Whirligig

by Andrew James Greig

  Frankie crossed over to her desk, catching the eye of DI James Corstorphine as he looked up from his screen, isolated from the general hubbub behind his office window. She smiled a welcome, but not too welcoming, preferring to keep a professional distance between them. She felt a twinge of sorrow for him and his increasingly desperate attempts to find some sort of meaningful relationship since losing his wife five years previously. It was in danger of becoming the office soap, Corstorphine’s forlorn love life, his membership of evening classes, rambling groups. At least he was able to laugh off those failed encounters that made it into the public domain, and with a town as small as this – that was almost all of them.

  Frankie logged onto her computer and began entering the petty crimes she’d accumulated during the morning shift. Two shoplifters, both just girls really. They’d been cautioned previously, time and time again, almost ridiculously slapdash in their inability to steal clothes or cosmetics without drawing attention to themselves by giggling uncontrollably. She’d tried her best to talk the store out of pressing charges, but it was one time too many. Frankie paused, taking the opportunity to look at the welcome spring morning sunshine through the station window. She couldn’t really blame the store, they were struggling to make ends meet as it was. Chances were it would never get to court anyway, too much pressure on the Procurator Fiscal’s Office to bother with two silly young girls. The threat of being taken to court and getting their names in the local press would be enough for the parents to come down hard, so it would be a result whichever way she looked at it. The window beckoned again, sunshine streaming in. Perhaps a tour of local farms, checking up on any rustling or fly-tipping activity – that would seem a sensible use of her resources for the afternoon. Thank God for a small-town police station, she thought to herself, nothing ever happens here. It was a sentiment shared by the entire staff, although they’d only ever be caught complaining about the lack of any proper policing work more becoming of their talents. The trick was to not complain too much, just in case they decided to transfer you somewhere busier – like Inverness.

  Her attention was drawn back to the front desk as a distressed woman’s voice increased in volume. The duty sergeant stood slowly, flapping both hands palm downwards in an effort to calm the woman. The unnatural deliberation of the manoeuvre served only to agitate the woman to greater volume, the pitch of her voice sliding upwards towards hysteria. Frankie spun her seat around to see what the fuss was about and recognised Margo McDonald immediately.

  “Bloody hell, what now?” She spoke the words under her breath, although the noise at the front desk was sufficient to drown out anything she said. Margo was what represented ‘trouble’ around here, and her uninvited appearance at the police station front desk was worthy of investigation. She joined the desk sergeant, his grateful glance offering fulsome thanks for the welcome interruption.

  “Margo, just take a breath. What’s the matter?” The distraught face on the other side of the reception desk was covered in sweat, with mascara forming panda rings under her eyes – at least it looked like mascara.

  Frankie took an executive decision. “Margo, come through here. You look like you need a seat.” She keyed the door release and led the way into the back office, Margo following her like an obedient child with a hand held tight onto an overnight bag, swollen to capacity. “Hamish, could you get us both a cuppa?”

  The desk sergeant happily relinquished responsibility and moved with ponderous intent to the station kitchen to leave the two women alone. The DI peered up from his screen, but Frankie shook her head. Whatever this was, it was easier with just the two of them.

  Margo collapsed in a chair, her eyes wild, darting from side to side like a trapped animal. One hand cradled her stomach, the other sought sanctuary on the desk between them as her bag was released to the floor, holding the wooden surface tight as if to steady the world. She tried to speak, but only primitive noises escaped in between desperate gasps for air.

  Frankie held up a hand. “Take it easy. Just get your breath back and we can talk then. There’s nothing that can’t wait. We’ll get you a nice cup of tea. Things are always better with a cup of tea.”

  Margo stared at Frankie as if she was the embodiment of her mother. Stock phrases coming hard on the heels of each other. Trite. Meaningless. She felt her breath returning to a more normal rhythm . She had left the cottage early that morning, gathering what few possessions she owned and bundling them into a bag in sheer panic in case Oscar came back and caught her in the act. He still hadn’t returned home since he had left for work the previous morning, and her fear had grown with every passing minute as she waited for the sound of his quad bike coming back up the glen. Oscar’s normally foul mood had reached new depths since she’d given him the news, far worse than normal, and she envisioned him drinking the night away until he reached that point where he was capable of doing anything.

