Flotsam and Jetsam

ELEVEN

Ewan had been relieved that he didn’t have to run the gauntlet of any more midges on the road along Sharkey’s Boot towards the row of crofts and outhouses where Rab McNeish lived and did the bulk of his carpentry and built his coffins.

He dismounted and stretched, then rubbed his neck where he seemed to have been bitten by hundreds of midges.

‘Let’s see if we can learn anything here then,’ he said to himself, as he crunched over the gravel to the front door. He noted the repair work that had been done.

‘I think his door must have taken a kicking,’ he said. ‘And it looks as if he has mended it himself. It is a great skill he must have with the hammer.’ And he grinned to himself as he compared it to his skill with the Highland hammer.

He knocked on the door and stood waiting for a moment, fully expecting Rab McNeish to throw it open any moment. But there was no answer.

‘Strange, he knew I was on my way,’ he mused, as he knocked again.

Then he tried the door and found that it opened straight away into a neat and ordered little hall, with closed doors to the right and left.

‘Mr McNeish? It’s me, PC Ewan McPhee. Hello.’

There was no reply. He tapped on each door before opening them and popping his head round.

‘What the dickens?’ he said, as he stopped and strained his ears. ‘Is that someone crying, I am hearing?’ Then he shook his head. ‘And now it sounds like an animal whining. More than one maybe.’ And following the sound he retraced his steps outside and went round the back of the cottages to a row of outhouses. By the timber stacked up against the walls and the sawdust that covered the ground outside it looked as if these were Rab McNeish’s workshops.

The noises were definitely getting louder.

He pushed open a door and stared in disbelief. There were about a dozen cages each with a cowering ill-kept dog whimpering and shivering away. They seemed like mongrels mostly and most of them were skinny with corrugated rib cages showing.

‘Goodness me! What’s going on here?’ he asked.

Then he saw the long bench with saws, various hunks of wood and something that looked like a cattle-prod lying on a bench.

The crying noise started again. A definite sobbing from behind the door. He took a step in and looked round.

Rab McNeish was curled up on the stone floor, almost in a foetal position, crying like a baby.

‘F-Forgive me!’ he moaned between sobs. ‘It’s the germs! The germs! They’re going to kill me. They’ll kill us all!’

Ewan felt a wave of nausea come over him. Rab McNeish was clearly in need of help that he couldn’t give him. He pulled out his mobile and called Dr Ralph McLelland.

Morag drove up to Bruce McNab’s cottage and quickly got out of the Escort. His dogs were barking furiously in their cages and she guessed that they had been barking away for some time, since by their eyes they seemed to be both distressed and angry. They were hurling themselves at the fronts of the cages in attempts to get out.

She didn’t wait, but went straight for the door that stood ajar.

And then she heard Sandy’s raised voice, cursing. And there was the sound of splashing water.

‘Police!’ she called, as she ran through the kitchen, noting the broken-open shotgun.

‘Bastard! Is this how you did it?’ she heard Sandy shout.

Along the hall she ran and burst into the bathroom.

Sandy King was staring wild eyed, as he pushed Bruce McNab’s bloodied face and head into the overflowing bath.

Morag stared in disbelief for a moment as she took in the scene. Bruce McNab was flailing about, but was being easily overpowered by Sandy. He held his head under the water and bubbles were streaming upwards.

‘Sandy, for God’s sake! You’ll kill him!’ she cried, dashing forward and grabbing his hands.

Sandy stared at her and snarled angrily. ‘Back off!’ Then he swung an elbow at her viciously and caught her on the side of the head. She tumbled sidewards and struck her head on the sink.

She slumped to the floor.

Torquil rode up the old track towards Half Moon Cove. The sand had been compacted by numerous tyre marks, leaving two continuous ruts with machair plants growing between.

‘Hello? What’s this?’ he wondered, as a set of tracks suddenly left the track and disappeared into sand dunes.

He stopped the Bullet and pulled up his goggles to see better. ‘Looks like a car went in but hasn’t come out again.’ He set off and turned into the dunes and found a Mercedes parked on its own. A fine patina of sand had already settled over the windscreen and bodywork.

