Death of a Bore (2 page)

‘Buzzards?’

‘The eagle,’ corrected John crossly. ‘She had raven hair and skin like milk.’

‘Aye, well,’ said Hamish, determinedly getting to his feet. ‘All verra interesting, but I’ve got to go.’

‘Oh, must you? Then I shall see you next Wednesday.’

Hamish jammed on his cap. ‘Don’t get up,’ he said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

He noticed that a wax coat hanging by the door was wet.

He was just getting into the Land Rover when John ran out after him. ‘You’ve forgotten your book.’

‘Aye, thanks.’ Hamish took it from him and threw it on to the passenger seat and drove off at great speed.

He won’t last the winter, he told himself, unaware at that time that John Heppel was to leave the Highlands but not in a way that Hamish Macbeth expected.

As Hamish drove along the waterfront in Lochdubh, he saw that one wire mesh waste bin had not yet been stolen by the fishermen to be used as a lobster pot. He stopped the Land
Rover with a jerk, picked up John’s book, opened the window, and hurled the book into the bin. The inscription had annoyed him.

He drove a little further and then noticed a small crowd outside Patel’s general store. Mrs Wellington, the minister’s wife, was one of the group, and she waved to him.

Hamish stopped again and rolled down the window. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘It’s dreadful,’ said Mrs Wellington. ‘Come and look.’

Hamish climbed down and walked over. The group parted to let him through. There on the whitewashed wall of the store by the door, someone had sprayed in red paint, ‘Paki Go
Home’.

‘And he’s not even Pakistani!’ wailed Mrs Wellington. ‘He’s Indian.’

The door of the shop, which had been closed for the night, opened, and Mr Patel came out. ‘Hamish, what’s happened?’ he asked.

‘Some maniac’s been writing on your walls,’ said Hamish.

Mr Patel looked at the wall. ‘Who would have done this?’ he asked, looking round the little crowd.

‘Do you sell spray paint?’ asked Hamish.

‘Yes, but never to children. I mean, I only sell it to people who’re going to use it round the house.’

Hamish addressed the group. ‘I want all of you to ask round the village and find out if anyone saw anybody near the shop. You closed half-day today, Mr Patel. It gets dark after two in the
afternoon. So it must have happened sometime between then and now. In the meantime let’s get some turpentine and wash the stuff off.’

‘What about fingerprints?’ asked Mrs Wellington.

‘No forensic team’s going to turn out for this, and the kit I’ve got wouldn’t be able to get one off that wall. Let’s get to it. And tell that new schoolteacher,
Miss Garrety, that I’ll be along to speak to the pupils tomorrow first thing.’

‘You think it’s children?’ asked Angela Brodie, the doctor’s wife, who had joined the group.

‘I don’t know,’ said Hamish. ‘I chust cannae think of anyone who would do this. Mr Patel is one of us and has been for ages.’

The group was getting larger, and everyone was desperate to take a hand at cleaning the wall. Hamish pushed back his cap and scratched his fiery hair. ‘If it was “English Go
Home”, I could understand it,’ he said to Angela. ‘There’s a lot of stupid English-bashing in Scotland these days.’

‘But not in Lochdubh,’ said Angela. ‘It must be someone from outside. Everyone in Lochdubh knows that Mr Patel originally came from India.’

The next day Hamish put his odd-looking dog, Lugs, on the leash and walked along to the village school. The school, like his police station, was under threat. The children
were taught up to the age of eleven years, and then the older ones were bussed to the secondary school in Strathbane. There had been various moves to close down the school, but each time the
well-organized villagers had mounted such a strong protest that they had succeeded in keeping it.

Miss Freda Garrety, the schoolteacher, was a tiny slip of a thing in her twenties. She barely came up to Hamish’s shoulder. She had straight black hair cut in a bob and a white triangular
face with large black eyes. She was dressed in a black T-shirt and black trousers. Hamish thought she looked like a harlequin.

‘I’m here to speak to your pupils,’ said Hamish.

‘About the graffiti?’ She had a lowland accent. ‘Make it quick. Exams are coming up.’

Hamish walked into the classroom, where the children still sat behind old-fashioned desks: the oldest at the back and the youngest at the front.

He walked to the front of the room. ‘I’m here to talk to you about the racist graffiti on the wall of the general store. This is a disgrace and should not be allowed to happen in
Lochdubh. Do any of you know anything about this?’

