Death of a Scriptwriter (10 page)

‘Quite,’ said Hamish, trying to block out a bright image of Priscilla with her calm features and smooth blonde hair.

‘Anyway, type up your report. Blair will be with you later.’

The phone rang shrilly. Hamish picked it up. Blair’s truculent voice asked for Daviot, and Hamish passed the receiver over.

Daviot listened and then gave an exclamation and said, ‘That’s great. Good work. It looks as if we’ve got our man. We’ll have this wrapped up today.’

Daviot rang off. ‘Blair’s had a call from the police in Glasgow. Two policemen heard Josh Gates, the husband of Penelope Gates, who stars in the series, shouting in the middle of St
Vincent Street, “I’ll kill him.” It turns out he was well-known in the business for blowing his top over his wife’s various sexy roles. He’d been in Smith’s
bookshop and asked to see the catalogue of forthcoming books. Then he shouted, “Slut,” and bought an ordnance survey map of this section of Sutherland. The bookseller’s assistant
said the catalogue was left open at a book illustration of
The Case of the Rising Tides
, showing his wife naked on the cover. We’ll find him.’

Hamish typed up his report, feeling irritated and isolated. He itched to know what was going on. Had Josh Gates really committed the murder? If he had, he was probably in
hiding somewhere.

He wondered if Patricia had heard the news. Surely she was bound to have heard about the murder by now. And where was Angus Harris?

It was eight o’clock in the evening by the time Jimmy Anderson called. His long nose was red with sunburn.

‘Filed your report?’ asked Jimmy, sitting down wearily.

‘Sent it to Strathbane ages ago,’ said Hamish. ‘The wonder o’ computers.’

‘Well, this case is nicely wrapped up. Got a dram?’

They were in the kitchen. Hamish went to the cupboard and brought down a bottle of cheap whisky. He knew Jimmy of old and was not going to waste good malt on him. ‘So was it Josh Gates
after all?’

‘Yes, it was him.’

‘Confessed?’

‘No, dead as a doornail when they got him.’

‘So how do they know he did it? What did he die of?’

‘We’re waiting for the pathology report, but it looks as if he got drunk and choked on his own vomit. He was lying up on the hill a little bit beside the road outside Drim. One of
the locals found him.’

‘So how do they know it was him?’ asked Hamish impatiently.

‘He had blood on his hands. They’ll need to check the DNA. But we’re pretty sure it’ll turn out to be Jamie’s blood.’

‘What’s the wife saying to this?’

‘She says he had a violent temper and that after the series was over, she was going to leave him.’

‘It’s all too convenient,’ muttered Hamish. ‘What happens now with the TV series? Cancelled?’

‘No, I gather Harry Frame considers it all wonderful publicity. They’re all returning briefly to Glasgow to recoup, get another scriptwriter.’

‘Why another? Hadn’t Jamie written all the scripts?’

‘He’d written the first two and the bible – that’s the casting, story line, setting, all that – but they’ll need someone or several to work out the remaining
scripts, or maybe change the first ones. That Fiona King says Jamie’s work was crap.’

‘So she’s still got her job?’

‘Didn’t know she had been fired.’

‘Aye, Jamie got her fired. An ambitious woman, I think.’

‘Och, we don’t need to worry about her or anyone else. Thank God it’s all tied up. Thon place, Drim, gies me the creeps.’

Hamish looked at him thoughtfully. He had an uneasy feeling it was all too pat. Yet Josh had been found dead with blood on his hands. But why should he have blood on his hands? If he had struck
Jamie on the back of the head with a rock or a bottle or anything else and he were close enough, blood might have spurted on his clothes, but not his hands.

‘Just supposing,’ said Hamish slowly, ‘Josh came across Jamie’s body when the man was already dead. You’d think with that wound in the back of the head that he
would be lying facedown in the heather. Josh wants to make sure he’s dead, so he turns him over on his back and that’s how he got the blood on his hands.’

‘Who cares?’ Jimmy finished his whisky and put the glass down and rose to his feet. ‘It’s all over.’

Soon Drim was emptied of television crew and actors and press. As if to mark their departure, the weather changed and a warm gust of wind blew rain in from the Atlantic and up
the long sea loch of Drim. The tops of the mountains were shrouded in mist. Damp penetrated everything, and tempers in the village were frayed.

Excitement and glamour had gone. Only two determined women attended Edie’s exercise class, and Alice’s front parlour, which she used as a hair salon, stood empty.

