Deadly Still

CHAPTER THREE

Torquil had taken the snaking headland road on his classic Royal Enfield Bullet 500. Visibility in the mist was not too bad, allowing him to open up the throttle and zoom past Loch Hynish with its crannog and ancient ruin, passing along the edge of the machair, the sand on peat meadow that intervened between the heather covered Corlin Hills and the seaweed strewn beaches below.

A couple of miles on he took the fork down towards the deserted fishermen’s hamlet of Cabhail and parked in the isolated layby, then jumped down and scrunched across the shingle beech to the entrance of St Ninian’s Cave, one of his favourite places in the world.

The great basalt columned cave had been used by generations of island pipers, including his uncle, the Padre. He remembered the day when he had first taken him and his pipes and introduced him to the cave’s special magic. The young Torquil had hoped that he would one day follow in his uncle’s footsteps and become a champion piper and winner of the Silver Quaich. Much to their mutual pleasure he duly did, so that there now resided a Silver Quaich on each end of the mantelpiece in the manse’s sitting room.

Nature had carved this sea cave beautifully, so that it seemed to hold a sound perfectly for a moment and Torquil was able to hear the correct pitch of his playing. It was a natural tape recorder for a musician.

For a couple of minutes he ran through his repertoire of warm-up exercises, to get his finger movements right. He played a string of leumluaths, taorluaths, grace notes and birls. Then he played a couple of reels, a strathspey and a piobaireachd. He found it an excellent start to the day and a great way of problem-solving, because strangely enough the pipe music always cleared his head and allowed him to see solutions.

He felt the need of such help this morning after his conversation with Lorna over the wedding favours, as well as his dilemma about who would be his best man.

He felt altogether in much higher spirits when he emerged from the cave to return to the Bullet, albeit no clearer about his choice of best man. Stowing his pipes in the panier he saw that he had left his mobile phone in the other one. Picking it up he found nine missed calls and nine voicemails, all from a phone number he did not recognise.

‘Damnation,’ he muttered angrily at himself. ‘I’m an idiot all right, leaving my phone here. Someone wants me urgently.’

He called his voicemail and was surprised to hear Morag’s voice. All of the messages were from her and each successive one was a curt rejoinder to call her immediately on this number, until the last one, spoken in an icy tone: ‘DI McKinnon, it’s me again! I need to speak to you urgently as this is a matter for both uniform and detective branch. Wallace and Douglas Drummond, our special constables are with me now. We have an extreme emergency situation at the pillbox on Harpoon Hill. We have taped off the area and I am sending them out to search for a missing teenager. I am at the scene waiting for you to attend. Call me as soon as you receive this and I’ll give you the details. I repeat — this is extremely urgent!’

He did as she bid and listened in horror and disbelief as she briefly recounted the events of the morning.

Putting on his Cromwell helmet and adjusting his Mark Nine goggles he started up the Bullet and, doing a U-turn, accelerated into the mist.

The local office of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the Western Isles Council was on the first floor of the Duncan Institute, a strawberry-pink-faced building right in the middle of Harbour Street. All of the buildings and shop fronts on the crescent shaped street were different colours and all of them were maintained through a council grant, justified because it helped the local tourist industry.

The Western Isles council, administering the Outer Hebrides and whose main office was in Stornoway in the Isle of Lewis was the only council in the whole of Scotland to have retained the official name in Gaelic. It was a decision that Councillor Charlie McDonald completely agreed with. A staunch Scottish Nationalist Party member for his entire political life he had a vision of a Scotland independent from the United Kingdom, which would need, in his view, a part of it to retain its roots and its ancient language. That part, he believed should be the Hebrides and some of the West coast of Scotland, for this had been the region where the Gaelic had been spoken for centuries. He had lobbied hard to have all road signs labelled in the two languages of English and Gaelic.

All of this was the nationalist view that he promulgated to the people of his ward and which everyone believed. The truth known only to himself was a different matter. Charlie McDonald was an opportunist. Although he had made his name in local politics, he had loftier ambitions, and had set his sights upon one day becoming the Member of the Scottish Parliament, or MSP, for the Na h’Eileanan an lar — the constituency of the Scottish Parliament — which had exactly the same boundaries as the Western Isles Council. The present MSP was in rude good health, though, so he knew that he would have to just bide his time, stay in the public eye and remain popular.

