The inflatable skimmed fast across the surface of the bay, sending spray up into their faces, then Murray throttled back to turn the boat side-on and nudge it gently in towards the steps. One of the constables jumped out with a rope to tether it to the rusted rung set in the wall, and one by one they made the jump from boat to landing stage, timing each leap with the highest point of the swell. Professor Wilson made it look easy, and it seemed to Gunn that the older man had the agility of a mountain goat. In stark contrast to Gunn himself, who almost fell, and was only saved from doing so by the steadying hand of the professor, who grabbed his arm. Gunn shrugged it free. ‘I’m fine,’ he said curtly.
To the accompaniment of screaming seabirds circling overhead, the five men made the long, windswept climb up the steps, doubling back to the crane emplacement, then following the tracks of the old tramway up to the intersection, from where a single concrete path led up to the lighthouse itself.
By the time they were on a level with the old ruined chapel, Gunn had to stop, leaning forward with his palms on his thighs, just to catch his breath. He felt the wind tugging at his clothes and filling his mouth as he sucked in oxygen.
Wilson shook his head. What was left of his hair was standing almost on end in the wind. ‘Are you not required to maintain a certain level of fitness in the force these days, Detective Sergeant? Man, you wouldn’t be fit to chase a sloth up a tree!’
Gunn straightened up in an attempt to recover a little of his dignity, but was certain that his face would be puce, and he avoided the eye of the uniforms, who he knew would be enjoying this ritual humiliation of their senior officer.
Before setting out from Uig in the boat, Gunn had interviewed the tourists who found the corpse. And he turned now to Murray. ‘You weren’t with the group that discovered the body when they went to look inside the chapel?’
Murray shook his head solemnly. ‘No, I usually stay with the tender. It wasn’t until they came and told me what they’d found that I went to take a look for myself. I wasn’t going to call you folks out on some wild goose chase.’
‘So it was just you and one other who actually went in?’
‘Aye, that’s right. The first fella in backed out before the others could follow, and threw up all over the grass.’ Murray nodded towards a discoloured area of ground near the entrance to the chapel. Most of the vomit had soaked away, but the evidence of the man’s breakfast was still visible.
Gunn felt his stomach heave. He waved the uniforms towards the old stone ruin. ‘You’d better do your stuff, boys.’
And as the two constables hammered in the metal stakes they had brought on the boat, linking them with fluttering crimescene tape to cordon off an area in front of the entrance, Gunn and the professor pulled on latex gloves and plastic shoe covers in preparation for taking a look at the body for themselves.
Gunn knew he was not going to enjoy this, and took a deep breath. He steeled himself, glancing out across the ocean, where sunlight played in burnished silver patches that fell through broken cloud, and wondered what on earth anyone would be doing out here to get himself murdered in the first place.
He followed Professor Wilson under the tape and into the narrow entrance to the chapel. There was a smell of damp in the gloom, and something else. Something unpleasant, a little like rotten eggs. Light fell in daubs through the broken roof, and the dead man lay twisted at an unnatural angle, his head turned to one side in a pool of long-dried blood and pale grey matter.
Professor Wilson dropped down to sit back on his heels and Gunn crouched beside him. There was very little room in here, and they were in very close proximity not only to each other, but to the body itself. Gunn gritted his teeth, determined to stay in control of his stomach, and watched as the pathologist began going carefully through the dead man’s pockets. First his dark blue anorak, which was unzipped. The outside pockets were empty, apart from a sweetie wrapper, and all he recovered from the inside pocket was a pen and a small spiral notebook whose virgin pages were quite blank. His trouser pockets yielded a car key on a tab. Very carefully, the pathologist half-rolled the body on to its side, and, with fingers like forceps, recovered a wallet from the back pocket.
Supporting the corpse with his free hand, he let it fall gently back to its resting place, then opened the wallet. He raised his eyebrows in surprise and turned his face towards Gunn. ‘Just cash. No credit cards, no driver’s licence —’ he slid two fingers into an opening just behind the empty card slots and drew them out empty — ‘or anything else, apparently, that might identify him.’ He handed Gunn the wallet, then turned his attention to the body itself, drawing a torch from his jacket pocket to play over the waxen features of the dead man. A slack face, lined by the years, fat accumulated in the jowls and folds of flesh beneath the jaw. Hair, thin and greying. Impossible now to say what colour it might once have been. The pathologist made a moue. ‘Very unscientific, but at a guess I’d say he was in his fifties. There will be better indicators once I get him on the table.’
In spite of himself, Gunn said, ‘Can you tell how long he’s been dead?’
The professor turned a withering look in his direction, then turned back to the body, lifting an arm and bending it at the elbow, before raising and lowering it at the shoulder joint. He spread fingers across the man’s jaw, which was quite slack, allowing him to open and close the mouth without resistance. The lips seemed vaguely swollen. Gunn watched as he unbuckled the trouser belt, unzipping the fly and pulling up the jumper, and the T-shirt beneath it, to expose the belly.
‘Greenish tinge to the abdomen,’ the pathologist said. ‘And slightly bloated, probably with gas. Though there’s fat there anyway, and the liver may well be distended. Help me roll him over.’
Gunn lent him both hands to roll the man on to his side and hold him there as Wilson pulled the trousers down over the buttocks, revealing red-purple discoloration where they had been resting on the ground. He pressed a thumb deep into the discoloration, then removed it. There was no change of colour. ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘Livor mortis is well defined. And fixed. Can’t blanch it with my thumb.’
Gunn knew better than to ask.
The pathologist then spread his palm on the man’s back and moved it gently back and forth. ‘A little skin slippage, too. Okay, let’s lay him back where he was.’ And when the body was lying once more as they had found it, Professor Wilson leaned over the head to examine the wound with the beam of his torch. ‘He’d been struck several times, I’d say, before the skull was breached. Abraded lacerations, and contusions. Something rough, like a rock or a stone.’ And almost involuntarily, they both looked around the confined space of the old ruin for what might have been the murder weapon, the beam of the professor’s torch playing over several possible candidates. ‘We’ll need to go through this place with a finetoothed comb.’ Then he returned the torch to the face of the victim and pulled back the eyelids in turn to shine its beam directly into the eyes. ‘Corneas are quite opaque.’ He snapped off his torch. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Gunn was only too pleased to be able to scramble out and straighten himself up to breathe cold, fresh air. Professor Wilson followed him out. Murray and the two constables stood some twenty feet or more away on the path, watching them. There was more rain in the wind now, although oddly it was brighter than before, great swathes of ocean around the foam-ringed islands of the Flannans reflecting dazzling sunlight from huge rents in low, bubbling raincloud.