Mr Jessop, the minister, thought he should feel glad that the ‘foreign invasion’ had left, but he felt uneasy. Everyone seemed to be squabbling and discontented.

He felt his wife was not much help in running the parish. Eileen Jessop, a small, faded woman, never interested herself in village affairs. It was her Christian duty, he thought sternly as he
watched her knitting something lumpy in magenta wool, to do something to give the women of the village an interest.

‘What can I do?’ asked Eileen, blinking at him myopically in the dim light of the manse living room. Mr Jessop insisted she put only 40-watt bulbs in the light sockets to save
money.

‘You could organize some activity for them,’ said the minister crossly. ‘Weaving or something.’

‘Why would they want to weave anything?’ asked Eileen. ‘The women buy their clothes from Marks and Spencer. And I don’t know how to weave.’

‘Think of something. You never talk to any of the women except to say good morning and good evening. Get to know them.’

Eileen stifled a sigh. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

It started more as a venture to keep her husband quiet. The next day Eileen plucked up her courage and went down to the general store, where Ailsa was leaning on the counter
and filing her nails.

‘What can I do for you, Mrs Jessop?’ asked Ailsa.

‘I was wondering whether I could organize anything for the village women,’ said Eileen timidly. ‘Perhaps Scottish country dancing, something like that.’

‘We all know fine how to dance,’ said Ailsa. She gave a rueful laugh. ‘They were all hoping for parts in the fillum, that they were, and now they all feel flat.’

And then Eileen found herself saying, ‘It’s a pity we couldn’t make a film of our own.’

‘A grand idea, Mrs Jessop, but –’

‘Eileen.’

‘Eileen, then. A grand idea, but what do any of us know about filming?’

‘My husband has a camcorder,’ said Eileen, ‘and I could get some books and maybe write a script. I was in my university dramatic society, and I wrote a couple of Scottish
plays.’

Ailsa looked in surprise at the minister’s wife, at her grey hair and glasses and at the jumble of shapeless clothes she wore. ‘Funny,’ she said, ‘I cannae imagine you
being in any amateur dramatic society.’

‘That was before I married Mr Jessop, of course,’ said Eileen, thinking treacherously of how marriage to a bad-tempered and domineering man had crushed the life out of her over the
years. ‘What do you say, Ailsa? Mr Jessop is going to Inverness this evening. We could have a meeting in the manse if you could round up some people who might be interested. There are some
crowd scenes in the play. We could end up using everyone in the village.’

Ailsa suddenly smiled, and her blue eyes sparkled. ‘You know, that would be the grand thing. What time?’

‘Seven o’clock?’

‘Fine, I’ll see you then.’

Mr Jessop looked amazed and then gratified when his wife told him she was going to make an amateur film using the people of the village as actors.

‘I’m glad to see you are taking your parish duties seriously at last,’ he said waspishly. He never believed in praising anyone. It caused vanity.

A few weeks after the murder, Hamish Macbeth suddenly decided to call on Patricia. He put on the suit she had admired, Savile Row, bought from a thrift shop in Strathbane, and
drove over to Cnothan and up to Patricia’s cottage.

A light was shining in her living room, and as he approached the low door of her cottage, he could hear the busy clatter of the typewriter.

He knocked on the door and waited. At last, Patricia opened the door.

‘Yes?’ she demanded.

‘Just a social call,’ said Hamish.

‘Come in, but not for long. I am writing.’ She led him into the living room and sat down again behind the typewriter and looked at him enquiringly.

‘I wondered how you were getting on,’ said Hamish.

‘Fine,’ retorted Patricia, her fingers hovering impatiently over the keys.

‘I gather from Major Neal that they’re getting another scriptwriter and going ahead with the series.’

‘It is no longer of any interest to me,’ said Patricia. ‘As you see, I am writing again, and that is more important than anything.’

Hamish leaned back in his chair and surveyed her. ‘And yet you got a good bit of publicity out of the murder. I saw you interviewed on television several times.’

‘I thought I came over very well,’ said Patricia complacently.

Hamish privately thought Patricia had come over as cold and snobbish and patronizing.

‘So what are you writing?’ he asked.

‘I don’t want to talk about it until it’s finished. I feel it’s bad luck to talk about it.’

‘Good luck to you anyway.’

‘Thank you. Is there anything else?’

‘No, no, just came for a chat.’

