Кит Мори - Deathly Wind

‘The freedom of the press, Superintendent Lumsden,’ Torquil returned.

‘Bollocks! Why didn’t you let me know about this?’

‘I was going to contact you this morning, sir. I knew nothing about this story until I read the newspaper this morning. In fact, it may be more complex than the report on the TV.’

There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the telephone, and then slowly, Superintendent Lumsden growled, ‘Go on, McKinnon, surprise me.’

Torquil took a deep breath. ‘I was going to contact you this morning, sir, after my meeting with the police surgeon. Doctor McLelland did a post-mortem last night.’

‘And?’

‘We haven’t had the meeting yet, sir. But there is a strong possibility that the man’s death was more suspicious than we thought.’

There was an interruption on the other end of the line and Torquil heard someone else talking in the background, and then Lumsden replying to them.

‘Right, McKinnon, spit it out, I’m going to have to go. I’m about to take a call from the laird of Dunshiffin.’

‘It may have been murder, sir.’

Torquil winced as the superintendent howled down the other end of the line.

‘Right! What a bloody fiasco! Have your meetings Inspector, then report back to me straight away. Meanwhile I’ll see what your laird wants.’

‘He isn’t my laird, Superintendent—’

But the line had gone dead.

When she heard the phone being replaced, Morag popped her head round Torquil’s office door. She sympathetically smiled at him. ‘Everyone is here. Are you ready to start? I’ve got the tea and biscuits ready.’

The atmosphere was subdued in the recreation-room, because everyone was conscious that PC Ewan McPhee, the big wrestling and hammer-throwing champion was no longer with them.

Torquil began by informing them all about the Scottish TV early news programme and about Calum Steele’s piece in the Chronicle .

‘Aye, but what I can’t understand is that anyone would listen to the wee windbag’s theories,’ said Douglas Drummond.

‘Och, it is because he is a man of letters and not an ignorant fisherman like you,’ replied his brother. ‘Or like me, for that matter – even though we both beat him in the Gaelic spelling contests when we were all at school. You remember them, don’t you, Piper?’

Torquil grunted assent and brought the twins to order by clapping his hands and standing up. ‘What Calum has done – is done!’ he said. ‘But although he has made the national news with his talk about killer eagles, it actually looks as if there is a more sinister killer abroad than an eagle. It looks as if there is a murderer on West Uist.’

He gestured to the local doctor. ‘Ralph, would you give us a summary of your post-mortem findings on the body of Liam Sartori?’

While Torquil had been speaking Ralph McLelland had been plugging his laptop into the station projector.

‘I’ve done this as a Power-Point presentation,’ he explained. ‘That way I can show you each stage of my examination, from the initial finding of the body by the causeway, through my preliminary external examination of the corpse, the post-mortem dissection, and the pathological and microscopic specimens that resulted from it.’

He looked at Morag. ‘Can we pull the blinds?’

And a few moments later with the room in partial darkness he pressed the home button on his laptop and a photograph of Liam Sartori lying on the rocks by the causeway flashed onto the wall.

‘As Torquil has just told us, the media have drawn attention to the so-called talon marks on the face of the dead man.’ He pointed a laser pen at the wall and indicated the livid lines on the face with the little luminous red arrow. ‘Quite clearly, if these are talon slashes then they lead us to think that they are the same marks that we so recently saw on the face of Kenneth McKinley.’

‘And are they, Ralph?’ Torquil asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ the doctor returned, changing the slide with the touch of a finger, to reveal the body of Kenneth McKinley and the deep gashes on his face. ‘What do you think?’

The others all craned forward to look.

‘I am not sure,’ said Wallace.

‘Isn’t there some test that will tell?’ Morag answered.

‘I honestly don’t know – yet,’ replied Ralph. ‘I’ve never come across a death as the result of an attack by a bird of prey. But the point is, it could have been. And we also have to ask several questions. First, could he have fallen off the causeway after being attacked by a bird, and then risen stunned from a knock on the head? Could he have then staggered forward to fall face first into a rock pool and drown?’

‘What makes you doubt that, Ralph?’ Torquil asked, already aware of Ralph’s findings.

Ralph moved to the next slide.

‘This!’ he said emphatically.

And they found themselves looking at the naked back of Liam Sartori, as he lay on the metal post-mortem table in the cottage hospital mortuary. Ralph directed the luminous arrow of his laser pen to a discoloured area that started between the dead man’s shoulder blades and ran up to his neck.

‘In my opinion this mark was caused by a foot,’ Ralph said. ‘You can see petechiae, tiny pinpoint haemorrhages dotted around and the spreading purple discolouration. This would be consistent with a foot having been stomped down hard on him – and maintaining pressure for some time. Possibly holding him underneath the water surface of that rock pool.’

‘You mean after he had staggered there?’ Wallace asked.

‘Except that we think he was dragged there, rather than staggered there,’ said Torquil. And he described the position of the dead man’s collar, the disturbed shingle where he had fallen.

‘Here’s a photograph of how we found him,’ said Ralph. ‘Bearing in mind that the Padre had pulled him out of the pool, yet the position of his collar would be hard to explain.’

He then ran through a number of slides detailing the morbid anatomical dissection. Despite herself Morag felt decidedly queasy and had to look away. The Drummonds, well used to gutting fish and removing vast amounts of entrails nodded with interest and sipped tea.

‘As you can see there, I am squeezing water from the lungs. But the question is, did that water get there before or after he died?’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Douglas Drummond.

‘Well, the presence of water in the lungs doesn’t by itself tell us a lot. It could have got into his lungs after he was dead.’

Wallace slapped his hand on the table. ‘Gosh, I see what you mean. It could have been made to look like he was drowned.’ Then he eyed the police surgeon doubtfully. ‘But how else could he have died?’

‘From this,’ said Ralph moving the slide to a photograph of a human brain resting in a large stainless-steel dish. Once again he manoeuvred the luminous red arrow of his laser pen to highlight a large clot of blood that had formed over the left temporal area. ‘That could have killed him, although I think it may have just been enough to stun or knock him out. He could have sustained it in a fall, but equally, he could have been hit and then fallen.’

It is not easy, this science of yours, is it, Dr McLelland?’ mused Douglas, his voice full of respect and awe.

‘Did you do a diatom test, Ralph?’ Torquil asked.

‘I did, and here it is.’ And with a press of the button the wall was illuminated with a microscopic section of what looked like bubbles in a mush of red pulp. All over the field were small dots of a greenish hue. ‘Those bubble-like structures are alveoli, the air pockets in the lungs, and those little dots are tiny unicellular organisms called diatoms. The water in the rock pool sample I took is full of them. This slide shows that they are present both inside and outside the alveoli. That implies that his heart was beating for some period of time after he was in the water. The diatoms have been inhaled and have entered the bloodstream. I have other samples that I have yet to analyse, but if I find them in other organs it is pretty conclusive that he drowned.’