Death of a Liar (8 page)

“Not yet.”

“I'll treat you to a meal at the Italians'.”

Over dinner, Hamish rediscovered that Priscilla was a good listener. He was able to go over the case in detail.

When he had finished, Priscilla said, “Why try to kill Christine?”

“If this man, Gaunt, is behind it all, then he probably was afraid there was still some incriminating clue in that house that she might find.”

“It would have been more sensible to shoot you. Surely you have proved to be more of a danger at finding out things.”

“Someone may have seen the lights in the schoolhouse and thought it was me. Something Gaunt or someone else wants badly is hidden and they still don't know where.”

“What about this Polish woman, Anka? Don't you think it odd that she should choose to hide herself away in Cromish?”

“I did at first, but she's been checked and double-checked. Dick is still in Cromish, but he'll be back tomorrow.”

“You must miss all the home comforts.”

“I wish I could get rid of the man,” said Hamish. “I want my police station back.”

“So what is your next move?” asked Priscilla.

How beautiful she looked, with the golden bell of her hair shining in the candlelight, thought Hamish. And how contained and passionless.

He said, “I had better go back to Strathbane whether Jimmy likes it or not, and talk to those two girls who used to go to the church. If Liz had claimed to be engaged and it wasn't to Gaunt, who else was hanging around there?”

Hamish's phone rang. To his surprise, the caller was Anka. “I am afraid Dick will not be able to travel,” she said. “He has a severe cold. I am taking him to the doctor tomorrow.”

Hamish felt a pang of unease. What did he really know of Anka?

“I'll get up there tomorrow to see him,” said Hamish.

“That will not be necessary,” said Anka and rang off.

“That's odd,” said Hamish, tucking his phone back into his pocket. “Anka has just told me that Dick is not well enough to travel. I said I'd go up there, and she told me sharply that it wouldn't be necessary. I don't like this one bit. I'll get up there first thing tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“It's not allowed. You know that.”

“We could go in my car,” said Priscilla.

“All right, then. I'd be glad of the company.”

Hamish reflected, the next morning, that it was comfortable that he no longer lusted after Priscilla. Of course, it was hard to have any passionate feelings for a woman who did not put out one little vibe.

It was a dismal day with a greasy drizzle smearing the windscreen. Priscilla's Range Rover splashed through lakes of melting snow.

By the time they reached Cromish, a gusty wind had started to blow and the sky was clearing to the west.

“What a noisy place,” commented Priscilla when they got down from the car outside Anka's cottage. “There must be more seagulls here than anywhere else in the northwest.”

“It's the waves as well,” said Hamish. “The Atlantic waves get higher and stronger every year.”

He rang the doorbell.

“The curtains are closed,” said Priscilla. “Maybe she's still asleep.”

Hamish tried the door. “It's open,” he said. He walked in, calling, “Anka!”

He opened the door to the living room. The first thing he saw was Dick asleep on the sofa.

“Don't wake him!” said an imperious voice behind him. Hamish swung round. Anka was standing there in men's pyjamas. “And who is this?” she said, turning round to confront Priscilla, who had just entered the room behind her.

Hamish made the introductions. Then he said, “Dick doesn't look ill.”

“He has seen the doctor this morning and we have a certificate to show you.”

What on earth is going on here, wondered Hamish. Has she drugged him?

He stepped forward and shook Dick awake.

Dick blinked owlishly up at Hamish. “I'm sick,” he said.

“You don't look it.” Hamish put a hand on Dick's forehead. “You don't even have a temperature.”

“It is no use,” said Anka. “We had better tell them. Let us all go into the kitchen and have coffee.”

“It's like this,” said Dick. “I am leaving the police. Anka and me are going to start our own bakery, maybe in Braikie.”

Hamish stared at him. Here was the news he had longed for. But Dick and Anka. He shot a covert look at Anka from under his long lashes. Even in those pyjamas, she looked seductive from her tousled hair to her bare feet. Such a woman could have any man she wanted. Why Dick? Money, that must be it. She wanted her own bakery, and no doubt Dick had money in the bank.