  No sleep had come to her. She’d lain in bed with the longest kitchen knife held tightly clasped in her hand, a cold sweat beading her skin and every sense straining in the dark for any sound of his approach. As soon as the grey light of dawn touched the eastern horizon, she took the one chance she might ever have to escape him completely. She would have to run away, far away from here, somewhere he could never find her. It was in that state of blind panic she’d first seen the shape as she hurried down the track towards the tree, causing her to stop suddenly with blood freezing in her veins, a cold pit forming where her womb lay. The shape rotated slowly and as the face turned towards her she saw dark shadows around the head resolve into crows. They flew off, cawing displeasure at being disturbed from feasting on his eyes, tempting morsels providing an aperitif to the main course. Her first instinct was to be sick, dry retching causing her to stagger away from the sight.

  Margo made a detour around the tree, climbing some way up the rock-strewn slope to avoid having to see or smell the sight again, then once securely back on the rough track she half-ran, half-walked in a mindless fugue until she found her feet had taken her to the police station. The reaction now came in waves: horror, shock, relief, all jumbled together in an incoherent mix of emotions. She sat facing the policewoman, her placid patience an antidote, and felt the feelings inside her recede. Margo fixed Frankie with an empty look and Frankie felt unable to stare back into eyes so devoid of hope, making a show instead of picking up her notebook and pen and placing them on the table. An unnatural silence held the air between them, broken only by Margo’s breathing becoming less ragged, more measured. Two mugs of tea arrived, held in Hamish’s overlarge hands. He set them down on the table, swept a practiced eye over Margo and decided she was safe to be left – for the moment.

  Margo waited until the duty sergeant had returned to the front desk, as if she wanted to share a secret that was just for the two women to hear. “It’s Oscar. He’s killed himself.” Her voice was low, at complete odds to the banshee howl she’d issued at the front desk.

  Frankie’s pen stopped in mid stroke and she engaged with Margo’s eyes at last. They appeared as dark pools, hauntingly pretty in their own way, but unsettling in the depth of anguish they displayed. They say you can read a person’s soul in their eyes. Frankie wondered, not for the first time, what horrors this woman sat opposite her had endured, to give her eyes like this.

  “Are you sure he’s dead, Margo? Could he just be unconscious or something? We ought to get an ambulance out to him just in case.” She adopted a sensible, business-like tone. “Now, where exactly is he? Can you tell me what happened?”

  Margo’s expression remained the same, but her voice now held a hard, sarcastic edge. “He’s hanging from the Hanging Tree, covered in shit, blood and flies. His head’s half off. It will take more than a fleet of fucking ambulances to bring him back!”

  She laughed then, leaning back in her seat and baring her teeth to the overhead fluorescents. Margo felt lighter, almost happy for a brief moment. Sh
e felt one of the chains that had held her captive finally break, offering her a degree of freedom that had never before seemed possible. She smiled beatifically at Frankie as she composed herself once more.

  Frankie felt a chill run down her spine. The woman was quite possibly insane, she might have even murdered Oscar. She tore her eyes away from Margo, risking a swift glance towards the front desk. Hamish was already making slow and steady progress towards them.

  “Margo, we’ll have to check, you understand that?” She spoke more calmly than she felt. “Hamish here will take you to one of our rooms where you can have a lie down if you want. There’s a toilet and washbasin if you need to freshen up.” She stood up and Margo reached for her untouched mug of tea. “It’s OK, I’ll carry that for you.”

  Frankie carried the mug, the surface of the tea forming miniature waves as her hand betrayed her nervousness. Margo made to pick up her bag, but Frankie forestalled her. “We’ll keep that safe for you here for the moment.”

