Harriet – she was still high on the list of suspects. Maybe she was connected with the drugs, maybe she just didn’t like Kai, maybe she had already shot Jim and then Kai rather than shot Kai and made it look as if Jim had done it.
If Harriet knew, maybe Donald? Where had he been at the critical moment? She would have to ask McCleod. But the time of the murder would have coincided with a split shift. Time enough to get on that bike, pedal up there… and kill Big Jim? And make it look like suicide? It was very hard to imagine Donald doing it, and even if he had, what would have been the motive? She dismissed the idea. Besides, Donald would be too lazy, in all probability.
Maybe, of course, it was an unhinged Big Jim all along, it was what it looked like – he was certainly erratic, and he had tried to kill her, after all. So, murder, suicide. Occam’s razor – the simplest explanation is likely to be the correct one.
The ferry clanked its ramp down and the vehicles drove off up the slipway. Hanlon walked up to where she had left her (Donald’s) bike and unlocked it. She slung her rucksack over her shoulders and pedalled off.
She cycled down the picturesque road, through the village of Craighouse, the hills and mountains on one side, the sea, now the sun was shining, a very deep blue, the hills of the Kintyre peninsula an impressionist green haze over the water.
She passed the Mackinnon Arms hotel, its car park empty. She stopped and looked at the mournful building, now, she guessed, totally deserted. She wondered if anyone had told the psychic holidaymakers that the place was closed. Maybe it would enhance the ghost hunters’ hotel experience if they arrived and the place was as inexplicably deserted as the Mary Celeste. They could have a seance and in answer to the question, ‘Is anybody there?’ they’d get the hotel owner from the thirties, the suicide, Eva, Franca, Jim and now Kai. You wouldn’t need a Ouija board, you’d need the equivalent of a ghosts’ group chat.
She paused briefly at the cottages and dropped the bag off outside. Donald’s car wasn’t there. She wondered if he was over in Islay looking for work. He certainly wouldn’t be busy at the Mackinnon Arms for a while, although maybe he would be soon, occupied with fighting Harriet for its ownership. That was if she wanted it. It can’t have had happy memories.
Back on the mountain bike, she passed the place – shack would have been dignifying it – where Big Jim had kept his bottles. She slowed as she went past. She thought of that fateful afternoon.
Here his Land Rover would have been parked. She could visualise Big Jim, very pissed, putting the vehicle in gear and heading off up the track to exact bloody revenge on Kai for some inexplicable reason. He had tried to kill her for no very good motive. What was it with the barman?
Revenge, dislike – had Kai’s sexual encounter with Harriet excited his jealousy? Had he seen Kai heading up the forestry trail and decided to confront him? Maybe Kai had let slip he was going to work for Donald when he took the hotel over. Easy to imagine Big Jim out of his mind, incredibly drunk (it’d be interesting when they found out how much alcohol was in his blood; her bet was it would be off the scale), jealous, homicidal anger fuelled by a couple of litres of Smirnoff.
Or, an alternative scenario, Kai’s murderer coming across an unconscious Big Jim, luring him into the Land Rover and driving him slowly up the jolting road to his death. He would have had to be lured – nobody would be strong enough to drag the dead weight of an eighteen- or nineteen-stone Big Jim up from the beach, over those rocks, into a Land Rover.
Was that how it had gone? Easy enough to get a befuddled Big Jim into a vehicle, just promise him more booze.
Hanlon was here now at the bothy. She got off the bike, went round the back and opened the door with the key that McCleod had given her, ducking under the police tape.
Inside it was cool and dark. There was a faint smell of blood, maybe just her imagination, and some dark stains on the floor. Otherwise it was much as before. Hanlon walked over to the wall, just above head height, where she had secreted the machine. She looked hard, leaned up, feeling with the tips of her fingers, and there it was. She retrieved the tiny recording device, USB sized, and put it in her pocket, then she retraced her steps.
Back in Donald’s cottage she switched on her old laptop, drumming her fingers impatiently as it warmed up.
She inserted the device into the port on the side, opened it and clicked on ‘Play’.
Excitedly, she leaned forward as she waited to discover Kai’s last words. The identity of his killer. Please, God, let it be Campbell, she prayed.
31
The next day, Hanlon opened the door to the ring on the bell. It was McCleod.
‘Oh my God, what the hell has happened to your face?’ She stared at Hanlon in horror. Hanlon’s left eye was swollen practically shut and was a purple-blue colour. There were several other bruises on her face, on her chin and cheekbone. McCleod’s eyes dropped to Hanlon’s upper right arm. This was even more badly bruised, as if she’d had an abstract tattoo inked onto the skin. It was there she had taken the bulk of Leo’s punches.
‘Jesus, your arm… You look like you’ve been hit by a truck.’
‘Come in, I’ll tell you about it.’ It was then that she noticed that McCleod was using a walking stick and hobbling. She looked at her questioningly.
‘What have you done?’ Hanlon asked.
‘I twisted my ankle at circuits,’
