foreclosed.
In some cases, the obvious was the obvious. And there was the detection rate to consider.
Finally, Gorrie couldn’t take any more of it. “Her hand was at the wrong angle,” he said. “I didnae think it could be suicide.”
“What?” asked the walrus.
“She was holding the gun the wrong way to have killed herself. If she were a man, perhaps, or stronger, but to have fired it the way she did, the bullet would have traveled further to the right of her head. To fire it the way she had”—Gorrie held his own hand to demonstrate—“her arm would have had to have been twisted.”
“The autopsy says that?”
“The report only notes the angle of the wound.”
“And the body might not have been moved? Or the arm jerk back as a reflex?”
“You’ll have to trust me on this, Nab. My instincts—”
“Frank, instincts?”
“I helped you out of the traffic division—”
“For twenty years you’ve held that over my head. Twenty years, lad.”
“And I’ll hold it twenty more, God willing.”
The walrus had no argument for that. More importantly, he was finished with his Danish. He rose.
“You have to close these cases out, Frank. The London papers are having a field day with us.”
“I wouldnae thought you cared about a London tabloid, Nab.”
The phone interrupted a recapitulation of the earlier lecture. Gorrie reached over and picked it up.
It was the detective in charge of the Cameron traffic accident case. They’d just found the truck they thought had hit the council member.
Gorrie caught a glimpse of an ancient stone house on his right as he turned down the road near Loch Ness where the truck had been found. Fifteen years before, the stone house had been the residence of Kevin and Mary Mac-Millan; it had been the scene of the first murder he’d ever investigated. Tidy case that — wife on the floor with her head bashed in, husband holding the hammer he’d done it with when the constables rushed in. Sergeant Gorrie spent more time typing up the report with his two-fingered typing than he did interviewing the suspect.
The truck was a year-old Ford, registered to and stolen from Highland Specialty Transport the night Cameron had been killed. It was a large diesel tractor, its front fender scratched slightly, one of its headlights smashed, and on its fender a small speckle of “something red and dried, foreign, not part of the finish”—the young detective’s exact words in his preliminary report — had been found.
“Tip came in directing us here on the hot line,” said Lewis. “Newspapers good for something, at least.”
The two investigators stood near the cab as one of the forensics people ran a small, battery-powered vacuum cleaner across the floorboards. The exterior of the truck seemed fairly clean, not what you’d expect if it had sat on the side of the road gathering dust for a week.
“Cleanest lorry I ever saw, inside and out,” said Lewis. “You could eat off the floor.”
“Vacuumed?”
“Maybe.”
“But that’s likely blood on the fender. And the glass.”
“Aye.”
They could do a DNA test on the fender, and attempt to match the headlamp glass with glass at the scene. If this truck had killed Cameron, they would know it.
“We’re under five minutes from the spot where Cameron was found,” said Lewis. He pushed back the hair on his forehead. He seemed to be combing it down to hide a bald spot, except that he had no bald spot. “If it was here the morning after the accident, two dozen constables missed it, along with myself at least twice.”
“When do you think it was left here?” Gorrie asked.
Lewis shrugged. “We’ll set up a barricade and ask people who pass this way going from work.”
Gorrie stood back a few feet and surveyed the scene. The shoulder across the way was wide enough for a waiting car, easily parked in the shadow of the pines.
Hadn’t the words Specialty Transport been on one of Cameron’s pads?
Gorrie reached into his pocket for his notebook, though even before he opened it he realized he hadn’t written down what the council member’s pads had said.
Bad detective work, that. What would the walrus say?
“Sergeant, have you a phone I could borrow?” he asked Lewis.
“It’s my personal phone, Inspector.”
Gorrie held out his hand.
Melanie, the sister’s American friend, answered on the second ring. Ms. Cameron was out, but she volunteered to check the pad. Gorrie listened as she pulled open the drawers.
“Right or left?” she asked, and his heart sank.
“Left, I think.”
“Nothing here. Wait, I’ll try the right.”
It was there. Halfway down the page of the second pad was the note: “Hgh Spec Trprt?”
Highland Specialty Transport. Or highly special transportation. Or Hugh Spectre Transport.
“There was a phone number, wasn’t there?” asked Gorrie. “Read it to me, would you?”
He punched the number into the sergeant’s phone, even though it meant breaking his promise to the sergeant that he would only call the nearby number. A very correct though very young bureaucratic voice answered on the other end.
“UKAE Nuclear Waste Regulation, Transport Division.”
“Transport Division?”
“Sir, can I help you?”
“What precisely is it you do, son?”
“I hang up the phone if I don’t have an explanation as to why this is not a crank call,” said the man.
Gorrie explained who he was and why, more or less, he was calling. The young man became considerably more helpful. He believed he had spoken to Cameron, who sat on the area Land and Environment Select Committee. The council member had inquired about forms and regulations governing transport of spent nuclear fuel. The conversation had not lasted long; Cameron had been referred to Constance Burns. The head of the UKAE Waste Division liked to deal with elected representatives personally.
“She takes all VIPs,” said the young man. “I’m not sure if she spoke to the committee member or not, just that he would have been referred.”
“Could you tell her that I’d like a word?” said Gorrie, who wasn’t sure if he qualified as a VIP or not.
“Afraid she’s out of the country on vacation in Switzerland. She calls in every morning and evening. Shall I give her your number?”
“Why don’t you give me hers instead?”
“Well, sir, our privacy policy—”
“Come now, be a good lad,” said Gorrie.
“Well.”
“You never know when you might need a favor,” suggested the inspector.
“As a matter of fact, if it was convenient, I could use one. There’s a matter of a speeding ticket.”
“Speeding? And when were you in the Highlands?”
“My girlfriend, Inspector, she suggested a holiday and, well, you know how it is… ”
“You’re going to fix a ticket?” asked Lewis as Gorrie punched in the number for Ms. Burns’s mobile phone.
“I was hoping you would,” said Gorrie.
The phone was off-line. Gorrie left a message, then dialed the hotel next. He had the clerk ring the room, but received no answer.
The plant manager at Cromarty Firth had emphasized how safe transporting spent uranium was. Gorrie decided to drive over to the plant and find out why the matter had been on his mind.
