by M C Beaton
“So let’s begin at the beginning,” said Deacon.
Patiently he took them through everything all over again. When he had finished, Hamish said, “Heather says she saw Doris on the beach where Doris says she was. June, how was it you let a seven-year-old wander off on her own?”
June looked puzzled. “It’s not like Heather to leave the younger ones, but I fell asleep and Heather was collecting shells. And she was, you know. She carried them home in that pail she uses for making sand-castles.”
Maggie put her head around the door. “A word with you, sir.”
Deacon went out. He was back in a few minutes and sat down heavily. “More problems,” he said. “That will be all,” he added to Dermott and June. The couple got up and went out, but Hamish noticed that Dermott did not take June’s arm or hand the way he usually did.
“What’s up?” asked Clay. “Not another murder?”
Deacon shook his head. “Cheryl’s been arrested. She and Tracey were in the pub and got drunk. Some local lads started taking the piss out of them and Cheryl smashed her pint glass on the bar and then tried to take it across the face of one of the lads. Would have done it too if Tracey hadn’t held her back.”
Violence, thought Hamish. We’ve been looking for someone capable of a sudden attack of violence and forgetting Cheryl is the one with a proven record. We’ve been looking for a motive. What was it he had said to Miss Gunnery? Something about a motiveless murder being the most difficult to solve. These had not been intelligent murders. They had been the result of rage, rage and fear; fear in the case of MacPherson, if he had been blackmailing anybody.
Deacon was called out again. Again they waited. When he came back, he said, “One of the locals remembers that MacPherson always had a big pair of kitchen scissors on his desk. We haven’t found a trace of them. If the murderer used the scissors as a weapon and threw them in the river, they could be somewhere down there sunk in the sand. We’ve searched all around below the jetty, but they could have been tossed in further up. I’ll tell you another thing: anything that’s tossed in that river can sink down below the sand and be buried. I don’t know if we’ll ever find them.”
“Is Cheryl being brought in here?” asked Hamish.
“No, she’ll stay in the cells until she sobers up. Why don’t you get back to that boarding-house, Macbeth, and see what you can sniff out?”
That ‘sniff out’ was unfortunate because it gave Hamish a sudden and vivid picture of Towser. He got to his feet, nodded to Deacon and Clay, and went out. Instead of driving off, he left his Land Rover where it was and walked down to the harbour. The tide was in, sucking at the wooden piles of the jetty, making wet clumps of seaweed rise and fall like the hair on the dead Bob Harris’s head. There were long trails of rain out to sea, dragging across the stormy water as if pulled by an unseen hand. The air was full of wind and salt and motion. Behind him, a policeman he did not know stood on guard outside the boat-shed. A little knot of tourists stared hungrily at the boat-shed, as if a vicarious thrill were as much a legitimate part of the holiday as the rides at the fairground.
Hamish was reluctant to go back to the boarding-house, reluctant to face the others. He wished with all his heart that the case was solved and he could return to Lochdubh. How could he ever have taken such a dislike to his home village? He could always ask to leave Skag. He was officially on holiday. But the short happy time he had spent with the others at the boarding-house before the murders had given him a queer sort of loyalty towards them.
With a little sigh, he turned and walked back to the police station, climbed into the Land Rover and drove to the boarding-house.
He was met in the hall by a stout middle-aged lady who said, “I am Mrs Rogers’s sister, Mrs Aston. Poor Liz has gone to lie down. She can’t cope here. You must be Mr Macbeth. Tea is just about to be served, if you will step into the dining room.”
Wondering, Hamish went in and joined Miss Gunnery. “I had thought of asking you out for dinner tonight,” he said. “But do you think this Mrs Aston is going to be any better?”
“Let’s see,” said Miss Gunnery. “She seems a very civil and polite woman.”
“She seemed to have heard a description of me,” said Hamish. “I could have been any other policeman.”
The door opened and the Bretts came in. They avoided looking at Hamish and sat down at their table in silence. Then Andrew and Doris came in, followed by a tearful Tracey. They, too, avoided looking at Hamish.
