Written in Bone dh-2

by Simon Beckett

  ‘The yacht’s nearer,’ I pointed out.

  Brody’s jaw worked at the prospect of asking Strachan for a favour. But much as he might dislike the idea, he knew it made sense.

  He gave a terse nod. ‘Aye. You’re right.’

  Fraser came over, clutching an armful of rusted steel reinforcing rods, the sort used for concrete foundations.

  ‘There was a pile of those left over from when they built the school,’ Brody explained. ‘Should do the trick.’

  Fraser let the rods fall on to the grass, his eyes red-rimmed. ‘This still doesn’t sit right with me. Just leaving him out here…’

  ‘If you can think of any alternative, then tell us,’ Brody said, but not unkindly.

  The sergeant nodded, miserably. He went back to the Range Rover and came back with a heavy lump hammer and a roll of tape. He strode ahead of us to the remains of the camper van, his posture rigid and determined. But at the sight of Duncan’s body, lying exposed to the elements like a sacrifice, he faltered.

  ‘Oh, Jesus…’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, he wouldn’t have felt any of this,’ I told him.

  He glared at me. ‘Aye? And how would you know?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Because he was already dead when the fire started.’

  The angry light died from the sergeant’s eyes. Brody had come to stand with us.

  ‘You sure?’ he asked.

  I glanced at Fraser. This wasn’t easy for any of us, but it would be hardest for him to hear.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, roughly.

  I led them through the wet grass until we had a better view of the skull. Scraps of black flesh still clung to the bone, varnished by the rain. The cheeks and lips had burned away, exposing the teeth in a mockery of the policeman’s engaging grin.

  I felt myself falter. The puzzle, not the person. I pointed to the gaping hole in Duncan’s skull.

  ‘See there, on the left-hand side?’

  Fraser glanced, then looked away. The head was turned slightly, so it was lying partly on one cheek. Its position made it difficult to see the full extent of the damage, but it was unmissable, all the same. The jagged hole overlapped both the parietal and temporal bones on the left side of the skull like the entrance to a dark cave.

  Brody cleared his throat before he spoke. ‘Couldn’t that have happened in the fire, like you thought Janice Donaldson’s had?’

  ‘There’s no way an injury like that was caused by the heat. Duncan was hit a hell of a lot harder than Janice Donaldson. You can see even from here that pieces of bone have been pushed into the skull cavity. That means the wound was made by an external impact, not cranial pressure. And from the position of the arms, it looks like he just went straight down, without making any attempt to stop himself. He literally didn’t know what hit him.’

  There was a silence. ‘And what did hit him? A hammer or something?’ Brody asked.

  ‘No, not a hammer. That would have punched a round hole through the bone, and this is more irregular. From what I can see so far it looks like some sort of club.’

  Like a Maglite, I thought. The steel case of Duncan’s torch was poking through the ashes near his body. It was the right size and shape, and was heavy enough to have caused the damage. But there was no point speculating until SOC arrived.

  Fraser had his fists balled, his eyes drawn to the body despite himself. ‘He was a fit lad. He wouldn’t have given in without a fight.’

  I spoke carefully. ‘Perhaps not, but…well, from how it looks he had his back turned when he was struck. The body’s lying face down, feet towards the door. So he was facing away from it, and pitched forward when he was hit from behind.’

  ‘Couldn’t he have been killed outside, and then brought into the van?’ Brody asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. For one thing, the table’s underneath him, which suggests he fell on to it. I can’t see anyone lifting his body on to it. And Duncan was hit here, on the side of his head,’ I said, tapping my own just above my ear. ‘For it to connect there the killer must have swung sideways rather than overhead like you’d normally expect.’

  Fraser still didn’t get it. ‘Why does being hit on the side of his head mean he was killed inside the van?’

  ‘Because the ceiling wasn’t high enough for an overhead swing,’ Brody answered for me.

  ‘It’s only guesswork at this stage, but it fits,’ I said. ‘The killer was standing behind Duncan, between him and the door. That points to him being left-handed, because the impact wound is to the left-hand side of the skull.’

