‘Thank you, Morag,’ she said. ‘That was very helpful.’

  She found Jo standing in the road, being harangued by a tall, stocky man in a lumberjack shirt, who’d apparently climbed down from a truck. The truck’s engine was still chugging. Writing on the side read MacGibbon’s Hardware.

  Jo saw Anna and raised her eyebrows to say, Come here!

  ‘Hello there,’ Anna said brightly.

  The man wheeled about and glared.

  ‘This is Tom MacGibbon,’ Jo said. ‘This is Detective Inspector Anna Vaughan, who’s in charge of the investigation.’

  ‘Is that right?’ the man asked unpleasantly. His eyes travelled the length of Anna. He was in his fifties, tanned and weather-beaten.

  ‘Is there a problem, Mr MacGibbon?’ Anna asked mildly.

  ‘You could say,’ he growled. ‘I’ve just been up to Lochgilphead so that lass could scan my fingerprints – “elimination purposes”, so she said on the phone. Well, I’ve got no problem with that – why would I? Aye, so I’ve borrowed Glen’s tractor from time to time.’ His tone was rising. ‘Only when I get there, and she’s explaining how the scanner works, she tells me I’m one of three people who are known to borrow the thing from time to time. Doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines, does it? So, I’m a suspect, am I? Top of the list? Well, I don’t know how that works, seeing as I was in the store all afternoon. No one’s even bothered to ask where I was, and you’re asking me for my prints like I’m the number one suspect⁠—’

  ‘Mr MacGibbon,’ Anna interrupted. ‘We will talk to you, in time. We’re sure plenty of people have alibis for yesterday afternoon. This is a matter of elimination, as our colleague told you. We knew your prints would be in the cab of the tractor along with Glen’s. Right now, we’re interested in who else’s prints are in there. Now, there’s a limited number of people who use Glen’s tractor from time to time.’

  ‘According to who?’ he cried.

  Anna said calmly, ‘Glen himself. He explained the system he has of lending the tractor, where he keeps the key, that people pay him in cash or drink. We need to know who has used the tractor in the past – not just for the prints, but so we know who knows how to operate it.’

  He coughed out a dismissive sound. ‘Aye, well some folk have got short memories.’

  ‘Mr MacGibbon?’

  ‘So who was on the list apart from me? Bill Robertson, I reckon. Scott who does the boats.’ He waved towards the inn over the road. ‘Did he mention everyone else who’s driven that thing?’

  Anna frowned. ‘Like who?’

  ‘Like half the village!’

  ‘Tom—’ Jo began, hands up to calm him.

  MacGibbon shook his head in disgust. ‘Ask him about the farm show,’ he said. ‘In fact, ask anyone round here.’

  Jo was staring at him now, frowning, lips parted. ‘The farm show,’ she murmured.

  ‘In 2021,’ MacGibbon said. ‘July. The pandemic was winding down and some of the locals reckoned we needed something for the community. Outdoors, so it was still safe and what-not. So Glen and Tess hosted a show down at the farm. Got some classic cars in, other farms brought animals – llamas, baby goats. They had prizes for rose cuttings and sold cakes. Me and the wife went along for a bit. Glen was giving rides on his tractor and there was an obstacle course with cones in a field. You could drive the thing between the cones, and it was timed with a prize for the winner. Glen showed people how to drive it, then sat in the side seat while they took it round the course. Like I say, half the village had a go.’ He narrowed his eyes, angry and triumphant. ‘So there you go. Before accusing me and Tom and Bill, just be aware there’s plenty of others round here know how to work that thing.’

  ‘I see,’ Anna said, her neck and shoulders prickling.

  She looked at Jo who nodded. ‘I wasn’t there,’ the constable said, ‘but I remember it happening. Some of my family went along.’

  ‘You can ask Glen for names,’ MacGibbon went on. ‘Or better still, just take a look at the village Facebook page. I reckon Morag did a whole album of photos for the day. People sitting in the cab holding that big wheel and grinning away like idiots. I’m not on Facebook but the wife is.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Anna said, feeling somewhat winded by the revelation. ‘Well, that’s very helpful of you, Tom.’

  ‘Good,’ he snarled, then looked from her to Jo. ‘Always like to help.’

  And with that, he climbed back into his truck and, revving the engine, drove off through the village.

  ‘Well, wasn’t he charming?’ Anna said.

