Death of an Addict (2 page)

‘I’ve been clean for six months. Honest,’ pleaded Tommy. ‘And I wasn’t pushing. I went to a rehab in Strathbane. Ask anyone. In fact, I’m writing a book about
my experience with drugs to warn other people what it’s like.’

‘Why were you found in possession of ecstasy and cannabis when you were a heroin addict?’ asked Hamish.

Tommy gave a rueful smile. ‘If you can’t get your drug of choice, you’ll go for anything.’ He rolled up his shirtsleeves. ‘Look, no track marks, and Mr McSporran
here will tell you he’s never seen me other than sober.’

‘It iss not the drink I’m worried about,’ said Parry.

‘It’s therapy-speak,’ explained Hamish. ‘Sober means he hasn’t taken any mood-altering chemical. Am I right, Tommy?’

‘Yes, I never even drink booze now. Please give me a chance,’ said Tommy earnestly. ‘You know I haven’t been any trouble, Mr McSporran, and I pay my rent on
time.’

‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Parry reluctantly.

Hamish made up his mind. ‘I’d let him be for the moment, Parry. I believe what he says.’

Outside in the sunlight, Parry said, ‘You seem mighty sure of yourself, Hamish.’

‘Like I said, I’m all for giving folks a chance. He seems a nice fellow to me. Come on, Parry. Strathbane’s become a sink o’ iniquity. I’ve seen a lot of good young
people wrecked. This one seems to have pulled himself together.’

‘I s’pose,’ said Parry. ‘He’s no trouble. Let’s hope your judgement is right, Hamish Macbeth.’

‘Och, I am never wrong,’ said Hamish with simple Highland vanity.

But when he had returned to Lochdubh and locked his hens away for the night, Hamish went into the police station office and phoned Detective Jimmy Anderson.

‘Tommy Jarret?’ said Jimmy in answer to Hamish’s query. ‘I mind him. Got away with possession and up in front of a lenient sheriff. Got nothing more than a stay in a
rehab and a hundred days’ community service.’

‘Wait a bit,’ said Hamish. ‘He was a heroin addict?’

‘Aye.’

‘That’s a pretty expensive drug to be taking in the Highlands of Scotland. Where did he get the money?’

‘Some aunt of his left him money, seems to be true. Respectable parents. Well off. Father a bank manager. Neat bungalow outside Strathbane, member of the Rotary Club, polishes the car on
Sunday, get the picture? So he can afford heroin. I tell you another thing that made me mad. Couldn’t get out of him where he got his supply from. I mean, he’s lucky to be
alive.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I believe there’s a lot of adulterated stuff around and some bastard at the Three Bells pub down at the old docks was pushing talcum powder. The street price of heroin in Aberdeen
was a hundred pounds per gram. Why are you asking about Tommy Jarret?’

‘The name cropped up,’ said Hamish.

‘Meaning the wee bastard’s in your parish. I don’t trust any o’ thae junkies.’

‘Lot of drugs in Strathbane?’ asked Hamish.

‘Aye, it’s a plague. It’s the new motorways. We’re no longer cut off up here so they zoom up the motorways from Glasgow and Manchester. The drug barons make money and
more young people die every year.’

‘What would happen, I wonder,’ mused Hamish, ‘if the stuff were legalized? I mean, there would be controls on the quality of the stuff and all the drug barons and drug cartels
would be out of business.’

‘Whit! It’s statements like that which explain why you’re a copper and I’m a detective. That’s a load of dangerous rubbish you’re talking, Hamish.’

‘Just thought I would ask,’ said Hamish meekly.

He rang off and then changed into his civilian clothes and went out for a stroll along the waterfront. He didn’t mind at all being a mere village copper. Hamish Macbeth had sidestepped
promotion to Strathbane several times. The waters of Lochdubh lay placid under a pale sky, with only the ripples from a porpoise to disturb the calm surface. The violent world of cities such as
Strathbane seemed pleasingly remote.

‘Dreaming, Hamish?’

Hamish, who had been leaning against the harbour wall, turned and found Dr Brodie’s wife, Angela, surveying him with amusement.

‘I was thinking of pretty much nothing,’ said Hamish. ‘Except maybe drugs.’

‘I don’t think we’ve got any cases in Lochdubh.’

‘Good.’

She leaned against the harbour wall beside him and he turned back and rested his arms against the rough stone, still warm from the day’s sunshine.

‘Why do people take drugs, Angela?’

