Flotsam and Jetsam (14 page)

‘We’ll start with old Mrs Rogerson at Aberstyle Farm. She sounded upset at the theft of her grandfather’s tobacco tin collection.’

He took the road that skirted Kyleshiffin moor and breathed deeply, enjoying the salty, peaty air. Then he swerved when he saw the dark haze rising from bushes at the side of the road.

‘Blasted midges!’ he cursed.

He did not notice the glint of sun on the lenses of a pair of binoculars that were trained on him.

Annie McConville always amazed Torquil. Although she was in her late seventies she seemed to thrive on hard work and was always on the go. Her animal sanctuary was famous throughout the islands and she was regarded as something of a local celebrity.  

She was scuttling about with a wheelbarrow of straw, busily cleaning out the cat cages in the outhouses while Torquil followed her. Crusoe was tagging along behind him on his lead, while Zimba her German shepherd and Sheila her West Highland terrier lay on the floor wagging their tails.  

‘So how many strays have you actually had recently, Annie?’  

Annie turned and straightened. ‘Too many by far. Six dogs and three cats. I can’t understand it. We’ve never really had a problem on the island before.’ She scowled. ‘No matter what that scunner Rab McNeish may say.’

‘Oh, what does Rab say?’

‘You know very well, Inspector McKinnon. The man is not right in the head. He has a thing about germs. He has been spreading malicious rumours about me and my dogs. He thinks that whenever a dog fouls any patch of ground it is me and one of my animals that is at fault.’

Torquil nodded. ‘I was aware that he had mentioned some such thing.’

Annie waved a brush under his nose and Torquil stepped back adroitly.

‘Well, he will not do it again. I told him myself this morning at the station.’

‘You were at the station this morning?’

‘Goodness me! Do those folk that you work with not tell you anything? I was in telling Ewan McPhee an important piece of information. I am surprised that he hasn’t told you.’

‘Well, we – er – have a rather important investigation on at the moment, Annie.’

‘Oh, and what sort of investigation is more important than the welfare of these waifs and strays?’

‘I am not at liberty to say just at this moment, Annie. But what was this information?’

‘It was about sawing bones. None of the stray dogs likes it.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

Annie tut-tutted. ‘Well, look, the easiest thing is for me to show you. Come through to the kitchen.’

And she led the way to another outhouse which had been tiled inside so that it was clinically clean. She went and scrubbed her hands, then opened a fridge freezer and took out a couple of marrow bones. She deposited them on a wooden chopping board on a strong bench.

‘We’ll just leave the door open. They’ll all hear well enough.’

And producing a long saw she started sawing one of the bones.

Almost immediately a chorus of howls and yelps rang out from the cages in the lower outhouses.

‘They don’t like it, you see,’ Annie said. ‘What do you make of that, Inspector McKinnon?’

‘Not a lot, Annie,’ Torquil replied. ‘Zimba and Sheila are barking away as well. Maybe it is just something that dogs don’t like.’

‘Och, will you not listen properly? Zimba and Sheila are telling the others to hold their wheesht. They are the seniors, you see. All the others are howling in distress. They don’t like it. Listen now, I’ll do it again.’

And as if on cue the yelping and howling started up again as soon as the rasping of metal on bone rang out.

This time Torquil noticed that Crusoe was also whimpering. Not only that, but he was shaking, as if with fear.

‘Goodness, Annie, you are right. Just look at Crusoe here.’ He knelt down and stroked the dog’s head.

‘Poor thing,’ she said, kneeling as well. And at her touch, her almost mystical touch with animals, Crusoe calmed down. He looked at her with his ears tucked back and licked her outstretched hand.

‘It is clear to me, Inspector. All of these poor animals have been scared. Mistreated they have been.’

‘I will find out who did this, Annie,’ Torquil vowed. ‘It is sounding as if it is one person who is at the bottom of it. Whoever it was tried to murder Crusoe here.’

And he recounted about how he had found Crusoe at St Ninian’s Cave, lashed to a piece of timber.

‘Could he have been thrown from a boat, do you think?’ Annie asked.

‘I have no idea, actually. It could have been from a boat or he could have been tossed in somewhere along that coast and drifted.’

