Death of a Sweep - M. C. Beaton [38]
Now, thought Hamish, a proper copper would tell him it was his duty to report what he knew and drag him off to the Guildford police. On the other hand, he was not supposed to be in Guildford.
They walked along the street. ‘How much?’ asked Hamish.
‘A hundred.’
‘Fifty or nothing,’ said Hamish, noticing that the pupils of the man’s eyes were like pinpoints.
‘All right. Give it to me.’
‘There’s a café ower there,’ said Hamish. ‘Let’s sit down. Information first. And if it’s not worth anything, nothing is what you’re going to get.’
The café was of the kind with a bewildering array of expensively priced coffee. Hamish ordered an Americana and his companion, a cappuccino.
‘What have you got?’ asked Hamish, ‘First of all, your name?’
‘Stefan Loncar.’
‘So what information do you have for me?’
‘That bastard, Timothy, sacked me last week. Says if I talk to the police, he’d cut my balls off. But I’m going back to Zagreb tomorrow. I need money.’
‘So what have you got?’
‘Those four men and their wives, the ones the police were asking about, they dined that evening in a private room upstairs.’
Hamish felt a flicker of excitement.
‘Were they all there?’
‘There were the four of them. I recognized the wives. But the men were all wearing funny masks.’
‘What! Why?’
‘They were laughing and said they’d just come from a fancy dress party.’
‘But people who dined in the restaurant on the same night couldn’t remember seeing them. Surely they would remember four men in masks.’
‘There’s a back stair leading from the car park which goes up to the private room. The police were happy to take Timothy’s word for it. Thomas Bromley paid for the dinner with his credit card. Timothy showed that to the police as proof but he said nothing about the private room. Where’s my money?’
‘Aren’t you worried? One of them could be a murderer.’
‘I’m off to Zagreb in the morning.’
Hamish took out a battered wallet and extracted two twenty-pound notes and a ten. Stefan snatched them and ran out of the café. Hamish hurried after him but when he got outside, Stefan seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
The four wives got together for drinks that afternoon. ‘Did you tell your husbands?’ asked Sandra.
‘Not yet,’ said Mary Bromley.
‘Don’t let’s,’ said Sandra. ‘It’s not safe. I think we should all keep quiet.’
Reluctantly, the others agreed.
Hamish Macbeth walked round to the back of the restaurant and studied the staircase. There was no CCTV camera. There was now possibly a fifth man involved, one who perhaps took the place of whoever it was had gone to Scotland to murder Captain Davenport.
He experienced a feeling of relief. One of the four must have committed the murder, which left the locals clear of suspicion. Now he had to head north and try to pass on what he had learned without betraying that he had strayed out of his area.
As soon as he got back to Lochdubh, he called Jimmy and told him to come to the police station in the morning. He locked up his sleepy hens, refused to feed Lugs who was getting fat, even though the dog banged his feeding bowl on the floor, then he showered and went to bed. But he did not fall asleep immediately. If Sandra Prosser told her husband of his visit, then Charles Prosser might complain to the Guildford police, and then one highland police sergeant would be in trouble. But if one of the men was a murderer and the others were hiding the fact and colluding with him, then Hamish doubted the Guildford police would learn anything. What about those masks, though? Britain had more spy cameras on its streets than any other country. Surely the men had been questioned about the masks.
Jimmy arrived at ten in the morning, his blue eyes bloodshot and his clothes looking as if they had been slept in.
‘Hard night?’ asked Hamish.
‘Don’t want to talk about it,’ mumbled Jimmy. ‘What’s up?’
Hamish described what he had found in Guildford. Jimmy groaned