  Hamish led Margo into a holding cell, the euphemism for ‘one of our rooms’ needing no translation.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t have anywhere else to put you for the moment.” Frankie offered as way of an apology. The duty sergeant locked the door, the metallic clunk reminding Margo of another of her mother’s favourite phrases, ‘One door opens and another closes.’ Margo took the mug of tea through the hatch, and sat on the mattress, ignoring them both.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Have a wee rest and we can take your statement later.” Margo didn’t respond, sitting with both hands clasped around the mug as if in prayer. They walked the short distance back to the office in silence, each concerned with their own thoughts.

  “I’ll get an ambulance sent out.” Hamish’s measured tone helped Frankie calm down. Something about the manner in which Margo had delivered her message had unsettled her more than she liked to admit. “And I’ll keep an eye on her,” he added.

  “Thanks, Hamish.” She flashed him a quick smile, grateful for his stolid presence. There were only the five of them working the station: two constables, including the one fresh out of training, the two detectives – herself and DI Corstorphine, and Sergeant Hamish McKee. A small team more closely integrated than the larger stations, more like a family group than work colleagues. She tapped on the DI’s door, and the pungent aroma of aftershave washed over her as she entered his office.

  “I saw Margo MacDonald. What’s up?” Corstorphine leant back in his seat, one eyebrow raised in his familiar interrogative stare. She stood in the doorway, working out her phrasing before speaking. It was a habit that led people to believe she was more slow-witted than she was, a perception she was in no hurry to correct.

  “She said Oscar has killed himself. He’s hanging from the old oak by the Gamekeeper’s Cottage in Glen Mhor.” She refused to use the colloquial term for that particular tree, preferring to let the past be dead and buried. “I thought we should take a look before anything else.”

  Corstorphine nodded, his expression unchanging. “When was this meant to have happened?” His tone betrayed a detective’s caution, treating every statement with a distrust learned from years of hard-won experience. He unwound his lanky frame from the comfort of the leather swivel chair he’d inherited from his predecessor, reaching for a mobile and a set of keys.

  “She found his body this morning and last saw him early yesterday morning, so some time in the last 24 hours, presumably.”

  “He’s an unlikely candidate for a suicide.” Corstorphine voiced what Frankie had already considered. Some people are suicides-in-waiting. They give the impression of drowning on dry land, a futility of purpose, of having already given up the struggle. Oscar was the type who’d face down death, wrest the sickle from death’s cold bone fingers and enjoy laying about him until stopped by a greater force.

  “We’ll take the Land Rover. That track’s fairly unforgiving on the suspension.” He led the way to the station car park, the midday sun failing to dispel the mood that was settling on them both. Murder, suicide – it was academic at the end of the day. A potential dead body awaited them, and even though it was an individual whose passing would be celebrated in some quarters, the next few days were going to be heavy with onerous paperwork and unpleasantness.

  III

  SATURDAY 13:07

  The two detectives sat in the 4x4, staring at the figure swaying in front of them, blue strobe from the Land Rover roof lights catching the body where it hung in the tree’s shadow. It was apparent even from a distance that he was dead; the neck wound alone would have killed him in seconds. DI Corstorphine turned off the engine and they dressed awkwardly in white forensic overclothes, pulling on blue latex gloves, incongruous in the rural setting, before reluctantly approaching the scene of crime. The heather’s perfume was insufficient to mask the earthly stench emanating from the body, a tang of iron from the blood discernible over more common odours. Tattered ribbons of flesh hung out of Oscar’s eye sockets where sharp beaks had penetrated, and the steady hum of flies increased in volume as they approached the body.

  Frankie held back her breakfast which repeatedly threatened to make a reappearance and raised the office SLR – taking shot after shot of Oscar’s corpse, zooming to focus in on his neck. She spotted the rabbit dangling beside him, strangely companion-like in death and added a few shots of that unlikely pairing. The wires disappeared into the leafy canopy above, but she took a few photos anyway.

