None but the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  McNab, who knew all about drowned bodies, glanced back at Jones. ‘Three of us won’t be enough to lift him.’

  ‘Is Erling coming?’

  ‘Yes, and both his men.’

  ‘Then we’ll manage.’

  ‘Where are you planning to put him?’

  ‘The shed at the schoolhouse,’ she said. Seeing McNab’s expression, she added, ‘It’s too warm in the cottage and the outhouses there are full of cats.’

  ‘I take it you’ll tell Jones the good news while I fetch the gear?’

  It was the second time in two days she’d felt sorry for Mike Jones. She was making a habit of it.

  ‘Just until the helicopter arrives,’ she promised. ‘And I’ll stay with the body.’

  Her assurance appeared to ease his fear a little. ‘I thought it might be Inga,’ he admitted. ‘That’s why I couldn’t go close enough to see. I should have checked.’

  ‘You were right to come and get us.’

  ‘Did he get caught in the tide?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘I’ll go back to the body. Could you wait here? We might need your help lifting it.’

  That prospect didn’t appeal, but he nodded anyway and headed back up the beach, to take a seat on the grass and await McNab’s return.

  Sam Flett would have known these waters, this causeway, like the back of his hand. Surely he wouldn’t have allowed himself to get caught by the tide? Rhona directed her torch beam at Sam’s head, looking for any obvious wounds.

  Maybe he lost his footing and banged his head on the rocks. People might drown in a few inches of water if they were unconscious. As far as she could see, there were no open wounds, no bloody gash, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t suffered a blunt-force trauma.

  Other things might have made him fall down and drown. A heart attack or a stroke. Sam was an elderly man. Fit, as far as she’d been aware, but past his three score years and ten.

  She felt a surge of sadness. Sam had been nice to her. Helpful. So concerned about Inga. That in itself could have put his heart under strain.

  But why was Sam near the causeway in the first place?

  Had he suspected that Inga had crossed to the island and gone looking for her? That was one possible explanation.

  Another one occurred which she didn’t welcome.

  That Sam had something to do with the missing skull. That he had been the one to take it and hide it in the mound. It was obvious he wasn’t happy about the grave being disturbed or the flowers for that matter. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted the skull to be reconstructed.

  Maybe Sam suspected he knew who the victim was.

  Rhona shivered as the breeze found its way under her jacket. Not fully clothed, she would have to put on another couple of layers if she was intent on sitting up the rest of the night with Sam’s body.

  McNab was coming towards her carrying the tarp.

  Ideally she should wrap and secure the body here then carry it ashore, but Rhona had been watching the level of the water in the rock pool and suspected it was rising.

  McNab was observing her, awaiting instructions.

  ‘How long before Erling gets here?’ she said.

  ‘He was picking up the community ambulance and hopefully the doctor. He said twenty minutes or so, but a vehicle that size won’t get along this far, half the path’s crumbled into the sea.’

  Rhona made her decision.

  On her right was a stretch of sand with fewer rocks.

  ‘Lay the tarp out there,’ she instructed. ‘We’ll roll the body onto it.’

  35

  Protocol said she should touch nothing without a witness or forensic help. At this moment she wished with a vengeance that she hadn’t sent Chrissy home.

  McNab had done as bid while Rhona attempted to clear the seaweed that had tangled the body.

  The water was rising. She was sure of that now.

  ‘We’ll need Mike’s help,’ she said.

  McNab baulked at that.

  ‘In normal circumstances—’ he began.

  ‘These aren’t normal circumstances.’ Rhona called to the figure still waiting on the shore.

  Jones came sloshing through the water towards them.

  ‘Okay,’ Rhona said. ‘Here’s what we do.’

  Twenty minutes later, they had dragged the body via the tarp to a spot above the waterline.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Is there any chance they’ll bring a body bag?’

  ‘I didn’t think to say.’ McNab looked put out by the omission.

  Rhona hoped the doctor or Erling would have thought of that.

