Death of a Nurse (17 page)

“Not that I know of,” said Charlie. “There’ll be one in Inverness.”

“Too far. It would show some signs of mud by the time it was brought back.”

“Couldn’t she just have asked Juris to clean it for her?”

Hamish phoned the hunting box. When Juris answered, he asked him if he had cleaned the nurse’s car and was told firmly that he had not. “It is not my job to work for the help,” said Juris with all the haughtiness of a stage butler.

“Let’s get something to eat,” said Hamish. “I’m starving and I cannae think on an empty stomach.”

They found a café which sold all-day breakfasts and tucked into fried haggis, black pudding, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, and mushrooms.

“Think the dogs will be all right?” asked Charlie.

“They’ll be fine,” said Hamish. “I left them dog food but Lugs has probably introduced the poodle to the delights of the Italian restaurant’s kitchen. Now let’s think. Just suppose Helen has been murdered. Let’s try that one. Who would murder her and where would they dump the body?”

“Well,” said Charlie slowly, “the only one who might have it in for Helen is Greta. What if she found out that Harrison had changed his will in Helen’s favour?”

Hamish phoned Juris again. When he had rung off, he said, “Greta is in residence. Harrison has refused another nurse and says Greta will look after him. She’s been there for the last week and she’s a powerful woman. Maybe she guessed Helen had bumped off her husband and took her revenge. I hate being out o’ the loop. It’s like detecting in Victorian times, Charlie. They could have found all sort of hairs and DNA and we don’t know about it.”

“If you wait until this evening when all the reports are in,” said Charlie, “I could try my hand at hacking into Blair’s report and the forensic reports.”

“So for now let’s try to figure out where Helen’s body could have been dumped,” said Hamish. “That car bothers me. So clean. Let’s try this way. Someone kills Helen and uses her car to dump the body. It’s a wee Ford, not a four-by-four, so no use for going over the moors. So the body would need to be dumped near a road. And whoever would not want to be away from the hunting lodge for too long.”

“That drug business bothers me,” said Charlie. “I mean, say she was in some drug racket, then someone from Strathbane could have got rid of her.”

“Maybe, but would they use her car and then get it cleaned? Let’s get back up there and start searching.”

They drove back to outside the hunting lodge. “Right or left, I wonder,” said Hamish.

“Let’s try left,” said Charlie. “The instinct would be to veer left away from the road to Braikie.”

The days had drawn out and they knew the evenings would be light and that they had plenty of time for their search.

But they could find no trace of anything. “Let’s call on Dick,” said Hamish. “He might have some ideas.”

Dick gave them a warm welcome, but to Hamish’s disappointment, the beautiful Anka said she had orders on the computer to work on and left them to it.

Over excellent mugs of coffee and scones, Hamish told Dick all he knew.

“There’s a car wash here now,” said Dick. “At that wee garage. Couple o’ Poles. You could try there. Do me a favour. At the bottom of the stairs, there’s a big bag o’ cans. Could you dump them at the recycling unit? You know where it is, Hamish. Out on the Lochdubh road before you get to the new seawall.”

They thanked him for the coffee and made their way to the garage. But it was shut up for the night and no one around could tell them where the Poles lived.

“I’m weary,” said Hamish. “Let’s get rid o’ Dick’s rubbish and start again tomorrow.”

The recycling unit was considered a disgrace because it was rarely cleared. Great mounds of cans, bottles, and newspapers reared up against the evening sky.

Seagulls swooped and dived. Two seagulls fought over a hamburger wrapper. Silly birds, thought Hamish. No food there. He dumped the sack of cans on top of a pile of others.

A seagull shat on his regulation sweater and he shook his fist at it. He made to turn away. Something was bothering him although it was hard to think with all the noise of the waves crashing on the shore and the wheeling, screaming birds. He turned slowly round, looking to right and left. A supermarket trolley had been dumped at the far end of the unit. It was overflowing with cans and plastic bottles. Nothing sinister there apart from one black shoe.

