‘The stone quarry.’
‘I didn’t realize there was a quarry near here,’ said Bannerman.
There wasn’t until the Dutchman bought the Invergelloch estate. Everyone thought he was mad buying a barren wasteland, but next thing we know he’s got himself a licence to quarry road stone and is making a fortune.’
‘Bloody foreigners,’ grumbled one of the farm workers. The Scottish highlands have got more bloody Dutchmen in them than Amsterdam.’
‘I’m not complaining,’ said the quarry worker. ‘I’ve got a good job and one that doesn’t involve bloody sheep!’
Bannerman smiled, and the quarry man warmed to his theme. He said, Tm telling you without a word of a lie, if you removed sheep as a topic of conversation from this town there would be a great silence.’
‘Get away with you!’ exclaimed one of the farm workers with a lazy swing of his arm, but there was no malice in it. The man’s face wore the smile of the old tolerating the foibles of the young.
‘Did the quarry bring many jobs?’ asked Bannerman.
‘About fifty,’ replied the quarryman, ‘between men from here and Stobmor.’
‘Coolies,’ said one of the shepherds. The Dutch keep all the cushy jobs for themselves. The workers are just coolies.’
The quarryman shrugged but didn’t rise to the bait.
‘Are there many Dutchmen?’ asked Bannerman.
Ten or twelve.’
‘Making a fat living out of Scotland,’ growled one of the others.
‘Maybe a Scotsman should have thought of it first?’ said the quarryman.
The topic of the quarry died out and Bannerman asked the farm workers if they knew the farm where the three men had died. Maybe they even worked there themselves?
Both men shook their heads. ‘We work the Liddell estate,’ said one. That’s well to the south of Inverladdie.’
‘I hear Inverladdie had trouble with Scrapie,’ said Bannerman. ‘Have you had any bother?’
‘No, touch wood,’ said the man with the crook. ‘We’re clear.’
Bannerman watched to see if any tell-tale glances would pass between the two farmhands but saw none. He knew that sheep farmers were often reluctant to admit to the presence of Scrapie in their flocks.
The landlord came into the bar and told Bannerman that his room was ready. ‘Would you be wanting anything to eat?’ he asked.
Bannerman found his eyes straying to the dried tomato stain on the front of the man’s cardigan. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.
‘We could do you, bacon and eggs?’
Bannerman fought off notions of homicide and was relieved to hear the man continue with alternatives. He ordered a steak and wished goodnight to his new-found companions in the bar before taking his bag upstairs. Bannerman noticed a distinctive smell as he climbed the stairs. It was the smell of small hotels all over the country, a mixture of dust, dampness and carpeting. He supposed that it had something to do with the fact that so many of these places had lain empty for quite long periods in their history. They had not been built as hotels of course, but had been large family houses at one time and had become too expensive to continue in that role. As a consequence, they had suffered neglect and decline, before eventually being rescued for sub-division or, as in the case of this one, conversion for use as a hotel. Bannerman suspected that during the times when such buildings had lain empty the cold and damp had crept into their floors and walls like ink spreading through blotting paper and had remained there ever since.
His own room appeared to be warm enough, thanks to an electric radiator that had been turned on to FULL, but it was surface warmth, a cosmetic warmth. He sat on the bed and found it firm and comfortable. There was a picture hanging above it depicting a trawler with waves breaking over its bow, which held the caption, ‘Heading for Home’ written below it in ornate writing. A gust of wind drove rain hard into the window pane and made Bannerman smile. ‘What a bloody good idea,’ he murmured.
The telephone rang and startled him. It was the owner announcing that his steak was ready.
SEVEN
Bannerman telephoned the Medical Research Council in the morning. It seemed to take an age before he was put through to Hugh Milne.
‘I tried calling you in Edinburgh; I was told you had gone north,’ said Milne.
‘Something awful has happened,’ said Bannerman. ‘Lawrence Gill has been murdered.’
‘Murdered?’ exclaimed Milne.
‘I don’t know who did it or why, but I do know that it had something to do with this brain disease business.’
‘But this is incredible. Why would anyone want to murder a pathologist who was simply trying to establish a cause of death?’
Bannerman took a deep breath and said, 1 know it sounds stupid, but I’m convinced that someone or some …’ Bannerman searched for a word, ‘faction, does not want the true cause of death discovered.’ He told Milne about the brains having been removed from the cadavers in Edinburgh.
‘Where exactly are you?’ asked Milne.
There wasn’t much point in staying in Edinburgh with no pathological material to work on, so I came up to Achnagelloch. I found out from Gill’s wife about the island he had run off to, so I tried to find him to ask about the missing brains. Instead I found him at the bottom of a cliff.’
‘I suppose there’s no chance it was an accident?’
‘None at all. Gill was hiding on the island because he knew someone was after him. He tried sending a parcel to you which I think contained the missing brains.’
‘But why send it to us when we had already seen the slides he had prepared?’
‘I wish I knew.’
There was a pause in the conversation. Bannerman guessed that Milne was having difficulty coming to terms with what he had heard. He suspected that the introduction of possible criminal involvement in what was thought to be a purely medical mystery was having the same unsettling effect on Milne as it was on himself. Both of them were getting out of their depth.
Milne broke the silence, ‘Perhaps you should return to London immediately,’ he said. ‘There may be danger in pursuing the investigation.’
‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Bannerman, ‘but I’m here now, so I may as well ask around a bit. It would be a help though if Gill’s death were played down for the moment. I don’t want the newspapers making connections between Gill’s murder and the problems up here. I thought your colleague, Mr Allison, from the Prime Minister’s office might help in that direction.’
‘I’ll alert him. I’m sure he has no wish to see this develop into a media circus.’
‘I’m sure he hasn’t,’ agreed Bannerman with just the merest hint of sarcasm, thinking about the cover-up of the radiation leak at Invermaddoch.
As a first step, Bannerman set out to find the vet’s surgery in Achnagelloch. He hadn’t bothered to ask at the hotel for directions because he thought the place small enough for him to find it on his own and he wanted to take a look at the town. He liked small towns; he liked their manageable proportions, the fact that you could see how everything worked and fitted together, unlike big cities which were anonymous places, their workings hidden inside bland concrete boxes.
After twenty minutes of searching he admitted defeat and asked directions from a woman who was coming out of a shop, carrying bread and milk. The bell attached to the shop door jangled loudly as she closed it, obliging him to begin his question over again. ‘I’m looking for Mr Finlay, the vet,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me where his surgery is please?’
The woman looked at Bannerman as if he had arrived from a strange planet. She stared at him so long without expression that he felt himself become embarrassed. The smile died on his lips.
‘You’re not from round here,’ said the woman.
‘No I’m not,’ agreed Bannerman, declining to add details.
‘Finlay lives in the old manse.’
‘The old manse.’
The woman nodded as if this were enough.