  ‘I’ll parcel it up for the moment,’ she said.

  ‘What about the clothing?’

  ‘We leave it on.’

  She had plenty of evidence bags with her gear, enough to use one for each item of clothing, but here wasn’t the place to undress him.

  Rhona set about making up her human parcel, instructing McNab when necessary, securing it all with tape. By the time Erling arrived, the body would be cocooned, with no chance for him to look on Sam’s dead face.

  He doesn’t even know who it is yet.

  ‘Maybe you should call Erling. Warn him about the body.’ Reading McNab’s expression, she added, ‘Or would you rather I did that?’

  ‘No, I’ll do it.’

  Rhona registered his determination but didn’t comment on it.

  ‘There’s a signal here. You should let Magnus know too. Stay with the body. I want to check out the rock pool we found him in.’

  Mike Jones moved away as though he didn’t want to be within earshot when McNab made his calls.

  Leaving McNab to it, Rhona re-entered the water. In normal circumstances the locus would have been thoroughly lit and searched. In this case she would be rooting around in the dark, and the next tide would wash this scene of crime clean (if it was the scene of a crime).

  Rhona came to a stop, pretty sure she was at the right place, marked by a larger upright rock that had probably halted Sam’s passage across the causeway.

  The sand patch they’d used was waterlogged now. The disturbed seaweed was back and floating in the rock pool. Rhona knelt down on a flagstone slab and began to search the water in which the body had lain. She’d thought she’d caught a glimpse of something earlier among the tendrils of seaweed, but had been too preoccupied with getting the body to safety to investigate.

  Now she rooted around with one hand while the other held the torch. Her reluctance to give up eventually paid off.

  ‘Got you.’ Rhona extracted the small object and held it in front of the torch beam.

  It was a brooch, or more exactly a sweetheart brooch, not dissimilar to the one in the grave. She turned it over and examined the back. On this one there were initials.

  EF BH

  As Rhona bagged the brooch, she heard voices from the darkness.

  It took five men to carry the corpse to the ambulance, which waited at the turn into the cottage. It had been decided to transfer Sam’s body directly to the doctor’s surgery to await the helicopter dispatched by MIT West which would arrive sometime tomorrow, both weather and schedule permitting.

  Sam was now double-wrapped. Dr Cameron, who hailed from Manchester, had supplied the body bag. A man in his fifties, he’d deserted the city some five years back to be the resident jack-of-all-medical-trades on Sanday, and had planned to spend his spare time birdwatching.

  ‘I haven’t had quite as much spare time as I thought,’ he’d told her as they’d made their way back along the dark single-track road.

  ‘I’d like to strip and forensically examine the body,’ Rhona said. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘I have somewhere I do minor surgery, but you could wait until you get it to the mortuary in Kirkwall, or better still Inverness or Aberdeen.’

  ‘I’d like to take a look while it’s still here.’

  Their conversation for the remainder of journey was about Sam Flett. The doc
tor knew Sam well, having spent time at the heritage museum researching the island he’d come to live on.

  ‘Sam knew everyone. He was a good bloke.’

  After a pause, he brought up the subject of Inga. ‘I take it there’s no word on the girl?’

  Rhona’s silence gave him the answer.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to the detective yet because it involves patient confidentiality.’ He thought for a moment before continuing. ‘But I believe Inga’s mother told DS McNab why she and the girl moved here.’

  Rhona had heard nothing of this from McNab, so she waited for more.

  ‘There was a problem of domestic violence. I treated Claire Sinclair shortly after she arrived on Sanday. There were some cuts to her arms that had healed, bruising, old cigarette burns.’

  Rhona intervened. ‘What about Inga?’

  ‘She was fine. Her mother assured me of that and I believed her. Often in such circumstances the women take the beatings to protect the children.’

  Rhona had a sudden thought.

  ‘Her partner doesn’t know where she is?’

  ‘She’s certain he doesn’t.’

  ‘Why is she so sure?’

