Deathly Wind

chapter six

Annie McConville was a formidable lady. Some people thought of her as the old dog-loving woman who was losing her wits, while others were more generous and averred that she was simply a glorious eccentric. The longer Torquil had known her, the more he had become aware of the strong personality that lurked behind the façade of eccentricity. He was sure that she fostered the image, just as Miss Melville, another West Uist worthy, played up to her image as the retired local schoolmistress.

Yet there was one quality possessed by Annie McConville that was now abundantly clear to Torquil. The old lady had a level head. She had discovered a body under tragic circumstances and had neither panicked nor gone hysterical. What she had done before Torquil arrived was to examine the body for any signs of life.

‘The poor soul has been dead since yesterday, I would be betting,’ she said, looking over his shoulder as Torquil squatted beside the body of the crofter as soon as he had telephoned to Kyleshiffin for assistance.

‘He’s had a fall, that’s for sure. Dashed his brains out,’ she said conversationally, as she clipped leads on the two West Highland terriers who were both cowering unhappily at her ankles, clearly anxious to get away from the disquieting dead body.

Annie sucked air between her teeth. ‘Aye, it looks like an eagle killed him.’

Torquil had noticed the three long gashes on Kenneth McKinley’s face, extending from above the left eye and running diagonally down across his cheek to the corner of his mouth. It was an obvious wound that stood out from the gashes and contusions that he seemed to have sustained in his fall.

Gingerly, and futilely he knew, he felt the neck for a carotid pulse. The cold skin was a shade somewhere between blue and purple and felt rock hard as rigor mortis had long set in.

‘He’ll have been after the eagle eggs up there, I am thinking,’ Annie went on.

‘You may be right, Annie,’ Torquil said, pursing his lips pensively. ‘But perhaps he was after the eagles themselves?’

‘Now why would you be saying that, Inspector McKinnon?’ Annie asked in a voice that almost seemed indignant, as if she was irritated that he had come up with an alternative theory to her own.

Despite himself, Torquil answered automatically, for he was mentally trying to piece things together. ‘Because you don’t necessarily need a rifle to rob a nest of eggs.’ He pointed mechanically to the bullet that lay beside the body, as if it had been thrown out of his camouflage jacket pocket upon impact with the rocky ground. ‘It looks like a .308 rifle bullet.’ He straightened up and peered round in search of the rifle. When he saw no sign of it he looked up at the sheer rock face and the ledge high above. Perhaps it is still up there, he mused to himself.

Annie tugged the Westies’ leads and the two dog stood upright eagerly ready to retreat.

‘I didn’t see that,’ she said coldly. ‘We’ll be away then, Inspector. You know where I am if you are requiring a statement.’

Torquil noted the angry tone that had suddenly entered her voice. ‘Are you all right, Annie?’ he asked concernedly.

‘I am perfectly well, thank you, Inspector McKinnon. I just did not want to say something now that I might regret later on.’

Torquil eyed her quizzically. ‘What do you mean, Annie? Why would you say something that you regret?’

In response Annie zipped up her anorak to its limit and sniffed coldly. ‘Oh don’t worry, Inspector McKinnon, I didn’t mean that I have anything to hide! I meant that I don’t want to say or think anything ill of the dead. Especially not when someone has lost their life so young. It is just that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone who harms one of the Lord’s creatures – be that animal, bird or man.’

Torquil watched her walk off with the two Westies tugging at their leads.

Her parting words had given him a strange feeling. ‘Animal, bird or man.’ He looked down at the bullet lying beside the body. He had left it there deliberately, since it would need to be photographed beside his body. It was certainly a calibre that would be enough to kill a man!

Doctor Ralph McLelland arrived in the Kyleshiffin Cottage Hospital ambulance about quarter of an hour later. It was not a purpose-built ambulance, but was in fact a fairly ancient camper van that had been donated to the cottage hospital by Angus Macleod, the late laird of the Dunshiffin estate. Sergeant Morag Driscoll arrived moments after him in the official police Ford Escort.

Torquil led them to the body and explained his findings before the GP-cum-police surgeon went to work, assisted by Morag, who was forensically trained.

Ralph McLelland was one of Torquil’s oldest friends. He was the third generation of his family to minister to the local people of West Uist. He had trained at Glasgow University then embarked on a career in forensic medicine, having gained his diploma in medical jurisprudence as well as the first part of his membership of the Royal College of Pathologists. But then his father had fallen ill and he had felt the old strings of loyalty tug at him, so that he returned to the island to take over his father’s practice and look after him in the last six months of his life. He had been in single-handed practice for six years.

