‘I’m going to need you to tell me everything you can about the whereabouts of that jewellery, sir. Its rightful owner happened to be watching TV last night and spotted her late mother’s stolen possessions in your fair hands; some eight pieces of very expensive gold, silver and platinum jewellery taken from the family home in a robbery last Hogmanay.’
‘You sound like you think Dad’s somehow to blame,’ Ally said, her voice surprisingly loud and pitchy, dodging the Special Constable to get at Edwyn.
‘Honestly, miss, it’d be best for everyone if you took a step back and let the Chief Inspector go about his job,’ Jamie Beaton said, reaching a hand towards her arm but not making contact.
‘It’s a very serious crime to be found in receipt of stolen goods,’ Edwyn went on. ‘Deliberately defacing such goods so as to disguise their provenance is also highly illegal,’ he added, not looking away from McIntyre whose ears were turning a little pink at the tips.
‘Dad couldn’t have known they were stolen!’ Ally yelped, still trying to dodge Beaton and address Edwyn directly.
‘The lassie came back for them, didn’t she?’ Ally’s father said with a gulp, looking to Sachin for confirmation.
Sachin was already way ahead of everyone and was producing his records – thank goodness he was as good a recordkeeper as he was a busybody. ‘That she did. See here.’ He showed the more senior policeman. ‘She collected them the same day she dropped them off, at two thirty to be precise. Left no tip in the jar.’
‘So it looks like you owe Dad an apology,’ Ally blurted, out of sheer relief, but evidently she wasn’t done yet. Angrily, she went on. ‘We’re trying to do good here, but you waltz in like he’s some kind of criminal. Did you actually watch the news programme last night? They called Dad a local hero!’
The Inspector turned to his younger colleague and gave him a meaningful nod, sending Jamie into an immediate response.
‘If you don’t calm down and step back, I’ll have to put you in the van for attempting to impede an officer in going about his investigations.’
Ally stared hard at Special Constable Jamie Beaton. He was about her age, a couple of inches taller than her, with dark hair to go with his dark eyes and a clean-shaven, probably-works-out-a-fair-bit look about him. Ally noticed his throat move as he swallowed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a much lower voice. ‘But please just pipe down.’
Edwyn had moved on and was asking questions about CCTV (the repair shop couldn’t afford anything like that), and informing everyone he’d need to collect witness statements and descriptions of the woman (Senga and Rhona were clambering over one another to offer their assistance), and he wanted to know whether McIntyre had indeed removed every trace of the engravings as that was going to make tracing the jewellery incredibly hard. McIntyre had probably unwittingly quadrupled their street value.
‘Engraved jewellery is notoriously hard to shift,’ Edwyn crowed as he took out his notebook. ‘You must be far more vigilant in future. All of you.’ He cast a stern eye around the volunteers.
Peaches and Willie still hadn’t moved from their spot in the sewing corner and looked at one another scoffingly like they were hardly likely to be asked to fence stolen curtains any time soon.
‘Did you get a good look at the woman, miss…?’ Jamie asked Ally, taking her to one side while the café women tried to ply his colleague with baking and coffee, both of which Edwyn refused.
‘Miss McIntyre,’ she replied. ‘I mean Allyson McIntyre. No, just Ally. Umm, let me see, the woman? I… I don’t know.’ Ally brought a hand to her cheek, trying hard to recall her.
‘You were here when she brought the jewels in?’ Jamie pressed, with what she interpreted as a soft Lowlands burr, quite posh to her ears. Edinburgh, maybe?
‘I suppose so, only it… wasn’t a very good day for me.’
‘Oh?’ He had his pad and pencil poised in his hands.
‘I was distracted with… something else.’
‘And what was that?’ he wanted to know, his expression serious.
‘Does it matter?’
He fixed her with a dogged look.
‘I was getting dumped, OK? And on what I thought was going to be a lovely, romantic first anniversary, if you must know! It was right there, where you’re standing.’
Jamie Beaton glanced down at his heavy black boots and, somewhat apologetically, took a deliberate step closer to the wall, which Ally thought was odd, and possibly a tiny bit endearing.
‘Any other details you can remember?’ His voice was softer now.
‘I think the woman had a long coat on?’ she said. ‘Beige, maybe. With a furry trim, and embroidered all over. She didn’t look like a robber, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Now that she came to think of it, the woman had looked stressed and tired.
‘We suspect she was a girlfriend of one of a gang of robbers. If you think there’s no robberies in the Highlands just because it’s pretty here, you’ve got another think coming. And criminals can look just the same as me and you.’
This was beginning to feel like a lecture, and Ally instinctively drew back her neck. Who did he think he was? This outsider, fresh from some desk job in the south, no doubt. She wasn’t some naïve country bumpkin.
If he could read her annoyance he didn’t show it. ‘If you saw her again, would you recognise her?’ he said plainly.
