It was early. The exceptional spell of warm, still weather had brought tourists and midges in almost equal number to this island off an island on the north-west coast of the most north-westerly outpost of the European continent. The voices of children rang out in the bright, clear morning, tiny footprints left in wet sand. A shouted warning rose above the rush of the sea, as parents laden with folding chairs and rugs and a hamper hurried down the tiny single-track road towards the shore. But a solitary, sharp scream sent back fear like an arrow, and everything was dropped, sand flying in the wake of swift feet as they sprinted towards the water�s edge.

The children were standing either side of a human shape lifting and falling only slightly on the ebb and flow of the sea, hair fanned out like seaweed in the sand. The young woman stared up into a sky reflected in the blue of her wide-open eyes. A pretty face, but bruised on the left side, the blood leached from a gash on her cheek by seawater. Her T-shirt was torn, ripped away at the neck, one breast exposed. She was barefoot, white panties shredded in bloodstained ribbons.

One of the children turned a pale face towards her parents, the death of innocence already apparent in dark eyes. And in a tiny voice said, �Will she be alright?�

George Gunn folded his jacket and laid it carefully on the driver�s seat before swinging the door shut. It was not gone nine-thirty, and yet the morning sun was already hot. He clipped his Motorola Airwave to his belt and folded up each sleeve of his blue shirt to just a fraction below the elbow.

�It�s going to be another hot one, George.� Detective Constable Louise McNish appeared pleased by the prospect.

Gunn grunted and glowered at her across the roof of the car. He preferred the wind blowing in off the sea, the sting of rain in his face. All a matter, he supposed, of what you were used to. McNish, a good twenty years his junior, was a mainlander. From the soft south. Sometimes known as Glasgow. They ran for cover at the first sign of real rain there. He turned his gaze towards the shore.

From the gravel parking area above the beach he saw the black rock exposed at low tide breaking through a skin of sand, high tide delineated by the seaweed it had left behind in wavy lines. The smell of it carried on the breeze, salty and familiar. Next to a white Nissan X-Trail, the ambulance was parked almost on the sand itself, the flashing of its blue light nearly lost in the brilliance of this late August sunshine. A woman crouched at the tideline, leaning over a figure that lay prone on the gentle shelving of the sand. A uniformed police officer and two ambulance men stood watching. Death seemed particularly inappropriate on such a morning.

Gunn picked his way across the beach, Louise following in his wake, black boots leaving deep treads in soft sand. The uniform nodded acknowledgement and stepped aside. The doctor looked up from the body. Fair hair dragged back and held out of her face by clasps. A strong face, pale, without make-up. She looked weary. �Just a lassie,� she said.

Gunn let his eyes fall to the body and felt something turn over in his stomach. He knew this girl. Not personally. But her face was very familiar. A striking face, full lips that he had seen often parted in laughter. Her long silken chestnut hair lay tangled among the seaweed, blue eyes gazing up at him, almost in accusation. He knew, of course, that was just in his mind. The guilt he always felt when confronted by a death he had not been there to stop. He closed his eyes. What was her name again?

�Caitlin Black, Detective Sergeant,� the doctor said, as though she had overheard his thought.

Gunn nodded. Yes, he remembered now. He opened his eyes and ran them over the familiar contours of her face, taking in the bruising below her left eye and the gash on her right cheek. �How did she die, Sam?�

Dr�Samantha Blair had been on the island for a full year now, filling a vacancy at the GP practice in Stornoway, and bringing the invaluable expertise of three years working as a pathologist�s assistant in Aberdeen. The powers that be in Church Street had immediately enlisted her services as police surgeon. In that capacity she had attended suicides and accidental deaths. But it seemed as though this might be her first murder. �Violently,� she said. �Much of the contusion you can see, the abrasions about her body and the wound on her face, occurred ante-mortem.� She pursed her lips. �And she may well have been raped. Quite brutally.� She tugged at the girl�s torn T-shirt, drying now in the sunshine. �Ripped nearly off her. Panties torn. Vaginal damage.�

�Cause of death?�

Sam shrugged. �Impossible to say. Could have been a blow to the head. She might have drowned. Her lungs are filled with water, though that doesn�t mean anything. It�ll take an autopsy to establish exactly how she died.� She stood up now, stretching stiffened muscles. �I�ll take a vaginal swab for DNA. If there�s semen there it�ll give us a clue to the identity of the rapist, who is probably also her killer.� She sighed. �It�ll be a few days, though, before we get results back from the lab.�

All Gunn could hear were the cries of gulls flying around the cliffs where they nested, the sound of the sea as the retreating tide sucked it out once more into the Black Loch. Sunlight fell, sparkling like jewels, on the surface of the water, and beyond the headland he saw a gannet diving for fish somewhere out on East Loch Roag. Life continuing as it had since the beginning of time on this convergence of the Atlantic Ocean and the north-western fringe of the European landmass. But not for this poor dead girl at his feet.

And he knew that all this would still be here when he, too, was gone. He had been resisting retirement, despite the pleading of his wife, with the sense that it would only accelerate him towards an end he had resolutely refused to acknowledge all his life. An end that was becoming increasingly hard to ignore. He let his eyes fall again to the lifeless form of Caitlin Black at his feet and felt reproached for surviving this long when someone so young had not. Someone with everything to live for.

Sam dropped again to her hunkers, and her voice dragged him away from his reverie. �You should look at this, George.�

He blinked and refocused, crouching beside her as she began carefully to part the girl�s salt-crusted hair. The ends of a fine gold chain, irretrievably tangled among the individual hairs, caught the sunlight. The doctor turned the dead girl�s head to one side and revealed a small shiny gold object nestled behind her left ear. It was still attached to the broken chain. Gunn frowned and peered at it more closely.

�What is it?�

�A pendant of some kind.� It was round, the same gold as the chain, and cut in the shape of an eye, with a virulent blue stone set at its centre like an iris. �A sapphire, I think.�

Gunn looked at her, surprised. �Real?�

She shrugged. �Beyond my field of expertise. You�ll need to ask a jeweller.�

�Hers, do you think?�

�Could be.�

Gunn reached around to the back pocket of his trousers for his Samsung phone. It was what they issued them now, a replacement for the traditional police officer�s black notebook. Officially known, prosaically, as a Mobile Handheld Device. Unlike the old notebooks, you could take photographs with it, record statements, type in reports and send them wirelessly. Gunn hated it. He fumbled to activate its camera function. Louise leaned over and tapped the screen. �Just swipe up now, George.�

He snatched it away from her in annoyance. �I know how to use it!�

An image of the girl lying in the sand flickered on to his screen. He took several photographs before asking the doctor to part the hair again so that he could get a close-up of the pendant. He stood up, heard a crack in his knee and felt a twinge of pain in his lower back. �Anyone know where she lives? How she got here?�

The uniform was eager to help. A young constable, not long out of probation. �When I first arrived,� he said, �there was a woman at that house over there.� He waved a hand vaguely towards the far side of the beach. �She said there was a light on all night at the house on the cliffs.� And he turned to point almost directly overhead. Black rock rose twenty-five feet into the blue of the sky, and the gable ends and pointed dormers of a white-painted cottage with slate roof broke the skyline.

Gunn was out of breath and trailing several paces behind his younger colleague by the time he and Louise had climbed the single-track road to the top of the cliffs. And he was glad of the stiffening breeze that blew in off the loch up here, cooling the heat in pink cheeks and providing much needed oxygen for toiling lungs.

The cottage was bigger than it appeared from below. An outbuilding attached itself at right angles to the far gable, creating a sheltered semi-courtyard behind the house. A vehicle gate stood open, but the pedestrian gate was jammed shut, and Gunn and Louise had to pick their way across a cattle grid.

The chippings that had once covered the courtyard were mostly lost in mud baked hard by the recent unaccustomed dry spell. The house itself had seen better days, whitewash peeling from roughcast walls, weeds growing in profusion around the step at the back door. A battered old lime green Ford Fiesta stood parked by the outbuilding.

Gunn stopped to take a photograph of it before approaching the vehicle. He pulled on latex gloves to open the driver�s door. The interior of the car was faded and tashed, and Gunn was struck by the smell of damp fighting for ascendancy over the scent of stale perfume and the musty odour of wet dog. He stooped to pick a lipstick holder from a mud-caked rubber mat on the floor. Fuchsia pink. He placed it carefully on the worn seat cover and glanced in the back. Half a dozen dog-eared fashion magazines were strewn across the back seat and liberally covered by muddy paw prints. He closed the door and rounded the car to the passenger side, where he sat in to open the glove box. Sweet wrappers and empty packs of chewing gum fell out, along with the other detritus of a teenage girl�s life. A broken mascara brush. A dried-up bottle of pale blue nail varnish. Right at the back was an owner�s manual, water-stained and tattered. Gunn leaned over to riffle through the stuff that had fallen out, and a short plastic wand about six inches long, pink at one end, white at the other, caught his attention. He picked it up. A small rectangular window at the white end displayed two short parallel red lines.

A shadow fell through the open door and he turned to see Louise leaning in for a closer look.

He said, �Is this what I think it is?�

She bent down to retrieve an empty cardboard box from the floor and held it up. �Well,� she said. �It�s not a Covid test.�

�Jesus!� The oath slipped from his lips in a pained whisper. Somehow, this only made it worse. He pulled himself together and photographed both items before slipping them into a clear plastic evidence bag and sealing it shut. He slid out into the warmth of the sun again. �Check out the perimeter of the house, Louise. And follow that path out to the far end of the headland. If there�s anything kicking about out there, we want to retrieve it before the wind gets up.� He turned to cast his eye over the back of the house, windows almost opaque with dirt and masking the gloom beyond. �I�ll take a look inside.�

The house was cool, thick stone walls defying the best efforts of the sun to penetrate its inner chill. There was a lingering hint of dampness in the air, and yet a sense of recent human presence. Something hard to define. Olfactory, perhaps. Bodies. Sweat. And something else. Alcohol, he realized, as he stepped from the gloom of a narrow hallway into the kitchen and saw a half-empty bottle of white wine catching the light of the sun that angled through a front window. Two glasses stood beside the bottle on a stained worktop. One still with an inch of wine in the bottom of it, a smudge of fuchsia pink on its rim.

There were crumbs on the worktop, and Gunn flipped open a pedal bin to look down on the remains of a half-eaten sandwich and its plastic wrapping among crumpled paper bags and napkins, and two empty wine bottles.

He crossed to the window and shaded his eyes from the sunlight to peer out. From here, the body and the little group of people attending to it down below were invisible. But he could see across to the far side of the bay where sunlight glinted off the bonnet of his car, and a woman was hanging up washing on a line outside a house on the hill above. He glanced at the ceiling and saw that the kitchen light was still on, although it would have been hard now to separate it from the wash of sunlight flooding the room. But it would surely have been visible at night from the house across the way, and he assumed that the woman hanging out the washing was probably the one who had reported it to the constable.

From the kitchen-diner, he wandered back into the hall. A door opened off it into a small living room with vintage nineteen-seventies wallpaper, faded and browned by years of peat smoke. The distinctive toasty odour of the peat lingered still, though who knew how long it was since a fire had burned in the grate?

Upstairs were two bedrooms, one either side of a small landing, separated by a tiny bathroom. In the room to his left, a lumpy old bed with wooden head- and footboards was covered with a frayed candlewick bedspread, dark blue, almost black, like a widow�s modesty. In stark contrast, the bed in the other room lay shamelessly naked, exposed by sheets flung aside to reveal the chaos of what looked to have been frenzied activity, depressions left by heads pressed into soft pillows. The room smelled of sex. There were stains on the sheets, and the evidence of long chestnut hair shed on white pillowcases.

Something caught Gunn�s eye on the floor, half hidden beneath the bed. He crouched down to see that it was a discarded credit card receipt. Standing up again, he crossed to the dormer. He tilted his head at an angle to see Louise coming back along the path from the headland, and took his Airwave from his belt to call her.

It was a couple of minutes before he heard her coming into the house and he shouted her up the stairs. She stepped into the bedroom and her eyes fell straight away on the bed. She turned to look at Gunn. He said, �We�re going to have to dust for prints, swab for DNA. And photograph everything here. Starting with this...� And he crouched once more, this time to photograph the credit card receipt before lifting it between latex fingers to examine it more closely.

