But he still wasn’t happy. Whatever he’d told Wallace, the superintendent clearly hadn’t accepted it at face value, and for a one-time detective inspector that was bound to rankle.
‘How did you find the body?’ I asked.
‘The dog caught the scent when I was taking her out for a walk this morning. It’s in an abandoned crofter’s cottage-a croft’s a small farm,’ he added, for my benefit. ‘You sometimes get kids going out there, but not usually in winter. And before you ask, no, I didn’t touch anything. I might be retired, but I know better than that.’
I didn’t doubt it. ‘Any idea who it might be?’
‘Not a clue. Far as I know no one from the island’s been reported missing. And there’s less than two hundred people live out here, so it’d be hard for anyone to disappear without its being noticed.’
‘Do you get many visitors from the mainland or other islands?’
‘Not many, but some. The odd naturalist or archaeologist. All the islands are peppered with ruins: stone age, bronze age and God knows what. There are supposed to be burial cairns and an old watchtower on the mountain. And there’s been quite a lot of renovation work going on, so we’ve had builders and contractors coming out. Road resurfacing, houses being done up, that sort of thing. But not since the weather turned.’
‘Who else knows about the body?’
‘No one as far as I’m aware. The only person I told was Wallace.’
That explained the curious looks of the locals when the police had arrived. Their presence would be big news on an island as small as this. I doubted the reason we were here would remain a secret for long, but at least for the moment we didn’t have to worry about sightseers.
‘He said it was badly burned.’
Brody gave a grim smile. ‘Oh, it’s badly burned all right. But I think you’d better see for yourself.’
He said it with both confidence and finality, closing the subject.
‘Wallace told me you used to work with him.’
‘I did a stint at HQ in Inverness. You know it?’
‘I’ve only travelled through. Runa must have been quite a change after that.’
‘Aye, but for the better. It’s a good place to live. Quiet. There’s time and space to think.’
‘Are you from here originally?’
‘God, no. I’m an “incomer”,’ he said. ‘Wanted to get away from it all when I took early retirement. And it doesn’t get much further away than this.’
There was no disputing that. Once we had left the harbour village, there was hardly any sign of life. The only habitation we’d passed was an imposing old house, set well back from the road. Other than that there had been only the occasional ruined bothy, and sheep. In the gathering twilight, Runa looked beautiful, but desolate.
It would be a lonely place to die.
There was a jolt as Brody turned off the road and bumped down an overgrown track. Ahead of us, the car’s headlights picked out a crumbling old cottage. Wallace had said the body had been found at a croft, but there was little left to show this must once have been a working farm. Brody pulled up outside and turned off the engine.
‘Stay, Bess,’ he ordered the border collie.
We climbed out of the car as the Range Rover drew up behind us on the track. The cottage was a squat, single-storey building that was slowly being reclaimed by nature. Looming up behind it was the peak I’d seen earlier, now only a black shape in the encroaching darkness.
‘That’s Beinn Tuiridh,’ Brody told me. ‘It’s what passes for a mountain out here. They say if you climb to the top on a clear day you can see all the way to Scotland.’
‘Can you?’
‘Never met anyone stupid enough to find out.’
He took a Maglite from his glove compartment, and we waited outside the car for Fraser and Duncan to join us. I collected my own torch from the flight case in the Range Rover, then we made our way towards the cottage, torch beams bouncing and criss-crossing in the darkness. It was little more than a stone shack, its walls furred with moss and lichen. The doorway was so low I had to stoop to go inside.
I paused and shone my torch around. The place was obviously long abandoned, a derelict remnant of forgotten lives. Water dripped from a hole in the roof, and the room we were in was cramped, a low ceiling added to the claustrophobic feel. We were in what had once been a kitchen. There was an old range, a dusty cast-iron pan still standing on one of its cold plates. A rickety wooden table stood in the middle of the stone-flagged floor. A few cans and bottles were scattered on the floor, evidence that the place hadn’t been entirely untenanted. It had the musty smell of age and damp, but nothing else. For a fire death there seemed remarkably little signs of any fire.
‘Through there,’ Brody said, shining his torch on another doorway.
As I approached it I caught the first faint, sooty whiff of combustion. But it was nothing like as strong as I would have expected. The door was broken, its rusted hinges protesting as it was pushed open. Watching my step, I went through into the other room. It was even more depressing than the ruined kitchen. The stink of fire was unmistakable now. The torchlight showed ancient, crumbling plaster on the bare walls, in one of which was the gaping mouth of a fireplace. But the smell didn’t come from that. Its source was in the centre of the room, and as I shone my torch on it my breath caught in my throat.
There was precious little left of what had once been a living person. No wonder Brody had looked as he did when I’d asked if it was badly burned. It was that all right. Even the white heat of a crematorium isn’t enough to reduce a human body to ash, yet this fire had somehow done just that.
An untidy pile of greasy ash and cinders lay on the floor. The fire had consumed bone as readily as it had skin and tissue. Only the larger bones remained, emerging from the ash like dead branches from a snowdrift. Even these had been calcined, the carbon burned from them until they were grey and brittle. Presiding over them all like a broken eggshell was a skull, lying with its jawbone canted off to one side.
And yet, apart from the body, nothing else in the room had been damaged. The fire that had all but incinerated a human being, reduced its bones to the consistency of pumice, had somehow done so without burning anything else nearby. The stone flags below the remains were blackened, but a few feet away a tattered and filthy mattress lay untouched. Old leaves and twigs littered the ground, yet the flames had rejected even these.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. What had shocked me to silence was the sight of two unburned feet and a single hand protruding from the ashes. The bones jutting from them were scorched to black sticks, yet they were completely unmarked.
Brody came and stood beside me.
‘Well, Dr Hunter? Still think there’s nothing suspicious about it?’
CHAPTER 3
THE WIND MOANED fitfully outside the old cottage, an eerie background music to the macabre scene before us. From the doorway, I was aware of Duncan’s indrawn breath as he and Fraser saw what was lying on the floor.
But I was getting over the shock now, already beginning to assess what I was seeing.
‘Is there any chance of getting some more light in here?’ I asked.
‘We’ve got a portable floodlight in the car,’ Fraser said, tearing his eyes from the pile of bone and ashes. He was trying to sound blase but the attempt wasn’t entirely convincing. ‘Go and get it, Duncan. Duncan.’
The young PC was still staring at what was left of the body. The blood had left his face.
‘You OK?’ I asked. My concern wasn’t entirely for his sake. I’d worked on more than one body recovery where a green police officer had vomited on the remains. It didn’t make anyone’s job any easier.
He nodded. His colour was starting to come back. ‘Aye. Sorry.’
He hurried out. Brody regarded the remains.
‘I told Wallace it was a strange one, but I don’t think he believed me. Dare say he thought I’d gone soft after a few years off the job.’