  Corstorphine turned away from the macabre sight. He’d seen dead bodies before, it came with the job – but not like this. Oscar’s body hung there like a medieval sacrifice, the gaping second mouth screaming silent obscenities at his back. He allowed himself time to process the image as he walked back towards the quad bike they had just passed, down the track, spotting snares spilled on the ground as the bike had toppled into the burn. He retrieved the rifle from its side holster, sniffing the barrel to confirm it hadn’t had recent use and took the keys out of the ignition. On second thoughts, he carefully fetched the engine oil tin, examining it suspiciously with a fair idea of what it contained. Looking back towards the tree, fresh tracks indicated where the quad had left the path, no other tracks were obvious. The rifle and tin were placed in the back of the Land Rover, wrapped in a plastic sheet.

  “Sir!” Frankie’s voice carried a note of query. “What do you make of this?”

  He followed the line of her arm to a white stick lying beside the track, immediately under the tree. It was a bone harpoon, more like the kind of thing he’d expect to see used by an Inuit fisherman than lying incongruously in some Highland glen.

  “Could be one of Oscar’s tools of the trade.” His response was neutral, unsure of the purpose of such a tool. “Wouldn’t put it past him to have something like that for getting at rabbits in burrows, perhaps setting snares from a distance.” He stooped to pick it up in a gloved hand, then noticed a gear wheel, partially obscured by the heather overhanging the path. “Now that’s interesting!” Frankie paused from photographing the harpoon to look at the object he held up into the sunlight. It was a gearwheel, each tooth perfectly identical to the next as they wrapped a geometric pattern around the rim of a circular bone disk. He turned it, admiring the skill with which it had been manufactured. “Was Oscar much of a creative artist?”

  “Not to my knowledge, sir. He’s...” She paused, rearranging her words to account for the past tense. “He was creative with his fists but more well known as a piss artist.”

  Corstorphine nodded thoughtfully, placing the gearwheel into a plastic bag. He peered up into the tree, wondering whether he was still capable of emulating childhood feats of tree-climbing heroics to look more closely at the wire support. “See if there’s anything else unusual around here.”

  They both undertook a fingertip search of the track, picking up tiny fragments of carved bone and wood and placing them into evidence bags as they went, w
ith Frankie painstakingly photographing each item and location.

  “You don’t think it was a suicide, do you, sir?”

  Corstorphine held her gaze for a long second before shaking his head deliberately. “No, Frankie. It doesn’t feel right, not with all this paraphernalia under the tree.” He looked back at the quad bike, calculating the likely speed and force of impact. “I’d say someone set a snare for him.”

  Frankie nodded, moving upwind of the body to remove herself from the smell which wasn’t even obliterated by the DI’s aftershave. She held aloft her evidence bag. “What about these gears?”

  He frowned. The gears were a complete mystery and would make their job that much harder to do. Then there was the dead rabbit hanging next to Oscar’s corpse in a manner that suggested someone was having fun at their expense.

  “Would you say Margo could have set all this up?” He looked up into the tree again, searching for inspiration, something that would tell him what had happened here. He tried to envisage Margo climbing into the branches, setting a snare for her man.

  “She had the motive, sir. It’s public knowledge he knocked her about.” She sounded doubtful. Margo was a doormat. Whatever spirit she once may have possessed had been beaten out of her by Oscar. But the manic laugh, the spark that lit her face when she seemed to rejoice in his death?

  “We can question her under caution when we get back.” He looked up from scrutinising the ground around the tree. A vehicle was making tortuous progress along the track. “Here’s the ambulance,” he said unnecessarily.

  It took four of them to release Oscar’s body from the tree and cut the wire from above his head with some difficulty. “Try not to touch the wire, it may hold forensic evidence,” Corstorphine advised as the body was manhandled into a body bag. The ambulance crew zipped it up, noses wrinkling up against the smell, and laid it down on the gurney, securing the body into place with straps. The two detectives guided the ambulance as it executed a multi-point turn, stopping it as the wheels started to sink into the soft ground each side of the track, or threatened to drop into the burn at the end of each laboured turn.