Snare (20 page)

* * *

Miss Pink's leaving the trailer was the signal for Esme to intercept her before she could reach her car. The woman had been talking to the crew of the fishing boat. When Miss Pink dutifully passed on Pagan's warning, her reaction was careless: And what makes him so sure it's not one of us?'

‘It could be,' Miss Pink agreed. ‘But asking everyone to stay indoors after dark is tantamount to a curfew; it affects the guilty as well as those at risk. Anyone abroad could be asked his business.'

‘On the excuse that he's in danger? That's a bit transparent. So how was Hamish killed?'

‘He was murdered and he had a fractured skull.' Pagan had told her to say no more than that.

Esme looked puzzled. ‘With that storm, it's surprising he was still in one piece. Surely a fractured skull isn't sufficient evidence to assume he was murdered? The impact could have been against a rock. What else did the police tell you?'

‘Only that: a fractured skull.'

‘I see. There must have been other marks, but you've been told not to talk. That way they may be able to trap the murderer and weed out false confessions from exhibitionists, right?'

‘Aren't you bothered about Hamish being killed?'

‘No. He was a hooligan – far worse than a gang of louts because he was a loner. His father is supposed to be upholding the law – but it wasn't illegal activities Hamish enjoyed, just immoral ones. Amoral, I should say. He was anti-social in the fullest sense of the word. He's got his come-uppance, and you ask me if I'm bothered!'

Are you going to take that line with the Chief Inspector?'

‘It's not a line; it's how I feel. Of course I shall say the same thing to him. What do I have to be afraid of?'

A car came round the Lamentation bend and turned into the nurse's drive. ‘You'll have to excuse me,' Miss Pink said. ‘I have to see Anne.'

‘I'll come with you. I have to see her too,' Esme said firmly in the face of Miss Pink's hesitation and then, coyly: ‘You can't have things all your own way, you know!'

* * *

Anne Wallace's reaction to their appearance on her doorstep was certainly not one of pleasure, although it was difficult to determine what emotion was uppermost in her mind. Her gaze flicked from one to the other, then to the quay, is it important?' she asked, holding the door as if prepared to close it in their faces.

‘Extremely important,' Miss Pink said.

‘You'd better come in then.' There was no attempt at politeness, ‘I'm in a rush this morning,' she went on, leading the way to her kitchen, ‘I've just nipped in for a coffee and a bite to eat and I'm off again. Will you have coffee?'

Miss Pink declined for both of them. Esme was silent, but her eyes followed every movement of the nurse as she filled a kettle, switched it on and turned back to them.

‘Well?'

‘You know that Hamish's body has been recovered?' Miss Pink asked.

Anne's face was set. ‘Yes?'

‘Did Knox call you?' Esme asked.

Anne turned on her as if she'd been attacked. ‘You mind your own business!' Her wild eyes came back to Miss Pink. ‘What have they done with him?'

Panic was infectious and there was a trace of it in Esme's reaction: ‘What would they do with him? He's not arrested. You're not thinking straight. He's the boy's father!'

Anne swallowed, fighting for control. She kept her eyes on Miss Pink. ‘How did he come to be in the water? And what's it got to do with Gordon anyway?'

‘Hamish was murdered,' Esme said coldly. ‘No!' Anne looked from one to the other. ‘That's her exaggeration, isn't it?' There was a smothered snort from Esme. Anne faced her. ‘You talk like a bad book: always making things up. You get your kicks out of other people's lives.'

‘She's right,' Miss Pink said. ‘He was murdered.'

‘So?' The kettle boiled, was switched off and ignored. Miss Pink told her of the fractured skull, of Pagan's warning about a double murderer, of the need for prudence.

‘What kind of prudence do you employ against a homicidal maniac?' Esme asked. ‘He broke into Camas Beag just by smashing a window-pane.'

‘He's not a maniac,' Miss Pink said. ‘And as for Camas Beag –'

‘Why do you say that?' Anne was strident,

‘If he's killed two people in a week, what's stopping him killing a third, or more? Why is he doing it?'

‘You tell us,' Esme said.

‘You interfering old cow!'