Charlie McDonald knew only too well that maintaining popularity as a politician was not an easy matter, if one wished to stick strictly to the book. Being a pragmatist, he was prepared to curry favours and use whatever means were needed to gain advantages to those constituents that mattered most to him, while still doing the job for the better good of the many. It was important, of course, never to be seen to be biased.

He was a forty-two-year-old bachelor who owned a fishing business and also ran a croft with his brother on the south of the island, having worked both with his father until his sudden death a couple of years previously. His complexion was ruddy from his outdoor life, albeit not weather-beaten as were so many of his age. When working on his boat or on his croft he wore the appropriate working clothes, but when doing council work, as he was this day, he dressed in a jacket, collar and tie.

Sitting behind his pine desk piled with paperwork from his work on the Sustainable Development committee, which oversaw and looked after matters to do with crofting, fishing, conservation and tourism, he was feeling more fraught than usual as he conducted his weekly morning surgery, when local residents and constituents either arrived for an appointment or dropped in on spec. Starting at his regular hour of seven o’clock he had seen and dealt with a dozen requests, enquiries and grievances by quarter past nine. As usual he had made copious notes of things that he would attend to later, whether by phone, letter or email. He prided himself on never being absent or late for surgery. Seven was a good time to start, he felt, even in the long dark days of winter, since no one could say he was not there for them.

His last client had really tested his patience and it had taken all of his political skills and considerable wiles to deflect the questions and his aggressive manner. There had been much finger-jabbing, desk thumping and more than a little cursing in both Gaelic and English. The case was more complicated than most, for it crossed the boundary between councillor and constituent and veered into the murky waters of personal business.

He was running his hands through his hair with his elbows on his desk when Archie Reid, his secretary, knocked and immediately came in. Archie was a wiry fellow in his early sixties with pebble-thick spectacles, wearing a cardigan over a grey shirt and a neatly pressed tie. He was known locally as Archie Many Hats, on account of the fact that he had several jobs and managed to inveigle himself into various odd job positions, such as the five hours a week he was paid by the council to look after Charlie McDonald’s surgery and sort his mail. Apart from that he had two businesses at the far end of Harbour Street. The first was a tobacconist and sweet shop and next door to it he had run a smokehouse. Archie Reid’s Smoked Kippers were highly popular on West Uist and on Barra, Eriskey and Benbecula.

Never one to stand on ceremony, Archie said, ‘It’s as well that I’m near as deaf as a post despite these hearing aids that Doctor McLelland arranged or I fear I’d be reporting the bad language coming out of this office. Yon Hamish McNab was fair shouting and cursing.’

Charlie McDonald nodded with a smile. He actually suspected that Archie heard well enough even without his hearing aids and he was not entirely sure that his vision was half as bad as merited his thick lensed spectacles. ‘Sorry about that, Archie, but you know that it was him doing all the swearing, not me. Was there anyone out there in the waiting room?’

‘Luckily not. He strutted out of here in a fair temper, though.’

‘That’s because he was cross.’

‘Aye, I gathered that. What was he wanting —?’

‘I cannot say, Archie, you know that.’

‘It’ll either have been about his distillery or the crofting, then,’ replied Archie. ‘By the way, your old wife rang.’

Charlie frowned. ‘You mean my ex-wife, Bridget. Although I’m not her biggest fan anymore, she’s only forty-two, and that doesn’t make her old, Archie. She’s still only about half your age.’

Archie eyed him distastefully. ‘Contrachd ort! Curse you! Anyway, she sounded in a fair dither and wants you to call her back straight away.’ He jabbed a finger in the direction of the phone. ‘Urgent, she said. If I were you I’d make her your first call.’

‘Any mail?’

‘Not yet. It’s not like that new postie to be late, so maybe no one wants to write to you anymore.’

Charlie called his ex-wife Bridget, expecting that she wanted to harangue him about money.

‘Why didn’t you call me right away,’ she asked shrilly.

He sighed. It hadn’t always been like that between them. He had loved her once, even hung on her every word instead of cringing at the sound of her voice as he did now. He had to admit that he was no innocent, he had wronged her by having an affair. A stupid liaison that meant nothing to him, but unfortunately had meant everything to that stupid cow, Peggy, Bridget’s one-time best friend. She had thought that the best way to win him forever was to tell Bridget that they were having an affair and wanted to be together. Bridget was always one to fire from the hip. She went bananas and divorced him, and he duly ditched Peggy. He should have felt guilty, but he didn’t. He enjoyed being a relatively free agent.