Mrs Aston wheeled in a trolley with three-tiered cake stands on it and proceeded to put one on each table. “Goodness, this is more like it,” exclaimed Miss Gunnery. On the bottom plate were wafer-thin slices of bread and butter, white and brown; on the next plate up, teacakes and scones, golden and fresh-baked, and on the top a selection of scrumptious-looking cakes.
“I wonder what the dish is?” said Hamish. “I smell fish and chips, but to tell the truth, I think I’ve had enough fish and chips to last me a lifetime.”
The trolley creaked in again. But it was fish and chips made surely by the hand of an angel: haddock fillets in crisp golden batter and real chips, rather than those frozen ones.
“This is grand!” exclaimed Hamish.
“And really good tea,” said Miss Gunnery. She looked across to where the three small Brett children sat in old–fashioned, well-behaved silence. “There’s a showing of The Jungle Book on in the cinema at Dungarton. It’s at seven-thirty this evening. We could all just make it after tea, and it might take your children’s minds off the troubles we are going through, Mrs Brett.”
“I tell you what,” said Hamish directly to the children, “if your parents’ll let you stay up late, I’ll give you a ride in the police Land Rover.”
Heather’s eyes widened. “With the siren on?”
“I don’t think I can manage that,” said Hamish, “but we could flash the blue light.”
“Och, let’s go,” said Tracey. “It’s started tae pour wi’ rain an’ if we sit in this hellish place, we’ll all go daft.”
There was a definite thawing of the air in the dining room. “Might be the very thing,” said Dermott. “But what if they send for any of us to interrogate us again this evening?”
“They didn’t say anything about it,” said Hamish. “Let’s forget our troubles and eat up and just go.”
“You’ll get into trouble with your superiors for fraternizing with the enemy,” said Andrew dryly.
“Maybe Hamish hopes that if he stays close to us, we’ll reveal something useful,” put in Doris in a flat little voice. There was an uneasy silence.
“No, no,” said Hamish. “I need to get my mind off the case as much as the lot of you. Come on. Let’s give the kids a bit o’ fun.”
And so Maggie Donald, arriving just after tea at the boarding-house to see if she could entice Hamish out to dinner, found him lifting the Brett children into the Land Rover. He told her rather curtly where they were going but did not issue any invitation. Maggie stood and watched as the cars drove off, feeling strangely abandoned and yet wondering crossly at the same time why Hamish Macbeth, a policeman, should want to spend the evening with a group of people among whom was probably a murderer.
The film was a great success. Hamish, who hadn’t seen it before, said to Miss Gunnery that it was just about his intellectual level. Hamish drove the Brett children home and on an empty stretch of road switched on the flashing blue light and the police siren.
Miss Gunnery, following behind, driving Tracey, said, “He is a very unusual policeman, our Hamish.”
Tracey shivered. “They’re all pigs.”
“There is nothing to fear from the police if you keep on the right side of the law,” said Miss Gunnery. “Why don’t you break free of company like Cheryl, Tracey, and make a new life for yourself?”
Tracey, instead of protesting, sat in silence. Then she said, “She belongs to ma sort o’ life. My faither’s in prison.”
“There comes a
time, Tracey,” said Miss Gunnery, “when you must break free of your family if you have had an unfortunate upbringing, which I believe you have experienced.”
Tracey gave a harsh laugh. “You know, sometimes when Ah’m comin’ back frae the jiggin’ wi’ Cheryl, and we’ve had a few drinks and we’re laughing and screeching, we see the respectable lassies standing at the bus stop, and they draw back a wee bit as we pass and turn their faces away. Cheryl usually gives them a mouthful, but me…” She sighed. “There’s a part o’ me would like fine tae be one o’ them.”
“You should get some skills,” said Miss Gunnery. “Get yourself a decent job. Goodness, there are so many courses available these days. Talk to your social worker about getting a course in word processing and shorthand. Get a good job, get some digs in a good part of town. There’s an awful lot you can do if you just have the courage. And it takes courage, Tracey. It takes a lot of guts, more guts than it ever takes to shoplift or get drunk. Your clothes and make-up, for example, mark you down as a vulgar tart.”