  ‘Apparently she never revealed that her family came from these parts. She said he would never contemplate that she would leave the Carlisle area, let alone come to Scotland.’

  The ambulance had drawn to a halt.

  The back door was thrown open and McNab peered in.

  ‘We’re here, Dr MacLeod.’

  The treatment room served her purpose very well. Brightly lit, clean, with a range of equipment to supplement what she always brought with her on jobs.

  The body having been carried in, Rhona suggested that she bring Erling back in once she and the doctor had unwrapped the body, so that he might see his ‘adopted’ uncle.

  ‘There’s a machine in the waiting room,’ the doctor had said. ‘It produces not bad coffee.’

  McNab’s expression had brightened at this, then realizing he would be sharing the space with his superior officer, didn’t look quite so keen.

  ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee, Sergeant,’ DI Flett had said.

  Left to their own devices, Rhona offered the doctor a forensic suit to don.

  ‘I’m not sure what’s required here,’ he said.

  ‘I just need a witness. This isn’t a postmortem. I need to check out his clothing then pack it, each item separately. I’ll examine his body, take samples and make notes about what I find.’

  He nodded without comment, although she was pretty sure this wasn’t a common occurrence for Dr Cameron in his general practice. He would be called to certify death on occasion, but as far as she could gather, anyone in extremis was normally whisked to the nearest hospital, that being Balfour Hospital, Kirkwall. If not there, then Aberdeen.

  As she unzipped the body bag, the tang of the sea filled the room. The cocoon she’d created to preserve Sam was still intact. Rhona carefully cut the tape and unwrapped the tarp.

  She pondered at this moment whether it might be better for Erling to see Sam fully dressed, rather than stripped naked and covered with a sheet. Under the waterproofs Sam was wearing a thick sweater and trousers. All of which were sodden. But at least he looked normal. Okay, his face showed signs of being in the water but …

  The puddles on the floor decided her.

  McNab was definitely not in his comfort zone, despite the two double espressos he’d drunk since arrival at the doctor’s surgery. DI Flett had asked him to describe in detail what had happened both in their visit to Sam’s cottage and to the Sinclair house, then the circumstances that had led them to recovering his body from the causeway.

  McNab had given him every last detail, down to the expression on Jones’s face when he’d opened the door to him.

  ‘When did you search the schoolhouse?’

  McNab gave him an estimate, because he couldn’t remember exactly.

  ‘Did you check the outhouses?’

  McNab stumbled over that, knowing he had, but not as thoroughly as he might have.

  DI Flett was looking at him in a manner he didn’t like, because it reminded him too much of the man he regarded as his real boss, DI Wilson.

  ‘You think what happens here doesn’t warrant a proper investigation, Sergeant?’

  McNab didn’t have an answer to that, at least not one he wanted to give.

  ‘Well?’

  As he opened his mouth to speak he knew that what he was about to say was a mistake, but he found himself saying it anyway. ‘I think, sir, that it’s difficult to investigate a small community if you are familiar with its residents.’

  He’d shot his bolt and his opinion, which was that DI Flett shouldn’t be here and probably PC Tulloch too.

  ‘But you are in no way familiar with the residents of Sanday, Sergeant, and it’s you we’re talking about here.’

  Things deteriorated after that, until the point when DI Flett suggested McNab accompany the body south on the helicopter. ‘As you originally intended.’

  As McNab was about to argue to the contrary, the door to the treatment room opened and Rhona emerged to tell DI Flett that he could come in and see Sam now.

  Erling had looked on death before a number of times. It never got any easier. The first time had been as a student. A friend had got high and drunk and leapt over a wall for bravado, not realizing there was a huge drop on the other side. A young life, full of intelligence and hope, had been annihilated in an instant. The shock and horror of that brief moment had stayed with him and would, he felt, remain forever.

  He’d attended fatal road accidents, which thankfully weren’t frequent on Orkney, collected fishermen’s bodies from the waters surrounding the islands and dealt with the results of a serious fire on Flotta, which haunted him still, especially when he thought of Rory.

