Death of a Valentine Part 17

"So it has. Let's go."

Hamish put out the lamp and lit a torch. "Hamish!" exclaimed Elspeth. "You don't have to let Sonsie and Lugs come with you. Leave them here for once. The kitchen's nice and warm.

"You can't go on with those beasts chained to you," she continued. "What woman would put up with rivals such as these?"

"You were aye jeering at them!"

"Don't let's quarrel," said Elspeth. "Let's get to the hotel."

They were about to drive off when the Currie sisters appeared, standing in the glare of the headlights and waving their arms. Hamish lowered the window. "What's up?"

"Tell Miss Grant the press are all at the hotel waiting for her," called Nessie.

"Waiting for her," chorused Jessie.

"Thanks," said Hamish.

He turned to Elspeth. "They'll all be in the bar. We'll park at the side and go in through the kitchen door."

The chef, Clarry, was sitting reading a newspaper when they entered the hotel kitchen.

"Evening, Hamish," he said. "I thought you pair might come in this way. Take the back stairs and the press won't see you. I'll send the boy up with some sandwiches. I've got some bones for Lugs and a bit o' fish for Sonsie. You can leave them here in the kitchen."

"She wouldnae let me bring them," said Hamish.

"Well, call in on your road out and I'll pack them up for ye."

Elspeth and Hamish made their way up the back stairs to Elspeth's room.

"Right," said Hamish. "Let's see what's on this video."

He switched on the television set and slid in the video.

It was a film of Annie being crowned Lammas queen. How far away that sunny day appeared now! There he was, standing just below the platform. The provost raised the crown and placed it on Annie's head. She smiled triumphantly. Her two attendants were Jessie Cormack and Iona Sinclair. Jessie was glaring at Annie.

The film ran on. Percy had followed the procession through the town.

"Do you notice anything?" he asked Elspeth as he went to answer the door and receive a tray of food and coffee.

"It all looks ordinary," said Elspeth.

"Wait a bit," said Hamish. "Run it back a little. Stop! There! That's Jake from the disco. He's pa.s.sing up a little package to her. b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Dealing drugs right in the middle of what should ha' been an innocent day."

"Yes, but he's dead," said Elspeth. "I'm starving. Let's have something to eat and look through the tape again."

"I hope Percy's all right," Hamish fretted. He picked up the phone by the bed and called Percy's mother.

"He hasn't come home," she wailed. "Where's my boy?"

"We'll have a search party out in the morning," said Hamish. "I'll call as soon as I hear anything."

He then phoned Jimmy and explained the situation. "It's urgent, Jimmy," said Hamish. "Percy said he'd remembered something. Now he's missing."

"Can't do anything tonight, Hamish."

"I don't think I should wait until the morning, Jimmy. Maybe I'll get over to Braikie and begin to look. I'll take McSween with me."

When he rang off, he said to Elspeth, "It's a right pity. I would ha' preferred your company, but the press'll be hounding you from now on."

"I know," said Elspeth sadly. "I'd better stop running away. I'll get back to Glasgow tomorrow where I've got a press agent to cope with the lot of them. I shouldn't have run away."

Hamish ejected the video. "When will you be back, Elspeth?"

"I don't know, Hamish. Maybe I'll spend my next holidays up here."

He bent his head to kiss her but the phone rang. Elspeth swore under her breath. She picked it up and then slammed it down again. Then she phoned reception and ordered that no calls were to be put through to her room.

Hamish hesitated in the doorway. "I'd better pack," said Elspeth, heaving her suitcase on the bed.

He felt he did not have the courage now to try to kiss her.

"You can't want a wee la.s.sie like Josie to go out in this freezing cold," protested Mrs. Wellington when he arrived at the manse.

"It's her duty," said Hamish. "Go and get her."

Grumbling under her breath, Mrs. Wellington climbed the stairs to Josie's room and opened the door. The room was in darkness and there was a powerful reek of whisky. She switched on the light. Josie lay on the bed, fully dressed. She was snoring loudly. An empty whisky bottle lay on the floor beside the bed.

It's that Hamish Macbeth, thought Mrs. Wellington. He's driven the poor la.s.sie to the bottle. I'll sort her out in the morning.

She went back downstairs. "Josie is very unwell," she said. "She has a bad cold and should rest."

"I'll see her tomorrow," said Hamish, thinking bitterly that Josie was absolutely useless.

Mrs. Wellington picked up the phone book and scanned the pages. Then she dialled a number. "Alcoholics Anonymous?" she asked. "When and where is your next meeting?"

The roads had been salted and gritted, and the Sutherland landscape lay dreaming whitely under a thick canopy of snow.

Hamish wondered where to start. He stopped in the main street in Braikie and checked his notebook for a list of phone numbers and addresses. He found the name Jessie Cormack. She lived with her parents in a flat above a greengrocer in a lane just off the main street.

He got out and walked there. He mounted the worn stone steps leading up from the street and rang the bell.

Jessie herself answered the door. "I was just about to go to bed," she said. "What's the matter? Is it Percy? Folks are saying he's disappeared."

