Thin Air

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘That would be best,’ Dunnett agreed. ‘At least you’ll know whether there’s a bullet in there. You appreciate that the track won’t show up on X-ray?’

  Ian closed his eyes for a second. It was clear that he thought that the pathologist wasn’t really trying. ‘You can’t inject something opaque into it, on the principle of a barium enema or something?’

  ‘Another nice try, but no. The layers of tissue and membrane are built up like your sandwich and the material would spread laterally between the layers. You’d end up with a big black blob. If we see a bullet, will the track matter so much?’

  ‘It could,’ Ian said. ‘And I’m not convinced that we’re going to find a bullet.’

  The pathologist took a few paces to and fro while he thought about it. ‘It’ll be a day or two before I can get around to him, so what I’ll do for you is this. I’ll try to get him passed under a CT scanner. That gives you pictures representing slices through the head. It could tell you most of what you want to know about the track, although I can’t hand out any guarantees. Then I’ll take the first steps of an autopsy up to the point of removing the brain, recovering the bullet if there is one and if I can get at it easily, and suspending the brain in a bucket of formaldehyde.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘About ten days.’ The pathologist held up a hand to quell Ian’s protests. ‘You either get a good result or a quick one. A brain has about the consistency of a blancmange just out of the fridge. Very difficult to section neatly and preserve the detail. Hardened by fixation in formaldehyde, I can slice it as neatly as boiled ham. And you’ll have to wait a day or two for the rest of the autopsy results. He isn’t at the head of the queue.’

  Ian nodded unhappily. ‘We’ll see what the X-ray shows,’ he said. He put the rest of his sandwich into his mouth.

  The pathologist looked at his watch again. ‘I seem to have missed my lunch. I suppose . . .?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ian said, spitting crumbs again. ‘Simon, we can spare a bite for Dr Dunnett?’ he asked me.

  I stopped writing. ‘Be my guest,’ I said. It would be poetic justice if nothing was left when Ronnie returned.

  ‘Mr Parbitter,’ Ian explained, ‘is acting as my note-taker until relieved.’

  Dunnett raised an eyebrow. ‘Simon Parbitter, the writer?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Ian. ‘So he keeps telling me.’

  ‘I’ve read a couple of your whodunnits,’ the pathologist said. ‘Call on me any time you need some gruesome advice. Would you like to attend an autopsy, some day?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ I said. ‘I could force myself, in the interest of my art. But not . . . somebody I once knew.’

  ‘I feel much the same way,’ said Dunnett. ‘I’m surprised how often my acquaintances turn up on the slab.’

  We joined the others in the barn. The pathologist helped himself with a generous hand. Ian made another sandwich. I moved onward to coffee and a beer.

  A radio had been quacking away in one of the police cars. A constable went to answer it and then came into the barn and muttered in Ian’s ear. Ian, mouth full, nodded.

  When they had eaten, Ian led the pathologist outside. I tagged along, exercise book in hand.

  ‘That was a message from the hospital,’ Ian said. ‘The widow is recovering from shock, hysteria and the vapours. I have a constable at her bedside – alongside both her sons. She says that she was looking out of the window at her husband when he suddenly collapsed. There was nobody near him. So we can expect to find a bullet in him.’

  ‘Unless she did it herself,’ Dunnett said. ‘Or unless she’s protecting one of her sons. Did the farmer have a humane killer of his own?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ian said, ‘but I can find out.’

  ‘I’ll find out for you,’ I said. I went into the barn and spoke to Miss Mather. I was back in a few seconds. ‘He had what she called a “Point two-two Cowpuncher” but he didn’t like using it himself, so if the vet was around he usually got him or her to do the deed.’

  ‘Would Mrs Heminson have had time?’ Ian asked me.

  I had been pondering the same question. ‘I think she would,’ I said. ‘But her collapse seemed to be genuine. She never twitched when Miss Mather lifted one of her eyelids.’

  ‘Stick to firm evidence,’ Ian said. ‘Would it have been physically possible for her to have used the humane killer on him, returned it to the house and come galumphing out again?’

