Death of a Valentine (5 page)

Harry Etherington had pleaded with his father not to press charges. He said it was all a bit of a joke and he’d got some friends up from London to help him. Sir Andrew
simply looked at Hamish coldly and said, ‘Do your duty, Officer.’

Hamish demanded the names and addresses of Harry’s friends and learned they were staying at a hotel over in Dornoch. He phoned the Dornoch police and told them to bring the men in. Then he
took Harry off to Strathbane.

He put Harry in a cell at police headquarters, went into the detectives’ room, sat down at Jimmy’s computer, and began to type out his report.

He was still typing when Jimmy arrived. ‘Where’s His Nibs?’ asked Jimmy.

‘In the cells. Where were you?’

Jimmy explained what had happened and said that Blair and McSween had been suspended from duty pending a full investigation.

Blair marched past them into his office and slammed the door. Then Daviot appeared. ‘Come with me, Anderson,’ he ordered, ‘and we will interview Hetherington. First of all,
Macbeth, what happened?’

Patiently, Hamish explained about having Sir Andrew’s permission to search the house and how he had suspected Harry because of Harry’s bad reputation and because he had been sure he
was lying. Also, he said, Sir Andrew’s description of the men – particularly the one with what had sounded a fake Irish accent – had alerted his suspicions. He said that the
butler had been witness to him finding the tiara.

‘Good work,’ said Daviot. ‘Do you want to sit in on the interview?’

‘Och, no,’ said Hamish, not wanting to show any sign of ambition or desire to rise in the ranks. ‘I’ll be off when I’ve finished this.’

Daviot’s temper was not helped because, before he could start the interview, Sir Andrew arrived and said he would not be pressing charges; he accepted that it had all
been a joke. Harry’s four friends were to be charged with possession of dynamite, malicious damage of a tree, and obstructing the road, thereby endangering drivers, and bound over to appear
at the sheriff’s court. Harry was charged not with the theft of the tiara but with conspiring to cause malicious damage and told he would be expected to appear in court as well.

Pondering the problem of Blair, Daviot wondered what to do. Blair was always attentive to him, and he was a Freemason and a member of the same lodge as Daviot. The detective always remembered
Mrs Daviot’s birthday and sent generous Christmas presents as well. At last he decided it was Hamish’s fault. Hamish should have phoned Blair immediately and voiced his suspicions of
Harry before he had even begun the search.

Blair was lumbering out of headquarters when he saw Josie ahead of him, carrying a box of items she had cleared out of her desk along with a small potted plant. ‘Hey,
you!’ he roared. Josie turned round. Her face was streaked with tears.

‘This is all your fault,’ said Blair, ‘and if you ever get your job back, you can rot up in Lochdubh until the end o’ time.’

Josie forced herself to speak calmly. ‘I told you what that gypsy fortune-teller said, sir. I don’t believe in the second sight. And where did Harry’s friends get the dynamite
from? One of the policemen told me some of the gypsies had been working over at the quarry near Alness a few months ago.’

Blair stared at her, his mind working furiously. Then he said grimly, ‘Get in the car wi’ me, lassie. We’re going to Alness.’

When Blair discovered after two days of detective work that two of the gypsies who had been working at the quarry had sold the dynamite to Harry’s friends, Daviot
breathed a sigh of relief. He would not need to get rid of Blair after all. Nonetheless, Blair had ordered an illegal search and the police inquiry dragged on for weeks. Josie was questioned and
questioned until she felt she would scream.

When it was all over, and only a small amount of compensation had been paid to the gypsies who’d had their caravans raided without a search warrant, she found that Blair had refused to
give her any credit whatsoever. She was to be sent back to Lochdubh and consider herself lucky that she still had a job.

Had Blair been at all nice to her, had he given her any credit, had he asked for her to be returned to Strathbane, her old obsession with Hamish would have vanished like highland mist on a
summer’s day.

But all she could now think of was Hamish’s brilliance in having found Harry Etherington out.

Hamish looked down at her with a flash of dismay in his hazel eyes. He wanted the village and his work back to himself. He told Josie to go back to checking on the outlying crofts and then got
down to repairing loose slates on the police station roof. He expected a quiet winter and shrewdly guessed that Josie would soon grow bored with the long miles she had to put in, and ask for a
transfer.

