Chapter 32
Having worked their way through those who’d been waiting for them at the fire station, Willie suggested they take the opportunity to check out their accommodation, and the site of the fire.
‘I posted the times you would be here to take statements, and the second slot is this evening, after folk finish work. You’ll likely get a younger contingent.
Although some of the real youngsters here, as everywhere else, don’t like to be seen talking to the law.
In that case they’re more likely to make an anonymous call to the fire station.
I’ll take note of any such calls, while you’re away.
’ He looked to Jo. ‘Was there anything useful in this morning’s lot? ’
‘Maybe,’ Jo said cautiously, with a quick glance at PC Tulloch, who nodded in agreement.
‘Good, because we want to get the bastard who started that fire. And find out what happened to the guy on the beach.’
Now back in the car, Ivan asked where Jo wanted to go first.
‘I’d like to check back at the fire site and maybe find a way down to the beach?’ she said.
Ivan nodded. ‘I think it will be good for folk to see the police car on the road. We can stop and talk to anyone we encounter on the way. I also have relatives over here. They’ll no doubt turn up somewhere at sometime.
’ He checked his watch. ‘DS Gowan should be getting picked up from Stromness about now. Wonder what he’ll be like? ’
Jo nodded without comment.
‘Bringing someone in is always tricky,’ he said, ‘although the Glasgow detective worked out all right on the Skaill Bay case. I heard DS Gowan volunteered to come. DS McNab certainly didn’t do that.
He hates to be anywhere outside Glasgow.
Came here under duress. Seems there was also history between him and the boss,’ he added, with a sideways glance at Jo.
‘Before your time, of course. A murder out on Sanday. DS McNab didn’t deal too well with the locals.
Even got thrown over the wall and into the sea at the Kettletoft Inn. ’
Now this was something Jo hadn’t heard, so she steered the conversation in that direction and away from DS Gowan, laughing at Ivan’s tale of a McNab out of his depth on the second-most northerly isle.
‘You like it here in Orkney, don’t you?’ Ivan suddenly asked.
‘I do,’ she answered honestly, while internally adding, so far.
They passed a few cars on the road, the third one of which honked at them and, by hand gestures, indicated that the driver wished to have a word. Drawing up at the side of the road, Ivan went over and got in the passenger seat.
From Jo’s viewpoint there appeared to be an animated conversation between them, before Ivan re-emerged and strode back to the car.
Jo waited while he settled himself back in the driver’s seat before asking what it had all been about.
‘Boy racers,’ Ivan told her. ‘Seems they’re using this road at night like a racetrack. He was keen to give me two registration numbers, which I took down. Then he had something more interesting to say.’
‘What was that?’
‘He’s seen a boat hanging about Lyrawa Bay on occasion. Thinks it moves between Cava and there.’
‘A dive boat?’ Jo tried.
‘He thought not. He knows the dive boats that operate in the area. And apparently this one comes late at night. Mr Maine’s a star gazer. That’s how he spotted it.’
‘The boss wondered how the victim had arrived on the beach. From land or sea,’ she said.
Ivan nodded at that. ‘I gave Mr Maine our contact numbers and asked him to keep a record of when he sees the boat back there, and anything else he spots through his telescope. It has an inbuilt camera so he’ll try to take a photograph.’
‘Did he say anything about the fire?’
‘He suspects the racers fired the digger. Thinks they’d been using the old Mowat croft as a place to get high. Or, he said, one of them is a Mowat chiel whose family didn’t want the land sold and an eco-house built there.’
‘What did Mr Maine think about the eco-house?’ Jo said.
‘Didn’t want it, but said it wouldn’t happen anyway now that Ivor’s dead and Hugh Mowat’s in charge.’ He halted there for a moment. ‘He was upset about the lass and her bairn that the digger unearthed there. Wanted to know if we’d worked out who she was yet.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That the recent death of the guy on the beach took priority, together with the whereabouts of Kris Mowat. He looked a bit surprised by that. Said he’d assumed that the body was Kris.’
‘But we don’t know that,’ Jo stressed.
‘I told him,’ Ivan assured her. ‘Said it was down to DNA results.’
‘Did you hear anything about the Mowats during your interviews?’ Jo asked cautiously.
‘It was all auld folk this morning. Keen to get a dig in at one or other of the Mowat clan. Old and more recent scores being settled, I suspect. Folk can carry grudges here a long time,’ he said with a shake of his head.
‘And they know their history.’ He glanced at her.
‘We can compare grudges later,’ he added with a grin.
‘Now for the source of the fire, and the path to Lyrawa Bay.’
Jo decided Ivan’s final remark meant what she’d been told by the last interviewee might be best kept until later. After all, coming from Caithness, she knew how folk would happily tell stories even if they had no proof they were true. Gossip wasn’t worth repeating if it wasn’t salacious.
Although, in her own case, the story had been true.
The faint scent of peat reached them before they met the blackened hillside. Willie had warned them they were still dealing with pockets of smouldering peat beneath the surface, which they were dousing with water from the burn that led down to the bay.
As Ivan parked up, Jo registered that the last time she’d stepped out of the car here, she’d needed a mask. This time the air was clear, the sky bright, which only served to emphasize the terrible destruction that surrounded them.
Ivan led the way, his expression serious. Only once you stood amidst such devastation could you fully appreciate both the power of a wildfire and its result. It wasn’t only the heather that had died. It was every living creature within it.
Reaching the ruins of the croft house, Jo noted that the digger had been removed. No doubt to be studied in more detail as the probable source of the fire.
Passing the ruins of the croft, she followed Ivan to the gaping hole of the grave.
‘D’you think we’ll ever find out who she was and who buried her here?’ he said.
‘DI Flett won’t give up, I think, until she’s identified and buried properly,’ Jo told him.
‘Good,’ Ivan said with a nod. ‘Right, let’s head for the beach. Willie said to follow the burn. Apparently Ivor used to keep a fishing boat down there.’
Reaching the shore, Jo found it hard to imagine the picture postcard image of blue water and golden sand as the place in the video Willie had sent them, where the same water had encircled the charred body of a man.
‘So where did he come from?’ Ivan said. ‘Up there?’ He pointed towards the hill. ‘Or out there?’ He indicated the outline of distant Cava.
‘I don’t remember the boss mentioning any samples of vegetation in the forensic evidence collected from the body,’ Jo said. ‘Although it could have been washed off by the incoming tide, I suppose.’
‘Maybe that’s why the boss thought he might have come from the water,’ Ivan said.
‘If the body turns out to be Kris, then we do have a motive. And a number of possible suspects in the various members of the Mowat clan,’ Jo said. ‘If it isn’t Kris, and I hope it isn’t, we have an even bigger puzzle to solve.’