‘Our local business types may be small fry in the bigger scheme of things,’ Ginny Horton said. ‘But they seem to know how to live.’
They had turned off the main road and were heading up the narrow track to Simon Crawford’s house. Horton was beginning to have her doubts. They’d driven a good quarter of a mile since leaving the main road, and Horton was beginning to suspect they’d taken a wrong turning.
‘That looks like the place.’ McKay pointed ahead of them to where two white towers had loomed into view.
‘Blimey. Looks like a castle.’
It turned out to be a large and imposing house, if not quite a castle. Horton pulled up in front of it. ‘Not bad.’ She turned and looked behind them. ‘Nice view.’
‘You sound like the world’s least enthusiastic estate agent.’ McKay climbed out of the car and looked around. ‘No one’s here to greet us. I’d have thought they’d have seen us coming.’
‘Assuming anyone’s in,’ Horton said.
Much of the snow had thawed as the temperature had gradually risen, but there was still a coating on the hillsides around them. ‘You’re right about the view, though. “The house benefits from spectacular views of Loch Ness, home of the famous Loch Ness Monster.” That’s how you do it.’
McKay led them up the path from the gravelled parking area. The house and garden were well maintained, and McKay suspected that some significant money had been spent on the place in the not-too-distant past. Crawford clearly wasn’t short of dosh.
The front of the house was dominated by a substantial porch at the top of a short flight of steps. McKay pressed the bell, waited for a few moments, then pressed again, holding it down for longer.
‘Looks like there’s no one home,’ Horton said from behind him.
‘Looks like it.’ McKay trotted back down the steps and made his way around the house, occasionally stopping to peer in one of the windows. ‘No sign of life,’ he said. ‘Though there are a few lights on.’ He continued around the house till he arrived back at the front door.
‘The question is,’ McKay said, ‘if he’s out, why is his car in the garage out there?’
‘Is it?’
‘Maybe he’s got more than one car. He’s obviously not short of a few quid.’
‘Maybe.’ McKay had climbed up to the front door again. He pressed his finger on the bell and held it down for another minute. Eventually he released his finger and stepped back. Then he tried the handle of the imposing front door.
To his surprise, the door opened. McKay glanced back at Horton, then peered inside. The wide hallway was empty. McKay pushed open the door and walked in.
‘You can’t just walk in,’ Horton protested. ‘He’s obviously just out somewhere.’
‘We’re police officers, Ginny. Here to keep an eye on the place as a civic duty. I’m sure he’d want that.’
‘I’ll leave you to do the explaining.’
‘In the meantime, we might as well have a look around.’ McKay peered around the hallway. ‘Nice place, isn’t it?’
‘Too nice for the likes of us to be wandering round in.’
Ignoring her, McKay peered into what was clearly the main living room. It was tidy, filled with what to McKay’s inexpert eye looked like expensive furniture. ‘Very tasteful,’ he muttered to no one in particular.
He left the living room and pushed open the door of what turned out to be the kitchen. ‘Ah.’ His tone was that of Sherlock Holmes finally finding the clue that he’d known would be there all along.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m no culinary expert,’ McKay said, ‘but I think that pan will need throwing out.’
Acrid smoke hung in the air, and the room was unnaturally warm. McKay had already spotted the cause – a saucepan set on a lit but thankfully low electric ring. He pulled a plastic disposable glove from his pocket, slipped it on and carefully turned off the ring. Then he turned back to Horton who was standing in the kitchen doorway watching him with curiosity.
‘I think it was soup,’ he said, ‘though I wouldn’t like to guess what sort. Now, it’s mainly charcoal.’
Horton was looking at the workplace next to the cooker. ‘That looks like it’s on its way to being a cheese and pickle sandwich.’ There was a loaf of bread from which two slices had been cut. Some cheese had been similarly sliced, with the open packet sitting next to the plate. An opened jar of pickle sat beside that.
McKay frowned. ‘From the state of this soup, I’d say it’s been here at least overnight. What sort of person gets halfway through making a meal, leaves the soup simmering on the cooker, and then buggers off for a day?’
‘Someone very forgetful?’
‘How old’s Crawford?’
‘His date of birth was on the Companies’ House site. Late thirties, from what I remember.’
‘Even I’m not this forgetful. Let’s check the rest of the house.’
It took them only a few minutes to complete a cursory initial search of the remaining rooms. There was no sign of Simon Crawford, and no obvious explanation for his absence.
‘It does happen,’ Horton pointed out. ‘You get interrupted in the middle of something, end up rushing out to deal with some crisis, and forget you’ve left something on the stove. It doesn’t necessarily imply foul play.’
‘Not necessarily,’ McKay agreed. ‘But it’s not the first mysterious absence we’ve had to deal with in recent days. This is uncannily like Hamish Forres’s disappearance.’
