Enter Geordie Piltock! Assault with a lobster!

Chief Inspector Fotheringham-Smith, perhaps having been emotionally prepared by what Mary now thought of as the Latex Feargal Incident, acted with reasonable fortitude and calm when informed that this time, yes really, Birkadale was well and truly dead, but mostly missing and certainly in pieces. Hyphen fainted, though later blamed over-indulgence the previous evening in one of the experimental reestit mutton burgers being sold door-to-door by a team of illegal Skald butchers.

Roadblocks were set up and people diverted as they turned up for the daily grind at the North Ness Business Park, the Mareel arts centre, cinema and centre of therapeutic face-painting (workplace for Evangeline who had stumbled on the hands and head) and the Museum. Mary wondered if another notice would be written and erected: Closed due to cuts.

But no-one thought to tell Geordie Piltock, a creel fishermen who habitually landed his lobsters and crabs at the old Hay’s Dock, and had done for 40 years, through both its slow decay and rapid gentrification into a maelstrom of digestible heritage. His boat, an ancient double-ended Shetland Model named Dirty Bonxie, was a known hazard to visiting cruise ships, at whose massive hulls Geordie would often aim his tiny craft, its Stuart-Turner 2-stroke engine sputtering and Geordie shouting with rage about shoplifting tourists.

Geordie came tramping right through the taped-off crime scene wearing scaly, watery, oily wellies and waving two lobsters, their claws clamped in rubber bands, one in each hand. It was like a piece of Daliesque surrealism, Mary thought, watching him remonstrate with McKinstry. So much for the integrity of the crime scene. Besmirched by crustacea. He was taken aside by Jeffries and McKinstry, who was examining one of the lobsters carefully, salivating slightly.

Back at the station, and in conjunction with a constabulary communications officer in Inverness, tracked down in the toilets of the Phoenix Bar, where he was asleep in a urinal, a press release was cobbled together, which said only that enquiries were under way into the discovery of certain body parts, thought to be human, at the North Ness Business Park, Lerwick. Police Scotland’s Shetland Command duly apologised for the inconvenience to the citizenry of Lerwick, but urgent enquiries were continuing. At this juncture. So to speak.

But the Lerwick rumour mill had already gone into hyperdrive. Pictures of the head were on the internet (far too many would-be Don McCuilins with DSLRs and long lenses, not to mention iPhones) and the redoubtable, revived Hyphen was now involved (and delighting in) an endless conference call with his mainland superiors; meanwhile the Lerwick police station switchboard was threatening to melt under siege from journalists, bloggers, TV stations, podcasters and Geordie Piltock’s wife, whose name was not Mrs Piltock but, oddly enough, Mrs Cow. No-one knew exactly why. She wanted to know where her husband was (in custody, having hit PC Alwyn Jeffries with a lobster; McKinstry had bought the other one and had been seen Googling Thermidor recipés).

Doctor Sharon was in a much more sombre mood than during her previous encounter with the Latex Feargal, and had just about finished a painstaking survey of the herring barrels and their immediate surroundings. The position of the Birkadale hands and head had been photographed from every conceivable angle. Glenda Skolovinski, super SOCO, was still signed off sick, her trench mouth apparently unimproved.

“Sleazy bastard loved being photographed,” muttered Sharon. Mary, hovering by the Gutter’s Hut wall, could just about make her out. “He’d have loved all the attention. Maybe he did it himself.”

“Tricky,” said Mary, “Which first? Head or hands?”

“Just a tad difficult,” said Sharon. “In fact, quite a feat. Right, I’m going to bag up the bits. I can tell you this, though. He was cut up by someone who really knew what they were doing. And with very good equipment, near-surgical. Not like that chainsaw dismemberment in Unst two years ago. Or the North Roe rotavator business. Also, a lot of the blood had gone, obviously before the hands and head were moved here. So you’ll be looking for a garage with good drainage. Or a shed, or a barn. Or a house I suppose.”

“Or maybe just some red staining, somewhere in the Shetland Islands,”

“Or, you could just check the CCTV footage,” said Sharon, nodding at the single camera, high on its accusatory stalk, that clearly covered the entire scene.

“Gosh, I’d never’ve thought of that,” said Mary. Thank God we have a forensic genius to hand.”

Sharon nodded. “I’m a good noticer. Always have been. Noted for it.” She gave a tight little smile. “Just call me Dr Doolittle.”

To be continued…