‘Most kind of you, but I would really like to get on.’

Hamish left, feeling snubbed. He wondered why he had ever felt sorry for Patricia. The woman was as hard as nails!

Six scriptwriters were seated around the conference table at Strathclyde Television. The main scriptwriter was an Englishman, David Devery, thin, caustic and clever. Harry
Frame did not like him but had to admit that he had put a lot of wit and humour into Jamie’s scripts. The part of Lady Harriet had come to life. The commune had been written out. But Lady
Harriet was to remain the blonde and voluptuous Penelope Gates, and she still seduced the chief inspector.

‘We need to get all this rehearsed and get back up there as quickly as possible,’ said Harry.

Sheila, filling cups over by the coffee machine, looked over her shoulder at Fiona. Fiona’s normally hard-bitten face looked radiant. It was all going her way now, thought Sheila. With
Jamie out of the way, the atmosphere of purpose and ambition had done wonders for Fiona.

And Jamie was more than dead. He was disgraced. Because of the publicity engendered by the murder, two people from Jamie’s script-writing class had surfaced to say that Stuart had shown
them that script of
Football Fever
and said he was going to give it to Jamie, that Jamie had cruelly trashed it, and Stuart had felt so low about it, he had said he would never write
again.

Sheila found she was looking forward to going back to the Highlands. A picture of Hamish Macbeth rose in her mind. She wondered what he had really thought about Jamie’s murder. Penelope
Gates, who had not seemed to mourn her husband one bit, had nonetheless told Sheila that she was puzzled by the murder. Josh, said Penelope, might have beaten her up, but murder Jamie? Never!

If Hamish were in a book like one of Patricia’s, she thought dreamily, he would prove that Fiona had done it to keep her job. But Hamish was only the village bobby, and –

‘What about that coffee, girl?’ demanded Harry.

Sheila sighed. Harry called himself a feminist but never seemed to practice what he preached.

She put cups on a tray and carried them to the table. Her mind wandered back to the murder. BBC Scotland had agreed to pay royalties for
Football Fever
to Stuart’s estate, which
meant that Angus Harris had come into quite a bit of money. He had even sold several of Stuart’s manuscripts to a publisher.

How neat it would be if Angus had done the murder. But no one had really been asked to produce an alibi. Josh had done it. Case closed.

Eileen Jessop watched the return of the television film crew with heavy eyes. Who would be interested in her amateur efforts now? It had all been going so well. The women had
liked the Scottish comedy she had written so many years ago. She had felt important and popular for the first time in ages.

She wearily trudged down to the general store. Ailsa once more had her sixties hairstyle, and from the community hall came the
thump
,
thump
,
thump
of the music from
Edie’s exercise class.

‘It’s yourself, Eileen,’ Ailsa hailed her. ‘Going to get a part in the movies?’

Eileen shook her head.

‘Och, you’ll be following the camera crew around, getting tips.’

‘I don’t suppose any of the women will be interested in my little amateur venture any more,’ said Eileen sadly.

‘Don’t say that! It’s the best fun we’ve had in ages. I bet we could knock spots off this lot.’

Eileen blinked myopically. ‘You mean you all want to go on?’

‘Sure.’ Ailsa leaned her freckled arms on the counter. ‘See here, we always do our filming in the evening, and that’s when this lot pack up. Of course we’ll go
on.’

Eileen gave her a blinding smile. ‘That’s wonderful. Mr Jessop doesn’t mind the rehearsals and the filming at all.’

‘Neither he should,’ said Ailsa with a grin. ‘We don’t film on the Sabbath and there aren’t any nude women in it.’

‘I hope they all keep their clothes on in this television thing,’ said Eileen anxiously. ‘Mr Jessop’s blood pressure is quite high.’

‘Do you always call him Mr Jessop? Sounds like one o’ thae Victorian novels.’

‘I mean Colin. He likes me to call him Mr Jessop when talking about him.’

‘Funny. But that’s men for you.’

After the filming of
The Case of the Rising Tides
got well under way, Sheila Burford found herself increasingly reluctant to return to the Tommel Castle Hotel in the
evenings with the rest of them to talk endless shop. She was becoming more and more disenchanted with the television world and was beginning to wonder if she had got into it because it made her
mother so proud of her and all her friends seemed to think she had an exciting job. Sometimes she felt like some sort of maid, fetching and carrying and serving drinks and coffee.