Free Deathly Wind by Keith Moray Page B

The cold skin was a shade somewhere between blue and purple and felt rock hard as rigor mortis had long set in.
    ‘He’ll have been after the eagle eggs up there, I am thinking,’ Annie went on.
    ‘You may be right, Annie,’ Torquil said, pursing his lips pensively. ‘But perhaps he was after the eagles themselves?’
    ‘Now why would you be saying that, Inspector McKinnon?’ Annie asked in a voice that almost seemed indignant , as if she was irritated that he had come up with an alternative theory to her own.
    Despite himself, Torquil answered automatically, for he was mentally trying to piece things together. ‘Because you don’t necessarily need a rifle to rob a nest of eggs.’ He pointed mechanically to the bullet that lay beside the body, as if it had been thrown out of his camouflage jacket pocket upon impact with the rocky ground. ‘It looks like a .308 rifle bullet.’ He straightened up and peered round in search of the rifle. When he saw no sign of it he looked up at the sheer rock face and the ledge high above. Perhaps it is still up there, he mused to himself.
    Annie tugged the Westies’ leads and the two dog stood upright eagerly ready to retreat.
    ‘I didn’t see that,’ she said coldly. ‘We’ll be away then, Inspector. You know where I am if you are requiring a statement .’
    Torquil noted the angry tone that had suddenly entered her voice. ‘Are you all right, Annie?’ he asked concernedly.
    ‘I am perfectly well, thank you, Inspector McKinnon. I just did not want to say something now that I might regret later on.’
    Torquil eyed her quizzically. ‘What do you mean, Annie? Why would you say something that you regret?’
    In response Annie zipped up her anorak to its limit and sniffed coldly. ‘Oh don’t worry, Inspector McKinnon, I didn’t mean that I have anything to hide! I meant that I don’t want to say or think anything ill of the dead. Especially not when someone has lost their life so young. It is just that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone who harms one of the Lord’s creatures – be that animal, bird or man.’
    Torquil watched her walk off with the two Westies tugging at their leads.
    Her parting words had given him a strange feeling. ‘Animal, bird or man .’ He looked down at the bullet lying beside the body. He had left it there deliberately, since it would need to be photographed beside his body. It was certainly a calibre that would be enough to kill a man!
     
    Doctor Ralph McLelland arrived in the Kyleshiffin Cottage Hospital ambulance about quarter of an hour later. It was not a purpose-built ambulance, but was in fact a fairly ancient camper van that had been donated to the cottage hospital by Angus Macleod, the late laird of the Dunshiffin estate. Sergeant Morag Driscoll arrived moments after him in the official police Ford Escort.
    Torquil led them to the body and explained his findings before the GP-cum-police surgeon went to work, assisted by Morag, who was forensically trained.
    Ralph McLelland was one of Torquil’s oldest friends. He was the third generation of his family to minister to the local people of West Uist. He had trained at Glasgow University then embarked on a career in forensic medicine, having gained his diploma in medical jurisprudence as well as the first part of his membership of the Royal College ofPathologists. But then his father had fallen ill and he had felt the old strings of loyalty tug at him, so that he returned to the island to take over his father’s practice and look after him in the last six months of his life. He had been in single-handed practice for six years.
    As for Morag Driscoll, she was a thirty-something single parent of three children. She too had for a time striven to break loose from her island background and had undergone CID training in Dundee before returning to West Uist, marriage and parenthood. Her husband’s early demise from a heart attack had given her a personal drive to keep healthy –