  In my record I was modifying the more colloquial expressions. Galumphing was definitely out. ‘The body’s quite close to the gate to the farmhouse garden,’ I said slowly. I was still finding it very awkward to speak coherently while recording my own words. ‘I was some way off when I saw him vanish beyond the barn. It must have been all of a minute later when she came out of the house and went towards him at a brisk trot. I think she could have gone through the garden, in at the front door and out at the back in that time. But wouldn’t Duggie Bracken have seen if she, or anybody else, had approached Old Murdo?’

  ‘That’s the first question I want to get around to asking him,’ Ian said. ‘More to the point, could anyone have counted on him not seeing them?’

  The pathologist cleared his throat to attract attention. ‘When I get inside his head, I should be able to tell you whether he could have walked around after his brain was penetrated. Some do, you know, even after the most extraordinary wounds.’

  Ian closed his eyes for a second. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not my end of the business,’ said the pathologist, ‘but, until I tell you otherwise, I think you should take into account that he might have been shot or spiked elsewhere and walked to where he fell. If the wife zonked him, she need never have left the house at all. Although,’ Dunnett added fairly, ‘I would doubt my own hypothesis if she used a humane killer. It’s the speed at which the bolt penetrates the brain that gives the instant knock-down, and they’re designed to be very fast indeed.’

  Duggie appeared out of the barn. He was usually a jolly-looking old chap, making me think of Father Christmas without the white whiskers, but today he more resembled Grumpy in Snow White. ‘I want to get on wi’ my work,’ he said peevishly.

  ‘Not yet,’ Ian said.

  Duggie made a disgusted noise and turned on his heel.

  ‘I’m rather busy myself,’ said the pathologist gently.

  ‘And I,’ Ian said with great patience, ‘am trying to do this by the book. The trouble is that this particular book seems to have some pages missing.’ He looked up at the looming clouds. ‘My one DC hasn’t cast up yet and my bosses—’

  At the sound of a vehicle, he stopped and waited. The same ambulance re-entered the farmyard. Ian sighed. ‘My bosses are treating this as—’ He stopped again and I saw relief in his face as a car that had been following the ambulance swung round to park with the others. ‘This, please God, will be the SOCOs and the technician. Perhaps we can get on now.’

  Three men and a young lady emerged, with the usual stretching of limbs and smoothing of clothing.

  ‘Who’s the girl?’ the pathologist asked. He sounded more interested than he had while discussing such mundane matters as murder.

  ‘We shall find out,’ Ian said. Another car, this time a small and rusty saloon, ground into the yard. ‘It’s all happening now,’ he said. ‘Miracle of miracles! This is my missing DC.’ He strode off to meet the newcomers.

  Dr Dunnett looked at his watch. ‘Bang goes most of another day,’ he said to me. ‘It’s customary for the pathologist to show his face, but out here in the sticks a police surgeon has usually certified death long before I turn up, and there’s not much I can say that he couldn’t have said. If I could wait for the cadaver to arrive at the mortuary I’d get twice as much done in my life.’

  ‘If you could call it a life,’ I said.

  The Scene of Crime Officers and the technician, casting their own anxious looks up at the clouds, bustled ab
out the body. Ian returned with the two DCs in tow – his own man, a youth by the name of Strachan and barely old enough to grow a decent set of whiskers, and the girl from Edinburgh whom he introduced as WDC White. She was older than she had looked, perhaps thirtyish, very calm and competent in manner but with an attractive face and an air of sensuality which seemed to be enhanced rather than concealed by her severe dress.

  ‘If Miss White has shorthand,’ I suggested, ‘perhaps you don’t need me any more.’

  Ian was back in his rapid thought mode. ‘For the next few minutes, I want somebody to take notes at the body,’ he told me, ‘and that had better not be you. I want DC Strachan to take a statement from Duggie Bracken. You go with them and take it down. Sit in one of the cars.’

  The young DC paled. ‘But – sir—!’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Nobody’s told me anything about this case. I don’t know what questions to ask.’

  ‘That’s why you need Mr Parbitter along,’ Ian said. ‘Between the two of them, you should know most of what you need to know by the time I want you again.’ His brusqueness evaporated as he led the WDC away with an air of almost inviting her to take his arm. Deborah, I thought, had better hurry home. Ian was a vigorous young man and, in an old-fashioned force like Lothian and Borders, droit de seigneur might still pertain.

