The provenance of the brown paper bag with it’s content of nails and staples continued to be the subject of police enquiry, in the course of which Constable Fergus paid an official visit to Polloch.
“This is a sample of what Mr. Munro’s car ran over,” he explained earnestly, opening his hand and revealing several nails and a staple. “These are 125mm galvanised nails, standard 5mm. The staples are 40mm, check the little barbs on the sides. They stop the staple from working loose; good for fencing.”
The logistics ganger looked at the nails. 125mm you say? Odd length. We get the usual 150mm nails, 6 inch in old money. We have barbed staples though, need them especially for the fencing posts. Everybody uses them.”
“Oh, well,” Fergus said, “if you don’t use that size of nail…”
“What size of nail?” Mackinnon walked into the office.
“125mm, these,” Fergus again showed the galvanised nails and staples. Mackinnon stared at the sharp grey objects, dull in the policeman’s palm.
“Staples like that, we have them for the fencing,” the ganger said, “ but our order is for the regular 150mm nails. I didn’t know they bothered to make 125mm, so these couldn’t have come from here,”…and this line of enquiry fell victim to exhaustion soon after.
Occam’s Razor, legacy of a thirteenth century monk and tenet of the local inspector, required further fact in order to form a reasonable hypothesis beyond that of carelessness by an unknown person (or persons) of either gender resulting in tragedy. The police enquiry began to rationalise itself in filed reports that emphasised the painstaking nature of the procedures followed and the absence of any indication of evil intent.
Several lines of enquiry opened and closed. Various vehicle owners were questioned. The corpse was examined and released to its family. A report to the Procurator Fiscal was studious. Local speculation around the death of Munro withered, lacking the oxygen of information.