‘DI Lynch, Police Scotland. This is DC Goode.’
Graham Lynch, red-headed, very tall and Aberdonian dour. Andy Goode was none of those things and his handshake with Serrailler was firm, his expression friendly, interested. Lynch might be interested, but he was clearly a man who played his cards close to his chest.
‘Come in. I’ve the kettle on, or there’s a coffee machine.’
‘No thanks.’
‘A brew of tea would be great …’ Lynch gave his junior colleague a hard look. Sod you then, Simon thought, you can sit and watch us both drink tea and eat our way through the shortbread.
‘I’ve come to release you from any further involvement in the case of the woman, Sandy Murdoch, dead, believed murdered. I have to thank you for your assistance while Police Scotland was undermanned in the area dealing with urgent matters, and to formally assume responsibility for the investigation.’
He sounds like a bloody robot, Serrailler thought, and the junior knows he is one. He deliberately avoided DC Goode’s eye as he set down the teapot and mugs.
‘Sure you won’t?’
‘Sure thank you.’
Serrailler joined them at the kitchen table. There had been no small talk, no preliminaries, no light touches. This was official and even tea was out of order. He sensed that the DI did not feel comfortable in the cottage, would have far preferred to sit in a police station, which Taransay did not have.
‘I have read your report and the report of the pathologist. I don’t think there’s anything to add.’
‘How do you see the investigation proceeding?’
‘You’re leaving it in capable hands, Chief Superintendent. We’ll obviously follow everything up.’
‘I’m sure you will. But listen, Inspector, we know that this was neither accident nor suicide, so it’s a murder inquiry and once the islanders find that out, they will be pretty shaken. Sandy Murdoch was well liked, she’d become a member of the community. People were upset at her sudden disappearance and then the finding of her body but murder would have been a million miles from their thoughts.’
‘What exactly are you trying to tell me?’
‘Just –’
But just what? Simon thought. Just go carefully. Just be respectful. Just be tactful. Just …
‘Nothing.’
The fact that he had taken a dislike to the DI did not mean he doubted his competence, and even if he did, it was nothing to do with him. He was out of it. He would like to know if they ever found out the identity of Sandy’s killer but he had a suspicion that in the end the case would go down as ‘unsolved’ and remain open. Perhaps for years, perhaps for good. But he could not have said why he thought it.
He worked on the Still files for the next three days without much of a break. The longer he spent on them the more holes he found in the original investigation and the more unanswered questions came up. He wanted to finish and then go over the whole thing again, filling out the notes he had made.
But on the third night, with the gales still battering the house, he woke at three o’clock, and at once his mind was full, not of Kimberley Still but of Sandy Murdoch. He lay on his back, his right arm behind his head, hearing the window latches rattle and the floorboards creak and groan and it was as though the time spent working on another, quite different case had freed some portion of his mind to think about Sandy. He was well aware that the case no longer had anything to do with him but he was certain that the pair who had taken over would put the whole thing on the back burner, once they had brought themselves up to speed.
It was not who Sandy was, she or he, which was exercising him. It was the bullet wound. Plenty of islanders kept rifles but it was not a rifle that had killed her. It was a revolver – the sort of gun which, since the Dunblane incident, was virtually impossible to get hold of. Criminals in major cities might have access to them but no one on Taransay, surely. Why would they want, say, a Glock pistol? You didn’t go after rabbits with one of those.
So, either the weapon had come onto the island with a stranger, been used to kill Sandy, and then gone away with the same person, or … or there was someone on Taransay hiding one away. This was so unlikely that Simon dismissed the idea and turned to thinking about an incomer. There were the students at the field centre. There had been a man seen getting off the ferry with them but walking away alone. Had he been the same one Simon had seen on the top road? He tried to focus on the figure in his memory. Walking boots. Rucksack. Cap. Wax jacket. All dark green and khaki, blending in with the background. Average height and weight. He had had no glimpse of the man’s face. Nothing had stood out except that he was a stranger and walking across the island alone. But people did that. Hikers, birders, archaeologists, who visited for a day or a week, and left. The man had not stayed at the inn and there was nowhere else.
But he had almost certainly gone and trying to trace him was a needle-in-a-haystack business. You bought a ticket for the ferry at the quay. It was possible to book online but nobody did so except during the peak few weeks of summer. Nobody asked for a name, ID, a passport any more than they did when you boarded a train.
He turned over. Let DI Lynch and his sidekick find the man.
He slept through the wind and rain until after seven o’clock and as he woke he was still thinking about Sandy and the gun and the stranger and the oddness of the whole scenario.
Twenty minutes later he was driving up to Douglas and Kirsty’s house. The kitchen smelled of frying bacon and Robbie was struggling with his shoelaces.