As for Morag Driscoll, she was a thirty-something single parent of three children. She too had for a time striven to break loose from her island background and had undergone CID training in Dundee before returning to West Uist, marriage and parenthood. Her husband’s early demise from a heart attack had given her a personal drive to keep healthy – which she managed in the main, except for a slight problem with her weight – so that she could provide for her ‘three bairns,’ as she called them.

Together, Morag and Ralph were a formidable team, forming as they did the unofficial forensic unit of the West Uist division of the Hebridean Constabulary. They knew unerringly what the other needed in terms of the examination of the body and the scene.

‘Is it a straightforward accident, do you think?’ Torquil asked, after the pair had spent about half an hour examining and photographing the body, the surrounding area, collecting bits and pieces and bagging them up in small polythene envelopes.

Ralph and Morag looked at each other. Ralph raised his eyebrows and Morag shook her head.

‘Well, it looks like it could have been an accident,’ said Ralph. ‘But I don’t like the look of that bullet you found.’

‘That’s my view as well, Piper,’ agreed Morag. ‘And where is the rifle?’

‘That’s what I thought,’ replied Torquil. ‘I took a walk up to that ledge and saw where he must have tumbled over. But there is no sign of a gun there. So either he didn’t have one with him,’ he paused and stroked his chin worriedly. ‘Or he had one – and someone for some reason has removed it from the scene.’

Death has a galvanizing effect upon people. An hour and a half later Torquil stood beside Alistair McKinley in the mortuary of the Kyleshiffin Cottage Hospital. He could empathize with the old crofter as he pulled back the sheet to expose the corpse of Kenneth McKinley, for he himself had personal experience of having to identify the dead body of a loved one. He remembered that it was like being hit with a sledge hammer, then having your insides twisted like an elastic band. He recalled the scream that threatened to erupt from the depths of his being, the instantaneous dryness of mouth and the overwhelming sense of disbelief.

Alistair McKinley’s normally ruddy complexion suddenly went pale, as if he had instantly haemorrhaged three pints of blood. And he teetered for a moment if on the point of fainting. But he didn’t. He immediately straightened up and swallowed hard, fighting down rising bile in his throat.

Then, ‘That is my son, Kenneth McKinley,’ the old man volunteered. ‘As you know well enough, Inspector McKinnon.’

‘I am truly sorry, Alistair. I am also afraid that—’

‘That bastard McArdle is going to pay for this!’

‘I’m sorry, Alistair,’ Torquil said quietly, with the intention of keeping Alistair McKinley calm. ‘What connection is there between them?’

‘This is his fault. The lad was as mad as a hatter after Gordon MacDonald’s funeral. He was disappointed that the – laird – told him he couldn’t have Gordon’s croft. He went off in a foul mood. When he was in one of those dark moods you couldn’t—’ His face creased into a woeful expression of pain – ‘you couldn’t argue with him. He was capable of doing anything.’ He shook his head. ‘Only this time he went and got himself killed.’

‘But what did you mean about Mr McArdle, Alistair? About him paying?’

Alistair McKinley held Torquil’s gaze for a moment, before shaking his head. ‘I meant … nothing, Inspector. It is not for me to say what will happen. But the good Lord may have designs on those with blood on their hands. That’s all I have to say.’

Suddenly, his weather-beaten face creased and tears appeared in his eyes as a sobbing noise forced itself from his throat. He wiped his eyes with a pincer-like movement of his right finger and thumb. ‘I should have stopped him. It’s my fault, Inspector.’

‘How so, Alistair?’

‘I was cross with him. We had an argument as well. I told him he needed more backbone. I said I was fed up with his fantasies. When he went off with his rifle I should have stopped him. I should have locked him in his room, the way I used to.’

‘So he had a rifle with him, did he? You are sure about that?’

‘Absolutely sure.’

Torquil did not think it an appropriate time to mention that the gun was missing.

The Padre was pulling into the Cottage Hospital car-park on his 1954 Ariel Red Hunter motor cycle on his way to visit Rhona McIvor when he saw his nephew come out of the back door of the little hospital with Alistair McKinley. The old crofter’s demeanour and posture told him that some tragedy had occurred. The fact that they were coming out of that particular door immediately rang alarm bells since the door only opened from the inside, and he knew full well that it meant they had come from the mortuary.

