Fallen Gods

Thirty-Two

"Have your guys taken a formal statement from Brother Aidan?" Skinner asked.

"Yes," Andy Martin replied. "Rod went to see him himself, yesterday afternoon."

"Did he sharpen up on his description of the guy Skipper I told you about?"

"No. If anything he was probably vaguer than when you saw him. He couldn't swear to a thing about the man, other than his age bracket, around the same as your brother's."

"Have you picked up any other leads up there?"

"None. The whole thing's a mass of uncertainties. We can't even be certain that Michael went into the Tay. There are various tributaries flowing into it; there's the Tummel, for example, that flows through Pitlochry. When the snows melted and the flood began, the whole river system was in spate."

"So he could have been dumped in the water in Pitlochry and wound up in Perth?"

"In theory, yes," Martin admitted. "Not above the hydro dam though, he wouldn't have got past that. They did open the sluice to increase the flow of water out of the reservoir, but a body would have been trapped."

"So what have you got that you're phoning me first thing in the morning? If it was just to say hello you'd have done it by now."

"I've got the post-mortem report. The pathologist was a bit slower than I'd have liked, but…"

"I agree. We'll have thoroughness before speed, every time. So what's the verdict?"

"You want all of it?"

"Of course."

"We don't have a homicide investigation, of any sort."

Skinner whistled. "I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that," he said, eventually. "He drowned, then?"

"No."

"What was the cause of death?"

"Michael died of a heart attack; all his main arteries were clogged up to hell, and he had a failing valve. His liver was also in the sort of condition you'd expect from someone who'd had an alcohol dependency for at least forty years. The pathologist said that he could have died at any moment, but that he did just over a week before discovery. The condition of the body shows that he was put into the river shortly after death. No doubt about that."

"The marks on the body? What about them?"

"Professor Hutchison agrees with you about the mark on the wrist; that he was probably wearing a leather watch strap and bloating of the body resulting from immersion could have stretched it to breaking point. We didn't find a watch at Miss Bonney's but it could have come off anywhere."

"What about the head wound? What about the bruising to the body?"

"They were all pre mortem, apart from the head wound. That was inflicted after death, possibly by something he hit in the river. The other bruising was largely superficial. Analysis showed a significant amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. Joe Hutchison says that the bruising could have been caused by him falling while drunk, and rolling downhill. I asked him about your claw hammer scenario. All he would say was, maybe."

"Stomach contents?"

"Jesus, Bob," Martin exclaimed, 'do you want to go that far?"

"Yes, Andy, I want to know everything."

"If you insist. He ate poached wild salmon, haunch of venison, well hung, mashed potatoes and turnip, and rum baba, shortly before he died, washed down with a significant amount of pretty good claret. The prof said that meal alone could have been enough to kill a man in his condition."

"Sexual activity?"

"Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Bob, surely…"

"My brother was homosexual, Andy. What if the man who took him away from Oak Lodge was someone from that area of his past?"

"Man, you were sixteen when he left and you never saw him again. How do you know that?"

"I just do. Okay?"

"Okay. There is no mention in the report of any signs of sexual activity, or of any sexually transmitted disease or infestation. Maybe he did go off to live happily every after, but there's no evidence of it."

Skinner sighed. "So what have we got?"

"Not a murder, certainly," said Martin. "Nor is there any physical evidence that might support a charge of culpable homicide; in theory those bruises could have been a beating and he could have had his coronary as a result, but the prof said that they were a couple of days old at the time of death."

"Could he have fallen in the drink and had his attack as a result? Did you ask that?"

"Yes, and Joe discounted it. He said that there would have been some ingestion or inhalation of river water even with that scenario, but there wasn't any."

"Yeah, okay." Skinner's disappointment was clear in his voice.

"He didn't put himself in the river," Martin continued. "We've established that. But even then, all I've got as a potential charge is concealing a death, which ranks pretty low on the priority list of CID in a small police force."

"Meaning you're scaling down your investigation?" Skinner asked, quietly.

"As you would do in the same circumstances."

"True."

"So you won't mind if I go looking for this Skipper bloke on my own?"

It was Martin's turn to heave a sigh. "And I could stop you, could I?" he exclaimed.