Death of a Valentine (4 page)

Hamish looked down at her wearily. He knew Hugh owned a bungalow on the shore road. ‘Were you just trying to get his attention, Hugh?’ he asked.

‘Aye, that I was, Hamish. Thon fat cat has bankrupted the town, and until that wall is built there’s no hope o’ getting my place sold.’

‘Take the handcuffs off, McSween,’ said Hamish.

‘But –’

‘Just do it!’

Red in the face, Josie unlocked the handcuffs. Hamish raised his voice. ‘Now listen here, all of you. The only way you’re going to get that wall built is to do something about it
yourselves. There are out-o’-work bricklayers and dry-stone wallers amongst ye. We’ll work out some fund-raising scheme and build the damn thing ourselves.’

There was an excited murmur as the news spread back through the crowd. The local minister, Mr Cluskie, mounted the platform and went to the microphone. He announced that Hamish Macbeth had come
up with a very good idea to save the seawall. He said a meeting would be held in the church hall on the following evening to discuss ideas for the fund-raising. This was greeted with loud cheers.
Then Hugh called for three cheers for Hamish Macbeth.

Josie stood off to the side. She was a small woman but she began to feel smaller and smaller, diminished, melting in the heat.

‘The tiara!’ exclaimed Hamish and set off at a run.

He knew that the tiara, when the procession reached the town hall, would be placed in a safe and replaced with a gold cardboard crown for the queen to wear for the rest of the
day.

He jumped into the Land Rover and headed for the town hall in the centre. To his relief, Annie was being helped down from the float. The tiara was put back on the cushion, and Councillor Jamie
Baxter took it off into the hall. Hamish followed.

‘I just have to see it’s in the safe all right,’ he said to Jamie’s back.

‘Och, man, each year you worry and each year it’s fine. Sir Andrew Etherington’ll be down on the morrow to collect it as usual.’

Nonetheless, Hamish insisted on supervising the installation of the tiara in the town safe.

Then he returned to the fair and joined a miserable-looking Josie. After Hamish had run off, the crowd had shunned her as if she had the plague. ‘Let’s go over to the refreshment
tent,’ said Hamish. ‘We need to talk.’

Josie trailed after him. ‘Sit down,’ ordered Hamish. ‘I’ll get some tea.’

He returned with a tray bearing a fat teapot, milk, sugar, mugs and two sugar buns.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you have to use your wits. You have to understand the local people. Where those bungalows are on the shore road was once considered a posh bit o’ the
town. Then the sea rose and rose. They got flooded time after time. Times are hard and now the people who own these houses wonder if they’ll ever see their money back. A good seawall would
stop the flooding. The houses could be repaired and be sellable again. Tempers are running high. They feel the provost and councillors have bankrupted the town. It should have been obvious to you
that Hugh was just trying to stop the provost.’

‘But he grabbed his chain! If that’s not theft then at least it’s assault.’

‘Look here, I go out of my way not to give normally respectable people a criminal record.’

‘What about targets?’

‘I never bother about government targets. Do you want me to get like thae English – arresting wee kids for carrying water pistols and giving some child a criminal record for carrying
a dangerous weapon, and all to meet targets?’

‘But if you don’t get enough targets, you don’t get promotions!’

‘I didn’t even want
this
promotion. I want to be left alone. Now drink your tea, and if you are not happy with the situation get back to Strathbane.’

One fat tear rolled down Josie’s hot cheek, followed by another.

‘Oh, dinnae greet,’ said Hamish, alarmed. ‘You’ll need to toughen up if you want to keep on being a policewoman. It’s not your fault. They’d love you in
Strathbane for any arrest. Things are different up here.’ He handed her a soot-stained handkerchief which he had used that morning to lift the lid of the stove. He had to keep the stove
burning if he wanted hot water from the back boiler. He had an immersion heater on the hot water tank but he found it cheaper to use peat in the stove because peat was free. He had a peat bank up
at the general grazing area.

Josie sniffed and wiped her face with a clean part of the handkerchief.

‘Drink your tea and we’ll go out. Look as if you’re enjoying the fun of the fair and folks will forget all about it. That Annie Fleming must be about the most beautiful girl in
the Highlands.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Josie. ‘Didn’t look anything special to me.’