‘That's enough, Esme!' Miss Pink showed a flash of anger. ‘You were persecuted too; don't forget that. Whoever was playing tricks on village people had an instinct for vulnerable targets.' Esme licked her lips. Miss Pink turned back to Anne, ‘It's because the police don't know the motives for the murders that Pagan wants us all to take precautions, particularly if we live alone. Being the nurse, you may be forced to go out on call. I suggest you telephone Pagan at the hotel and ask him if you can have an escort in an emergency.'

Anne gaped. ‘How long is this going to last?'

‘Presumably until Pagan is sure that it's safe again.'

‘That's when he's caught,' Esme said savagely. ‘And how long is that going to take, that's what she's saying, right?'

Accusing eyes were turned on Miss Pink – united now in their distrust of her. She was the scapegoat for a situation that confined them to houses where the enemy could effect entry just by smashing a pane of glass.

She glanced across the water as she drove along the street, saw that trees obscured Camas Beag and had a sensation of
déjà vu.
At Feartag Beatrice looked up in astonishment as she burst into the kitchen. ‘I know why he went to Camas Beag: to use the telephone! Three years ago someone broke into a summer cabin in Montana for the same reason. I suddenly remembered.'

‘That means that the person who broke into Camas came from a house without a telephone.'

‘Not necessarily. He could have had a telephone but not the opportunity to use it. Every road seems to lead back to Hamish.' She recounted her interview with Pagan; she had been circumspect with Esme and Anne, but at Feartag she felt secure and uninhibited. She told Beatrice about the petechial haemorrhages and what they meant.

‘You're much more confident about this murder,' Beatrice said.

‘The motive for Hamish's death seems obvious.'

‘Didn't you think it was in the case of Campbell?'

‘Ye-es, that he saw something he shouldn't have seen – but Hamish was alive then – that's a point. How does the sequence go? I found Campbell's body on Monday afternoon and he was here Saturday evening. With the amount of damage that had been done to the body, he must have been put in the water on Saturday night, probably not long after he left here. But Hamish was around on Sunday; he was searching for Campbell at the back of Fair Point. Hamish disappeared on Sunday night, and turns up in the sea on Wednesday morning. Where was he on Monday and Tuesday?'

Beatrice shook her head helplessly, ‘I'm talking to myself,' Miss Pink said. ‘The autopsy may be able to narrow down the time of death – the extent to which his last meal was digested and so on – but if we assume he climbed out of his bedroom window some time around ... tennish? There's a huge gap before he was put in the sea, and that was either Monday night or last night.'

‘How do you arrive at that?'

‘Because the trawler picked up the body at the mouth of the loch, and it had to be put in the water on an ebb tide. The tide turned last night around eleven.'

‘You left out Sunday. If he left his home about ten in the evening, the tide would be ebbing until about three in the morning.'

Miss Pink was silent. When she did speak her mind was elsewhere; she said absently, ‘He wasn't put in the sea the first night.' Her eyes glazed. ‘Yes,' she said at last, ‘he could have been put in the water anywhere on an ebb tide, even from the lighthouse road, and he'd still be found at the mouth of the loch.' She focused suddenly on Beatrice, ‘I'll opt for last night,' she said crisply. ‘There was a risk of his coming back on a rising tide otherwise.'

‘Why are you so sure it wasn't the first night?'

‘The body was kept on land for over eight hours.' She explained about
post mortem
staining. ‘The blood drains downward after death so that, if a body is on its back as this one was, the dorsal parts are stained, but not those parts that are in contact with the ground, like shoulders. After six to eight hours, the blood coagulates and if the body is then moved, the blood can't disperse, so you know whether a body has been kept elsewhere before discovery.'

‘That's amazing. Are you saying that the person who strangled Hamish kept the body for two days – in the
village?
'

‘The village, or a car, a boat, a byre, even a ruin. All traces of where it was kept would have been washed away by the sea. He wasn't strangled by the way; there were no marks on the throat. He was suffocated.' Beatrice looked stricken. ‘Sorry,' Miss Pink muttered absently. After a while she asked, ‘Why would he want to use a telephone?'

Beatrice treated this as rhetorical until the silence seemed to demand an answer. ‘How could I know, Melinda? He had to speak to someone of course, and he needed privacy.'

