Death on an Island

 First chapter of something I'm working on. 

Chapter one

 

 

Detective Inspector Roberts extracted one arm from his coat when the telephone rang. Constable Cilla Lesley answered, then held out the receiver to him. ‘For you, sir,’ she said, ‘Sounds urgent.’

Betty Oliphant, the postmistress on the island of Muckle Skarrag spoke with a shaking voice. ‘Roberts. Thank goodness I got yourself. It’s Billy Swanson. He’s been killed. I can’t believe it. Nothing like that ever happens here. They say his throat was slashed right from ear to ear.’

Roberts took a deep breath. ‘He’s been what?’ he asked. Probably an accident, he thought. Betty was old and very nervous. He remembered when she’d phoned him sure as could be that someone was poisoning her lambs. It turned out to be a bad outbreak of blue tongue.

‘He was stabbed. In the throat. Out on the bog. Throat slashed like a pig. Oh dear, oh dearie me.’

A trickle of ice ran through Roberts’s veins. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Matthew Dawson brought the news to me not two seconds ago. I phoned right away. He says to tell ye there’s no hurry. It was an accident.’

‘Is the body still there?’ He stifled a threatening curse. Chances were half the island would have trampled all over the crime scene by now.

‘No, he was sinking in the mud. He wouldn’t be there at all if he hadn’t been found by the new nurse. The men carried him to Willie Firth’s barn.

Roberts sucked his teeth. Matthew Dawson was an interfering old sod who thought he knew everything.

‘And who exactly is Willie Firth?’ He fought to keep the irritation out of his voice.

‘Och, he’s the undertaker. Took over after his father died. He was called Willie and all. Reached a good age he did. Nearly one hundred, and then the cold took him one winter. The awful bad chest he had.’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ snapped Roberts, stopping her before she got into full flow.

He cursed silently. There was a strong possibility that the man had been drinking that gut-rotting stuff they brewed and had fallen on his knife. Much as he dreaded the trip over to that damnable island, he had no excuse not to go, and anyway, Dawson had no right to take over.

Roberts hated boats. Especially the small yoles favoured by the Muckle Skarrag men who were not above skirting the notorious bores just to scare him. The police were not the most popular visitors to the island. He suspected that they still had illegal stills hidden about the place. Not that he cared personally; they had made some pretty decent stuff back in the day and he had had a few samples himself, but he had a job to do. However, this had nothing to do with the whisky.

‘What’s up, boss?’ asked Cilla, looking up from her desk.

‘Billy Swanson calls himself the Laird of Muckle Skarrag. He’s no more a Laird than I am. Nothing more than a jumped-up factor to his father. Swanson has accused half the island of one thing or another in his time. Damn nuisance.’

‘What’s he saying now?’

Roberts ran his hand over his bristly hair. ‘Not a lot. He’s dead. Murdered if you listen to Betty from the post office. An accident if you listen to the self-appointed one who thinks he knows everything. I’ll just see what the chief says. No doubt I’ll have to go over ― again.’

He entered the inner sanctum to discuss the matter with the Chief Constable. Eric Lawson steepled his fingers as he listened to the story, and raised his eyebrows when Roberts expressed a desire to have constable Cilla Lesley accompany him to Skarrag. He gave a wry grin and lifted one eyebrow. ‘I thought you were against women in the force. You’re not going soft on her, are you?’ He half-shut his eyes in a way that irritated Roberts even further.

The very idea, he thought, incensed. Lawson’s comment was probably said in jest, but still… ‘Are you wise? The lass is more than half my age. The women may be more inclined to open up to a young lassie than to me, that’s all.’ Roberts had never married. He almost had once, but Helen had left town with an insurance man all but demolishing his heart. He had been immune to women since. Anyway, given the lack of law officers in Caithness, when did he ever have the time?

True, he hadn’t been at all keen when they told him they were getting a female constable. Even if she had been a valued member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the war, the force was no place for a woman. But Cilla had proved a hard and willing worker, and he had gradually warmed to her.

His mind went back to a few months previously to the allegation of neglect against Nurse Watson by Billy Swanson. The Caithness Executive Council had ruled that there was no case to answer, and that had ended the matter, or so he thought. Billy Swanson narrowly escaped getting arrested himself when he came roaring into the police station like a mad bull, threatening all sorts.

‘It was the nurse who found the body,’ Roberts said, ‘I hope there’s not a lot more to this that we have to discover.’

Lawson peered at him over his glasses. ‘We need to be seen to do a thorough job. You’d better stay the night — give it a couple of days at least. Get the whole thing cleared up without wasting time coming and going.’

Roberts readily agreed. ‘I thought the same myself, chief.’ Much as he would have preferred his own bed, the fewer crossings he was forced to endure, the happier he would be.  

‘I’ll get in touch with the Procurator Fiscal, clear it with him. You can travel with his team when they go to retrieve the body.’ He picked up the phone, glancing up as he did so. ‘He’ll probably want the lifeboat boys to pick up the corpse. Make sure it’s not tampered with any more than it already is.’ He turned his attention to the receiver as a tinny voice answered from the other end.

 

The minute Roberts returned to the front office, he nodded at Cilla. ‘You are coming with me.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Cilla said, the smile stretching across her face. She was sick of the mediocre tasks she had been handed up till now; she knew she was worth so much more than making tea and taking phone calls. It would be great to actually do something, maybe finally get a chance to prove her value. Roberts was a bit gruff, but he wasn’t too bad. She’d caught him watching her at odd moments as if weighing her up. And sometimes he even asked her opinion. Once he actually gave her a nod of approval.

‘When are we going?’

Roberts glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘You nip away home and grab some stuff. We’ll be going as soon as the fiscal’s team are organised. Oh, and we’ll be staying the night. Betty Oliphant is a widow and she runs the post office. If we need it, there’s a telephone there, and she has a couple of empty rooms she’s let us use in the past. Oh, and remember and pack your ration book. Betty’ll need that if she’s going to feed us.’

 

‘We’re staying over?’ Cilla asked, instantly wary, but thankful that he had said there were a couple of rooms. She’d had men come on to her before, and she sincerely hoped Roberts was not going to be one of them; she’d come to think more of him than that. Not that she couldn’t handle herself, but it would create a difficult working relationship. She hadn’t been in the job very long and was still feeling her way with the team.

‘Aye, it’s for the best. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of days. I want to get it cleared up; no need to come back over that firth every night, no need at all. The man most probably fell on his knife, anyway. But as he turned away he thought that most of the islanders had a reason to kill Billy Swanson.