A Double Death on the Black Isle (34 page)

“So,” the fiscal summarized, “Fraser died from bleeding on the brain, caused by a blow to the head. This blow could have been inflicted hours earlier. Fraser Munro collapsed, perhaps hours later, and Fraser died.”

“Yes.” The pathologist sat waiting for Calum Sinclair's questions.

Calum took his time. He had noted his opponent's frequent use of the victim's name—“Fraser this”, “Fraser that.”
Another good move,
Calum thought,
makes the jury feel like Fraser was someone they knew.

And,
Calum thought,
I'm willing to bet he calls the boys, “McPhee this” and “McPhee that.”
The McPhee name had not many positive connotations in the Highlands of Scotland.

He looked at the pathologist. Before him sat a man who worked exclusively with the dead. His suit and tie had first seen life perhaps thirty years earlier. And, almost to the point of cliché, the man had a voice that had the life sucked out of it.

“Do you have any questions?” the sheriff asked Calum, becoming impatient with what he saw as delaying tactics.

“Sorry,” Calum said, “I was thinking over what has just been said and I'd like to repeat it—to be clear.”

Then Calum spoke, only looking for “yes” and “no” answers from the doctor.

“Mr. Fraser Munro died from bleeding in the brain?”

“Yes.”

“The blow
was perhaps
inflicted hours earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Munro collapsed
perhaps
hours later?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Munro could
possibly
have been hit again?”

“Yes.”

“
Perhaps
hours later?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, that is all.”

Rob nudged Joanne in the ribs and hissed a triumphant, “Yes,” seconds after the last “yes” was heard clearly throughout the court.

The minor victory for Calum Sinclair was mitigated by the next witness—Allie Munro.

Not a big man, he looked solid. Not a handsome man, he looked dependable. Most of all, to the jury he looked like one of them. From years of working closely with the Ord Mackenzie family, Allie could moderate his Black Isle dialect and glottal stops, giving the impression of a man of substance. His suit—navy blue, bought off the rack from a high-street chain of
tailor shops—was the same suit worn by three members of the jury.

When he had finished his description of finding his son dead on the roadside, one of the female jurors hid tears, one man had to clear his throat, and all of them, men and women, were moved by his account. He was indeed one of them.

“You went out when?” the procurator fiscal asked.

“Half past six.”

“That is when you usually start work?”

“No, seven, but seeing it was May we were doing an early cut to make silage, and I wanted to go by the milking shed to talk to the man who's in charge of the . . . the cows.” He stumbled over the word, he would naturally have said “coos,” but this was the Sheriff's Court.

“Then what did you do?”

“I took the tractor out. I always have a wee look around the farm first thing.”

“What happened then?”

“I was driving along, and being high up, I could see into the ditch. I saw a jacket, and . . . and it was ma son.”

“Just before the Devil's Den?”

“Aye. I thought he was drunk, then I thought he was hurt . . . so I got off the tractor and I . . . I touched him and . . .”

The fiscal waited, no questions, allowing Allie to tell the story in his own time and words.

“I kneeled down beside him,” Allie Munro continued, “and I touched his head and I held his hand and there was no much of anything I could do because he was dead.

“But I pulled him up a wee bit 'cause it wisney right him lying in a ditch, and I laid him on the grass. There were lots o' them wee orchid flowers there,”
the kind Agnes likes,
he remembered but didn't say, “and I put ma jacket over him.”

Allie paused for a moment, thinking through the sequence.
What next? Oh. Right. Our Alistair came up the road, but he didny touch his bother, nor come near him, he somehow just knew, and he turned and ran away. But no need to mention any of that, Allie decided.

“Then I ran to the big house to use the office phone,” he continued. “I didny want Mother to know what had happened to Fraser, not just yet. All I could think was to call the doctor. He said he'd be right out, and told me to call the police. So I did. Then I ran back and waited wi' ma son Fraser. . . .

