Penny laughed. ‘I should be vegetarian if I’m honest, especially as I’m a nature lover. I have a struggle with the moral issue about killing animals, but I do like meat. It’s not much of a compromise, but I avoid eating meat two days every week.’
‘Is today a meat day then?’ Ewan asked, hopefully.
‘It is.’
‘Good, I’ll have the oxtail whipped up in a jiffy.’
‘Add one slice of toast and some beans as well and I’m all yours.’
Ewan’s smile froze and colour rose in his cheeks. He shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘Aye, well, no bother — Penny.’
As he backed into the kitchen she screwed her eyes and punched the side of her head.
Shit! Me and my mouth. Do I tell him I didn’t mean anything or — do I just leave it at that?
She was about follow him to explain when the bell went and the door opened. She went back through to the counter as Wallace and Douglas came in, dressed in their fisherman’s waterproofs. Each was carrying a large fishing crate full of assorted bottles.
‘We’ve got a different catch today, Penny,’ Wallace said. ‘And we’ve another two in the van.’
‘Are these from the stills?’ Penny asked, lifting the flap for them to come through.
They put them through into the rest room and slid them under the table tennis table. ‘Aye, we confiscated bottles from four stills. We’ve got them all listed and labelled and the names of the distillers. You can have a look while we go and bring in the others.’
‘You haven’t tasted any of them, have you?’ Penny asked.
‘We’re not daft, Penny,’ Wallace replied.
‘Although Eggy MacOnachie might say differently,’ added his brother. ‘I have to confess though, we had a sniff. They all have a very different nose.’
‘A nose?’
‘Aye,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s fragrance or bouquet. These all vary as you’d expect, what with them being unregulated stills. That’s peatreek for you. Some are very peated, others quite seaweedy.’
Wallace raised his voice. ‘Is that you cooking, Ewan McPhee? You’ve got two starving men here, any chance of putting on more of whatever it is you’re cooking there?’
Ewan put his head round the door. He was still flushed. ‘I’ll open another tin of soup and another tin of beans. Penny and me were just about to —’
‘Oh, don’t let me and my ugly brother be gooseberries then,’ said Wallace with a grin. ‘We can go to the chip shop.’
‘We’ll just get the other crates and go,’ added Douglas, beaming suggestively at Penny.
‘Och, you scunner, don’t be silly. We were just having a bit of food together, as colleagues.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Penny. ‘Just as colleagues, so please join us.’
As the twins went out for the crates Ewan smiled bashfully. ‘You’ll get used to that pair. They like a joke, you see.’
Penny nodded. ‘It happens in stations all over, Ewan. Women officers are used to it.’
‘Well, you won’t catch me making jokes like that,’ he said, returning to the kitchen.
Damn. That’s what I assumed, Penny thought, wistfully.
Torquil returned to the station to find Ewan, Penny and the Drummond twins eating and chatting in the rest room.
‘Would you like some food, boss?’ Ewan asked, rising from his chair.
‘I could pop out and get you a sandwich if you’d prefer,’ suggested Wallace.
‘Or I could go to the chippie,’ said Douglas. ‘It would be no bother, Piper.’
Torquil shook his head. ‘That’s kind of you all, but I need to get my reports down on paper before I forget something. I need to think.’
Wallace and Douglas told him about their confiscation of the peatreek supplies from the four illicit stills, along with their locations and the background on the owners.
‘We’ll need samples getting over to the forensic lab as soon as possible.’
‘Penny already asked us to get onto it, Piper,’ said Wallace. ‘We’re going to get them sorted and off on the next ferry.’
‘And I’ll liaise with Ian Gillesbie and tell him they are on their way, boss,’ added Penny.
‘Good work, folks,’ Torquil said as he retired to his office. He had just sat down when his mobile went off. It was Lorna calling from the Stornoway office.
‘Hi darling,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to be quick because Superintendent Lumsden is on the war path and he’s in a rush to catch the ferry over to West Uist. You need to know that he’s given an interview to Scottish TV and BBC Alba about him personally going to West Uist to take over the search for Vicky Spiers.’
‘That was predictable,’ Torquil replied.
‘Anyway, he’s given me a stack of things to do before he leaves and I’m going to be roped up for a while. He’s given me a bit of a roasting for spending so much time on your case rather than on what he calls “proper policing”. But this is important and I thought the sooner you know about it the better.’
Torquil pulled a writing pad closer to him. ‘Shoot, Lorna. I’ll make notes.’
‘I talked with Dr Lamont. He’s done the post-mortem on Robbie Ochterlonie. He would have talked to you, but since he already had my number and I attended the Jamie Mackintosh post-mortem, he contacted me.’
‘Sounds perfectly reasonable.’
‘He said that Mr Ochterlonie had died from a head injury. There were two components to it apparently. One was a blunt facial injury, which fractured his nose and produced what he called a Le Fort type 2 fracture. He explained that it’s a severe facial fracture. The nasal bones splintered and the three facial bones on each side, the maxilla, the zygoma and the orbital rim were all fractured. Dr Lamont says that a fall from standing will tend to produce a type 1 Le Fort fracture, which they call a floating palate. It is a low velocity impact injury. It is not too severe, but a type 2 is called a floating maxilla. The whole of the middle of the face gets detached and pushed inwards. Effectively, the face is smashed in. It is usually associated with a high velocity impact, falling from a height or impact at speed. He reckons it was because Robbie Ochterlonie was a big man.’
‘OK, I’ve got that down.’
‘He also had a contrecoup injury to the brain. That means the back of the brain was all bruised.’
‘Does that mean he was hit on the back of the head?’ Torquil asked quickly.
‘No, it’s French, as in contre coup, meaning the other side. The brain effectively bounced from the trauma and hit the back of the cranium. It is consistent with a Le Fort fracture type 2.’
‘What caused the fall though? Was there any evidence of a heart attack, or a stroke?’
‘He thinks he had a fit. There were petechial haemorrhages inside his brain and on the surface of it. They are tiny bleeds, but all over the place. He can’t say whether the fit occurred causing him to fall, or if it happened at impact as he fell. He wants to gather all the biochemical findings and the toxicology before he can say conclusively, but he wanted us to know the position now. He’s made a note for Ian Gillesbie the Senior Scene Examiner to liaise with us.’
‘Any idea how long that’s going to be, Lorna?’
Lorna laughed. ‘How long is a piece of string? Sorry, but I’d better go. Superintendent Lumsden is here. I thought I’d brief you now in case I don’t get time. I thought maybe you could get Penny to catch Ian Gillesbie, since she worked with him at the scenes.’
‘Aye, you’re probably right, especially if Lumsden is coming over to take charge of the search.’