The winter arrived without much happening and Josie continued to doggedly perform all the dull tasks allotted to her. There seemed to be no chink in Hamish’s armour. The Christmas holidays
when she could go back to her mother in Perth came as a relief.

She poured out her woes to her mother who said comfortably, ‘There’s bound to be a big case soon and then you’ll be working together.’

‘Nothing ever happens up there,’ said Josie bitterly, ‘ and nothing ever will. All Harry and his friends got was a slap on the wrist and community service. Those gypsies got
three months each. Harry and his friends had a top-flight lawyer.’

Her mother put down the romance she had been reading. ‘There are aye a lot of blizzards up there in January with folks cut off. You’d be thrown together.’ Was that not what had
happened to heroine Heather in the book she had been reading? And hadn’t Heather ended up on a sheepskin rug in front of a log fire in the arms of the laird?

That was all Josie needed to fuel her imagination. When a really massive blizzard roared in, she would struggle along to the police station. They would be snowbound together, talking
companionably by the stove. And then . . . and then . . .

But the winter proved to be unusually mild. Patel’s, the local shop, began to show a display of Valentine cards towards the end of January. Josie longed to buy one, but
was afraid Hamish would simply ask Patel who had sent it. Finally, she felt completely defeated. She would go to Strathbane and beg for a transfer, but after Valentine’s Day. Maybe Hamish was
cool to her because he was hiding a secret passion. Maybe a card would arrive for her.

Before going on her rounds on Valentine’s Day, she hung around the manse until the post arrived. There was nothing for her. Determined now to get back to Strathbane, Josie bleakly set off
on her rounds.

Annie Fleming, the Lammas beauty queen, did not go to work on Valentine’s Day. She usually went to work as a secretary at a wildlife park outside Strathbane. She
considered it a mangy park with only a few animals. It was the brainchild of an earnest English woman and her Scottish husband. It was the first job that had come her way and, as she was desperate
to avoid working for her father who owned a bottle-producing factory, and to gain at least a little independence, she had taken it. On previous Valentine’s Days, her father had insisted on
examining her cards, demanding to know who had sent them. Annie had a pretty good idea who had mailed each card but, fortunately, the tradition of not signing cards was a blessing and so she had
told her father she hadn’t a clue.

But there was one she was longing for. A disco club in Strathbane had started lunchtime sessions. It was there that Annie had met Jake Cullen, he of the black leather outfit and supply of
Ecstasy pills. In all her restricted life, she had never met someone more exciting. The drinks he plied her with and the drugs he gave her made her feel strong and confident.

She parked in a back lane in Braikie that afforded a view down to the main road. She waited until she saw her father with her mother in the passenger seat drive past and then drove home again
and waited eagerly for the post. She knew her bosses were down in Edinburgh and that she was supposed to open up the wildlife park, but she persuaded herself that she would not be very late.

The doorbell rang. Annie swore under her breath. She had not wanted the postman to know she was at home. But there could be a really big valentine for her that could not fit into the letter box.
She opened the door.

‘Grand morning, Annie,’ said the postman, Bill Comrie. ‘Aren’t you at work?’

‘I think I’m coming down with something,’ said Annie.

‘I’ve a rare bit o’ post for you, and a package. You’re popular wi’ the fellows.’

‘Thanks.’ Annie snatched the post from him and shut the door firmly in his face.

The package was addressed to her. It looked exciting somehow. She decided to leave it until last. She had six valentines. Five were the usual soppy kind, but the sixth held a peculiar
typewritten rhyme.

Nutcase, thought Annie, putting it down with the others beside that mysterious package. Before she opened it, she went to the sideboard in the living room and took out a bottle of gin. She
poured a stiff measure into a glass, carried the gin bottle into the kitchen, topped it up with water, and returned it to the sideboard. Back in the kitchen, she unpicked a little of the hem at the
bottom of her jacket and picked out an Ecstasy pill. She swallowed the pill down with a gulp of gin.

Now for that parcel.

