a typewriter. I don’t think he’d know one end of a computer from another.”

  “I’m going to have a talk to him. Want to come?”

  “No, I’m going back to talk to the television people. I mean, Jimmy, if the script had been changed through several drafts, why didn’t they say so?”

  “I gather this episode of Down in the Glen is to be featured as an in memoriam to Heppel. They’re not going to turn around and say most of it wasn’t his writing.”

  “You’ve got a damn answer for everything,” said Hamish crossly. “See you later.”

  When Hamish emerged, it was to find the vans had gone. The day had that white light it always gets in the Highlands just before darkness falls. He guessed they’d probably moved back to the Tommel Castle Hotel.

  He collected his dog and drove off.

  ∨ Death of a Bore ∧

  11

  All the world’s a stage, but some of the players have been very badly m
iscast.

  —Oscar Wilde

  Hamish diligently questioned members of the cast, technicians, make-up girls, and actors for the rest of the day without managing to make a crack in their statements of goodwill to all.

  Perhaps away from the location, he might have better luck. Surely there was some typist or gofer or some sort of menial who might be able to give him a different picture.

  He joined up with Jimmy and outlined his plan. “I’ll run it past Blair first,” Jimmy said.

  “Must you?”

  “I’ll put it up as my idea and you can come along. If I say it’s your idea, you know what he’s like: he’ll tell you to go back to your local duties.”

  Jimmy walked away and phoned. He came back with a grin on his face.

  “Good. I’ve got his lordship’s permission.”

  They drove in their separate vehicles to Strathbane after Hamish had left Lugs at the police station. I wish the light days would come back, thought Hamish. It’s like living in one long dark tunnel. Were night shots more expensive than day shots? A lot of the filming when he had left seemed to be going ahead, floodlit.

  They parked at Strathbane Television and got out. “I should have told you to wear plain clothes,” said Jimmy. “It’s hard to have a friendly wee chat with a long drip like you in uniform.”

  “I’ve got clothes in the Land Rover, in the back.”

  “Put them on.”

  Hamish emerged after some minutes, wearing a thick fisherman’s jersey and jeans.

  “Right now,” said Jimmy, “we hover on the other side of the road and look for a likely target. What’s the time?”

  “Coming up to five-thirty.”

  “The common folk should be finishing work any minute now.”

  Four young women came out, laughing and chattering. “There we go,” said Jimmy. “We’ll follow them. Let’s hope they all go for a drink or a coffee.”

  The girls turned in at a pub, and Hamish and Jimmy followed them in.

  Hamish heard one of them say, “Let’s take this table. Whose turn is it to buy the drinks?”

  “Mine,” said Jimmy, moving in on them.

  The girls looked from Jimmy with his foxy face and bright blue eyes to the tall figure of Hamish. “All right,” said a dark-haired one, tossing her hair in the manner of a shampoo advertisement.

  They all ordered alcopops. Jimmy and Hamish went to the bar. “I think we’d better tell the truth about who we are,” said Hamish as Jimmy paid for the drinks.

  “Why?”

  “I think they’ll find it exciting. I mean, there’s now two murders and the press wouldn’t bother interviewing secretaries, which is what I think they are.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  When they were seated at the table, Hamish began. “I’m Police Constable Hamish Macbeth, and this is Detective Inspector Jimmy Anderson. And you are?”

  The dark-haired one said she was Kirsty Baxter, and she introduced her friends as Sally Tully, a petite blonde; Kate McCulloch, a thin sallow girl; and Robin Sorrell, a small quiet creature with gelled hair in four colours.

  “Are you investigating the murder?” asked Kirsty excitedly.

  “Yes, we are,” said Jimmy. “Are you all secretaries?”

  Kirsty said, “I am and so’s Sally. Kate works in the costume department and Robin’s a researcher.”

  “Did any of you know John Heppel?”

  “I did,” said Robin. “Last time he wanted to go on location up at Betty Hill, I had to go ahead and find a hotel for him. He kept complaining about the service, so I was sent to see what I could do. He seemed very pleasant and asked me to join him for a meal. Then at the end of the meal he suggested we go to his room. I asked why. He leered at me and said, ‘You know.’ I told him flat, I’m not that sort of girl. He went apeshit. He said he’d spent money on a meal for me. I pointed out the television company was footing his bills.

  “He said he’d have me fired. I thought he was mad. I put in a report of sexual harassment. The big cheese called me in.”

  “Harry Tarrant?”

  “Yes, him. He told me I didn’t understand the artistic temperament. He said great writers were often great womanisers. He told me to ignore it. I didn’t want to lose my job, so I did.”

  “What about Patricia Wheeler?” asked Hamish. “She had a fling with him.”

