Chapter 12
The scene was one of devastation. The smell even worse.
They’d got suited up at the vehicle, and had walked along the road where the fire had jumped on its advance towards the top of the hill and the grave of Betty Corrigall.
Erling found himself inordinately relieved that the fire had failed in its attempt to engulf her final resting place.
A light wind whipped at the burnt heather stalks, sending choking clouds up into the air. Jo’s eyes sent him a silent thanks for suggesting, no, insisting that she mask up before they left the car.
The track to the croft had been widened by the fire engine’s approach. It stretched muddily before them, the edging of burnt heather flattened on either side, trails from heavy boots visible through the surrounding scorched vegetation.
It looks like a battlefield, he thought. And it had been. While he and Magnus had watched from Houton through binoculars, the men and women of the Longhope fire service had directly faced and fought the raging inferno on the ground.
The smoky debris in the air obscured a clear sight of the digger until they were up close. The shock at what it had become stopped him in his tracks.
The twisted and blackened shape bore no resemblance to the bright, shiny red vehicle that he had seen standing on that spot two days ago, its shovel crusted with damp clumps of peat.
Now, even through the mask, he caught the taste and scent of accelerant. He hadn’t doubted Willie, last night, when he’d declared it as arson, but smelling it now confirmed it for him.
As he contemplated this, he saw that his DS had moved to the excavation site and was staring into the empty grave.
‘There’s a bottle in there,’ she said, pointing.
Erling, his eyes streaming from the effects of the lingering smoke, attempted to focus where she indicated. Eventually he made out the shape of what definitely looked like a bottle. Lying alongside the grave, he reached in and retrieved it with a gloved hand.
It was a whisky bottle. A close look at the mud-streaked label indicated it as the locally produced Highland Park.
He sniffed at the mouth of the bottle, trying to distinguish whether it had in fact held whisky or been used to transport accelerant here.
Passing it to Jo, she did the same. ‘I’m not a whisky fan,’ she said. ‘But that’s definitely what was in there.’
‘So the accelerant didn’t arrive here in that way,’ Erling said. He checked the grave once more, in case anything else had been thrown in, all the while considering whether the setting of the fire had been related in some way to the discovery of the grave itself.
Jo, he noted, had now wandered towards the tumbledown cottage. He could see her dark head through the window opening, and then above the remains of the outer wall.
He realized that he’d paid little attention to what lay inside the ruin on the previous occasion they’d been here, focused solely, as he had been, on the grave and its contents.
There were countless abandoned stone crofts to be seen on the islands.
Relics of Orkney’s past, they often stood next to a more modern family bungalow.
The Mowat clan, according to Tommy, were all still living in Orkney.
Settled in Longhope in the east of Hoy, on the close-by island of Flotta and scattered across the Mainland.
It seemed only Kris’s mother, Betty, had departed these shores.
A shout from his DS sent him to join her.
She was standing in what had likely been the main room, where folk had gathered to eat, socialize and some even to sleep. The flagstone floor was still visible, although now split in parts by the upwards push of weeds and heather, determined to reclaim the hillside as their own.
Interestingly, there was no sign of the fire within the walls, suggesting again that its source had been the digger, after which it had rapidly climbed the hill behind.
Registering his arrival, Jo pointed silently at a corner where there may have been a recent visitor. As evidenced by the remnants of what had been a snack meal of sorts.
‘I take it yesterday’s SOCO team didn’t report this?’ Jo checked as she collected the debris in an evidence bag.
Erling indicated not.
‘So whoever was here likely arrived after the SOCO’s departure,’ Jo said. ‘Do we know when the fire began?’
‘I first spotted it when I reached home after being with Tommy, which was around ten o’clock,’ Erling responded, remembering his consternation when he retrieved the binoculars from the glove compartment of his car to view the burning light on the Hoy hills.