‘Looks as if it has been here a while, Crusoe,’ he said to the dog in the pannier. ‘Registration FNJ 1. I am thinking that has to stand for Flotsam and Jetsam. So it looks as if Mr Fergie Ferguson has been paying a visit on old Guthrie.’

He switched off the engine and dismounted. ‘Come on then, Crusoe, we’ll take a look.’ He was about to set off when he noticed the footprints leading from the car. ‘Curious and curiouser. Let’s follow our TV man, since it looks as if he didn’t go up the main track.’

And sure enough, although the winds from the sea had almost covered the prints, there was enough for Torquil to see that he had taken a circuitous route around the high fenced enclosure.

‘Looks like he climbed over here, Crusoe. Which means I am going this way too.’ He held out a stern hand. ‘I want you to stay put. No noise. I won’t be long.’

Crusoe whimpered, wagged his tail a couple of times, then settled down on his haunches and laid his head on the ground.

Torquil grinned then started shinning over the fence. He landed on the other side beside a couple of indentations where Fergie Ferguson seemed to have landed. Then he followed the tracks across more dunes until they came to the back door of the beachcomber’s sprawling house.

He tried the door handle and it opened straight away.

‘Hello! It is Inspector McKinnon of the West Uist Police.’

There was no answer.

‘Mr Lovat? Mr Ferguson? Anyone at home?’

He made his way through a pristine clean kitchen, across a spartanly furnished hallway and into a long front room overlooking the sea. It was set out like a studio, with all sorts of driftwood, sculptures and piles of packets and boxes on benches.

‘Anyone at home?’

He noted the telescope set up in the bay window with a bottle of Glen Corlan whisky nearby it. He picked it up and noted the sticker from Anderson’s Emporium.

‘I am guessing that Alec Anderson is about the only person to visit here,’ he muttered.

Then he started to feel uneasy. There was a chill in the room, despite the sun. And a noise.

He turned, localizing the noise to a huge chest freezer that was humming by a back wall.

‘What’s this for? Don’t tell me old Guthrie is an ice-cream fanatic.’

He crossed to the freezer and idly lifted the lid.

The first thing he saw was what seemed like a bloody rat. Then he realized that it was a bloodstained hair-piece. But under it was a face with unseeing eyes staring up at him. Then he realized that he was looking at a dead body. Yet there were too many hands.

‘My God! Two bodies!’ he gasped.

‘That’s right, Inspector,’ a voice snapped behind him. And then he felt something cold and hard dig into his back. ‘This is a Glock semi-automatic. It’s just over your spine and it will cut you in half if you so much as move a muscle. There is room in this freezer for a third body.’

Dr Ralph McLelland had fortuitously been visiting a patient on the nearby Wee Kingdom. He answered Ewan’s distress call straight away and quickly took charge.

‘The poor chap is away with the fairies. I’ll need to admit him to the cottage hospital under the Mental Health Act and then I’ll need to get a psychiatrist over from the mainland. Meanwhile, you’ll have to get the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to come and take a look at these poor creatures. It looks as if he’s been systematically abusing them.’ He sucked air between his teeth. ‘It’s a bad business, Ewan. I reckon it will take time for them to come across, what with the restrictions on the ferries with the murder case. You might be as well just having a word with Annie McConville.’

‘Aye, it is a pity that she doesn’t like mobile phones. I could have given her a ring straight away.’

‘Well, why don’t you go and see her now? I will have to wait until Sister Lamb can get here to help me from the cottage hospital.’

Somewhat relieved to be able to leave the harrowing scene Ewan headed off on Nippy and was soon back on one of the side roads leading to Kyleshiffin.

As he turned on to the main road a familiar canary yellow camper-van came hurtling towards him. The driver peeped its horn at him and made to swerve round him, but Ewan held up his hand for it to stop.

Deliberately he dismounted, switched off the engine and set the moped on its stand.