“Then they arrived, the doctor first, the police after, and a wee whiley later I took the tractor back an I went across the yard an told Auld Archie, who'd come looking for me, and he said he'd get everyone working, and then . . . then I talked wi' Agnes. . . .” This was a part he never wanted to remember.

It was the noise she made. It was a roar, a sound coming from deep inside of her, it coursed through her lungs and her heart and her bone marrow, dislodging some piece of her that would never be replaced.

Standing in their kitchen, helpless, holding her, he had heard the echo of another roar. Not the same sound, but of the same source, a positive to this negative, a light to this blackness. That other roar he had heard ringing across the farmyard, twenty-nine years earlier. He was forking hay into the loft and his Agnes was giving birth to their firstborn. A roar, a cry, a mewling sound, and his sister Effie shouting across the morning, “It's a boy!”

He wouldn't let Agnes see Fraser. “Not yet,” he had said. But she saw him later . . . when he was tidied up, much better than seeing his face and the blood and the sick all over him. Allie shook his head the way you would when you were working and fiercesome midges were biting and nothing could make them go away.

The procurator fiscal looked at him, then at the jury, then back to Allie. “Thank you, Mr. Munro. No more questions.”

An excellent move, Mr. Fiscal,
thought Calum,
leaving everyone in court, reliving that morning with Allie Munro.

Calum stood. “Mr. Munro, I am sorry you lost your son.”

He paused, ostensibly to allow the witness to recover. Calum had been watching Allie Munro throughout his testimony. He had been waiting for some bend in the flow of the story, but he felt not a ripple.

“Tell us about the night Fraser went out and didn't return. Did you hear anything unusual that night?” Although Calum's voice was soft, it had the knack of carrying to every corner of the room.

“Not a thing.”

“Are you a heavy sleeper?”

“I am that. It's hard work on a farm.”

“Did you hear the other farmhands return?”

“No, I never did.”

“Dogs, did you hear dogs in the night?”

“Nothing.”

“Early that morning, was there anything different?”

“No.”

As Calum questioned the witness he sensed, no
felt
, something was bothering Mr. Alistair Munro—he was answering the questions with too much certainty. It could be the courtroom, it could be the sight of the men who had attacked his son, it could be he was telling everything he knew. Calum did not believe for one moment the man was lying, but
there is something unsaid,
he thought.

What
? Calum asked himself.
I have no idea,
he concluded. So he said, “I have no more questions.”

Allie Munro's face remained its clear, trustworthy self. But
deep in his brain, as brief as lightning, visible only if you were looking into the hazelnut brown of his eyes, there was a flash of relief. And Calum was looking. It was a trick one of his professors had taught him.
Watch them when they think it is all over,
he had told Calum.

Calum watched. Now he knew. He looked at Allie, holding his eye for a fraction of a second, then nodded, letting him know he knew. Then Calum sat down.

Allie Munro waited. All in the room waited quietly, recovering from the testimony. The hush had an intensity to it; to lose one's child was a fate no one should have to bear.

“Thank you, Mr. Munro.” The sheriff looked at the clock. “Court will reconvene at two o'clock.”

The shuffling and rustling of people and of papers was all that could be heard as the court dismantled until the next session.

Joanne and Rob left together and stood outside on the pavement, waiting for Mrs. Ross.

“I thought Calum Sinclair would have had more questions, didn't you?” Joanne asked.

“My father says you have to be part-actor, part-lawyer when it comes to appearing in court,” Rob replied, “and that last round was all about timing. See, the jury was so overwhelmed by Allie Munro's story, it was the wrong time to ask too much.”

“What a thing to have happen, to find your child like that. . . .”

“Joanne,” said a woman's voice.

Joanne turned. “Hello, Mum.” She stepped forward and took her mother-in-law's arm. “Are you all right? You're not looking too good.”

“Hello, Mrs. Ross,” Rob said. “Why don't you wait here with Joanne for a minute. I'll borrow a car and give you a lift home.”

