Chapter 14

Sarge looked filled with chagrin when he came down the stairs the morning after his one hit wonder attempt at show how real men drank scotch. Miss Fields had seen him dragged in and up the stairs the night before. The sun hadn’t even set she must have thought as she glared at him and at the clock that dominated the hallway.

This morning her glare didn’t waver. Liz tried to explain it away with a “delayed jet lag” clarification, but Miss Fields may not have married any men but she knew them well enough.

“Actually, first scotch,” Sarge mumbled with a sheepish grin. That didn’t cut any ice with their host who believed men who drank were an abomination unless they were damn good at it. Sarge was caught both ways. It hadn’t helped that Donald had “accidentally” spilled some incriminating evidence on Sarge’s shirt. The reek of liquor had followed Sarge up the stairs that night. Miss Fields normally had a patriotic dislike for the English. However, just for Sarge that morning, he was faced with a full English breakfast, greasy bacon, sausages, runny eggs etc. and she stood over him as he vainly tried to eat it. Sarge was a big man with a big appetite but that morning it took all his courage to clean the plate; courage and well-founded sense of fear. He wasn’t naïve enough to smile and ask for seconds because she would have called his bluff in a flash.

They stopped at a shop on the way to the police station. Liz thought Sarge was looking for some antacid to make it through the day. Instead, he did the first diplomatic thing he had done since reaching Scotland. He just hoped that Miss Fields wasn’t allergic to flowers or thought that they were a waste of money. Just in case, he left them on the doorstep and rang the bell before scurrying back to Liz. He didn’t notice the smile on the lined face of Miss Fields who was peering at the strange man from Australia behaving like a little boy, but she did also blush at the thought that a man had thought so highly of her. No man had in such a long while.

It was back to business as soon as they walked in the door. Donald was already on deck as was Amelia who spoke first. They had traced the supplier and received samples of the thin plastic tubing. It was easy to see how they could effectively be used to add piping to cardboard boxes but these days specific crimping tools and a drying varnish could create the same and lock it in place. It wasn’t economically viable what was being done and that suddenly made it all the more suspicious. Samples of the cardboard had been brought down from the printing works and as Liz had suspected the tubes fitted neatly in the corrugations. The fact that the tubes were hollow didn’t seem to matter because that made them lighter, but when Sarge bent one by just fiddling with it, it shattered easily. A solid piece of plastic would have been far stronger.

They reminded Sarge of something from his childhood but he couldn’t think what. It would come to him if he thought of other things. That was how his mind worked. His ‘brilliant’ insights were usually the result of dormant thoughts connecting with each other. Liz’s mobile rang and she went outside to take it. Her mother had been ill, which Sarge knew so he accorded her some privacy. But it wasn’t her mother, she had read the screen, it was Nat. She spoke to him at length about the incident from yesterday and how Sarge was feeling under the weather this morning. She knew Nat had dragged himself from his bed at Sarge’s request and found the information required from the McAllister warehouse in Cairns. She joined Nat in the four-way conspiracy to rattle her boss’s nerves.

She handed the mobile to Sarge and whispered “It’s Nat”

“Hi Sarge,” Nat’s voice boomed out across the room so much so that Sarge moved the phone quickly away from his now deafened ear. The voice continued on, “You always said that you didn’t trust new technology and I should follow your lead, so as you are halfway across the world, I am yelling really loud.” Sarge vainly tried searching for a way to turn the volume down. The same volume that Liz had set to its maximum.

“Seems that you are possibly on to something, well Liz probably anyway. Are you there Sarge? Are you there?” Nat’s voice was making the phone move around on the table where Sarge had placed it.

“Shutup you moron. Speak in a normal voice” Sarge yelled at the phone. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“Geez, you always seemed to be more than capable of doing that on your own. Just chill mate. Have a nip of whisky. It’s not night time over there is it? If it is, don’t go outside because that is when those horrible sporrans feed. I hear a vasectomy is a much easier process.”

McPherson, Campbell and Rhodes gave up at that point and were in fits of laughter. Sarge was furious. He turned to Liz who was wiping tears from her eyes, “Do that speaker thing you do with these phones and let’s stop mucking around.”

Liz took the phone and told Nat he was magnificent, in serious trouble, but totally awesome. On the other end of the line Nat felt that payback was a good thing. Sarge had been owed some and he was delighted to have had the opportunity. Everyone settled to the task at hand as Nat carefully explained what he had found.

“The special lots contained plastic tubing. None of their everyday customers had it in their cartons. The tubing was concealed in the corrugated cardboard sides of the boxes and were filled with a very fine powder which was currently being analysed. However, in the specially packaged bottles of Scotch that bore the McAllister name as well as the original distiller, the piping on these boxes had the same tubes with a different substance in it, which too was off for analysis.”

Sarge interrupted asking how the tubes were sealed. The answer was plain ordinary beeswax. The whole lot would have been bonded in Scotland before being sent. Any sniffer dogs would have perhaps scented something but their handlers would have seen the bonding details and noticed the special seal on the box made of beeswax. A regular trader would be given the benefit of the doubt, but no-one was seriously going to suspect the packaging on high end scotch, perhaps not even those checking the container loads at the Scottish dockside.

“Get back to us as soon as you can about that powder…… and remember when you least expect it, you can guarantee something is coming your way,” Sarge directed Nat.

“Reading you loud and clear admiral. Roger over and out,” came Nat’s quick reply knowing Sarge’s fear of watercraft.

“So, you like sailing do you, Sarge?” McPherson asked. “I’ll take you out on the loch in my wee dinghy before you leave. No sporrans out there to worry about. They’re too scared of Nessie.”

Donald McPherson realised just how lucky he was. He was working with four of the finest detectives he had come across, if you counted Nat, and he was actually enjoying himself for the first time in years. He walked across to the small offices where his other detectives worked and called them altogether. “I am offering an open transfer to any of you who would like to go somewhere of your own choosing. It is time that many of you gained new experience and this police station gained new experience. Please feel free to get in early as I am looking at major changes here over the next six months.”

He didn’t wait for questions. They would come later when the stunned silence that had greeted his remarks evaporated. He had just made himself the most hated man in Inverness with that short statement, but Donald McPherson was a man of determination and once he saw a course of action was the right one, it would take a hell of a lot of persuasion to make him change direction. He knew that the men under him didn’t have the capacity to make such a case. He on the other hand may be challenged by those above him, but he was a through man and he had all the individual profiles and appraisal reports to handle that. Up until today he just hadn’t had the wherewithal to make changes that would last. The station needed a new broom through it and he was the one who had set himself up with the task. He was an honest man and if asked for a reference for any of his current staff he would not lie. His staff knew that and many went down to the inn for some inner reflection through a newly emptied beer glass. Suddenly for them the party was over.