‘Because they like the effect. You should know a simple thing like that, Hamish. Then in the young, it’s bad and exciting.’

‘But all those warnings,’ protested Hamish. ‘All those kids dying from ecstasy pills.’

‘Addicts never think it’ll happen to them. And the young feel immortal anyway.’

‘What if it were legalized?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. The illegality itself is a deterrent. Can you imagine if young people, children maybe, had unlimited access to LSD?’

‘You’re right,’ said Hamish with a sigh. ‘What’s the solution?’

‘Everyone starts refusing?’

‘I cannae envisage that.’

‘It could happen. Just become unfashionable. Like smoking. You’re having a quiet time these days, Hamish.’

‘Long may it last. I wouldnae like to see another murder in Lochdubh.’

‘There may be one shortly.’

‘Who? What?’

‘Nessie and Jessie Currie are joint chairwomen of the Mothers’ Union at the church this year.’

‘Oh, dear.’ Jessie and Nessie were middle-aged twin sisters, both unmarried.

‘The others are complaining it’s like being run by the Gestapo.’

‘Can’t they vote them out?’

‘Not for another year.’

‘What are they doing that’s so bad?’

‘Well, at the cake sale, they criticized the quality of the baking and reduced little Mrs McWhirter to tears, for one. Then they have lately become obsessed with germs and the church hall
has to be regularly scrubbed. They have pinned up a cleaning rota and all women must remove their shoes before entering the hall.’

‘I’ll have a word with them.’

‘Would you, Hamish? I don’t know what you can say. Everyone’s tried.’

‘I’ll have a go.’

Hamish said goodbye to her and strolled off in the direction of the Currie sisters’ cottage.

He knocked at the highly polished brass lion’s head on the door. Jessie answered, blinking up at him through her thick glasses. ‘It’s you. It’s you,’ said Jessie,
who had an irritating way of repeating everything.

‘I just dropped by for a wee word,’ said Hamish easily.

‘Come ben.’ Hamish ducked his head and followed Jessie into the living room, where sister Nessie was seated.

Nessie was knitting ferociously, steel pins flashing through magenta wool.

‘What brings you?’ asked Nessie.

Hamish sat down. ‘I’ll get tea. I’ll get tea,’ said Jessie.

Hamish raised a hand. ‘Not for me, thank you. This’ll only take a minute.’

Jessie folded her arms and eyed the tall red-haired policeman nervously. ‘It must be serious for you to refuse a free cup of tea, free cup of tea.’

‘It iss the little matter o’ the Mothers’ Union.’

Nessie stopped knitting. ‘What’s up wi’ the Mothers’ Union?’

‘The pair of you are what’s up with it.’

‘What d’ye mean, d’ye mean?’ demanded Jessie. ‘We run it wi’ an iron hand, iron hand.’

‘Well, now, ladies, the iron hand seems to be the trouble. Ye cannae go on like the Gestapo.’

‘Who’s complaining?’ demanded Nessie wrathfully.

‘Chust about everyone,’ said Hamish Macbeth.

‘We’ve done nothing wrong, nothing wrong,’ said Jessie. ‘We’ve made sure the church hall is clean, and that place was a sewer, a sewer.’

‘Yes, and it iss the grand job the pair of you are doing at fighting the germs, but is there any need to fight the others?’ Hamish reflected it was an odd world when the
Mothers’ Union was being run by two childless spinsters. Did anyone ever use the word ‘spinster’ any more? What was politically correct? ‘Miz’ was irritating and
pretentious. Single? And why should women who were not married be considered strange in any way? He was not married himself.

‘I’m speaking to you, Hamish Macbeth,’ shouted Nessie, penetrating his thoughts, ‘and all you can do is sit there like a gormless loon after insulting us.’

‘Insulting us,’ chorused Jessie.

‘I wass thinking about Margaret Thatcher,’ lied Hamish.

‘What about her?’ asked Nessie, a look of reverence in her eyes.

The sisters adored Margaret Thatcher.

‘Well, now, Mrs Thatcher –’

‘
Baroness
Thatcher,’ corrected the Currie sisters in unison.

‘Lady Thatcher, then. Now, herself would run that Mothers’ Union with a firm hand. But she would delegate responsibility, draw everyone in. You get more out of people if they like
you. Diplomacy is the word, ladies.’

‘And what do you know about Lady Thatcher?’ jeered Nessie.

Hamish half-closed his eyes. ‘It wass the great day,’ he crooned, his Highland accent becoming more sibilant as he worked himself up to telling one massive lie. ‘I wass down in
Inverness and there she wass, just doing her shopping like you or me.’