‘Except that Gary Forres had good reason to expect his father to be there. We’ve no particular reason to expect Crawford to be here, except that he appears to have been halfway through preparing a meal.’
‘I’ve a bad feeling about it, that’s all.’
‘That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Because you had a bad feeling about this.’
‘Let’s go and check outside again.’
As they approached the front door, McKay stopped to check a range of outdoor coats hanging on a rack beside the doorway. There were several coats there, but there was no way of knowing if any was missing. Similarly, there was a selection of shoes and boots on the floor below, including a pair of walking boots, but it was impossible to tell if any had been removed. McKay didn’t even know whether Crawford lived alone, although he thought the house had a distinctly male feel.
He stepped back out into the bright afternoon and walked across to the garage he’d noticed on the previous circuit of the house. It was a single garage, largely filled by the bulk of a recently registered Land Rover Discovery. The car was locked, and there was no sign it had been driven recently. McKay peered in through the passenger window, but the interior of the car was deserted.
There were no other outbuildings at the rear of the house, other than a small shed at the edge of the garden. McKay walked across the snow-covered lawn and tried the shed door. The handle was stiff but eventually he forced open the door. There was nothing inside but a collection of garden tools and large lawnmower.
‘Anything?’ Horton was still standing by the steps to the front door.
He closed the shed door and walked back over to her, shaking his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. We don’t have enough to call it in as a missing person. All we’ve got is an unlocked front door and a half-prepared meal.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘It doesn’t feel right to me. But I think all we can do for the moment is keep an eye on the place.’ He climbed back up the steps to the front door. He stopped at the top of the steps and pulled out a notebook. He scribbled a short note, tore out and folded the sheet, and then left it in a conspicuous spot on the floor just inside the front door. He’d already checked the lock on the door. There was a deadlock, but also a simpler latch which he could use to secure the door, without preventing him from gaining access later if he needed to.
‘I’ve asked him to call me urgently when he gets back.’
‘I had a look at his website. It’s fairly basic, but there’s a number for him on there.’
‘Even better.’
‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’
‘We’ve had three deaths in a week. I’m not keen to have another one.’
‘We might have four already,’ she reminded him. ‘Depending on what’s happened to Gary Forres.’
‘You always know how to brighten my day, Ginny. I suppose we’d better check.’ He pulled out his phone, flicked through his contacts and found the number for the hospital at Raigmore. ‘The last time I used this number, it was you lying in hospital.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Horton said. ‘That all came much too close to home.’
It took McKay a few minutes to be transferred to the ward where Forres was staying. ‘DI Alec McKay,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to get an update on Gary Forres’s condition.’
‘His condition’s improved over night. Quite considerably so, in fact. He’s still in the ICU for the moment, but we’re hoping to be able to release him to a general ward if there are no further problems.’
‘We’d like to speak to him,’ McKay said. ‘When do you think he’ll be up to that?’
‘Not today,’ the nurse said firmly. ‘He’s still unconscious.’
‘Do we have any more clues as to the cause of his illness?’
There was another pause while presumably the nurse weighed up the ethics involved in answering his question. ‘Nothing definite,’ she said finally, ‘and you’ll really have to talk to the consultant. But we don’t think it’s natural causes.’
McKay did his best to keep his voice neutral, while signalling to Horton that he was hearing something potentially significant. ‘Really?’
‘That’s what the consultant said. They did some initial checks, There’s no sign of any heart problems or similar. He hasn’t had a stroke. He appears to have simply collapsed. It was touch and go for a short while, but then he rallied and has been improving. They’re still trying to work out what the problem might be.’
‘So what diagnosis do they think it’s likely to be.’
‘Well, that’s the point,’ the nurse said. ‘They think the cause is something he’s consumed or which has somehow entered his body…’
‘You mean drugs?’
‘I couldn’t really say.’ The nurse’s tone was that of someone who fears she might have already said more than was wise. ‘But that was one of the explanations being talked about. Apparently there are several drugs that could cause this effect.’
‘Are we talking about something self-administered?’
‘Again, it’s really not for me to say. But the consultant seemed to think not. He thought that because of the timescales involved it was more likely to be something administered intravenously by a third party.’
‘Would it be possible for me to speak to the consultant?’
‘I’ll track him down and get him to call you back.’
‘Please make sure he understands it’s urgent.’ McKay glanced at his watch. ‘In fact, I’m currently heading back to police HQ at Raigmore. It’ll probably take me about twenty-five minutes. If he hasn’t phoned me back by then, I’ll pop into the hospital and come in to speak to him directly.’
‘He is very busy–’
‘I appreciate that. But I’ve a hunch that at least one more life might depend on finding out what actually happened to Gary Forres.’