  But I haven’t had to face this.

  Sam Flett had been more than just an ‘adopted’ uncle. He had been a friend. He and his wife, Jean, had dealt with his younger self with a skill Erling could only now appreciate. His own parents had been more distant. Loving, but he had found it too difficult to speak to them about the growing realization of what he might be. He had always thought of it as ‘might’ as though there was some way things might turn, like the tide, and he would wake up to find he was normal.

  And I wanted so much to be normal.

  He had felt no such contradiction while with Jean and Sam. In fact, he had never worried for a moment about who or what he was when on Sanday with them. Maybe that was why he’d exuded the pheromones that Magnus had smelt and remarked upon.

  Erling observed the face that was no longer Sam Flett. The fish had claimed it. Sam had become a part of the food chain of the ocean. That aspect of his death Sam wouldn’t have minded.

  ‘What happened, Sam?’

  Erling listened intently, as though he might hear a response.

  ‘He thinks I’ve screwed up,’ McNab told Rhona. ‘He wants me to leave.’

  Rhona remained silent and drank her coffee.

  ‘When I said someone tried to drown me outside the hotel, he suggested it might have been horseplay. He’s the one not investigating properly, because he’s too close to this place and the people involved.’

  He waited again for her to comment, but she didn’t, despite her concerns. McNab didn’t scare easily. If he believed someone had tried to kill him, then from her experience, his claim had to be taken seriously. On the other hand, Sanday folk were used to policing themselves. If an incoming officer of the law had been seen to fall short of what was required, i.e. take steps against the infiltration of a known paedophile, then they might see that as a punishable offence. And he had been rescued pretty quickly, which suggested Torvaig had been given a heads-up on the fact that McNab was in the water.

  ‘What if the same person attacked Sam Flett?’ he said.

  Having stripped and processed Sam’s body, the evidence of a blunt-force trauma to his head had
become apparent. Something she still had to tell Erling.

  ‘I don’t think you should leave,’ she said. ‘You’re part of the team sent in here. But perhaps you might try to work better with local officers.’

  ‘You sound like the rule book for MIT.’

  ‘I meant to.’

  ‘You’ll back me up?’ he urged.

  ‘Sam Flett’s death changes everything,’ she told him.

  Erling turned on her re-entry to the treatment room. ‘Can you tell how Sam died?’

  ‘It’ll take a postmortem to determine that for certain.’ She gave the stock answer.

  ‘But you have an idea?’

  ‘There’s evidence of a blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull.’

  ‘He fell on the causeway and hit his head?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Erling went quiet, appreciating he was putting her on the spot. Dr MacLeod wasn’t a forensic pathologist and wasn’t conducting a postmortem. She was there to strip forensic evidence from the body.

  ‘I found this,’ she said. ‘In the rock pool where his body lay.’ She held up a bag.

  Through the plastic he saw a metal object. Studying it, he realized what it might be.

  ‘A sweetheart badge?’ he said, trying to imagine why Sam would have such an object on his person.

  ‘There’s a pair of initials,’ she said.

  ‘What are they?’ As he posed the question, Erling realized he was worried what her answer might be.

  36

  Magnus had been dozing in one of the Orkney chairs when the mobile rang. Startled into sudden wakefulness, he was puzzled as to where he was for a moment, surrounded as he was by an image of the past.

  His shock at the news of Sam’s death had been followed by a deep disquiet, and the realization that though Sam had been afraid for the girl, it may have been his own death he’d been forewarned of. Magnus’s investigation of the second sight had unearthed many similar stories, but he hadn’t wanted Sam to feature in one of them.

  He’d immediately asked McNab if he might help in any way.

  McNab had answered no, then amended that somewhat. ‘Can you take another look around Sam’s place?’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  There was a pause, then McNab said, ‘I never thought he was being completely straight about the business of the cold case. And Rhona found a sweetheart brooch with the body, a replica of the one in the grave, only this time it had the initials EF and BH on it.’