  Young Strachan looked at me for help. ‘Which is . . . whatever the name was?’

  ‘Duggie Bracken.’ I beckoned Duggie out of the barn. ‘DC Strachan will take your statement,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there to take notes. Is that acceptable?’

  ‘Anything, if it lets me get on. I’m losing money,’ Duggie added, as though this was the clinching argument.

  We sat in the more comfortable-looking of the police cars – Strachan in the driver’s seat, Duggie beside him and myself bringing up the rear. I opened the exercise book on my knee. The DC glanced anxiously over his shoulder.

  ‘The best procedure,’ I said carefully, ‘would be for Mr Bracken to tell us, in his own words, what he saw and heard from before Old Murdo walked into the farmyard for the last time until he pointed out to the Inspector that there was blood in the corpse’s hair.’ I felt even more encumbered, taking down my own words while at the same time trying to keep the constable advised as to just what on earth we were talking about.

  ‘Damn little,’ Duggie said, ‘and that’s the truth. See, I was up by the beam, facing the other way, banging awa’ wi’ the spit-gun and wi’ the muffs over my lugs. The old timmer beams was rotted and I’ve been putting in an RSJ. That’s the steel beam,’ he added helpfully. ‘Last week there was enough shoring in there to hold up Edinburgh Castle. But now all I’ve to do is to frame the steel beam, ready to box it in.’

  Around the body one of the men was taking photographs. The black clouds were almost overhead.

  Duggie resumed. ‘First I knew anything was adae was when you passed below me, dropping your rabbits as you went and starting to run. I looked round and there was Old Murdo down on the ground, with Bertha pulling at him. When I lifted the muffs, I could hear her screeching fit to drown a foghorn. Then she went down thump atop of him. So I slid down my ladder, canny-like, for I’m not as young as I was, and I helped you – Mr Parbitter – roll her off him. Then I took another keek at him, to see if she’d quite flattened him.

  ‘If he was breathing it was damn little, so I turned him over – after we’d shifted her ladyship, he seemed light as a feather – and I started the artificial respiration. I did a course once, in the First Aid. That’s when I saw the blood in his hair.’

  The men were sliding Old Murdo’s corpse into a body-bag. I looked away. ‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight,’ I said. ‘You fired shots with the nail-gun just before you saw me go by?’

  ‘One shot, as I mind.’ I noted the answer but put a large query in the margin. I would have to think back. I was almost sure that I had heard more than one shot.

  ‘You didn’t see anyone else, or anything out of the usual?’ DC Strachan asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Strachan, still only barely aware of the morning’s events, had shot his bolt. ‘Could somebody have approached Old Murdo without you seeing them?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye. Easy.’

  Duggie did not seem put out by being questioned by one with no proper status in the investigation so I decided to push my luck. ‘Earlier today,’ I said, ‘before the vet turned up, you were having a row with Old Murdo. What was that about?’

  ‘What did anyone ever argy-bargy wi’ the old skin-a-louse for?’ Duggie demanded rhetorically. ‘Money. I was laying out the cost of materials and the mason’s time for fixing the wallheid. We’d agreed I’d be paid as I went along, but when the time came did he want to pay up? Did he hell! But I got his cheque in the end.’

  Here was something else that DC Strachan could get his teeth into. ‘Did you indeed?’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look at it.’

  Duggie fished in a pocket of his overalls and produced a cheque filled out in a spidery hand. Looking over Strachan’s shoulder, I saw that it was made out for a substantial sum.

  ‘You see?’ Duggie said. ‘And now that the mannie’s dead, I jalouse the cheque’s no good. So I’m the last to have wanted him awa’.’

  ‘The cheque never was any good,’ I said. ‘It’s dated two years ahead.’

  What Duggie said probably caused the farmer to turn in his body-bag. But Old Murdo was out of my sight in the ambulance which was already pulling out, followed by the pathologist’s car. The men had pulled a plastic sheet over the ground where the body had lain. A clap of thunder drowned Duggie’s next words. A moment later, the heavens opened.

  ‘What did you say?’ I had to shout the question over the drumming of rain on the roof of the car.

  ‘Naethin’ for you to scrieve.’

