Chapter 8 #2
They lumbered on through the rain.
Mud. Mud all the way up past her knees. About half of it was from sploshing their way along the stupid waterlogged track, the other half following an unfortunate incident involving a particularly slippy bit and landing on her arse.
At least McKinnon had the good sense not to laugh. Otherwise he’d be wearing that bloody peaked cap of his as a suppository. He cleared his throat. ‘So . . . have you worked out who did it? Who killed Sir Reginald?’
‘Give us a chance, haven’t even interviewed anyone yet!’
‘Only I thought, with the deductive thing you did at the bar? You know, when we first met?’
Roberta stopped in the middle of the track and turned to give his arm a good hard punch.
‘Ow!’
‘You didn’t actually believe all that Sherlock Holmes nonsense, did you? You arrived at the hotel in your uniform, you laminated wanknumpty! I saw you.’
He stood there, staring at her, wearing the kind of expression a small child does when you tell them Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist and their gerbil isn’t off living on a lovely farm, it’s dead and flushed down the toilet.
She hit him again.
‘Ow!’
‘Come on.’ Roberta squelched off, but he stayed where he was. And when she looked over her shoulder, he was still there, staring after her, sort of hunched in on himself.
Oh, for God’s sake . . .
Her shoulders slumped. Then she turned and stomped back through the mud, till she was standing in front of him again. ‘All right, all right – I’m sorry I called you a wanknumpty. OK?’
His face doubled down on the spanked-puppy look. ‘We’re not going to catch the killer, are we.’ Said as a statement, not a question.
Might as well throw him a bone, I suppose.
She forced a cheery tone into her voice. ‘Of course we are, because we’re the good guys!’ This time the punch on his arm was a lot more gentle and playful. ‘See?’
He deflated even further. ‘We’re going to bumble along, messing things up, till the real police get here from Inverness and take over.’
Roberta took hold of his shoulder with her free hand and gave him a squeeze. Spelling it out, nice and slow: ‘We – will – catch – the – killer.’
He looked down at his feet and nodded, clearly not believing her. But at least this time when she scuffed off he slouched along beside her. Sighing with every third step. Like the massive pain in the jacksie he was.
She stepped around a puddle. ‘This dodgy goldmine, was it just the locals got burned, or was it Sir Whatsisname’s mates too?’
‘Probably.’ Voice flat and miserable. ‘Well, maybe some of them. You don’t screw over your real friends, do you?’
‘True.’
But that was typical of the landed gentry, wasn’t it? Why rip-off your posh mates when you could stick it to the working class instead? Make the peasants pay for your champagne-and-caviar lifestyle while they struggle along on Buckfast-and-sliced-white.
The path turned left up ahead and – hold on to your sweat-soggied arse-munchingly uncomfortable Brazilian pants – that pair of stone pillars with the wrought iron, ‘SKIRIVOUR CASTLE HOTEL’ above it hove into view.
About bloody time.
Twenty feet past that and it was the castle’s turn, lurking there in all its rain-lashed ugliness.
Roberta squelched towards the gloomy pile, frowning as something stirred in the depths of her brain. Something . . . ‘You ever read Murder on the Orient Express?’
McKinnon shrugged. ‘Nah, I don’t really do books. The Sarge is your man for that kind of thing, loves his crime novels.’
‘Pin back your lugs and learn something, then.’ She stopped, looking up at their very own blot on the landscape.
‘In Murder on the Orient Express, this slimy American gets bumped off and Hercule Poirot has to figure out who did it. Only it wasn’t just one murderer, they all killed him – everyone on the train. ’
‘Aye . . .’ PC McKinnon pulled a face. ‘Seems a bit far-fetched. I mean, it’s hard enough getting four people to agree on where to go for dinner, can you imagine getting a whole train-load to do it about murdering someone?’
Philistine. ‘It’s a classic of modern literature.’
‘You’d be there all year!’ He counted the points off on his fingers. ‘To get anything done you’d need to elect a chairman, which means setting up a voting system, then there’s regular meetings, somewhere to meet, agendas—’
‘All right, nobody likes a smartarse.’
He started on the other hand. ‘—someone to take minutes, probably a bunch of subcommittees about stuff like alibis and killing methods—’
She thumped the back of her hand against his chest. ‘I’m no’ saying the whole town murdered Sir Buggerlugs, it’s—’
‘And even if it was logistically possible, where would everyone in the village hide? They weren’t invited to the wedding and they can’t have sneaked off in this weather with the bridge out. They’d be every bit as stuck as we are!’
She gave him another thump. ‘I liked you better when you were cringing in awe-struck reverence.’
‘You did ask.’
‘Hmph . . .’ Roberta marched off, past the dribbly fountain and under the big portico with its miserable bunting. Clicked her umbrella shut and gave it a good shake, sending water flying like a soggy terrier.
‘I’m sure it’s a good book, it’s just a very silly idea.’
She shoved through the double doors into the hotel lobby again. Jammed the umbrella back in the thing. Peeled off her high-vis raincoat and thrust it into the cultureless idiot’s arms. ‘You’ve no’ got a clue about proper literature.’
Sergeant Moore appeared from the other side of that huge metal stag. Face all creased and worried. ‘Where did you pair disappear off to?’
McKinnon unbuttoned his raincoat. ‘Bridge is out. Must’ve got washed away in the night.’
‘Aye, and there’s sod-all mobile signal out there either.’ She squished and squelched past the pair of them, making for the stairs.
‘I could’ve told you that.’ Sergeant Moore fell into step beside her, holding out a couple sheets of paper. ‘I’ve made a list of everyone and ranked it in order of who hated him the most to least.’
‘Aye, I got the low-down from your wee loon, there; every bugger for a hundred miles hated our victim.’ The steps creaked beneath her saturated shoes. ‘Don’t blame them either: man was a dick.’
Sergeant Moore stopped at the bottom of the stairs, frowning up at her. ‘Where are you off to now?’
Roberta kept on going. ‘Getting changed. Everything from the waist down’s dripping. And no’ in a sexy way!’
And believe it or not, the rude sod had the cheek to shudder at the thought.