Liz Gannick appears ten minutes after Maggie leaves, riding a golf buggy from the hotel loaded with equipment. She listens to my account of finding the man’s body, her anger erupting when she sees the food scattered across the hallway.
‘What’s all that gunk?’
‘Maggie spilled some soup; I didn’t want to do any more damage.’
‘Clear it up, for fuck’s sake, but wear protective gear.’
Gannick is unrolling metres of clear plastic, like she’s planning to wrap the entire house in cellophane. Her approach fascinates me. The woman’s like a grenade, primed to explode. I can tell she’s glad to arrive before the pathologist, but she’s barely glanced at Louis Hayle’s body. She casts her crutches aside, then climbs the stairs, crawling on hands and knees. Once fresh plastic is laid on each tread, she considers the victim at last.
‘Is this the complainer, Ben?’
‘That’s him. He didn’t have many close friends here, but no serious enemies either, as far as I can tell. I can’t see why anyone would target him, apart from his arrogance.’
Gannick raises her hand, like she’s stopping traffic. ‘That’s enough speculation to last me a lifetime. Give me some breathing space, for fuck’s sake.’
I keep my mouth shut as she circles the body, remembering my uncle describing the dead man as a bully.
‘It’s rare to fall backwards downstairs,’ she mutters. ‘Trip-hazard injuries are normally face first: a broken back or neck. Facial wounds are rare. People normally raise their arms instinctively to protect their heads.’
I look at Hayle’s damaged face; there’s crimson swelling around a dark red line on his forehead that’s still oozing blood.
Gannick is already too immersed to remember my presence. By the time I’m kitted out in a white sterile suit and overshoes, she’s spraying luminol on surfaces, clutching a UV torch that turns the air blue. When she runs it over the stairs, its glare travels at the slowest pace imaginable as she checks for blood spatter.
My phone is buzzing with messages when I step back outside. Gareth Keillor says he can’t get here until tomorrow morning, unable to find a boatman willing to ferry him over so late at night. He’ll arrive bright and early on the police launch. Then DCI Madron calls to tell me to remain at Hayle’s property until morning, with all doors locked, in case the killer returns. He reminds me that Travis’s hit man might already be on the island, and offers to send Lawrie Deane over to stand guard, but I refuse. One unarmed cop with no experience of conflict would be no match for a professional killer. I hiss out expletives when the call ends. I could easily secure the place and return at first light, but now I’m forced to stay put. The case has picked the worst moment to consume my energy.
My only option is to tell Nina that I can’t be with her tonight, or at the airport tomorrow. Her tone is muted when I ring the hospital, but there’s relief in her voice too. I wanted our child’s life to begin on the islands like mine, but now I don’t care so long as they’re both safe. She ends our conversation with another warning.
‘Remember your promise, Ben.’
‘How could I forget?’
She hangs up before I can give any more reassurances.
My thoughts are still with Nina and the baby as I check Louis Hayle’s Victorian kitchen, with its range and butler sink. The room is so immaculate, he must have had a cleaner, or enjoyed buffing every surface to such a high shine, I can see my reflection in the chrome surface of his coffee machine. The man’s loneliness shows in the content of his freezer. Maggie and Billy’s meals are stacked in piles, their generosity bigger than his appetite. It reminds me of when I lived alone. I used to stand by the window studying the world outside while eating pizza from a box, instead of facing an empty table.
The pictures on Hayle’s walls hark back to happier times. One shows him hanging off the side of a yacht as it cuts through high waves, the photo bleached with age. The next is of him in his forties, full of swagger on Hell Bay beach, his skin deeply tanned, surrounded by grinning children, including me and my brother at the edge of the pack. He looks like a stand-in for James Bond, his glittering smile a fraction too white. There are hardly any pictures of his pretty, diminutive wife. Maybe he kept her in the background, too self-absorbed to notice her needs. The couple’s daughter only appears in a few graduation and wedding photos. I can’t recall her visiting the islands at all since her mother died.
Louis Hayle appears to have led a prosperous life, with homes in London and Scilly, until age overtook him. His desk is stacked with correspondence about the activities centre, including copies of letters he sent to the island council, English Heritage and Greenpeace. He urged numerous charities and ecology groups to fight the development, without success. It’s possible that he reached the end of his tether, with no family to support him. I check his filing system, but can’t find any evidence that he was under threat. His tax returns show that he lived on a handsome pension, but there’s no sign of the huge wealth he accrued during his heyday. I’m still ploughing through his filing cabinet when Gannick calls me from the hallway.
‘The stairs are clean, Ben.’ There’s a victory smile on her face.
‘Meaning what?’
‘There’d be blood marks from that cut on his forehead if it happened on the way down, but the wall and skirting are spotless. Those facial injuries were inflicted after the fall.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Check out the blood spatter by his head.’ Her blue light shows a spray of droplets on the floor that are invisible to the naked eye.
‘Someone kicked or bashed him in the face as he lay dying?’
‘It looks that way, then they cleared up most of the blood. Keillor can tell you more. I’m going back to the hotel for food, alcohol and sleep. I’ll run detailed checks tomorrow.’
‘Thanks for your help, Liz.’
‘I don’t do it to please you. It’s my job, remember?’ She offers a grudging smile, then swings outside, her crutches tapping over the cobbled path.
It’s only after she’s gone that the reality of staying here alone till morning hits home, but it makes sense. I made the mistake of leaving one murder victim unguarded, with disastrous results. It can’t happen again, even though my situation has grown more vulnerable. I take a final look outside, using a torch from the hallway; Hayle’s back garden appears orderly, his recycling boxes stacked by the door, yet something is out of kilter. The man did something that left the killer so incensed he experienced a violent death.
I’ve taken a dozen pictures for the pathologist, but I’d rather not spend the night next to the corpse, so I return inside to find a place to rest. The drawing room has a long view down Badplace Hill. I pick a sofa facing the window, but when I stretch out, sleep is a distant fantasy. I can see a handful of house lights glowing in the valley below, and a white thread spools across the western horizon every few minutes. The lighthouse on Round Island was automated decades ago, but it’s still pulsing out warnings, reminding every man, woman and child that the sea cannot be trusted.