  ‘Oh, he always is,’ Jo said. ‘Did you show Morag the book?’

  ‘She thinks it’s Ellen’s. Did you talk to your dad?’

  ‘Just did, before Tom came by. The 3.15 ferry left bang on time yesterday afternoon. Pretty full sailing, too, due to some golf tournament that’s on. Over 300 people were onboard.’

  ‘Wow,’ Anna said. ‘In that case, can you get on to Corporate Comms right now and get an updated appeal out? Ask for all the usual channels, but if they could put something out on local radio on Islay and Jura, that could help.’

  Jo made the call. Meanwhile, Anna opened Facebook on her personal phone and found a page called ‘Baldrishaig Community’. The page’s administrators were Morag Robertson and Carol Baillie. She searched under the photos and found an album called Baldrishaig Farm Show, 10th July 2021. There were dozens of photographs, showing animals, smiling children, groups of locals posing under bunting, and the tractor, with photo after photo showing people sitting in the cab, Glen Cameron beside them. She recognised Morag, Rosie Blake, Rosie’s husband Olly and Harriet Maxwell. There were even videos, showing people driving the thing between cones.

  Jo finished her call. Anna showed her the page.

  ‘He’s right,’ Anna said gloomily. ‘Half the village have driven the tractor.’

  ‘Seems like it,’ Jo said, scrolling through the photos.

  ‘Go through the videos, will you? Make a note of everyone shown driving it. It proves nothing, really, but we’ll know someone’s lying if they deny ever driving the thing. It’s annoying how it widens the field so dramatically.’

  Jo gave a sudden small gasp. ‘Oh, gosh…’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look.’ Jo turned the phone in her hand. The photo showed a very slight, very frail-looking old lady in a green gingham dress, looking tiny in the tractor’s cab, a grinning Glen Cameron like a giant beside her. ‘That’s my wee granny.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’ve never seen that photo before. I remember my mum saying Gran was so excited that day. She really suffered in the pandemic, and she was so happy to be out and about.’

  ‘She looks like she was having a great time,’ Anna said, then saw Jo’s expression. ‘Is she…?’

  ‘She died in March this year,’ Jo said. ‘She was eighty-nine. She lived just near Scott and Vonnie’s place in Torinturk. To be honest, we were all surprised she made it that long. She had an iron will, old Bessie, but a weak body.’ She smiled sadly, then shook herself, as if embarrassed by her own show of sentiment.

  ‘Time to go see Carol Baillie,’ Anna said. ‘Find out what she can tell us.’

  17

  Duncan Baillie had suffered a stroke last May, his wife told them quietly in the little kitchen of their bungalow. She was his main carer, though a couple of women from social services came in each day to help with bathing, and dressing and undressing.

  ‘I spent thirty years nursing,’ the little woman told them. ‘I love my husband, and I love to look after him, but I also recognise the need to have time and activity for myself,’ she said. ‘That’s why I work, just a few hours each week, including in the shop. It keeps me sane. It keeps me connected to other people. People don’t come to visit any more. I’m so pleased you’ve come. Duncan will be pleased to see you too, though he’ll struggle to express it. He hears everything and understands, but he can’t speak.’

  ‘You deliver prescriptions too, don’t you, Carol?’ Anna asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said brightly, ‘for the chemist’s in Tarbert. On a Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, plus the occasional Saturday morning. I love it. I drive about and people are so grateful. One or two always insist on making me a cup of tea, and I love that too! As I say, it makes me feel connected.’

  She made tea, put biscuits on a plate, arranged pots, cups and saucers on a tray, then led the way through the cluttered but cosy little house. Duncan was waiting for them in a large and pleasant conservatory that faced south over a sweep of lawn and tall, clumped rhododendrons. Anna imagined this room would be roasting when the sun was out, but this afternoon the sky was thunderously black.

  ‘Here are our visitors, Duncan,’ Carol said gaily. She told him their names.

  ‘Hello, Mr Baillie,’ Anna said.

  ‘Oh, he’d like you to call him Duncan,’ Carol said, ‘wouldn’t you, dear?’

  Duncan Baillie, propped, half-lying in a large wicker armchair, effected a kind of nod and groaned a greeting.

  ‘Please, do sit down,’ Carol cooed.

  They took their places round a low coffee table.

  ‘This is a lovely spot,’ Anna commented, eyes on the garden.