‘Dad wears boots all the time, and slippers in the house, I never ever see him in a pair of laced-up shoes,’ Robbie said, pink in the face with bending over. ‘Can you tie laces Mr Simon?’
‘I can. Let me –’
‘Even with your bionic hand you can?’
Simon hesitated. He was wearing pull-on boots. Because until he not only had his new prosthesis and was practised in using it, doing laces, picking up small objects and performing fine finger-and-thumb tasks was impossible. The previous evening he had automatically gone to lift a heavy fallen branch out of the way, and dropped it on his foot, because there was no muscle power in his prosthesis. And when he was caught out like that, it made him flare up, swear at himself, curse the inanimate objects that defeated him. And now he was being challenged by a four-year-old over tying shoclaces.
‘No, Robbie. You’re right. I can’t. I can’t help you.’
It seemed a huge and significant failure and it sickened him.
Kirsty simply handed him a mug of tea. ‘Bacon on toast?’ She gave him a close look.
‘Douglas is out back but he’ll be taking Robbie to school … if it’s him you wanted.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sit down, enjoy your breakfast.’
‘You didn’t ask if I’d already had it.’
‘I can tell you haven’t by looking at you, and even if I’m wrong, who turns down a second one, in this weather?’
Robbie had bent over again and said nothing more, but as Simon took a mouthful of tea, he leapt up. ‘I’ve done them, I’ve tied them, I’ve tied them!’
Kirsty gave a great, warm smile. ‘Come here, let me look.’ Robbie stood on one and then the other leg, raising each shoe to show.
‘Clever wee boy, you can tie them and you’ll never forget it again. Well done, Rob.’ She put out her arms to hug him but he ducked away, and fled from the kitchen. Kirsty laughed. Her face had rounded out and she showed her pregnancy well.
‘You’re looking bonny,’ Simon said. ‘Everything good?’
‘It’s fine, thank you. I’m a lot happier now I’m no so sick every day. What about you?’
He nodded, his mouth full of hot bacon. He thought he might well not be on the island for much longer, and he did not want to tell her. He would tell no one, just get on the ferry and wait for it to return and spread the word that he’d left, with a heavy rucksack and a holdall.
Kirsty sat down opposite him with her own mug of tea. ‘Next time you come,’ she said, as if she knew what he had been thinking, knew that he was soon off, ‘you’ll have a new arm, we’ll have a new bairn and they’ll have found out who killed Sandy Murdoch.’
‘Who?’ Douglas came in through the back door. ‘Robbie? You’ve ten minutes.’ A shout from above.
‘He tied his own shoelaces.’
Douglas looked at her and smiled. ‘That boy!’
Simon saw the look that passed between them, a look of pride and delight. And love. He felt a chip of ice settle on him.
‘Morning, Simon. What can I do for you?’
‘I wanted a talk but you’ve to get Robbie to school. Maybe I’ll come by another day.’
‘Is it anything I can help with?’ Kirsty asked.
He hesitated. He had no idea, but to stay a bit longer in the warm kitchen, with tea and bacon, was appealing.
‘You might. I just don’t know, if I’m frank. I’m probably flying a kite.’
‘Fly it. Robbie, have you your bag and your recorder and your gym shoes?’
Robbie slipped out.
‘When’s the new one due?’
‘February. No doubt it’ll be blown in on a force eight.’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘No idea. You don’t get scans every other week here. With the early one it was too soon to tell, and besides, we’d maybe just like a surprise.’
‘It’s a boy,’ Simon said. ‘Oh, you’re the expert, are you?’
He laughed. But Kirsty was the mother of boys. It seemed obvious to him and he had no idea why.
Douglas and Robbie whirled out in a chaos of bags and coats and boots and shouts and churning wheels and they heard the jeep rattle off up the track.
‘More tea and bacon now?’
He leaned back in his chair. Was this what he really needed? Wanted? This life here. He could work at cold cases. Distance detective. But Kirsty would not be part of the deal and who else was there on the island? Possibly others but he hadn’t made it his business to find out.
Perhaps he would ask her. Kirsty would know.
She had put the kettle back on and was setting herself a plate now. ‘I can’t settle to a calm breakfast while all that’s going on.’
‘And now I’ve come to disturb your peace.’
‘Aye, but I’ll cope. So – what’s this all about?’
‘Sandy Murdoch.’
‘I thought you were off that now.’
‘News travels fast.’
‘As you should know.’
A look. He knew what it meant. She knew.
He explained. ‘Kirsty, I’ve been going over and over it and I know what they’ll do. Yes, it was a murder, yes, they’ll investigate as they are duty-bound to do, but they’ll take their time. Sandy had no relatives we know of, nobody has come forward, and without that, it will go slowly through due process. Of course they’ll be back over here and asking all the questions I asked but meanwhile … I barely knew her but I have an itch to get this sorted because there’s something, something … it’s either the stranger who was seen getting off the boat and then walking across the top paths, in which case –’
‘No chance.’
