Charlie frowned and declined to answer. ‘Not so much wrong with the hearing aids today, is there, Archie? Now, away and make some tea while I make a few calls.’
Archie gave him one of his sour looks. ‘You should have taken better care of your old wife. Bridget was a treasure, you ken.’
Charlie pulled one of his practiced smiles. ‘Tea, Archie?’
When Archie left he picked up the phone and smiled, debating with himself which call to make first. He was much in demand it seemed. He wondered what either of the women in question wanted. His lips curled into a leer as he imagined the two of them lying naked in the heather and him standing over them with a choice to make.
He dialled the number that immediately came into his head.
Torquil raced back along the road for a mile and then went off-road to weave his way along old rutted tracks through the gorse to reach the old road leading up to Harpoon Hill.
Morag was waiting outside, still just in her jogging kit, running on the spot with her arms crossed so she could rub her upper arms to keep warm. Behind her police barrier tape had been strung on canes around the pillbox and across the entrance.
‘You must be frozen, Morag,’ he called up as he pulled the Bullet onto its stand and took off his helmet. He ran up the slope, peeling off his leather jacket on the way so that he could drape it round her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry I left my phone while I was practising at St Ninian’s cave.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘This is a tragedy and no mistake.’
His sergeant’s pained expression and pale face told him how much of an ordeal she had found the situation. ‘I got Ewan to send up the barrier tape with the twins. We’ve strung it six feet clear all the way about the pillbox just in case. I sent them off to look for Vicky Spiers.’
He patted her shoulder. ‘Good work. So, Jamie’s inside?’
Tears had formed in her eyes and she nodded. ‘I couldn’t do anything for him, Torquil.’
‘I’m sure you did what you could, Morag. And Ralph McLelland is going to see Catriona McDonald?’
‘Aye, its fortunate that Stan Wilkinson was on his round and was coming along when he did. She can’t see anything, Torquil. The poor kid’s hysterical.’
He nodded. ‘Right, let’s take a look.’
‘Brace yourself, Piper,’ she said, using the nickname Torquil’s friends on the island often called him.
They ducked under the tape and entered the dark interior of the pillbox.
‘They put cardboard boxes over the windows and I left them in case the forensics need to see everything as it was. There’s a lantern just inside, which I switched off when I … when I stopped my resuscitation attempt. I … I thought they might be able to work out how long it had been on from its charge.’
‘You just stay here at the entrance then,’ Torquil told her, conscious that her voice was quaking.
The pillbox was a hexagonal structure built of reinforced concrete, with a Y-shaped wall inside that was not complete, so that men would have been able to walk round it from one embrasure to the next. It was designed thus to limit ricocheting bullets should it be targeted and it effectively divided it into two spaces and an entrance area. As Morag had said, it was dark because of the cardboard boxes the teenagers had blocked up the embrasures with. In the right hand one he saw the body of Jamie Mackintosh.
‘I tried CPR for twenty minutes, Torquil,’ Morag said from behind him. ‘That’s why the blanket is thrown aside there. And I took another one and wrapped it round Catriona.’
‘Did you take photographs?’
‘Aye, but this isn’t my phone so I’ll send them to my own phone and get them when I charge it up. Then I’d better delete them from Stan’s phone.’
‘Better not just yet,’ Torquil said over his shoulder. ‘Just in case they don’t get through to yours. We’d best impound Stan’s phone until we’ve sorted everything out with the Procurator Fiscal.’
Kneeling down, Torquil cursorily inspected the body, careful not to disturb anything else. Reaching for his own phone he took several pictures and then stood up to look round the pillbox.
‘He had been frothing at the mouth,’ Morg explained. ‘It looked like he’d had a fit, or some sort of seizure. Maybe he’d inhaled vomit. Anyway, I cleared his mouth before I gave him CPR. When I began chest compressions some dirty vomit came out of his mouth.’
Torquil nodded and looked around the pillbox. ‘So there are two blankets here, one belonging to Jamie beside his body, and one by the wall.’
‘That will be Vicky Spiers’s.’
‘Oatcakes, empty crisp bags, three cans of Coke and an empty bottle of whisky,’ he said out loud as he photographed them and their positions. ‘It does no harm to have more pictures.’ He stood up and looked round to see Morag standing at the entrance, studiously avoiding looking at the teenager’s body. ‘There’s no label on the bottle,’ he noted.
‘Catriona reeked of whisky and so did Jamie,’ Morag returned. Her hand went unconsciously to wipe her mouth. ‘I gave him mouth to mouth. The fumes almost knocked me out.’
Torquil knelt down and sniffed the empty bottle. ‘Daingead! I see what you mean. It’s peatreek, and bloody strong at that. I’m betting they were washing it down with Coke.’ Straightening up, he nodded at his sergeant. ‘Let’s get outside. We’ll need to get a Scene Examiner over from Lewis.’
Up until 2013, when the West Uist was part of the Hebridean Constabulary, they would have handled this entirely inhouse. Morag had undergone CID training in Dundee as a young officer, thereby picking up forensic experience before returning to West Uist, marriage and parenthood. She and Doctor Ralph McLelland, the local GP and police surgeon, who was also a qualified pathologist, had worked as an unofficial forensic team. With the amalgamation of all eight of the Scottish regional police forces into the national Police Scotland, everything had changed, and regulations were strictly enforced. Now they had to bring in a Scene Examiner, a specially trained civilian employed by the Scottish Police Authority to collect evidence, which would then be passed to Torquil as the local DI and to the forensic lab on the mainland.
It was with this all in mind that Morag and Torquil had taken so many photographs and taken good care not to disturb the scene of the sudden death of the teenager.
Outside, the mist had turned into mizzle as the fog descended, and therefore visibility had started to recede to fifty yards, as it was liable to do in the Western Isles. Looking up at the sky with a frown, Morag called the station and issued further instructions to Ewan McPhee.
‘Tell him to say that we urgently need this whisky bottle analysing,’ Torquil said over his shoulder. ‘Say we’re pretty sure its peatreek, but we suspect it’s got a high level of methyl alcohol in it.’
Morag transmitted the message. Then: ‘That’s exactly what I thought, boss. What with Catriona losing her sight and poor Jamie Mackintosh dying suddenly.’
Although technically Torquil was no longer her boss, since she was now uniform and he detective branch, they had continued to work together in the way they were used to, for it worked so well. She just made sure she stayed on the right side of Superintendent Lumsden.
Torquil nodded. ‘We really need Ralph McLelland up here to certify death before we can notify his parents. We’ve got to get moving on this.’
‘He’s going to have his hands full dealing with Catriona. That’s if he can do anything to help her,’ Morag added.
‘Aye, and there is Vicky Speirs to find. Let’s hope the weather lifts, because it isn’t helping. There simply aren’t enough of us, Morag.’ He glanced at his watch and took a rapid intake of breath. ‘Nèamhan math! Good heavens, the new Detective Constable. I’m supposed to be meeting her off the ferry.’