Death of a Policeman (Hamish Macbeth)

by Beaton, M. C.

  “This,” said Andy. He flicked open the lighter and threw it onto Beryl’s lap.

  She went up like a torch. “Let’s beat it,” said Andy. “She screamed enough to wake the dead.”

  They walked out of the villa to be faced with a squad of armed police. They turned to run, but the villa was in flames.

  “Get down on the ground,” shouted a policeman through a megaphone, “or we’ll shoot.”

  Hamish arrived in time to see them being led away. A fire engine came roaring up, and soon hoses were being played on the burning building.

  Hamish approached Jimmy. “I’ve got what they said at the bog on tape. If they shut the safe behind them, you may find stuff in there that she hid when we searched the house.”

  “You’d better get to the hospital,” said Jimmy. “You’re as white as a sheet. If you’ve got bleeding from the brain, you’ll be dead by the morning.”

  Hamish phoned Dick from the hospital the next morning and told him about his adventures.

  “Nobody phoned me,” said Dick. “Where’s my car?”

  “I’ll get them to search for it.”

  “I’ll come over with Betty and see you.”

  “Not Betty,” said Hamish. “They’ll be in to take a statement from me, and Blair might be hanging around.”

  “Oh, right.”

  What on earth was Dick going to do about Betty, wondered Hamish.

  Jimmy called later and waited while a policeman took a full statement. Then he said, “The safe survived the fire. I’m waiting until forensics are finished.”

  “What are the Campbell brothers saying, if anything?” asked Hamish.

  “Nothing so far. But it looks as if they burned the Shuttleworth woman to death.”

  “I think that one thought she was invincible,” said Hamish. “She knew I was watching her and she would ha’ been the first suspect.”

  The results of Hamish’s tests were good. He was advised to spend another night in hospital before going back to Lochdubh. Dick arrived bearing newspapers and grapes.

  “Something awfy bad has happened,” said Dick. “I got a phone call from Blair. He saw me with Betty. He said he would keep his mouth shut provided I did a few jobs for him.”

  “Number one being spying on me,” said Hamish. “Don’t worry. I’ll shut him up.”

  “I’ve been thinking, Hamish. I might quit the force and move down to Perth with Betty. I could get a job as a security guard.”

  “That would be a grand idea,” said Hamish. “Does Betty know?”

  “I haven’t asked her yet.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  After he had left, Hamish phoned Blair. “If you talk about Betty’s history,” he said, “then much as I admire and like your wife, her background story will be all over the newspapers and I will tell Daviot how you tipped Beryl off about the search.” Blair cursed and ranted but finally agreed to keep his mouth shut. He did not dare tell Hamish how he had already called on Betty and reduced her to tears by saying he would tell Dick’s boss that he, Dick, was consorting with a prostitute.

  After the call was over, Hamish leaned back against the pillows with a sigh of satisfaction. His police station would soon be all his again.

  Betty finally dried her eyes and surveyed the situation. Her daughter was due home at Christmas. That detective, Blair, would never leave her alone. What if her daughter found out? And poor Dick, who meant so much to her, would be ruined.

  She sat down and began to write a letter to Dick. Her innocent time with him seemed to highlight the sordidness of her life. She had coped with it by being constantly on anti-depressants. Her daughter must never know how she had made her living. When the letter was finished, she went to get her supply of insulin. Betty, although she baked delicious cakes, hardly ever ate them because she was a diabetic. With a steady hand, she injected herself with a strong overdose, then went to lie down on her bed and close her eyes for the last time.

  Dick set out that evening with a bunch of red roses and a diamond ring. How beautiful Sutherland looked on a starry night. His heart sang as he motored in a car rented from the local garage. His own car had not been found.

  He parked in front of Betty’s home, went up and rang the bell. There was no answer, and the house was in darkness. She had given him a key.

  Dick unlocked the door and went in. The little hall was in darkness, but there was a light shining from under the living room door. “Betty!” he called and went into the living room. She wasn’t there. He was about to turn away when he saw a letter addressed to himself in the middle of the coffee table.

