Gillian Galbraith - Where The Shadow Falls

‘I’ve tracked the report down, Alice.’ He sounded defensive. ‘It’s with Doctor Zenabi for his signature. We were going to email it to you later this morning, but if you want to pop in and collect it, his room is further down this corridor, third on the left. He should have signed it by now.’

‘There were one or two things I need to ask you, first, if you’ve got the time, Professor?’

‘When have I ever got the time on a lecture morning? But fire ahead. I can give you until eleven o’clock, and then I’m off to give a talk on “Paradoxical Undressing”. Law students on this occasion. No, we’d better make that quarter to eleven, in order to give me time to get to Old College.’

‘I’ve spoken to the Sheriff’s partner and he told me that on the Monday night, Freeman planned to take an overdose of amitriptyline…’

‘He?’

‘He.’

‘Well, the toxicology certainly confirmed that,’ the Professor said, gathering together, as he spoke, a couple of lever-arch files from a desk drawer. ‘It was an unexpected finding-that it was in his system, I mean. There was none among the drugs swept from the various cabinets and drawers in Moray Place. Did he tell you where the man got it from?’

Alice nodded. ‘From their other house, in the country, in Kinross-shire. Nicholas, that’s the Sheriff’s partner, had some. He told me that he was given it a while ago when his mother died, and that he’d never got round to throwing it out because…’

‘Mind you,’ the Professor interrupted, ‘it wasn’t the cause of death. He was undoubtedly alive when he was attacked. After all, we took over 150 millilitres of sub-dural blood from the brain, a massive haemorrhage. But it was certainly a fatal dose, the amitriptyline, I mean.’

‘What sort of condition would the Sheriff have been in between, say, about seven o’clock and ten or thereabouts?’

‘Well, you’ve got to remember that he’d been knocking back alcohol a bit-not that much-about fifteen milligrams, no more than a few double whiskies, I suppose. By that time, seven onwards, I’d say that most of the effects he’d be feeling really would be from the drink. Maybe his speech would be a little more slurred with the two in combination… he might have been a bit slower in thought, too. Unsteady. As the evening progressed the effects of the drug would begin to kick in.’

‘And there was no sign of him having been forced to eat or swallow anything? I’m thinking of the pills?’

‘No. Certainly, the oral examination showed nothing unusual.’

‘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.