Obituary: DCI Angus MacLeod, murder squad officer

DCI Angus MacLeod: Murder squad officer who started his working life as an Isle of Lewis ploughman, aged 13

Born: 23 October, 1927, Isle of Lewis. Died: 21 September, 2013, in Paisley, aged 86

Detective Chief Inspector Angus MacLeod, who was involved in 31 Scottish murder cases in Strathclyde, all of which were solved bar one, has died at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, aged 86.

He was born on the MacLeod family croft and brought up in the village of Swordale on the Isle of Lewis, where his first language was Gaelic.

He learned only faltering English at Knock School, which he left to go to work as a ploughman at the age of 13.

Angus was the second oldest of six children born to Catherine and Alexander MacLeod.

He was a popular young man in Point where, with his horse called Jimmy, he tilled the fields of every family in the small crofting community.

He took the boat to the mainland and joined Dumbarton Burgh Police Force on the 19 March, 1949.

Angus was the last officer to be recruited by that small force before it was disbanded and integrated into Dunbartonshire Constabulary, which later became part of Strathclyde Police.

The beat allocated to him by Chief Constable Bert Gunn was Dumbarton High Street and the working class communities of Brucehill and West Bridgend.

Big Angus, as he was widely known, developed his English on the beat, making himself hugely popular in the community where people loved his friendly ways and his lilting accent.

The children especially liked him for the fact that he chased them for playing football in the street or stealing apples from gardens in nearby posh Kirktonhill but never seemed to be able to catch any of them.