‘When was this, when was this?’ cried Jessie.

‘Let me see, it would be June last year, a fine day, I ’member.’

‘What was she buying?’ asked Nessie, her eyes shining.

‘It was in Marks and Spencer. She wass looking at one of thae tailored blouses she likes to wear. Silk, it was.’

‘And did you speak to her?’

‘I did that,’ said Hamish.

‘What did you say?’

‘I asked her to autograph my notebook, which she did. I asked her the secret of success.’

Both sisters leaned forward. ‘And she said?’

‘She said the secret was the firm hand.’

‘Ah!’

‘But with kindness, she said. She wass as near to me as you are now. She said she never let herself get bogged down wi’ bullying people or bothering about the small stuff. “If
you work hard,” she says to me, “you do the service for others chust because you want to. The minute you start pushing people and bragging about how hard you are working for them, they
turn against you. Nobody wants a martyr.”’

The sisters looked at each other. ‘Maybe we have been a bit too strong, bit too strong,’ said Jessie.

‘Aye, maybe we’ll go a bit easier,’ said Nessie. ‘And then what did she say?’

‘Dennis, her husband, came up at that minute and he says, “You’re neffer going to buy that blouse, Maggie. The colour’s wrong.” It wass the purple silk.’

‘I’ll bet she told him to take a running jump,’ said Nessie.

‘Not herself. She chust smiled and said, “Yes, dear, you’re probably right.” You see there wass the security men all about her and a lady like that wasn’t going to
stoop to be petty.’

‘What a woman, what a woman,’ breathed Jessie. ‘We shall neffer see her like again.’

Hamish stood up, his red head almost brushing the low ceiling. ‘I’ll be on my way, ladies.’

‘Can we see that autograph, Hamish?’

‘Och, no, I sent it to my cousin Rory in New Hampshire. He has it framed and hung over his fireplace.’

Hamish made his way out. In the small hallway was a framed photograph of Margaret Thatcher. He winked at it and let himself out.

He ambled back towards the police station. As he approached Patel’s, the general store, he recognized the waiflike figure of Felicity Maundy. In the same moment, she saw him and her face
turned a muddy colour. She unlocked the door of an old Metro, threw her groceries on to the passenger seat, climbed in and drove off leaving a belch of exhaust hanging in the air.

‘Now, what’s she got on her conscience?’ murmured Hamish. ‘Probably went on some demo when she was a wee lassie at school and thinks the police still have a eye on
her.’

He shrugged and proceeded along to the police station. His rambling roses at the front were still doing well and their blossoms almost hid the blue police lamp.

Hamish began to plan a relaxed evening, maybe put on a casserole and let it simmer and go to the pub for an hour. The new alcopops had turned out to be a menace, those sweet fizzy alcoholic
drinks. They had been designed, in his opinion, to seduce the young, but it was the Highlanders, the fishermen in particular, every man of them having a sweet tooth, who had become hooked on them.
So Hamish meant to combine pleasure and duty by keeping a sharp eye on the drivers who were drinking over the limit. Then he would return at closing time and start taking away car keys.

He opened the kitchen door and went in. The phone in the police station office began to ring shrilly. He went quickly to answer it. He experienced a blank feeling of dread and tried to shrug it
off. It would be nothing more than a minor complaint. Or a hoax call.

He picked up the receiver. ‘Lochdubh police,’ he said.

‘Hamish, this is Parry. It’s yon fellow, Tommy Jarret. He’s dead.’

‘Dead. How? Why?’

‘They think it’s an overdose. They found a syringe.’

‘I’ll be right over.’

Cursing, Hamish rapidly changed into his uniform. How could it all have happened so quickly? he thought. The lad had been all right. What had happened to his, Hamish Macbeth’s, famous
intuition? He could have sworn Tommy Jarret was not in danger of returning to his drug taking.

He drove off up the winding road leading out of Lochdubh towards Glenanstey, his heart heavy. Large black clouds were building up behind the mountains. They seemed like black omens, harbingers
of trouble to come.

There is something particularly tragic about the death of a young person. Only that day, Tommy Jarret’s life had seemed to stretch out in front of him. Now he was a
crumpled piece of clay.

‘You didn’t touch anything?’ Hamish asked Parry as they surveyed the body in silence.

‘I checked his pulse. I had to make sure he was dead. Och, Hamish, he must have felt he was safe when you gave him that chance and so he decided to go back on the stuff.’