Кит Мори - Deathly Wind

Morag ran through the rest of the messages then went through to the kitchen to make tea while Torquil began work on his report.

When Morag came back through with the tea-tray she found him comparing the empty cartridge he had found on the Cruadalach isles with the two live cartridges – one that had been found beside Kenneth McKinley’s body and the other that he had obtained from Alistair McKinley.

‘These certainly look to me as if they’re from the same batch,’ he explained. ‘And from my chat with Alistair it is clear that young Kenneth McKinley had a thing about guns. He had a bookcase full of books about weapons, the SAS and hunting.’

He shoved the photograph that Alistair McKinley had given him across the desk. Morag swivelled it round and frowned.

‘I see what you mean. And it makes you think about Ewan’s entry about GUNS in his diary.’

‘Aye, and his gun is nowhere to be found.’

‘Is it a dangerous gun?’

‘They all are potentially deadly, Morag. And this one is a .308. It could easily take down a stag.’ He shook his head. ‘Superintendent Lumsden is going to love this. And I have to say that I have a bad feeling about it all.’

Torquil was just about to go off to meet the Drummond twins at the harbour when his mobile phone rang. It was his uncle, the Padre.

‘I think you had better come out to the Wee Kingdom, laddie. I have just found a body.’ His voice hesitated for a moment. ‘It looks nasty, Torquil. Somehow I don’t think this was a natural death!’

Morag had phoned through to the cottage hospital and managed to get hold of Ralph McLelland, who collected her from the station in the West Uist ambulance. Torquil had gone on ahead on his Bullet and parked alongside the Padre’s Red Hunter on the island side of the Wee Kingdom causeway. Ralph parked behind them and he and Morag got out and looked over the edge of the causeway.

There was a fifteen-foot drop to a small shingle shelf covered in swards of slimy kelp with a couple of rock pools before the shelf disappeared into the sea. Torquil and the Padre were kneeling beside one of the pools looking at the body of Liam Sartori.

‘He’s dead all right, Ralph,’ said Torquil, looking up when he heard their arrival on the causeway.

‘He was lying face down in this rock pool when I found him,’ said Lachlan. ‘I was on my way to tell the crofters about Rhona’s death and I saw him from the top of the rise. I pulled him out and turned him over to see if I could do anything for him. I assumed that he’d drowned. I tried CPR for a few minutes, but—!’ He shook his head despondently. ‘Then I realized that things weren’t what they seemed.’

Morag and Ralph scrambled down to them.

‘What do you mean, Lachlan?’ Morag asked. ‘He must have fallen off the edge of the causeway, and knocked himself out when he fell in the pool. Isn’t that what happened?’

Torquil shook his head. ‘I agree with Lachlan. There’s something that doesn’t fit here. You can see where he must have landed. The shingle is all disturbed over there. I can’t see how he would have ended with his face down in that pool. It is too far away.’

‘Maybe he stunned himself, then got up and staggered about a bit before collapsing in the pool,’ Morag suggested.

‘It’s possible,’ said Ralph McLelland, kneeling beside the body, ‘but look at those gashes on his face. They’re like talon marks. Like the ones on Kenneth McKinley’s face.’

There were three ugly slashes running across the bridge of Liam Sartori’s nose. His face and hair were damp and blood oozed from the wounds.

‘That’s what worried me,’ said Lachlan. ‘I am not sure that I—’

There was the click and flash of a camera and they all looked up to see Calum Steele standing on the causeway, a new digital camera in his hand.

‘Looks like the eagles have been busy again,’ he said. ‘He’s the one who threw my last camera in Loch Hynish, by the way, Torquil.’

Calum Steele had already been up to Wind’s Eye croft to photograph the wind towers and he insisted on accompanying Lachlan, despite the minister’s protestations as he went to break the news about Rhona’s death to the crofters of the Wee Kingdom. As expected, they were all devastated, and all rushed in to the Kyleshiffin cottage hospital to pay their respects.

Calum rode back on his Lambretta along the Dunshiffin road with the aim of getting a surreptitious photograph of the new laird and his other minion to illustrate his article on the windmills, and to link up with the piece he was planning to write about Liam Sartori’s death and the ongoing ‘Birds of prey’ series that he was developing in his mind. The thought of a ‘killer eagle’ had raised visions of him making it into the national news, where in his heart he felt that he belonged. And maybe, he thought as he rode along, he might drop in at the castle if the laird was out and pump Jesmond for a titbit of news about that dead dog.

Turning a corner he had to swerve suddenly as a Porsche Boxter hurtled towards him in the middle of the road. As a result, he skewed off the road into a patch of bracken and fell sidewards. By the time he got to his feet, with the intention of haranguing the driver, whom he assumed would stop and come to his assistance, he was dismayed, then outright furious, to find that the car was out of sight. And he had recognized the car, the driver and the passenger.

‘That bloody laird! I’ll have him!’ he cursed.

He rode straight back to Kyleshiffin, along Harbour Street then up Kirk Wynd to the police station. He saw red when his eye fell on the Porsche parked directly outside the station.

He dismounted and made for the door, fully intent upon giving them a good ticking off, West Uist style, but he stopped on the threshold as he heard raised Glaswegian voices followed by Sergeant Morag Driscoll’s calm remonstrance.

‘Look, police-girlie, I had a call to say that one of my boys has been taken by the police. Now I want to see him and I want to see your head honcho, right now!’

Morag stared at Jock McArdle with steely eyes and tight lips, then, still maintaining her calm, said, ‘Firstly, Mr McArdle, don’t you ever call me a police-girlie again, or I’ll be on your case so tightly that you won’t even dare to drop dandruff in public. And secondly, I am not obliged to discuss whether anyone has been taken into custody with a member of the public.’

‘Damn it – woman – has my boy been arrested?’

‘You can call me Sergeant Driscoll, not woman,’ Morag returned firmly, indicating the three stripes on her Arran jumper. ‘And the answer is no, we do not have anyone in custody at this moment.’

McArdle frowned. ‘Then why did someone call me and say he’d been taken away?’

Morag drew her ledger closer and picked up a pencil. ‘Who called you, Mr McArdle?’

McArdle looked at Danny Reid. ‘Did Jesmond say who called?’

Danny Reid shook his head. ‘Just a message to say he’d been taken away.’

‘That message did not come from here,’ said Morag, looking puzzled. She tapped the pencil on the ledger. ‘What I can tell you is that there has been an incident involving a young man and we are trying to determine if he has any next of kin.’

Jock McArdle stared at her in shock, then he thumped his fist on the desk, ‘Incident? Next of kin? What gives here?’

Calum Steele had come in silently. He coughed and advanced towards the duty desk, drawing his portly body up to his full five foot six. ‘Do you need any help, Morag,’ he queried.

Danny Reid put a hand on his chest and prodded him back. ‘Just butt out, chubby,’ he snarled.