  ‘Isn’t it? We’d have a view of the sea that way,’ Carol said, pointing, ‘if it weren’t for the vegetation. But we don’t mind, do we, dear?’ She laid a hand on one of her husband’s.

  She made a fuss of pouring teas and passing the milk jug around, then it was time to refuse biscuits.

  ‘Now, then,’ Carol said cheerily, ‘shall we get down to business? Ellen!’

  ‘How well did you know her?’ Anna asked.

  Carol shrugged. ‘She was our nearest neighbour! Well, actually, our nearest neighbours are Harriet and her boy, aren’t they? They’re up the hill, as you know. Ellen was down the hill – the first house. I’d see her. We’d pass the time of day. Well, we would if she was in a good mood.’ She gave a fond, slightly sad smile.

  ‘You were friendly?’

  The smile became strained. ‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly. Not latterly, in any case. No… I’m not sure Ellen had any real friends.’

  ‘She had a niece,’ Anna said. ‘Beth Howie.’

  ‘Yes. I think I must have met her once or twice. She was never really down here. I don’t believe they got on. Ellen rather repelled people, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes. It’s horrible to talk unkindly about her when… when she’s only just passed away, but… but you see, I really think the only way she could really cheer herself up was by causing problems for other people.’ She winced now the words were spoken. ‘Nevertheless, I felt sorry for her. I pitied her.’ She nibbled the edge of a sugary biscuit, then wiped a crumb from her lower lip.

  ‘How long have you both been here?’ Anna asked, including Duncan in the question.

  ‘Five years,’ she said. ‘We’d bought the house just at the start of the pandemic – in March 2020. Duncan decided it was time we both retired. I didn’t want to, but there you go. We couldn’t actually move until the July, though, so we were rather stuck. Of course, the couple who bought our place in Barrhead, they were coming from London, so they weren’t allowed to move in either. What a horrible time. But we landed here eventually and made it our home.’ She was touching her husband’s hand again. ‘We got stuck in, didn’t we, dear? I took on shifts at the village shop and Duncan planted the vegetable garden and began helping at the food bank in Tarbert.’

  ‘You’re one of the administrators of the village Facebook page, too, I understand.’

  ‘I am. At the heart of things, so to speak.’ She beamed, but then it faded. ‘Then I’m afraid Duncan had his stroke and… well, that complicated things somewhat. As I say, that was in May last year. So began a month in hospital, in Lochgilphead, but they were so good. So very kind. They let me spend nights there, so I could be with him. And of course, our local GP is a very nice man indeed. Dr MacCorkindale, you know? Vernon. His surgery is in Tarbert, but he lives just outside the village. If you turn and go up the hill into the forest just beside the pub, his is the big house up there. Baldrishaig House. Very grand. A widower now, of course, but so positive. So committed to his job and to his patients.’

  Anna let her chirrup on for another few minutes, then said, ‘Tell us about the jam, Carol.’

  ‘Oh! That. Yes.’ She sighed, depressed. ‘Awful. On top of everything else. And on Christmas Eve. How wicked.’

  Rain came on steadily, big drops bursting on the conservatory’s glass roof. They looked up in unison. The sky overhead was very black now. A gust of wind made the conservatory’s frame creak. Out in the garden the rhododendrons lurched as if they were coming to life.

  ‘It was Harriet who alerted me,’ Carol said quietly. ‘She drove past the hutch where the jam was for sale – it was down at the bottom of the hill, on the corner where you turn to come up. Harriet saw some of the jars were broken, with jam dripping down. She stopped the car to check and saw all the jars were broken. “Someone’s smashed the lot,” she told me. She was very upset, as was I. I walked down the hill with her. Every single jar! Some had had the lids unscrewed and the jam tipped out, others were just smashed, as if someone had taken a hammer to them.’ There were tears in her eyes and she shook her head. ‘Such a waste. I stopped selling them after that. I made marmalade in January and gave one or two jars away, but I didn’t offer any for sale.’

  ‘Who do you think did it?’ Anna asked.

  Carol hesitated, eyes on her teacup. Then she said, ‘I didn’t know at first. Youths passing by, I thought. Or someone with a grudge, though I couldn’t think who. Then Ellen said something to me. We were both in the shop one day, in January. I was buying jam, bread, butter, some other bits and pieces. Ellen queued behind me at the till. “Of course, you have to buy your own jam now, don’t you?” she said. Just like that – in that wheedling tone. And I knew then it was Ellen who’d done it.’

