The turrets and battlements of Dunshiffin Castle, the thirteenth-century stronghold of the MacLeod family, were lost in the mist as Torquil approached on his Royal Enfield Bullet. He stopped a hundred yards away and parked his machine by the side of the road and then advanced on foot. He had no intention of announcing his arrival, so he took to the grass verge and jogged along towards the bridge that crossed the moat. Unfortunately, there was no way of entering the castle by any other route, so he kept close to the walls of the gateway tower and thanked the mist for giving him some cover. Once in the gravel courtyard he stepped carefully in his stout Ashman boots so as to avoid announcing his presence.
On the way there he had stopped to call for back-up, but cursed when his phone failed to connect with any of his staff. He had thought of taking a detour to the phone box on the Arderlour road, but the sound of the gunshot when McArdle had called him had indicated the urgency of the matter. He knew that he would just have to use his wits and trust to the message he left in the voice box and his ingenuity.
There were no lights on, but one side of the large double front door was standing ajar. Torquil made his way towards it by following the courtyard wall and then climbing up the side of the steps to come at it from the side. He wrapped his goggles around the end of his baton and edged it into the doorway, using it like an angle mirror. Seeing nothing suspicious he crept through the door to stand in the hall as swirls of mist wisped through the door.
On the oak-panelled walls hung numerous stag heads, antlers, shields, with criss-crossed claymores and pikestaffs. On either side of the stairway leading up from the great hall stood empty suits of armour. Having been in the castle on numerous occasions over the years, as both guest and as a piper for formal occasions he knew his way about the place. But the thing that led him at the moment in the chilly atmosphere was the unmistakable smell of a gun having been discharged. As he stealthily crept up the staircase, passed the larger than life size portrait of the Jacobite laird, Donal MacLeod the odour became stronger. He reached the top of the stairs where twin galleries ran east and west with doors dotted along them and corridors at either end leading off into the interior of the castle. And there the smell was very strong. Grasping his baton he headed for the west wing.
All of the curtains were closed and the long corridor was almost in pitch blackness, except for a line of light coming from a door at the end of the corridor. Torquil knew that this used to be the billiard-room in the previous laird’s day. He stopped for a moment to take off his boots and then crept softly along the corridor in his stockinged feet. As he did so he heard a click then a muffled thud, like the sound of a billiard cue striking a ball followed by it thumping into a pocket of a billiard table. It was then, as his eyes accustomed to the extra darkness of the long corridor that he was aware of a figure ahead of him, creeping along the wall towards the door.
He stopped to watch as the figure reached the door, seemed to peer through the crack, then gingerly push the door open. As he did so the smell of a gunshot mixed with cigar smoke seemed to grow even stronger.
Then a voice cried out from the room, ‘Don’t move a muscle, Cardini!’
Torquil moved swiftly on his tiptoes towards the door. Inside he saw the back of a man dressed in a smoking jacket bent over the billiard-table, as if frozen in time having just played a shot. Just behind him, a man was standing with his feet wide apart, arms outstretched, both hands holding an automatic weapon, pointed directly at the back of the other’s head.
There was no time for thought. Torquil was in the room in a couple of strides. With a swift upward strike of his baton he knocked the man’s gun upwards, where it discharged with a deafening explosion, shattering a window. Then, moving swiftly before the man gained control of the gun, he brought the baton down sharply on the back of his head.
As the assailant fell face down, Torquil kicked the gun under the table, and then leaned down to turn him over.
He was surprised to see himself looking down at the unconscious figure of Vincent Gilfillan.
‘Thank God for the West Uist police!’ came Jock McArdle’s voice. ‘You know, McKinnon, I think you’ve saved me a job.’
chapter eighteen
Katrina looked round as a floorboard creaked as Morag and Lachlan entered the ruined lighthouse-keeper’s cottage. Tears were streaming down her eyes, but her voice was instantly authoritative as she moved into clinical mode.
‘He’s alive! But only just. Phone for Dr McLelland and get him to drive his ambulance down to the Wee Kingdom jetty.’
‘Who is it, Katrina?’ asked Morag, screwing her eyes up as she entered the dimly lit ruin.
‘My God, Morag, it is Ewan!’ gasped the Padre. His look of amazement turned instantly to anger as he saw the stout ropes about his ankles and his wrists. ‘Who could have done this?’
But Katrina was not listening. She had her bag open and was making a quick examination of the almost comatose police constable. He was in a state of collapse and utter squalor, having clearly soiled himself several times over the last few days.
Morag went outside for a moment and called Ralph McLelland. She returned with her emotions in a state of complete turmoil. She was so relieved, yet like the Padre, so angry that anyone could have done such a thing to her friend and colleague.
A low groan escaped from Ewan’s lips as Katrina went over his chest with her stethoscope.
‘Oh Ewan, I am so sorry, so very sorry,’ she sobbed, as she slung her stethoscope round her neck and reached into her bag for an intravenous giving set and a bag of saline.
‘He’s dehydrated and looks as if he’s lost a couple of stone,’ she volunteered. ‘He needs intravenous fluids, cleaning up and a good work-up in hospital.’ She wrapped a tourniquet about his arm, found a vein and adroitly threaded a needle and cannula into it. With her teeth she pulled off the seal on the saline bag and linked it up to the cannula. ‘Hold that high would you, Sergeant?’ she said, handing Morag the bag, while she taped the cannula in place then applied a bandage around the site.
‘I am so pleased to see him alive,’ Morag said at last, tears steaming down her cheeks. She pointed to the large polythene water flagon on an old table with a tube that hung down near Ewan’s head. The flagon was empty but for about a few millitres of brackish water. ‘Whoever tied him up here obviously left water, but nothing else.’
‘And I guess they didn’t intend to leave him here as long as this. The monster!’ exclaimed the Padre. Then he turned to Katrina. ‘But how did you know he was here? You have probably saved his life; you know that, don’t you?’
Katrina bent down and kissed Ewan on the forehead. When she looked up her face was racked with guilt. ‘I didn’t save him, Padre. In fact it’s my fault that he’s here in the first place!’
Torquil looked up at the unmoving figure bent over the billiard table. He saw that although the figure was wearing a smoking jacket it was clearly not the stocky Jock McArdle. As he slowly straightened he saw that it was Jesmond, the butler.
A very dead Jesmond.
His cheek was actually lying on the table surface, his sightless eyes staring straight ahead. From his mouth a frothy trail of vomit had trickled over the green baize. Clearly he had not died a natural death, but his body had been arranged thus.