‘And when did he call?' Miss Pink asked, and then answered her own question: it was before our visit to Camas Beag – which was on the Saturday. Campbell's cottage was set on fire Friday night.' She regarded Beatrice so intently that the older woman began to fidget. ‘Campbell visited you on the Saturday evening,' she said, ‘and you kept something back...'

‘No –'

‘Campbell recognised Hamish –'

‘He didn't say –'

‘... as the intruder who ran away from the cottage earlier that evening, the person who knocked him down.'

‘The intruder wore a hood.'

‘But he wasn't wearing gloves.'

‘He forgot his gloves.'

‘He wore a hood and forgot gloves? Rubbish. How did Campbell know it was a man – or a boy?'

‘The figure,' Beatrice said wildly. ‘He was slight, like a –'

‘Like a boy. Men aren't slight. It was Hamish and he wasn't wearing a hood.'

Beatrice looked so miserable that Miss Pink went to the sitting room and returned with a bottle of Cointreau. ‘Can't find your brandy,' she said, pouring a generous measure into a glass. ‘You can't hurt Hamish now,' she went on gently. ‘Nor Campbell. In any event, you can tell me.'

‘There's a problem.' Beatrice shook her head: an old lady close to the end of her tether. ‘I can tell you what Campbell said, but you know how much reliance can be placed on that.'

‘So that's it! You didn't say anything before because you didn't believe it.'

Beatrice nodded eagerly. ‘Campbell seemed to be acting in character – hysterical, making wild accusations ... Yes, he did say he lied to us about the intruder wearing a hood; that in fact he wasn't, and that although he was running away so he didn't see the face, he knew it was Hamish by his figure and his agility. I didn't put any credence on it. I thought he was accusing someone who was hostile to him – just another example of paranoia – if that was –'

Miss Pink interrupted. ‘Why was Hamish hostile to Campbell?'

Beatrice frowned, trying to remember a conversation four days old. ‘He showed no surprise that Hamish was the intruder, nor that he'd turned violent ... And he was quite sure that Hamish was the arsonist –'

‘Hamish's speciality was practical jokes,' Miss Pink mused. ‘He didn't try heavy breather calls here because Campbell had no phone. Anonymous letters? Somehow Campbell doesn't seem a suitable target. He might have known something about the police car being put in Anne's drive ... cars! His cottage was close to the car park; could he have seen Hamish breaking into vehicles back in the summer?'

'It's a possibility –'

Miss Pink rushed on, ‘You wouldn't think anyone would murder for that – although children murder for the most trivial motives.' Beatrice gaped at her. She went on, ‘Someone postulated a gang from outside – Hell's Angels – but what about a local gang? No, too risky, too many people involved – but someone telephoned from Camas Beag after the fire. The sequence was: fire, telephone call, Campbell killed, Hamish killed. Doesn't it look as if Campbell was murdered because he knew too much, then Hamish because he could expose Campbell's killer?'

‘Campbell was murdered just because he knew Hamish had been stealing from cars?'

The question hung between them and they were so absorbed by it that for a moment neither could identify a familiar sound from the passage.

‘Telephone,' Beatrice murmured. As she stood up, someone pounded the door knocker.

‘I'll see to that,' Miss Pink said.

Pagan was on the doorstep. She was annoyed at the interruption. ‘You're operating alone again. Short-handed?'

Always. May I come in?'

Beatrice nodded a greeting to him as she listened to her caller on the telephone. Miss Pink took him along the passage to the sitting room and offered coffee. He declined, 'I'll get caffeine poisoning. People are hurt if I refuse, but with you I can be truthful. I can't take any more coffee.'

‘You've had a hard morning?'

He sighed. ‘Did you pass on my warning? Good. And did you learn anything from Miss Dunlop and the nurse?'

‘Not really. Esme Dunlop is convinced Hamish asked for trouble. They're both concerned that a killer's on the loose. The nurse is worried about Gordon Knox. Did he say anything about the odd incidents – like the police car in the nurse's drive?'

‘He suspected Hamish all along but he couldn't tackle the boy, or was afraid to. He's not the first officer to sow a wild oat in middle age, but he says he didn't intend it to become serious. He's probably speaking the truth. The nurse is a trifle long in the tooth – a bit possessive, if you take my meaning.'