“Watch yer mouth!”
“I am giving you some straight talking. I feel there is strength and goodness in you, Tracey, that has never been tapped. You could put this horrible experience up here to good effect. You could look back on it as a watershed in your life, the day your life changed. No, don’t protest. Think about it.”
Mrs Aston was waiting for them. “Coffee in the lounge,” she announced.
“That woman is a treasure,” said Andrew as they gathered in the lounge minus June and the children, who had gone upstairs. “I bet it isn’t instant coffee either.”
The coffee was excellent. By a sort of silent agreement, no one talked about the murders, but when Hamish finally went to bed, he reminded himself severely that he was a policeman.
♦
The next morning, Tracey was missing at breakfast. Crick, the policeman on duty, told them that Cheryl had been moved to the women’s prison in Dungarton on remand and that Tracey had gone to visit her. Miss Gunnery heaved a sigh and said half to herself, “Why did I even bother trying?”
Tracey had walked into Skag and caught the bus to Dungarton after having picked up a visitor’s pass at the police station. Her hair was brushed down in a simple style and she was not wearing any make-up. She had put on a plain T–shirt, short skirt, and low-heeled shoes.
The prison was a modern one, with bulletproof glass separating visitor from prisoner. There was a small grille to allow speech. “How’s it goin’, hen?” asked Tracey.
“No’ bad,” said Cheryl with a shrug. “You’re lookin’ a bit plain. What hiv you done tae your hair?”
“Nothin’ much,” muttered Tracey.
“Shouldnae let all this get to ye,” said Cheryl, whose hair was gelled into spikes.
“Cheryl,” ventured Tracey, “I’m sick o’ all this. I’m thinking of gettin’ a career.”
Cheryl cackled with derisive laughter. “Go on, you bampot. They cannae keep me in here fur all that long and then we’ll hae a few laughs.”
“I don’t want any more laughs,” said Tracey. “I’ve had a fright. I want to be respectable.”
Cheryl’s eyes narrowed. She could not bear to see this friend and ally slipping away. “I’ve a secret to tell ye. Lean forward.”
Tracey leaned towards the glass. “I killt them,” said Cheryl. “Both of them.”
“Why?” mouthed Tracey silently.
“For kicks.”
Tracey got to her feet and stumbled out, her hands to her mouth. Cheryl glared after her in disbelief. There was no impressing some people.
♦
Hamish, calling back at the boarding-house later that day after a lengthy discussion about the case with Deacon, wondered what had happened. Everyone was showing marks of strain. Tracey was a shadow of her former flamboyant self. She clung to Miss Gunnery, and Hamish wondered why such a hard piece like Tracey should suddenly decide to befriend the retired schoolteacher. But when he took Miss Gunnery aside and asked her, Miss Gunnery said that Tracey was very young and quite shaken by the murders and good might come of it. It was possible to reform anyone. Hamish looked cynical. He was sure that once Tracey was back in Glasgow with her family and friends, all thoughts of reform would go out of her head.
He returned to the police station to spend the rest of the day sifting through the statements and studying all the forensic evidence. Somewhere amongst all this pile of paper was surely a clue to the identity of the murderer: Doris and Andrew both had motives, as had June and Dermott. At last he gave up and drove into Dungarton and bought Miss Gunnery a tartan travelling-rug to replace the one in which he had buried Towser.
He gave the rug to Miss Gunnery and suggested they have dinner out that evening. Hamish was becoming worried about his dwindling finances. He felt cheated of a holiday he had initially planned to go on somewhere later in the year, but the trip south and all the other expenses had eaten into his reserves.
To his surprise, Miss Gunnery said firmly that she would pay for dinner, provided they took Tracey along with them. Hamish did not want to have any part in the reformation of young Tracey, considering her a lost cause, but felt it would be uncharitable to say so.
Like quite a lot of small Scottish towns, Dungarton boasted a Chinese restaurant in the main street, directly opposite the Indian one. It was a Saturday night and the place was quite full. Hamish looked around at the placid Scottish faces munching through crispy noodles and bean sprouts at the other tables and thought how untouched by the nasty world they all looked, safe and secure, never having known anything of the underworld stirred up by murder.