‘What’s wrong, Constable?’ the swarthy driver asked, rolling down his window. The sun glinted off his ear-ring.

‘Step out of the van would you?’ Ewan asked. ‘Both of you.’

With a huff of impatience the driver opened the door and got out. ‘What’s this about? We haven’t got much time,’ he demanded.

‘I can see that. You two always seem to be in a hurry. Too much of a hurry. There have now been three occasions when I have been concerned abut the way that you handle this vehicle.’

‘We’re sorry, Officer,’ said the slimmer and younger of the two. ‘We’ll be more careful.’

‘Oh to hell with this lummox,’ said the other. ‘He can’t do anything. We weren’t breaking the law.’

‘I do not like your tone, my man,’ said Ewan.

‘No? Well you’ll just have to lump it, mate, because we’re too busy to stop and chew the cud with the likes of you. Come on Tosh, let’s get going.’

‘Just a minute now,’ said Ewan, grabbing hold of the man’s arm.

In a trice the man darted a hand inside his camouflage jacket and drew out a gun.

‘Christ, Craig, what are you playing at?’ exclaimed the lean one.

But Ewan had reacted instantly. He had grabbed them both around the neck at the same time bringing his knee up sharply to dash the gun from the one called Craig’s hand. Then he bashed their heads together and held them until he felt them both slump into unconsciousness.

‘I will not tolerate disrespect to the law,’ Ewan said. ‘And firearms are just as illegal here as on the mainland.’

He nudged the firearm away with his foot then reached down and handcuffed the two men together.

‘Now let us see what you have inside this van of yours,’ he said, walking to the rear and opening the door. He looked inside and stood gaping for a moment.

The noise of an approaching vehicle made him turn and he looked round to see the Drummond twins approach in their truck.

‘Well, well, well, what have we here?’ Wallace asked, as he climbed out.

‘I have apprehended a couple of villains. It looks like they are the ones responsible for the spate of burglaries on the island.’

‘And it looks as if they might be out of it for a while,’ Douglas said with glee. ‘They didn’t know what they were doing when they picked on Ewan McPhee. Well done, big fellow.’

Ewan grinned proudly and bent down to retrieve the gun. ‘Aye, a right pair of scunners these two. I don’t know what Torquil will say when he hears that gun crime has come to West Uist.’

Morag felt water splashing on her face and hands on her shoulders.

The memory of Sandy King holding Bruce McNab’s head under the water in the bath brought her back to sudden consciousness. She opened her eyes and saw Sandy King staring at her with wide open eyes.

She lashed out and caught him on the side of the head.

‘Morag! You’re OK! Thank the Lord.’

She clenched a fist to punch again, but stopped when she saw the concern on his face and she realized that the water had been splashed in her face to try and rouse her from unconsciousness, not an attempt to drown her.

‘Sandy, what have you done—?’

‘To McNab? Just taught him a lesson. He’ll be OK. Look.’

And she saw Bruce McNab was lying slumped against the bath. He was bleary-eyed and breathing heavily, but he was alive.

‘We had a fight,’ Sandy explained as she managed to sit up. ‘Or rather, he fought a bit as I dragged him to the bath. If you hadn’t come I might have taken it a bit further. But he deserves it, the useless piece of shit.’

‘Heather McQueen was your sister, wasn’t she?’ Morag asked.

Sandy stood up and swallowed hard, his eyes filling up with tears. ‘She was my half-sister. That’s why we had different names. There were just the two of us left after my mum died. We were like chalk and cheese. She was bright and liked lads, while I was sporty and a bit over-focused on being a football star. We had a huge row on the phone one time, what about God only knows, but from then we didn’t communicate, not even Christmas or birthday cards. Effectively we wrote each other out of our lives.

‘Then I was off at soccer camps and then playing for one club or another. I was playing in Munich when it happened and I never found out until a month after. How do you think that felt? I was loaded with guilt.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘How did you find out?’

‘I went right back to basics and traced her birth, then – I found your name.’

