Murder on the Moor - C. S. Challinor [34]
He followed the most direct route across the lawn to the jetty where the boat was moored. Rid of its tarpaulin, the bottom had filled with rainwater. Rex looked back toward the house. A distance of not more than thirty feet, but no one looking from a window would have seen anything through the deluge the previous night.
All the perpetrator had to do was transport the body to the loch, dump it in the boat, and row out as far as possible before dispatching it into the chilly depths. In the low visibility, that person may not have noticed the islet where the corpse was ultimately washed up among the reeds.
Mulling over his meager findings, Rex entered the house and added his boots to those in the hallway. He compared the samples of soil and plant debris from the flowerbed on his to the mud on the guests’ footwear, and found something of botanical interest. Subdued male voices emanated from the library. Upon walking into the room, he saw that the television was switched on to the news. The newspaper photograph of seven-year-old Melissa Bates filled the screen, her dark hair braided on either side of a heart-shaped face.
Alistair, standing in the middle of the room, muted the sound when he saw Rex. “Nothing new,” he reported.
“It’s si—sick,” Donnie stuttered from the sofa where he sat beside his dad. “Who’d want to hurt a wee girl?”
“I hope they got the sadistic bastard this time,” Hamish replied.
Rex noticed that the men had all helped themselves to his stock of Guinness. Cans littered the end tables. Rob Roy sat in his leather wing armchair, a beer clasped in his lap.
“I pray this time they did,” Alistair concurred. “I hope they checked out Collins’ alibi thoroughly first. It’s funny how he always seems to have a good one available.”
“If it’s not Collins after all, you can’t go on blaming yourself for his acquittal,” Rex pointed out.
“I know when someone is lying. He’d have to prove he was more than a hundred miles from Rannoch Moor yesterday before I’d believe him, and it would have to be God vouching for him.”
“Rannoch Moor is a vast stretch of wasteland,” Hamish said, slurring his speech and causing Rex to wonder exactly how many beers he had consumed. “I visited there once and remember thinking I’d never want to break down in a lonely plash like that. They cut down most of the trees, you know, to prevent villains from lurking in the foresh. Have you ever been there, Rob?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“I know it quite well,” Rex told them. “I used to hike across Rannoch Moor, precisely because of the solitude. There’s a lot of wildlife, as you’d expect in such an unpopulated area.”
Rex actually knew the area better than most. Surrounded by mountains, Rannoch Moor brooded across fifty square miles, rising to over one thousand feet above sea level, the whole substratum of granite gouged by glens, slashed by rivers, and pitted with lochs. Gnarled roots of old pine trees from the ancient Caledonian forest beckoned from the peat. No road connected the moor from east to west, where deep bog swallowed everything put in its path.
By virtue of being so desolate, it provided a haven for all sorts of bird, animal, and plant life, which he had duly noted on his hikes. The shores and islets of trout-filled lochs attracted goosander, black-throated diver, and red-breasted merganser, while curlew and grouse haunted the heathery slopes. Golden eagles and osprey circled the rocky summits where hare and roe deer roamed undisturbed for the most part. Fragrant myrtle abounded in the bogs and a particular plant grew exclusively in the region, which was indeed a treasure trove for the observant nature lover.
“No sign of Cuthbert?” he asked in a casual tone.
“He went off in his daft hat after the ambulansh left,” Hamish told him. “He said your advocate friend Alistair could take over.”
“Trust that aristocratic twit to shirk his duties,” Alistair remarked.
Rex could not agree more. The investigation