Кит Мори - Deathly Wind

‘There might not be any post for some time, Dr McLelland,’ said Guthrie. ‘The ferries have been cancelled until further notice by order of the police. I was down at the harbour this morning just on the off chance, but nothing is doing.’

‘It is all these deaths, isn’t it, Doctor?’ Agnes suggested, as she redressed the latest addition to the household on a changing mat.

‘I am afraid so, Agnes. But the police will be making good headway.’

‘Do you think so, Dr McLelland?’ Guthrie asked. ‘I heard from Wattie Dowel, the chandler, that they’re pretty much in the dark. Could you—’

Ralph’s mobile phone went off just then, which under normal circumstances would have caused him some alarm, since there was a good chance that it indicated another call and a receding opportunity to take breakfast before morning surgery. But he was well used to Guthrie Calanish’s attempts to get gossip out of him, so he raised his hand for quiet as he answered the call.

He was not expecting it to be a call for him in his capacity as the police surgeon. His eyes widened as Torquil told him that they had found another body on the Wee Kingdom. He replied curtly, ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’

‘Something urgent?’ Guthrie enquired, a tad too curiously for Ralph’s liking.

He forced a smile. ‘Just another call. A doctor’s life is rarely dull, you know.’

Agnes smiled up at him. ‘Oh no one could ever accuse you of being dull, Dr McLelland.’

Guthrie gave her a withering look and showed Ralph McLelland to the door. He watched the doctor hurry up the path with shoulders hunched to protect his neck from the rain, then he nodded thoughtfully and reached for the telephone.

The rain stopped at about five o’clock. Morag and the Drummond twins had arrived in the branch Ford Escort before Dr Ralph McLelland. Once Leading Fireman Fraser Mackintosh had satisfied himself that the site was safe from further fire, and he and Torquil had checked to make sure that there was no possibility that the charred body showed any signs of life, they had withdrawn to preserve the crime site. For that was what Torquil had deemed it to be, especially after Fraser Mackintosh had informed him that he believed there to be strong evidence of arson caused by some incendiary device.

‘The place was petrol bombed, Piper,’ he had said. ‘The cottage and the wind towers.’ And he had pointed out the shattered fragments of milk bottles and the empty blackened petrol can that lay in a corner of the burned-out sitting-room.

Both Torquil and Morag Driscoll were CID and forensic scene of crime qualified, having both been seconded for training a few years previously. It was the chief constable’s view that the Hebridean Constabulary should be totally self-sufficient and able to deal with all situations, without recourse to the mainland force. Accordingly, together with their ever-willing special constables they had cordoned off the crime site with posts and tape barriers and then donned protective white coverall suits, as dictated by the Serious Crimes Procedure, while they awaited the arrival of Dr Ralph McLelland, the GP-cum-police surgeon.

‘My God, I can guess what you’ve got for me. I caught the characteristic smell half a mile off,’ said Ralph McLelland as he closed the door of his car and came over to them with his Gladstone bag in one hand and his forensic case in the other.

‘It is nasty, Ralph,’ said Torquil. ‘There is a badly burned – unrecognizable – body, in the ruins of the cottage.’

He waited while Ralph opened his forensic case and from it drew out a white coverall suit. ‘An accident?’ Ralph asked suspiciously, as he climbed into his suit and zipped up.

Torquil shook his head. ‘No, it is suspicious all right.’

‘It is a sight that you would be better seeing without having had breakfast,’ Wallace Drummond said.

‘I nearly lost mine,’ Douglas, his brother, confessed.

Ralph nodded sanguinely and picked up his case. Then he followed Torquil and Morag along the designated access path into the ruins to view the body.

It was a grisly sight. The blackened, shrivelled body lay sprawled on the floor near the hearth in what had once been the sitting-room of Gordon MacDonald’s croft. Ralph sucked air between his lips with a pained expression and stood looking about him for somewhere to lay his bag down. Finding a spot he put the forensic case down and placed his Gladstone bag on top. He knelt down, opened the bag and drew out his stethoscope and an ophthalmoscope. Torquil and Morag watched him admiringly as he painstakingly examined the body as best he could without disturbing its position. An absolute stickler for routine and precision in all matters medical and forensic, he checked to ensure that the body was truly dead, and that there was no activity in the heart or nervous system.

‘Dead as a piece of coal,’ he announced, coiling his stethoscope and replacing it and his ophthalmoscope in his Gladstone bag, his bag for the living. Then he reached for his forensic case, which contained the instruments he used for examining the dead.

‘Can you tell us how long, Doctor?’ Torquil asked, his tone moving to the official.

The inspector was rewarded with a look of scorn. ‘You are kidding me, Inspector!’ Ralph replied, with a touch of sarcasm. ‘A body found badly burned in a burned-out ruin of a house! The normal post-mortem changes mean nothing.’

‘Not even the body’s position?’ Torquil persisted.

Ralph allowed a grim smile. ‘Ah, you noticed,’ he said. ‘The fact that he was not curled up is suggestive that the individual was dead before the fire started.’

Morag grimaced. ‘Another murder?’

Torquil looked at her with a troubled frown on his forehead. ‘It looks like it. But we have a more immediate question to ask.’

‘Aye’, said Wallace Drummond. ‘Who the hell is he?’

Ralph looked up at the special constable and shook his head. ‘That is going to be difficult, considering the fact that his features have been burned beyond recognition – except perhaps to someone very close to him. We may have to get hold of dental records.’

Torquil pointed to the blackened body piercings on the lips, ears and eyes. Then to the mouth, which seemed to have fixed into a charred look of agony. ‘What do you make of that?’

And, as Ralph looked, so he noticed for the first time the gold chain about the body’s neck, disappearing into the mouth.

‘It looks like a chain, possibly with a medallion,’ Ralph returned. ‘I will know better once I have done a full examination back at the mortuary. But first do you want to get the scene properly photographed and documented?’

And for the better part of an hour Morag, the Drummonds and Torquil set about recording the scene in notes, photographs and diagrams. While they did so Ralph drove back to Kyleshiffin and swapped his car for the Cottage Hospital Ambulance. On his way back he passed the familiar sight of Calum Steele on his Lambretta scooter. Despite Calum’s wave to stop, Ralph merely acknowledged him with a nod of his head and drove on. He knew all too well that the Chronicle editor had somehow scented out a story, and that he would be trying his damnedest to winkle out whatever information he could. But with a suspected murder on the cards Ralph knew it was best to leave that to the official force.

Torquil was busy in the ruins, but heard the tell-tale Lambretta engine approaching.

‘Shall I intercept the wee man himself?’ Douglas Drummond asked.

Torquil sighed. ‘No, but thank you for the offer, Douglas. It would be as well to make this official and I need to make sure that he doesn’t do his usual thing and expound his own theories to the public rather than the official line.’