�What is it?� Louise said.

Gunn dropped it into an evidence bag. �Credit card receipt from the Co-op in Stornoway. Probably for that half-drunk bottle of wine sitting downstairs in the kitchen.�

And still the good weather continued, as persistent as the summer rain that usually blew in off the Atlantic at the approach of autumn. All the way during the long drive up the west coast to Ness, Gunn sat silent in the passenger seat. Impervious to the sunshine. Wrapped in his own deep despond of gloom. He had been happy to let Louise drive, knowing that he would not be able to concentrate on the road.

For most of the forty-minute trek across the moor, he had gazed sightlessly through the windscreen, north and east, across its vast featureless expanse. The heather was already in bloom, an ocean of undulating purple that shimmered off into the uninhabited interior of the island, where at other times of the year blue flowering water forget-me-not would fill sodden hollows, and the yellow of marsh marigolds grew along roadside ditches.

Villages strung out like beads on a necklace lined the road north, fully exposed to the anger of the winter storms that blew across three thousand miles of ocean to vent their fury on a resolute coastline that reflected the character of those who lived there. Nothing grew, beyond a few stunted bushes, to offer any kind of protection. Trees here had an even more tenuous hold on the landscape than people. On the west side of the road, the land that stretched off to the shore was known as the blackland, the fertile machair that had drawn folk to settle here in the first place.

And each settlement had raised its own church, different denominations of the same religion, reflecting man�s inability to agree on anything. The Church of Scotland. The Free Church of Scotland. The Free Church of Scotland Continuing. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Gunn had long ago given up counting. The things you saw as a police officer made it hard to have faith in anything.

They passed the dominating edifice of the Free Church at Cross, with its bell-free bell tower, and accelerated up the slope beyond. Then minutes later they began the gentle descent towards Port of Ness. At Crobost Stores, Louise turned right, and they climbed up to the village of Crobost itself, stretched out along the crest of the hill. An arc of golden sand opened out below them, sweeping around to the harbour at the port. Sunlight coruscating across the bay was blindingly bright, and Gunn slipped on a pair of sunglasses, as much to hide behind as for protection.

On their right, a metalled turning crossed a cattle grid to Crobost Church, with its commanding view across the north of the island to the lighthouse at the Butt. A sprawling car park reflected the continuing influence of the church in the local community, and the manse that overlooked it stood proud against the blue, blue sky. The home at one time of Donald Murray, a man who had killed to save a life, and lost his own in consequence.

Which made Gunn think again of Fin Macleod.

It was many years ago now that he had first come to Ness with Fin to show him the place where Angel Macritchie had been murdered. In the boat shed just down there at the port. And it was almost as many years since he had last seen him. Not since he�d left the island following the shooting of Donald Murray outside the church court in Stornoway. He had liked Fin from the moment he met him. A troubled man, yes, but a cove with a good heart. He had deserved better than the things fate had flung at him in the past. And better, Gunn knew, than those that lay immediately ahead. He closed his eyes and felt despair in his soul.

�Is this it?� Louise�s voice crashed into his darkness and he opened them again.

�Yes.�

She turned into a gravel parking area above a nineteen-fifties pebbledash bungalow that sat down below the road looking out across the bay.

�Do you want me to come with you?�

He nodded and they both stepped out of the car into a soft breeze blowing off the moor to the south. Gunn stood for a moment to gather himself, and took a deep breath.

Louise followed him down the path and they climbed to the door. Gunn rapped on it three times, then stood back to remove his sunglasses and slip them into a breast pocket. The knot of his tie felt uncomfortably tight.

It took an eternity for the door to open, and a slip of a girl stood there barefoot in T-shirt and baggy jog pants. It was years since Gunn had last seen Donna. He knew that she must be in her late twenties, or older, though she still gave the impression of a twelve-year-old. Small. Slight-built. Fragile. He was shocked, all the same, by her appearance. Sallow skin, almost translucent blue. Penumbrous shadows beneath her eyes. Shoulder-length hair was greasy, an almost indeterminate colour, and dragged back behind her ears. There was fear in her dark stare.

From somewhere Gunn dredged up his voice. �Hello, Donna.� And even to himself it sounded unreal. He paused. �Is Fionnlagh at home?�

It was overcast, a dull featureless morning, as Fin drove them north on Helen Street. Weather that reflected their mood. There had been little sleep. Fin wasn�t sure that he had slept at all, and he was certain that Marsaili had not. He was up making coffee at five, unable to lie in bed any longer, and sat staring down into the back court until the faint light of dawn bloomed into the grey light of depression.

Hours spent on the phone the previous evening had established some cause for hope. Fionnlagh had not been arrested. He had gone voluntarily to the police station in Stornoway for questioning. But a teenage girl had been murdered, and the police felt that Fionnlagh was connected in some way with her death.

Seats on the first available flight to the island had been booked and checked in online. Overnight bags were packed and sat side by side on the back seat of the Honda. Marsaili had wanted him to phone his boss at Govan, but Fin felt the need to speak to him in person.

McDonald�s was doing brisk breakfast business, open 24/7 and popular with officers on the night shift. Further on, vehicles were gathering on the forecourts of industrial redbrick sheds with corrugated asbestos roofs, and the sky spat its first drops of rain at Fin�s windscreen as he turned into the police parking.

�Stay here,� Fin said and, without waiting for a response, got out and walked quickly towards the three-storey police headquarters.

Vaguely familiar faces nodded to him as he climbed the stairs to the second floor and strode along the east corridor. He had never felt at home here and had the sense now of it being an alien, even hostile environment.

The office of the Cyber Crime Forensics Coordinator was at the far end of the building. His door stood ajar. Fin knocked and entered. Ronnie Young looked up from his desk in surprise. He hadn�t expected to see Fin for another couple of hours.

�Fin,� he said, as if somehow Fin might have forgotten his own name.

Young was not, as his name suggested, in the first flush of youth. He was a fifty-something grey man in a grey suit, who had lost his hair in his twenties. The dust of time had settled on him along with the acceptance that life was never going to fulfil its early promise.

�You�re a bit previous.� His penchant for stating the obvious was famous among his team.

�I need some time off, sir.�

Young frowned and shuffled papers on his desk as if he might find a response hiding somewhere among them. �You�ve had your full complement of leave for the year, Fin.�

�These are exceptional circumstances, Mr�Young.�

Young looked up, a flicker of interest momentarily breaching his indifference. �What are?�

�My son has been taken in for questioning in connection with a murder on the Isle of Lewis.�

Young frowned. �I�m sorry to hear that.� He appeared to think it over. Then, �We�re short-staffed right now, Fin. I just don�t have the people to be able to let you go.� And as if in mitigation, �Anyway, there�s nothing much you can do about things at this stage, is there? I mean, you�re not a cop any more. And it doesn�t sound like your son has been charged with anything yet.�

Fin�s voice was tight with constraint. �Is that a no?�

Young shrugged his apology with a smiling insincerity. �I�m afraid it is.�

All the way back along the corridor, Fin was only vaguely aware of the rain now blowing against windows that looked out on to the scruffy retail park opposite. An Aldi, a Starbucks. But it wasn�t until he stepped out again into the car park that he felt the full force of it. A warm summer squall, with big fat raindrops blowing almost horizontally across the roofs of cars. He was soaked by the time he reached the Honda and dropped into the driver�s seat. Condensation formed almost immediately on the windscreen and side windows. He started the engine and turned on the blower. Marsaili looked at him anxiously. �Everything alright?�

�Fine,� Fin said, and slipped into first gear. �We�d better hurry if we�re going to catch that flight.�

They had long ago left behind the rain of the central belt as they flew north and west, scraping mountain tops bathed in sunlight that cut black shadows into deep valleys.

More sunshine lay like a shimmering skin across the Minch, before the jagged coastline of the island reached the first white-fringed fingers of rock into its sparkling blue water. Their Loganair Saab�340 twin-engine turboprop banked as it descended over Loch a Tuath, skimming the sandbank that lay to the west before finding the runway beyond the rocks. Inland, heather in dazzling purple bloom smothered a landscape scarred by generations of peat-cutting, and Fin was reminded that the nickname of his island home was Eilean Fraoch. Heather Island.

George Gunn was waiting apprehensively in the arrivals area as passengers from the plane formed a straggling line across the tarmac to the terminal building. He had spent some time idly examining a partition wall subdivided into adverts for Harris Tweed and Lewis salmon, and the standing stones at Callanish. Anything to avoid thinking about the encounter to come. The giant wooden carving of a Lewis chessman that stood watch over the luggage carousel seemed to glare recrimination in his direction.

Fin was surprised to see him. Surprised, too, by the shirt-sleeves, and the tan that cast unaccustomed colour across Gunn�s dimpled face beneath his widow�s peak. He had put on weight, and Fin noticed the Motorola Airwave unit clipped to his belt where a white shirt appeared to be trying to free itself from the constraints of dark blue trousers. Did that mean he was here on official business?

Gunn stepped towards Fin and Marsaili, holding out an awkward hand. His smile was strained. �Good to see you, sir.� He nodded towards Marsaili. �I wish it could have been in happier circumstances.�

�Don�t we all?� Fin said. �What are you doing here, George? How did you know we�d be on this flight?�

�An educated guess, sir. We had word that you were on your way.�

Fin frowned. �Did you?�

But George clearly wasn�t going to elaborate. �I thought I�d come and give you a lift into town. Unofficially, of course. Save you a taxi.�

They followed him out to the car park, and a soft south-westerly blew into their faces. There was a smell of the sea in the air, and a hint of peat smoke. Just enough to know that someone nearby had lit a fire, in spite of the good weather. Old habits died hard. Gunn lifted his folded jacket from the passenger seat to place in the boot beside their bags. And Marsaili stood on the tarmac staring at him, ignoring the door that Fin held open for her. It was the moment Gunn had been dreading.

�Are you going to tell us?� she said.

His face reddened. He sighed. �It was me that brought him in, Marsaili.� And he added quickly, �Though I�ve got very little to do with the investigation now.�

Fin said, �You must know he didn�t do it, George.�

Gunn braced himself, summoning all the diplomacy he could muster from his years of experience in the force. �Much as I don�t want to, sir, I have to confess that it very much looks like he did. There is so much evidence against him. And when the DNA comes back from the lab, it�s likely to remove any lingering doubt.�

The silence blew about them like the wind. Finally, Marsaili said, �I thought maybe you owed us a little more than that, George.� And her voice chilled the air.

Gunn looked from one to the other, but all he could manage was, �I�m sorry.�

The drive to town passed in silence, Fin and Marsaili sitting in the back, Gunn alone up front like a disgraced chauffeur. It felt wrong somehow to be given a lift by an old friend who had just told them their son was a killer. And to be greeted by this unexpected sunshine, when they carried such darkness in their hearts.

Gunn sped along Oliver�s Brae, sunlight glancing off rooftops and sparkling across a bay glimpsed fleetingly between houses. Down past the old yellow-painted Mackenzie�s Mill, to Engebret�s filling station at the roundabout. Then, as he drove up towards the Caladh Inn, he said, �If you ever get down to the outer harbour, you�ll see the new deep-water port they�re building across at Arnish Point.� He knew they weren�t interested, but he couldn�t bear the silence any longer. �They say it�ll be operational soon, and take huge bloody cruise ships up to three hundred and sixty metres long.� He blew through pursed lips. �Not that we have the infrastructure here to cope with five thousand folk at a time coming off these things and flooding the town.�

He glanced in his rearview mirror to see frozen faces staring blankly out of side windows. At the roundabout he turned into Matheson Road before taking a left into Church Street, down past the Bangla Spice Indian restaurant and the Peking Cuisine Chinese Takeaway to the parking area behind the police station.

They sat for some moments in further silence before he turned off the motor. Then Gunn twisted in his seat to look at them. �Don�t even think you can dig down into this one, sir. You�re not in the police any more.�

�Then why do you keep calling me sir, George?�

�Force of habit, sir.� He made a face. A grimace. �If you go talking to witnesses and the like, the powers that be will regard it as interference. The CIO will run you off the island.�

�CIO?� Marsaili said.

