Dagger Magic

"We'll just have to wait and see," Somerville said. "Listen, sorry to cut you off short like this, but my watch is telling me I'm three minutes short of being late for an appointment. Where are you just now? Out in the car?''

"Aye."

"In that case, why don't you find a public phone box and call me back in half an hour? By that time, I'll be at the number two phone box I usually use when I'm out of the office. You know, the one on the square."

The phrase carried significance amongst members of the Order of Freemasonry to which both McLeod and Somerville belonged. To any uninitiated listener, the words would have conveyed nothing more than a set of directions. To McLeod, it was an indication that something more was afoot than Somerville was prepared to discuss over an open line.

"I know exactly the phone box you mean," he told his colleague. "I'll talk to you again in half an hour."

Slowing for a traffic signal, Cochrane watched his superior return the portable phone to its place in the glove box.

"Where to now, Inspector?" he asked. "You still want to go back to headquarters?"

McLeod's shrewd blue eyes were half-lidded in thought behind his gold-rimmed aviator spectacles.

"Not just yet," he told his young assistant. "Let's make a detour to Jordanburn. I have a feeling that Dr. Sinclair and I may have some further business to discuss."

On their way back across town, McLeod kept an eye out for a public telephone and finally spotted one outside a neighborhood grocery shop. Directing Cochrane to pull over, he got out of the car and went over to the call-box, fishing coins from his pocket. After consulting his pocket directory, he lifted the receiver and dialled.

Somerville's voice answered promptly. "That you, McLeod?"

McLeod fed a selection of coins into the slot. "Aye, it's me. Now, suppose you tell me what this is all about."

From the other end of the line came a deep intake of breath, like a weightlifter getting ready to heft a heavy set of barbells.

"Sorry about the cloak-and-dagger tactics, but I don't suppose I have to tell you how easy it is to scan a cellular phone. I meant what I said earlier about your friend Lovat. It's damned lucky for us that he was the one who found the body, not some other hapless member of the public. The last thing anybody needs is for the press to get wind of what I'm about to tell you." McLeod was fully on the alert now. "I'm listening."

"Well, for starters, this Scanlan fellow didn't just fall overboard and drown. He was helped along by a knife in the back and a clip on the head."

"Some brush with illegal fishermen, perhaps?" McLeod asked, for incursions of foreign fishing boats into British and Irish waters had led to more than one violent clash in recent months.

"That's what we thought at first," Somerville replied. ' Their control said that Scanlan and his partner were going out to check reports of illegal fixed nets, but he lost them when a fog came rolling in. The next anyone heard from them was the next day, when Scanlan's partner was found adrift in their boat."

"And what does the partner have to say?" McLeod asked.

"Nothing," Somerville said bluntly. "He had a matching knife wound."

"Ouch. Could he and Scanlan have gotten into a fight?"

"With each other? Not impossible, but bloody unlikely," Somerville said. "The word from the Northern Fisheries Board is that the two men had been working together for the better part of four years. Nothing to indicate that there was ever any friction between them."

"Which brings us back to square one."

"That's right. And it gets worse. The weapon that inflicted the wound in Scanlan's back wasn't your usual switchblade or hunting knife. This was something out of the ordinary: heavy, with a triangular blade, probably a good eight to ten inches long. Preliminary examination indicates that it pierced the lung. Even if Scanlan hadn't landed in the sea, he probably would have died of internal hemorrhaging within a matter of minutes."

"I see," McLeod said. "What about the partner's wound?"

"Pretty much the same, so far as we know."

"And the blow to Scanlan's head?"

"Probably not sufficient by itself to be fatal," Somerville said. "It's possible he got it falling out of the boat - hit his head on a rock or something. Actual cause of death may turn out to be drowning - not that it much matters to Scanlan. We'll know more after the post-mortem."

"When's that?"

"As soon as possible, if I have anything to say about it," Somerville growled. "I'll let you know exactly when and where, as soon as the arrangements have been made. You and that psychiatrist friend of yours - what's his name, Sinclair? - might well want to be present."

"Oh?"

Adam Sinclair's role as a police consultant was well documented, especially with respect to some of the stranger cases that came the way of the Lothian and Borders Police. Somerville's suggestion was enough to kick McLeod's internal warning system into full operation.