by Iain North
‘Stainless steel,’ the doctor confirmed, picking through the tangle.
‘And?’ Macdonald asked impatiently.
‘Medical equipment,’ he nodded, examining what looked like a large pair of scissors.
A second barrel swung in.
Macdonald rubbed anxiously. ‘We need more than this.’
The second drum was down. The top came off, some of the brown muddy water splashing over Dr Mackenzie. The air around him turned blue momentarily before he turned his attention to its contents.
There was more twisted metal and shards of broken glass.
Macdonald sighed. ‘We can hardly arrest the man for dumping his rubbish in the sea. If we did that we’d have to bring in two thirds the Highland population.’
‘So what now?’ Jim asked.
‘Lucky for you we found that body. Otherwise I might seriously think about calling it a day.’ He looked up at the starlit sky. ‘Or rather a night.’
‘They keep looking?’
‘For now.’
A big 4x4 crunched over the gravel towards them.
‘This is all I need,’ Macdonald mumbled, setting off to meet the vehicle.
‘Who’s that?’ Jim asked Dr Mackenzie, who was still brushing silt off his jacket.
‘That, my friend, is Chief Superintendent Sam Robertson.
‘The big guns are rolling in.’
‘He’s come to see if his over-time budget is being spent wisely,’ Mackenzie chuckled.
Chief Superintendent Robertson stepped out of his car and was greeted by Macdonald. Jim couldn’t hear the exchange of words, but it seemed civil enough. Macdonald guided the Chief Super to the incident room and the pair disappeared inside.
‘I’d leave them to it,’ Mackenzie advised. ‘The Chief Super doesn’t have much time for the Fourth Estate.’
‘What’s new?’ Jim groaned. He had yet to meet a Chief Super who did.
A third barrel dropped on to the tarpaulin next to Dr Mackenzie. He stood well back as the process of opening it up was undertaken. There were more lumps of pink granite. Jim caught a sparkle in the eyes of one of the suited men.
He heard him whisper to Dr Mackenzie: ‘I think we’ve got something this time, sir.’
The pathologist, hands gloved, reached in and fumbled about as if it were a lucky dip bag at a school fete.
‘I think so, too,’ he agreed, lifted out what looked like a handful of bones. But if they were bones, they were very small bones.
A radio message flickered through the dry night air to the incident caravan and in a second Macdonald bounded out.
‘What have you got for me, boys?’
‘Have a look.’ Dr Mackenzie placed the bones carefully down on the plastic sheet.
‘Human?’ the inspector asked.
‘I’ll need to examine them properly, but I’d say so.’
‘Adult or child?’
‘Infant, quite definitely.’
In the palm of his hand, Dr Mackenzie held a tiny skull.
*****
Chapter 23
The police operation at the dock continued through the night and well into the next day. Inspector Macdonald anticipated they would be there for at least a week, maybe two.
The forensic evidence grew as each hour passed. Dr Mackenzie opened a temporary mortuary in one of the oil company sheds. Jim found him overseeing a small team of officers who were painstakingly piecing the minute corpses together.
‘You don’t look as if you have had a wink of sleep.’ He greeted Jim with a firm handshake.
‘Have you had time to sleep, doc?’
The old man shook his head. Jim noticed heavy bags under exhausted eyes.
Three lines of trestle tables ran the length of the shed.
‘Let me show your something,’ Mackenzie said, leading Jim towards one of the tables.
Jim recoiled in horror when he witnessed what was on top of the table.
‘So far we have managed to piece together six human skeletons,’ Mackenzie explained, pointing at the evidence before them. ‘But we quickly noticed something rather unusual.’
He picked up a tiny bone and held it in front of Jim’s eyes.
‘Do you see the deformity in the bone structure?’
Jim nodded.
‘This is not an isolated incident. Every one of the skeletons we have examined so far has some level of deformity. Some are far more extreme than others.’
Eight more barrels had been unearthed. Four contained human remains, two were full of medical equipment and the other two had corroded so badly under the water that they had long since lost whatever they once held.
After the initial flurry, however, it was taking longer and longer for each barrel to come ashore, and fewer bones were arriving in the temporary morgue. By 10am the search was winding down, although a handful of divers would spend the day trawling the bottom of the dock.
Inspector Macdonald had what he wanted, Chief Superintendent Robertson could justify the expense of the operation and Dr Mackenzie’s work was clearly only just beginning.
‘What about Professor Gallagher?’ Jim asked as Mackenzie returned the bone to its place on the table.
‘Eddie tells me there is no sign of him yet.’
*****
Over at the incident room, the inspector was preparing for a well-earned break.
‘Do you fancy some breakfast, Jim? My treat.’
Guests at the Lochcarron Hotel were sitting down to tea and toast when they stumbled into the dining room.
‘I’m absolutely knackered,’ Macdonald yawned, stretching his arms above his head.
Jim nodded. ‘The works?’
‘With plenty of coffee.’
They sat down to plates laden with bacon, eggs, sausage, beans and fried bread. The plates were clean before they spoke again.
