‘Is this what happens whenever you go out, Alec?’
‘What can I say? It’s a gift.’
‘Just remind me not to be in the vicinity next time.’
‘Sorry if I ruined your evening, Helena.’
Grant stared at McKay as if daring him to say more. He gazed back amiably. It was nearly 11pm. The crowd had been dispersed as soon as it had become evident what had been found in the fire, although a few rubberneckers had hung around at the far end of the beach. Grant had summoned backup in the form of two squad cars, and the uniforms had helped seal off the scene. Grant had offered McKay a lift back later so Chrissie had headed off home. Emsworth was hanging around in the background, pacing up and down as if taking personal responsibility for what had happened.
‘The only upside,’ McKay said, ‘is that we’ve also ruined Jock Henderson’s evening.’
‘You think Jock has a social life?’
‘I’ve generally assumed he lies in his coffin awaiting our summons. But he looked a bit pissed off tonight.’
Jock Henderson was the lead scene of crime officer in the region and, for reasons neither of them could clearly remember, a long-time antagonist of McKay. As McKay was speaking, Henderson emerged from the crime scene tent beside the remains of the bonfire. He made his way towards them, his movements as ever resembling those of an ungainly stork.
‘You reckon you’d spotted this earlier in the evening?’ he said to McKay in an accusatory tone.
‘Not me. Some young guys. I went to see what they were looking at.’
‘You didn’t believe it was a body?’
McKay exchanged a glance with Grant, irritated that Henderson was trying to put him on the back foot. ‘I don’t know what kind of parties you go to, Jock, but I’m not accustomed to finding a corpse on the bonfire.’
‘Tonight’s your lucky night, then. Because that’s exactly what you have. If you’d thought to have the fire extinguished earlier I might be able to tell you more about it.’
McKay had no intention of getting into a war of words with Henderson. In truth, McKay was kicking himself for not taking action immediately, even though his reasons had seemed sound enough at the time. But it was one thing to berate himself. It was another to have Jock Henderson doing it for him. ‘So what are your limited skills able to tell us?’
Henderson’s expression suggested he might be about to engage in a stand-up row. ‘The body’s very badly damaged by the fire so it’s not possible to glean too much at this stage. We might be able to get more from forensics and the pathologist. All I can really tell you is that the body’s male.’
‘Is there no end to your powers, Jock?’ McKay stared out across the firth, as if expecting the sea to provide him with more answers than Henderson had so far managed.
‘What about cause of death?’ Grant asked.
Henderson’s face was expressionless. ‘I’d need the doc to confirm, but I’d say he burned to death.’
McKay turned. ‘You mean he was still alive in the fire?’
‘Looks that way to me. From the way the body was contorted. Again, difficult to be sure but I’d say he’d been tightly restrained, maybe plastic ties. Whatever it was had disappeared into the flames, but it looks as if he’d been struggling to extricate himself.’
‘Jesus,’ Grant said. ‘The poor bastard.’
‘But how would you get a live body into the middle of a bonfire?’ McKay asked.
‘That’s your territory,’ Henderson said. ‘I’m just telling you how it looks.’
‘Nothing else you can tell us, Jock? Age, ethnicity.’
‘I’d be struggling even to tell you his height. There are traces of clothing but difficult to tell what they might have been. I don’t think that any usable ID is likely to have survived, except maybe anything metallic like keys, but we’re still checking that. Not the easiest or the pleasantest of tasks as you might imagine.’ He spoke with an apparent degree of relish. ‘The one thing I’ve learned over the years is that the human body burns surprisingly well, if you give it half a chance.’
‘Glad you’ve learned something, Jock,’ McKay said. ‘But it leaves us with the mystery of how anyone could plant a body in the middle of a public bonfire without anybody bloody noticing. Maybe we should have a word with your friend, Emsworth. He was presumably involved in setting up all this.’
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Henderson said. ‘I’ll see what else I can extract from the scene.’
‘Don’t push yourself, Jock. At least you spotted he’d been burnt. It’d be churlish of us to expect more.’
Henderson treated McKay to one of his trademark graveside smiles. ‘Has anyone ever told you you have a very juvenile sense of humour, Alec.’
‘Only you, Jock. I always pitch my humour at the level of the recipient.’
Without offering a response, Henderson loped back over to the crime scene tent. Grant watched until he was out of earshot and then said, ‘What is it with you and Jock?’
‘Beats me,’ McKay said. ‘I always enjoy his company.’
Grant had beckoned Emsworth to join them. He looked exhausted and white-faced. ‘It’s an awful business.’ He gestured towards the crime scene tent. ‘Is it really…?’
Grant nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘But how? We tried to be so careful on the health and safety stuff. Somebody must have screwed up badly.’
Grant looked across at McKay. ‘I’d ask you to keep this confidential for the moment, Bill. But we think he was put there deliberately.’
Emsworth blinked. ‘You mean as a means of disposing of the body? But that would never have worked, surely? Someone was always going to spot it at some point.’
‘You sound like an expert at disposing of bodies,’ McKay commented. ‘But then I suppose you are, in a manner of speaking.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly claim expertise,’ Emsworth said. ‘But it’s the kind of thing I have to research from time to time. You should see my search history.’
‘The thing is,’ Grant went on, ‘we don’t think it was simply an attempt to dispose of the body. We think he died in the flames.’