Fin glanced at her. �Chief Investigating Officer.� And he turned back to Gunn. �Who is it, George?�

�No one you would know, sir. From Inverness. One of those university graduates who�re taking all the top jobs now, with their doctorates in criminal justice and their degrees in accounting.� His disapproval was patent. �Like most CIOs, he�s a bit of a bastard.� Bastards, apparently, could be measured now in increments. �This one�s a little different, though. He�s a clever bastard.�

The clever bastard was Detective Chief Inspector Douglas Maclaren. A sharp dresser with a footballer�s haircut. He was a good fifteen years younger than Fin, who had recently crossed the half-century threshold, his once-blond curls thinning now and turning quietly silver. Fin recalled the old aphorism that you know you are getting old when the policemen start looking younger. This one looked like a boy, and possessed all the arrogance of youth. And his patronising attitude towards the father of the young man helping them with their inquiries irked Fin more than he wanted to admit.

He had left Marsaili in reception, sitting huddled on a hard plastic chair, as if by making herself smaller she could also reduce the size of the problem. He had told her it might be better if he spoke to the CIO on his own. Maclaren had given him a lukewarm greeting, waving him into a seat on the other side of a desk in an upstairs office. He regarded Fin curiously now and leaned back in his reclining office chair to interlace his fingers in his lap. His jacket, hanging on the back of the chair, trailed on the floor behind him. A dark pink shirt fell open at the neck, his cuffs neatly folded once above the wrists. Fin noticed that he was wearing an Apple Watch.

�So...�Fin Macleod.�

�Well done. At least you got my name right, if nothing else.�

Maclaren�s sardonic smile slowly faded. �Aye, your reputation goes before you.�

�What reputation is that?�

Maclaren rocked forward to lean his elbows on the desk. �Oh...�where should I begin? Insolence? Insubordination?�

�Big words, Detective Chief Inspector. Did you learn those at university?�

Maclaren�s jaw set now. �You�re not doing your son any favours, Macleod.�

�He shouldn�t need them. The only thing that matters is the evidence.�

�And we�ve got plenty of that.�

�So, tell me.�

Maclaren couldn�t contain his mirth. �What? Are you his lawyer now? You should know better, Macleod. We don�t share evidence with anyone at this stage of an investigation, least of all family.� He sat back again and his face hardened. �I�ll tell you this, though. We have forensic and witness evidence to put your boy at the scene of the murder. She was eighteen, you know that? Eighteen, for God�s sake! And your son�s what, thirty? Her fucking teacher! Literally.�

Fin felt his face stinging, as if he had been slapped. He didn�t know if the shock showed, but behind the facade he was shaken to the core.

And Maclaren wasn�t finished. �He raped her, struck her on the head, and most likely threw her off the cliffs into the sea. They�re fortunate here to have a police surgeon with experience in forensic pathology. She found semen in the girl and took DNA samples. When we get those back, I think your boy will be going down for a very long time.� He paused. �So don�t come waltzing in here telling me I�ve got it wrong.�

He reached for a sheet of paper on his desk and ran his eyes over some scribbled notes.

�I had a call from your boss at Govan. Seems you�ve gone AWOL. I suggest that if you want to keep your job, you go back to Glasgow and leave us to do ours.�

Fin let that slide and tried hard to keep focus. He said, �Fionnlagh�s still helping you with your inquiries, then?�

�No.� Maclaren shook his head. �I arrested him an hour ago. Although he�s not yet officially accused.�

�So you�re holding him for twelve hours.�

�And another twelve if need be.�

�And the post-mortem?�

Maclaren sighed his frustration. �I want them to do it here. I mean, I don�t want anyone leaving the island until I nail this thing down. But the police surgeon�s not qualified to do the PM, which means I�ve got to wait for a pathologist from the mainland. And it seems they�re in short supply right now. So we have to put the lassie on ice at the morgue until they send us someone.�

Fin pushed clasped hands between his knees, finally at a loss for anything to say. He couldn�t meet Maclaren�s eye. The two men sat in silence for some moments before Maclaren finally relented. He reached into a drawer and pulled out an eight-by-ten colour photograph, and pushed it across the desk towards Fin. �I�ll share this much with you. No harm in it, since it�ll be in all the papers tomorrow.�

Fin reached out to take it and gazed uncomprehendingly at a gold pendant in the shape of an eye, a fine gold chain broken at the clasp snaked around it on a pale grey background.

Maclaren said, �It was found tangled in the girl�s hair. Chain broken. Her mother says it�s not hers. So...�

�Is it real gold?�

�Eighteen-carat. And that�s a sapphire at its centre. We found it on an internet search. It�s called �the Evil Eye�. Worth around sixteen hundred quid.�

�Then it�s not Fionnlagh�s either.�

�That remains to be seen.�

Fin pushed it back towards Maclaren.

�Keep it. I�ve got plenty of copies. Maybe your boy�s missus knows something about it.�

But Fin just shook his head. �They don�t have that kind of money.� He stood up. �My wife�s waiting downstairs. Is there any chance we could see him?�

Maclaren pursed his lips and thought about it. �You can have five minutes.� He stood up and lifted the phone. �I�ll get an officer to take you down to the cells.� Then he paused. �Though there�s something else it wouldn�t hurt you to know, Macleod. We found a pregnancy testing kit in the girl�s car. Used. And showing a positive result. The police surgeon tested both her blood and her urine. Just to be sure.� He let that sink in. �She was pregnant. Which seems like a pretty good motive for a married man to get rid of the teenage girl he was having an affair with. Don�t you think?�

The sergeant at the charge bar watched them with unabashed curiosity as his uniformed constable unlocked the gate to the cells and led Fin and Marsaili down the hall to the first door on the right. Fin had snatched a moment to fill Marsaili in on his interview with Maclaren.

This was the same cell in which they had kept Donald Murray overnight when the CIO leading the investigation into the murder of Angel Macritchie had decided, incorrectly, that he was a suspect. Nothing much had changed, except for the colour of the paint. The walls now were a pale blue, with dark blue doors. Gone was the deep red floor, replaced by a well-worn beige. Any blood spilled would be instantly visible. The key scraped in the lock, and released the door with a dull clang. Fin felt sick.

As it swung open, he saw names scratched in the paint by local hard men who regarded a night spent in the cells as a badge of honour. Sunlight fell in through the cubed panes of a small, square window high up on the facing wall, and Fionnlagh sat on a slab of cold raised concrete beneath it, wrapped in a blue anti-suicide blanket. To the left of the door, a stainless steel toilet stood against the wall in the unforgiving glare of overhead lights that burned 24/7, and in full view of the CCTV camera set in the ceiling.

The uniform closed the door discreetly behind them, and Fin and Marsaili stood in silent despair at the sight of their son leaning forward on his elbows, staring at the floor, refusing to meet their eye. Both were shocked by his appearance. He had Fin�s blond curls, and lean handsome features. But they were haunted now. Skin pale and taut, shadows around his eyes like bruising. Fin felt hope ebbing away. He had sat through countless interrogations during his time in the force, and figured he knew guilt when he saw it.

The silence in the cell was broken only by the distant hum of the overhead lights, and lasted for an inordinate length of time. Until finally Fin forced himself to speak. His voice sounded distant, disconnected, as if it came from someone else. He said, �Well?�

Fionnlagh looked up. �Welcome to my world,� he said. �A cereal bar for breakfast. Pot noodle for lunch, served in a paper bowl with a plastic spork. Lukewarm coffee, in case I am tempted to throw it at someone. Can�t take a shit without someone watching me.� His eyes flickered upwards towards the CCTV camera.

Marsaili said, �Tell me you didn�t do it, Fionnlagh.�

He responded by returning his stare to the floor. More silence followed, before Fin spoke again. �If you�ve got something to say, son, get it off your chest. Now. To us. You�re not incriminating yourself. We�re not police officers, for God�s sake. We�re your parents.�

�We�re here to help.� Marsaili was almost pleading.

But Fionnlagh was unmoved, his fingers interlaced in front of him to make a single fist. Fin saw that his knuckles were white with tension.

Then Marsaili�s voice turned suddenly harsh, unforgiving, as she might have spoken to a child. �Why, Fionnlagh?�

His eyes flickered briefly in her direction. �Why what?�

�You were having an affair with that girl.�

The look he turned on her was sullen, intransigent. �Is that a question or a statement?�

�I�m asking you.� Her frustration broke through her distress.

He considered his response briefly. Then, �Yes,� he said and looked at the floor again.

�Why? For God�s sake, why?�

Fin placed a hand gently on her arm, offering reassurance and counselling restraint.

Fionnlagh drew a long, tremulous breath, as if summoning courage or strength from the deep. He looked up, eyes filled now with both accusation and defiance. �Because sometimes when you marry a girl that you got pregnant as a teenager, you grow apart as you grow up. You�re not the same people any more. What you thought was love turns to disappointment, regret. And then resentment.�

Fin thought how articulate the boy was. How he must have thought this through. Turning it over and over again. In search, perhaps, of justification for his infidelity.

But he wasn�t finished. �We have nothing in common any more, me and Donna. Except maybe for a constant irritation with each other.�

Fin was aware of Marsaili�s fleeting glance, as if their son had somehow touched a nerve that went beyond his own relationship. But he forced himself to focus on Fionnlagh. He said, �And a daughter who needs you.�

Fionnlagh was suddenly scathing. �And where were you when I needed you?�

Anger fuelled Fin�s response, a clifftop scene on a rock in the Atlantic replaying vividly in his mind. �Right where I needed to be, Fionnlagh.�

And as if that scene had replayed in his head, too, the fire left Fionnlagh and he hung his head, almost in shame. But Marsaili wasn�t about to let the central issue drift. She said, �This girl. She was just eighteen. A pupil in your class. What were you thinking? You were twelve years older than her, for God�s sake! A grown man. She was just a child.�

And all Fionnlagh�s vehemence returned. �She was not a child, Mum! Caitlin was smart, and funny, and beautiful. I know that people will say the twelve years between us was wrong. But we knew it wasn�t. And twenty years from now, no one would have thought twice about it.� Sudden tears filled his eyes with the realization that there would be no twenty years from now. At least, not for Caitlin.

His passion shocked both parents to silence for a moment, then Fin said, �Are you going to tell us what happened or not?�

Once more Fionnlagh�s defiance filled the room, sucking all the oxygen out of the confrontation. He shook his head and returned his gaze to the floor.

Fin said, �I suppose you knew she was pregnant?�

Fionnlagh�s head snapped up, and Fin felt Marsaili�s eyes on him, too. Both caught by surprise. Then, �Oh God.� Fionnlagh�s voice escaped his lips in a whisper, and he dropped his face into his hands.

They pushed through swing doors into reception, and then out into an unreal world where the sun shone, and other people who, if not always satisfied with their lives, were at least happy in the moment. For Fin and Marsaili, all happiness and hope had vanished.

They stood on the top step. The touching distance between them felt like an unbridgeable gulf. And Marsaili said, �So she was pregnant.�

Fin let his gaze drift down Church Street towards the pleasure craft lined up along pontoons in the inner harbour. �Apparently.�

�Well, you saw Fionnlagh�s reaction.�

Fin nodded.

�He didn�t know.�

But Fin wasn�t ready to commit to a consensus. �Maybe not,� he said, then shook his head in shame and disbelief. �She was his pupil, Marsaili. Just a kid. How could he...? � He turned despairing eyes towards her, and she could barely bring hers to meet his. Their shame shared.

They heard the scrape of the swing doors behind them and turned as Gunn stepped tentatively out into the early afternoon. He was unable to hide his embarrassment. �I don�t know what your transport arrangements are,� he said. �But I can have someone drive you up to Ness, if that would help. I take it that�s where you�re going?�

Dryly, Fin said, �Don�t do us any favours, George. We�ll hire a car from one of the rental places in Bayhead.�

Gunn nodded. �I got a bit of a bollocking in there, sir.�

Fin frowned. �Who from?�

�The CIO. He didn�t like it that I picked you up at the airport.�

Fin snorted. �That figures.�

Gunn hesitated. �He warned me to give you a wide berth. Not to fraternize, is how he put it.�

�Well, there�s a surprise.�

Gunn shuffled uncomfortably. �I told him you were my friends. He said a police officer has no friends. Particularly during a murder investigation.�

Fin�s smile was sardonic. �Aye, well, he�s got that right, hasn�t he?� And he took Marsaili�s arm and steered her away, down towards the harbour and the sunlight glittering all the way across the bay to the castle grounds.