Annie bit her lip as she thought. ‘You might do worse than have a word with Guthrie Lovat. He must know more than anyone about the way flotsam and jetsam drift on to the beaches round here.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘If he will let you in to see him that is.’

‘I don’t think I have ever actually talked to him,’ Torquil mused.

‘Aye, well, he keeps himself to himself. And he’s not an animal lover, that I can tell you.’

‘Really?’

‘Aye, really. Years ago before he had made his money and bought that strip of beach at Half Moon Cove, I used to walk the dogs there. They used to love to have a run over the sands. But that Guthrie Lovat saw us one time and started pelting the dogs with stones. I gave him a good ticking off.’

Torquil stood up. ‘Thank you for that, Annie. I’ll certainly consider it. It’s probably time that I got to know our famous beachcombing artist.’

Wallace and Douglas drove up the old dirt track towards Dr Dent’s cottage. Wallace drew their battered pick-up truck to a halt just before the wooden gates beyond which Dr Dent’s aged Land Rover was parked.

‘It’s a bit weird calling at the house of a dead man,’ Wallace remarked.

‘Especially when it looks like he was murdered,’ Douglas agreed.

They let themselves through the wooden gate and crunched up the gravel drive.

‘Dr Dent doesn’t seem to have been one for gardening then,’ Douglas said, pointing to the overgrown garden with knee high grass and weeds.

Wallace shrugged. ‘Why would he be? It isn’t as if he owned the place. Morag says it was rented on his behalf by the University of the Highlands.’

‘You can hardly see that pond for all the grass,’ Douglas replied with a nod towards a fish pond with several large goldfish visible under a surface carpet of water lily leaves.

The front door was locked and the windows were all closed.

‘Let’s check the back,’ Douglas suggested, leading the way.

It only took a few moments to do a circuit of the cottage.

‘It seems secure enough,’ Douglas pointed out as he shielded his eyes and peered through a front window. ‘But it’s a bit of a mess inside.’

‘I see what you mean,’ his brother agreed, as he joined him at the sill and looked in.

Through the glass they saw that the front room had been arranged as a sort of laboratory. There were various electronic gadgets and an assortment of glass apparatus stacked on a table, with a microscope and an array of chemical bottles and fixatives. It seemed untidy to say the least.

A bookcase against a back wall looked as if someone had pulled every book out of it and thrown them
higgledy-piggledy
on the settee.

‘Look at that great wet area over by that box thing.’

‘That’s not a box, Douglas,’ Wallace corrected. ‘It’s some sort of tank with pipes attached to it.’

The twins looked at each other.

‘Are you thinking what I am thinking, Wallace?’

Wallace swallowed hard and nodded. ‘I think so. I don’t know why he would have a tank of water in his front room, but he was a scientist. An odd one at that! But Dr Ralph McLelland said he was drowned, but not where he was found on the moor.’

‘We’d better let Torquil know pretty damned quick. He might just have been murdered in his own cottage.’

Morag had been on the telephone non-stop since the others had gone off on their various tasks.

First she telephoned Ralph McLelland and ascertained what personal effects of Dr Dent’s he had in his possession. And, of course, she asked him for a resume of his findings, so that she could start organizing the case file.

Calling the University of the Highlands had resulted in her being directed to various people including the university chancellor, the head of the department of biological sciences and then to the HR department. All of them had been shocked to hear of Dr Dent’s death, but were even more shocked to discover that the police thought that his death was suspicious.

She talked with Jenny Protheroe, the HR director, who gave her as much information as they had on Dent. That merely amounted to a run through his curriculum vitae, which she agreed to scan and send over by email, and an acknowledgement that he was alone in the world with no known relatives.

‘I can’t say that I liked the man,’ Jenny confessed. ‘He had a reputation, you see.’

‘A reputation? What sort of reputation, Jenny? Any information could be relevant.’

There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘He was a Lothario.’

‘A Lothario? You mean he liked the ladies?’

‘And how! Staff, students, anyone in a skirt, if you know what I mean.’

Morag noted the tone of bitterness in her voice and wondered whether Jenny Protheroe, director of HR at the university had been targeted at some stage.

‘Was he in a relationship recently, do you know?’