‘You’ve a great story on your hands,’ Macdonald conceded, wiping the corners of his mouth with a serviette. ‘What’s your line?’
‘From what I can gather, Gallagher was out for himself. A bit of a mad scientist, I suppose,’ Jim replied.
‘Did you see his private hospital?’
‘Do you know any of the background to that?’
Macdonald slurped some coffee. ‘We turned the place over but we found nothing. There were no files and it looks like all his equipment ended up in the dock at Kishorn.
Jim extracted a tiny strand of bacon fat from between his back teeth with his tongue. ‘From what I can gather he did his medical tests there. He took pregnant, vulnerable young girls to the hospital and held them there.’
‘What was he working on?’
‘Initially it was a drug for epilepsy. He had to try it out on various people – the old, the young, pregnant women – to make sure there were no side-effects.’
‘And apparently there were,’ Macdonald observed.
Jim nodded. ‘Doctor Mackenzie said there is every likelihood these babies were delivered alive, not stillborn, as Gallagher told the mothers.’
‘He disposed of the evidence.’
‘He couldn’t risk a scandal. If word got out that his drug that caused birth defects, it would have ended his career.’
‘So he killed the babies and dumped the bodies in the dock.’
‘I guess he expected it to be filled after the yard closed.’
The inspector’s mobile phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and answered. A series of ‘Ayes’, ‘Nos’ and ‘Fucks’ followed, raising a few eyebrows in the gentile surroundings of the Lochcarron Hotel dining room. The tone of the conversation worried Jim. Maybe Gallagher was about to crawl out from underneath it all.
Macdonald folded the handset up and placed it down on the table.
‘Have you found Gallagher?’
Macdonald shook his head. ‘His flat in Inverness was empty and there were signs of a hasty departure. The boys have put out an alert on his car and informed the airport and stations.’
He scraped hi
s chair back over the floor and hauled himself to his feet.
‘I need a cigarette.’
Jim finished his coffee, paid the bill and joined the inspector on the terrace overlooking Loch Carron.
‘Any word on your young reporter friend,’ Macdonald asked.
‘I couldn’t get through to the ward earlier.’
‘There should be someone on duty now.’
Jim wandered along the terrace, took out his Blackberry and dialled the Raigmore Hospital switchboard.
He got through to the ward. A handful of words were exchanged before he snapped the phone off.
‘I’ve got to go to Inverness,’ he said.
*****
Chapter 24
It wasn’t a bad day for a funeral. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. Jim knew there was nothing worse than burying someone in the wet. It made the whole think a hundred times more depressing. While the sun was glowing there was at least hope.
Jim leaned against the stone wall that ringed the tiny kirkyard, a part-smoked cigarette jabbed between his dry lips. He wondered whether the wall was there to keep people out, or in. Maybe it was simply there to prop up weary mourners.
Crunching gravel snatched him from his thoughts.
‘Are you well?’ Macdonald grunted.
Jim nodded without enthusiasm.
‘Not many folk turned out,’ the inspector continued, making polite but inconsequential conversation.
‘No.’
‘You got a good story.’
‘Cheers. ‘
‘That will pay a few bills.’
The cheque from the Sunday Mail would probably not arrive for another weeks or two, but Macdonald was right, it would pay a few bills. The sale had been easy, even negotiating the fee up met with no sustained opposition from the news desk. The editor would probably have thrown in his right arm for the exclusive.
The tale secured the front-page splash and occupied a double-page spread inside. Gory details of Professor Gallagher’s medical experiments, interviews with bereaved parents, even a comment from an outraged British Medical Council spokesman, it was all there, along with pics and a snap of Inspector Macdonald, the man who led the investigation.
‘Shame you didn’t get your man,’ Jim sympathised.
The inspector smiled. ‘It’ll save the taxpayer coughing up for an expensive trial.’
Gallagher had done what many said was the decent thing. A dog walker found him in Forestry Commission woodland on the outskirts of Inverness, a length of cheap plastic hose running from the exhaust pipe of his vintage sports car into the cabin. The Homebase till receipt was lying on the passenger seat beside his lifeless corpse.
Jim turned, back pressed to the wall. He saw Mrs Mackinnon, dressed in a long black coat, being comforted by the minister.
‘It’s not a bad spot,’ Macdonald said. ‘Mountains on one side, sea on the other.’
He was right. There were worse places to end up than Lochcarron Cemetery. Quiet, scenic and with a degree of exclusivity you couldn’t expect in the city.
‘Not a bad choice,’ Jim agreed, flicking his tab-end across the wall.
Macdonald pulled the collar of his jacket up. There was a chill breeze coming in off the sea. ‘I might see you at the wake.’
The inspector turned and walked away. He stopped briefly to say a few words to Mrs Mackinnon, and then skulked off to his car.
Jim lifted his packet of Marlboro Lights from its resting place on the top of the wall and picked his way slowly through the headstones. Mrs Mackinnon was shuffling out of the cemetery with the minister and the remaining mourners were making for their cars.
Once they were all gone he knelt down in front of the headstone and wept.
*****
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 5