Gunn watched them go, and felt the weight of his heart in his chest like rocks in a sack.

The house stood L-shaped at the top of the drive, a metalled parking area protected on each side from the prevailing weather. There were two cars there. A Toyota�RAV four-by-four, and a scraped and battered lime green Ford Fiesta with a large tortoiseshell cat sunning itself on the bonnet.

A tiled awning sat above a fully glazed back door, although Fin could barely see beyond it into the house for reflections. When he rang the bell he heard the muffled barking of a dog, which then appeared, jumping up at the glass, breath exploding in condensation on the far side. A red setter, its rich rust coat shining in sunlight that fell through floor-to-ceiling windows all along the front of the house behind it.

Ailsa appeared then, catching the setter by its collar and pulling it back as she swung the door open. She was so concerned with the dog that she didn�t immediately look up, and Fin had a moment to take stock of her. Gone were the long blond locks, cropped now to platinum spikes that elaborated the fine shape of her head. She was thinner than when he had last seen her, almost painfully so. She wore jeans, and what looked like a man�s pale blue baggy shirt over them. Her white leather trainers were scuffed and discoloured.

When finally she looked up, he saw that she was still a handsome woman. But grief had taken its toll. Deep lines cut shadows beneath her eyes, and her mouth was set in sadness. The same doe eyes that had gazed at him across the fires on Eilean Beag scanned him now without recognition. The dog was still barking, and fighting to free itself from her grip. �Can I help you?� she said.

Fin said, �You can let the dog go. Usually they like me.�

She frowned and stood up, her head tilted a little to one side. The setter slipped from her grasp and jumped up on Fin, who made a great fuss of it, ruffling its ears and averting his face from a tongue desperate to slather him with saliva.

It was her turn to assess him, and it didn�t take long for recognition to turn to recrimination. �What do you want?� Her tone was uncompromising. But she was distracted by the dog. �Down, Bella, down!� And reluctantly Bella dropped back to all fours.

�Nice to see you, too, Ailsa.�

She snapped at him. �Don�t give me that shit, Fin. Last time we were together, you told me to stay the fuck away from you. I think I kept my side of the bargain.�

Fin lowered his head a touch. Regret for the cruelty of intemperate youth welling up inside him. �I�m sorry,� he said, and felt the inadequacy of the apology even as he uttered it.

�Sorry, too, no doubt, that your son murdered my daughter. Why are you even here?�

�Ailsa, I want to bring Caitlin�s killer to justice as much as you do. I just don�t believe that Fionnlagh did it.� He wondered how convincing he appeared, when behind the facade he was still tortured by uncertainty.

Her stare was unrelenting. �The police think he did.�

�The police aren�t always right.�

�You used to be one, didn�t you?�

He nodded.

�So you have evidence to the contrary? Is that what you�re saying?� She paused. �Or maybe you�re just biased.�

He had no response to that.

�You realize he was fucking her, right? Him thirty and her just eighteen. A pupil in his class!�

Fin couldn�t meet her eye. He shook his head. �And that�s unforgivable,� he said. �I can�t defend him in that.�

There was a long moment between them then when she might have slammed the door in his face. He half expected that she would. But in the end she stepped back, holding it open, and said, �Well, if you have something to say you�d better come in.�

He stepped inside, and a marble floor stretched away to the outer limits of a sprawling space that encompassed an open-plan kitchen, dining and living area. The entire far wall comprised huge sliding glass doors that looked west on to a paved terrace that was more wishful thinking than of practical use. Even when weather allowed, the midges would, Fin knew, put it off-limits. Still, the view made it all worthwhile. Beyond the islands that broke the green of the water, and the beach behind them, the mountains of Uig cut purple against the clearest of blue skies.

At one end of the room, a red leather settee and reclining armchairs gathered themselves around a long glass coffee table facing an enormous wall-mounted TV. At the other, a vast oak table beyond the kitchen counter seated ten with ease, twelve at a push. Sheepskin rugs softened the marble underfoot, and somewhere in the background a soft radio voice was punctuated by the squawking of a parrot in a bamboo cage that hung from a looping chrome stand. Sunlight heightened the vivid blues and reds of its feathers as it told them repeatedly to Mind the gap!

Ailsa said, �Caitlin taught him that. She heard it on the Underground during a trip to London and thought it would be funny. The bloody thing never stops. But in a way I don�t want it to. I hear her voice every time.� She bit her lip, controlling an urge to spill tears. �The traces people leave when they�re gone.� She took a deep breath. �They�re all hers. The animals. Bella. And there are three cats around somewhere.� She nodded in the direction of the parrot. �And Oscar, of course. We�ve even got sheep somewhere out the back. I mean, who keeps pet sheep? I�m giving them to the crofter on the other side of the bay. They�ll probably end up on someone�s plate. Caitlin would have hated that. But I can�t keep them.� She stopped then. Nervous small talk exhausted. She looked at Fin. �And what if he did?�

Fin frowned. �I don�t...�

�Fionnlagh. What if he did kill my Caitlin?�

It was not a thought that Fin had yet brought himself to confront head-on. He shrugged despondently. �He�ll probably spend the rest of his days in prison.�

�And that�s supposed to make me feel sorry for him?�

�No, of course not.� Fin was starting to think that coming here was a mistake. He could neither account for, nor defend, anything Fionnlagh might have done.

But from somewhere in the depths of her grief and anger she found, perhaps for the first time, a spark of sympathy. Not for Fionnlagh. But for his father. The shared experience of a parent losing a child. She said frostily, �Take a seat. I�ll put the kettle on.�

She crossed to the kitchen as Fin slipped uncomfortably on to one of the armchairs, perching on the edge of it and turning his head to look beyond the glass and take in God�s work of art that the architect had framed with his windows. Bella curled up on the rug at his feet. The room was warm, but the air was icy.

Ailsa called across the room as she filled the kettle, �I�d have sold this place years ago if it wasn�t for Caitlin. She loved it. Even though the two of us were like peas rattling about in an empty can. I could have done with the money. And I could have done without the commute.�

She came back across the room and sank into the settee.

�I knew him, you know.�

Fin frowned.

�Your son.� She spat that out, like a criticism. �I�ve been teaching Gaelic at the Nicolson since Niall and I divorced. When...� and she clearly had trouble saying his name, �when Fionnlagh first joined the science department, I thought there was something familiar about him. And then I knew. From the moment I spoke to him. He�s so like you, Fin. Just not such a bastard.� She paused. �At least, that�s what I thought. But if I�d known he was fucking my daughter...�

Fin�s embarrassment was acute. He couldn�t meet her eye.

She said, almost sarcastically, �Oh, don�t worry. I don�t blame you. Lots of other things I can blame you for, Fin, but not that. After all, she was fucking him, too.�

They sat in silence for some moments until he said, �What other things do you blame me for?�

She said, �I�d never have married Niall if it wasn�t for you.�

�Why?�

�Because I only ever went with him to make you jealous.� She cast accusatory eyes in his direction. �But you never were, were you?�

�I was with Marsaili.�

�And still are, apparently.�

He nodded.

�Lost a kid, too, I heard.�

�You seem to hear a lot of things.�

�It�s the island, Fin Macleod. No one has any secrets here. You should know that.� She hesitated, but clearly felt that her own grief gave her the right to ask. �What happened?�

The shaking of his head was almost imperceptible. �A hit-and-run. In Edinburgh. He was just eight, Ailsa.�

�But not Marsaili�s boy.�

�No. Mona and I...�well...�it wasn�t the kind of marriage that was ever going to survive a loss like that. And then I was sent up here on a murder investigation.�

�Angel Macritchie.�

He nodded. �And I reconnected with Marsaili. Discovered that Fionnlagh was really my son, not Artair�s. Not that it compensated for the loss of Robbie. It just brought a different kind of responsibility. A commitment I hadn�t expected.�

�For which he rewards you by going and killing my girl.�

Fin winced at the sudden vindictiveness of her words. Then got defensive. �Or not.�

�We�ll see.� She heaved herself out of the settee as the kettle boiled on the kitchen counter. �You want tea or coffee? I�ve only got instant.�

�Tea.�

She returned carrying a tray with cups, saucers and a teapot, a milk jug and sugar bowl, which she placed on the coffee table. �Help yourself.�

As she sank back into the settee, he said, �That pendant. The one they found caught in Caitlin�s hair. I suppose the police let you see it?�

She nodded. �It wasn�t hers.�

�Or Fionnlagh�s.�

�We don�t know that, do we?�

�We don�t know that he didn�t give it to Caitlin. A gift. Not something either of them was going to advertise.�

A slight shrug of Ailsa�s shoulders conceded the possibility. �Expensive,� she said.

�People do crazy things when they�re in love.�

�Oh, so that�s why he killed her? For love?�

Fin�s head dropped, and his gaze fell on Caitlin�s dog, still curled up on the rug. Almost as if she sensed his eyes on her, she turned her head to look at him. Bella would be missing Caitlin, too. He said, �I don�t suppose her father might have given her the pendant, and she didn�t want to tell you.�

Ailsa scoffed. �Hah! Not a chance. They didn�t have that kind of relationship.�

He turned curious eyes in her direction. �What happened between you and Niall?�

�What do you care?� And when he didn�t respond, she shrugged. �Just didn�t work out, did it? Turned out he was even more of a bastard than you.� She leaned forward to fill her cup and add a splash of milk. �When you all went to Glasgow, he went to Stirling. Took a degree in marine biology at the Institute of Aquaculture at Stirling University. I went with him. Trained as a teacher. But we came back to the island when his father died suddenly, and Niall took over the fish farm. I even encouraged him.� She sighed. �Biggest mistake I ever made.�

�Why?�

�It was really the end of that era. Of the little man with his own small fish farm. All the independents were getting hoovered up by the big boys. A hell of a lot of money in it. I mean, big bucks. A Norwegian company called Stor Laks made Niall an offer he couldn�t refuse. But he held out for more. He wanted a job with the firm. Figured he had something to offer.�

�And they said yes?�

�They did. And he spent the next ten years, most of them in Norway, climbing their internal career ladder. All the way. And by the time he was CEO, they were the third largest salmon farming concern in the world. Turning over, literally, billions. That�s when he renamed the company Bradan Mor and built this place. It was supposed to be a home for his family. Me and E�ghann, and later Caitlin. Only it was never a home. Because he was never here. They were buying up fish farms all over the world, and wherever there was a fish farm for sale that�s where he would be.� She pressed her lips together, containing her emotion, before sipping at her tea. �In the end, there�s no amount of money that can sustain a relationship like that.�

�So you split.�

She nodded. �The surprise was that he insisted on having custody of E�ghann.�

�Your son?�

�Yes. He didn�t give a shit about Caitlin, and he was happy to leave us the house, but he wanted that boy.� Bitterness laced her words. �And, you know, what Niall wants, Niall gets. Especially with billions to back him up.�

Fin resisted the temptation to express his surprise at how easily Ailsa had given up her son. He said, �How did the kids take it?�

�Caitlin was pretty upset. E�ghann was too. I mean, he doted on his dad, but he couldn�t understand why I would be prepared to let him go. He�s never forgiven me for that.� Sudden tears punctured a brave front. �And I�ve never forgiven myself either. He won�t even speak to me now.�

Fin had no idea what to say.

