‘I think it was almost certainly murder, Superintendent Lumsden. I will fax the report through to you shortly. I think under the circumstances we will have to seal the island off.’
‘Of course. Any suspects.’
‘Too early to say, Superintendent.’
‘Any leads?’
‘A few. They’ll all be in my report.’
There was a sharp intake of breath from the other end of the line, and a wince of pain. Torquil imagined the big policeman in his crisp uniform, with his foot bandaged. He felt little sympathy for his superior officer.
‘OK, get on with it. Let me have that report as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I’ll call the laird and tell him that there is now a murder inquiry going on.’
‘Of course, Superintendent. Shall—?’
But before he could finish, there was a click and he once more found himself staring at the dead receiver.
Morag tapped on the door. ‘I gave Calum the official line. We have no information to divulge and we are making inquiries. And I told him to behave.’
Torquil gave a half smile. ‘And we can be sure that he won’t! Ah well, let’s get on with this thing. First of all, we have to seal the island off.’
‘I took the liberty of getting on with that. No more ferries until further notice.’
Torquil smiled. ‘What would I do without you, Morag?’
She returned his smile. ‘The same as I’d do without you, boss. Just don’t think of going! I hate to think what would happen if it was me who had to speak to Superintendent Lumsden.’
After Katrina had left, Nial continued his round of the coast, stopping every now and then to get out of his car and check out the nesting birds on the machair dunes and the cliffs. He mechanically jotted his recordings in a small notebook which he would later transcribe onto his laptop. The truth was that his mind was not fully on the job. Even spotting one of the eagles wing its way towards its high eyrie in the Corlins did not fill him with his usual enthusiasm. Instead, he was preoccupied by the women in his life.
Until a few days ago he had thought that he was madly in love with Megan. Then she had almost gone potty over those dead hedgehogs, and done a Lady Macbeth thing. It had spooked him, he had to admit, and it was then that he had become aware of the emotional door standing ajar. And shining through that opening was Katrina and his feelings for her. He grinned and felt a deep inner warmth as he thought of how rapidly those feelings had heated up until they had reached boiling point, for both of them, culminating in the passionate love-making that they had just enjoyed in the long grass of the machair.
Except that Katrina had emotional baggage. That policeman, Ewan McPhee. She felt guilty about him and She would have to work on that.
He was feeling torn between the two women. Megan or Katrina? He felt bad about his betrayal of Megan, but seeing her freaking out had altered his image of her. That was a weakness on his part, he felt. Yet he couldn’t help it and part of his mind rationalized it by thinking that she had pushed him towards Katrina.
He grinned as he put his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the distant stacks and skerries.
‘West Uist is a beautiful island, all right. And she’s a beautiful woman.’
He had made up his mind.
Danny Reid was perspiring profusely. He was stripped to the waist and a coating of moisture covered his torso as he started heaping soil onto the grave. He hated digging. He hated all manual work if the truth be known, but burying bodies was one thing he hated above all else. And it had been a heavy body.
He had patted the turned earth into a smooth mound and was just replacing the turf that he had cut on top of it when he heard Jock McArdle’s footsteps crunch on the gravel path behind him. He was carrying a decanter of whisky and two glasses.
‘That’s a good job you’ve done, Danny. And it is a good spot for them both. They hadn’t been here long, but Dallas and Tulsa both loved tearing about this old patch of lawn.’ He sighed and Danny Reid noted the tears in his boss’s eyes. ‘We’ll be able to see them from the snooker-room upstairs.’
Danny laid his shovel down and pulled on his T-shirt. ‘Liam was right upset about them.’ He nodded at the whisky glasses in his employer’s hand. ‘Are we going to have a toast to the girls, boss?’
McArdle held out the crystal whisky glasses for Danny to hold while he poured two liberal measures of malt. ‘Aye, but we’re also going to toast Liam. That was Superintendent Lumsden on the phone again. He tells me that Liam was definitely murdered. They’re starting an inquiry.’
Danny stared at Jock McArdle, his hand clenching the glass so that his knuckles went white. ‘The bastards! Who did it, boss?’
Jock McArdle ignored the question for a moment. He raised his glass. ‘To the girls! And to Liam! May we always look after our family.’
They both swilled their drinks back in one.
It has to be one of those bastards on the Wee Kingdom,’ McArdle replied. ‘And I am guessing there is no chance on earth that the local flatfeet will be able to find the buggers. We’re going to have to do it ourselves, Danny.’
‘How’s that, boss.’
McArdle smiled, ‘I’ve got an idea to flush them out.’ He hefted the cut crystal glass in his hand and nodded towards the ornamental fountain in the centre of the lawn. In unison they threw their glasses at the fountain.
Jesmond had been watching from an upstairs landing window. He winced as he saw the hundred-year-old crystal smashing on the fountain.
‘Peasants!’ he exclaimed. He reached for his mobile phone.
The Corlins were shrouded in swirling mist by the time that Alistair McKinley left his jeep at the foot of the cliffs, just at the spot where a few days ago they had found the broken body of his son. He pulled off his shoes and socks and wiggled his feet, flexing the well-developed toes that typified many of the outer islanders – especially those who were descended from the old cliff-scaling families of St Kilda’s. Alistair McKinley had been proud of his heritage and had tried to instil that pride into his son. He had taught him to hunt, to survive in the wild when the weather was at its worst, how to forage for food under rocks and in pools, and he had taught him how to climb.
And that was what had been eating away at him for days. How could Kenneth have fallen? He was as sure-footed as any of the old St Kildans who used to scale the sheer cliffs of Hirta, the larger of the isles in order, to snare the fulvers and take their eggs as they nested. Alistair felt sure that it had been an outside agent that had caused his fall and he intended to investigate for himself. His soul burned to find satisfaction.
‘If your spirit is there, Kenneth – come with me!’
He swung his hunting bag over his shoulder and then swung the shoulder sling of his shotgun bag over his neck and right shoulder so that the bag hung across his back and would not impede him as he climbed.
And he began to scale the almost sheer face, his fingers and toes finding holds and clinging long enough to hoist and pull himself up. Despite his age he climbed with the effortless ease of a monkey.
‘You were a good lad, Kenneth. You didn’t deserve to die so young,’ he whispered to himself, as he swiftly ascended towards the shelf of rock from which it was reported that he had fallen. ‘I know why you were coming here.’
He pulled himself up over the ledge and lay for a few moments waiting for his breathing to settle to normal. And as he lay there, his shrewd eyes pierced the swirling mists until he caught a glimpse of the eyrie some distance away.
‘You devil birds!’ he cursed under his breath, as he pulled off his shotgun bag and drew out his 12-bore. He reached into his hunting bag and drew out two cartridges. Breaking open the gun he slid them into place and snapped it shut.