Evil for Evil by Aline Templeton Read Free Book Online Page B

He’d managed to farm out interviews arising from last night’s fracas and after an extended shift yesterday felt smugly entitled to a quiet morning with a wee bit of gentle catching-up and maybe a chat to Sergeant Jock Naismith, always abreast of the station gossip. Now with Andy Macdonald off on leave and Ewan Campbell out doing interviews, he’d have to take this one himself – at least an hour’s journey with a boat trip at the end. MacNee could feel sick going ‘doon the watter’ on a Clyde ferry, and that was before they left the pier. He set off thinking bitterly of Campbell, out on what now looked like a real doss, just standing listening to folk for a while before he came back for his pie and beans.
    The sunshine and the scenery didn’t cheer him. MacNee had a townie’s distaste for anything involving fresh air and mud, and the tractor drawing a horsebox which kept his speed to nineteen miles an hour on a narrow road bounded by stone walls for a quarter of an hour didn’t improve his temper.
    The local constable was obviously getting his knickers in a right twist. A couple of messages had come through from HQ asking for an ETA, and MacNee’s responses had got sharper and sharper. With the time the victim had waited already, another half-hour wasn’t going to make a whole lot of difference. Anyway, a historian was likely to be more interested than the police.
    But here at last was the small village he was looking for – just a wee street of houses straggling along the edge of the bay. Bonny enough, MacNee admitted grudgingly, with the islands out there and the sun shining.
    The Smugglers Inn was halfway down the street. There was a badged car in its small car park with a young constable beside it, looking spare. As MacNee drove in, he turned, a hopeful expression on his round pink face.
    It wasn’t easy to get space to park, with three other cars and too many people around, and MacNee noted darkly that one had a professional-looking camera. He slotted the car in beside a shrub with small pink flowers, swarming with wasps. He batted at them irritably as he got out.
    The constable hurried across. ‘DS MacNee? PC Hendry, sir. Glad to see you. It’s been a wee thing tricky—’
    He was immediately joined by the man with the camera, holding up a card. ‘Tony Drummond. Press. You took your time!’
    MacNee assessed him sourly: mid-forties, balding a bit, paunch, but with sharp brown eyes. Not with a national; he recognised thename from his byline in the local paper and he probably acted for a news agency too. That explained Hendry’s anxiety – he’d be pressured by the man trying to protect his scoop.
    ‘Well, Mr Drummond,’ he drawled, ‘I can’t tell you anything till I’ve had a word with the officer here. So perhaps you’d let me do that, while you wait, say – over there?’ He gestured towards the wasp-infested bush. Seemed appropriate.
    Drummond laughed. ‘Ah, Sergeant, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m the one you want to talk to, not Doug here.’
    The look MacNee gave Hendry at this evidence of fraternising with the enemy reduced him to stammering. ‘Mr Drummond – it was him found the body – well, the bones.’
    ‘I see,’ MacNee said stiffly. ‘Better give me the facts, then, sir. Constable, have you arranged a boat?’
    ‘No need,’ Drummond said promptly. ‘I’ll take you out myself.’
    ‘Good of you,’ MacNee said, with an ill grace. It was entirely unsatisfactory, but what else could he do? And those others – interested locals, no doubt, half a dozen men and one woman with blonded hair who was giving him a friendly smile.
    MacNee didn’t return it. He went to speak to them. ‘Right, lady and gents. Any useful information, speak to PC Hendry here. Otherwise, you may as well go home. There’ll be nothing happening for a good wee while.’
    There was some disgruntled muttering, mainly from a big man wearing farmer’s dungarees and a surly expression, but they