‘The team left Hoy around six last night, so sometime in between, our fire-raiser turned up here. Ate snacks, drank whisky—’
‘And set the digger alight.’ Jo met his eye. ‘I was wondering . . .’
‘About Kris Mowat?’ When Jo nodded, Erling said, ‘Me too. He was missing for most of yesterday and didn’t return to the hotel overnight.’
‘But why would he start a fire here?’ Jo said.
‘As revenge on his family, for not telling him that Ivor had died?’ Even as he said this, Erling knew there was more to all of this than a simple grudge about not being told of the death of his great-grandfather.
‘I need to speak with young Kris,’ he said firmly, thinking that both Kris’s situation and Ivor’s ‘shenanigans’ would likely be revealed when he did.
Hearing a vehicle approach, they emerged to find Willie Halcro heading down the track towards them.
‘Let’s see what Willie thinks about all of this, after which we’ll check out all three ferry ports on Hoy with the photo Rachael sent to your mobile. See if we can find out if Kris Mowat was on the island yesterday, and if so, when he left.’
As they met up with Willie and told him the tale of the whisky and the picnic, another vehicle arrived, disgorging four men.
‘Aye, the house wasn’t in the path of the fire,’ he said.
‘The wind direction took it straight up the hill. Whoever was in the ruin may only have been here to view the grave. Folk are ghoulish that way. Or,’ he added grimly, ‘perhaps they were the ones to start the fire. I take it you’ve collected the evidence? ’
‘We have,’ Erling said.
‘Good.’ Willie nodded. ‘I’m about to do the same with the digger.
’ He looked up at the blackened hillside.
‘The rest of the team are here to check for any signs of smouldering. If the underlying peat has caught fire anywhere, then we’ll have to dig holes and fill them with water to prevent the fire starting again. ’
It was then that Erling mentioned the missing Kris Mowat.
‘That’ll be Ivor’s great-grandson?’ Willie said. ‘His arrival has fair stirred the Mowat family pot,’ he added. ‘You think he might have come over to Hoy?’
‘We’re going to check the ports for a sighting while we’re here,’ Erling told him.
Willie wished them good luck with that.
They made their final stop at Moaness, where the passenger ferry from Stromness berthed. There had been no recognition on the faces of the crews who’d viewed the photograph at either Lyness or Longhope, so this was their last chance to discover if Kris had been on Hoy at all.
If he’d come directly from Stromness on the passenger ferry, then he would have had to walk the three and a half miles from the ferry to the old croft at Lyrawa.
Which was perfectly feasible. Plus it wasn’t uncommon for walkers to be traversing Hoy from May onwards, many of them heading for the old road to Rackwick Bay, a beauty spot on the western seaboard.
Erling had sent Jo to talk to the ferry crew. From the car, he watched as she chatted to each of the men in turn, noting their reaction to Kris’s photograph. It looked like they’d been right, and Kris Mowat had visited Hoy yesterday.
But that didn’t necessarily mean that Kris had been the one to set the digger ablaze. To do that would have required inflammable liquid. Which he would have had to bring with him or acquire once he landed here.
Unlike the friendly overtures his sergeant had bestowed on the ferry crew, Jo’s face gave nothing away as she walked back to the car.
Sliding in, she buckled up, her expression still inscrutable.
‘Well?’ Erling finally said.
‘Guess,’ Jo demanded, without even the hint of a smile.
‘Kris came across from Stromness on the ferry yesterday, but he didn’t return,’ Erling said. ‘Either last night or any time today.’
Jo nodded. ‘Correct.’
‘Did he have luggage of any sort?’
‘I checked. The guys said they don’t take note of luggage unless it’s outlandishly large or the passenger has a bike.’
‘So he could have brought accelerant with him. And lit the fire,’ Erling said.
‘Yes, but even were all that true,’ Jo said, ‘I still think he would have contacted Rachael by now.’
Erling found himself in agreement.
‘If no one saw Kris leave Hoy, then it stands to reason he’s still on the island,’ he said.