A Double Death on the Black Isle (15 page)

When Allie returned to the farmyard, he could see his wife in the kitchen window; the lights outlined her shape as she stood at the sink, staring into the distance, not moving. He grieved for
her. It was then that he realized that in his walk around the estate, a whole hour nearly, he had not once grieved for his son who was now lying in the morgue.

The local policeman met the two detectives from Dingwall at the village hotel.

The landlord was the first to be interviewed. He gave his statement to the detective from the town reluctantly. In spite of being the landlord of a small hotel and bar, he did not like nor trust strangers.

“Aye,” said the landlord, a man in his middle forties with about the same number of hairs on his head. “This is where Fraser drank.” He was polishing glasses as he spoke.
What a stupid question
, he thought,
where else would Fraser drink?”

“Was there any trouble the night Fraser died?” The detective asked, knowing there was no confirmation when Fraser had died. The early hours of the morning was the best guess.

“Not in here.”

“That's not what I've been told.”

“There was a few words, maybe.”

“Who was arguing?”

“I never said arguing, a wee bit of a disagreement more like.”

Detective Sergeant Wilkie too was middle-aged, and it showed in a face permanently set in a sour, disappointed frown. He had been posted here from Edinburgh, to what he thought of as the ends of the earth. His wife was from the Highlands and loved it. He hated it. He hated the people even more, and this was from a man who had been here eleven years.

“Answer the question or I'll have a word with the licensing board,” he told the landlord.

The landlord shrugged, held up a glass, saw that it was shining-clear and started on another.

“The disagreement, the argument, whatever you want to call it . . .” the detective continued.

“I was busy, I didn't notice.”
I'm not here to do your job for you,
the landlord was thinking,
and whatever happened to Fraser Munro, it's good riddance to bad rubbish.

The landlord's wife was less discrete. It helped that her questioner was a local man, promoted to detective constable. She had known him as a boy and always said he had done well for himself.

“It's yourself young Davey. Or should I say
Detective
Grant? I'm always saying you've done well for yourself.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Duncan. I need to ask you a few questions about the night Fraser died.”

Knowing the woman well, the detective constable settled in for quite a session. The smell of stale beer and cigarettes made him long for one of each, but knew, with the detective sergeant there, his chances were nil.

“This is a respectable house, you know,” Mrs. Duncan started. “We never have any problems. At least none we can't handle ourselves.”

“The night Fraser died, what time did he come in?”

“The back o' six, maybe. I came in at half past and he was here at the bar.”

“Did you hear him have words with anyone?”

“No more than usual.” She saw by the constable's face and his fierce scribbling that she had said something important. “I mean, we did have a wee bit o' trouble wi' him an' his tongue. . . .”

“And his fighting?”

“Once or twice. But they were no really fights, drunken dancing with a few punches and kicks more like.” She stopped, looked across at the closed shutters of the bar, worried that her husband might be there listening. He'd told her to hold her tongue with the police . . . but this was Davey, one of their own.

“Did you ever throw Fraser out of the bar?”

“Well, we did bar him, but it was only the once . . . no, twice. It's his father and his poor mother I feel sorry for. A right nice family they are. Allie Munro was born on that farm, and their Fraser was aye on about how he hated it, and hated the Ord Mackenzies.” Mrs. Duncan leaned forward and dropped her voice to that hush usually used to describe a serious medical condition. “He wasn't the same since he came back from his regiment.”

“So who was he having words with that night?”

“All the usual, the farm boys, the tinkers, anyone in earshot.” She rattled off the names of two McPhee brothers and three of the lads from Achnafern Farm. “Aye, Fraser was going on about them all being mammy's boys, no real men, but no one took much notice.” She shrugged, as though it was all nothing.

But DC Grant knew it was a nothing that could have led to Fraser's death.

“Was there any more than words?”

“It got a wee bit heated, so my husband threw them all out and after that I didn't see much. I heard a bit o' yelling from outside, but boys will be boys, nothing wrong in a wee bit o' fisty-cuffs—as long as it doesn't get out of hand.” She realized what she had said and suddenly put her hands to her mouth in a half-prayer. “But it must have got out of hand, mustn't it?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Duncan.” The policeman closed his notebook, satisfied. This was a good witness—respectable and indiscreet.

Next came the questioning of the lads from the farm. Faced with three men ages seventeen to twenty-three—three locals all born to families who had worked Achnafern Estate for generations, who collectively saw nothing, knew nothing, and supplied
the minimum of information in grunts and “ayes” and “Aa canny mind”—DS Wilkie should have known better and handed over the questioning to the local policeman.

DC Grant had been at school with the oldest, knew the families of the other two, but no, the sergeant was in charge and he made sure everyone knew it. When it was time to head back to the police station, Grant was amazed to hear that the case had been solved.

“There was a fight outside the hotel, right?” DS Wilkie asked. His constable knew this was a rhetorical question and stood almost at attention, saying nothing.

“The tinker boys, Jimmy McPhee's brothers, had a fight with Fraser Munro. Right?” The sergeant spat out the name Jimmy McPhee.

Again the detective constable knew better than to speak.

“So there's the answer. One of the punches led to Munro's death, so it's manslaughter. Right?”

The smug look on the sergeant's face, the way he rubbed his hands congratulating himself on solving the case, made DC Davey Grant extremely uneasy, but he knew there was no questioning his boss once he had reached a decision. The investigation was closed.