  She must have had to go out, he thought. He sat down on the couch, opened the envelope, and began to read.

  “Dear Dick,” he read. “It wouldn’t have worked out. I couldn’t bear the scandal. I couldn’t bear it if my daughter found out. I never worked on her holidays. I want you to tear up this letter. I’ve made it look like an accident. There is no such thing as a tart with a heart. But the life coarsened me in a way that just recently has made me feel sick. But my precious girl must never know. I have taken an overdose of insulin.

  “All my love,

  “Betty.”

  Dick got slowly to his feet like an old man. He went into the bedroom and looked down at the dead figure of Betty on the bed.

  He took out his phone and called Hamish.

  Hamish found him sitting in the living room. Dick told him again what had happened and handed him the letter.

  “You’ve got to get out o’ here,” said Hamish.

  “I’m not ashamed of her.”

  “Nor should you be. But the two-faced Calvinists at police headquarters won’t see it that way. You’ll lose your job. Conduct unbecoming in a police officer and blah, blah, blah. You’ll be dragged in for questioning. Your fingerprints must be all over the place. They may think you murdered her. Respect her last wishes and get out o’ here. Come on. Let’s dust the place, and get rid of that letter.”

  But Dick seemed incapable of moving. Hamish put on a pair of latex gloves and cleaned every surface he could think of. He took Betty’s address book, looked up her daughter’s college address in Cambridge, typed it out and printed it and left it on the desk. He found a travel bag and put the address book and computer into it, stuffing Dick’s bouquet of roses along with them. He took Dick’s car keys and drove his car to where he had parked the Land Rover some distance away.

  When he returned, he urged Dick to his feet. “We’ll go back in the Land Rover. You can collect the car another time. Come on, laddie. It’s all over.”

  After giving Dick a couple of sleeping pills he had found in an old medicine chest, Hamish put him to bed and drove grimly to Strathbane. He had phoned Blair’s wife, who was waiting for him in the bar of the Scotsman Hotel.

  “What is it, Hamish?” she asked anxiously.

  Hamish told her of the circumstances of Betty’s death and her husband’s threats.

  “I’ll kill the old bastard,” said Mary passionately.

  “Don’t,” said Hamish. “What I want to know is if you ever heard anything about Betty when you were on the game.”

  “Not a word. And we all pretty much knew what everyone else was up to. We didn’t know about the foreign imports because that was before my time.”

  “For her daughter’s sake, I want her to go to her grave as a respectable woman.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Now you’re respectable and no one knows about you, could you claim her as a friend?”

  “Least I can do.”

  “Good, here’s the address. I left the door unlocked. Go and find the body and call the police and call her daughter.

  I left her name and address on the desk. Betty went to the local kirk so the minister there will be glad to perform the funeral rites. Blair won’t like it.”

  “Then he can get stuffed,” said Mary. “It’s as if he murdered her. Leave it to me.”

  “Tell me, Mary, could it ha
ve worked out?”

  “I didn’t know the woman. Look, my man is a drunken bastard but it suits me to be off the streets and have a nice home, and it’s thanks to you I could change my identity. I can handle him because you never lose a sort of inner coarseness. I’m educated now and talk posh and look posh, but inside there’s a tramp. Dick’s a decent man. Give it a couple of years when romantic love fades and he might have begun to resent her past. I can’t see any way it could have worked in the long run.”

  Hamish called in at police headquarters to see Jimmy and was told he had left. He ran him to earth in the pub. “Have the Campbell brothers started talking yet?” asked Hamish, sitting down next to him.

  “Singing like canaries,” said Jimmy. “It seems that Beryl was laundering money for them and acting as a courier, bringing money in from abroad. They swear it was Murdo himself who topped Gonzales and got them to clean up the mess in the cottage. Gonzales was trying to get more money for dealing drugs and was creaming off a lot of the profits. But we’ve got them for murdering Beryl and for the assault on you. Also, they claim they were told to dump Jessie’s body in your garden, but they didn’t kill her.”

