Кит Мори - Deathly Wind

Torquil nodded, and pulling out his notebook opened it at his last entry. ‘So it is the Steyr-Manlicher Scout that Kenneth took with him?’

‘It was. And so when can I have it back?’

‘That’s just it, Alistair. We haven’t found the gun!’

The crofter looked aghast. ‘You haven’t found it? That’s not possible.’

‘No sign of it at all. And that is serious. Were there any distinguishing features about the rifle?’

Alistair McKinley swallowed a mouthful of tea. ‘I can let you have a photograph of it.’ He went along the landing and opened a bedroom door. ‘This was Kenneth’s room,’ he said, almost forlornly, standing aside for Torquil to enter.

The posters on the wall attracted Torquil’s attention. They were recruitment posters for the marines: men in combat clothes charging through jungles, or wearing heavy camouflage gear stalking through woodland, guns at the ready. Then he noted the bookcase, neatly stacked with books about guns and weaponry, the SAS, and various manuals on hunting. On the bed was a scattered pile of clothing: dungarees, various camouflage jackets, rolls of thick socks. Beside the bed was a series of photographs of Alistair, Kenneth himself and his dead mother. Alistair leaned past him and picked up the framed photograph at the back.

‘He liked this one. He got me to take it one day when we were up in the Corlins.’

Torquil took it. It was a carefully posed photograph of Kenneth McKinley with a rifle aimed at some distant target. ‘It looks as though he’s modified his rifle a bit,’ he commented.

‘Aye, he made his own sound modifier.’

Torquil looked him straight in the eye. ‘Why did he need a silencer?’

Alistair shrugged the question away. If you are trying to take out half-a-dozen rabbits before they make it to their burrows then muffling the sound makes a good deal of sense.’

‘I know what might also help,’ Torquil said, as they made their way back along the landing. ‘A sample of the bullets he used.’

Alistair McKinley eyed him curiously then shrugged and unlocked the metal cabinet at the top of the gun cupboard. He opened a box and drew out a bullet. ‘There you are. Just standard .308 cartridges. And the other box has .22s.’

He reached into the cupboard and unlocked the partition with the 12-bore shotgun. ‘I might as well get this ready for tomorrow.’

‘For the hedgehog cull?’ Torquil asked.

Alistair McKinley nodded curtly. ‘Aye, and I tell you one thing, Inspector McKinnon, I’m in a killing mood, the now.’

Vincent had been working himself up into a rare temper as he fed Geordie Morrison’s chickens and collected their eggs. He felt that he alone of the Wee Kingdom community actually saw through Geordie’s façade as the jolly carefree eccentric, the natural father and perfect husband. Oh, he was affable enough, charismatic even, and he had them all eating out of his hand. No one carped when he just took off with his family, generally leaving Vincent or the late Gordon MacDonald to tidy up after him and cover for his chores. Rhona had always been smitten by him, of course, and the McKinleys never really bothered. They had always tended to be pretty well self-sufficient.

Only now, in amid the irritation, Vincent was starting to worry. This time the family had been away longer than expected. It was usually just a day or two on some joy-ride or whim of Geordie’s. He wouldn’t have thought too much about it, except that they seemed to have suddenly run into death and tragedy everywhere. Gordon had suddenly died of a stroke or heart attack. Young Kenneth had killed himself on some foolish climbing accident in the Corlins. And then Rhona had almost died from a heart attack. There were too many things going on.

Why didn’t Geordie Morrison have a mobile like everyone else? But oh no, him and his bloody ‘green’ lifestyle!

The germ of anxiety had become heated on the flames of the irritation that he was feeling about having to do all these extra chores. He began to wonder whether Geordie really had taken his family and gone off in their boat. The boat had gone, right enough, but were they all OK? Could they be stranded somewhere – or even worse! He tried to shove the thought from his head, but he couldn’t help thinking that Sallie would usually send one of the kids round with a note.

Except when Geordie pre-empted her and just took them off, of course. He had done it before, the big galoot, and only given Sallie time to write a note, which Rhona had found on the mantelpiece.

That’ll be it! Vincent thought. For goodness sake, I’ll have it out with the dim-witted pair of them if I find a note just waiting there. Putting us through all this!

With the basket of eggs in one hand he let himself into the unlocked back door of their cottage. The whole place smacked of family life. The smell of children, their toys, paintings, crudely written messages to their parents were everywhere – on the floor, the walls, attached to the fridge.

Entering the equally children-dominated sitting-room filled him with sudden dread. What if they had had an accident and no one had known about it?

Bugger! Ewan McPhee had died out there somewhere and his body hadn’t been found yet. He cursed himself for a fool and ran up the bare wooden stairs to see if he could find some clue: a map, a book, anything that might point to where they had gone.

But there was nothing. Their beds had all been made, the bathroom was neat and tidy, the towels neatly folded and hanging from the rails. No toothbrushes! That meant that they had gone off somewhere, but that was all.

He was on the point of taking the liberty of checking drawers to see if he could elicit some information, although for the life of him he didn’t know what sort of thing to look for, when he heard footsteps downstairs.

‘Geordie? Sallie?’ he cried, turning and descending the stairs two steps at a time.

Megan Munro was standing in the middle of the room, wringing her hands in agitation. She was dressed in a baggy pink sweater with matching pink bobble hat, with her jeans tucked into pink patterned Wellingtons. He could see that she was trembling so much that her large hoop ear-rings were actually shaking slightly. When she recognized Vincent her lower lip started to tremble and she began to move towards him.

‘Megan, what’s wrong?’

He was silenced as she threw herself into his arms and buried her face against his chest. He felt her rhythmic sobbing.

‘Is it … Nial?’

She moved her head in answer back and forth and mumbled between sobs, ‘We – we had a row! About … birds … and hedgehogs. And her!’

‘Her?’

‘Katrina Tulloch. He says he’s worried about her.’ She made a choking noise. ‘I said he was more worried about her than he is about me! And he went off.’

Vincent stood patting her back, just letting her get rid of her emotions.

She looked up at him. ‘I went for a walk, just to straighten my head out and I saw movement in the upstairs window here. I thought the Morrisons must be back. I thought I’d be able to chat to Sallie. I thought she’d understand.’

Ignoring an unexpected pang of disappointment and resentment Vincent continued to make supportive, soothing movements on her back. ‘There, there, Megan,’ he said softly.

The sudden bang on the doorframe made him snap his head up to see Liam Sartori standing in the doorway, an insolent grin on his face.

‘Well, well! What a cosy scene,’ he said, holding up a hand with a number of envelopes. ‘Listen, don’t let me interrupt anything here. I’ve just come to deliver some letters. You two are crofters, aren’t you? I met the lady at the – er – party, the other day.’