Gorrie nodded, stuffing the mailer into his own topcoat.
“Appreciate it,” he said. “Don’t suppose you had a chance to give the files a look.”
Conall shook his head.
“Afraid not,” he said. “But I hear the coroner’s ready to confirm the deaths a murder-suicide, issue a report that’ll put the inquiry to a fast and easy rest.”
Gorrie considered that a moment, then shrugged.
“We’ll see, brother-in-law,” he said, and finished gassing up.
“What about my redhead?” asked Gorrie.
“Aye, that’s where you have yourself a piece of something to match the weather,” said Conall. He took the gas pump and held it out like a pointer. “An interesting case.”
“And?”
“Report is nae finished.”
“Conall — come now. Not a hint?”
His brother-in-law leaned back on the blue fender of his car and shined an idiot grin. Then he began pumping fuel into his Vectra.
“I suppose this will cost me a pint or two around Easter,” offered Gorrie finally.
“I was thinking of those fine cigars ye had at Christmas.”
“That was Fennel had ’em, not me.”
“Fennel and you are close as stones in a castle wall.”
“I’ll send my sergeant after the report.”
“The sergeant you complained had flown off to Paris for a job hunting art thieves? The lass who has not been replaced despite your crying buckets of tears to the superintendent.”
“Not to the superintendent.”
His brother-in-law smiled. “Ten cigars.”
“Two. They’re five pounds apiece.”
“I suppose you’ll find out soon enough through official channels.”
“Three.”
Conall returned the nozzle to the pump. “Truth is, the lab report won’t tell you anything, save the T4 is more than a wee bit high, above 37 ug/dLs. Very high, that. She had a great deal of phenylephrine hydrochloride in her stomach as well. Now, if you cared to get technical—”
“Conall, you’re irritating my nerves,” said Gorrie. “What does it mean?”
“Five cigars?”
“I’ll see what I can do about the cigars, lad. I’ll do my best.”
“She had no thyroid. She was taking artificial thyroid hormone because she’d just had her thyroid taken out. Cancer, I suspect.”
“And?”
“Well, she took too much of it, you understand. The hormone. That’s the T4. You’ll have to fish out the medical records, but the thinking is she forgot what she was doing and took two pills a day instead of one, two or three times. And then she took the cold medicine and it gave her a stroke. Far too much of that too. Small dose together might even have killed her, but here there was no chance. Some people have no sense when they’re medicating themselves.”
“Stroke?”
“Aye. Bad luck. Sort of thing they warn you about at the chemist. It could also be suicide, I guess. But it’d be a very clever way to do it — too clever. Easier to get a gun like the Mackay woman.”
“Getting a gun is not that easy for most of us,” noted Gorrie. They hadn’t been able to trace the weapon, though he’d put DC Andrews back on it three days before.
Conall shrugged. “More than likely it was an accident. Medicine was taken off the market a year or two ago.”
“Matched the type on the floor?”
“I believe that will be the report.”
“Do you ha’e anything else for me, laddie?”
“Not a thing. Arm nick was the sort of thing you would get giving blood. Nice work on the thyroid incision, I’m told. Takes a real artist to sew it up.”
“Her face was puffed up.”
“Aye. The sinuses. She had a cold, remember?”
“Aye.”
“There was a bruise on her chest, probably bumped herself falling.”
“Can you give blood when you have a cold?” Gorrie asked.
“Why not? Five cigars,” added Conall. “And I’d like the disc back when you’re done.”
“Aye,” Gorrie grunted.
An accident then, like council member Ewie Cameron’s accident. A coincidence, random and unconnected. The sort of thing that happened all the time.
A walrus waited for Gorrie in his office, polishing its tusks on a large piece of pastry supplied by one of the girls down the hall. He sat behind Gorrie’s desk, brushing crumbs away with his stubby fins, every so often touching his enormous mustache to see if any had strayed there.
The walrus was the deputy area commander, whose arrival at the Inverness Command Area’s CID section could bode no good at all.
“Sir,” said Gorrie, who had been warned by scurrying comrades before he approached.
“Inspector Gorrie, I’m pleased you could make it this morning,” said the deputy commander, Nab Russell.
“I’ve been nosin’ around,” answered Gorrie. “What brings you here, Chief?”
“There are rumors, Inspector, that your methods of detection are not proceeding with the snap and polish expected of the Northern Constabulary,” said Russell.
From another man, the words would have been meant to elicit a laugh. But another man was not the deputy commander. In a minute, Gorrie knew, he would begin to cite the Constabulary’s unprecedented detection rate—62 percent, up four percentage points from the year before and, more importantly, four points higher than that of the Central Constabulary. Not that there was competition, mind.
“I believe a review of my methods will pass any muster,” said Gorrie.
“You’re trying to connect a traffic accident involving a respected council member — a legate holder, a man descended from heroes, Frank — an unfortunate accident to a tawdry suicide?”
“At least one was murder,” said Gorrie.
“Cameron slept with the wife?”
“No evidence of that. I didnae even think it has been suggested.”
“Where’s the connection then?”
“It would be premature to connect them, sir. Inquiries are being made.”
“Inquiries, lad! I’m not the bleeding press. What is it you have?”
“The dead men met together the night they were murdered,” said Gorrie. “That’s it.”
The walrus pounced. “One was murdered by his wife. The other died in an accident.”
“Manslaughter, at the least.”
“Pending an investigation — and that is not your case,” Russell reminded him.
“I didna ask to be assigned it, sir.”
“You made hints.”
“I followed strict procedure when I met with the detective sergeant in charge,” said Gorrie sharply.
He had. The hints were made in a pub later on.
“Frank.” The walrus leaned to one side, then slid back in the desk chair. With appropriate adjustment for specifics of geographic locale, the speech that followed could have been given by nearly any police supervisor in the islands of Great Britain since the Romans. Crimes to be solved, yes, but flights of fancy not to be indulged. Connections sought, but fantasies nipped in the bud. Investigation to be pursued, but wild-goose chases to be
