found these? Surely, not even an inveterate slob would leave valuable gold coins lying around for any length of time in their car. They couldn’t have been here long. Perhaps this explained where all the mud had come from. Was this what Ross had been doing on his trips into the countryside, rooting up old coins?
Scotland as a whole was incredibly rich with history, but nowhere more so than this region. Myths and legends of buried treasure had for years drawn legions of dreamers and speculators to the Loch Ardaich pine forest and surrounding glens looking to get rich in other ways, armed with metal detectors and shovels and divining rods and God knew what else. Nobody had ever found anything of significant historic interest, barring a few rusty old arrowheads and, on one exciting occasion, a medieval Scottish claymore sword so decomposed that it looked like a rotted stick. Gradually, the treasure hunters had dwindled to a bare few – while the sceptics and naysayers became both more numerous and vociferous. ‘There’s nothing there’ had become the received wisdom.
But it looked as though Ross might well have proved the naysayers wrong. Why hadn’t he shared the news of his discovery?
Reflecting, Ewan felt a pang of betrayal. He’d always considered Ross his friend. Friends didn’t hide things from one another. Ross’s deliberate act of secrecy smacked of mistrust and deviousness. What did he think, that Ewan would try to steal his precious coins? Claim his share, because they’d been discovered on company time?
But hold on a minute, Ewan thought. This wasn’t making any sense. What were the coins doing lying about in the van in the first place? Who wouldn’t have brought them inside and made sure they were safely hidden away? Which meant, or implied, that the reason Ross had left these two particular coins in the van was that he didn’t know they were there.
Which in turn also meant, or implied, that the reason he didn’t know they were there was that he’d accidentally dropped them, in his typically clumsy and negligent style, while his attention was taken up with something else. And what else could possibly have distracted him in such a way?
One logical answer sprang to mind.
More coins.
Ewan could picture it perfectly. Ross, delirious with greedy joy at his find, scrambling home in such a rush that the gold was literally slipping through his fingers. How many more coins could he have found? Enough, obviously, that he hadn’t bothered even counting them until he got back to his flat, or else he’d surely have missed these two. Dozens of them? Scores? Who could say?
But then Ewan had another thought that made his blood turn cold.
If these two coins represented only a minor fraction of Ross’s haul, as logic suggested, then where were the rest? What if Ross had had them on his person, keeping them close, when the alleged killers struck? What if the killers had taken them?
And worst of all, what if the gold was the reason they’d killed him?
Suddenly this whole dreadful thing made some kind of sense.
Ewan pocketed the pair of coins and pulled out his phone to call his uncle. No reply, and no messaging service on which to leave a voicemail. Ewan only had the Italian landline number to reach him on. He wasn’t even sure if Boonzie possessed a mobile. Knowing him, perhaps not. There was an email address for him and Mirella, but Ewan had given up sending messages to it long ago.
Ewan couldn’t stand passively waiting any longer. He had to do something. People must be told about this. Now there was not only a potential witness to the crime, but a likely and compelling motive to boot.
Kinlochardaich had a church, a pub, a garage, a small convenience store and its own tiny primary school with about twenty-five pupils, but it had no police station – something many residents regarded as a blessing. The only cop hereabouts was Grace Kirk, and so Ewan clambered into his van and drove hurriedly over to the rented cottage in which she lived alone, just beyond the outskirts of the village. He was a little nervous about going to see her. They hadn’t been alone together since they were both sixteen years old and sort of, kind of, on-and-off going out. Not that it had been much of a relationship. A bit of hand-holding, a few awkward kisses and some sweet talk, nothing more serious. But Ewan had secretly worshipped and pined for Grace for years afterwards, and in fact was willing to admit to himself that he’d never quite got over her. The news of her return to Kinlochardaich a few months back had got him rather worked up, though he’d never had the courage to speak to her, let alone ask her out again. The local gossip mill had it that she and Lewis Gourlay, a regular of the drinking fraternity at the Arms, were an item. Ewan stubbornly refused to believe the rumour.
In the event, he needn’t have felt nervous because Grace wasn’t at home. Ewan’s remaining option was now to drive the thirty miles south-east to Fort William, the nearest town of any real size, and talk to the police there. The journey took an hour, thanks to the narrow and winding roads.
The police station was a generic slab-sided office building located out of town near Loch Eil, with misty hills looming in the background. On arrival Ewan blurted out his story as best he could to a duty officer, who became thoroughly confused, asked him to calm down and showed him into an airless, windowless interview room with a plain table and four plastic chairs. Locked in the room and made to wait, Ewan felt strangely like he was under arrest. The beady eye of a video camera watched from one corner.
Half an hour later, the door opened and in walked two middle-aged plainclothes men who introduced themselves as Detective Inspector Fergus Macleod and Detective Sergeant Jim Coull. Macleod was a large burly man with a neck like an Aberdeen Angus bull and a florid complexion, and Coull was a smaller sandy-haired guy with a brush moustache, lean and whippy in build, whose hands never stopped moving. They sat at the table and asked him to run through the account he’d told the duty officer.
Ewan patiently laid the whole thing out to them in detail. They listened gravely and Coull scratched occasional notes on a pad he kept close to his chest. When Ewan reached the part about the coins, the detectives asked if they could see them.
‘I only brought the one with me,’ he said, showing them the slightly newer one from 1746. It was a lie; the other was still in his pocket, but some mistrustful instinct made him keep it hidden. The detectives examined it with impassive faces, then Macleod asked if they could hang onto it as evidence. Ewan, who had seen this coming, reluctantly agreed. Coull put the coin in a little plastic bag and assured him it would be well looked after.
‘Don’t forget to drop the other one into the station when you get a chance,’ said Coull.
‘Of course,’ replied Ewan, thinking he’d do no such thing.
‘Now tell us again about this poacher who claims to have witnessed the alleged incident,’ Macleod said, leaning across the table with his chunky square hands laced in front of him. The term ‘alleged incident’ grated on Ewan somewhat, but he patiently and politely repeated what he’d already told them.
‘Like I said, that’s all I know about the man. I don’t know his name, or exactly who or what he saw, other than he witnessed four men pushing Ross into the loch and deliberately drowning him. He couldn’t swim, anyway.’
‘Couldnae swim, eh?’ Coull asked, glancing sideways at his colleague as though this were some suspicious detail critical to cracking the case. By now Ewan was starting to get peeved by their lacklustre response. He asked them what they intended to do about this, now they had the facts of the matter before them.
Macleod heaved his thick shoulders in a shrug. ‘To be honest, Mr McCulloch, I would hardly say we had the facts. What you’re reporting
