Snare by Gwen Moffat

Author:Gwen Moffat [Moffat, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781445829418
Publisher: AudioGO

CHAPTER TEN

Sgoradale was suddenly a centre of activity, intensifying from the moment when Knox saw the thing in the water. Miss Pink had stressed that it had been immersed for a while and, when they drew near, coming in by sea, she was glad that she’d taken that precaution. The water was lower now and, in the heaving sea, a more or less globular object appeared at the end of the arm, all colour washed out: dark hair plastered to a splintered skull. The arm was no longer projecting but floating limply on the surface.

They went back to the village, Knox informed his superiors at Morvern and was told to guard the cove. Miss Pink told him to take a gun. ‘For the birds,’ she said, when he looked puzzled. He raised no objection when she accompanied him to the boat.

The weather was worsening and the sea rising but, once in the lee of the islands, they were sheltered from the wind. They landed in the cove. Gulls were swooping at the head and he fired at them wildly – a useless gesture. From cracked white bone, empty sockets regarded the shore, the head swaying on the stalk of a neck. The damage had been done already by crabs; gulls could do little more, ‘It’s been there days,’ he said.

She calculated. ‘A day and a half. Miss Swan saw him on Saturday night.’

‘He must have tied something round himself and jumped in.’

Questions crowded her mind but they were technical; she was appalled at the questions that he must be asking himself, had been ever since she told him of her grisly discovery. For him the body itself could have little importance compared with Hamish’s present whereabouts.

Their enforced intimacy did not last long. The shoulders of that dreadful form had just appeared when a boat emerged from the islands with four people aboard, ‘It’s the Chief Inspector,’ Knox said, and walked down to the water.

The men came ashore and pulled the boat up. The boatman was old Sinclair. He studied the partially exposed body without surprise; he wouldn’t be unfamiliar with the appearance of a body recovered from the sea. Knox introduced Miss Pink and she found herself scrutinised by pale blue eyes in a pale face. Detective Chief Inspector Pagan belied his name: short ginger hair under a flat cap, a smart trench-coat and dark tie implied conformity. His sergeant had the blunt features, the alert bearing of a bright Gorbals youth, but he wasn’t a youth, and the creases in his tanned cheeks spoke of the kind of wasting that goes with hard training. His name was Steer and he moved like a boxer. Pagan regarded the body without expression, but Steer had the look of a boy presented with his first bicycle. The fourth man was the diver.

There was no need to use a boat. The diver approached the body from the rocks and seemed scarcely out of his depth when his head submerged, giving the impression of a monster nosing its prey.

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