‘Very little … remember Jill Dando’s murder – that beautiful young television presenter, gunned down at her own front door by some random man who was never found. No motive, no gun, no killer. Nothing. It’s like that, only Sandy wasn’t famous, so no one from the press is over here, there’s nothing to interest anyone. Listen. I’ll tell you what I can’t stop turning over. She was killed with a revolver. Not a rifle. And who in God’s name would have that sort of gun on Taransay?’
She sat in silence, drinking her tea, looking out of the window. Thinking. Simon did the same. But he had no hope that they would come up with any answers.
‘Who would have had a gun like that for some years? Kept it?’
‘And ammunition.’
‘What kind of a person?’
‘A criminal. Someone who’d been part of a gang.’
‘A policeman?’
‘Impossible. If you’re an officially armed officer, the checks on taking guns out and handing them back are done for one incident at a time and one only, and on the rare occasions when a cop like me, say, has to carry one – and you have to take proficiency tests frequently – the same would apply. They don’t just hand you a gun if you ask for one.’
‘So who else?’
‘Ex-military – but again, they don’t just get to have one and put it in their back pocket.’
‘So when would they carry one?’
‘In wartime. On military ops. And in training. But then they are checked in and out.’
‘Isn’t that machine guns?’
‘Depends on who they are, their role, rank, the circumstances. Of course this only applies to the UK – you go to the Middle East, Russia … But this is Taransay, Kirsty.’
‘Yes.’ She got up and took the last two rashers of bacon out of the pan. Toast from the range.
‘One each.’
They sat and ate in silence. Guns were in front of them. Guns and bullets. Guns and bodies. None of it seemed relevant to where they were. The sun had broken through for the first time in over a week, and the sky was suddenly blue and brilliant over the sea. The wind had dropped.
Kirsty sighed.
‘Yes. But there are too few of them. It worries me. I don’t tell Douglas but Robbie needs more – more friends, more challenge.’
‘What will he do later?’
‘Off on the ferry, either every day, or Monday to Friday. They stay on the mainland – the school has no boarding itself but they stay with families, that’s not a problem.’
‘You’d miss him.’
‘Of course, but it’s what Douglas did, it’s what everyone did, and what’s the alternative for us? Mainland life? No.’
‘I’d better go. Thanks for …’
Kirsty looked up at him. ‘You said war? In wartime?’
‘Well, yes, but I’m not talking about ancient weapons left over from 1945 or even 1918.’
‘I know that.’ She was frowning. ‘What?’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t …’
‘Yes,’ Serrailler said. ‘You should.’
‘It might not be relevant.’
‘Let me be the judge of that. Kirsty?’
She stood and walked over to the window. Came back. She seemed anxious. But it was better not to push her, better to wait and let her work it out and hope she would make up her mind correctly. Whatever she had to say would not be trivial but he could not see at this point how there might be anything at all which would help him.
Then she sat down again and said, ‘Iain.’
He said nothing.
‘He’s been here twenty years near enough. He met Lorna on the mainland and brought her here. I don’t know how … we don’t see her much and I’ve never got to know her well but I sense she isn’t happy, and that she hasn’t been for a while.’
She poured out more tea for herself. It was lukewarm now, the dregs of the pot, but she drank it anyway.
‘Douglas … he ought to be telling you this himself. I don’t know.’
‘Would you like me to ask him when he gets back?’
‘No. No, he won’t mind. He’s told no one else but me … Douglas keeps things to himself. On the other hand, he can’t be the only one – you know Taransay. He saw Iain with Sandy once or twice.’
That took him by surprise. No need to ask if Douglas was sure, no need to say anything.
‘But I know that doesn’t mean … well, why in God’s name would he shoot her dead?’
‘Yes. And how?’
‘You said … wartime. People had those guns in wartime. Soldiers.’
Kirsty had seen Iain and Sandy. Had they really been having an affair? Iain was always at the pub. Sandy had always been alone. And Iain had a wife. Plenty of other people were out and about over the island but Iain never seemed to be. But if it had been true, Iain would have had to cover up his own shock and distress and he had surely done so successfully. Yes he had been upset but so had everyone. And you did not leap from vague suspicions of an affair to accusations of murder.
There was the sound of the jeep outside. The front door banged.
‘I’ll make fresh tea.’ Kirsty got up without meeting Serrailler’s eye. It was clear that she was not going to carry on their conversation.
‘Not for me, thanks. I’ve work to do.’
‘When’s the arm-fitting?’ Douglas asked. ‘Robbie’s desperate to see you tie your shoelaces.’ He put his arm round Kirsty who leaned against him.
Simon went. If he had not had so much on his mind, he would have felt excluded, for all the bacon and tea and toast and talk.