‘I studied everything about her death and just couldn’t believe it. She was a great swimmer. I thought there had to be some man involved in all this. That was what Heather was about. And it all pointed to that Dent character. I found out that he was still working here on West Uist. When Dan Farquarson started making advances to me, I guess you’ll find out about that, he wanted to get me in his pocket so that I could fix a match here or two. Well, it was the ideal opportunity to come here, so I persuaded him to arrange it.’

‘And so you came to West Uist, for what? To get even?’

‘To find out if he was responsible for her death. I was going to beat the hell out of him. And then I found out it wasn’t him. It was this specimen!’

Bruce McNab’s head had slumped on to his chest.

‘But I’m getting ahead of myself. I found out where she was buried after I burgled the local newspaper office. Fancy that, eh? Me a common burglar! But I needed to look through the papers without anyone suspecting what I was doing. And when I went to lay flowers on her grave, low and behold, who did I find doing the same thing, but Bruce McNab.’

At the mention of his name Bruce McNab looked up. ‘I deserved everything you gave me, King,’ he said through puffed lips. ‘Except I didn’t do anything to your sister. I loved her, you know. I really loved her. We had an affair, a lovely, special affair. But she had to keep it all secret because of Digby bloody Dent. Why, I don’t know.

‘But that night we went out in the boat and got drunk. Doped up and drunk. I passed out and found her gone. I just assumed she had gone for a swim on her own and swam ashore somewhere.’

Morag gasped and covered her mouth. ‘But instead, she drowned.’

Bruce McNab choked back tears. ‘And the useless idiot that I am, I didn’t have the gumption to come forward. I just kept quiet.’

‘Why did you wait to put flowers on her grave after so long?’ Morag asked.

‘We had a run in with Dr Dent the other morning. I suppose it unsettled me, brought it all back and I felt guilty.’

‘But what I don’t understand, Sandy, is why you didn’t just have it out with Bruce McNab? Why all this?’ She pointed at Bruce McNab’s bruised and bloody face and the water-soaked bathroom.

‘I wanted him to suffer a bit. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t said anything. Especially when he had kept some of her things.’ And from a pocket of his track suit he drew out a locket and chain. ‘There’s a picture of my mum and Heather’s dad in here. My mum gave her that one birthday.’

Bruce McNab buried his face in his hands. ‘I loved her. I didn’t know who broke into my place and stole it, or why. Except that they had come looking for it. I thought you were coming to kill me.’

‘I didn’t know that would be here,’ Sandy said. ‘I was just looking for something of hers to confirm that you knew her. And the more time that we spent fishing and all that rot, when you didn’t seem bothered about anything, well, it just made me want to make you suffer. To understand what it must have been like for her.’

Morag stood up and looked Sandy straight in the eye. ‘Were you going to drown him, Sandy?’

He returned the look, his eyes registering nothing but sorrow. Then he shook his head. ‘No. I just had to make a gesture for Heather.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Family honour, I suppose.’

Torquil slowly turned round and looked at the gun held steadily in Alec Anderson’s hands.

‘Are you responsible for these bodies?’ he asked.

‘Only one of them, although I have to admit that I put them both in there.’ He smiled. ‘Oh and I would appreciate it if you would put your hands up. I haven’t decided on the best way of disposing of you yet.’

Torquil raised his hands. ‘I think you should put that gun down and we can talk.’

‘We can talk well enough like this, Torquil McKinnon.’ He backed across the room, all the time keeping the Glock pointed at Torquil’s head. He picked up the bottle of Glen Corlan and uncorked it with his teeth, then poured a hefty shot. He took a swig and then returned to face Torquil.

‘How long has Guthrie Lovat been dead?’ Torquil asked.

Alec shrugged. ‘About ten months. The old fool had to go and have a stroke or a heart attack as we were unloading the Sea Beastie. Just dropped dead at my feet.’

‘And why didn’t you just call for help?’

Alec Anderson laughed. ‘Are you kidding me? We had been business partners for five years. How would I explain the load of heroin in the boat?’

Torquil’s eyes widened. ‘Heroin? On West Uist?’