The thing was he was only free half the time. He was still Catriona’s father and she was the apple of his eye. Acrimonious though the divorce had been both he and Bridget agreed to share custody and to bring her up and give her the best opportunities they could.

‘She’s not been home all night,’ Bridget stated sharply.

There was a moment’s silence which both he and Bridget expected to fill.

‘Well, where has she been?’ he asked. ‘She’s with you Sunday to Wednesday, and this is Monday.’

‘She said she was staying with you and that you said it was OK. She was going on from Vicky’s house.’

‘Vicky Spiers?’

‘Of course! What other Vicky does she know?’

Sarcasm, always sarcasm, he thought.

‘You’re hopeless, Charlie McDonald! So where is she? Did she even go to her job this morning? She’s only sixteen, for God’s sake.’

‘You don’t know if she’s gone to work?’

‘There’s no reply at the Hydro, it just went straight to their call-back message.’

Charlie sighed. He could see that she was in one of her ‘it’s your fault’ moods. ‘They’ll be busy, that’s all, Bridgie.’

‘Don’t call me that!’ she snapped. ‘Find out now.’

The phone went dead in his hand and he replaced it on the receiver. Almost immediately Archie tapped once on the door and came straight in.

‘While you were on the phone Mrs Esther Corlin-MacLeod rang me in reception wanting you to call her. She says you know her number. And just a minute later Mrs Helen Beamish the solicitor did the same as well.’ He stood on the other side of the desk with his hands deep in his pockets. ‘Was that about Catriona?’

Charlie frowned and declined to answer. ‘Not so much wrong with the hearing aids today, is there, Archie? Now, away and make some tea while I make a few calls.’

Archie gave him one of his sour looks. ‘You should have taken better care of your old wife. Bridget was a treasure, you ken.’

Charlie pulled one of his practiced smiles. ‘Tea, Archie?’

When Archie left he picked up the phone and smiled, debating with himself which call to make first. He was much in demand it seemed. He wondered what either of the women in question wanted. His lips curled into a leer as he imagined the two of them lying naked in the heather and him standing over them with a choice to make.

He dialled the number that immediately came into his head.

Torquil raced back along the road for a mile and then went off-road to weave his way along old rutted tracks through the gorse to reach the old road leading up to Harpoon Hill.

Morag was waiting outside, still just in her jogging kit, running on the spot with her arms crossed so she could rub her upper arms to keep warm. Behind her police barrier tape had been strung on canes around the pillbox and across the entrance.

‘You must be frozen, Morag,’ he called up as he pulled the Bullet onto its stand and took off his helmet. He ran up the slope, peeling off his leather jacket on the way so that he could drape it round her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry I left my phone while I was practising at St Ninian’s cave.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘This is a tragedy and no mistake.’

His sergeant’s pained expression and pale face told him how much of an ordeal she had found the situation. ‘I got Ewan to send up the barrier tape with the twins. We’ve strung it six feet clear all the way about the pillbox just in case. I sent them off to look for Vicky Spiers.’

He patted her shoulder. ‘Good work. So, Jamie’s inside?’

Tears had formed in her eyes and she nodded. ‘I couldn’t do anything for him, Torquil.’

‘I’m sure you did what you could, Morag. And Ralph McLelland is going to see Catriona McDonald?’

‘Aye, its fortunate that Stan Wilkinson was on his round and was coming along when he did. She can’t see anything, Torquil. The poor kid’s hysterical.’

He nodded. ‘Right, let’s take a look.’

‘Brace yourself, Piper,’ she said, using the nickname Torquil’s friends on the island often called him.

They ducked under the tape and entered the dark interior of the pillbox.

‘They put cardboard boxes over the windows and I left them in case the forensics need to see everything as it was. There’s a lantern just inside, which I switched off when I … when I stopped my resuscitation attempt. I … I thought they might be able to work out how long it had been on from its charge.’

‘You just stay here at the entrance then,’ Torquil told her, conscious that her voice was quaking.

The pillbox was a hexagonal structure built of reinforced concrete, with a Y-shaped wall inside that was not complete, so that men would have been able to walk round it from one embrasure to the next. It was designed thus to limit ricocheting bullets should it be targeted and it effectively divided it into two spaces and an entrance area. As Morag had said, it was dark because of the cardboard boxes the teenagers had blocked up the embrasures with. In the right hand one he saw the body of Jamie Mackintosh.