“Who's going to pay for all this?” demanded Hamish.

“I have my own money and Dick will help out,” said Anka. “We are a team. We are superb bakers.” She put an arm around Dick, who was sitting next to her. “This man is an angel.”

Dick smiled at her. He looked radiant.

“We have so many plans to make,” said Anka. “Please give Dick two more days. We have so many things to do.”

“If I could just be having a wee word with Dick in private,” said Hamish stiffly.

“We'll go ben,” said Dick.

In the living room, Hamish confronted Dick. “Look, are you sure she isn't just using you?”

“It might be hard for you to understand,” said Dick, “but we are a match when it comes to the baking. This is a dream. Because she's beautiful, you think she can't fancy me. Well, she does. You can't stop me.”

“Dick, I'm only worried about you.”

“You've been trying to get rid of me for ages,” said Dick. “So shove off and enjoy your own company.”

“There's no need to be rude. And you are speaking to a superior officer.”

“Shove off,
sir
,” said Dick.

They glared at each other and then Hamish began to laugh.

“I swear to God I'm jealous,” he said. “You've always been more interested in the kitchen than any police work. You can start right away. I'll swear blind you've had a breakdown and tell them that the accommodating doctor has given you a sick note.”

“Well,” said Priscilla on the road back. “Doesn't that make you feel warm all over?”

“It worries me a bit. She's glamorous enough to break Dick's heart.”

“Oh, Dick's attractive.”

“Dick!”

“Yes, he's sort of cuddly.”

Hamish experienced that nasty stab of jealousy again. For the cool Priscilla to find Dick attractive was really annoying.

He dropped Priscilla at the hotel, almost relieved to see her go. She seemed to epitomise his failure to find a lasting relationship.

Hamish attended the funeral at the crematorium in Strathbane.

The Reverend Donald Bentley gave a frosty eulogy and hoped his sister would be forgiven for her many sins.

There was no one else to say anything about the dear departed.

The crematorium was run by two elderly brothers, Kenneth and Robert Wright. They were identical twins. Both were in their early eighties.

After the last dreary hymn was over, Hamish went to talk to Kenneth Wright.

“Did you know Miss Bentley?” he asked.

“I met her the once,” said Kenneth. “That man from that peculiar church brought her along to a service.”

“Who was being cremated?”

“A Mrs. Jessica Andrews. It was a most undignified service, I thought. Everyone clapping and stamping to songs I had never heard before. Jesus is your buddy, that sort of thing.”

“Could you find an address for Mrs. Andrews?”

“Come into the office.”

The office was dark and bleak. A shelf of urns stood against the window.

“I hope those aren't full,” said Hamish.

“No, no, no,” said Kenneth. “We keep them there as an example of what can be bought.”

“You should dust them,” said Hamish. “They look a bit dingy, and that one of the left has a sair dunt in it.”

“Do you want this address or not?” snapped Kenneth. “I haven't got all day.”

“Right,” said Hamish. “Didn't mean to offend you.”

No computer for the Wright brothers, thought Hamish, as Kenneth opened an old-fashioned ledger.

“Ah, here it is. Number five, Loan Road, Beauly.”

“Thanks. Are you all right? You look worried.”

“I am very well, thank you. Now, if there is nothing else?”

Hamish found Jimmy standing outside the crematorium, smoking.

“You didn't attend the service,” said Hamish.

“Slept in. Anyone there interesting?”

Hamish told him about Jessica Andrews. “I might nip down to Beauly and have a word wi' her,” he said.

“Not on your beat, Hamish.”

“I know, but there's something else.” He told Jimmy about Dick leaving the force and setting up as a baker with Anka. “I think I'd better check in with the Polish society in Inverness, just to see if I can find out anything about her.”

“Believe me, Hamish, her background has been checked every step of the way. She's just what she says she is.”

