‘I need your help,’ the voice said, but it came over as ‘If feed shelf …’
‘Who is this speaking?’
‘Sheevon.’
‘Hold on, let me walk up the slope a bit, it’s sometimes better there.’ Serrailler did so, but when he put the phone to his ear, there was only a hissing sound and then abrupt silence.
‘Effin mobile signal.’
Sam said from the doorway. ‘I made some coffee.’
‘Great, thanks. God knows who it was, I couldn’t make any sense of it.’
They sat down at the kitchen table. Sam had put out the pot of coffee, milk and a plate of Kirsty’s chocolate brownies, dropped off at the front door by Douglas just after dawn.
‘She likes feeding me up,’ Simon said. ‘Thinks I’m too thin.’
Sam looked at his plate and said, ‘She’s pretty. Really.’
‘She is. And a delightful woman and safely married.’
‘Safely?’
Simon didn’t answer.
‘You mean if she’d been free she’d have been a threat to your safe single life?’
‘No.’
‘You’d have done OK.’
‘Living up here? I don’t think so.’
‘You always skip sideways.’
‘There you go again.’
‘I’d better go over to the pub, see if anyone’s left a message. You coming?’
‘Bloody hell, it’s like living in the 1950s. I got a signal on the top road the other day … well, half a bar.’
But Simon was on his way to the door. ‘It was probably the doc,’ Sam said, whisking the car keys away and climbing into the driver’s seat.
‘That’s why I want to pick up any message now. I can drive with this arm, you know. Don’t you feel safe with me any longer?’
‘Yes, I just love driving this. You feeling insecure, being disabled?’
‘Fuck it, Sam, sometimes you push it too far. No, I feel perfectly normal. I’ve got a very clever fully functioning arm, thanks to the brilliant prosthetic engineers, and in a month or two I’ll have one so state-of-the-art I’ll be able to pick up a pin in my fingers. I do not feel insecure, I feel bloody lucky. They saved my life, so what’s an arm?’
‘Between friends.’
‘Watch it!’
A sheep had wandered across the road within a few yards of them. Sam braked, swerved and skidded, righted the car and continued.
‘Would he be able to tell if she drowned herself?’ he asked after a silent couple of miles.
‘Not sure … certainly he will know if she died of drowning, which she almost certainly did – that’s the easy bit. Other factors come into play when recording a suicide verdict – known state of mind, any note or other communication left to anyone, things like coat pockets full of heavy stones to weight herself down … but I’m no medic. What do you think?’
Sam shrugged. ‘You knew her, I didn’t.’
‘True, but you were very possibly the last person to see Sandy alive, so if she was in a state of mental distress …’
Sam looked at Simon in shock. ‘Do you think that’s likely? That no one else saw her after she dropped me off that night?’
‘It’s possible, Sambo. She lived alone, it was late … and a filthy night. No one would be likely to call then … maybe the next morning, who knows, but when it was first noticed she hadn’t been around for a bit someone would have said if they’d been to the house that morning.’
‘Jeez. What will happen?’
‘If you were thought to be the last person? Nothing, except you may have to give evidence at the inquest. Don’t worry about that – it’ll be short and formal and the chances are the coroner will return a verdict of taking her own life by drowning.’
‘They might think I’d killed her.’
‘Why on earth would they think that? You mean you might have left me once I’d gone to bed, walked through a storm and a howling gale to a house you didn’t know, gone in and … and what? Knocked her on the head and dragged her down a steep path to the sea, in pitch darkness? And what would your motive have been?’
‘OK.’
But even so, Sam remained silent for the rest of the way.
Iain gave a short laugh. ‘If I were a betting man … Do you want the phone before or after the drink?’
There were half a dozen in the bar. Sam slipped over to a far table.
‘In case you’re wondering, it’s everyone – there’s been damage to the mast or some of the usual nonsense. Mobiles are nae use out here, they really are not. You’ve had three calls, all wanting to leave messages, or wanting me to hike off and find you, as if I’d the time.’
‘Sorry, Iain. I’ll have a pint of Cluny, and Coke for Sam and what you’re having.’
‘No need, thanks all the same. There’s Lorna off the phone now, away and grab it before someone else does. Here.’
He held out half an envelope with names and numbers.
Dr Murray. Kieron. Richard.
He started with the pathologist and got voicemail. Left a message. Richard? He couldn’t think of a Richard. He rang Kieron.
‘Chief Constable’s office.’
‘This is Simon Serrailler. I got a message to call the Chief.’
‘Ah, I’m sorry, he’s out at the meeting, he has a dinner this evening, and I’ve no idea what he wanted you for, I’m afraid – he didn’t tell me anything.’
‘Right … thanks. Will you tell him I’ll ring tomorrow? No point in him calling my mobile, the whole island’s off signal. Or he can email me. That seems to be working.’
‘I’ll do that. Thank you.’
He went back to Sam, who had finished his Coke, got another, and was flipping through the Sun.