He crossed the car-park to meet them. After seeking Alistair McKinley’s permission, Torquil explained about the finding of Kenneth McKinley’s body at the foot of the cliff.

‘Do you need some company, Alistair?’ asked the Padre.

The crofter scowled. ‘If you are going to the Bonnie Prince Charlie, the answer is yes, but if you mean do I want God’s company, the answer is definitely no!’

Lachlan glanced at his watch as Torquil retreated, but not before he had given him a gesture that meant ‘look after him’.

The Padre sighed inwardly. He felt profoundly sad at the loss of a young islander. He put a comforting hand on Alistair McKinley’s shoulder. ‘No, it will just be me, Alistair. The Lord never pushes Himself on folk, but He’s there if you need Him later.’ He squeezed the shoulder. ‘Come on then, we’ll drink to your lad’s memory. Just the one drink, though. The whisky bottle can be a false comfort at a time like this.’

Alistair McKinley said nothing but allowed himself to be steered down Harbour Street to the Bonnie Prince Charlie Tavern. The aroma of freshly cooked seafood assailed their nostrils as they entered the bar, behind which the doughty landlady Mollie McFadden and her bar staff were busy pulling pints of Heather Ale and engaging in healthy banter with the clientele.

‘And what can I be doing for you gentlemen?’ Mollie asked, as she finished serving another customer and greeted them with a smile. She blinked myopically behind a pair of large bifocal spectacles perched on the end of her nose. She was a woman of almost sixty years with a well-developed right arm that had pumped a veritable sea of beer over the years.

‘A drink in memory of my boy, Kenneth,’ Alistair McKinley said; then raising his voice above the background of chatter, ‘And a drink for anyone who will drink with me.’

Mollie’s face registered a succession of emotions from shock to profound sadness. ‘Oh Alistair, I am so sorry to hear that. An accident, was it?’ she asked, as she signalled to her bar staff to begin dispensing whiskies from the row of optics above the bar to the assembled customers willing to join the crofter in a drink.

‘A tragedy,’ Alistair returned. ‘He fell from a cliff at the base of the Corlins.’

Mollie paused momentarily from pouring a couple of large Glen Corlin malt whiskies for Alistair and the Padre. ‘Was he climbing in the Corlins?’

The crofter shook his head. ‘He was after shooting the eagles, I am thinking.’ He picked up one of the ornamental Bonnie Prince Charlie jugs of water that lined the bar and added a dash to his whisky.

Mollie nodded sympathetically. Being well used to orchestrating toasts and all sorts of drinking ceremonies, both joyous and tragic, she clanged the bell above her head. As the bar went silent she drew attention to the crofter standing in front of her.

‘To my lad, Kenneth McKinley,’ called out Alistair, raising his glass.

A chorus followed, then about twenty glasses were raised, drained and then snapped down on the bar. Half a minute or so of silence ensued, then the customers dutifully and respectfully came up and offered their condolences to the bereaved father.

When the throng had passed, Alistair McKinley fixed Lachlan with a steely gaze. ‘You said just the one, Padre, but I have a mind to drink this place dry. Will you be staying with me?’

The Padre had charged his old briar pipe and was in the process of applying a match to the bowl. He blew smoke ceilingwards.

‘My words were merely cautionary, Alistair,’ he said. ‘I will happily have one more drink with you, but then I will take you home myself. If it is your wish to drink more then I suggest that we get you a small bottle to take home. You need to keep the lid on it.’

‘Padre, you mean well, I know. But at this moment I don’t give a monkey’s curse for anyone. I’ve lost my boy today and that means I’ve lost my whole damned reason for life.’ He tapped his glass on the bar and nodded meaningfully at Mollie, for her to replenish their glasses.

Lachlan laid his pipe in an ashtray and put a hand on the crofter’s arm. ‘Alistair, I know you are hurting right now, which is only natural. But it would be best to deal with it naturally. Drinking will only make the hurt worse.’

Alistair did not bother with water this time. He drained his glass and immediately signalled for another. ‘I’ll find my own way home, Padre. And right now, the only person that needs to worry about me drinking isn’t you – it’s that bloody laird!’

One of the things that Torquil had not missed while he had been away was the twice weekly telephone call he was obliged to make to his superior officer, Superintendent Kenneth Lumsden.