Josie thought hopefully that by
enjoying the fun of the fair,
Hamish meant they should go on some of the rides together, but he ordered her to police the left-hand side
of the fair while he took the right.

It was a long hot day. Josie had set her hair early in the morning but it was crushed under her hat, and trickles of sweat were running down her face. By evening, when Hamish briefly joined her,
she asked plaintively when they could pack up.

‘Not until the fair closes down,’ said Hamish. ‘There’s sometimes a rough element in the evening.’ And he strolled off, leaving Josie glaring after him.

By the time the fair began to close down at eleven in the evening, Josie was tired and all her romantic ideas about Hamish Macbeth had been sweated out of her system. He was an inconsiderate
bully. He would never amount to anything. He was weird in the way that he shied away from making arrests.

She sat beside him in mutinous silence on the way back to Lochdubh, planning a trip to Strathbane on the Monday morning, turning over in her mind the best way to get a transfer back again.

‘You may as well take the day off tomorrow,’ were Hamish’s last words that evening to her.

Hamish was outside the police station on the following Sunday morning, sawing wood, when he heard the shrill sound of the telephone ringing in the police office. He ran in and
picked up the receiver. Jimmy Anderson was on the line. ‘You’d better get over to Braikie, Hamish. We’ll join you as soon as we can.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Sir Andrew Etherington collected thon tiara from the town hall first thing this morning. He was on the way back to his home when there was a blast up ahead and a tree fell across the
road. Four fellows he didn’t know appeared and said they’d move the tree if he’d sit tight. Now Sir Andrew gets out of the car to go and help. He gets back in his car and waves
goodbye to those helpful men. He’s nearly at his home when he realizes that the box wi’ the tiara is no longer on the seat beside him.’

Hamish scrambled into his uniform and then phoned Josie and said he’d be picking her up in a few moments. Josie complained that she was just out of the bath.

‘Then take your car and follow me over,’ said Hamish. ‘The tiara’s been stolen. Get on the road towards Craskie. Take the north road out of Braikie and you’ll see
my Land Rover. Some men got a tree to fall over the road, blocking Sir Andrews’s way, and when he got out to help them someone nicked the tiara.’

Hamish was cursing as he took the Braikie road. Every year the safety of that tiara was his responsibility.

As he drove through Braikie and out on the north road, he slowed down until he saw a rowan tree lying by the side of the road. He stopped and got out.

He remembered that tree, for trees were scarce in Sutherland apart from the forestry plantations, and such as survived were miserable stunted little things bent over by the Sutherland gales. The
rowan tree, however, had been a sturdy old one sheltered from the winds in the lee of a hill that overshadowed the road. The bottom of the trunk had been shattered by a blast. He went across to
where the tree had once grown and studied the blackened ground. He guessed a charge of dynamite had been put at the base of the tree.

He straightened up as Josie’s car came speeding along the road. He flagged her down and said, ‘You wait here for the forensic boys. I’ll go on to the shooting box.’

The shooting box was a handsome Georgian building, square-built with a double staircase leading up to the front door.

Hamish knew that the front door was never used so he went round to one at the side of the building and knocked. A grisled old man, Tom Calley, who worked as a butler during the shooting season,
answered the door. ‘It’s yourself, Hamish. A bad business.’

‘I’d like to speak to Sir Andrew.’

‘I’ll take you to him.’

‘Has he got a shooting party here?’

‘Not yet. The guests are due to arrive next week for the grouse. There’s just Sir Andrew and his son, Harry.’

‘No other help but yourself?’

‘A couple of lassies frae Braikie, Jeannie Macdonald and her sister Rosie.’

Hamish followed him up stone stairs to a square hall, where the mournful heads of shot animals looked down at him with glassy eyes.

Tom led the way across the hall and threw open the door to a comfortable drawing room, full of shabby furniture and lined with books.

Sir Andrew put down the newspaper he had been reading. He was a tall, thin man in his late fifties with a proud nose, thin mouth, and sparse brown hair. His son, Harry, was slumped in a chair
opposite his father. Harry, in contrast, was short and plump, owlish looking with thick glasses.

‘This is infuriating,’ said Sir Andrew.

