finally came to a stop, they all jumped down to look out over the gaping hollow of the valley below.
It was late afternoon by now. The sun was well up in the sky and tipping gently to the west, creating a subtle change in the angle and direction of the shadows in the valley. They had come equipped with boots and waders and stout sticks, and Fin led them down the same way that he and Whistler had gone that morning, carefully picking their way over rocks that had dried in the warmth of the sun, the surface of the peat at the bottom of the loch already starting to crust and crack.
There was not a breath of wind down here, and the midges clustered around them, getting into their hair and their clothes, biting, biting, biting, like myriad needles piercing their skin, not painful exactly, but irritating almost beyond endurance.
‘For Christ’s sake, did no one think to bring any bloody repellent?’ Professor Wilson glared at Gunn as if it were his fault. His face was red with irritation and exertion, his unruly copper beard exploding from it like wire bursting through its cable sheathing. A frizzy halo of ginger grew around a head that was otherwise bald across the top, white and splattered with big brown freckles. He slapped at it with open hands. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’
But by the time Fin had given him a hand up on to the nearside wing, he had forgotten about the midge clouds, and was absorbed by the scene that confronted them. His eyes darted about, taking in every visible detail of the plane, before slipping on a pair of latex gloves and pulling open the door to the cockpit. Even he, used as he was to the multifarious perfumes of post-mortem, recoiled from the smell that struck them almost like a physical blow. In the enclosed space of the cockpit, baking as it had been for hours now in the sun, the rate of decomposition had accelerated, catching up on seventeen lost years. The smell was much worse than when Fin and Whistler had opened it up that morning.
‘We’re going to need to get him back to Stornoway double quick, or we’re going to lose what’s left of him,’ the professor said. ‘Let’s make this as fast as we can.’ He clambered carefully over the roof of the cockpit to the far wing and tried to open the door at the pilot’s side. It was stuck fast. Fin and Gunn scrambled over after him, and between them managed to prise it open. They moved back, then, to give the pathologist access to the corpse.
It was a grim sight, the mostly decayed body still fully dressed, the natural fibres of the clothes having survived better in the cold water than the flesh of the dead man.
Professor Wilson opened up the jacket to reveal a white T-shirt beneath it bearing a Grateful Dead logo. ‘Dead he certainly is, but I doubt if he’s very grateful.’ He pulled up the T-shirt to expose the cheesy white tissue still clinging to the fatty areas of the torso. He explored the mush with fingers that simply disappeared into it. ‘Adipocere,’ he said, apparently undisturbed. ‘There’ll be more of that around his thighs and buttocks, but the internal organs’ll be long gone I think.’
He moved the head very carefully to one side, revealing the bones of the spinal column at the neck. Just a few remnants of grey-white tissue were left holding the skeleton together. The pathologist removed a long, pointed instrument from his breast pocket and gently poked about among the bones. ‘Pretty porous and brittle. These are going to break very easily, and the remaining tissue’s not going to hold them when we start moving him. Best leave him in these clothes for transporting him. They’re about the only thing that’s keeping him in one piece. If this water had been any warmer, all we’d have found here would be a pile of bones.’
He turned his attention, then, to the skull.
‘Massive trauma,’ he said. ‘Half his jaw’s gone. His brain on this side would have been pulverized.’
‘Is that what killed him?’ Fin asked.
‘Impossible to say, Fin. The injury could have been inflicted after death for all we know. All the same, it might be a good guess.’
‘Any idea what could have done it?’
‘Something blunt. Big. The size of a baseball bat, though flatter I’d say. But the force that was used to inflict an injury like this. .’ He shook his head.
‘Not the result of a plane crash then,’ Gunn said.
The professor threw him a look. ‘Does this plane look to you like it’s crashed, Detective Sergeant?’
Gunn glanced at Fin. ‘No, sir, it doesn’t.’
‘No, it fucking does not! I’m no expert, but I’d say this plane didn’t crash into the loch. It landed on it and sank. And one thing’s for sure, this fella wasn’t flying it.’ He eased open the jaw with his metal probe. ‘And all this damage to the jaw and the teeth means we’ll not be able to make a positive ID from any dental records that might exist.’
‘What about DNA?’ Fin said.
‘We can extract some from the bones, for sure. And there is a little hair left. But what do we have to compare it to?’
Gunn said, ‘His parents are dead. No brothers or sisters.’
‘So no immediate familial match possible. And I don’t suppose he’ll be in the database. What about personal items? Comb, hairbrush, shaver? Anything that might have remnants of his DNA.’
Gunn shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, sir. The parental home would have been cleared out for sale after their death. And who knows what happened to Mr Mackenzie’s personal items from Glasgow?’
Professor Wilson scowled at him. ‘Not much bloody use are you, Detective Sergeant?’ Then he turned back to the corpse and slipped two fingers very carefully into the inside pocket of the leather jacket. By gentle increments, he eased out a bleached leather wallet. ‘We might just have to rely on this.’ He opened it up. If there had been paper money in it once, it was long gone. There was a handful of coins, and three credit cards all in the name of Roderick Mackenzie. From an inside flap the pathologist drew out a plasticized card with Roddy’s photograph on it. Membership of a Glasgow fitness club. He looked back at Fin. ‘You knew him?’
Fin nodded.
‘I guess that’s him, then?’
‘It is.’ Fin found himself staring at the faded face of the once handsome young man, with his head of blond curls and slightly lopsided smile. And, as before, when Gunn had referred to him as
‘So. .’ Professor Wilson turned towards Gunn. ‘What do you think, Detective Sergeant?’
‘I think he was murdered, sir.’
The pathologist shrugged, for once finding himself in accord with the policeman. ‘Not conclusive, of course, but I’d say there was a damned good chance of it. What do you think, Fin?’
‘It’s what I thought the moment I opened the door of the cockpit, Angus. And I’ve not seen anything to change my mind.’
The professor nodded. ‘Right, then. We want that recovery team up here as quickly as possible. Photograph the body, then get it back to Stornoway, and we’ll see if there’s anything else we can divine on the autopsy table.’
As the pathologist slithered down off the wing, Gunn caught Fin’s arm. ‘So he was up here poaching was he, Mr Macleod? Your pal Whistler.’
‘He was.’
‘In a storm?’
Fin nodded, but knew that Gunn could sense he was being evasive.
‘Not that simple, George.’
Where Whistler was concerned, nothing was ever simple. And Fin turned his thoughts back to the events of two days before, wondering how he could ever have been so foolish as to have taken the bait.
CHAPTER FIVE
I
As he drove home the night after that first encounter with Whistler, Fin’s thoughts had been dominated by him. The way he lived, the imminent eviction from his home.
The sun cast lengthening shadows among the dried grasses on the rise as he passed the turn-off to the Crobost Free Church. He cast a glance towards the manse standing on the hill above it, and the Reverend Murray’s