Hamish unhitched his torch from his belt and walked forward. One black regulation shoe. He began to claw at the cans and bottles, sending them flying.

Stuffed in the very bottom of the trolley was the dead body of Helen Mackenzie.

Her empty eye sockets stared up at him.

The seagulls had had her eyes.

Chapter Twelve

Blair was furious. Had Daviot not been on the scene, he would have suspended Hamish from duty for destroying valuable evidence by throwing the cans and bottles which had covered the body all over the place.

“Why is it,” Daviot asked Jimmy, “that one highland policeman can find out what we have missed?”

“Maybe it’s old-fashioned policing,” said Jimmy. “Hamish doesn’t have any of the benefits of forensic science and so he has to use his brain.”

A crowd had gathered outside the recycling unit, their faces avid with curiosity in the lights of the halogen lamps which had been erected.

Helen’s body and the supermarket trolley were now shielded inside a tent. “She’s been strangled,” whispered Hamish to Charlie. “Bruises on her neck and her poor face black. I wish these seagulls would go away. I hate them.”

“I think they’ll be here when we’re all gone,” said Charlie. “I mean, that’s the creepy thing about Sutherland when you’re out on your own under the stars. You feel like an intruder. But the birds belong.”

Jimmy came up and demanded a full report. He listened carefully to Hamish’s story about the car. “Get back into Braikie,” he ordered, “and see if you can find where that garage owner lives and then find those Poles.”

They found the garage owner lived in the bottom half of a house near the garage. He was sleepy and cross at being woken up, but he volunteered that the Poles lived in a bed-and-breakfast at the back of the garage.

The door of the B&B was opened by a small woman wrapped in a tatty dressing gown and with her hair in rollers. The minute she saw their uniforms, she began to shriek that she kept a respectable house. Charlie told her in a soothing voice that they simply wanted to speak to her Polish residents.

“First floor left,” she said sulkily. They made their way past her and up the stairs. The car washers turned out to be two brothers. They were not Polish but Lithuanian and their English was not very good. But with patient questioning and showing them a photo of Helen’s car, which Hamish had snapped on his phone, they volunteered that a man had driven it in two days ago. They described him as being tall and dark and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He had been wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes.

“That doesn’t sound like anyone we’ve come across so far,” said Charlie gloomily as they left.

“We’ll need to come back in the morning,” said Hamish, “and ask all around.”

He reported back to Jimmy, who told him to write up what he’d got and see if he could find out anything else. Blair was holding an impromptu press conference, swollen up with ego like a bullfrog until a reporter asked him what Strathbane thought about the mistake in pinning the murders on Malky, upon which Blair abruptly stalked to his car and got driven off.

In the morning, Charlie arrived with the news that Mr. Harrison had phoned and wanted to book himself and his daughter-in-law into the hotel. He said he was weary of what seemed like a constant police presence.

“George has said he’ll try to get as much information out of him as possible,” said Charlie.

“Let’s hope the colonel is careful. If our murderer comes for Harrison, he might take out the colonel as well. You’d better nursemaid them, Charlie, and I’ll cover for you. I’ll get back up to Braikie and see if I can find out more about our mysterious car cleaner.”

Before he left, Hamish took the dogs for a walk. He met the Currie sisters and, remembering how rude he had been to them, blurted out an apology.

“What you need is a good woman,” said Nessie.

“Good woman,” echoed Jessie.

Hamish touched his cap and hurried on. Nessie scampered after him. “There’s the widow Banks up at the churchyard at the grave of her wee boy what died of meningitis. She would make a man a good wife. Rosie Banks needs to move on.”

Hamish looked across at the churchyard where a woman was slumped in front of a gravestone.

“I’ll maybe have a word with her later,” he said, and made his escape.