"Can I come in?" Hamish removed his hat.

"You'd best come through to the kitchen," said Jessie. "My parents are watching television."

Hamish sat down and took out his notebook. "If Percy was worried about something, where would he go?"

She frowned in thought. "He might go to the minister."

"What about friends?"

"All his friends were from the kirk but he'd stopped seeing them and he barely spoke to me."

"Did Percy need money? If he thought he knew the killer, would he try to blackmail him?"

"Not Percy. He'd be more likely to do something stupid, like say to the murderer, 'I know it was you and I'm going to the police.'"

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Hamish drove to the minister's home. Martha Tallent opened the door. "What do you want?" she whispered. "Everyone's in bed."

"You'll do," said Hamish. "Just a wee word."

He followed her into the living room. "What's it about?" asked Martha.

"Have you seen anything of Percy Stane?"

"No. Why?"

"He phoned me to say he had some information and now he's missing."

Her eyes widened with shock. "Will this fright never end? He hasn't been here."

"Any phone calls?"

"Not for me. A few for Father. Nothing sinister. Just the usual parish business, people wanted to know about wedding and funeral arrangements and things like that."

"You heard them all?"

"Yes, we were all in the living room when they came in. I heard them all."

"Did you know Percy?"

"Only slightly. He was obsessed with Annie. Oh, I remember now. It was last week. Father went over to the Flemings' house to check the repairs to the kitchen and he found Percy loitering in the garden. When he asked what he was doing there, Percy said he wanted to be near the place she had died. Father told us he thought Percy was sick in the head and he wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Percy was the murderer."

Hamish thanked her and went out again into the cold, frosty night. He went to the Flemings' home. The police tape had been removed. There was something pitiless about the biting cold and the white snow which blanketed everything. He cursed the "lambing blizzard" that often struck the Highlands in April.

The garden gate screeched when he opened it. He looked in the front windows of the house and then studied the front door. There was no sign of a break-in.

He made his way around the side of the house to the kitchen door. There was a new door and new windows; the kitchen door was locked and padlocked.

He turned and surveyed the garden, glittering under a small cold moon. His eyes narrowed as he saw a black lump of something in the far corner.

He switched on his torch and walked over, his boots crunching in the frozen snow.

Percy lay there, his dead eyes staring up at the uncaring moon. Blood from slashes in his wrists stained the snow. An old-fashioned cutthroat razor lay half buried in the snow beside him.

Hamish cursed under his breath. Poor Percy. What a waste of a young life. And all over some manipulative b.i.t.c.h! He had attended Annie's funeral but few people apart from the press had turned up. The locals, having learned of Annie's reputation, had shunned the funeral, which had taken place two whole months after her murder. None of the town's dignitaries who had smiled on her so fondly when she was the Lammas queen had bothered to put in an appearance. He retreated to his Land Rover, switched on the heater, took out his phone, and called Strathbane.

Then he waited. And as he waited, he began to wonder about Percy's death. Surely if Percy had planned suicide, he would not have bothered to phone the station in Lochdubh.

After a while, he heard the sound of approaching sirens. He was suddenly weary of the whole business. Percy's death had depressed him so much that his emotions felt as numb and as cold as the weather outside.

Jimmy Anderson was the first on the scene, followed by Andy MacNab. "Bad business," he said. "G.o.d, it's cold. Suicide?"

"Looks like it."

"Well, get your suit on and show me." They all struggled into their plastic suits. Hamish led the way to the garden. "We'll just stand here at the edge," said Jimmy. "Don't want to muck up the crime scene. I've called in a local doctor. Dr. Forsythe's retired and the nearest pathologist is in Aberdeen, would you believe it?"

Soon the garden was a hive of activity. A tent was erected over the body and halogen lights glared over the scene.

A local doctor, Dr. Friend, finished his examination. "Seems a clear case o' suicide," he said. "Poor young man."

"When you examined the cuts on his wrists," said Hamish, "did it look as if he'd really done it himself?"

"What are you getting at?" demanded Jimmy.

"Only that it seems odd to me," said Hamish. "The laddie phoned me earlier and said he had information for me. Now he's dead. Could someone have drugged him and then slashed his wrists for him?"

"I suppose it's possible. The pathologist will do a better estimation than me."

"There were no footprints near the body other than your own, Hamish," said Jimmy.

"So it happened earlier in the day. The falling snow would cover up any other footprints. Maybe we could have sc.r.a.ped off the top snow and seen if there was anything underneath but now everyone's trodden everything. Cutthroat razors aren't that common. I wonder if it could be traced."

"Hamish, you'll find it was suicide, plain and simple. You can go home now. There's nothing more we can do till we get a full postmortem. Do you want to tell his mother? Or shall I send a policewoman?"

"Send a policewoman," said Hamish gloomily.

"Where's McSween?"

"Ill in bed."

"I'll send Police Sergeant Sutherland. She's good at that sort of thing."

Hamish got home, feeling tired, cold, and miserable. Tomorrow the press who were waiting to see if they could interview Elspeth would be delighted to find they were all in the area of a murder. Press coverage meant pressure and pressure meant Blair.