LITMIR.BIZ

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That, as far as Jean was concerned, was a very good thing. And yet even her shrinking gaze discerned that below the red cloth of his jacket glistened a smear of crimson, and a crimson thread wove its way between the pebbles toward the lick of the waves.

      Thomson set aside his first-aid kit and squatted down to inspect the body, the physical shell of a human soul. Alasdair hunkered down beside Thomson. Jean tucked her arms as close to her body as she could and still train her flashlight on the scene, but she was cold with more than the temperature. The wind tugged at the scarf around her head and its soft wool tickled her cheek.

      “I’ve phoned Doctor Irvine,” said Thomson. “He’ll be here soon as may be.”

      “Good,” Alasdair replied. “He can do the preliminaries. Me, I’ve phoned D.C.I. Gilnockie at Inverness C.I.D.”

      “Criminal investigation? But he fell.”

      “If he fell, what did he go falling from?”

      The young man shone his flashlight right and left, back and forth. “Oh. There’s nothing high enough just here, is there? Did he go falling from the castle wall and crawling away—away from the house, though, I’d be expecting him to crawl toward it, looking out help. And if he’d died from a fall, his head would likely be cracked open or his neck twisted round.”

      Alasdair said, “Very good.”

      Jean wondered if Thomson realized what high praise he was getting, Alasdair suffering idiots and fools just about as gladly as he suffered biting insects like the infamous West Highland midge. She flexed her knees and took a step back, then forward again, so as not to miss anything. So as not to show disrespect to the dead.

      “The shingle,” Alasdair went on, “is less likely to show marks of him crawling than sand, aye, but I had me a good look-round whilst Tina, well, whilst Tina ran to and fro, and saw nothing. Gilnockie will order a full work-up. I’ve likely missed a scuff mark or two in the dark, or, if we’re lucky, footprints. In any event, I’m thinking he died where he fell—or fell where he died, rather, just here.”

      Thomson considered that a moment. Then, gingerly, he knelt down and placed his flashlight and his cheek almost on the pebbles, all the better to sight along the trickle of red. “The blood’s coming from his chest. His jacket’s torn.”

      “Oh aye. The wound’s in his chest, or as near as I can tell save rolling him over. And his jacket’s not torn but sliced.”

      “A slice, is it? Could he have fallen on a bit of flotsam or… He didna fall. It was no accident.” Thomson’s eyes sparked and abruptly he sat up and back.

      Alasdair waited.

      “He was stabbed and the weapon carried away.”

      As superfluous as Thomson’s kit, Jean offered no comments aloud. Silently, though, she said to the constable, Go ahead, change that passive voice to active—someone stabbed him, someone carried away the weapon. It was…

      “A murder? Here? On my patch?” Thomson’s voice swooped to a higher register. Then his body seemed to grow heavier and more compact, and his voice sank again, finding its specific gravity. “Well then. Visitor or local makes never mind, we canna have murders, now, can we? What are you thinking happened, sir?”

      Jean read Alasdair’s nod as a repeat of her own Good lad. Tucking her flashlight beneath her arm, she reached into the carrier bag for the thermos.

      “He was alone no more than twenty minutes,” Alasdair said. “From the time we saw him on the battlement—and he did not fall, he let himself down carefully—to the time we met Tina was no more than fifteen. And it was perhaps five more minutes before we heard her scream.”

      “How long did you talk to Ian at the office?” Jean poured tea into a plastic cup, the warmth searing through her gloves, and handed it to Alasdair.

      “Ah, ta. Twelve minutes, according to my phone.”

      Jean poured Thomson a cup as well. Steam coiled upward in the glow of the flashlight.

      “Thank you kindly, madam. Mr. MacLeod here, he was after seeing the old ruined church, you were saying?”

      “So he was telling us,” Alasdair answered over the edge of the cup. “He had no time to get there, though. Likely he never even reached the wee promontory. He met up with someone else and they did not stand about talking. One, maybe two thrusts, and the killer was off along the beach and past the church. Whether he then circled round the estate to Kinlochroy or went on along the coastline—well, we’ll leave the evidence-gathering for the C.I.D.”

      Thomson was looking more starstruck by the moment, his tea forgotten, steam dissipating, in his hand. He dragged his gaze away from Alasdair’s face to his surroundings. “If the killer had come away along the path, you’d have seen him. By sea, well, it’s a rough night.”

      You could tell, Jean thought, what a landlubber she was. The concept of water as highway hadn’t occurred to her. And yet there was a reason the formal entrance of the new castle faced the loch. Passable roads were late coming, here. The early peoples of this area hadn’t felt they were on the rim of civilization at all, when such a broad highway connected them to the world.

      “What’s further up the coastline to the north?” Jean asked. “More beaches? Or cliffs?”

      “Cliffs,” replied Thomson. “No proper beaches, and no proper roads save the one leading to Keppoch Point and the lighthouse. The works are automated, but there’s a hermit lives there. Or so folk are saying of him. I’m thinking he just prefers the company of the birds and the sea creatures. No harm in that.”

      “Usually not, no.” Alasdair drained his cup.

      Jean envisioned the beautifully drawn map of Dunasheen Estate posted on the website. The house or new castle and its dependent buildings lay to the west of Loch Roy, south of the old castle on its islet. The extensive garden with its smaller segments lay on the sheltered southwest side of the house, otherwise there would have been nothing but gorse and heather lining the forest walk leading to the new—newer, newish—church. Whereas the old church was outside the walls, almost outside the estate entirely, northwest of the house.

      Light flashed in the corner of Jean’s eye and she looked around. Two beams of radiance preceded two humanoid blobs down the hill and onto the bridge. They didn’t indicate the Scene of Crimes Officer, unfortunately—more likely the blobs were Rab Finlay and the doctor. Instead of pouring herself a cup of tea, she screwed the top back on the thermos.

      What had Greg said? Oh yes. “He said something about having time for a squint at the old castle. I thought he meant having time before it got dark.”

      “But what if he had an appointment with someone at the church?” asked Alasdair.

      Two minds, one thought. Go figure. “If that person wasn’t the murderer, then maybe he or she saw something.”

      “Aye,” said Thomson.

      “And look here,” Alasdair went on. “He fell with his head a wee bit closer to the castle, as though he was turning and going back to it. Or as though he was trying to escape his killer. And yet he was stabbed in front, not in back. Could be he turned about to strike out with his torch.”

      Thomson nodded, remembered his tea, and swallowed it in one audible gulp. Jean collected the cups. Yeah, the female ran the refreshment services, but it wasn’t as though she had anything more to contribute, not right now, anyway.

      “Hullo!” called a man’s voice, and the two dim shapes squeaked across the shingle, the occasional raindrop like a nano-comet streaking down through the beacons of their flashlights.

      Yes, the man in the lead was burly Rab Finlay. His tweed cap was pulled down low and his gray-shot black beard bristled upward, so that his cheeks reddened by weather and nose reddened by the weather’s antidote—anti-freeze, Tina had said—seemed squashed between. He tucked his flashlight beneath his arm, thrust his hands deep into his pockets,

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