Кит Мори - Flotsam and Jetsam

He tried the door handle and it opened straight away.

‘Hello! It is Inspector McKinnon of the West Uist Police.’

There was no answer.

‘Mr Lovat? Mr Ferguson? Anyone at home?’

He made his way through a pristine clean kitchen, across a spartanly furnished hallway and into a long front room overlooking the sea. It was set out like a studio, with all sorts of driftwood, sculptures and piles of packets and boxes on benches.

‘Anyone at home?’

He noted the telescope set up in the bay window with a bottle of Glen Corlan whisky nearby it. He picked it up and noted the sticker from Anderson’s Emporium.

‘I am guessing that Alec Anderson is about the only person to visit here,’ he muttered.

Then he started to feel uneasy. There was a chill in the room, despite the sun. And a noise.

He turned, localizing the noise to a huge chest freezer that was humming by a back wall.

‘What’s this for? Don’t tell me old Guthrie is an ice-cream fanatic.’

He crossed to the freezer and idly lifted the lid.

The first thing he saw was what seemed like a bloody rat. Then he realized that it was a bloodstained hair-piece. But under it was a face with unseeing eyes staring up at him. Then he realized that he was looking at a dead body. Yet there were too many hands.

‘My God! Two bodies!’ he gasped.

‘That’s right, Inspector,’ a voice snapped behind him. And then he felt something cold and hard dig into his back. ‘This is a Glock semi-automatic. It’s just over your spine and it will cut you in half if you so much as move a muscle. There is room in this freezer for a third body.’

Dr Ralph McLelland had fortuitously been visiting a patient on the nearby Wee Kingdom. He answered Ewan’s distress call straight away and quickly took charge.

‘The poor chap is away with the fairies. I’ll need to admit him to the cottage hospital under the Mental Health Act and then I’ll need to get a psychiatrist over from the mainland. Meanwhile, you’ll have to get the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to come and take a look at these poor creatures. It looks as if he’s been systematically abusing them.’ He sucked air between his teeth. ‘It’s a bad business, Ewan. I reckon it will take time for them to come across, what with the restrictions on the ferries with the murder case. You might be as well just having a word with Annie McConville.’

‘Aye, it is a pity that she doesn’t like mobile phones. I could have given her a ring straight away.’

‘Well, why don’t you go and see her now? I will have to wait until Sister Lamb can get here to help me from the cottage hospital.’

Somewhat relieved to be able to leave the harrowing scene Ewan headed off on Nippy and was soon back on one of the side roads leading to Kyleshiffin.

As he turned on to the main road a familiar canary yellow camper-van came hurtling towards him. The driver peeped its horn at him and made to swerve round him, but Ewan held up his hand for it to stop.

Deliberately he dismounted, switched off the engine and set the moped on its stand.

‘What’s wrong, Constable?’ the swarthy driver asked, rolling down his window. The sun glinted off his ear-ring.

‘Step out of the van would you?’ Ewan asked. ‘Both of you.’

With a huff of impatience the driver opened the door and got out. ‘What’s this about? We haven’t got much time,’ he demanded.

‘I can see that. You two always seem to be in a hurry. Too much of a hurry. There have now been three occasions when I have been concerned abut the way that you handle this vehicle.’

‘We’re sorry, Officer,’ said the slimmer and younger of the two. ‘We’ll be more careful.’

‘Oh to hell with this lummox,’ said the other. ‘He can’t do anything. We weren’t breaking the law.’

‘I do not like your tone, my man,’ said Ewan.

‘No? Well you’ll just have to lump it, mate, because we’re too busy to stop and chew the cud with the likes of you. Come on Tosh, let’s get going.’

‘Just a minute now,’ said Ewan, grabbing hold of the man’s arm.

In a trice the man darted a hand inside his camouflage jacket and drew out a gun.

‘Christ, Craig, what are you playing at?’ exclaimed the lean one.

But Ewan had reacted instantly. He had grabbed them both around the neck at the same time bringing his knee up sharply to dash the gun from the one called Craig’s hand. Then he bashed their heads together and held them until he felt them both slump into unconsciousness.

‘I will not tolerate disrespect to the law,’ Ewan said. ‘And firearms are just as illegal here as on the mainland.’

He nudged the firearm away with his foot then reached down and handcuffed the two men together.

‘Now let us see what you have inside this van of yours,’ he said, walking to the rear and opening the door. He looked inside and stood gaping for a moment.

The noise of an approaching vehicle made him turn and he looked round to see the Drummond twins approach in their truck.

‘Well, well, well, what have we here?’ Wallace asked, as he climbed out.

‘I have apprehended a couple of villains. It looks like they are the ones responsible for the spate of burglaries on the island.’

‘And it looks as if they might be out of it for a while,’ Douglas said with glee. ‘They didn’t know what they were doing when they picked on Ewan McPhee. Well done, big fellow.’

Ewan grinned proudly and bent down to retrieve the gun. ‘Aye, a right pair of scunners these two. I don’t know what Torquil will say when he hears that gun crime has come to West Uist.’

Morag felt water splashing on her face and hands on her shoulders.

The memory of Sandy King holding Bruce McNab’s head under the water in the bath brought her back to sudden consciousness. She opened her eyes and saw Sandy King staring at her with wide open eyes.

She lashed out and caught him on the side of the head.

‘Morag! You’re OK! Thank the Lord.’

She clenched a fist to punch again, but stopped when she saw the concern on his face and she realized that the water had been splashed in her face to try and rouse her from unconsciousness, not an attempt to drown her.

‘Sandy, what have you done—?’

‘To McNab? Just taught him a lesson. He’ll be OK. Look.’

And she saw Bruce McNab was lying slumped against the bath. He was bleary-eyed and breathing heavily, but he was alive.

‘We had a fight,’ Sandy explained as she managed to sit up. ‘Or rather, he fought a bit as I dragged him to the bath. If you hadn’t come I might have taken it a bit further. But he deserves it, the useless piece of shit.’

‘Heather McQueen was your sister, wasn’t she?’ Morag asked.

Sandy stood up and swallowed hard, his eyes filling up with tears. ‘She was my half-sister. That’s why we had different names. There were just the two of us left after my mum died. We were like chalk and cheese. She was bright and liked lads, while I was sporty and a bit over-focused on being a football star. We had a huge row on the phone one time, what about God only knows, but from then we didn’t communicate, not even Christmas or birthday cards. Effectively we wrote each other out of our lives.

‘Then I was off at soccer camps and then playing for one club or another. I was playing in Munich when it happened and I never found out until a month after. How do you think that felt? I was loaded with guilt.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘How did you find out?’

‘I went right back to basics and traced her birth, then – I found your name.’

‘I studied everything about her death and just couldn’t believe it. She was a great swimmer. I thought there had to be some man involved in all this. That was what Heather was about. And it all pointed to that Dent character. I found out that he was still working here on West Uist. When Dan Farquarson started making advances to me, I guess you’ll find out about that, he wanted to get me in his pocket so that I could fix a match here or two. Well, it was the ideal opportunity to come here, so I persuaded him to arrange it.’