Crisis (18 page)

On his first traverse along the main street he did
not see a single living soul. He turned and came
back to where he had seen a hotel sign and this
time he caught a brief glimpse of a figure flitting
out of one doorway and into another. There was
no one in the small hotel reception area when he entered, clutching his bag and brushing the rain off
his shoulders. He read some of the notices that were
pinned up on a wall by the door while he waited,
hoping to get a feel for the place.

They were typical small town notices; one concern
ing the progress of the darts team, some adverts for
properties owned by the National Trust in the area
- all depicting gloriously sunny days, and a couple
of receipts from local charities for collections made
at Christmas in the bar. One notice in particular
caught Bannerman’s eye. It said that the sum of
one hundred and eighty-three pounds had been
raised for the fund for Mrs May Buchan. Bannerman
recognized the name; one of the dead farm labourers
had been called Buchan. The woman must be his
widow.

‘Can I be helping you?’ inquired a soft highland
voice behind him. He turned to find a man in his
fifties wearing a heavy-knit cardigan over corduroy
trousers, looking at him through thick-rimmed spec
tacles that sat beneath an unruly mop of grey hair.

Td like a room,’ said Bannerman.

‘Would you, now,’ replied the man, almost absent-
mindedly as he appraised Bannerman virtually to the
point of embarrassing him with his stare. ‘And what
kind would you be wanting?’

‘Ideally a warm, dry comfortable one with its own
bathroom,’ said Bannerman.

‘Well two out of three isn’t bad, as the Americans
say,’ replied the man. ‘We don’t have rooms with
bathrooms but as you’re the only guest you’ll not
be having much bother with queuing.’

‘Sounds fine,’ agreed Bannerman, who was so
tired after his drive that he would have taken
a stable. ‘I’d like to go up right away if that’s
all right.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said the man softly.

‘No?’

‘I’ll have to have Agnes make the room up first.
We don’t get much in the way of passing trade
at this time of year. Perhaps you’d like to wait in
the bar?’

Bannerman said that he would. He opened the
door that the man pointed to and found himself
in a small, smoky bar with a coal fire at one end.
There were three men seated at the counter and a
boy in his late teens was serving behind it. They
looked at Bannerman as he entered. ‘It’s a rough
night out there,’ said one of the men.

‘Certainly is,’ agreed Bannerman. The men looked
to be local, two were wearing caps, one of whom was
resting his elbow on a shepherd’s crook, the head of
which had been carved out of horn. The third man was wearing dungarees and a woollen hat. He was
considerably younger than the other two and smiled
a welcome.

‘You’re English?’ said the younger man who had
commented on the weather.

“Fraid so,’ said Bannerman with a smile.

The smile was returned. ‘We won’t hold it against
you,’ said the man.

‘In that case perhaps I might buy you a drink?’
said Bannerman.

All three opted for whisky. Bannerman invited the
barman to join them and the boy said he’d have a
beer. The ice had been broken and faces relaxed into
smiles.

‘What brings you to Achnagelloch?’ asked the man
with the crook.

‘I’m a doctor,’ said Bannerman. ‘I’ve come to talk
to the local health authorities … about the three
men who died.’

There was very little reaction from the men. One of them did shake his head and say. ‘Bad business,
meningitis. My sister’s boy died of it.’

‘Did you know the men?’ Bannerman asked.

‘It’s a small place, most folks know everybody,’
said the man with the crook.

‘You look as if you work out on the hills yourself,’
said Bannerman.

The man nodded.

‘You too?’ Bannerman asked the other man wear
ing a flat cap.

‘Aye.’

‘How about you?’ Bannerman asked the younger
man.

‘
I’m in the quarry,’ replied the man.

The quarry?’

‘The stone quarry.’

‘I didn’t realize there was a quarry near here,’ said
Bannerman.

There wasn’t until the Dutchman bought the
Invergelloch estate. Everyone thought he was mad buying a barren wasteland, but next thing we know
he’s got himself a licence to quarry road stone and is
making a fortune.’

‘Bloody foreigners,’ grumbled one of the farm
workers. The Scottish highlands have got more
bloody Dutchmen in them than Amsterdam.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ said the quarry worker.
‘I’ve got a good job and one that doesn’t involve
bloody sheep!’

Bannerman smiled, and the quarry man warmed
to his theme. He said, Tm telling you without a
word of a lie, if you removed sheep as a topic of conversation from this town there would be a great
silence.’

‘Get away with you!’ exclaimed one of the
farm workers with a lazy swing of his arm, but
there was no malice in it. The man’s face wore
the smile of the old tolerating the foibles of the
young.

‘Did the quarry bring many jobs?’ asked Bannerman.

‘About fifty,’ replied the quarryman, ‘between
men from here and Stobmor.’