‘Could you just describe to me exactly what happened?’

Sir Andrew went through his story again. When he had finished, Hamish said, ‘You don’t have much of a description of the men.’

‘They were wearing those baseball caps with the peak like a duck’s bill pulled down over their faces. They all wore sort of working clothes, grey shirts and jeans.’

Hamish’s eyebrows rose. ‘All wearing the same type of clothes?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘What sort of accent?’

‘Highland, I suppose, although one sounded a bit Irish.’

‘How Irish?’

‘At one point he said, “Faith and begorrah, ’tis a black thing to happen on a fine day”’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Would I make that up?’

Hamish glanced out of the corner of his eye at Harry. There was a certain rigid stillness about him.

‘If you don’t mind, sir,’ said Hamish, ‘I’d like to search the house.’

‘You need a search warrant!’ shouted Harry.

‘Go ahead,’ said Sir Andrew. ‘Pipe down, Harry.’

Detective Chief Inspector Blair arrived followed by the scenes of crimes operatives. Then Jimmy Anderson along with a van full of police officers arrived at the bombed
tree.

‘Where’s Macbeth?’ demanded Blair.

‘Gone to speak to Sir Andrew,’ said Josie.

‘He should ha’ waited for me.’

‘I’ve remembered something, sir. It’s important.’

‘Spit it out!’

‘I went to a fortune-teller at the fair yesterday . . .’

‘God gie me patience.’

‘No, wait. She said something about a bang and flames.’

‘Oh, she did, did she? I might ha’ known. Sodding gypsies. I might ha’ known they’d be behind this.’ Blair called everyone around him. ‘Get back to that fair.
The caravans should still be there. Search every single one. Get it!’

Hamish met Tom in the hall. ‘Which is Harry’s room?’ he whispered.

‘Follow me.’

Up more old stone steps worn smooth with age. ‘This is it,’ said Tom, opening a door.

The room was dominated by an old four-poster bed. On either side of the bed were side tables covered in paperbacks. There was an enormous wardrobe. Hamish opened it. It was of the old kind with
room for hats, drawers for ties and shirts on one side, and space for hanging clothes on the other.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Tom.

‘You’d better stay,’ said Hamish. ‘I might need you as a witness.’

As he searched the wardrobe, he turned over in his mind what he’d heard about Harry. He had a reputation of being a bit of a wastrel. His mother was dead and Sir Andrew was rumoured to be
strict, always finding some job or other for his son and raging when Harry usually only survived a few weeks in each.

The wardrobe yielded nothing sinister. He turned and surveyed the room.

Then he dragged a hard-backed chair over to the wardrobe and stood on top of it, his long fingers searching behind the wooden pediment on top of the wardrobe.

He slowly dragged forward a black leather box.

Blair, originally from Glasgow, detested gypsies even more than he detested highlanders. It was this, fuelled by his glee when Josie whispered to him that she wanted a transfer
back to Strathbane and that Hamish Macbeth was useless, that caused him to make one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

He did not have search warrants but he ordered his men to search every caravan. The gypsies howled their protests and then fell ominously silent. The reason for their silence was soon proved as
no fewer than three lawyers, the sum total of the lawyers in Braikie, arrived, demanding to see the search warrants.

And as they were making their demands, Superintendent Daviot arrived on the scene.

Red-faced, Blair was just spluttering that it was a matter of urgency and that PC McSween had given them proof that the gypsies were involved when Jimmy Anderson came hurrying up, clutching a
mobile phone. ‘Hamish has just arrested Harry Etherington,’ he said. ‘He found the tiara hidden in Harry’s room.’

Daviot stared at Blair and then at Josie. ‘You, Detective Chief Inspector Blair, and you, Josie McSween, are suspended from duty pending inquiries. Where is Macbeth now,
Anderson?’

‘Taking Harry to Strathbane.’

‘I’ll go there directly. Blair, make your best apologies and get your men to put everything back neat and tidy just the way they found it. Who is the head man here?’

‘Me,’ said a small wrinkled man. ‘Tony McVey.’

‘Mr McVey, you have our deepest apologies.’

‘Aye,’ said McVey. ‘And your damp apologies are not going to stop the lawsuit.’ He turned on his heel and walked away.