LITMIR.BIZ

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a few days, then borrowed his car to drive down to Birmingham to purchase the instrument and visit my mum. I drove back on Monday and left early on Tuesday morning.”

      He was silent for a moment. “I will ask you again if you had reason to suspect that your friend was in any sort of trouble.”

      “No,” I answered perhaps too quickly, then stopped to consider. “What sort of trouble do you mean?”

      “Did he have financial problems?”

      Shaking my head, I answered, “No. He bought his house outright, and his needs were very simple. If he required money, he only had to hire out again as a road manager. Angus had a very good reputation in the business. Any number of bands would have hired him if they knew he was available. He’d done that often in the past.”

      “What about drugs? Did he have a drug problem?”

      “No. Angus was very anti-drug. Why do you ask?”

      Campbell looked down at his hands. The office was obviously not his. I felt certain that his own would not have had so much as a paperclip out of place, and I doubted if a backwater such as Dunoon would have warranted its own Detective Inspector anyway. Considering its close proximity to Glasgow, he’d probably been brought in from there. Consequently, Campbell seemed ill at ease.

      Finally, he looked up. “I’m going to take you into my confidence. Certain bits of evidence have come to light since we spoke yesterday, and they have led us to believe the people who visited Mr. MacDougall on Thursday evening are involved in the drug trade.” Campbell fastened his eyes on mine. “In light of that, would you like to revise what you just told me?”

      “No. I wouldn’t. Angus had nothing to do with drugs of any sort.”

      “Excuse me if I find that a little hard to believe. After all, he worked in the pop music business—”

      “Yeah, yeah,” I interrupted, “to hear most people talk, you’d think we...they did nothing more than get wasted and defile young women. Well, I was there, and yes, there was some of that to be sure, but most of us took our job seriously, and you can’t play well when you’re wrecked. Angus’s job was very tough, and he couldn’t have done it either, if he’d had a drug problem. What makes you think Angus’s killers were part of the drug trade?”

      “As I said, various bits of evidence. Things that were done. We have a national computer database where we can input facts we discover and it will tell us if this sort of thing has been reported before. In your friend’s case it has. Three other unsolved murders. These were criminals who came to his house. If you’re telling me the truth, why did those particular people come there? It’s that question I most want the answer to.”

      “What in God’s name happened? You keep hinting around, but you haven’t really told me anything.”

      Campbell considered for a moment, then came to another decision and abruptly stood. “Constable Dickson, could you see aboutgetting one of the pool cars to drive us out to the MacDougall place?”

      “Right away, sir.” Dickson closed her pad with a snap and left the room.

      ***

      The weather and the drive out to poor Angus’s place was a far cry from my last trip there. The roads were completely dry, and as a passenger, I could watch the scenery go by. The cold, clear air, cloudless sky and distant vistas gave me a lot to look at, but I cannot say I enjoyed the trip.

      A road block had been set up at the beginning of the one-lane road to Angus’s.

      “Can’t have media vans clogging a one-lane road, can we?” Campbell said as we passed, and I slumped down in the seat, hoping the few newshounds wouldn’t somehow spot me. Earlier, I’d slipped into the police station right under the noses of several. I knew that sort of luck wouldn’t last forever.

      Campbell sat in the front while Dickson drove. We spoke very little. I got the feeling that the detective was letting me stew in my own juices in the hope that I might reconsider what I’d told him. I had a pretty good idea of why he was taking me to the crime scene.

      As we came to the last mile of our trip, Campbell turned around and said, “We’re fairly certain your friend let his killers in, since there’s no evidence they forced their entry.”

      I shook my head. “Wouldn’t have been a need. Angus seldom locked his door.”

      Campbell, unperturbed by my correction to his hypothesis, scribbled in a small notebook he took from his jacket pocket. “There appears to have been a struggle once they were in, though. Papers were scattered all over the room, and—”

      “Papers were scattered all over the room when I was there,” I interrupted again. “Angus was attempting to do his own taxes.”

      This time Campbell looked up sharply, and I could have sworn Dickson snorted, but if she had, it was quickly covered up by snuffling and other cold-type noises.

      “We found broken furniture and a bookcase knocked over. He fought back hard, it seems.”

      “Doesn’t surprise me. Angus was a big man and wouldn’t back down from anyone.”

      Arriving at the farmhouse, we pulled into the spot where I’d parked the damaged XKE just a few days earlier. It felt like a lifetime. Climbing out of the back seat of the police sedan, I looked out at Loch Striven. The scene was still beyond description, the hills as forlorn and forbidding as ever. The gulls still wheeled, crying in the air above. But something had gone, and everything felt as if it were rapidly receding into a distant memory. I knew I would never return here of my own volition.

      Yellow crime scene tape snapped noisily in the steady wind. A blast skittered down my neck, causing me to shiver, but out of proportion to how cold it actually was.

      Angus’s Jag wasn’t parked in its usual spot, nor was the beat-up Land Rover. Both had probably been carted off somewhere for examination. A white van stood there instead, along with a blue and yellow checked Strathclyde police sedan. As we’d pulled in, a sleepylooking constable had jumped out of the driver’s side. This time Dickson snorted for sure.

      Campbell walked over to me. He had to raise his voice against the wind. “As near as we can figure, three people arrived here shortly after eight on Thursday evening. We’ve spoken to a witness who drove by a bit earlier, and there were no strange cars parked here. An hour later there were. These visitors probably didn’t leave until the wee hours of the morning. The Medical Examiner thinks your friend died sometime after two a.m.”

      “How did Angus die?” I asked.

      Campbell fixed me with a curious gaze. “Sure you want to know?”

      “I can handle it.”

      Campbell looked at me assessingly. “Your friend was tortured and eventually had his throat slit.”

      Campbell’s blunt, matter-of-fact delivery caused me to feel like I’d been kicked in the stomach, even though I should have been prepared by all his dark hints.

      My legs suddenly felt as reliable as overcooked spaghetti, and I had to lean heavily against the police car. The world spun crazily as I forced myself to take some deep breaths.

      As if from the far end of a long tunnel, I was aware of Constable Dickson saying to her counterpart from the squad car, “Bet you five quid he loses his breakfast. Seems like the kind.”

      That pulled me out of my funk. With my eye on the big-mouthed constable, I straightened and said, “Right, then. Shall we go inside?”

      Campbell and I had to put on the white crime scene suits you see on the telly.

      The place certainly was a mess. On the right as you entered the sitting room stood a large stone fireplace with bookcases on either side. One of these was down completely, and the other leaning precariously. I’d been so wrong in my assessment of the tax documents piled everywhere earlier in the week. It had been nothing like what I saw now. The big

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