‘At the post mortem you never mentioned any motor neurone disease, Professor?’
‘No. Did he have it?’
‘Well, Mr Lyon said that he was diagnosed with it about eight months ago and had begun to experience some pretty unpleasant effects; largely difficulties with speech and swallowing. That kind of thing.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Would it be possible to look again? I mean, to check to see if he did have the disease?’
‘No, probably not. We released the body for the funeral and I think we’d be short of blocks. I’m not sure we’ll have taken enough from various areas of the brain. We might also have needed tissue from the tongue and I’d probably have had to involve Professor Donaldson, the neurologist but-’ he hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t advise going down that route anyway. There’s no point, we know already the cause of death. The Sheriff could’ve had motor neurone disease in its early stages and nothing would necessarily appear on post mortem, but his general practice records are being sent to the department. Why don’t I phone Maureen and see if they’ve got here? If a diagnosis of MND was made during his lifetime it’ll be in there and more reliable, in all probability, than any made at post mortem. In life, you see, you get fasciculations, clear symptoms, signs etc. Let’s phone Maureen and ask her to bring them if they’ve arrived, eh?’
The secretary bustled into the office bearing a thick brown folder and pointing at her watch.
‘You’ll need to get a move on, Professor, or you’ll be late for the students.’
Professor McConnachie nodded non-commitally, and began to examine the file, pulling aside clinical notes and charts until he reached the correspondence section.
‘Here it is, Alice. The Sheriff went to the Murrayfield and saw a neurologist there. I know him, actually. A chap called Kennedy. He seems to have made a fairly confident diagnosis-let’s see… slurring of speech, excess saliva… history… electromyalgic results, CT scans… fasciculations. It’s all there.’
‘And the date of the letter?’
‘Er… 4th November 2005.’
‘A thoussand pieces you know, not the bikkest I haff effer done but, well, pussles relax me.’ Mrs Nordquist twirled a minuscule jigsaw piece between her fingers and then began to concentrate intensely on the puzzle tray on the table before her. Surreptitiously, Alice attempted to make out the image being formed. Upside down, it seemed to be no more than a mass of squiggles, possibly in the form of an alien with multiple auras encircling it.
Without looking up Mrs Nordquist inserted her piece, took a sip from the little glass beside her and said conversationally, ‘The Scream… do you know? Munch’s masterwork? It’s one off my faforites. But I can eassily talk at the same time, so you jusst carry on, Detectif Rice.’
‘Well, perhaps I should begin by letting you know that I’ve met Nicholas, Mr Lyon.’
‘Yess?’ Mrs Nordquist did not appear to be disconcerted by the news.
‘Yes. And I got the impression from him that when you told us that you and the Sheriff were strangers to each other, that was not quite true.’
‘Well, maybe, but I also said he wass a goot neighbour.’
‘In fact, you were friends?’
‘Yess.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us about Mr Lyon? You must’ve known that such information was exactly the sort of thing that we needed.’
Mrs Nordquist sighed deeply and slowly put down her next jigsaw piece.
‘Becoss I knew what James would haff wanted ant what he would not haff wanted. The Police, anyone, really, to know he wass gay. He wass very olt-fashioned. I could haff told you, but it didn’t seem right. So I jusst made jokes, I wass nervouss. It wass his secret to impart, not mine.’
The woman’s speech stopped abruptly as her housekeeper entered the room bearing a tray with lunch on it. After it had been placed on the coffee table in front of her, Mrs Nordquist said, ‘Ant the bottle, Mrs McColl-where iss the bottle?’
Mrs McColl looked defiantly at her employer, but on being met with an equally unblinking stare, she signalled her defeat by shaking her head and muttering ‘It’ll be the death of you… your precious aquavit!’
Her servant vanquished, Mrs Nordquist began to poke at her food idly, and then continued: ‘James wass my friend. Nicholas too. James wass deat. What difference does it make, eh? Effentually, you’d find Nicholas. It’s your jop.’
‘Why did you phone Nicholas that morning?’
Mrs Nordquist stabbed a piece of asparagus and raised it to her mouth.
‘Wouldn’t you haff? The man’s luffer wass dead, for heffen’s sake. Kilt!’
‘What exactly did you tell him?’
‘That James had been murdered, ant that you were all ofer their houss.’
Holding Alice’s gaze as she did so, and to show that she had now lost all appetite, Mrs Nordquist flicked the green spear off her fork onto the cream carpet below her, and Freya’s muzzle emerged from its hiding place under the sofa to snap up the titbit.
DCI Bruce looked into the mirror compact that he had found in his desk drawer. A fine-looking man, he concluded. No-one had ever actually paid him such a compliment, or likely ever would, but its absence had never dented his belief in the truth of such an observation had it been made about him. Red hair and blue eyes. An excellent Celtic combination. Today, maybe, the skin looking a little pallid and freckled, but more than made up for by the manly auburn moustache. At the afternoon press conference he would photograph well again, any pallor being put down to overwork, and such an impression could only do him good.
The unannounced entry into his office of the Assistant Chief Constable, Laurence Body, jolted him out of his reverie and he dropped the mirror back into its hiding place before rising from his seat.
‘Well, DCI, I hope you have some progress to report. There seems to have been precious little to date.’
Thank God the Detective Segeant had phoned. ‘I do, actually, Sir. I heard from DS Rice that the toxicology report confirms that the Sheriff took a fatal overdose of that drug-am… whatever.’
‘The amitriptyline?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘So?’
‘Er… so what, Sir?’
‘So, do we know whether the Sheriff was already dead when he was hit over the head or whether the drug killed him? Whether only a corpse was battered?’ Body’s irritation coloured his voice.
DCI Bruce cleared his throat, trying to gain time to think. This possibility, now so obvious, had not previously occurred to him. He would rely on Professor McConnachie’s post-mortem remarks.
‘The cause of death was the blows, the Prof told me that at the mortuary,’ he said, trying to sound confident.
‘And did the Professor have the toxicological results to consider then?’
The Chief Inspector was just formulating an evasive reply when Body answered his own rhetorical question. ‘Of course not. He wouldn’t then be aware of any competing cause. For Christ’s sake!’ He sighed with exasperation before continuing, ‘And we have no suspect as yet, I understand?’
‘Actually, I’m just about to see one. The Sheriff’s partner.’ The day had been saved.
Nicholas Lyon leant against the window-sill and looked out through the smeared glass across St Leonard’s Bank and the broad sweep of Queens Drive and onto Salisbury Crags beyond. A scene so carefree and sunlit that it seemed to belong to his past, not to this dreary, painful present. All his life he had been protected by the law, by James and James’ knowledge of it; and here he was in the front line, unprotected and under attack. And all because of James. Even his own body was letting him down, palms clammy and sweat trickling down his brow. He closed his eyes, slowly breathing in, trying to blot out the alien world in which he found himself, with its institutional smells and unashamed ugliness.