“So how was Cheryl?” he asked Tracey.
“Fine,” she said. Her hand holding the fork trembled slightly. “Och, when can ah go hame?” she suddenly wailed.
“Soon, I think,” said Hamish. “The police have your home address and your statement. They’ll warn you not to leave the country, and that will be that.”
“Bob Harris was a scunner,” said Tracey.
“Yes, he was,” said Hamish, “but no one has a right to take anyone’s life, Tracey.”
She stared at him with large frightened eyes, looking young and lost without her usual armour of paint and hair gel. “Do ye believe in hell, Hamish?”
“Aye,” sighed Hamish Macbeth. “But not in the afterlife, Tracey. We’re all living in it, one way or the other, right now.”
∨ Death of a Nag ∧
10
But Guilt was my grim Chamberlain
That lighted me to bed.
—Thomas Hood
Hamish realized as he awoke next day that he had not reassured Miss Gunnery about the welfare of her cat, and what was even more strange was that she had not asked him about the cat or about her friend, Mrs Agnew.
He plunged in right away when he met her at breakfast assuring her that Joey looked fit and well. She thanked him in an abstracted voice. The murders were beginning to tell on her. Her interest in Tracey had seemed only momentarily to lift the strain. She had dark circles under her eyes and wisps of hair were escaping from her normally severe hair-style.
Everyone else seemed to be feeling equally gloomy, despite the delicious breakfast. Mrs Aston, a cheerful and motherly figure, apparently unaffected by the criminal goings-on of her sister and brother-in-law, delivered and collected plates.
“You’ll be going to church,” she said to all at large.
“Good idea,” said Hamish suddenly. He was worried about the silent, downcast Brett children. Church was as good a place as any to go to on a Scottish Sabbath.
It is amazing in this modern age how such a group of normally irreligious people can suddenly decide in adversity that church is a very sensible place to go to. But then, there are no agnostics on the battlefield.
The day was quiet and calm and quite chilly when they went out to the cars, all too exhausted with worry to contemplate the walk to Skag. Crick, on duty at the door asked them where they were going and made
a note of it in his book.
They arrived at the Church of Scotland in good time for the start of the service. The church was plain and devoid of ornament. They sat in one of the hard pews and listened to a wheezy organ murdering Bach.
The minister was an imposing figure, like one of the lesser prophets, with a flowing grey beard and shaggy locks. Hamish could not decide whether his eyes were burning with religious zeal or whisky. There was a strong suggestion of the actor about him. This was no clap-happy Christianity, no tambourines or steel guitars, only dreary hymns sung to the asthmatic music of the church organ.
Then the minister leaned over the pulpit and began his sermon, the theme of which was honesty being the best policy. He obviously believed more in a God of wrath than one of love and certainly appeared convinced that the dishonest were condemned to the hell of eternal fire. Without his overwhelming presence, the words would have seemed a mixture of the trite and the mad, but his voice rang round the church, conjuring up for Hamish a vision of the days of John Knox. How Mary Queen of Scots must have disliked that man!
When they emerged from the church, it was to find the weather had changed again and a hot sun was blazing down. But it was a subdued party who gathered by the cars. Tracey was weeping quietly and Miss Gunnery had an arm about her shoulders, young Heather was as white as a sheet, and Hamish cursed all Bible-bashing clerics.
They drove back to the boarding-house. I am sick of this place, thought Hamish. I want shot of it. I want to go home. And then he realized that Tracey was tugging at his sleeve. “A word wi’ ye,” she whispered. “No’ inside. Let’s walk down to the beach.”
As he walked off with her, Hamish was conscious of Miss Gunnery’s eyes boring into his back. For a brief spell, the spinster’s interest in Tracey had seemed to lift her growing obsession for him, Hamish. He hoped it wouldn’t come back.
“What is it, then?” he asked when they had reached the shingle bank. “Let’s sit down, Tracey. You’re in an awful state.”