She fought to regain control. �He lives with his dad on Cyprus. Tax exiles, the pair of them. They even took Cypriot nationality, so that they�ve still got European citizenship post-Brexit.� She glanced at the tray on the coffee table. �You haven�t poured your tea.�

�I won�t bother, thanks.� Fin stood up. �It�s a sad story, Ailsa.�

She nodded her agreement and wiped the tears away. �With a tragic ending. Thanks to your son.� She got to her feet. �They�re on the island just now, you know?�

Fin was surprised. �What, Niall and E�ghann?�

�Niall bought that big white house that sits up on the cliff overlooking Port of Ness. A few years back now. He wanted a base on the island. He�s restored and extended it. You wouldn�t recognize the place these days.�

�Why would he want a place here?�

�Because they�ve invested a fortune on state-of-the-art cages in East Loch Roag, out near the mouth of the loch. Scottish salmon is still the brand that sells the product, Fin. Hence the Scots Gaelic, Bradan Mor. Big Salmon. It was a direct translation from the Norwegian.�

With Bella trotting at her heels, she followed him to the door and held it open. Fin paused on the step. �I�m sorry, Ailsa,� he said. �For everything.�

She looked at him with the tears of loss welling up again in her eyes, and the ache of regret in her voice. �So am I.�

At Garynahine he turned left on to the road that would take him all the way up the west coast to Ness. A long drive with time to think. Past the standing stones at Callanish, the tweed mill at Shawbost, the abandoned church at Barvas, transformed now into a stylish home. And all the tiny settlements with their mini-marts and filling stations, potteries and art galleries established by incomers. The museum and caf� run by Ness Historical Society � Comunn Eachdraidh Nis � in the old Cross Primary School at North Dell. The Cross Inn, where once the only tree of note on the west coast had spread its boughs, only to be brought down sometime during his years of absence. His old friends Roddy and Whistler had fought there one night in the car park after an Amran gig. They were both long gone, like the tree itself, a landmark that had survived generations. All things, Fin thought, must pass. The only constant in life was change.

At Crobost Stores he carried on down the gentle slope to the port, the coastline vanishing in a heat haze that shimmered away to his right. Vehicles stood in a row outside a light grey roughcast building behind a white picket fence. A blue and white sign on the wall identified it as the Breakwater, and through its back windows, Fin could see folk sitting at tables, eating and drinking, enjoying views out across the inner harbour and the beach beyond. A couple emerged carrying a pile of takeout pizzas in boxes, and got into a car. This was new since Fin�s last sojourn on the island, and was clearly popular with tourists.

He drove slowly past it in second gear, and glanced down towards the boat shed where Angel Macritchie had been found disembowelled and strung up from the rafters. A dark chapter in so many lives.

And now he turned his attention to the house that sat proud on the cliffs ahead of him. Its harled walls were painted white, bay windows incorporated into a conservatory that wrapped around the front and the far side. On the near chimney, gulls sat on clay pots screeching at the sky. An extension at the rear of the property had been extended again. But tastefully. Nothing seemed out of character, although Fin thought that the house must virtually have doubled in size.

What had not changed was its exposure to the elements. Fin had witnessed waves breaking sixty or seventy feet into the air over the harbour wall below. There was no shelter for what was now Niall Black�s island home, no hiding place for the house they had all known so well as children playing on the beach or the inner harbour when the tide was out. And yet it had stood resolute and strong against whatever weather the winter storms might have thrown at it.

Fin had never known who lived there, but had the impression that it might have been a holiday home, lived in or rented out for just a handful of weeks in the year.

He freewheeled along to iron gates that stood open, and passed through them into a large asphalt parking area at the rear of the property. There were three randomly parked vehicles. A dark green Range Rover, a Nissan pickup and a silver Mercedes saloon. He pulled in beside the pickup and stepped out to feel the heat of the sun on his face and the wind in his hair. And he remembered the day that Niall Black told them of his grand plan to steal his father�s fish.

I feel privileged to have grown up on the island.

Of course, it has its downsides. A high rate of unemployment, alcoholism. And when you�re a teenager, you can feel trapped here, watching through a distant lens as the rest of the world conducts its affairs. But there�s very little crime. And as a kid you were free to roam the highways and byways, bathed in one moment by watery sunshine, and lashed the next by stinging rain. The moor was ever-changing. Winter brown morphing to green. Spring flowers growing in colourful profusion. Bog cotton dipping and diving like snowflakes in the wind. All giving way, finally, to the blanket of purple laid down by the fraoch. We would spend hours on the beach, clambering among the rock pools in search of crabs left behind by the outgoing tide.

During many years living on the mainland, I�ve lost count of how often folk would tell me that this place where I grew up was the middle of nowhere. But I�ve always thought of it as being the middle of everywhere, the centre of everything.

That summer, though, before we left for university, I was ready to go. A black cloud hung over my immediate future. Artair and I had been selected to join the guga hunters on their annual August trip to An Sgeir, a rock way out in the Atlantic where we were to slaughter two thousand young gannets. Guga is the Gaelic word for a juvenile gannet, and once plucked and salted, they are considered a delicacy back here on the island.

Twelve men from Crobost had been making the trip every summer for four hundred years. What had begun as a desperate search for food had grown into a tradition, a rite of passage for young men. But neither Artair nor I wanted to spend two weeks on that bleak and inhospitable rock, scrambling among the blood and shit that covered the cliffs, slaughtering defenceless birds. It was not an activity that either of us believed was likely to make men of us. But it had been arranged by Artair�s dad, and there was no way we could avoid it.

It was the cloud that lurked always on my horizon, looming ever larger as the time drew near. So it came as a relief, a welcome distraction, when Niall described his plan to us that fine July day on Traigh Shanndaigh, the beach at E�ropaidh. Hardly anyone, other than locals, knew about that beach back then. Fine golden sands gathered in an arc at the head of a narrow inlet cutting deep into the profile of the north-west coast, just about a mile south of the lighthouse at the Butt. The lighthouse itself was built in the mid-eighteen-hundreds by the Stevenson brothers, one of whom was the father of Robert Louis Stevenson. I didn�t read his books until much later, and probably only because of the connection to the island. Reading was far from our minds then.

I had been to the beach often with my father when I was young, combing for the treasures washed up by winter storms. But that day we were just passing the time, sitting smoking, barefoot in soft golden sand, and basking bare-chested in the unaccustomed warmth of the sun, hoping for tans, but mostly just being burned red.

There were five of us, all looking forward to escaping the island and going to university in the autumn. Except for Artair, who was still in a blue funk about being the only one left behind. He had never made it to the Nicolson, poor grades at Crobost sending him instead to the vocational Lews Castle College, which in those days was still in the castle itself. While the rest of us talked excitedly about student accommodation and grants, Artair sat with his heels pressed into the sand, depressed and sucking intermittently on his inhaler, his puffer as we all called it.

Artair had suffered from asthma since childhood, and I�d never known him to be without his puffer. The other kids called him Wheezy, because of the breath that always seemed to whistle in his chest. We all had nicknames, of course. That was the way of it on the island then. Still is. I was just known as Fin, short for Finlay, my English name. Niall was called Niall Dubh, because his surname was Black, the same as the colour of his hair. Iain Murray was a cousin of Donald�s, whose father was the minister at Crobost Church and also called Iain. So young Iain was known as The Rev. Alasdair Fraser had a shock of carrot-coloured wiry hair, and naturally everyone called him Ally Ruadh � ruadh being the Gaelic word for red.

If your nickname was Mickey Mouse, an envelope addressed to Mickey Mouse, Ness, Isle of Lewis, would reach you from anywhere in the world.

Iain was a quiet boy. He would sit without a word at parties and drink beer until he fell asleep, and someone would invariably have to take him home. But he was smart. Dux several years running at the Nicolson, and got six straight As in his Highers, so had the choice of almost any university he wanted. He picked Glasgow, because he�d heard there were lots of parties and a never-ending supply of beer.

I never cared much for Ally Ruadh. There was something sleekit about Alasdair, untrustworthy. You would never let him in on a secret, which is why I was surprised that day when Niall included him in his plans.

We were all sharing the one cigarette. Niall passed it to me and winked, as if I were already in on the scheme he was about to unveil. �You guys fancy making a wee bit of cash before we leave the island?�

Artair growled, �Aye, just rub it in.�

Niall ignored him, and everyone else turned interested heads in his direction. After all, who wouldn�t want to make a little money? He said, �You know how my dad�s got a fish farm?�

�Who doesn�t?� Alasdair said.

Niall pulled a face. �Well, you know where his cages are.�

�Down by the Bridge over the Atlantic.� I wondered where on earth this was leading.

�That�s right. On the East Loch Roag side. Six of them. A good few thousand salmon in each.� He grinned. �I figure he�s not going to miss a few.�

Stupidly, none of us realized what he was getting at. �Why would he miss any?� Iain said.

Niall shrugged casually and smiled. He�d never been short on self-confidence. �Well, maybe if we were to go and lift one or two...�

Ally Ruadh frowned. �Why would we do that?�

Niall leaned in confidentially. �Because,� he said, �I just happen to know a fella that works on the Linshader estate. A ghillie, who knows folk that�ll pay good money for wild.� Even then there were restrictions on the catching of wild salmon.

�But they�re not wild fish in your dad�s cages,� Artair said. �They�re farmed salmon, and there�s no great value in those. You can buy the fillets in the supermarket.�

Niall said, �And you can tell the difference, can you?�

Artair shrugged, defensive. �Well, maybe not me. But there are folk who would know. Especially if they�re paying top dollar, supposedly for the real thing.�

�Aye, well, maybe with some farmed salmon you could tell. But not my dad�s.� The cigarette had made its way round to Niall again, and he took a long pull at it. �See, where he�s put his cages, there�s these really powerful currents that flow through that narrow strait between the two Loch Roags. So strong that my dad has to put weights on the nets that hang down from the rafts, otherwise the tide would lift them to the surface and the fish would escape.�

�What�s that got to do with anything?� Alasdair said.

Niall pulled a face that reflected his disdain. �Think about it, Ruadh. When the tides are at their strongest, even with the weights, the nets are forced to an angle of forty-five to sixty degrees. Which means that the fish are all swimming in one direction. Against the tide. Rather than just mooning about in the cages, getting fat, like they do at other fish farms. It makes them sleek and firm, well-toned the way wild salmon are. They�re like Ferraris, my dad says. He defies anyone to tell the difference between his fish and the wild ones they pull out of the Grimersta River.�

�All of which means what?� I said.

�It means, Fin, that any salmon we take from my dad�s cages can easily be passed off as wild. And wild salmon fetches big money these days. Restaurants, exporters, just ordinary punters who want a taste of the real thing. My dad�s got tens of thousands of the bloody things. He�s not going to miss a few, and we can all make ourselves a nice wee addition to the shitty grants the government�s giving us to go to university.�

Silence fell among us then, as the implications of Niall�s plan sank in. I remember listening to the incoming tide breaking along the beach, just feet away from where we sat, and I watched the foam bubble up and disperse among the fine grains of wet sand.

�How would we do it?� Alasdair asked.

Niall said, �I�ve got a friend at Tabost who�ll lend me his van.� Then he qualified himself. �Well, we�ll have to pay him a bit out of the proceeds, and deduct the cost of the petrol. But it�ll do the job. We�ll rendezvous at the end of the Cross � Skigersta road at about, say, one in the morning. It�ll take us an hour, hour and a quarter, to get down there. Same back again. That�ll give us about an hour at the cages, and we�ll be back by half four.�

More silence as we digested this.

�How do we get out to the cages?� It was Iain this time.

�There�s a wee harbour at Baile na Mara on the east side of Great Bernera that my dad uses to service the cages. The place is deserted at night. He keeps a couple of working boats there, so we�ll borrow one of those, and it�ll take no time to motor round to the bridge.�

�What if someone sees us?� Artair pulled on his puffer, anxiety at the prospect tightening his chest.

�It�ll be dark. Mostly,� Niall said. �And nobody lives along the coast there. There�ll be no one around at that time.�

I was excited by the idea, all thoughts of the upcoming guga hunt banished from my mind. And I think Artair was, too, in spite of his nervous disposition.

�Well?� Niall demanded.

�I�m in,� I said.

�Me, too.� That from Iain. And then Artair and Alasdair both threw in their lot, and Niall beamed with delight.

I don�t know why none of us thought it was a bad, or immoral, thing to do. Stealing from Niall�s dad. But a few fish out of a good few thousand didn�t seem like that big a crime. He�d never miss them.

I had a word of caution, though. �Just one thing,� I said. And I cast a meaningful look in Alasdair�s direction. �Not a word of this to anyone, okay? No one. If the Macritchie brothers, Angel or Murdo, got to hear about it, you can bet your life they�d want a piece of the action. And when the Macritchies get involved in anything, it always ends in disaster.� The debacle of our futile attempt to steal an old tractor tyre for Bonfire Night loomed large in my memory, even although it was years ago now. And the guilt of what had happened to poor Calum up on the roof of the castle still haunted me. The Macritchies had been at the heart of both.

