‘And there are a lot of hotheads around,’ agreed Lachlan. ‘But he’ll get flak from people like Nial Urquart and the bird lovers.’
‘Damn!’ Torquil cursed, as he pushed his plate aside. ‘That’s all I need with a murder investigation on my hands.’
No sooner had he said it, than his mobile went off. Morag’s name flashed on the view screen.
‘Torquil have you seen—?’
‘Aye, Morag. I’ve got the Chronicle in front of me. Calum Steele is a prize idiot.’
‘He is that,’ Morag agreed. ‘But I didn’t mean the Chronicle, I’ve just been watching the tail end of the early morning Scottish TV news before I take the kids to the minders. Kirstie Macroon has just done a piece on the “Killer Eagles of West Uist”, and she had a tele-interview with Calum. We may be in for an influx of reporters and sensation seekers.’
Torquil groaned.
‘I’ve got everything teed up for first thing though,’ Morag went on. ‘The Drummonds and Ralph McLelland are coming in. I thought we’d have the briefing in the recreation-room at the station. I’ll have it all ready for when you get in.’
Superintendent Lumsden had left a message with Morag for Torquil to telephone him as soon as he set foot in the building.
‘I think his gout must still be playing him up,’ Morag said with a grimace that told Torquil exactly the sort of reception he could expect when his superior officer answered the telephone. And indeed there were no pleasantries or preliminary banter: the superintendent just went straight for the jugular:
‘Why the hell is it always the same with you, McKinnon? Do you set out to embarrass me with the chief constable? Why do I always seem to hear about what’s happening on West Uist when I look at the TV news? Killer eagles for goodness sake! Have you no control over that numskull reporter Calum Steele?’
‘The freedom of the press, Superintendent Lumsden,’ Torquil returned.
‘Bollocks! Why didn’t you let me know about this?’
‘I was going to contact you this morning, sir. I knew nothing about this story until I read the newspaper this morning. In fact, it may be more complex than the report on the TV.’
There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the telephone, and then slowly, Superintendent Lumsden growled, ‘Go on, McKinnon, surprise me.’
Torquil took a deep breath. ‘I was going to contact you this morning, sir, after my meeting with the police surgeon. Doctor McLelland did a post-mortem last night.’
‘And?’
‘We haven’t had the meeting yet, sir. But there is a strong possibility that the man’s death was more suspicious than we thought.’
There was an interruption on the other end of the line and Torquil heard someone else talking in the background, and then Lumsden replying to them.
‘Right, McKinnon, spit it out, I’m going to have to go. I’m about to take a call from the laird of Dunshiffin.’
‘It may have been murder, sir.’
Torquil winced as the superintendent howled down the other end of the line.
‘Right! What a bloody fiasco! Have your meetings Inspector, then report back to me straight away. Meanwhile I’ll see what your laird wants.’
‘He isn’t my laird, Superintendent—’
But the line had gone dead.
When she heard the phone being replaced, Morag popped her head round Torquil’s office door. She sympathetically smiled at him. ‘Everyone is here. Are you ready to start? I’ve got the tea and biscuits ready.’
The atmosphere was subdued in the recreation-room, because everyone was conscious that PC Ewan McPhee, the big wrestling and hammer-throwing champion was no longer with them.
Torquil began by informing them all about the Scottish TV early news programme and about Calum Steele’s piece in the Chronicle.
‘Aye, but what I can’t understand is that anyone would listen to the wee windbag’s theories,’ said Douglas Drummond.
‘Och, it is because he is a man of letters and not an ignorant fisherman like you,’ replied his brother. ‘Or like me, for that matter – even though we both beat him in the Gaelic spelling contests when we were all at school. You remember them, don’t you, Piper?’
Torquil grunted assent and brought the twins to order by clapping his hands and standing up. ‘What Calum has done – is done!’ he said. ‘But although he has made the national news with his talk about killer eagles, it actually looks as if there is a more sinister killer abroad than an eagle. It looks as if there is a murderer on West Uist.’
He gestured to the local doctor. ‘Ralph, would you give us a summary of your post-mortem findings on the body of Liam Sartori?’
While Torquil had been speaking Ralph McLelland had been plugging his laptop into the station projector.
‘I’ve done this as a Power-Point presentation,’ he explained. ‘That way I can show you each stage of my examination, from the initial finding of the body by the causeway, through my preliminary external examination of the corpse, the post-mortem dissection, and the pathological and microscopic specimens that resulted from it.’
He looked at Morag. ‘Can we pull the blinds?’
And a few moments later with the room in partial darkness he pressed the home button on his laptop and a photograph of Liam Sartori lying on the rocks by the causeway flashed onto the wall.
‘As Torquil has just told us, the media have drawn attention to the so-called talon marks on the face of the dead man.’ He pointed a laser pen at the wall and indicated the livid lines on the face with the little luminous red arrow. ‘Quite clearly, if these are talon slashes then they lead us to think that they are the same marks that we so recently saw on the face of Kenneth McKinley.’
‘And are they, Ralph?’ Torquil asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ the doctor returned, changing the slide with the touch of a finger, to reveal the body of Kenneth McKinley and the deep gashes on his face. ‘What do you think?’
The others all craned forward to look.
‘I am not sure,’ said Wallace.
‘Isn’t there some test that will tell?’ Morag answered.
‘I honestly don’t know – yet,’ replied Ralph. ‘I’ve never come across a death as the result of an attack by a bird of prey. But the point is, it could have been. And we also have to ask several questions. First, could he have fallen off the causeway after being attacked by a bird, and then risen stunned from a knock on the head? Could he have then staggered forward to fall face first into a rock pool and drown?’
‘What makes you doubt that, Ralph?’ Torquil asked, already aware of Ralph’s findings.
Ralph moved to the next slide.
‘This!’ he said emphatically.
And they found themselves looking at the naked back of Liam Sartori, as he lay on the metal post-mortem table in the cottage hospital mortuary. Ralph directed the luminous arrow of his laser pen to a discoloured area that started between the dead man’s shoulder blades and ran up to his neck.
‘In my opinion this mark was caused by a foot,’ Ralph said. ‘You can see petechiae, tiny pinpoint haemorrhages dotted around and the spreading purple discolouration. This would be consistent with a foot having been stomped down hard on him – and maintaining pressure for some time. Possibly holding him underneath the water surface of that rock pool.’
‘You mean after he had staggered there?’ Wallace asked.