‘Aye, heroin on West Uist!’ he repeated sarcastically. ‘You may not think it, Inspector, but this idyllic wee island of yours is a sort of ‘traffic island’! How do you think old Guthrie became so rich? From his driftwood sculptures? Away with you. We collect the goods from the buoys that they fling off the cargo boats as they go up and round to Scandinavia. It has been the perfect cover all these years.’

‘And so Guthrie Lovat died and I suppose you have been pretending that he’s still here.’

‘That’s right. I’ve even wired up a tape-recording on the intercom system to discourage visitors. Only Alec Anderson ever visits here to deliver his supplies and to collect his packages of artwork to send all over the world. Only it is heroin not driftwood.’ He smirked and took another swig of whisky. ‘And I’ve been chained to this for the last ten months until I worked out the old fool’s account number.’

‘What account?’

‘His numbered Swiss account. The wee place that our suppliers post money into. The old sod would never give me that, he just gave me my cut. But after he died I couldn’t get at it at all, until I found the account number. Only by then that Digby Dent bastard was bleeding me dry.’

‘He was blackmailing you? About Guthrie?’

‘He was. He had seen me drag his body up the beach from the jetty. I don’t think I did it too gently, actually. But he had also seen me that other time, when Guthrie was still alive and I moved a dead body.’

‘That will have been Heather McQueen.’

Alec Anderson smiled. ‘Right you are. Although we didn’t know who she was. She complicated things by drowning and getting washed up like any old piece of flotsam and jetsam on Half Moon Cove. Well, anyway, Dent had been skulking about in the early morning, checking on midge swarms or something, and he saw me do it. Then after the Fatal Accident Inquiry, he started putting the finger on us. Nothing too serious, but enough to hurt. And then a month after Guthrie died he told me that he knew all about it. He even had photographs.’ He grinned. ‘The fool told me that he had them on his computer.’

‘You planned to kill him, then?’

‘He pissed me off! Then he implied the other morning that he was going to say something on the TV show – Flotsam & Jetsam. He demanded whisky, so I gave him a bottle loaded with a little heroin. I thought he wouldn’t make the show. But when he did and he seemed out of control, he had to go.’

‘And so you killed him?’

There was a crackling noise from a bench in the corner, then a tinny voice.

‘Alec, it’s me!’

Almost immediately there was a whirr and a taped voice spoke out: ‘No hawkers, sales folk or onion Johnnies, thank you.’

‘Piss off, Alec and let me in!’

Alec laughed and walked sideways to the bench. He pressed a button. ‘Come in, Agnes. We have company.’

‘Agnes is in on everything?’ Torquil asked.

‘Everything. She aspires to living somewhere hot, without having customers to serve. She distracted Digby Dent the other night and I bounced a gnome off his head.’

‘And did you both drown him in the tank?’

‘We did. And when she gets here we will have to decide how we are going to deal with one very nosy police inspector.’ He smiled. ‘After all, now that we have access to the account there is nothing to hold us to this god-forsaken wee island any more.’

The sound of the emporium van on the gravel outside was followed by the opening and closing of its door, then a few moments later Agnes Anderson came in. Her face was surprisingly unmoved by the spectacle of her husband aiming a gun at Torquil’s chest. There was annoyance rather than surprise.

‘Oh Christ!’ she moaned. ‘Now we have another one.’

‘Agnes wasn’t happy with me when I told her I had to get rid of that Ferguson clown,’ Alec Anderson explained.

He cocked his head to the side. ‘What do you think, my love? Is there room enough for three in that freezer?’

‘Alec, you’re a fool. We can’t just shoot him. How can we dump his body with a bullet in it?’

‘Is that what you are planning to do with the others? Dump them?’

‘Of course,’ Alec replied. ‘The freezer would keep them well preserved, so we were going to dump them in water somewhere. Somewhere away from here.’

‘You had practice there,’ Torquil replied. ‘A pity that you moved both of them to the wrong places. We have all the evidence we need.’

‘Like hell you do!’ Agnes said.

Torquil looked past them to the door. Then suddenly he called ‘Here, boy!’