‘My God.’ Emsworth stared at her. ‘But how could that be possible?’
‘We thought you might be able to help us with that,’ McKay said. ‘Given you were involved in the setting up of the event, I mean.’
Emsworth looked horror-struck. ‘Yes, of course. We built the bonfire over the last week or so to make sure it would be ready for this evening.’
‘Who was involved in that?’ Grant asked.
‘Mainly our own volunteers. Some of the same people who were stewarding tonight and a few others. I can give you a list of names. It won’t be absolutely definitive because we had people come and go fairly informally but it’ll give you the majority. The wood was donated by various locals, and our team collected it by trailer and brought it back here.’
‘When did you finish building it?’ Grant asked.
‘Couple of days ago. We were keen to get it done well before so that it would help promote the event.’
‘So someone could have placed the body inside any time over that last couple of days?’
‘I don’t know how easy that would have been. The fire was well built. But I imagine you could have done it if you took a bit of time and care.’
‘You didn’t check it at any point?’
‘Why would we? We kept an eye on it to make sure it wasn’t vandalised, and we did a final safety check before we ignited it. But that was just to make sure that no children or pets had managed to hide themselves in the outer parts of the fire. It never occurred to me that someone might have planted anything – or anyone – right in the heart of it.’ He stopped, as a thought had clearly struck him. ‘My God. I lit the fire myself. Are you telling me I was actually responsible for burning someone to death?’
‘Whoever put the body in there was responsible,’ Grant said. ‘You couldn’t have known.’
‘I know but– Well, it’s a shock. You presumably don’t have any idea who the victim is?’
‘Not yet. To be honest, identification may be a challenge,’ Grant said. ‘We’ll identify him in due course, one way or another, but it’s likely to be a tricky one.’
‘I make up this stuff for a living,’ Emsworth said, ‘but it’s a whole different kettle of fish when it’s for real.’
‘That so?’ McKay said. ‘I sometimes think you writers don’t realise how real this can be.’
Emsworth nodded. ‘You’re quite right, Alec. For me, crime’s just a game, an entertainment. I understand that. Though I may know more about it than you realise.’
The comment seemed designed to pique McKay’s curiosity, but he was in no mood to bite. ‘Anything else you can tell us? Any suspicious behaviour among the volunteers? Strangers hanging around?’
‘I can’t imagine any of the volunteers being involved in something like this. They’re just people who wanted to help out. It’s been a tough year, and people just wanted to do their bit to keep things going over the winter. As for your second question, I’m not sure. We’ve had a few people hanging around I didn’t recognise, but most of them just seemed interested in what we were doing. I can’t say I noticed anyone acting suspiciously.’
‘Seems most likely the body would have been placed in there overnight,’ Grant said. ‘I can’t imagine how anyone could have done it in the daytime without being seen. That end of the beach isn’t exactly overlooked, but we can see if anyone in the nearest houses saw any unusual activity.’
‘I thought I had a lurid imagination,’ Emsworth said. ‘But I’m struggling to imagine why anyone would want to do something like this to another human being.’
‘What motive would you give them?’ McKay asked. ‘If you were writing about this in one of your books, I mean.’
Emsworth gazed at McKay for a second as if suspecting he was being mocked. ‘I don’t know. I’m not keen on the lunatic serial killer trope so I try to give my killers at least a half-convincing motive. But I don’t know why anyone would want to make the victim suffer in the way this poor soul has.’
‘It’s not unknown,’ Grant said. ‘This kind of stuff’s often linked to organised crime. Revenge killings. Or a warning. Designed to be a deterrent. We don’t get much of that stuff up here, but it happens occasionally.’
‘But why here?’ Emsworth said. ‘Quiet little place like this.’
‘That might be precisely why,’ McKay said. ‘Causes a stir. Gets attention from the media. It’s easier to do the deed in somewhere out of the way than it would be in the city. Probably just a coincidence that they happened to choose this particular wee backwater.’
Emsworth nodded, then turned his attention to Helena Grant. ‘Is there anything more you need from me tonight, Helena? To be honest, I’m absolutely bushed. I’ve been up since the crack of dawn getting this set up.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I’m just sorry it didn’t end up the way you’d hoped. Real shame after all the effort you and everyone else put in.’
‘That’s life.’ Emsworth stopped, realising what he’d said. ‘Or death in this case. The first part of the evening went well. It’s just a pity we had to truncate it. But all that seems small beer compared to what’s happened.’
‘To answer your question,’ Grant said, ‘no, that’s fine for tonight. We’ll need to get a formal statement from you but that can wait till the morning. You don’t need a lift home? I know it’s not far but if you really are exhausted…’
‘It’s only at the top of the village. The walk’ll do me good. Give me a chance to clear my head, come to terms with all this.’ He hesitated. ‘I assume you’re likely to be tied up here for a while yet?’
‘I’m afraid so, Bill. I’m sorry we had to end the night like this.’
‘There’ll no doubt be plenty of other opportunities to compensate.’
‘I’m sure there will, Bill. I’ll be in touch.’
Emsworth looked as if he was on the point of saying something else, but instead he bade Grant and McKay goodnight and turned to walk back along the beach towards the village.
Grant turned back to McKay. ‘As for you, Alec, don’t you dare to say a word. Not a single bloody word.’