‘Rubbish paper,’ Simon said.
‘Sure is. Get everyone?’
‘No one.’
‘Simon,’ Iain shouted across. ‘Doc’s on the phone again.’
‘I take it you’re still in charge,’ the pathologist said. ‘You know about the business over on the mainland?’
‘I heard they can’t spare a man. Some drug-smuggling. But I’m fine to hold this end. Do you have any results for me?’
‘Aye and one or two surprises. Can you get over here?’
‘Next ferry leaves in twenty minutes, I’ll catch that. Where do I come?’
‘I’ll meet you.’
Dr Murray was waiting on the jetty when the ferry docked, in the usual battered jeep relied upon by those who had to get about and no fuss, in all seasons and weathers.
They drove about a mile and then parked in front of a Victorian building which looked like a school but was in fact the old cottage hospital. That had been transferred, along with the local primary school, to a modern building to the west of the town.
‘We’re the path lab, the mortuary and the records office, and behind is the procurator fiscal’s office. We’ve been pressing for more space and modern facilities for years but we’re no likely to get them. Come in.’
They had reached the entrance via a short flight of semicircular stone steps and now walked down the inevitable cream-painted corridor, with high sash windows set along it, to a pair of doors declaring ‘No Unauthorised Entrance’.
The usual mortuary smell. Disinfectant and chemicals of a very particular kind. Formaldehyde. And something else. The smell of death which nothing could ever stifle or disguise. And yet Serrailler knew that it was not really there. Death in here had already been sanitised, rendered neutral. Death had been wiped clean, distanced from its former self, which had been life, and plunged into the maelstrom of that huge change in its every molecule. Death was not death here. And yet it was not life either. Death was a medical matter, an anonymity, an object robbed of personality and status. Death had been taken over and dealt with.
He had never found the pathologist’s theatre of work alarming or repellent. In some ways, he found it rather beautiful, in the way that all ritual was beautiful. There was always respect, always formality. Rules were adhered to, routine followed. There was never any place for informality, for creativity, for making it up on the spot, for diversion. A post-mortem had a pattern, and a shape. A form.
Murray had sent the assistant out. ‘We’ve no but the one,’ he said. ‘Yesterday I had three. Small boy went under the wheels of a sheep transporter. His dad’s.’ He shook his head.
Never let anyone say these men grow callous and cynical, that they have seen it all and can no longer feel anything, that they are medical automatons, that each dead body means as little to them as the last and the one before that.
‘I knew them. This is it – you live in a small community. You suffer with it.’
He shook his head again.
‘You can stand over there if you prefer.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Surprising how many policemen aren’t. Right, Peter.’
Serrailler watched as the mortuary assistant wheeled in the sheeted body. He and the doctor slid it onto the examination table and then Murray beckoned Simon closer. He first rolled the sheet down to reveal the face and neck.
Sandy looked as they all looked. Wiped clean, as if death had taken not only the breath which was life but the person, the personality, the essence, leaving a blank, for all there was still a face with features, and those features spelled her name.
It was Sandy. But Sandy was no longer there.
‘Still the same ID?’
‘Yup. That’s her.’
‘Right. Let’s turn, please.’
They turned, so that Sandy was now lying face down. The long hair had been cut and the head shaved. But it was the neck the doctor pointed at.
‘See there?’
Simon bent over, looked. Whistled softly.
‘Not suicide then,’ he said.
What he saw was a wound where a bullet had entered. It was precisely placed to kill in one.
‘Do you have any idea of the type of gun yet?’
‘Not exactly, but of course it wasn’t a rifle or the head would have been blown off – and rifles are the only legitimate guns owned by the islanders. It could be a Glock but I’m not a ballistics expert. I’ve emailed pictures, I’ll get a firm ID from Glasgow, maybe tomorrow if I’m lucky. I presume that will tell you more.’
‘No one has hit her while meaning to take out a rabbit. This is a revolver.’
‘Which means the killing was deliberate.’
‘And probably carefully planned. I doubt if anyone on Taransay owns that sort of lethal weapon – if they do, they’ll have kept it well hidden. But why would they? Any other injuries?’
‘Nothing serious – some scrapes and minor cuts on the hands and head – bumped against a rock or whatever. Body was dead when it went into the sea.’
‘I have been on the island before now – know it quite well, so far as any incomer ever can – and I can imagine brawls – I’ve seen a few on a Saturday night. But it’s a close community …’
‘They all are and no worse for it.’
‘No. And I can’t imagine anyone who would murder Sandy. She was popular … bit of a loner but she pulled her weight, she’d become part of the island. Why would anyone kill her?’
Murray looked at him in silence for a moment, then gestured to the assistant to help him turn the body over and take off the sheet.
‘This didn’t entirely surprise me, given one or two other features, but it may come as a shock to you.’
Sandy. Still unmistakably Sandy. Dead. Lying on her back.
His back.