A
fter two years in the local solicitor's office, Calum Sinclair had a deserved reputation as a bright young man—even a partnership was possible. One day. It would be a good opportunity, one of his tutors had advised when asked an opinion on the offer of a job in the small Highland town.

“Calum, you're one of my best students, but without family connections, you'd be lost in the city. Just another clerk in a law office,” his professor had said.

From a small Caithness town, perched right on the northernmost coast of Scotland, to Edinburgh University to study law as a scholarship student, he was now a junior in a respectable solicitors' office.

Not a tall man, he gave the impression of reliability. Perhaps it was his strong jaw and his cheekbones, which looked as though they had been sculpted by the relentless wind of his home county.

For the first year in the Highlands, Calum Sinclair questioned his decision almost weekly. To say that he was bored would be understating the tedium of a small-town solicitor's life. Now there was the prospect of an intriguing case and even more intriguing clients.

The visit from Jimmy McPhee was causing interest in the office. Mr. Cameron, the senior partner in the firm, had no problem having a Traveler for a client.

“His money is as good as anyone else's,” he replied when Calum had raised the matter.

This was not the opinion of some of the office staff.

“Whoever heard of a tinker getting a solicitor?” had been the reaction of the secretary.

The police, and all too often the law, treated Travelers differently. Prejudice against them was as deep as the prejudice against the Romany, and everyone now knew what had happened to them during the Second World War.

Calum Sinclair knew that if the McPhee brothers were charged with complicity in the death of Fraser Munro, he would have to allow for this in his defense strategy.

“So what charges could the polis bring?” Jimmy McPhee asked as soon as he was comfortable in the visitor's chair, only an arm's length across a narrow desk from Calum. The smallness of the room was made bearable by the view to the hills and mountain beyond.

“Mr. McPhee . . .”

“Call me Jimmy, everyone does.” Jimmy's grin was so cheeky Calum couldn't help smiling back.

“You said on the phone that the police are looking for your brothers to question them in relation to Fraser Munro's death. Why do you think they will be charged?”

Jimmy's grin became a glower and Calum saw just why people were intimidated by him.

“We're tinkers. That's cause enough for some people.”

Calum waited.

“And I have my sources.”

“Mr. McPhee . . .” Calum Sinclair started.

“Jimmy.”

“Fine—Jimmy—so if they are charged, and you want me to represent your brothers, I'll need some background on what happened.”

Jimmy gave a brief account of the night Fraser Munro died.

Calum wrote quickly on a legal pad in his personal shorthand. “Your brothers were drinking in the hotel bar. Do they go there often?”

“No. They don't have enough money to drink more than once a week.”

Calum noted that. “Was it usual to be out on a weeknight?”

“Not usual, but they'd had a hard day working at Achnafern and wanted a beer before going home, so they said. You know how it is on these long summer nights, no getting dark before ten, you feel like the day is never ending.”

“And Fraser Munro?”

“He was a regular. Four or five nights a week.”

“I'll confirm that.” Calum looked up. “Next, the fight.”

“A bit o' argy-bargy and some pushing and shoving. You couldn't call it a fight.”

“Do you know why they were fighting?”

“It was all the usual stuff from Fraser—calling them names, trying to pick a fight, trying to prove he wis a big man.” Jimmy had know Fraser for years and didn't think him much of a fighter—all show in his opinion.

“Did either of your brothers hit Fraser Munro?”

“They swore it was only a bit o' shoving, a kick or two, maybe a slap, but no real punching.”

“Witnesses?”

“From what I heard, the landlord and his wife, some other o' the drinkers, and the lads from Achnafern Farm.”

“Now,” Calum reached for a map and unrolled it on the desk, “show me where all this took place.”

“This is the hotel,” Jimmy pointed, “this is the farm and the farm road.” Jimmy pointed to a sharp bend on an unsealed road with woodland on either side. “It's no marked, but there's a bridge
over a wee burn. It's called the Devil's Den. That's where Fraser Munro was found.”

“Would your brothers walk home that way?”

“No. They'd take this road over the hill to where the boys stay with our cousins.” Jimmy showed him. “The farm road would be well out of the way.”

Unless they wanted a quieter place to finish the fight,
Calum thought.

“Do you know if anyone might have seen your brothers on the road that night?”

“There were the other farm lads that left wi' Fraser Munro.”

“Anyone else?”

“Naw.” Jimmy paused to think. “Lambing is well over, there'd be no one out in the fields that late. One thing—the dogs at the schoolhouse on the road. The boys set them off barking just as a joke. They said they whistled and got a laugh when the old schoolteacher gadgie shouted at them to wheesht.”

“That might come in useful . . . if they are charged.”

Jimmy said nothing to that, but he knew that if Fraser Munro's death really was suspicious and if the police needed a culprit and if a McPhee was in the vicinity, then the McPhee would be charged.

“I know the polis will be coming for my brothers,” Jimmy said. “If they're charged, I'll let you know.” He stood to leave.

They shook hands, but before he opened the door to show Jimmy out, Calum knew he had to ask one further question.

“You're not hiding your brothers from the police are you?”

“Me? Would I do that?” Jimmy gave his signature, eyes-screwed-up-mouth-like-a-Halloween-lantern grin.

When he had gone, Calum answered for him. “Oh, yes you would, Jimmy McPhee—if it suited you.”

He sat down to read his notes, thought through the visit and his impressions. It had been more than interesting—it had been entertaining. He had taken an immediate liking to the feared, hard man of the McPhee family. He almost wanted the brothers to be charged just so he could have a challenging case and the enjoyment of McPhees as clients.