‘Coolies,’ said one of the shepherds. The Dutch
keep all the cushy jobs for themselves. The workers
are just coolies.’

The quarryman shrugged but didn’t rise to the
bait.

‘Are there many Dutchmen?’ asked Bannerman.

Ten or twelve.’

‘Making a fat living out of Scotland,’ growled one
of the others.

‘Maybe a Scotsman should have thought of it first?’
said the quarryman.

The topic of the quarry died out and Bannerman
asked the farm workers if they knew the farm where
the three men had died. Maybe they even worked
there themselves?

Both men shook their heads. ‘We work the
Liddell estate,’ said one. That’s well to the south
of Inverladdie.’

‘I hear Inverladdie had trouble with
Scrapie,’
said
Bannerman. ‘Have you had any bother?’

‘No, touch wood,’ said the man with the crook. ‘We’re clear.’

Bannerman watched to see if any tell-tale glances
would pass between the two farmhands but saw
none. He knew that sheep farmers were often reluctant to admit to the presence of
Scrapie
in
their flocks.

The landlord came into the bar and told Bannerman
that his room was ready. ‘Would you be wanting
anything to eat?’ he asked.

Bannerman found his eyes straying to the dried
tomato stain on the front of the man’s cardigan. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

‘We could do you, bacon and eggs?’

Bannerman fought off notions of homicide and
was relieved to hear the man continue with alterna
tives. He ordered a steak and wished goodnight to
his new-found companions in the bar before taking his bag upstairs. Bannerman noticed a distinctive
smell as he climbed the stairs. It was the smell of
small hotels all over the country, a mixture of dust,
dampness and carpeting.
He supposed that it had something to do with the
fact that so many of these places had lain empty for
quite long periods in their history. They had not been
built as hotels of course, but had been large family
houses at one time and had become too expensive
to continue in that role. As a consequence, they had
suffered neglect and decline, before eventually being
rescued for sub-division or, as in the case of this one,
conversion for use as a hotel. Bannerman suspected
that during the times when such buildings had lain
empty the cold and damp had crept into their floors
and walls like ink spreading through blotting paper
and had remained there ever since.

His own room appeared to be warm enough,
thanks to an electric radiator that had been turned
on to FULL, but it was surface warmth, a cosmetic
warmth. He sat on the bed and found it firm and
comfortable. There was a picture hanging above it
depicting a trawler with waves breaking over its
bow, which held the caption, ‘Heading for Home’ written below it in ornate writing. A gust of wind
drove rain hard into the window pane and made
Bannerman smile. ‘What a bloody good idea,’ he
murmured.

The telephone rang and startled him. It was the
owner announcing that his steak was ready.

SEVEN

Bannerman telephoned the Medical Research Coun
cil in the morning. It seemed to take an age before he
was put through to Hugh Milne.

‘I tried calling you in Edinburgh; I was told you
had gone north,’ said Milne.

‘Something awful has happened,’ said Bannerman.
‘Lawrence Gill has been murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ exclaimed Milne.

‘I don’t know who did it or why, but I do know
that it had something to do with this brain disease
business.’

‘But this is incredible. Why would anyone want
to murder a pathologist who was simply trying to establish a cause of death?’

Bannerman took a deep breath and said, 1 know
it sounds stupid, but I’m convinced that someone or
some …’ Bannerman searched for a word, ‘faction,
does not want the true cause of death discovered.’
He told Milne about the brains having been removed
from the cadavers in Edinburgh.

‘Where exactly are you?’ asked Milne.

There wasn’t much point in staying in Edinburgh
with no pathological material to work on, so I came
up to Achnagelloch. I found out from Gill’s wife
about the island he had run off to, so I tried to find
him to ask about the missing brains. Instead I found
him at the bottom of a cliff.’

‘I suppose there’s no chance it was an accident?’

‘None at all. Gill was hiding on the island because
he knew someone was after him. He tried sending
a parcel to you which I think contained the missing
brains.’

‘But why send it to us when we had already seen
the slides he had prepared?’

‘I wish I knew.’

There was a pause in the conversation. Bannerman
guessed that Milne was having difficulty coming to
terms with what he had heard. He suspected that
the introduction of possible criminal involvement in
what was thought to be a purely medical mystery
was having the same unsettling effect on Milne as
it was on himself. Both of them were getting out of
their depth.

Milne broke the silence, ‘Perhaps you should
return to London immediately,’ he said. ‘There may
be danger in pursuing the investigation.’

‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Bannerman, ‘but
I’m here now, so I may as well ask around a bit. It would be a help though if Gill’s death were played down for the moment. I don’t want the newspapers making connections between Gill’s murder and the
problems up here. I thought your colleague, Mr
Allison, from the Prime Minister’s office might help
in that direction.’