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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 A
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 bitch! He had attended A
Then he waited. And as he waited, he began to wonder about Percy’s death. Surely if Percy had pla
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. “God, 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 scraped 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.
Josie sat mutinously in Mrs. Wellington’s car the following morning. She had been appalled to learn that the minister’s wife was taking her to an AA meeting in Strathbane. Deaf to her protests, Mrs. Wellington had said that if Josie did not go, she would tell Hamish that Josie had been drunk. Mrs. Wellington had also found two precious half bottles of whisky in Josie’s underwear drawer and confiscated them.
As the car neared Strathbane, Josie protested, “I’ll be stuck in a room with smelly old drunks in dirty raincoats.”
“It’s where you belong,” said the minister’s wife. “But I happen to know respectable people go to these meetings.”
She parked outside a church in the town centre. “There’s a lunchtime meeting here. It’s only an hour long. I’ll see you inside and come back and pick you up when it’s over.”
A tall man in a business suit was standing at the door, acting as a greeter. “This is Josie,” boomed Mrs. Wellington. “First meeting. Look after her.”
“Will do. Come along, Josie. I’ll introduce you. My name’s Charlie.”
There were twelve people in the room, all smartly dressed and clear-eyed. Josie would have felt better if they had been dirty old men. There was no one to feel superior to. They pressed literature on her and gave her a cup of tea. Then they all sat around a long table. A woman was the speaker. Josie mutinously did not listen to a word. What had it to do with her? What a stupid place and what stupid slogans pi