Кит Мори - Flotsam and Jetsam

‘Thank you for your support as usual, Superintendent Lumsden,’ he said wryly as he snapped the phone shut.

The lights were on in the mortuary and Dr Ralph McLelland’s battered old Bentley was parked in front of it as Torquil rode the Bullet into the cottage hospital car-park. He pressed the intercom button and spoke into it.

‘Come away in, Torquil,’ Ralph’s vaguely distorted voice called back. ‘I am in the lab.’

Torquil found him sitting by his microscope.

‘Is it about the water samples, Ralph?’

‘You were right; there is blood in the pond, the water tank and the bath water. That makes it look as if he was drowned some time ago in the tank, then the water there and in the bath must have circulated for quite some time. And it looks as if the murder weapon was tossed into the pond.’

‘Any idea how long he had been dead?’

‘No. But that wasn’t actually what I wanted to see you about: it was about that girl who drowned last year, Heather McQueen. You remember the other day that I said I had a bad feeling about all this?’

‘Aye, I do. But I don’t follow you.’

‘It was about Dr Dent’s body not being in the right place. Then when Morag Driscoll told me that you wanted to know if there was anything odd about Heather McQueen’s post-mortem, it suddenly struck me.’ He pointed to the microscope. ‘I looked out the tissue specimens I took at her post-mortem and the water samples that I collected from her lungs.’

‘She was drowned in Loch Hynish. Surely that’s all that there was to it.’

‘Oh she was drowned all right. But Loch Hynish is a freshwater loch.’

‘You have me worried now, Ralph. What is it?’

‘She had sea water in her lungs. I didn’t do the test at the time, it didn’t seem necessary. But now that I have it is clear – she drowned in the sea.’

‘Are you serious? That means we have two bodies that were drowned.’

Ralph nodded and clicked his tongue. ‘And for some reason, maybe for different reasons, both bodies were moved.’

Torquil thumped the bench so that the microscope shook.

‘Damn it! And that makes it likely that we have two murders here, not just the one!’

Morag found it hard not to walk around with a smile on her face the next morning. Ewan noticed it straight away, but was polite enough to wait until he had made her a mug of tea before asking her.

‘Did you have a good evening, Sergeant Morag?’

‘It was bliss, Ewan. Sandy is so … nice!’

‘Are you seeing him again?’

‘Uh huh. Tonight. We have—’

The door banged open and the Drummond twins came in. They were not so reticent.

‘You look flushed, Morag Driscoll. You must have had a good time with that football lad,’ said Douglas.

‘You just remember that you have wee ones at home. Not too much gallivanting at nights now,’ added Wallace.

‘I … I … don’t know what you—’

‘Yes you do,’ interrupted Wallace with a wink.

And before she could reply to this the door opened again and Torquil bounced in with Crusoe at his heels. He had his Cromwell helmet in one hand and a dossier of notes in the other. ‘I’ll be needing to get an extra helmet soon,’ he said, grinning at the dog.

Morag coughed. ‘Yes, well, I had been meaning to have a word with you about that, Torquil McKinnon. It is not legal to be riding about on that motor cycle with a dog in your pannier.’

Torquil stared at her for a moment, then noticed the amused, knowing looks on the faces of the others. He grinned, then asked, ‘Did you have a good evening, Morag?’

And then even before she could reply, he suddenly turned serious and waved the dossier in the air. ‘Come on, everybody into the rest room. There have been more developments. Ralph called me in last night to the mortuary. We have two murders on our hands now.’

To their amazement he told them of Ralph’s findings about Heather McQueen.

‘So, Morag, we really do need as much information about her as possible.’

‘I had it as my first task today already,’ she replied.

‘And, Ewan, I want you to go over and have a word with Rab McNeish.’

‘Why is that, Torquil? Is that so-called burglary of his relevant to these deaths?’

‘What so-called burglary, Ewan?’ Torquil asked.

‘Oh, didn’t I report it? Well it was weird actually. He came in to complain, like he always did. Then he said he had been sort of robbed, or something like that. Then Annie McConville came in and gave him what-for about his complaint about her. He got flustered then said he didn’t want to make a report and left.’

‘And so you didn’t record it as a burglary after all?’

‘Well, no. He retracted the whole thing.’

Torquil stood frowning. ‘Maybe all the more reason to have a word, then.’

‘And – er – what am I asking him about? I mean, is it just about this burglary?’ He scratched his head. ‘Because I am confused, sir. If it isn’t about that, then why am I going?’

‘Because he’s an undertaker, Ewan,’ Torquil replied, adding the name to the board and adding a circle to it. He drew a line between his circle and that of Heather McQueen. ‘He did her funeral.’

He tapped the end of the marker on the board as he looked at the notes he had made in the dossier that lay before him ‘And then there was another little puzzle that adds to this whole mystery.’ He wrote the word flowers under Heather McQueen’s circled name. ‘Lachlan found that someone had put flowers on her grave the other day. I asked the Reverend Canfield about it and he thinks they were put there by Digby Dent.’

The bell rang out to alert them that someone had just entered the office. Ewan excused himself and went through to see.

It was a very agitated-looking Chrissie Ferguson and an equally anxious looking Geordie Innes.

‘He hasn’t come home all night,’ Chrissie blurted out. ‘Something’s wrong!’ she cried. ‘You need to do something!’

‘We had to cancel the show at the last minute, last night,’ Geordie Innes said. ‘Do you have any idea what that does to a show’s ratings?’

‘Bugger the ratings, Geordie!’ exclaimed Chrissie in exasperation. ‘Something is wrong, very wrong. This isn’t just one of Fergie’s benders. He always contacts me, even when he’s ratted. Something is not right, I tell you. He had a bee in his bonnet about that old beachcomber refusing to come on the show after that Dent fiasco.’

Ewan calmly took all their details and their phone numbers and promised that they would start looking for him straight away and check with them about any progress later that morning.

Torquil was just about tying matters up when he returned to the rest room. Ewan gave him a quick report about Fergie Ferguson.

‘She said he had a bee in his bonnet about Guthrie Lovat not coming on their show.’

Torquil tapped the name Flotsam & Jetsam on the board and the names of the presenters underneath. ‘That is interesting. And he was peeved at Dr Dent, wasn’t he? And now his wife says that Guthrie Lovat refused to come on their show after Dr Dent’s death.’

‘I remember that they were sort of gloating in anticipation on the night of the show when Dr Dent came on drunk. It sounds as if old Guthrie must have cried off.’

‘What do you want us to do, Torquil?’ Wallace asked.

‘I want you to go to St Ninian’s Cave and scour the beach. Crusoe was washed up on the beach. It is just an idea, but have a look to see what else washes up there. Maybe have a look at some other beaches about there.’