Solemn faces stared back at him, but nobody spoke. ‘Now, some of you may know something but don’t want to tell me in front of the others. If you do know anything at all, I want you
to call at the police station with one of your parents.’

A small boy put his hand up.

‘Yes?’

‘My faither says there’s too many foreigners in this country. Maybe you should speak to him.’

‘You’re Dermott Taggart, am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is your father at home?’

‘He’s down on a building site in Strathbane.’

‘Do you think he might have had something to do with this?’

Dermott looked suddenly frightened. ‘Don’t be telling him I said anything,’ he said, and burst into tears. Freda rushed forward to comfort him.

‘Anyone else?’ asked Hamish.

Silence.

‘Well, listen carefully. Racism is a serious crime. The culprit will be punished, and mark my words, I’ll find out who did this.’

Hamish returned to the police station and went into his office, where he stared blankly at the computer. Who on earth would want to paint a racist slogan on Patel’s
shop?

There was a cry from the kitchen door. ‘Hamish, the telly’s here. They’re outside Patel’s wi’ that writer cheil.’

Hamish rushed out. Archie Maclean stood there. ‘Ye wouldnae think they’d bother.’

Hamish walked with him round to Patel’s. John Heppel was standing outside the shop, facing a camera crew.

‘. . . and that is all I have to say,’ he was declaring pompously. ‘I, John Heppel, will do my utmost to help the police find the perpetrator of this wicked crime. Thank
you.’

Hamish’s hazel eyes narrowed in suspicion. John Heppel was made up for the cameras, and yet he could not see a make-up girl anywhere around.

He pushed his way through the crowd that had gathered to where John was talking with the interviewer, a pretty girl called Jessma Gardener.

‘How did you find out about this?’ demanded Hamish of John.

‘Ah, Constable. I just happened to be passing and saw the television crew.’

Hamish leaned forward and drew a long finger down John’s cheek and then studied the brown make-up on his finger.

‘Do you usually wear make-up?’ he asked.

John flushed angrily. ‘I am so used to television appearances,’ he said, ‘that I carry a kit in the car. I owe it to my readers to look my best at all times.’

Hamish turned to Jessma. ‘How did
you
hear about this?’

‘Someone phoned the news desk late last night.’

‘Would you mind phoning up and asking the name of whoever it was phoned the story in?’

‘I’ve got to be going,’ said John, and he pushed his way past Hamish and through the crowd.

While Jessma took out her mobile and phoned, Hamish stood watching the retreat of John Heppel.

When she rang off, she said, ‘It was an anonymous caller. Then John phoned and said he would be at the shop. As he’s writing a script for one of our shows, we thought we may as well
interview him. Me, I think it’s a waste of time. You should have heard the whole speech. You’d think the wee mannie ran the Highlands. It’ll probably end up in the bin.’

Hamish went back to the police station, collected his dog, and drove off in the Land Rover in the direction of Cnothan. He put the light on the roof and turned on the siren as Lugs, his dog,
rolled his odd blue eyes at his master. Lugs hated that siren.

Hamish cut off several miles to Cnothan by bumping along a croft track and arrived at John Heppel’s house before the writer.

He got down from the car and waited.

He searched through the rubbish bin at the side of the house and was still searching when John drove up.

‘What are you doing?’ demanded the writer angrily.

Hamish straightened up. ‘I was looking for a can of spray paint.’

‘I’ll sue you for defamation of character.’

‘You do that and I’ll get a warrant to search your house and examine your clothes for paint. I think you sprayed that graffiti to get yourself a bit of publicity.’

‘How dare you!’

‘I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment without bothering about a silly man like you. Don’t ever do anything like that again.’

‘I’m telling you, I’ll sue you!’

‘Go ahead,’ said Hamish. ‘I’d enjoy seeing the sort of publicity that would get you. When I arrived at your place last night, your coat was still wet. You’d been
out. Any more publicity stunts like that and I’ll have you.’

‘I hate that sort of person,’ said Hamish to his dog as he drove off. ‘Now, what do I do, Lugs? Do I tell the villagers? Och, it’s chust a storm in a
teacup. He won’t try anything like that again. But I will have a word on the quiet with Mr Patel.’

Mr Patel’s eyebrows shot up into his hair when Hamish took him outside his shop and quietly explained his suspicions about the writer.