‘I tried CPR for twenty minutes, Torquil,’ Morag said from behind him. ‘That’s why the blanket is thrown aside there. And I took another one and wrapped it round Catriona.’

‘Did you take photographs?’

‘Aye, but this isn’t my phone so I’ll send them to my own phone and get them when I charge it up. Then I’d better delete them from Stan’s phone.’

‘Better not just yet,’ Torquil said over his shoulder. ‘Just in case they don’t get through to yours. We’d best impound Stan’s phone until we’ve sorted everything out with the Procurator Fiscal.’

Kneeling down, Torquil cursorily inspected the body, careful not to disturb anything else. Reaching for his own phone he took several pictures and then stood up to look round the pillbox.

‘He had been frothing at the mouth,’ Morg explained. ‘It looked like he’d had a fit, or some sort of seizure. Maybe he’d inhaled vomit. Anyway, I cleared his mouth before I gave him CPR. When I began chest compressions some dirty vomit came out of his mouth.’

Torquil nodded and looked around the pillbox. ‘So there are two blankets here, one belonging to Jamie beside his body, and one by the wall.’

‘That will be Vicky Spiers’s.’

‘Oatcakes, empty crisp bags, three cans of Coke and an empty bottle of whisky,’ he said out loud as he photographed them and their positions. ‘It does no harm to have more pictures.’ He stood up and looked round to see Morag standing at the entrance, studiously avoiding looking at the teenager’s body. ‘There’s no label on the bottle,’ he noted.

‘Catriona reeked of whisky and so did Jamie,’ Morag returned. Her hand went unconsciously to wipe her mouth. ‘I gave him mouth to mouth. The fumes almost knocked me out.’

Torquil knelt down and sniffed the empty bottle. ‘Daingead! I see what you mean. It’s peatreek, and bloody strong at that. I’m betting they were washing it down with Coke.’ Straightening up, he nodded at his sergeant. ‘Let’s get outside. We’ll need to get a Scene Examiner over from Lewis.’

Up until 2013, when the West Uist was part of the Hebridean Constabulary, they would have handled this entirely inhouse. Morag had undergone CID training in Dundee as a young officer, thereby picking up forensic experience before returning to West Uist, marriage and parenthood. She and Doctor Ralph McLelland, the local GP and police surgeon, who was also a qualified pathologist, had worked as an unofficial forensic team. With the amalgamation of all eight of the Scottish regional police forces into the national Police Scotland, everything had changed, and regulations were strictly enforced. Now they had to bring in a Scene Examiner, a specially trained civilian employed by the Scottish Police Authority to collect evidence, which would then be passed to Torquil as the local DI and to the forensic lab on the mainland.

It was with this all in mind that Morag and Torquil had taken so many photographs and taken good care not to disturb the scene of the sudden death of the teenager.

Outside, the mist had turned into mizzle as the fog descended, and therefore visibility had started to recede to fifty yards, as it was liable to do in the Western Isles. Looking up at the sky with a frown, Morag called the station and issued further instructions to Ewan McPhee.

‘Tell him to say that we urgently need this whisky bottle analysing,’ Torquil said over his shoulder. ‘Say we’re pretty sure its peatreek, but we suspect it’s got a high level of methyl alcohol in it.’

Morag transmitted the message. Then: ‘That’s exactly what I thought, boss. What with Catriona losing her sight and poor Jamie Mackintosh dying suddenly.’

Although technically Torquil was no longer her boss, since she was now uniform and he detective branch, they had continued to work together in the way they were used to, for it worked so well. She just made sure she stayed on the right side of Superintendent Lumsden.

Torquil nodded. ‘We really need Ralph McLelland up here to certify death before we can notify his parents. We’ve got to get moving on this.’

‘He’s going to have his hands full dealing with Catriona. That’s if he can do anything to help her,’ Morag added.

‘Aye, and there is Vicky Speirs to find. Let’s hope the weather lifts, because it isn’t helping. There simply aren’t enough of us, Morag.’ He glanced at his watch and took a rapid intake of breath. ‘Nèamhan math! Good heavens, the new Detective Constable. I’m supposed to be meeting her off the ferry.’