‘Do you think she could be dead, Piper?’ asked Douglas Drummond.
Torquil felt a shiver run up and down his spine. ‘I certainly hope not. I’m banking on her having found somewhere to crawl into and fall asleep.’
‘Will we alert the television and radio tomorrow, Torquil?’ asked Morag.
‘Aye. I’ll do that. And I promised Calum that I’d let him have a statement first thing. We have to play ball with him. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow for all of us.’ He turned to DC Penny Faversham. ‘I’m sorry that I had to give you a sudden death as your first job.’
She nodded and gave a wan smile. ‘Dr McLelland said he couldn’t issue a death certificate and so I had to contact the Procurator Fiscal’s office, which I did. That’s the second thing I’ve found quite different up here in Scotland. In England we call in unexpected deaths to the coroner.’
‘Aye, they have a similar role,’ Torquil replied. ‘You’ll have to read up on the differences between Scots law and English law. What was the other thing, Penny?’
She gave a short laugh. ‘Language. I don’t mean accents, but the Gaelic. Will I have to learn all this Gaelic? On the drive up the west coast to Oban I saw that all the road signs had both English and Gaelic names.’
‘It is pretty controversial actually, Penny,’ Morag explained. ‘It is been a political issue for a few years, especially in the mainland parts where Gaelic is not spoken, or hasn’t been spoken for centuries.’
‘Here on West Uist you’ll get by fine in English,’ volunteered Ewan.
‘What were your impressions about the scene, though?’ Torquil asked. ‘You’ll need to write up your report in the morning, but just give me your overall impressions. You took photographs, didn’t you?’
‘I did. I know that the Senior Scene Examiner who came over from Lewis is going over the place again first thing in the morning, so I was careful not to disturb things more than I could help.’
She pulled out a pocket book from her waterproof jacket and opened it where she had made copious notes. ‘The subject, known as Robbie Ochterlonie was a man of thirty-seven years, according to Dr McLelland’s case notes. He is the manager of The Old Hydro Residential Home and he was found by Norma Ferguson, his assistant manager. She had gone there after she had finished supervising breakfasts for the residents, because he hadn’t shown up this morning to take over his duties. He is a known type 1 diabetic, which means he uses insulin.’
‘We used to know Robbie. He was a fisherman before he became a confirmed landlubber and found easier ways to make money running the Hydro,’ said Wallace. ‘He liked a drop of the hard stuff as well.’
‘Not the real stuff either,’ added Douglas. ‘He was a peatreek man.’
‘Peatreek?’ Penny repeated.
‘That’s the name for illicit whisky, Penny,’ said Torquil. ‘The Irish have potcheen, the Americans have moonshine and in Scotland it is referred to as peatreek.’
Penny hummed interest. ‘Well, there was certainly whisky around. He’d dropped a glass of it when he fell on his face. And there was an empty bottle that had rolled over to the wall.’
‘What did Ralph think about the death?’
‘He wouldn’t commit himself. He seemed incredibly knowledgeable, though.’
‘Ralph is a qualified pathologist as well as a GP,’ Morag informed her.
‘That explains his reticence then, I suppose. He said there were several possibilities.’ She consulted her notes. ‘First, he could have had a heart attack or stroke and collapsed. Second, he could have had a problem with his blood sugar, either hyperglycaemia, that’s means a high sugar level, or hypoglycaemia, which is when it’s too low. The latter would mean he’d overdone his insulin.’
‘And was there any evidence of that?’ Torquil asked.
Penny nodded. ‘On his kitchen table there was a syringe and several bottles of insulin. They all seemed to be empty.’
Torquil nodded. ‘The Senior Scene Examiner will record and tag everything.’
‘I took a few photographs myself, boss. Dr McLelland didn’t object,’ said Penny, picking up her mobile phone and accessing her photos. She crossed the room and showed him the scene of the body lying face down, with the whisky glass and bottle nearby. Another was of the sitting room with an open roll-top desk and various notebooks and sheets of paper, one of the kitchen table with the syringe, medication and empty bottles of different types of insulin, then finally the empty bathroom, and the bedroom with a neatly made bed.
She went on: ‘The other possibility was that he’d drunk himself senseless and fallen. Whichever it was, he seemed to have broken his nose and possibly also fractured his skull, according to Dr McLelland. A post-mortem will tell which.’
‘That’s a good job, Penny,’ Torquil said. ‘We’ll review it all when we have the Scene Examiner’s report and the results from the post-mortem.’
‘There was something that did really concern me, though, boss,’ she said, using the informal title for the first time.
‘Tell us,’ said Torquil.
‘I interviewed Norma Ferguson, of course. She was also worried this morning that two of her care assistants hadn’t shown up.’
‘Did she say anything else? What were their names?’
‘Vicky Spiers and Catriona McDonald.’
Torquil frowned. ‘Well, we know where Catriona is and we know where she and Vicky were, but not where she is now. We better be ready to muster the search party at first light.’ He took a hefty sip of tea. ‘And the other search will be for Angus Mackintosh. I need to talk to him and give him the bad news as soon as possible. Anyone have any idea of where he could be?’
‘I’ve tried everywhere, boss,’ said Ewan.
Torquil nodded. ‘Then I suggest we all sleep on it.’
To everyone’s dismay the new day had not brought an improvement in the weather. If anything, the clouds had descended further, causing dense fog, and on the ground the mist was as thick as it had ever been. The weather forecast was for more of the same for the whole week.
Morag organised the search team at dawn. It consisted of the six uniform police constables from Lewis, about forty islanders who had helped the day before and the two Drummond twins. Ewan was left to man the station, and while Torquil wanted nothing more than to help, he had to contact the Procurator Fiscal and the labs on the mainland. As DC Penny Faversham had experience of attending scenes of death he sent her to work with the Senior Scene Examiner from Lewis.
Morag split the searchers into groups, each under the supervision of a uniformed police officer and gave them photocopied maps marked out with the areas that she wanted them to comb, using the cordoned off pillbox as the starting point to spread out from.
The Senior Scene Examiner had set up a tent with all the forensic kit needed and could be seen working, accompanied by Penny, both dressed in white crime suits.
Calum and Cora had gone out to Harpoon Hill to interview some of the searchers as they prepared a special edition of the West Uist Chronicle and recorded little video clippings for the newspaper’s blog. Morag spotted them immediately and discouraged them from going near the police cordon tape. She promised that Torquil would brief them as planned when he was able to.
Ian Gillesbie, the Senior Scene Examiner was a forty-five-year-old man who had seen every imaginable crime scene and could not be flustered by anything. He detailed every step of what he was doing into a hands-free headset microphone recorder.
Penny watched and noted everything down, from the meticulous photographing of the body and the site, the taking of samples and the bagging and labelling of the bottles, packets and debris of the teenagers’ overnight activity.