  Sally giggled. “Talking about flings,” she said, “I was working late one night because there were urgent letters to be typed. I work for Mr. Southern, one of the directors. I’d delivered the letters and got them signed. I was making my way to the cloakroom to get my things when a cup of coffee flew past my head and crashed on the wall opposite.

  “A door to one of the offices was open and Patricia and John were there and she was screaming at him.” She fell silent.

  “What did she say?”

  “Can this be off the record, please?” begged Sally.

  Jimmy and Hamish exchanged glances. Jimmy nodded.

  “She was shouting, ‘I’ll kill you. Who the hell do you think you are to tell me you don’t want to see me any more?’

  “He said, ‘Oh, shut up, you old hag. Look on it that I was doing you a favour.’ She screamed, and then there was the sound of a blow and a crash. Mr. Tarrant came along then and said, ‘Why are you standing there?’ I hurried off.”

  Kirsty chimed in, “And next day Alice Patty had a big bouquet of roses on her desk. I took a squint at the card. It said, “Forever yours, John.” Don’t tell anyone what we said, because Mr. Tarrant was a great friend of John’s.”

  “Did any of you see the script John wrote for Down in the Glen?” asked Hamish.

  They all shook their heads, but Kirsty said, “I did overhear Mr. Tarrant say that the script was brilliant and it would show people down south that in Scotland we could raise a soap up to literary standards.”

  Hamish and Jimmy asked more questions before deciding they had elicited as much information as they were going to get.

  They walked out and at Jimmy’s insistence went into another pub. “Maybe we should have taken them over to police headquarters and made it official,” said Jimmy.

  “They might just have denied everything.” Hamish looked gloomily down into yet another glass of tonic water. He was getting sick of the stuff. He thought about Angus at the police station. “I suppose it’s easy for an expert to recover material from the hard drive of a computer.”

  “They got some sort of forensic hard drive detection machine down in Glasgow. They just plug the hard drive into it, download the stuff onto a disk, put it into another machine, and the contents come up on a screen.”

  “But an amateur could do it?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “Got to go.” Hamish dashed out of the pub, leaving Jimmy staring after him.

  He drove fast all the way to Lochdubh. He parked at the police station. The door was locked. He fumbled with his new ring of keys until he got the right ones and unlocked the door.

  The door to the police office was standing open. There was no sign of Angus and, worse than that, no sign of John Heppel’s computer.

  He rushed along the waterfront to Sea View. Mrs. Dunne said that Angus had packed up and left.

  “I’m a fool!” said Hamish, and she stared at him in amazement.

  It was only when he was walking back to the police station that he realised there had been no welcome from Lugs. With a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach, he went back into the police station calling for his dog. No Lugs.

  Angus didn’t have a car. Angus would have to have taken the bus.

  Hamish drove back to Strathbane with the siren on and the blue light flashing. He went straight to the bus station. He questioned the clerk at the ticket office and was told that a young man with a dog had booked a ticket on the Inverness bus.

  He headed off for Inverness. Angus knew that Hamish could not report him to the police.

  In Inverness he checked first at the b
us station and found that so far no one of Angus’s description had been booked on a Glasgow or Edinburgh bus. He then called at bed and breakfasts, one after the other, without success, until he remembered there was a YMCA.

  The man who ran the hostel said that someone of Angus’s description with a dog had called in looking for a room about half an hour ago. He told him they couldn’t take the dog as well.

  He might be walking the streets, thought Hamish, running back to where he had parked the Land Rover.

  ♦

  “Come on, Lugs!” said Angus, dragging on the leash. He had taken a great liking to Lugs and had got the dog to come with him by saying, “We’re going to see Hamish,” something that Lugs had seemed to understand. Now the dog kept sitting down and looking at him balefully out of those odd blue eyes of his.

  “I’m going to leave you,” said Angus furiously. He dropped the leash and walked on. Lugs stared after him and then pricked up his huge ears. Just as the police Land Rover rounded the corner of the street, Lugs darted forward and sank his teeth into Angus’s trousers.

  “Get off!” howled Angus. There was a tearing sound as the seat of his trousers came away in Lugs’s teeth.

  The next thing Angus knew, a furious Hamish Macbeth was climbing down from the Land Rover. Angus began to run, but Hamish, who had won cups for crosscountry running, brought him down with a rugby tackle, jerked him to his feet, and shook him till his teeth rattled.

  Then he handcuffed him and shoved him in the back of the Land Rover. He tenderly lifted Lugs onto the passenger seat.

  “You are going back to Lochdubh,” he shouted at Angus. “You are going to check back in at Mrs. Dunne’s and go on as if nothing has happened, or I will beat the pulp out of you. You couldn’t get into the hard drive, could you?”

  “No,” whimpered Angus.

  “Why not?”

  “It wasnae my fault. Man, nobody in the country could get into that hard drive. Someone used a programme that doesnae just delete the files but overwrites them with random garbage, maybe seven times.”