“Let me go down there,” wheedled Hamish. “You know I can often get things out of people that other policemen can't.”

“Oh, all right. But go in plainclothes and if Inverness police catch you, I know nothing about it.”

On seeing Beauly, Mary Queen of Scots is reported to have said, “
C'est un beau lieu
” (it's a beautiful place), and so the town came to be called Beauly.

Beauly is near Inverness. It boasts a wide main street and a ruined priory, now the possession of Lord Lovat.

Number 5, Loan Road, was a trim Victorian granite villa. Hamish hoped that some relative of the dead Jessie Andrews still lived there. The front garden was simply gravel, bordered by a stone wall.

There was a polished brass doorbell set into the wall. The orange glow from the streetlamp outside shone on blank empty windows at the front. Hamish rang the bell.

At first he thought there was no one at home, but then a light went on in the hall inside. The door opened. A small, waif-like woman stood there. She had very fine straight white hair which hung down in two wings beside her thin white face. Although her neck was wrinkled, her face was smooth. She was wearing a faded black sweater and jeans and two large fluffy slippers in the shape of pink bunny rabbits.

Hamish introduced himself and said he was investigating The Church of the Chosen.

“Come in,” she said. “I am Jessie's sister, Heather Green.”

Hamish followed her small, thin figure to a kitchen at the back of the house.

It was very cold. The kitchen was old-fashioned with a Belfast sink and an old gas stove and a table covered in oilcloth and surrounded by four hard-backed chairs. There was no refrigerator or washing machine.

“Will you take tea, Sergeant?” asked Heather in a high thin voice.

“That would be grand.”

She lit a gas ring and put a battered kettle of water on it. Hamish waited until the tea was made and served before he began to question her. Heather clasped her hands round her mug of tea as if for warmth.

“Jessie was a widow,” she said. “We lived here together. Jessie inherited quite a bit of money after her husband died. She said she'd made out a will leaving everything to me. And that she did. But apart from this house, Jessie only had fifty pounds left in her bank account. I found out she had been making donations to that church. I confronted that preacher, Brough, and he told me that she had been very generous. He would pay for the funeral but that was all. Our bank manager told me that Jessica had paid the church money amounting to seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

“I am a retired schoolteacher. I have my pension, but it's not all that much.”

“Can't you sell this house?”

“I suppose I must. But I was brought up here. I never married. I would hate to leave the place.”

“What did Jessie tell you about the church?”

“That's what was so odd. She told me nothing until nearly the end. She said she was visiting friends in Inverness. And she had begun to behave oddly. She had always been a placid body. But she began to lose weight and chatter, chatter, chatter.”

Drugs, thought Hamish bleakly.

“So how did you hear about Brough?” he asked.

“She said she was going to get married to him and two days later she was dead. The procurator fiscal said it was caused by an overdose of pure heroin. He put ‘heart attack' on the death certificate, to be kind. I went to the police. I told them that this man, Brough, had supplied my sister with drugs. They got back to me and said they could find no proof and that Brough had told them he had never proposed marriage to Jessie. I had to let him pay for the funeral because I have so little, you see.”

“I believe there are benefits for people in your position,” said Hamish awkwardly.

“I could never lower myself to scrounge on the state,” she said firmly.

Hamish got to his feet. “If I find anything out, I'll let you know. What is your telephone number?”

A thin flush suffused her face. “I don't have one,” she said in a low voice.

Hamish wondered as he drove into Inverness whether Jessie had been murdered. But how to prove it? From her sister's description of her behaviour, Jessie had been taking amphetamines. It would be assumed she had progressed to harder drugs.

He parked in Inverness and made his way to the headquarters of the Polish Association in Union Street. It transpired that Anka had only visited once. Her beauty had made her memorable, but nothing more was known about her.

He collected his Land Rover and drove out to the church. He fed Sonsie and Lugs with carry-outs he had collected in Inverness and let them run around.