He had taken photographs of everyone at the hunting box on his iPad. He set out for Braikie. The landscape was glittering from the recent rain. He glanced up at the mountains, steel grey against the washed-out sky, noticing every gully and crag sharply defined, and knew that was a sign of more rain to come.

He had not taken his pets with him. Since the loss of Sonsie, he did not feel the need for their constant company. He often thought about Sonsie and mourned the loss of his big cat.

He went straight to the car wash and showed the photographs to the two Lithuanians. They studied them closely and then one of them pointed to the photo of Juris. “Maybe,” he said.

“Was he Eastern European like you?” asked Hamish. They said he hadn’t spoken, merely handed over a piece of paper asking that the car be cleaned inside and out.

“Anything odd about the inside?” asked Hamish. “Bloodstains? Signs of violence?”

They looked at him, puzzled.

Hamish went to the translation app on his iPad, typed in a series of questions, got them translated into Lithuanian, and passed them over. They typed back that the boot had been muddy. Nothing in the car but a scarf.

What had they done with the scarf? Handed it over when the man came back for the car. What did the scarf look like?

Paisley pattern.

Hamish wondered how he could get Juris on his own. Police would still be combing the hunting box for clues. Then he remembered that Juris always answered the phone.

He rang him up and said he wanted to talk to him away from the house and suggested Juris drive to a pub called the Drop Inn in Braikie.

The pub was thin of customers. A brewery had tried to encourage more customers by turning it into a gastropub, but it seems the hard drinkers of Braikie preferred the dinginess of the Red Lion. He took a table by the window and waited. He was just beginning to think Juris would not come when he saw him parking outside.

Juris joined him and asked abruptly, “What’s up?”

“You know Helen’s body has been found?”

Juris nodded. “Do you mind if I have a beer?” he asked.

Hamish went to the bar and got him a pint. He stared straight at Juris and said, “Why did you have Helen’s car cleaned?”

He expected a hot denial but Juris said calmly, “It’s my job.”

“What!”

“Look, Mr. Harrison has a mania about clean cars. That includes Helen’s. I protested before that I wasn’t there to be a servant to a nurse and he told me to obey orders. It was my job. So I check the garages as usual and there’s her wee car covered from top to toe in mud. So I took it to the car wash. Got a receipt and put it down on my expenses.”

“When did you find the car?”

“It was the morning before we found she’d disappeared.”

“And did you report this to the police?”

“It’s like this. That man, Blair, is out to pin it on me because I’m a foreigner in his eyes. If I told him, he would have dragged me off. You know he would. That’s why I lied to you and told you I hadn’t had the car cleaned.”

“You could be accused of tampering with evidence,” said Hamish.

“I was only doing my job as usual,” said Juris stubbornly.

“Describe the car.”

“Like I said, it was top-to-bottom in mud. Helen was a bit of a slob and the inside was full of sweetie wrappers and old beer cans. I looked in the boot and it was all muddy.”

“There was a scarf. Do you have it?”

“It’s in my car.”

“I’ll need that. I’m sorry, Juris, but you’re in for a rough time. I’m afraid I’ll need to call Strathbane. That could have been the scarf that strangled her. I’ll try to get Jimmy Anderson to deal with it.”

After Hamish had called Jimmy, he was told not to let Juris out of his sight. He, Jimmy, would take Juris in for questioning.

Jimmy eventually arrived with two police cars following.

Is he really innocent? wondered Hamish. Or am I leaning backwards against Blair’s hatred of foreigners?

There seemed to be nothing else to do but go back to Lochdubh, look over his notes, and hope there might be just something he had missed.

As he drove along the waterfront, a thin drizzle was beginning to fall. He saw that Mrs. Banks was still in the graveyard. He stopped his vehicle and got out.

He walked up to her and said gently, “You’ll get soaked. Come away, lassie. There’s nothing you can do now but move on.”

She was a plump little woman in her thirties with rosy cheeks, cheeks that were now blotched with tears. She had lost her husband to cancer and then immediately afterwards, her six-year-old to meningitis.