‘Not that I know of. Women were wary of him ever since last year. One of his students, Heather McQueen drowned when she was doing post graduate work with him on West Uist.’

‘Ah, of course. A tragedy.’

‘There were rumours about an improper relationship.’

‘But nothing like that came out at the Fatal Accident Inquiry,’ Morag remarked.

‘Well, it wouldn’t, would it?’

Morag made careful notes of the conversation and then made a list of bullet points to tell Torquil.

She was just about to phone Ewan to ask him to collect Dr Dent’s effects from the mortuary when she opened her diary and she saw Sandy King’s card inside the cover. She felt her cheeks warm and she smiled.

Before she knew what she was doing she had dialled his number. The call was answered even before she had time to change her mind.

‘Sandy King here.’

‘Oh – er – it’s Morag Driscoll.’

‘Hi, Morag, I am glad you rang. When are you free?’

‘It’s not so easy to say, er – Mr King, you see—’

‘My name is Sandy.’ She noticed the amusement in his voice.

‘Sorry – Sandy! It’s the police training. The formality, I mean.’

‘I was kind of hoping that I could get behind that. Find the informal Morag.’

Morag’s hand went to her hair and she started twirling a strand. Goodness, what am I doing here, she thought? I’m like a wee girl. I should just pull the plug before this gets out of hand.

‘Maybe you can,’ she heard herself say. She hesitated and then added, ‘I have to tell you that I was married. I am a widow.’

‘So I believe.’

‘And I have three kids.’

‘I know. I found that out for myself.’

‘And you still—?’

‘I really want to meet up with you, Morag. So, when can we fix it?’

She paused for a moment, then: ‘Tonight at eight. I’ll get my sister to baby-sit. Meet me at Arbuckle’s; it’s a little wine
bar-cum-restaurant
just off Deuglie Street which you’ll find at the top of Harbour Street. We can get a glass of wine or a beer.’

‘A meal sounds good to me. Eight o’clock it is. I can’t wait. Bye, Morag.’

‘Bye – Sandy.’

Morag stared at her mobile in disbelief. Was it true? Was she really going on a date with Sandy King, The Net-breaker?

She pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

Then her phone went. It was Wallace Drummond with news that brought her back to earth with a crash.

Ewan had taken details from Alice Rogerson at Aberstyle Farm. She had discovered the burglary herself two mornings
previously when she came in from helping her husband with the morning milking. It had been a professional job, clinically performed.

‘They must have known precisely when we were out of the house,’ she told him. ‘And they took my grandfather’s collection of tobacco tins, including one that he had when he was in the trenches on the Somme. That was what hurt most. It was sentimental, you see.’

And apart from that they had taken all of her jewellery and her husband’s Omega watch.

After that he had ridden across to Strathcombe, a hamlet of five crofts where three of them had been burgled the night before. And, as in the Rogerson case, they had been niftily done when the owners were all out tending to their crofts.

‘Professionals are at work here,’ Ewan mused as he pedalled into action. ‘That strikes me that they are not local folk then. No one here on West Uist would have any idea about this burgling. I’ll get the others interviewed then get back and see if I can’t see some pattern that will lead me to the culprit.’

He glanced at his watch and decided the best route towards the next case, which was over on the west of the island.

‘Och it will be best to go past Sharkey’s Boot, I am thinking.’ Then he remembered that Rab McNeish lived on Sharkey’s Boot and he had been about to complain of a theft, until he had been scared away by Annie McConville.

‘Torquil is always going on to me about taking initiative. Well, maybe this is just the sort of thing he meant. Maybe Rab McNeish would like me to investigate his theft. He said it was at his house. Antiques!’

He patted the moped’s handlebars. ‘Come on, Nippy, let’s show that initiative. Sharkey’s Boot it is and McNeish’s
half-complaint
about burglary.’

He had only gone a quarter of a mile when his phone went and he had to stop to answer it.

It was Morag.

‘Ewan, we need you back right away.’

‘But Morag, I think—’

‘And on your way, stop at the mortuary and get a bag from Dr McLelland. He’s expecting you.’

‘But Morag, do you—?’

‘Be quick, Ewan, there’s a pet. Torquil wants me to meet him and the twins at Dr Dent’s cottage, so I need you to look after the station.’