  The rain squalled around us as they stared down at Duncan’s body, playing it out for themselves. I waited, wondering which one of them would say it first. Surprisingly, it was Fraser.

  ‘So he let them in? And then turned his back?’

  ‘That’s how it looks.’

  ‘What the hell was he thinking? Christ, I told him to be careful!’

  I somehow doubted that. But if the police sergeant needed to revise his memory to ease any guilt he might be feeling, I wasn’t going to stop him. There was a more important point here, one I could see from Brody’s expression that he hadn’t missed, even if Fraser had.

  Duncan hadn’t thought he was in any danger when he let his killer in.

  Brody reached out and took the tape from Fraser.

  ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  CHAPTER 18

  THE POLICE TAPE snapped and twisted, strung out between the steel rods that Fraser had hammered into the ground. With only one hand, there was little I could do to help. Brody had held the rods in place while Fraser knocked them in with the lump hammer, positioning them every few yards to form a square perimeter round the van.

  ‘You want to take a turn?’ the sergeant panted, halfway through.

  ‘Sorry, you’ll have to do it. Arthritis,’ Brody told him, rubbing his back.

  ‘Aye, right,’ Fraser muttered, pounding the steel rod into the turf as though venting his anger and grief.

  Which was perhaps what Brody had intended, I thought.

  I stood nearby, hunched against the cold and damp as they ran the tape between the rods. It was only a symbolic barrier, but I still wished there was more I could do as they fought against the wind to secure the whipping ends of the tape.

  Finally, it was done. The three of us stood, taking one last look at the camper van behind its flimsy barricade. Then, without a word, we headed back for the Range Rover.

  Our priority now was to let the mainland know what had happened. While Wallace still wouldn’t be able to send any support until the storm eased, the murder of a police officer would escalate this to a whole new level. And until help arrived, it was more important than ever for us to maintain contact with the outside world. Particularly for Fraser, I thought, watching him trudge ahead of us on the track, his broad shoulders slumped. He looked the picture of abject defeat.

  Beside me, Brody suddenly stopped walking. ‘Have you got any bags left?’

  He was looking down at a tuft of wiry grass, rippling and bent in the wind. Something dark was snagged against it. I reached in my pocket for one of the freezer bags I’d brought from the hotel and passed it to him as Fraser came back.

  ‘What is it?’ he wanted to know.

  Brody didn’t answer. Putting his hand into the bag as though it were a glove, he bent down and picked up the object that had been snared by the grass. Then, reversing the bag so it was inside, he held it up to show us.

  It was a large, black plastic screw cap. A thin strap that would once have fastened it to a container stuck out from it, snapped clean after an inch or so.

  Brody put his nose to the open top of the bag. ‘Petrol.’

  He handed it to Fraser, who took a sniff himself. ‘You think the bastard dropped this last night?’

  ‘I’d say it’s a fair bet. Wasn’t here yesterday, or we’d have seen it.’

  Fraser’s expression was furious as he tucked it into his coat pocket
. ‘So somewhere on this godforsaken island there’s a petrol container with a broken strap but no lid.’

  ‘If it hasn’t been chucked off a cliff by now,’ Brody said.

  The drive to Strachan’s house passed in subdued silence. When we turned up the long driveway leading to the house we saw that Grace’s Porsche Cayenne had gone, but Strachan’s Saab was parked outside.

  I couldn’t see Strachan’s house being without its own generator, but despite the day’s gloom there were no lights in any of the windows. Rain dripped from Fraser’s fist as he banged the cast-iron door knocker. We could hear Strachan’s dog barking inside, but there was no other sign of life. Fraser gave the heavy door a thump, hard enough to rattle it on its hinges.

  ‘Come on, where the fuck are you?’ he snarled.

  ‘Probably off on one of his walkabouts,’ Brody said, standing back to look up at the house. ‘I suppose we could always just go down to the yacht ourselves. It’s an emergency.’

  ‘Aye, and what if it’s locked?’ Fraser asked. ‘We can’t just break in.’

  ‘People here don’t usually lock their doors. There’s no cause.’