  ‘Did you challenge her?’

  ‘No. No point. You could never win with Ellen. She’d deny things and start attacking you, saying you were the wicked one. Ask Morag after her cat was poisoned. Ellen just threw it back in her face.’

  ‘But you told PC Stewart?’

  ‘Yes. Sam’s very kind. He came out to see the damage. He even offered to help clear it up. But he explained there was very little he could do.’

  ‘You had an argument with Ellen one time, didn’t you?’ Anna asked. ‘Quite a public one, I believe.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, that…’ Carol looked at her hands, embarrassed. ‘Yes. Well, I regret that. Again, though, Ellen provoked it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was only recent. A month ago. She was following me in her car. I don’t know why. Into Tarbert, from there to Inverneil and back here again. I knew she was doing it. So I stopped the car, down in the village. So did she, just behind me. I got out and asked what she was doing. She said minding her own business. I’m afraid I got quite upset, then she got out and began berating me.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘My driving. She said she considered my driving “erratic and hazardous”. I told her I considered myself a very safe driver. She said she was going to buy one of those dashboard cameras and take videos of me for the police. I couldn’t speak, I was so angry. I mean, my car is my freedom! I got back in it and drove home. She followed me, but not up the hill. A very strange woman.’ She added quietly, ‘I started dreading going out. The idea she might be sitting in her car down the hill, ready to follow me, possibly filming me. Except she didn’t do it again. As though she had something else to focus on.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, she was always finding someone else to persecute, often over the slightest thing. She was wicked to poor Harriet about her boy. And she persecuted that young couple along the road over one of their little girls, I believe. She did it to the doctor, too. Threatened to report him. I was a nurse. That sort of complaint can destroy a medical career. It didn’t get as far as the GMC, I’m pleased to say. Well, Ellen wasn’t happy about that! She started saying his wife wasn’t really ill. That he was drugging her. But it wasn’t true! It wasn’t. I knew Didi MacCorkindale. She was genuinely poorly. Cancer that spread. And poor Vernon was so distressed about it. He was a medical man but could do nothing for her. Awful. Didi was in dreadful pain and then she died. Still, Ellen kept going on about it. She, erm…’

  She caught herself and peered from Anna to Jo.

  ‘Yes, well…’

  ‘What, Carol?’ Anna prompted. ‘What were you about to say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, and smiled an unconvincing smile. ‘Nothing at all. Ignore me. Besides,’ she went on with some satisfaction, ‘Ellen’s dead now. There’ll be no more rumours, no more persecution. No more mischief. Oh! Listen to me,’ she said, a hand fluttering to her mouth. ‘That sounds so awful, as though I’m pleased. I’m not pleased. Forgive me. It’s dreadful what’s happened. Really very dreadful.’

  Anna left a pause, then said, business-like, ‘We’re asking everyone to tell us where they were yesterday afternoon. It would be most helpful to know where you were.’

  ‘Yes,’ Carol said, unbothered. ‘Yes, I understand. I was out and about delivering prescriptions. As I said, Thursday is one of the afternoons I work. Usually from one until five.’

  ‘Including yesterday?’ Anna prompted.

  ‘That’s right.’ Carol looked out over the garden. Rain was falling heavily now. The leaves of the rhododendrons gleamed with it. ‘I must have left here a little before one,’ she said. ‘I drove back towards Tarbert, then up the A83. I had deliveries in Inverneil, then Ardrishaig, then up in Kilmartin. Actually,’ she said brightly, ‘I could tell you exactly. Give me one minute.’

  She rose and left the conservatory, returning a few seconds later with a small sheaf of stapled papers.

  She sat and peered myopically at the top page. ‘Yes. Mrs Pedley, 4 The Croft, Inverneil – it tells me the contents of the prescription. I’m not sure I should share that with you. Patient confidentiality. Then Mrs McGregor, Flat 3, 2 Birch Grove in Ardrishaig.’ She drew a finger down the page, her lips moving silently. ‘Twelve deliveries, as far north as Kilmartin. I think I was back here just before five. You could check all of these, I’m sure. But—’ she bit her lip ‘—I’d prefer if you asked the pharmacist yourselves. Much better if she handed over the information. She might want to… What’s the word? Redact? Yes, she might want to redact the details of what each person received.’