  “And what about Cyril?”

  “They said Cyril was an informant. But they swear blind they never touched him.”

  In the following weeks, Hamish was left with his bad conscience. If he hadn’t manipulated Dick into meeting Betty, then none of this would have happened. Dick drifted around the police station like a ghost. He had lost weight. Dreary holidays came and went. They were spared any visits from Hetty because Hamish had told her that Dick had gone away to Glasgow to stay with relatives.

  Sutherland seesawed its way through changes of climate. One week, the countryside was white under a raging blizzard and the following week, a false spring arrived with mild winds blowing in from the Gulf Stream.

  Dick had a sudden impulse to visit Betty’s grave. Hamish had gone out on his rounds to make sure people in the more remote crofts were all right. Dick had bought another old Ford.

  He motored to the cemetery and began to wander through the graves, holding a vase and a bunch of white roses. At last he found the grave and crouched down and began to arrange the roses in the vase.

  “Did you know my mother?” asked a voice behind him.

  Dick got to his feet and turned around. A lanky young woman with thick glasses stood looking at him.

  “I was a friend,” said Dick.

  “I’m her daughter.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” said Dick. “I thought you were at university.”

  “Half term. The minister told me that mother helped a lot of people. She often worked in the soup kitchen.”

  “She did indeed. A great lady.”

  “Mother wouldn’t have wanted you to waste your money in flowers. Here!” She took out a wallet and extracted a twenty-pound note. “Buy yourself a meal.”

  “I do not need your money,” said Dick, outraged. He stalked off.

  When he got to the car, he sat trembling with outrage. Then he looked in the rearview mirror. His face was covered in grey stubble. He looked down at his clothes. He was wearing an old donkey jacket over a washed-out T-shirt. He realised his hair was straggling down the back of his neck. No wonder she had taken him for a down-and-out!

  He drove into a barbershop in the town and got a shave and a haircut. He then bought new clothes: an anorak, wool sweater, and new trousers. He changed in the public toilet and left his old clothes behind.

  When he got back to the police station, there was a note on the kitchen table. “Gone to Braikie. Shoplifting. Hamish.”

  Dick realised that he had been so sunk in gloom, he had barely noticed that Hamish had stopped taking him out on jobs.

  He got back into his car and headed for Braikie. He cruised around but couldn’t see Hamish anywhere. He phoned him. “Nothing but a couple of schoolkids,” said Hamish. “See you back at the station.”

  Dick was just driving past the library when he saw Shona leaving for her lunch. He stopped the car, got out, and followed her into the café.

  “Why, Dick!” she exclaimed. “You’re so thin!”

  “Been having a hard time o’ it,” said Dick, sitting down opposite her.

  “That makes two of us,” said Shona, and began to cry.

  “Here, lassie. Dinnae greet. Tell Dick all about it.” He said to the waitress. “Leave us for a bit.”

  He handed Shona a handkerchief and waited until she had finished crying. “It’s Diarmuid,” she said. “He’s broken off the engagement.”

  “Why?”

  “He says I’ve been sleeping with half the men in Braikie.”

  “Oh, really? And what does dear Hetty have to say for herself?”

  Shona looked at him in surprise. “What’s Hetty got to do with it?”

  “She’s a spiteful, jealous cow. Where does this Diarmuid work?”

  “In the town hall. In the sanitation department.”

  “It’s Diarmuid Hendry, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but ...”

  “Eat something. I’ll be right back.”

  Dick went into the town hall and located the sanitation department. He flashed his warrant card and asked to speak to Mr. Hendry. He was ushered into a small cubicle of an office. Diarmuid rose to meet him. “What’s this about, Officer?”

  “Shona is very upset,” said Dick. “I believe you’ve been listening to malicious lies from Hetty, her boss. There’s not a word o’ truth in any of it. I’m surprised you even listened to the woman.”

  Diarmuid looked awkward. “She was very convincing.”

  “Well, now you know it’s all lies, you can get engaged again,” said Dick.