  There might be now, I thought. But I was against it for another reason.

  ‘If we get down there and find it’s locked we’ve wasted even more time,’ I said. ‘And does anyone know how to use a satellite radio anyway? Or a ship-to-shore, come to that?’

  The silence that greeted the question told me neither of them did.

  Fraser slammed his hand against the door. ‘Shit!’

  ‘Let’s go and find Kinross. We’ll use the ferry’s,’ Brody said.

  Kinross lived by the harbour. When we reached the outskirts of the village, Brody told Fraser to take a shortcut down a narrow cobbled street that bypassed the main road. The ferry captain’s bungalow had a prefabricated look to it, and like most of the other houses on Runa it had new uPVC doors and windows.

  But the rest of the building had a run-down, uncared-for look. The gate was missing from the bottom of the path, and the small garden was overgrown and strewn with rusting boat parts. A fibreglass dinghy lay overgrown with dune grass, its bottom holed and splintered. Brody had told me Kinross was a widower who lived alone with his son. It showed.

  Brody and I left Fraser brooding in the car while we went up the path. The door bell chimed with a cheery electronic melody. No one answered. Brody rang it again, then hammered on the door for good measure.

  The muted sounds of movement came from inside, then the door was opened. Kevin, Kinross’s teenage son, stood in the hallway, eyes briefly making contact before darting off again. The angry red mounds of acne scarred his face in a cruel topography.

  ‘Is your father in?’ Brody asked.

  The teenager gave a shake of his head, not looking at us.

  ‘Know where he is?’

  He shuffled uncomfortably, narrowing the gap in the doorway until only a thin strip the width of his face remained open.

  ‘Down at the boatyard,’ he mumbled. ‘In the workshop.’

  The door snicked shut.

  We went back to the car. The harbour was a turmoil of crashing waves and churning boats. Out on the jetty, the ferry pitched and rolled at its berth. The sea churned wildly, the spume so thick it was indistinguishable from the rain.

  Fraser drove down to the corrugated shack on the seafront that I’d passed on my way to Brody’s the previous day. It was set close to the foot of the tall cliffs that encircled the harbour, and which protected it from the worst of the weather.

  ‘The yard’s communal,’ Brody said as we climbed out of the car and hurried over, having to fight against the wind. ‘Everybody with a boat chips in to the running costs, and if they need repairs everyone pitches in.’

  ‘Is that Guthrie’s?’ I asked, indicating the dilapidated fishing boat hauled up on blocks that I’d noticed the day before. It appeared in even worse condition up close. Half of its timber hull was missing, giving it the skeletal look of some long-dead prehistoric animal.

  ‘Aye. Supposed to be making it seaworthy again, but he doesn’t seem in any hurry.’ Brody shook his head in disapproval. ‘Rather spend his money in the bar.’

  Skirting the covered piles of building supplies stacked nearby, we hurried for the workshop entrance. The wind threatened to wrench the door from its hinges when we opened it. Inside, the workshop was stiflingly hot, thick with the smell of machine oil and sawdust. Lathes, welding torches and cutting gear littered the floor, while the walls were covered with shelves of tools, stained black with ancient grease. A radio was playing, the tinny melody fighting against the chug of a generator.

  About half a dozen men were inside. Guthrie and a smaller man were crouched over the dismembered remains of an engine that was spread out on the concrete floor. Kinross and the others were playing cards at an old Formica table, on which stood half-drunk mugs of tea. A tin foil pie case doubled as an ashtray, overflowing with cigarette stubs.

  They had all broken off what they were doing to stare at us. Their expressions weren’t exactly hostile, but neither were they friendly. They regarded us blankly. Waiting.

  Brody stopped in front of Kinross. ‘Can we have a word, Iain?’

  Kinross shrugged. ‘I’m not stopping you.’

  ‘I mean in private.’

  ‘It’s private enough here.’ To emphasise his point he opened a pouch of tobacco and began rolling a cigarette with oil-stained fingers.

  Brody didn’t bother to argue. ‘We need to use the ferry’s radio.’

