Perhaps, Ewie thought, he should have shied away from the plant supervisor. Declined to attend their clandestine meeting at the pub, or at least refused to accept the envelope he was handed under the table. He could then have claimed ignorance with honesty. He was no hero. No warrior chieftain like his namesake Sir Ewen, seventeenth clan chieftain, slayer of the last wild wolf in Scotland, and Jacobite rebel who fought beside Bonnie Dundee at Killiecrankie, where it was said he’d torn the throat out of a ranking English officer with his bare teeth, drinking his blood as it pulsed from the wound. Nor would Ewie compare himself to his great and renowned forebear Major Allan Cameron, founder of the bold 79th Highlanders, which was later renamed the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, and then merged with the Seaforths to become the Queen’s Own Highlanders.
Ewie was simply Ewie. An estate legatee, resolute bachelor, and minor elected official appointed to the Land and Environment Select Committee, which reported to a policy committee, which in turn was under the higher control of a strategic committee of the district council. His usual issues of concern were sewage improvements, road and bridge repairs, traffic-light placements, and such. Ewie did not pretend he’d inherited the brave disposition of his forebears. Did not share their combative propensities. He was proudly content to have his fabled lineage charted in the social registry, and the family crest and tartan displayed on his mantelpiece.
Finished with his warmups, Ewie tarried by the ledge as the lights of an oncoming vehicle slid over the rise up ahead, on his side of the road. They glanced off the blaze-orange windbreaker he always wore on his morning rambles, a precaution that made it easier for motorists to spot him. The small Citröen that appeared moments later was familiar, belonging to a pretty young woman who owned the bakery just over the Kessock bridge. She slowed as she came closer, pulled out toward the opposite lane to give Ewie a comfortable berth, and exchanged a mannerly wave with him in passing.
Then the road was again empty. Ewie got on with his walk, feeling physically looser, and hoping he’d eased some of his mental tensions as well. But his thoughts soon drifted back to what he’d learned from the plant supervisor, and they were accompanied by unrelieved distress and anxiety.
It would have been easy for Ewie to rebuff the fellow with a smile, a shrug, and a polite tip of his glass before any secrets were divulged. Easy to shut his eyes to the whole scandalous deal. So why on earth hadn’t he?
The answer, Ewie knew, was that he was stuck with an inconvenient sense of responsibility. Both as public servant and citizen. The plant at Cromarty Firth employed almost fifteen hundred people from Black Isle down the coast to Inverness, and accounted for perhaps twenty-five million pounds per year in local wages, with millions more filtering into the economy through secondary commerce — a full thirty percent of the Gross District Product. At present the core workforce was involved in decommissioning prototype fast breeder reactors built in the 1950’s and ’60’s. But with the site a top contender for an experimental JET tokamak fusion laboratory, revenues had the potential to double in the next ten years.
If the disclosures were true, however…
That word again, Ewie thought.
If.
If they were true, it was not only the expansion that would be threatened, but Cromarty’s very license to remain operational. The UK Atomic Energy Authority constabulary would shut down the plant in a blink, sending the area’s economic prospects into the deepest of holes.
Ewie started up a moderate incline with brisk strides and rhythmic swings of his arms. He wanted to get his blood circulating, and the oxygen flowing into his lungs. Wanted beyond all else to clear his head.
As he neared the top of the rise, Ewie heard another vehicle coming toward him. A commercial rig, judging from the rumble of its wheels. He reached the downhill side and saw that it was a giant tub of a Unimog. The truck was moving well in excess of the speed limit with its brights on.
Startled, blinking from glare of the headlamps, Ewie stepped further onto the shoulder. The truck kept hauling along as if it were on a speed course. Ewie was sure the driver had his gears in fifth.
Ewie decided to let him go on by before resuming his walk. Probably the driver was some ass who’d fallen behind schedule making a delivery to Inverness, and meant to catch up with the clock by hurtling along this quiet stretch of blacktop with no thought of his or anyone else’s safety. Ewie had a mind to memorize his tag number and report him to the police when he got home.
By the time Ewie realized the Unimog had swerved directly toward the shoulder where he was standing, it was too close for him to get out of the way. Blinded by the headlamps, his ears filled with thunder, he reflexively cast his hands front of his face, thrusting his body back toward the wooded area lining the road.
A split second before the front end of the cab mashed into him, Ewie began to shout something that was part question, part curse, and part expression of fear and anger. But the loud roar of the engine drowned out what little of it escaped his lips, and then everything was over for him, all over, his life crushed out, the truck plunging on down the road, away toward the mainland, the blood spatters on its massive fender unnoticeable to anyone who might chance to see it pass in the semidarkness.
They were lying in bed, the husband on his back with the quilt pulled to his bare chest, his wife on her side atop the quilt, facing him, her right hand flat on his stomach. Her nightgown, a flimsy strip of lace-edged silk, revealed far more than it hid. Slung across his body, her right leg was long, toned, the flesh of its thigh smooth and creamy white.
Inspector Frank Gorrie of the Northern Constabulary, Inverness Command Area, was thinking he might be envious of the fellow she was snuggled against, if only his gaze hadn’t climbed above the generous swell where the nightie did not quite manage to cover her breasts.
She had a beautiful figure.
Gorrie did not know about the face, would not know until he saw a photograph of her as she’d appeared in life. Most of it was gone, blown away by a.38-caliber bullet, and there was blood all over the rest. The shot that killed the husband was cleaner, a single entry wound in the middle of his forehead. Probably he’d been asleep when it was fired, never knew what hit him. His face was tranquil, eyes closed. There was a dash of foam at the corner of his lips.
Gorrie could see that the pillowcases were soggy and red under their heads, under the pistol clutched in the woman’s left hand, her finger curled around the trigger, its short barrel thrust into what remained of her mouth.
Standing at the foot of the bed, Gorrie experienced a brief twinge of guilt that had nothing to do with his appreciation of the dead woman’s comely shape. In police work, you noticed what you noticed. The best and worst in people often rubbed up close, and he would not damn himself for being human. But whatever had happened to the couple, or between them, their intimate connection was a strong thing in the room, and Gorrie suspected his discomfort came from the peculiar feeling that he’d somehow intruded upon it.
He turned to the young constable at the door behind him. “What’s the crack on Drummond from the Child Protection Unit?”
“On his way. Someone from Social Work’s coming with him.”
Gorrie motioned to the left, where they’d found the couple’s infant son in his nursery adjoining the master bedroom.
“Baby’s quiet. You sure he’s okay?”