Just as we had five years earlier, embarking on the great Bonfire Night tyre theft, Artair and I shared a bike ride to the rendezvous. There was no climbing out of my window at dead of night this time. I was seventeen, going on eighteen, and I came and went as I pleased. My aunt couldn�t have cared less.

It still never got fully dark at that time of year, but dark enough that we wouldn�t be seen easily. I had arranged to meet Artair at the Crobost end of the Cross � Skigersta road, and as usual he was late. A full ten minutes. I was nervous enough as it was, but waiting for Artair set me on edge. I was stiff with tension as I sat there on the angle of my bike watching the moon lay its silver across the Minch. Artair�s folks were more strict, and I had no doubt he�d had to sneak out when he was sure everyone was asleep. Still, I was none too happy.

I heard him before I saw him, wheezing up the road, moonlight throwing his shadow across the moor. �About bloody time!� I told him. But he just stood there gasping, and sucking on his puffer until he had recovered his breath.

�My dad was sitting up reading late. I had to wait till he�d gone to bed and put the light out. Even so, I�m not sure he was asleep when I left. He might have heard me go out the back.�

�Time you stood up to him, Artair. You�re not a kid any more.�

But Artair was withering. �Aye, like you stood up to him about having to go out to An Sgeir with the guga hunters.�

I had no response to that, and we shared a silent, unhappy moment. A million and one things understood between us, but left unspoken. �Come on,� I said, and he hopped on to the saddle and put his hands on my shoulders. I stood on the pedals to get the chain turning the back wheel.

The night was warm, and as still as it ever gets on the island. Which meant there were midges. We were alright as long as we kept moving, the breeze of our own momentum sending the little bastards flying off in our wake. But it made me think of that old joke: how can you tell a happy motorcyclist? Answer: from the flies embedded between his teeth.

The road was about two and a half miles long, and I knew it would take us anything up to fifteen minutes. Because Artair had been late, we were both late. But still I felt compelled to stop when I heard it. I jammed on the brakes so suddenly Artair nearly came off the saddle. �Jesus Christ, Fin, what are you doing?�

I shushed him, putting a finger to my lips, and told him to listen.

He glared at me. �What am I listening for?� Then he heard it, too. That distinctive crex, crex drifting across the moor in the dark. And he frowned. �What is it?�

�It�s a corncrake.�

�Jesus, Fin!� And he waved his hands around his head to fend off the flies. �You stopped us here to get eaten alive by midges, just to listen to some bloody bird?�

�It�s not just some bird,� I said. �My shen told me it was one of the rarest sounds you�ll ever hear on the islands. Most of the corncrakes left in the world breed in eastern Siberia. And you�ll hardly find them anywhere else in the British Isles. �R�c an fhe�ir� was what Shen used to say when he heard one. Croaker of the grass.�

Artair was alternatively slapping his face and running frantic hands through his hair. �I don�t give a shit, Fin. You�ll be croaking in the grass if you don�t get moving!�

And reluctantly I set off again.

When eventually we came out opposite the Cross Inn, the van was sitting idling at the side of the road. An angry voice hissed through the open window. �Where the hell have you been?� It was Niall, leaning across from the driver�s side.

�Fin wanted to stop and listen to a corncrake,� Artair said, his voice laden with sarcasm, ignoring the fact that he�d been a full ten minutes late meeting me in the first place.

�For God�s sake, get in! We haven�t got time to go listening to bloody birds in the night.� A door slid open, I leaned my bike against the fence, and we climbed into the back of the van. Alasdair was sitting up front with Niall, and Iain was sitting opposite the door with his back pressed against the side of the van, knees pulled up to his chest. When the door slid shut and the van juddered off into the dark, Iain leaned across and said, �Was it really a corncrake?�

�It was,� I said.

A brief blink of light from a streetlamp momentarily illuminated his pale face. And I saw awe in his bright, shining eyes. �I�ve never heard one,� he said, and, for the first time in all the years I�d known him, I felt an odd kinship with The Rev.

In the end we made up for lost time, and got down to the Bridge over the Atlantic in just under an hour. We saw Niall�s dad�s cages basking in moonlight. But it took another ten minutes on winding single-track roads before we drove down through a dark copse of pine trees to emerge into brilliant moonshine at Baile na Mara. Deep shadows fell across the water from a pier that reached out on concrete stilts into the loch.

Deserted buildings huddled around the harbour, dark shapes in the night. A seafood processing factory, huts with tin roofs that housed offices or stored equipment. A sign, mounted on a railing next to the ramp, languished in the shadow of rusting blue barrels. COMHAIRLE NAN EILEAN SIAR Baile na Mara. This pier is owned by the Local authority. All users must report their presence to the Harbour Master. Even had there been one, we certainly wouldn�t have been reporting our presence to him.

We parked up beside a concrete hut and scampered across the ramp, pursued by our own shadows. Past untidy heaps of crab and lobster creels. On to the pier, where a rusting crane stood ready to load and unload supplies from fishing and service boats. More creels, and plastic boxes, fenders and buoys whose multifarious colours, brilliant in daylight, were lost in the colourless light of the moon.

There was an assortment of boats tied up around the pier. Motorboats for laying and collecting creels, sailing dinghies, smaller service craft with outboard motors. At high tide they would be easily accessible. But the tide was out, and you could only get to them down flimsy, rusted ladders.

Across the loch, you could see the streetlights of Breascleit strung out along the far coast. We had brought torches with us, but so bright was the moon we had no need of them. Which made life a little easier, though it made us more visible. I felt very exposed as, one by one, we slithered down the ladder to drop into one of Hamish Black�s service boats. It was a sixteen-foot aluminium ex-army assault craft with a large outboard motor. Niall said his dad had bought two from a man who�d brought a job lot of them to the island. It made quite a racket when we jumped down into it, and the thing lurched dangerously.

�What about lifejackets?� I whispered. None of us, I knew, could swim. Which was how it was on the island back then. Parents discouraged their children from ever going near the water, never mind into it. So very few ever learned to swim.

Niall cast me a withering look. �Get real, Macleod!�

He yanked on the pull cord, engaging the starter mechanism, and the motor burst into life. The noise of it thundered in the still of the night, and I knew just how far sound travelled on water. We were all so jumpy we barely noticed the midges, and I lost my footing, falling back into the belly of the boat, as Niall accelerated out from the harbour and into the loch proper.

He pulled back on the throttle then, and we cut almost silently through black water, leaving a luminous trail in our wake, hugging the shore as close as we dared. There was always a danger of striking hidden rock, especially in the dark, but Niall said he had done the journey many times with his dad, and was confident of the course he carved out in the night.

It took nearly fifteen minutes to get to the cages. We rounded the headland and saw them from the water for the first time, six interlinked square structures sitting very low in the loch, the profile of the bridge beyond them standing dark against the sky.

We tied up at the nearest and clambered clumsily on to a walkway of layered larchwood planks that sandwiched deep polystyrene blocks for buoyancy. Threaded rods between the inner and outer planks were set at regular intervals to clamp them tight, and the walkways fed into heavy galvanised steel corners with tying eyes for mooring the cages, or bolting them together. I was amazed at how big they were once you were on them. Nine square metres, Niall said. I was struck, too, by just how makeshift it all appeared. Old tyres lashed between the cages to stop them from bumping together, and a sea of polystyrene beads floating in the water around them.

The net to contain the salmon was hung from a crude wooden handrail on the interior of the structure, but there was another net draped along the outside that caught my foot as I tried to leave the boat.

�For Christ�s sake, Fin, be careful,� Niall hissed. He was a silhouette against the moon, stretching out a hand to help me on to the cage.

�Why the hell are there nets on the outside?� I said, annoyed with myself for needing assistance to get out of the boat.

�Predator nets,� Niall said. �To stop seals and the like getting at the salmon. Bloody useless things!�

Now we were all on the walkway, except for Iain, who was to stay in the boat and pack the fish into the insulated blue plastic containers of ice we had brought with us. Niall unclipped a long pole with a net attached to a triangular frame at one end.

�There�s another pole on the rail at the far side, Fin. You go round and get it. We�ll net the fish, and Alasdair and Artair can carry them to the boat. Half an hour at the most. We�ll try and get as many as we can.�

The first problem arose when I couldn�t find the net on the other side of the cage. Niall cursed at me across the water, then ran round to look for himself. This time he cursed his father. �There should be two. Fuck knows why there aren�t.� He leapt across to the adjoining cage, but couldn�t find any there either.

We went back around to where Artair and Alasdair stood waiting nervously.

�We�ll just have to make do with the one,� Niall said. �Next time we�ll bring our own!� And he thrust his pole over the rail and into the water, stirring up a flurry of activity among the salmon. I saw them writhing around, either in panic or perhaps the belief that food was on the way. At any rate, the surface of the water itself came alive. Niall guided his net through the turbulence, before lifting it out to raise above the level of the rail. Two salmon in it squirmed and leapt around, and, as he swung it across the rail for us to grab them, both slipped free of the mesh and fell back into the water.

�What the hell?� Niall thrust his net in once more, lifting three fish clear this time. But before he could swing it towards us, they had fallen out again, landing with a splash. �Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!� His language was deteriorating as rapidly as the fish were escaping. �How�s that possible?� He slid the pole back through his hands to examine the net. Exasperation exploded from between his lips. �It�s got a fucking hole in it. What the hell�s he playing at?�

�Who?� said Alasdair.

�My dad. One fucking net, and there�s a bloody hole in it!� He hurled the pole down on to the walkway. �We�ll have to guddle for them.�

�What�s that?� Artair said.

�Catch them by hand,� I told him.

Niall said. �It should be easy enough. The water�s hoaching with the buggers.� He got down on to his hands and knees and squeezed himself through the spars of the handrail so that he could reach down into the water. Within seconds he had pulled a squirming fish out of the depths and held it up for one of us to grab. I grasped the thing and felt it slithering about through my fingers, passing it on to Artair before I lost it. He gave it to Alasdair, who ran to the boat and threw it to Iain.

�Jees!� Artair said. �This�ll take for ever.�

In fact, over the next fifteen minutes, with both Niall and me reaching into the water, we only managed to pass something approaching a dozen fish to waiting hands, dropping several in the process. Before finally Niall said, �Let�s call it a night. We�ll come better prepared next time.�

I passed a final fish up to Alasdair, who didn�t really get a proper hold of it. And as it squirmed and wriggled out of his grasp, he reached further over the rail and virtually somersaulted across it as his feet slipped from beneath him on the wet larch.

We all watched in abject horror as Alasdair was swallowed by the water, the surface of it still boiling with the fevered activity of the fish. He never uttered a sound, but the splash as he fell in was like an explosion in the still of the night. We stood then for an eternity waiting for him to resurface. Although I�ve no idea now what we thought we could do to help him.

Iain called from the boat. �What�s happening?�

We all ignored him, still holding our collective breath. Until suddenly Alasdair broke the surface, arms flailing. The sound of his panicked gasping for air filled the night. But he was a long way out in the cage, and there was nothing for him to grab on to.

It was Niall�s quick thinking that saved the day. He snatched the pole he had earlier flung in a temper on to the walkway, and thrust it out across the water towards the frantically splashing Alasdair. After two unsuccessful attempts, Ally Ruadh finally managed to catch hold of it, and everyone lent a hand to pull him in and drag him, gasping, over the rail.

We clustered around him, standing watching as he lay on his back fighting for breath, eyes wide, but panic finally starting to subside. Before, inexplicably, he began shouting and writhing at our feet.

�What in God�s name�s wrong with him?� Artair�s panic mirrored Alasdair�s.

And then a huge, wriggling salmon squeezed itself out from the neck of Alasdair�s shirt, to lie thrashing beside him on the walkway, and we all burst out laughing, as much from relief as anything else.

�Well caught,� Niall said, between peals of laughter.

�That�s not even funny!� Alasdair bellowed, almost in tears, his red hair smeared wet across his face. But that only sent us off into further paroxysms of laughter.

We laughed and made jokes at Ally Ruadh�s expense for most of the way back to Baile na Mara, while he sat shivering in silence in the bow of the boat, glaring back at us resentfully.

Niall counted the fish in the blue plastic container. Thirteen, including Alasdair�s whopper. �Not as many as I�d have liked. We�ll have to do better next time.�

�Lucky for some, though.� Iain grinned.

�Aye, but not for Ally Ruadh,� I said, and we all laughed heartily again at the look on Alasdair�s face.