  Kinross ran the tip of his tongue along the edge of the cigarette paper, then smoothed it down. He nodded towards Fraser.

  ‘What’s wrong with his? Don’t the police have radios these days?’

  Fraser glared back without answering.

  Kinross plucked a piece of tobacco from his mouth. ‘Fucked, are they?’

  I could hear the sergeant’s heavy adenoidal breathing, like an angry bull’s, as he started forward. ‘Aye, and so will you be if-’

  ‘We’re asking for your help,’ Brody cut in, laying a restraining hand on Fraser’s shoulder. ‘We need to get in touch with the mainland. It’s important, or we wouldn’t ask.’

  Kinross unhurriedly lit the roll-up. He shook out the match and tossed it into the overflowing ashtray, then considered Brody through a plume of blue smoke.

  ‘You can try, for what it’s worth.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Fraser demanded.

  ‘You won’t be able to transmit from the harbour. The radio’s VHF. Has to have line-of-sight, and the cliffs block the signal to the mainland.’

  ‘What if you need to send a Mayday?’ Brody asked, incredulous.

  Kinross shrugged. ‘If you’re in the harbour, you wouldn’t need to.’

  Fraser had bunched his fists. ‘So take the bloody boat out to sea, where you can transmit.’

  ‘You want to try going out in this, go ahead. But not on my ferry.’

  Brody kneaded the bridge of his nose. ‘How about the other boats?’

  ‘All VHF, the same.’

  ‘There’s Mr Strachan’s yacht,’ one of the card players suggested.

  Guthrie laughed. ‘Aye, that’s got communications coming out of its arse.’

  I saw Brody’s face close down. ‘Look, can we try the ferry anyway?’

  Kinross took an indifferent drag of his roll-up. ‘If you want to waste your time, it’s up to you.’ He nipped out the glowing end of his cigarette and put it in his tobacco pouch as he rose to his feet. ‘Sorry, lads.’

  ‘I was losing, anyway,’ one of the card players said, throwing in his cards. ‘Time I went home.’

  Guthrie wiped his hands on an oily cloth. ‘Aye. I’m off for something to eat.’

  The other card players were already throwing their cards down on the table, reaching for their own coats as Kinross pulled on an oilskin and went out, letting the doors swing back on us as we followed. Rain and spray filled the air with an iodine tang a
s he strode bareheaded along the harbour to the jetty, oblivious to the breaking waves. The ferry was bucking against its moorings, but he walked up the gangplank without hesitation.

  The rest of us were more cautious, holding on to the gangplank’s railing as it tipped and swayed. It was barely any better once we were on board, the slippery deck pitching unpredictably. I looked up at the ferry’s aerial, bent and quivering in the wind, then at the cliffs surrounding us. I could see now what Kinross meant. They hemmed the small harbour in on three sides, rising up like a wall between us and the mainland.

  Kinross was already fiddling with the radio set when we crammed into the claustrophobic bridge. I braced myself against the wall as the deck pitched queasily underfoot. A medley of discordant hums and squeaks came from the radio set as Kinross spoke into its handset, then waited vainly for a response.

  ‘Who are you calling?’ Brody asked.

  Kinross answered without turning round. “Coastguard. They’ve got the biggest radio mast on Lewis. If they can’t hear us no one else will.’

  We waited as he spoke into the handset, receiving only a hollow hissing in return.

  Fraser had been watching the ferry captain with an expression of sullen dislike. ‘You remember bringing any strangers across on the ferry about four or five weeks ago?’ he asked suddenly.

  Brody gave him an angry look, but he took no notice. Kinross didn’t turn round.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No what? No you didn’t bring anyone, or no you don’t remember?’

  Kinross stopped what he was doing and turned to stare at him. ‘This to do with the murder?’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  Kinross’s smile threatened violence. ‘And if I don’t?’

  Brody cut in before Fraser could respond. ‘Take it easy, Iain, no one’s accusing you of anything. We just came out here to use the radio.’

  Deliberately, Kinross lowered the handset. He leaned back against the swaying bulkhead, folding his arms as he regarded us.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what this is about?’