There was a noise of running feet then a streak dashed from the door straight for the gap between Alec and Agnes Anderson.

Agnes immediately gasped and shied away and Alec stared down.

It was the slightest chance, but Torquil took it. He kicked at Alec’s wrist and the Glock discharged a burst and then went flying from his hand. Torquil instantly flew at Alec and grabbed him in a bear hug.

‘Agnes! Get the gun!’ cried Alec Anderson. ‘Shoot him.’

As Torquil and Alec went over and started grappling on the floor Agnes made a grab for the Glock.

But Crusoe was there before her. Sensing it was dangerous and that he must not let her have it, he sank his teeth into her hand. She screamed and tried to dislodge him, but he clung on.

Torquil brought his head down sharply on Alec Anderson’s face and nasal bones snapped in a torrent of blood. Then as the fight went out of the emporium owner he swiftly handcuffed him.

‘Leave, Crusoe,’ he said. And as the dog dutifully released the terrified Agnes, he handcuffed her to her husband. ‘Thank you for letting Crusoe in when you arrived, by the way,’ he said to her.

Standing and getting his breath back, he reached for his mobile and called Morag. Briefly he told her of his catch.

‘Can you give Ralph McLelland a call? I think we need his ambulance and his assistance. We had better deal with the casualties first, then we had better do the forensics.’ He reached over and closed the bench freezer. He sighed. ‘And I am afraid that I don’t relish telling Chrissie Ferguson the news that we have found her husband.’

Later that afternoon, the immediate problems and tasks had been tackled, including the arrest of Geordie Innes, who had been implicated by Craig Harrison and Tosh Mulroy as the boss of their antiques robbery gang. The young producer had an expensive drug habit that he had fed by arranging the theft of antiques that had been presented to the Flotsam & Jetsam show. A profitable business, they had been working the scam for two seasons.

Then had come the harrowing identification of Fergie Ferguson’s body by Chrissie Ferguson, and her subsequent sedation in the cottage hospital by Dr Ralph McLelland.

And it had been an unwelcome solution to the mystery of Crusoe being cast adrift to discover that Rab McNeish the local carpenter and undertaker, had been systematically abusing stray and stolen cats and dogs. Ralph was of the opinion that an animal phobia and a disease phobia sparked by his brother’s death from toxoplasmosis had resulted in a psychotic mental illness.

‘I knew there was something odd about those knots that I found on the cord he used to lash Crusoe to the timber,’ Torquil had confessed to Ralph. ‘They were just like those knots that you used after the post-mortem on Dr Dent.’

‘Surgical knots,’ Ralph had replied. ‘A lot of undertakers use them when they tidy up corpses.’

Torquil had just made up his report on all of the cases when Lorna called on her mobile.

‘I don’t know when Superintendent Lumsden will let me home,’ she said. ‘That big job that we were working on with the Customs folk came to nothing. He was expecting to make a big drugs bust. Heroin.’

‘Tell me more,’ Torquil urged.

‘He was sure that drug traffickers were using one of the Scandinavian shipping lanes that go past the Hebrides. We boarded one of them with the Royal Navy today, but found nothing. The boss is as angry as I’ve ever heard him.’

‘Perhaps if I tell him about the double murder here on West Uist he might cheer up.’

‘A double murder! Oh, Torquil, don’t make him any angrier.’

‘We solved them both!’ And he roughly ran through the various cases.

‘That might help. You know how he is about his crime figures. But I know he was hoping for great things from the drugs case.’

‘An MBE, you said. Well, it just happens that we have a heroin haul here. He was right, they have been using one of the shipping lanes, but they have been jettisoning the drugs near West Uist all this time.’ He laughed. ‘Tell the superintendent that he can have all the glory if he lets you have your leave.’

‘I think it would be better coming from you, darling.’ And they fell into their usual exchange of intimacies and endearments.

‘Maybe I will give the superintendent a ring now,’ Torquil said at last. ‘Hearing his dulcet tones will end what has been a less than perfect day.’