By the time we got back to the pier, Alasdair�s red hair had dried sufficiently to restore some of the curl to it, as well as a little of his sense of humour. He allowed himself a grudging smile as we joked about him swimming the Atlantic to land the biggest salmon ever pulled out of the ocean.

His clothes were dry, too, after the hour-long drive back to Ness. And as the van headed off up the road, Artair and I got back on my bike for the final leg of the return journey over the Cross � Skigersta road.

I felt his hands on my shoulders and his breath on my neck as he said, �And no stopping this time to listen to bloody corncrakes!�

It seemed to me that I had just drifted off to sleep when my aunt�s voice came crashing into distant dreams. I surfaced from a warm sea of gentle oblivion to an awareness of sunlight slanting in through the dormer and lying hot across my bed. It had been dark when I closed my eyes, or at least the sun had not yet risen over the horizon, and it was somehow shocking to realize how far the day had progressed in what felt like such a short time.

�Finlay?� she shouted again from the foot of the stairs, and I swung my legs out of bed to plant them on cool linoleum. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

�What is it?�

�Your friend�s here. He says you�re expecting him.�

I frowned. I wasn�t expecting anyone. Reluctantly I dragged on some clothes and a pair of trainers, and stumbled down the stairs to the tiny hall below, running fingers back through my hair. My aunt was standing by the open door wearing some kind of tie-dyed lilac smock, pale powdered face like a death mask cut across by the two slashes of scarlet that were her lips. Beyond, silhouetted against a backdrop of sunlight on sea, stood the tall figure of Niall Dubh.

�I don�t know what sort of hour you got in last night, Finlay, but you�re too young to be wasting your life lying in bed half the day.� And she headed off into the kitchen, leaving Niall standing on the doorstep.

�What is it?� I was not best pleased at being awakened so rudely.

He flicked his head to indicate that I should follow him outside, and I shut the door behind me. We walked a few paces towards the harbour, and I clocked his father�s van sitting there. �I want you to come with me,� he said.

I frowned. �Where?�

�To Linshader. I don�t feel like facing Coinneach Smith on my own. I promised him more than just eleven fish.�

�I thought we caught thirteen?�

He shrugged. �I gave one each to the other boys.�

�But not to me and Artair?�

�Like you could have carried two fish with you on the bike!�

I had to concede that might have been tricky.

�I just need some moral support, Fin. He�s a prickly character, Coinneach. Not a fella you�d want to rub up the wrong way.�

I sighed. �I�ll just get some toast then to keep me going.�

Over the next couple of weeks we risked six trips out to the cages, netting between forty and fifty fish each time. We divided the taking of the salmon between the different cages, moving from one to the other each time, hoping that would make the loss of the fish less noticeable to Niall�s dad, or his workers. Financially we were all doing very nicely out of it, but knew it couldn�t last.

Niall in particular was starting to get the jitters. �My dad�s going to cotton on,� he said. �Sooner or later. We can�t keep this up for much longer.�

The problem was that Coinneach Smith didn�t want us to stop. If we were doing well out of the enterprise, he was doing even better. He figured we could keep going right through the month of August.

Of course, Artair and I knew that was impossible. At least for us. We had an appointment with two thousand gannets out on An Sgeir. And Iain and Alasdair didn�t want to do it if we weren�t there. So we all met up one Monday towards the end of July to try to reach a consensus on what to do. But there was no decision to make. Niall had already taken it for us.

We gathered down at the jetty at Port of Ness, just by the boat shed, and wandered along the breakwater to climb the rock that separated the inner and outer harbours. There we sat among the tussocks at its grassy summit. The spell of fine weather looked to be coming to an end. Gone were the clear skies. Dark clouds gathered ominously in the west, the wind strong enough now to drive in waves that broke over the far wall, throwing spray fifteen or twenty feet in the air. We felt it in our faces.

�Tonight,� Niall said. �Last time.�

�What about Coinneach?� I asked.

�Fuck Coinneach. There�s a limit. And we�ve reached it.�

I don�t think there was one of us who disagreed, and a certain amount of relief did the rounds among us. But none of the others had met Coinneach, and Niall and I exchanged glances. I had no desire to be there when Niall told him it was over.

I�m pretty sure I didn�t sleep that night. Certain that I didn�t drift off, even for a moment. I remember weeping. Tears that seared my cheeks. Sobs that tore themselves from my chest to be muffled by my pillow.

By the time I heard my aunt in the kitchen downstairs, I was lying with burning eyes staring at the ceiling, a feeling of such aching emptiness inside me that I could barely move. When life has dealt you the most devastating and irreversible hand, it is almost impossible to grasp. I can remember thinking that, if only I had been able to sleep, I would wake up to realize it had all been a bad dream. I would cycle down to the port to find Iain sitting up on that rock in the harbour with a can of beer in his hand and a cigarette burning between his fingers. �Heard a corncrake last night,� he would tell me. �At the back of the croft. Clear as day. Crex, crex.�

�Finlay!� My aunt�s voice. �Are you awake yet?�

I didn�t have the energy to respond.

�Finlay!� she shouted again. �Finlay, you need to hear this. Come down.�

It was only when I stood up that I realized I hadn�t undressed, and that my clothes were still residually damp from the night before. At least I had kicked off my trainers. I pulled them on now and went carefully down the stairs on shaking legs, hands braced on the walls either side of me.

My aunt looked up from the kitchen table and her jaw fell open. �For God�s sake, Finlay, what have you been up to? You look dreadful.�

I caught my reflection in the window as I rounded the kitchen table. She was right. I looked like death. Eyes mired in shadow, skin chalk-white and stretched over gaunt features. The transistor radio that sat on the fireplace was playing the morning news in Gaelic from Radio nan G�idheal. It barely penetrated my consciousness. Just meaningless background. Wallpaper. I didn�t even hear it.

�They�ll give a resum� of the headlines in a minute,� my aunt was saying. �He was one of your friends, wasn�t he?�

�Who?� I said, suddenly alert.

�Iain Murray. His body�s been recovered from one of the fish farm cages down by Great Bernera. Workers went out to check on damage after the storm and found him floating face down in the water. No one knows what he was doing out there in the middle of a storm in the middle of the night, or how he even got there. Apparently there�s to be a police investigation.�

I got out of the house as fast as I could. My aunt wanted to cook me breakfast, but I knew I wouldn�t be able to keep it down. I followed the path down to the shore, buffeted by the wind. But at least it was dry.

In a daze, I drifted past the remains of what had once been a fish processing factory, just a collection of stones now in the grass. I climbed the hill on to the promontory, and followed the cliffs out to where men returning from war had built cairns in memory of those who had not. I sat among them now, hair blown free of my face by the remnants of the storm, and thought about Iain. It was the first time I had lost a contemporary. A friend. And those thoughts of death that you bury deep in your subconscious, to be faced only in some indeterminate and unimaginable future, were suddenly front and centre in my mind. My own mortality looming large.

I stood up then, and started collecting the stones that lay around me, to build a cairn for Iain. A repository for his soul. A place he would always be remembered.

I saw Niall coming from a long way off, hands thrust deep in his pockets, skirting the cliffs to make his way out to the point. I carried on building the cairn, and without a word, Niall, when he reached me, began collecting stones to add to the pile. Nothing passed between us except for a silent understanding. When finally we were finished, we sat side by side looking out across the Minch. Sunlight fell in scattered fragments through broken clouds, constantly on the move, as if God himself were trying to calm the seas with light. Niall cupped his hands around a cigarette that he then passed to me. We smoked in silence before finally I said, �We need to tell people what happened. His folks deserve to know.�

His head snapped round. �No!� He took the cigarette off me for one final puff before flicking it away into the wind. �Nothing�s going to bring him back, Fin. And we still have our whole lives ahead of us.� I felt his eyes on me, without turning to look at him. �I want you to come with me.�

Now it was me turning my head. �To see Coinneach?�

�I don�t want to go alone.�

I closed my eyes, and a long sigh released itself from deep inside. The last thing I wanted was a face to face with Coinneach. I felt an unreasonable anger towards him, as if Iain�s death were somehow his fault. And in a way it was. But no more than ours. Or Iain�s. I wanted to tell Niall to do it himself, but I didn�t. My head fell a little and I nodded acquiescence. �Okay.�

The old Norse Mill was one of more than two hundred scattered at one time about the island. It dated back to the twelfth century. Restored now, it sat at the mouth of a stream that flowed from a tiny freshwater loch above to the sea loch below. A turf roof on a two-tier stone structure, wooden paddles in the lower half turned by running water for the millstones to grind the grain.

Fin skirted the mill, following a pitted dirt track through the heather, down towards the shore at the Aird Mh�r side of Loch Riosaigh. He was grateful that it had not rained for weeks, or the path would have been impassable in his two-wheel-drive rental car. As it was, he tensed each time the vehicle lurched into a pothole, fearing that it would rip away the sump.

Finally he saw the old crofthouse that Iseabail had described. It sat right down on the shingle shore at the far side of the loch, once-white walls streaked black by the weather. There was a broken concrete platform on the loch side of the house, from which a ridged slipway angled down into the water. An inflatable dinghy, its outboard motor tipped into the body of it, was pulled up on to the shingle, and Fin could see figures squatting among the concrete and weeds outside the house. He lost sight of them as he rounded the head of the tiny loch, and the house itself was almost obscured by blasted rowans laden with clusters of orange berries turning virulent red. A sure sign of a cold winter to come.

A battered old grey Land Rover stood on a levelled area at the front of the house, weeds and moss almost obscuring the chippings laid in some distant past to provide a hardcore base for parking. Windows at the front of the property were boarded up, and a ragged green curtain hung across an entrance that was missing a door. There was not a breath of wind here as Fin stepped out into the midge-infested morning. The tiny flies were instantly in his hair, on his face, under his collar, myriad little biting bastards, and he hurried out of the sunshine, pulling the door curtain aside and moving from bright light into impenetrable gloom. The old crofthouse exhaled damp in his face, and he stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust.

He could hear the thump, thump of distant music, and he called out into the shadows, �Hello?� But there was no response. As his pupils dilated and the wreck of this abandoned house took shape around him, Fin stepped carefully through a hallway of half-rotted floorboards that moaned and complained underfoot. A doorway on his right opened into a room devoid of furniture, save for a scattering of sleeping bags and pillows that lay about the floor. Nineteen-fifties sepia wallpaper hung in strips from pitted plaster, and the place smelled of stale tobacco. And something else. Musky and vaguely familiar.

Further down the hall, a door to his left led to a room where sunlight leaked in around all sides of a window sealed with strips of cardboard. Two computer screens on a table filled the room with an eerie light, and the air whirred and hummed with the sounds of a computer processing digital information. The floor was a snakepit of cables coiling among open packing cases, video equipment, a camera on a tripod, and a couple of drones piled one on top of the other. Fin wondered where the electricity came from. He had seen no power or telephone lines leading to the house.

At the end of the hall, a door opened into a lean-to kitchen with a ceiling that sloped down to a back door. Black mould mottled damp plaster. All the kitchen fittings, including the sink, had been removed. A fold-up table stood beneath the only window, and a kettle, toaster and microwave were all plugged into a bar of sockets powered by a cable that wound its way out through the back door.

The music, coming from outside, was much louder here, and Fin heard the purr of a diesel generator, and the chatter of voices. He held aside the beaded curtain that hung in the doorway and stepped out on to the broken concrete patio. The generator stood on a plinth away to his left. To his right a group of teenagers and an older man sat in a circle, on mats and makeshift chairs. Three girls, around the same age as Caitlin and Iseabail, and a boy with a shaven head. They were passing around a joint. A fug of scented smoke hung in the air, joss sticks arranged like a fan in a glass jar in the centre of the circle. To keep the midges at bay, Fin assumed. He swiped the air around his head to stop them from eating his face.

The older man had his back to the door, but turned as Fin stepped out. He looked like a throwback to the punk era of the nineteen-seventies, a face full of studs and other piercings. His tanned and naked torso was well sculpted, a riot of tattoos. Each arm adorned by a tattoo sleeve. He wore shorts and open sandals, his black hair gelled into spikes. His lean face was unshaven, just the first hint of silver among the bristles, and Fin thought he was a good-looking man in a seedy sort of way. He was, perhaps, forty. But could have been younger. Or older.