‘Time to phone the headmaster,’ he said to Sergeant Morag Driscoll when he arrived back at the converted bungalow on Kirk Wynd, which served as the Kyleshiffin police station.

Morag had been engrossed with paperwork at the front desk. ‘Rather you than me, boss,’ she replied, laying her pen down and jumping down from her high stool to lift the counter flap. ‘Would you like a wee fortifying cup of tea to set you up?’

Torquil sighed and shook his head. ‘I’ve gone off tea for now,’ he shrugged his shoulders dejectedly. ‘I’m sorry, Morag.’

Morag nodded, her own face dropping. They were both thinking of the big constable, Ewan McPhee and his ever-willingness to make tea. ‘That’s OK, boss. I guess it wouldn’t taste the same without being stewed!’

Despite themselves they both grinned at the reference to Ewan’s ineptitude at brewing tea.

‘Do you think there’s still a chance, Torquil?’

He bit his thumb. ‘Of finding him alive?’ He gave a slight shake of the head. ‘I can’t see it, Morag. But I hope to God we can find his body, for Jessie’s sake. I’m going to go out in the Seaspray first thing in the morning. Are the Drummond twins going to be about?’

‘Aye. They said they’d be in to see you at nine-thirty. They’ve been a couple of stars while you’ve been away, but they still have to make their living.’

‘Thank heaven for our special constables,’ agreed Torquil. And he went into his office and dialled Superintendent Lumsden.

To say that there was a personality clash between Torquil and his superior officer would be an understatement, for they had clashed horns on several occasions, and on one it had even resulted in Torquil being suspended from duty for a short spell. The superintendent hailed from the lowlands of Scotland and seemed to loathe and despise the Hebridean way of life. He was a big man with a ruddy face, a walrus moustache and a chin that could have been carved out of wood. He was a widower and had only applied for the post with the Hebridean Constabulary because his only daughter had married a teacher on Benbecula and he had wanted to be close to her. A police officer of the rules and regulations variety, he had never found it easy to deal with the more laid back approach to life of the islanders. Although he lived on Benbecula and worked between offices on North and South Uist, his jurisdiction ran throughout the whole of the Outer Hebrides. The running of the West Uist division of the Hebridean Constabulary particularly incensed him. Although it only consisted of an inspector, a sergeant, a constable and two special constables, he considered it shambolic to the point of chaos. He disliked the disregard for uniform, schedules and rank. For this he seemed to hold Torquil McKinnon personally responsible. He felt that twenty-eight was too young to achieve the rank of inspector, he himself having had to wait until he was in his mid-thirties.

‘I had been expecting your call yesterday, McKinnon,’ his voice boomed down the phone as soon as Torquil was put through to him.

‘I have been catching up, Superintendent Lumsden. Would you—’

‘What’s the latest on McPhee?’

Torquil bristled. Somehow to have his friend referred to by his surname, as if they were discussing a local crook, rankled. Part of him felt he should remonstrate, but he choked back the feeling and replied calmly.

‘He is still missing, sir. I am going out to look around the island myself first thing in the morning.’

There was a moment’s silence, then a soft creaking noise from the other end of the phone. Torquil imagined the beefy superintendent shaking his head disdainfully, his stiff collar producing the creaking.

‘Do what you have to do, McKinnon. But bear in mind it is five days now since he went missing. He is bound to be dead.’

‘I know that, sir. I just want to find his body. He is – was, my friend. I’ll be going out with the Drummonds.’

At the mention of the Drummond name Torquil imagined that he heard the same neck-creaking noise. Then, ‘If there is no news by tomorrow, I feel that a first report to the Procurator Fiscal should be made. It looks as though there will have to be a Fatal Accident Enquiry.’ There was a sigh. ‘It would be better if we had a body, though.’

Torquil’s hackles rose again, but he suppressed his ire. ‘Talking about a Fatal Accident Enquiry, Superintendent, I have to report that there has been another death. A climbing accident, I think. We found a body at the foot of a cliff at the base of the Corlins.’ He declined to mention that Ralph McLelland, Morag and himself all had reservations about the death.

‘Damn it, McKinnon. Are you some sort of jinx! You go away for a holiday then all hell breaks loose, people fall in the sea and go missing, or fall off cliffs.’

Torquil was about to reply, when his superior snapped, ‘Fax me a full report by the end of the day.’

The line went dead and Torquil found himself staring at the receiver held in his white-knuckled fist. ‘Thank you for your usual support, Superintendent Lumsden,’ he said.