Yeah, whether we were now looking at a double murder or a murder and an involuntary manslaughter, there was nothing more left for Shay and me to do here once he’d packed all these samples up and shipped them off. Our suspects were in the wind now, and it could be days, weeks or even months before they were taken into custody. Hell, there was even a slim chance they might have run into trouble out on the water and both drowned for all we knew.
Ewan had been back and waiting for a while, so we split the bags between us all and started to walk back up to the station. “Evening flight for this batch again, Mr Keane?” he asked. He must have heard all the last part of our conversation.
Shay shook his head. “They can go tomorrow. By the time I’ve printed everything off and got them packed up properly, it’d probably be too late to get them on board the plane in time to fly out tonight, anyway. Besides, it’s Friday night, Ewan. I’m sure you have better things to do than hang around working late again. You’re off duty this weekend, aren’t you?”
“Aye, I am, barring emergencies. Actually, a bunch of us are meeting up down at McNeill’s tonight for a drink, and some live music. You’d both be very welcome.” I doubted Shay would want to go, but that actually sounded rather tempting.
“I might just take you up on that offer,” I told him. “I think the least I can do is buy you a drink after all your help, Ewan.”
I left my cousin to get on with packing up his samples and went to tell Trish the bad news. She took it with a shrug and a wry little smile.
“No need to look so glum, Conall. You’ve basically wrapped the whole case up in two days, and I don’t see how anybody could reasonably have expected any further miracles after that. I’m sure Chief Anderson will agree with me.” She shook her head. “To be honest, I’m a little taken aback by how quickly you and your cousin cracked this one. I’ve never seen anything like it.” It was nice of her to say so, but I still didn’t feel very happy about Jordan and Phelps managing to slip through our fingers like that. “I’ll get the general alert sent out immediately. Go and enjoy an evening off. You’ve done your part. There’s a good chance they’ll turn up soon enough.”
Downstairs again, I composed another email to Anderson, and sure enough, my mobile rang a few minutes later.
“What can’t be helped, can’t be helped, Conall,” he reassured me. “It’s not as if you could have searched every boat on the island in time to stop them anyway, even if that had been possible to arrange.” At least he didn’t sound disappointed. “Maybe we should see about arranging a little squadron of drones for your cousin to play with for next time?”
He might have been joking, but I could just imagine how much fun Shay would have playing with a new toy like that. And if he’d had thermal imaging drones out patrolling the harbour last night, I was certain he’d have programmed the things to alert him to something as suspicious as Phelps and Jordan sneaking off in that dinghy. I liked that ‘next time’ too. If Anderson thought we’d let him down, he wouldn’t have said that. Would he?
“That could be very useful, Sir,” I told him, and he just chuckled.
“Aye, if the Watchdog people didn’t get up in arms about it every time they suspected we were ‘misusing’ the things... and if I had the budget for it. No, I’m afraid he’ll just have to make do with the resources he already has for the foreseeable future.”
Well, I was pretty sure Shay could arrange some little nano drones for himself if he thought they were worth having. They’d be a lot quieter and harder to spot than the standard police drones, anyway. It was certainly worth thinking about.
“When would you like to fly back?” Anderson asked. “I can book you onto the one forty-five tomorrow?”
“That would be fine, Sir,” I agreed. I knew Shay was itching to get back to check on the house, and if I did decide to have a few drinks tonight and let off some steam, at least I wouldn’t need to be up early.
By the time I’d finished with Anderson, our printer was busily churning out pages of colour photographs. I estimated Shay might still need another ten minutes to finish organising everything, and it was going up to seven by then, anyway. Unless something unusual was going on back in Inverness, Caitlin should have finished work ages ago. I sent off a text to let her know we were all done here and would be heading back tomorrow. Her reply made me smile.
‘What took you so long? We’ve closed three cases down while you’ve been lazing around.’
I couldn’t resist having a look at what my team had been up to after that. They’d rounded up the kids who trashed the Porsche, let a couple of drunken brawlers off with cautions and caught one of the pickpockets who’d been working the town centre lately. Not bad.
I helped Shay repack everything with the right folder of accompanying papers and thumb drive in each bag, making sure that we’d arranged everything carefully enough to prevent any breakages. We put the desks back how we’d originally found them before grabbing our things, and this time, I left the office door open and the key in the lock. Trish would
