'Hi,' the smal er man greeted them, as he walked down the steps from the porch. 'You didn't need to tell me you were the Bureau guys. I'd have known you by those suits. I'm Dave Schultz, lieutenant, State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation…' He directed their eyes behind him with his thumb.'… And this is Detective Toby Small, one of life's great ironies.' The giant gave them an amiable grin.
Schultz looked at Skinner. 'So you, sir, must be the victims' son-in law. Deputy Chief Skinner, is that right?'
The Scot nodded, reaching out a handshake; there was enough in the lieutenant's tone to tell him that, alien or not, his rank was going to count for something.
'Did you have a good flight from Scotland, sir?'
'No. I had a long flight from Malaysia.' He decided that a little more personal information would do no harm. 'I was due to address an international drugs conference there.'
'You got that problem too?' asked Smal, as if to prove that he could speak.
Skinner glanced up at him. 'Detective, everyone has that problem. In our case we have one of the largest unprotected coastlines in Europe. So every comedian with a boat thinks he can stuff his ballast tanks with hashish, sail it up to Wester Ross, offload it and get away clean. More often than not he's right, as well.'
His eyes snapped back on to Schultz. 'Okay. Let's get something out of the way. Was it either of you guys who phoned my wife?'
The New York policeman seemed to recoil slightly; he held up a hand as if to ward Skinner off. 'No, sir,' he said, vehemently. 'It was not. We heard about that and we apologise that it happened. It was one of the local guys, playing detective before we got here. Don't worry, he's had his balls fried.'
'Well make sure he's kept out of my way, or I'l make him eat them.'
He caught Smal gazing at him with an expression that he had seen once in the eyes of a police dog as it looked at its handler.
'Okay, gentlemen,' he continued, 'if I can have a look at the house.
Are your technicians finished up here?'
'Yes, sir,' the lieutenant answered. 'They're all done. As you requested we've left the scene as close as we could to the way it was when we got here… apart from the bodies, of course. They've been taken to the morgue in Loudonvil e, our regional headquarters. After we're done here, the coroner would like you to go there: he prefers for a family member to make a formal identification. We've put a hold on the autopsies til you've done that.'
Skinner shivered inwardly; outwardly he nodded briskly, as he headed up the short flight of steps, on to the veranda. The New York detectives fol owed him up, but his Bureau escorts stayed below, anxious, he guessed, not to offend local sensibilities by intruding on to their scene.
'How were they found?' the DCC asked Schultz. 'That part of the story was pretty vague.'
The lieutenant pointed out towards the expanse of lake, which could be seen from where they stood. As he did so, Skinner noticed a jetty, with a small powerboat moored against it. 'A neighbour of Mr and Mrs Grace was out in his cruiser, getting set for some dawn fishing. He saw that the porch light was on, and that the front door was open. He came ashore to check the place out and found them. He called the nearest police office, in Edinburg.'
Skinner's eyes screwed up as his momentary bewilderment registered on his face. 'Where?' he asked.
'Edinburg,' Schultz repeated. 'It's the nearest township, although it's barely big enough to warrant a dot on the map.'
He shook his head wondering whether it was simply coincidence, or whether it had been the name that had first attracted Leo to this remote place. 'I see,' he murmured. 'This fisherman guy: he's been checked out, has he?'
'Yes, sir. We're satisfied that's how it really was. The guy's over seventy; even if he had a grudge against the Graces, he couldn't have kil ed them like that.'
'No, I guess he couldn't. Time of death?'
'Around 9 p.m., the coroner reckoned; give or take an hour, he said. It was very cold through that night.'
Skinner looked down at the rocking chair, at rest now on the wide porch, to the left of the front door as he faced it. A chalk circle had been drawn around it. There was a cushion on the seat, untethered but stil in place, the shape of its occupant's buttocks stil showing clearly in it.
'Nothing's been touched? That cushion's as it was found?'
'Yes, sir. You'll see the crime scene photographs, but the old man was sat in his chair just as if he had died in his sleep. That's what Mr 58
Southern, the neighbour, thought at first, til he went inside.'
The DCC nodded and walked indoors, into a big living room, with a great hearth, filled with the grey ashes of a log fire. He looked around; the place looked as if it had been turned over by an expert in a hurry.
Most of the cushions of the leather suite stood on end, left in those positions by whoever had searched under them. The drawers and doors of a big farmhouse sideboard lay open. Books had been stripped from their shelves, flipped open, he guessed, then thrown on the floor. His father-in-law's flap-front desk, which he remembered from the den in his Buffalo house, had been ripped open. The chisel which the kil er had used lay beside it. The whole scene, furniture, books, every loose object in the room was covered in white fingerprint powder. 'You've been thorough,' Skinner murmured.
'Yes, sir,' the lieutenant agreed. 'We always are.'
'Did you lift any prints?'
'Nada. We got prints of Mr and Mrs Grace, Mr Southern, and the cleaning lady, plus one or two wild ones, but we don't think that any of those belong to the perpetrator. They were in the wrong places for him.'
'One perpetrator?'
'There's no indication that there was more than one perp. There are creaking boards al over the deck outside, yet Mr Grace was taken completely by surprise; my gut feeling is that this was a lone burglar.'
'Did he get anything, do you think?'
'We'l need you or someone else to do an inventory, but as far as we can tell he got money, cards, watches, rings, other valuables: everything you'd expect in a robbery.'
The big Scots policeman shook his head. 'Not everything, Lieutenant Schultz, not everything.' He picked up a book from the floor, and held it out. 'See this? It's a first edition ofMoby Dick, and it's signed by Herman Melville.' He looked at the volumes on the floor and selected another, then turned to the flyleaf. 'That signature? James Thurber. If you root around here for long enough you'l find first editions signed by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Mitchell and God knows who else.
'I'm no expert, but there's thousands of dol ars, no, tens of thousands, lying on the floor here. Yet this guy looks through them al , for some reason, then just leaves them here. And this, you tell me, is a professional thief, who's prepared to kill…'
He broke off. 'Where's the kitchen?' he asked, sharply.
'Through there,' said Smal, pointing to a door to the left of the hearth.
Skinner walked across and looked inside. The inevitable outline was chalked on the floor; there was blood too, a lot of blood, around where the body had lain, streaking the pine doors of the wall cupboards, and splashed across one of the work surfaces. 'Bastard!' he murmured.
'The guy cut through an artery with the strangling wire,' Schultz explained, unnecessarily. 'It must have been over in seconds, though.'
Bob thought of his gentle parents-in-law as he pictured the scene. His head swam, and for an instant it was as if he had been there, and he could see it al happening. He felt himself sway, and grabbed hold of the nearest worktop to steady himself. He knew that he could not postpone sleep for much longer.