Hamish helped her up. “You need bereavement counselling,” he said. “Go and see Dr. Brodie and he’ll fix you up. Would your husband and boy want you to live like this?”

She scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and sighed. “I almost envy folk whose bairns are murdered.”

“Why?”

“Because when the murderer is caught and punished, that’s closure.”

“I think that’s a television fiction,” said Hamish sadly. “If it’s a child, there is no closure. Just courage. I’ll walk you to the doctor’s now.”

After he had delivered her to Dr. Brodie, he walked through the rain and up to a hill overlooking Lochdubh to where his first dog, Towser, was buried. He sat down on the wet heather and stared at the simple cross that marked the dog’s grave. How he had grieved over the loss of Towser! How he had sworn never to have another pet. But Archie had given him Lugs and then the vet had given him Sonsie.

Hamish sat there for a long time until he realised he was soaking wet.

He made his way back to the station and changed into civilian clothes. A seed of an idea was beginning to take place in his brain. It was far-fetched. It was outrageous. But somehow, it fit.

He phoned Charlie and said, “Call down here. I’ve an idea and I need your help.”

The colonel was sitting with his wife, Mr. Harrison, and Greta when Hamish arrived with Charlie.

“We would like a word in private with Mr. Harrison,” said Hamish. “May we use the manager’s office?”

“You can’t walk in here and order me around,” said the colonel.

“Please, George,” said Charlie quietly. “It’s important.”

“Oh, very well. Push me along, Greta.”

“It’s all right. I can manage,” said Hamish, seizing the wheelchair.

The office was lit with a shaded green lamp on the desk. Hamish took out a powerful tape recorder and laid it down on the desk.

“What’s up with you?” snarled Harrison.

“Mr. Percy Harrison,” said Hamish. “I am charging you with the wilful murder of Helen Mackenzie.”

“Why on earth would I kill the bitch?”

“Grief,” said Hamish. “She killed your son. You overheard me accusing her of the murder of Andrew and of Gloria and Miss McGowan. Andrew was your only son. Somehow, you shook a confession out of her and then you strangled her. You can walk. I know that. I saw you once. You’re a powerful man. You waited until the middle of the night, maybe slung the dead body over your knees in the wheelchair, and took the body out to her car and dumped it in the boot. You had strangled her with her scarf. You took the body to the dump, shoved it in an old trolley, and piled the trolley up with cans and bottles. You put the car back, knowing Juris would find it and clean it. You hated her so much, you didn’t even bother to hide anything. You could have cleared out her room and made it look as if she had fled.

“But you had murdered her and got your revenge and that was all you wanted.”

“You gormless idiot,” roared Harrison. “What proof do you have?”

“Your DNA is on the scarf that strangled her,” lied Hamish. He knew it would take ages for any results to come in. “Forensics took the DNA of everyone at the hunting box ages ago.”

Harrison sat for a long time, staring at the lamp on the desk as if hypnotised. Then he said, “Yes, I did hear you. Andrew might be pompous but he was my son. I told Helen to wheel me over to the garage because I wanted to look for something. Then I got her by the throat. I said if she confessed, I would let her escape. If she said nothing, I would kill her. I took a gun and jammed it in her mouth until she nodded. She went on about how she thought I loved her. Rubbish. She said Gloria had always been scoring off her in the past and had taken her boyfriend away. One day, Gloria had called on her and shown her that diamond pendant I gave her. Helen wailed it just wasn’t fair. She started pleading and babbling that she had done it all for me. That she had killed Gloria to protect me. I could have shot her then and there. But I put the gun in my pocket. I told her I would let her go if she came back into the house and typed out a confession.

“It seemed to take hours with her breaking off to try to justify herself and begging and weeping. She was the one who sent that filthy anonymous letter so that my last memory of poor Gloria was shouting at her. At last she was finished and I got her to sign it. She even confessed to wearing the scarf with which she had strangled Gloria. I made her fetch it.