These two were sitting in the middle of the path, ignoring his best efforts to scare them off. His breathing became shallow as he remained kneeling, watching the rats watching him. He backed off a little more but this time his progress came to a sudden dramatic halt when an agonising pain shot through his leg and he tried to scramble to his feet. A rat had come up behind him and sunk its teeth into the calf muscle of his right leg.
McNish clutched at the revolting creature on his leg and pushed his flabby fingers as hard as he could into its body, trying to make it release its grip. He was diverted from the task when another of the creatures started to climb up his trouser leg under his cassock. McNish cried out in terror, letting go of the first rat to try and stop the progress of the second but his vestments were making it difficult. He tried tearing at the material to get at the creature but the garment was well made — there was no great demand for cheap cassocks — and wouldn’t part. Trying to protect his genitals by forcing his thighs together while jerking round in circles in an attempt to shake off the rat on his leg made McNish trip and crash to the ground. He hit his head on the path but the pain was eclipsed by that imposed by the rat bites. He started to roll over and over on the path, hoping that he might escape his tormentors by reaching the water, like a man trying fleeing from a swarm of bees. This however, did not work for water rats. Once in the water, he was theirs.
‘Careful, Mac. It could be some kind of diversion,’ said the yellow jacketed security man to his colleague. They had come to the north end of the field after hearing what they thought were cries for help.
‘You stay here then and I’ll take Caesar up to deal with the diversion,’ replied the man, reining back an eager Alsatian dog on a short lead.
‘Watch yourself then. Some of these save-the-planet loonies are mad bastards.’
The guard left the edge of the field and crossed the margins to reach the fence separating it from the canal towpath. He looked left and right but saw no one. Only the dog stopped him from going back to report a false alarm. It started to bark loudly and strain at the leash.
‘What do you see, boy, eh?’ asked the man, cautiously peering into the bushes between him and the canal. ‘Some bugger hiding there, you think? Maybe I’ll just let you flush ‘im out, eh?’
The guard unclipped the dog’s lead and the animal shot under the bottom wire of the fence. He went straight past the bushes and up on to the towpath where he stood, looking at the water and barking loudly. His master followed, although it took him a deal longer to get through the fence and struggle up through the undergrowth. He could now see what the dog was excited about and went slightly pale as he brought out his mobile phone to call his colleague. ‘Charlie? It’s Mac. You’d better get up here.’
A few minutes later the two men stood side by side looking at the body in the water.
‘It’s a bloke in a dress.’
‘He’s a minister, you arse.’
‘D’you think he’s dead?’
‘Unless he’s wearing an aqualung. He’s face down.’
‘Shouldn’t we pull him out?’
‘We’ll let the police do that. They get paid for that kind of shit.’
Detective Inspector Brewer watched his men pull the body of James McNish to the side and hoist him on to the bank to turn him over on to his back.
‘Christ, what a mess,’ murmured one.
‘The rats weren’t slow getting to him,’ said another. ‘Look at his neck.’
‘What is it the residents of Blackbridge have about swimming in the canal?’ said the detective sergeant with Brewer. ‘You just can’t keep them out of it these days.’
Brewer gave a half smile and shrugged. ‘Well what d’you reckon? Did he jump or was he pushed?’
‘Hard to say anything right now,’ replied the sergeant. ‘You don’t often find a Church of Scotland Minister floating up the canal in full gear, so to speak. Could have been a baptism that went horribly wrong… or a suicide… he could have fallen and hit his head on the path before tumbling in or someone might have pushed him.’
‘Or he could have fallen from a passing Boeing 747,’ said Brewer. ‘Get full statements from the guards, will you? And then we’ll see what the doctor has to say.’
‘Right, sir.’
Do you know if he had any relatives?’
The sergeant shrugged. ‘Wife ran off a while back. Don’t know of anyone else. Seemed to be a bit of a loner by all accounts. Rumour said he drank.’
‘So do I,’ said Brewer.
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed the sergeant. ‘I’ve just remembered.’
‘Share it with us.’
‘It was the Ferguson boy’s funeral today in Blackbridge. McNish here must have been officiating: that’ll be why he’s all dolled up. Wonder if that had anything to do with it.’
ELEVEN
Steven waited until after lunch before driving out to Blackbridge to talk to James Binnie. He left it until then because he wanted to be sure that the Ferguson boy’s funeral would be well and truly over and also that the mourners would have had time to disperse. Funerals with media interest always attracted political animals who would see it as a photo opportunity, a chance to display their care and concern to the voting public. He didn’t know who would be going from the ranks of the establishment but he did know that he would prefer not to be seen by them. In view of what Macmillan had said, he would be keeping as low a profile as possible from now on.
Ann Binnie smiled pleasantly when she opened the door to him and invited him in. ‘James is in his study,’ she said. ‘He’s been expecting you.’
Ann called out to her husband and showed Steven into a small, book-filled room at the back of the house where he found Binnie sitting in an arm chair, one arm dangling over the side, the other holding a glass of whisky.’
‘Join me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t normally drink at this time of day but after this morning, I need it.’
Steven accepted. ‘How did it go?’ he asked tentatively.
‘The funeral? It was a nightmare and a damned shame for the parents. They didn’t need that on top of everything else.’
‘This was not the reply Steven had expected. ‘What went wrong?’ he asked.
Binnie took another sip of his whisky and paused for a moment, shaking his head as if unable to accept what he’d seen as really having happened, then he related the events at Canal Field Cemetery to Steven, who found himself horrified.
‘Sounds like the man must have had a nervous breakdown,’ he said. ‘What a time to choose.’
‘I don’t think choice came into it,’ said Binnie, ‘although I suspect booze did. McNish has been on the road to ruin for years. Well, it’s all over now. They pulled him out of the canal an hour ago.’
‘He killed himself?’ exclaimed Steven.
‘More likely he got sozzled and fell in,’ said Binnie. ‘I hate to speak ill of the dead but frankly, the place is better off without that man. If you’d heard him at the cemetery this morning, he would have made a barrack-room bruiser sound like Cliff Richard. He really lost it in a big way.’
‘Tell me more about the rat,’ said Steven.
‘What about it?’
‘Did you think that was a normal thing for the animal to do in the circumstances?’
Binnie looked at him for a moment. ‘Ann said you wanted to talk about rats,’ he said. ‘No, I must confess that I didn’t. In fact, I’ve been concerned about a quite few things that our long-tailed friends have been doing in recent weeks. What’s your interest in them?’
‘No specific interest,’ said Steven. ‘People keep talking about the general increase in the rat population all over the country but there’s been no mention of a change in their behaviour to my knowledge. I just wondered.’ Steven told him about the rat that had run out of the rape field and over the security guard’s shoes. ‘That’s what made me think that there might also be some kind of change going on,’ he said. ‘I remember thinking at the time that it seemed a bit odd, out of character, you might say, as if the rats had suddenly become less timid around here.’