There was a tab at the side to rip to get the parcel open. She tore it across. A terrific explosion tore apart the kitchen. Ball bearings and nails, the latter viciously sharpened, tore into her
face and body as flames engulfed her. Perhaps it was a mercy that one of the nails pierced her brain, killing her outright, before the flames really took hold.

Mrs McGirty, an elderly lady who lived in the next cottage, heard the loud explosion just as she was about to enter her own home. She seized a fire extinguisher she kept in her car and ran to
the Flemings’ house and round to the back where she knew the kitchen was. She thought it was a gas explosion. The kitchen door was lying on its hinges. Screaming with fear, she plied the fire
extinguisher over the horrible mess that had once been the beauty of the Highlands and over the flaming kitchen table. Then, white as paper, on shaking legs, she went to her own home and phoned
Hamish Macbeth.

Hamish phoned Josie before setting out for Braikie. He did not expect her to arrive until later because she was supposed to be up on the northwest of the county. But Josie had
become weary of home visits and so she had been parked quite near Lochdubh, up on a hilltop, reading a romance, when she received the call.

Hamish stood in the doorway of the kitchen and grimly surveyed the body. He heard a car driving outside and went out. Josie had arrived. ‘A murder!’ she cried excitedly.
‘Where’s the body?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘Can I have a look?’

‘Go to the kitchen doorway but don’t go in and don’t touch anything. Suit up before you go in.’ Hamish was wearing blue plastic coveralls with blue plastic covering his
boots.

Josie went back to her car and eagerly climbed into a similar outfit. Hamish stared after her, his eyes hard, as Josie went into the house. She was back out a minute later and vomited into a
flower bed.

‘Go and sit in your car,’ ordered Hamish, ‘and pull yourself together. I’m going to see Mrs McGirty next door. It’s thanks to her the place didn’t burn
down.’

Mrs McGirty answered the door. Her old eyes had the blind look of shock.

‘I’ll phone the doctor for you,’ said Hamish. ‘Go in and sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

He found his way to the kitchen, made a cup of milky tea with a lot of sugar, and took it to her. ‘Now you be drinking that,’ he said gently. ‘What’s the name and number
of your doctor?’ When she told him, Hamish phoned her doctor and asked him to come along immediately. Then he said, ‘Tell me what happened.’

In a quavering voice, Mrs McGirty told how she had heard a bang and then seen smoke pouring out from next door. The kitchen was at the back of the house but the smoke was curling up over the
roof. She had run in and plied the fire extinguisher.

‘You are a verra brave woman,’ said Hamish. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, possibly a lot of useful forensic evidence would have been lost.’

There was a ring at the doorbell. Hamish answered it. He recognized another neighbour, Cora Baxter, wife of Councillor Jamie Baxter.

‘Is she all right?’ asked Cora. ‘Ruby? Mrs McGirty?’

‘She’s in there. Could you sit with her until the doctor arrives?’

‘I’ll do that. Poor, poor Annie.’

‘How did you learn it was her?’

‘Thon wee policewoman outside.’

Josie should not be gossiping, thought Hamish.

When he went outside, the area had been cordoned off. The army bomb squad were just going into the house. The scenes of crimes operatives were suiting up. Jimmy Anderson approached Hamish.
‘They’re saying it was Annie.’

‘From what was left o’ the body, it looked like her,’ said Hamish.

‘Who on earth could ha’ done this?’ said Jimmy. ‘I was talking to some folk at the edge of the crowd and by all accounts, they’re a churchgoing, God-fearing family
and Annie is prim and proper and a right innocent. And why wasn’t she at work? The parents have been phoned. The mother works with the father. They said at first it couldn’t be their
daughter because she left this morning for work, but we got on to the postie on his mobile and he said he delivered the post to Annie. Said there were valentines and a package, all addressed to
Annie.’

‘That’s why she waited for the post,’ said Hamish. ‘She wanted to see her cards. Now, if she was that keen, there must have been a card she was really hoping for. Look,
Jimmy, she worked over at that wildlife centre. I’ll get over there and find out what I can. There’s nothing I can do here until all the bomb and forensic evidence is collected.
Where’s Blair?’

‘Got the flu. What about your sidekick?’

‘I’d better take her with me.’