  I closed the exercise book. I could well believe that Duggie’s remark was unsuited for inclusion in a formal statement.

  Somebody had left an umbrella in the car. Bumping and boring in our efforts to keep three people in the shelter of a brolly built for one, we ran to the barn where police, suspects and witnesses were sheltering together, peering out at the rain which was bouncing high off the cars and turning the farmyard to mud.

  ‘This was all it needed to make my day,’ was Ian’s greeting. ‘Footprints obliterated, evidence washed away. I suppose it didn’t occur to any one of you three nitwits to drive the blasted car over here? At least it would give us somewhere private for interviews. I don’t want the farmhouse disturbed yet. You.’ He glared at the unfortunate Strachan. ‘Bring a car over here. A roomy one, not that roller-skate of yours.’

  ‘I’ll need a key.’ Strachan caught a key in mid-air, put up the umbrella again and plodded off through the mud.

  ‘Can I get on wi’ my work now?’ Duggie asked.

  ‘Later.’ Ian pulled me aside and dropped his voice. ‘What did you get?’

  ‘He says that he saw and heard nothing until I ran by. I think he may be telling the truth. He thinks that he only fired one shot just beforehand but I think that I heard more than one. Make what you can of that. And he had a row with Old Murdo earlier in the day.’

  ‘Over money, of course.’

  ‘Of course. Old Murdo gave him a cheque but it was dated two years off. Duggie says that he hadn’t noticed that fact until I pointed it out to him.’

  Ian’s eyes went out of focus for a moment as he mentally sorted out the ifs and buts. ‘More complications!’ he said. ‘Is even Duggie so dim that he wouldn’t scrutinize one of Old Murdo’s cheques?’

  I shrugged. ‘Either way,’ I said, ‘it gave him a motive for wanting Old Murdo alive.’

  ‘If he had the sense to see it.’

  The car arrived and nosed half its length into the barn. ‘Inside,’ Ian said, singling out the detectives from the constables on loan. ‘It’s time for a briefing.’ He supplanted Strachan in the driver’s seat. WDC White got in beside him. Some
how the two SOCOs, the technician and DC Strachan managed to heap themselves into the back. We could see Ian’s lips moving. The eyes of the detectives shifted from one to the other of us as he spoke. Wallace was talking to a sulky Miss Mather about the diseases of dogs and they seemed to have forgotten about the rest of us.

  The jeep appeared suddenly out of the rain and stuck its nose into the barn beside the police car. The constable got out and stooped to the window of the police car. Ronnie, at the wheel of the jeep, wound his window down and I put my head inside. The interior smelt of steam, dogs and Ronnie.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  Ronnie glared at the remains of lunch. ‘You didn’t leave muckle.’

  ‘I did,’ I said. ‘But the pathologist arrived and ate it. I didn’t want to argue with him, he cuts people up. How did you get on? Could it have been an accident?’

  Ronnie shrugged. ‘Maybe and maybe no’. He’d put bait out and took most of his shots on the ground from a hide in a ditch. But he’d picked up his empty cases. I made him show us, and he was one short. There was another crow, outby from the others, I think the gowk had shot it out of a tree.’

  ‘Before or after we met him?’

  ‘No way to tell. He may’ve missed other high shots. In which case . . .’

  ‘A bullet could have arrived here,’ I finished for him.

  ‘Aye. It happens. It’s this way. If you shoot steeply up, the bullet comes down tumbling and wouldn’t hurt a soul, no more than a wee rap on the head. Below about forty degrees, it keeps on going. And once in a million there’s somebody where it comes down. There was a mannie killed on the deck of a steamer in the middle of the Clyde a few years back.’

  Ronnie got out of the jeep and went over to where Miss Mather was sitting disconsolately beside Wallace on a pile of pallets. A minute or two later, I heard him trying to sell her his ancient Land Rover as a replacement for her ruined DAF.

  The doors of the other car opened and the investigative team emerged. ‘Right,’ Ian said. He looked at Strachan. ‘You follow the pathologist and catch him at the hospital. Bring back X-rays and any messages.’ He switched to one of the SOCOs. ‘Go with him, make sure no traces are lost from the body and then stay with it and represent me whenever the body’s touched.