Eventually, I decided that I’d done everything that should be done and began to pack up. Conall peeled off his gloves and went to talk to the patiently watching patroller, constable MacLean.
“I think it would be best to have this towed down to your station for now,” Conall told the constable. “The rental company can have it back once we’re sure we don’t need it any longer, but that might take a few days.”
“Right you are, Sir. We’ll be sure to let them know. That was a very interesting little exercise to watch, I must say. I’ve never seen one of the real SOCO lot in action before.” Not surprising, he couldn’t have been in the force for long. “Very thorough and methodical, aren’t they?”
“They have to be, Constable,” Conall explained patiently. “None of us like to see a case fall apart in court because of badly documented or contaminated physical evidence.”
“Aye,” MacLean agreed thoughtfully, “we wouldn’t like that at all, Sir.” I put my bag back in the boot, and we took our leave of him.
“Turn left at the bottom, Con,” I instructed as we headed down the hill. “There’s a cafe further on by the pier where we can grab a quick bite before we drive back.” The sandwich he’d had back at Callanish wasn’t enough to keep him going ‘til dinner, not if he agreed to the suggestion I intended to make about a swim after work, anyway.
“Good idea, I could do with a pit stop. You’re really good at that kind of work, you know, fast but thorough. It’s been a while since I saw you do that.” Over four years, actually. SOCO certification had been a handy way of joining up with him on a couple of cases back then, and it hadn’t been any bother to get that. “Just don’t let Davie ever see you in action,” he added. “You’ve got enough bloody people wanting to steal you already.”
“As if anyone could!” I scoffed and was rewarded by the sight of a happy, smug little smile.
Back at the station, I labelled my photos so they could be easily matched up with the numbered samples and added the file to the folder. Then I printed a copy off to box up with our collection, ready to be run out to the airport. The team in Inverness could have done that themselves, but it was better to save them the time and trouble. I didn’t want to give any of them a reason to badmouth my professionalism; it would only reflect badly on my cousin. Ewan MacLeod, who was still hanging around, assured me he’d make sure that our package got onto the last evening flight to Inverness for us. I liked Ewan. He was a nice lad.
Conall had jumped at my idea of hitting the beach for a bit, We both had a lot of bottled-up energy to burn off, and we’d work better through the evening after a decent session in the water. Once he’d sent off an update on our progress to Anderson, he gave Ewan his keys back and went off to check with Trish about borrowing a vehicle for our little out of hours excursion. I got the fingerprint searches set up in a queue, ready to run through the PND while he was doing that, and he soon came back, looking a bit surprised, with a set of keys to a nice little unmarked VW Golf R from the pool. Apparently, we were to consider it ‘ours’ for the duration of our stay. We grabbed our laptops and headed for the hotel to get ready.
“Did you pack your wetsuit?” I asked.
“Rolled up in a corner of my bag,” he assured me.
Good. We could comfortably stay in long enough for a proper session then. I hadn’t bothered to shut my laptop down, so once I got to my room, I just set it up again and secured it before getting changed. Conall reappeared, looking a lot happier with some old gym clothes thrown over his swim gear. I shoved our travel towels and water bottles into my pack, and we locked up our rooms and went to claim our nice new ride.
“You should ask for a better car back in Inverness,” I told Conall as we settled in, and he checked it out admiringly. “They’d probably let you have one. It’s weird, the way you and Caitlin go around in a constabulary car all the time.”
“I suppose it is,” he admitted. “I’d never thought about it, really. The Vauxhall’s alright, and it was what was available in the pool when I got there, but something like this would be really nice.” My casual comment had got him thinking. All of McKinnon’s DIs had better rides than he did, but that sort of thing never seemed to occur to him. “Mind you, it won’t be too long before they start looking into turning the whole fleet electric.” I could hope! “Still, that could be a few years off yet. I might just put in a request when we get back. Why not? Where are we going?”
“Gress looks okay, and it’s less than fifteen minutes away. There’s handy parking for the beach too.”
“That car park before the village?” He’d already punched it up on the sat nav. “Alright.” I think he took a real shine to that Golf on the quick trip up there. He never got to drive anything he really liked, except for some of our holiday rentals.
The beach we arrived at was all clean, golden sand, a long stretch about a kilometre long from north to south and, from the colour of the water, the sea remained shallow for a good distance out. It was all very flat and calm
