“She had no thyroid. She was taking artificial thyroid hormone because she’d just had her thyroid taken out. Cancer, I suspect.”

“And?”

“Well, she took too much of it, you understand. The hormone. That’s the T4. You’ll have to fish out the medical records, but the thinking is she forgot what she was doing and took two pills a day instead of one, two or three times. And then she took the cold medicine and it gave her a stroke. Far too much of that too. Small dose together might even have killed her, but here there was no chance. Some people have no sense when they’re medicating themselves.”

“Stroke?”

“Aye. Bad luck. Sort of thing they warn you about at the chemist. It could also be suicide, I guess. But it’d be a very clever way to do it—too clever. Easier to get a gun like the Mackay woman.”

“Getting a gun is not that easy for most of us,” noted Gorrie. They hadn’t been able to trace the weapon, though he’d put DC Andrews back on it three days before.

Conall shrugged. “More than likely it was an accident. Medicine was taken off the market a year or two ago.”

“Matched the type on the floor?”

“I believe that will be the report.”

“Do you ha’e anything else for me, laddie?”

“Not a thing. Arm nick was the sort of thing you would get giving blood. Nice work on the thyroid incision, I’m told. Takes a real artist to sew it up.”

“Her face was puffed up.”

“Aye. The sinuses. She had a cold, remember?”

“Aye.”

“There was a bruise on her chest, probably bumped herself falling.”

“Can you give blood when you have a cold?” Gorrie asked.

“Why not? Five cigars,” added Conall. “And I’d like the disc back when you’re done.”

“Aye,” Gorrie grunted.

An accident then, like council member Ewie Cameron’s accident. A coincidence, random and unconnected. The sort of thing that happened all the time.

A walrus waited for Gorrie in his office, polishing its tusks on a large piece of pastry supplied by one of the girls down the hall. He sat behind Gorrie’s desk, brushing crumbs away with his stubby fins, every so often touching his enormous mustache to see if any had strayed there.

The walrus was the deputy area commander, whose arrival at the Inverness Command Area’s CID section could bode no good at all.

“Sir,” said Gorrie, who had been warned by scurrying comrades before he approached.

“Inspector Gorrie, I’m pleased you could make it this morning,” said the deputy commander, Nab Russell.

“I’ve been nosin’ around,” answered Gorrie. “What brings you here, Chief?”

“There are rumors, Inspector, that your methods of detection are not proceeding with the snap and polish expected of the Northern Constabulary,” said Russell.