  Diarmuid sat down behind his desk and began to fiddle with a paper clip. Dick thought he looked like a geek with his oily black hair and thick glasses. He had expected Diarmuid to be handsome.

  “There’s a problem,” said Diarmuid. “I’ve met someone else.”

  “You whit?” roared Dick.

  “It just happened,” mumbled Diarmuid. “I’m in love with her.”

  “You make me sick,” raged Dick. “You cannae have loved Shona one bit, and I’ll tell you this, she’s had a lucky escape.”

  Dick went back to join Shona. “What did he say?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid the turd has found someone else. Look, Shona, pet, he’s useless. If he’d really loved you, he wouldn’t have believed Hetty for a moment. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was already involved with this other lassie and wanted out. He’s nothing but a streak o’ piss. What did you see in him?”

  “He was gentle. I had a boyfriend once who practically raped me. Diarmuid even said we could leave the sex bit until after we were married.”

  “Michty me!” Dick looked at her with shrewd eyes.

  “Does he live with his mother?”

  “Yes, I met her. She was very sweet. She told me just how he likes his coffee in the morning and all his favourite food.”

  “Oh, she did, did she? Shona, look at me. The new lassie won’t last long, either. Cheer up.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Want me to speak to Hetty?”

  “Oh, no, please. It would be awful if you did. We’ve no proof. I’d better get back. Don’t worry about me. I’ll get over it.”

  Dick went back to Lochdubh and told Hamish all about Shona’s aborted engagement.

  Hamish looked at him blankly for a long time. Dick was just beginning to wonder if Hamish had heard a word he had said, when Hamish finally said, “I’ll be damned. Here we’ve got an unbalanced woman. We’ve got one dead policeman, namely Cyril. It must have been the biggest thing that ever happened to Hetty. Then he dumped her. Do you think the crazy bitch might have shot him?”

  “It’s more a man’s murder,” said Dick. “Has she even got a shotgun?”

  “If she has, I’ll bet it isn’t registered. For a moment, I was thinking of seeing the provost and getting her fir
ed. Then I thought, she might kill Shona. The more I think of it, the more I think we’ve had a murderer right under our noses all this time.”

  “But how can we prove it?” asked Dick. “We don’t have enough to ask for a search warrant.”

  Hamish seized the Highlands and Islands phone book and flipped through it. “Here we are. I’d forgotten the address. It’s Number Four, The Loans. I’ll get over there after dark and scout around.”

  Hamish put on dark clothes that night and set out for Braikie. He decided he’d better be careful. He had walked into the Campbell brothers’ trap like an idiot. He parked the Land Rover several streets away.

  Hetty, he remembered, lived in a tall old house, divided into flats. Her apartment was on the ground floor. Thank goodness for the Victorians and their love of shrubbery, thought Hamish, easing himself into a thick clump of tall bushes near the entrance.

  He crouched down further as the light went on in Hetty’s flat. The door opened and a man came out. Hetty, wearing a pink dressing gown, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hungrily on the mouth.

  “Good night,” he said. “Don’t forget Mother’s invited us to tea tomorrow.”

  “I won’t forget, Diarmuid. Nighty-night, darling.”

  Well, I’m blessed, thought Hamish. It’s Shona’s geek. He waited until Hetty had gone indoors again and Diarmuid had driven off and then wondered what to do. He could hardly break in while she was there.

  Then he thought, she would be out for tea tomorrow. Tea would mean high tea, so probably around six o’clock. He decided to return the next day, stake out her house, and see if he could get in to make a search. He saw a lane up the side of the house and made his way there. There was a narrow road at the back. A gate led into Hetty’s garden. It was shielded from the houses on either side by shrubbery and trees. That would be a good way to break in.

  He returned to the station to tell Dick that Hetty was Diarmuid’s latest love.

  “What! Throw over Shona for that!” exclaimed Dick.

  “I think sex is the answer. Maybe he was a virgin before she threw open her legs in welcome. I’ll try to get into her flat.”