‘Are ye sure?’ asked Mr Patel. ‘I’ve signed up for one o’ his classes.’

‘You want to be a writer?’ asked Hamish, momentarily diverted. ‘What kind of book?’

‘I was thinking I might write my life story. You know, how I started off selling stuff out o’ a suitcase round the Hebrides until I had enough to start a shop.’ His brown eyes
took on a dreamy, unfocussed look. ‘I’ll call it
An Indian’s Life in the Far North of Scotland.
’

‘Maybe you should try for something snappier.’

‘Like what?’

‘Cannae think of anything.’

‘There you are! That’s why I need to go to a writing class.’

‘Anyway,’ said Hamish, ‘I’ve no actual proof he did it, and in order to prove it, I’d need a warrant to search his house and I can’t see me getting it. So
we’ll keep this between ourselves.’

‘So you’re not sure he did it?’

‘Pretty certain. I mean, he turned up with make-up on.’

‘Maybe he’s . . . well, you know . . . that way inclined.’

‘He’s inclined to getting his stupid face on television, that’s all.’

‘Hey, Hamish!’

Hamish turned round. Callum McSween, the dustman, stood there. ‘I found a book inscribed to you in the bin. Here it is.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ mumbled Hamish. He wanted to say he had put it there deliberately but suddenly wanted to forget all about John Heppel.

He nodded goodbye to both of them. He drove to the police station, got down, and helped Lugs out because the dog’s legs were too short to enable him to jump down from the Land Rover. He
looked at the book in his hand.

He glanced along the waterfront. It was now the dinner hour – Lochdubh residents still took dinner in the middle of the day – and the waterfront was deserted.

He hurled the book so hard that it flew straight across the waterfront and over the sea wall.

Hamish was just frying some chops when there was a knock at the kitchen door. The locals never came to the front door. He opened it. In the days when Hamish was a police
sergeant, his caller, Clarry Graham, had worked for him – or, rather, had not worked, Clarry finding that his talents lay in being a chef.

To Hamish’s dismay, he was clutching That Book.

‘It’s quiet up at the Tommel Castle Hotel at the moment,’ said Clarry plaintively. ‘I was out fishing in the loch when this book fell out o’ the sky and right into
my boat. It’s inscribed to you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Hamish.

‘Must’ve been kids,’ said Clarry.

‘Come in.’

‘You don’t want to be reading something like that anyway,’ said Clarry. ‘Full o’ nasty words. I’m telling you, there’s an eff in every line.’

‘That’s the fellow who’s going to be giving those writing classes.’

‘Oh, I’d signed up for those.’

‘You, Clarry? A book? I mean, what about?’

‘I’m going to call it
From Police Station to Kitchen.
’

‘Look, Clarry, it iss awfy hard to get a book published these days. Particularly a life story. You really have to be some kind o’ celebrity. Besides, this John Heppel seems to write
the sort of stuff you wouldn’t want to read.’

‘He’s going to tell us about publishers and agents,’ said Clarry stubbornly. ‘I’d like to make a bit o’ money. Just look at what J.K. Rowling
earns.’

‘Didn’t it dawn on you that J.K. Rowling can
write
? Clarry, only four and a half per cent of the authors in this world can afford to support themselves. I ’member
reading that.’

Clarry’s round face took on a mulish look, and Hamish suppressed a sigh. Clarry obviously thought he was destined to be one of the four and a half per cent.

When Clarry had left, Hamish began to think uneasily about John’s writing classes. John, he was beginning to feel, was some sort of dangerous foreign body introduced into the highland
system.

He decided to attend the first class. It would upset John to see him there, and Hamish looked forward to upsetting John. He flicked open John’s book and began to read. It was one of those
pseudo-literary stream-of-consciousness books set in the slums of Glasgow. The ‘grittiness’ was supplied by four-letter words. The anti-hero was a druggie whose favourite occupation
seemed to be slashing with a broken bottle anyone in a pub who looked at him the wrong way. The heroine put up with all this with loving kindness. Hamish flicked to the end of the book, where a
reformed anti-hero was preaching to the youth of Glasgow. No one could accuse the book of being plot-driven. Hackneyed similes and metaphors clunked their way through the thick volume.

Maybe it was all right, he thought ruefully. Like all Highlanders, he was quick to take offence and loathed being patronized. The inscription still rankled, however.