Free Death of a Scriptwriter by MC Beaton

discovered that
his friend had died of AIDS during his absence and had left him his flat and effects in his will.
    Stuart had been a struggling writer. A trunk was full of manuscripts. Angus did not know what to do. Perhaps he should find some literary agent and send off all these manuscripts in the hope
that at least one would get published. He pulled them out one by one, stopping when he came to one entitled Football Fever .
    He slowly opened it. It was the script for a television documentary. He frowned. It had been shown in the States on PBS, but he was sure Stuart’s name hadn’t been on it. It had
originally been produced by BBC Scotland.
    And then he remembered seeing something about it in that day’s Scotsman . He went and got the paper and came to the interview with Jamie Gallagher.
    It all clicked into place in his mind as he read the interview with Jamie. Stuart had written to him, saying that a scriptwriter called Jamie Gallagher was running an evening class to teach
writers how to prepare a script for television.
    ‘The bugger must have stolen it,’ said Angus.
    He set out to investigate. He called at BBC Scotland, but they had never heard of Stuart. He tried to find out names of any people who had attended Jamie’s classes, which had been held in
the basement of a church. But there were no records, and no one could remember anything.
    Angus knew his own violent temper was his weakness. But the thought that poor Stuart had died and someone had used his script to get international fame and glory was past bearing. This Jamie
Gallagher was in Drim.
    He would drive up there and confront him.
    Josh Gates, hungover, ate his bacon and eggs in a bed-and-breakfast outside Perth as he read the interview with Jamie. Here was the man who was behind making his wife flaunt
herself on television.
    ‘He’ll have me to reckon with!’ howled Josh.
    The other diners averted their eyes. This must be the madman whose drunken retching had kept them awake during the night.
    Fiona moved through the next day as if walking in a nightmare. She could hardly bear to look at Jamie and at the triumphant little smirk on his face.
    Harry Frame arrived, having flown to Inverness early in the morning and taken a taxi up to Drim. Typical, thought Fiona. I have to watch out for every penny, and he spends about a hundred and
fifty pounds on a cab fare.
    ‘Hang on for another week and be sweet to Jamie,’ urged Harry. ‘It might blow over.’
    ‘No scriptwriter should have this amount of power,’ said Fiona.
    ‘Well, he hasn’t done anything since Football Fever , but everyone still talks about that.’
    Fiona picked up a script. ‘But Football Fever was clever and witty, and this is just crap.’
    ‘Jamie knows what he’s doing,’ said Harry.
    ‘Well, let’s take this location of Drim for a start. The Case of the Rising Tides . It’s on a sea loch, but the tides don’t rise and fall the way they would do at
the seaside. Also, the climax of the book is based on the flooding of the spring tide, and this is summer and the tide doesn’t flood.’
    ‘I thought we weren’t going by the book,’ said Harry. ‘What is it, Sheila?’
    ‘There’s an Angus Harris here, breathing blood and fire,’ said Sheila. ‘He says his friend Stuart Campbell wrote the script for Football Fever and Jamie pinched
it.’
    ‘Show him in,’ said Fiona quickly.
    Angus Harris was a good-looking young man with blond hair and a tanned face.
    ‘What’s this all about?’ asked Fiona.
    ‘This!’ Angus held out the script of Football Fever he had discovered. ‘My friend Stuart Campbell died when I was in the States. He left me his flat and effects. I was
going through his stuff and I found this. Now Stuart attended a scriptwriting class given by Jamie Gallagher, and as I remember, the people in this class submitted various scripts to Gallagher for
his opinion. The bastard must have copied Stuart’s script and, hearing he was dead,