“That's right good of you,” Mrs. Ross said. “I'm fine. Really. It was just hearing all that about finding Fraser.”

“I know,” Joanne said. “Tell you what, I'm coming home with you, and I am making the tea. Won't be as good as yours, but you're letting someone look after
you
for once.”

The poor soul,
Joanne thought.
She really must be feeling unwell, I've never known her to take up an offer of kindness on first asking.

Rob thought the afternoon session was another triumph for the procurator fiscal's side.

The fiscal, although a cautious man, felt that once he had a McPhee on the stand—it didn't matter which brother—he could conclude his case confident the accused would do his job for him.

Next to them, on an easel, standing close to the jury where all the court could see, was a large, simplified map of the area.

Geordie McPhee was called.

Good choice,
thought Calum,
he's the most glaikit of the two.

“Mr. McPhee, let's go through this with the aid of the map,” the fiscal started.

The accused looked around to see who Mr. McPhee was before he realized it was himself.

“You and your brother had a fight with Fraser Munro here.” The fiscal was using a teacher's pointer to touch the spot on the map where the hotel was clearly marked.

“No a fight really, more like pushing n' that,” Geordie replied.

“When you and your brother left the car park, where was Fraser Munro?”

“In the middle, lying on the ground.”

Calum tried his best not to groan.

“Then, Mr. McPhee, when you walked home, on this road,”
again he used the pointer, “you were not too far ahead of Fraser Munro and his friends.”

“Aye, we could hear them behind us.”

Calum scribed a note to himself that Fraser couldn't be that badly injured if he set off home immediately after the fight. Remembering his own warning, he put a line through the word “fight,” and scribbled “scuffle.”

“After the turnoff here,” the fiscal said, “you walked past the schoolhouse here,” again the gesture with the pointer, “and you set the dogs off.”

“Aye, we did that.” Geordie smiled as he remembered him and his brother shouting and singing to annoy the schoolmaster, who had given them many a belting with the extra heavy tause when they were boys.

“Now, Mr. McPhee, the Devil's Den, where Fraser Munro was found, is here. Diagonally across this woodland.”

Calum realized that the fiscal was now into a rhythm. With his map and his pointer and his “Mr. McPhee” this and “Mr. McPhee” that, he was making an impression on the listeners.

The fiscal was not a man that anyone would notice in real life. He was the person whom witnesses would say was “ordinary.” Ordinary height, ordinary brown hair—even his wife would have to pause and think if asked his eye color. But a gown and wig transformed him into a creature of stature and authority, and his wits sharpened when he donned the costume of office.

“Aye.” Again Geordie agreed. “That's the Devil's Den right enough.”

“So you
could
have,” the fiscal said, with the emphasis clearly on the “could,” “quite easily cut through the woods here to the Devil's Den?”

Calum shot up with an objection, but not before the fatal reply.

“No easy, but aye, we
could
have. . . .”

The final bit of Geordie's sentence was lost in the objections and the sheriff overruling the objections, so no one heard the faint, “But we didney.”

Calum looked down at his papers—he daren't look at the jury after that answer.

“Let's go back to the hotel car park.”

Once again Calum recognized a clever move and knew this would be the last question. Returning to the fight would leave the scene vivid in the minds of the jury.

“You said there was some pushing and shoving. Did you kick Fraser?”

“Only on his legs.”

“Did your brother kick him too?” the fiscal asked.

“He wanted to get stuck into him, but thon farm boys stopped the fun.”

“Did you kick him again? When he was on the ground?”

“Only the once when his friends wisney looking,” the accused replied cheerfully.

The procurator fiscal looked around in a careful, exaggerated turn of the head, his eyes sweeping the jury and said, “No more questions.”

It was no surprise to Calum Sinclair, but some of the spectators and most of the jury thought it abrupt when the procurator fiscal turned to the sheriff and announced that he had no more witnesses to call.

His case was simple and straightforward and hard to refute. The McPhee brothers hit Fraser Munro. Fraser Munro died.