The music came from an ancient ghetto blaster at his feet, and it appeared he was holding court at the centre of a circle of adoration, apparently exerting some kind of Svengali-like influence on his teenage followers. Abruptly he turned off the music and jumped to his feet. �What the hell do you want, mate?� The soft Irish cadence of his voice belied the aggressive nature of his query.

Fin said, �Colm Hendry, I presume.�

�Which doesn�t answer me question.�

�I�m Fionnlagh Macleod�s father.�

There was a momentary hiatus. Then one of the girls said, �His dad�s a cop.� And the boy holding the joint threw it quickly away into the loch, where it fizzled briefly.

�Used to be,� Fin said, and there was a collective groan around the circle.

Hendry shook his head and smiled wryly. �Well, that was a waste of good dope,� he said. Then his face darkened. �So you�re the father of the boy that killed our girl.�

�I don�t believe he did.� Fin paused. �Do you?�

�I wouldn�t know, mate.�

�But you knew Caitlin?�

�Of course I did. Great girl. Total gem. Why anyone would want to do her harm is beyond me.�

�And Iseabail?�

�Well, you never got one without the other, did you?�

�So they both spent time here?�

Hendry shrugged non-committally. �Maybe.�

�And you knew Fionnlagh, too?�

He scratched his bristles. �Knew him wouldn�t exactly describe it.�

�How would you describe it, then?�

�The only thing I know about him is that he didn�t like me very much.�

�Why is that?�

�You�d have to ask him. I only met him the once, Mr�Macleod. Turned up here one day and threatened to punch me lights out if I didn�t stay away from his girl.�

�Meaning Caitlin?�

�That�s right.�

�Why?�

Hendry laughed. �I don�t know. Maybe he was jealous.� He turned towards his acolytes. �Jenny, put the kettle on, would you, love?� Then to the others, �Maybe you guys would give us a wee bit of privacy, eh?�

Jenny was on her feet first, and disappeared into the house. The others dispersed more slowly, wandering off around the far side of the building.

Fin looked at Hendry. �Your little coterie of followers?� His voice laced with more than a little sarcasm.

Hendry was unperturbed. �They�re just killing time till they leave for university. Giving me a wee hand while they wait.�

�Doing what?�

Hendry gazed at him thoughtfully before appearing finally to make a decision. �Come inside and I�ll show you.� He pushed past Fin and into the house with a rattle of wooden beads.

Fin followed him through the kitchen and into the room with the computer. Hendry leaned over the desk, and a swipe of his mouse banished screensavers from both monitors to reveal rows of files.

As he searched among them, Hendry said, �Got a call last June from a guy I knew. Young producer of a Gaelic-language TV show. He and his presenters had found this huge quantity of dead salmon dumped illegally down at Mangersta. I set myself up here, and got secret drone footage of one of those huge Norwegian hydrolyzer ships scooping thousands of dead salmon out of the cages. They loaded them into big plastic containers and ferried them down the coast to Mangersta where they�d found this wee hidden geodha in the cliffs. They were taking the containers in and out of there in smaller boats and dumping the fish on the beach.�

He stood up and sighed. �I couldn�t follow them all the way with the drones.� He grinned. �So camped myself out on the cliffs down at Mangersta for a week, and caught them red-handed. Footage of them dumping the fish. And they had no idea I was even there.� He turned back to the computer. �I�ve edited together a wee sequence.� Two mouse clicks opened a video file and one of the screens filled with the footage. It was clearly shot from some considerable height above the cages in East Loch Roag. A large hydrolyzer, like the boat Niall had pointed out to him yesterday, was hoovering dead fish from the bottom of the cages through a wide flexi-tube, sorting them into big blue plastic containers that were then swung by crane on to hovering support boats. When the deck of one was fully loaded, it set off for the mouth of the loch, and another took its place.

The clarity of the images was remarkable, the camera zooming in and out, focusing on different elements of the operation. Men in orange overalls could be seen moving about on the decks of the various boats, hooking up crates to cranes and guiding them to safe landing spots on other vessels.

The sequence cut then to grainy distant shots from shore of a fully laden service boat heading south along the coast. Then more aerial images, at Mangersta this time, of a smaller crane offloading crates one at a time from the service boat to a smaller craft that shuttled back and forth, in and out of the geodha, where the contents of each crate were tipped out on to the vast and growing pile of dead salmon on the beach.

Fin said, �But surely this was bound to be discovered?�

Hendry shook his head. �Not really. In time, nature will dispose of the evidence. The fish�ll biodegrade. Then when the winter storms come, and the sea gets driven in at force, it�ll all be washed away. It was pure bloody chance that Donnie and the girls were filming down there.�

�Iseabail told me it was sea lice and jellyfish that were killing the salmon.�

Hendry nodded. �There�ve been several jellyfish blooms around the coast this year. And there�s only going to be more of them as water temperatures rise. But the cages are infested with sea lice, Mr�Macleod. There�s far too high a concentration of fish, and the lice literally eat them alive. I�ll show you.�

He leaned over the desk again, and Fin saw a thin line of red abrasion around the back of his neck, as if something had cut into it. �What happened to your neck?� he said, and Hendry absently raised a hand to run soothing fingers over it.

�Damned light meter,� he said, still focused on his screens. �I keep it on a leather thong around my neck. Bloody thing caught on something and broke. Just about cut me head off, too.� He opened another video file. �Here.� And he stood back. �This is inside the cages themselves.�

These shots were taken underwater. With audio. Seawater bubbling around dozens of grey-looking salmon with great chunks eaten out of them by the lice. Fin watched in horror as the fish swam lethargically about the camera lens like zombies, half-alive, half-dead, staring through murky water with large, sad eyes.

�How did you get footage like this?� Fin said.

Hendry tapped his nose and smiled. �Been in this game a long time, mate.� He dropped into a wheely chair, folding his hands across his belly in a gesture of self-satisfaction, and stretched his legs out in front of him. �Bradan Mor have been panicking,� he said. �Trying to spin this. Putting wrasses into the cages.�

�Wrasses?� Fin frowned.

�Smaller fish that actually eat the lice off the salmon. Scavengers. But that�s just a PR exercise. There are too many salmon in these cages. You know, modern cages can be up to twenty metres deep and some of the bigger ones can have anything from a hundred thousand to half a million fish in them.�

�So what do the jellyfish do?�

�Micro jellyfish, really. They kill the salmon by blocking and stinging their gills. But the real problem is just overcrowding. Profit above welfare. In the past, that kind of concentration of fish led to all sorts of diseases. Furunculosis, fibrosis, stuff like that. The early fish farmers basically used to chuck antibiotics into a cement mixer with the feed, then throw it into the cages. These days it�s more scientific. The smolts from the hatcheries are being vaccinated against lots of different diseases before they even go into the sea.�

He took a tin of roll-ups from his pocket and held it out to Fin, who shook his head. Hendry selected one, lit it, and sat back to blow smoke through the arrows of light that fired themselves into the room from where the cardboard failed to meet the window frame.

He said, �You know that lovely pink colour of the salmon we buy in the supermarket? Fake. Like Donald Trump and his phoney tan. Completely artificial. They add a pigment called astaxanthin to the feed, which wild salmon get from eating prawns and krill. And sometimes they use the fermentation of a microorganism that does the same job. Without that, the flesh of farmed salmon would be a very unappetising grey, and no one would want to buy it.�

He leaned over to run his mouse across the desktop and activate a screensaver that wiped the images of zombie salmon from his screens.

�So now Bradan Mor are resorting to pretty extreme measures to get rid of the lice.�

�Extreme how?�

�By flooding the cages with formaldehyde. Well, maybe flooding would be a wee exaggeration. But they�re using it as a treatment. Formaldehyde! A highly toxic, fucking systemic poison.� He jumped to his feet, suddenly energized. �But don�t take my word for it. Let me show you.�

It look less than ten minutes, after negotiating the access track in Hendry�s Land Rover, to reach the harbour at Baile na Mara. The place was deserted.

Hendry parked where Niall had left his Mercedes the day before, and the two men strolled down to the pier. A slight breeze kept the worst of the midges at bay, the rest burning off in the sun as it rose higher in the most painfully blue of skies. Without the wind and the rain, Fin had the impression of being somewhere foreign, a trip abroad. Only the smell spoiled the illusion.

He had been aware of it yesterday, though it didn�t seem as powerful then. The stink of rotting fish. Hendry went straight to a rusted orange skip and climbed the rungs attached to its far side. He gestured for Fin to follow. �Come on up.�

Reluctantly Fin climbed to the top of the sealed skip, the stink of decaying fish growing more pungent with every rung. Hendry threw open a large hatch and the odour that struck them was like a physical assault. Fin could see the thousands of dead, diseased and half-eaten salmon inside, filling it almost to the roof, and he retched several times. Had he eaten breakfast, he was certain he would have reintroduced it to the world, right there on top of the skip. The interior of it was alive with flies and maggots.

Hendry closed the lid again with a clang, and stood up. �This site is RSPCA and ASC assured,� he said. �You�ll see that label on salmon in the supermarket. It�s supposed to reassure you about the quality of the fish and the responsible and sustainable environment in which they were raised.� He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders. �No comment necessary, eh?�

�But what are these fish doing here in a skip?� Fin said.

�They�ve been trucking these disposal skips in and out for months. I don�t know where they take them, but clearly they couldn�t get rid of the morts fast enough. Which is why they started dumping them down at Mangersta. I figure mortality in the cages must be around twenty-five percent.�

Fin whistled silently through pursed lips. If Niall�s figure of one hundred thousand fish a cage was right, that meant somewhere around three hundred thousand salmon would die before harvesting at this farm alone. He climbed down the rungs after Hendry and followed him around to the far side of the skip, where white plastic 1,000-litre containers were stacked two high. Hendry jabbed a finger at the label on one of them. �Formaldehyde Solution,� he read. Then ran his finger down a list of warnings opposite a skull and crossbones in a red diamond. �May cause cancer. Do not breathe in. Causes damage to organs.� He glanced at Fin. �Employees have to use special protective clothing when they work with this stuff.�

He started walking towards the former fish processing plant that Niall had told Fin was now used as offices. Fin went after him.

�With freedom of information, I got figures from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. More than fifty tons of formaldehyde have been used here and elsewhere in Scotland.� He paused at the steps leading up to the offices. �And the UK Health and Safety Executive have ruled that chemical levels in the fish don�t pose a health risk.� He shook his head slowly. �Mr�Macleod, would you want to eat salmon that have been pumped full of vaccines, half eaten by sea lice and drowned in toxic chemicals?�

They heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Hendry glanced back along the road, and they saw sunlight reflecting from the roof of a car. �Better make ourselves scarce.�

Fin was perplexed. �Why?�

�Because I don�t want to be seen here.� He took the steps two at a time up to the door and disappeared inside. Fin sighed. He had no desire to be found hiding in the offices of Bradan Mor like some thief in the night. But he seemed left with little choice, so he ran up the steps to vanish inside just as the approaching car pulled in next to Hendry�s Land Rover. Hendry was lurking in a corridor hanging with protective white plastic suits.

Fin whispered, �What about your vehicle?�

�Could be anyone�s,� Hendry�s voice came back at him out of the gloom. There was a dartboard on the wall behind him, half a dozen darts clustered together in the cork. �There�s fishermen use the pier all the time.� He turned and opened a door marked HEALTH ROOM. �In here.�

With a dreadful sinking feeling, Fin knew that, if the occupants of the vehicle came into the building, he and Hendry would be trapped in this room and almost certainly discovered. Hendry, by contrast, was hyped up with excitement, and Fin realized he was enjoying this. The activist closed the door softly behind them and went to crouch by the window. The room itself was lined with shelves groaning with paperwork and blue and white cardboard boxes. A large noticeboard was pinned with memos and instructions on jellyfish surveillance and the sampling of sea lice.

Hendry was sneaking glances out of the window. �They�re not coming in.�

Fin breathed a sigh of relief.

�They�re taking one of the RBBs. Probably going out to the Bradan Harvester.�

�That�s the boat that washes off the sea lice?�

�A hydrolyzer, yeah.�

�How does it do that?�

�It�s got a reservoir of fresh water aboard, Mr�Macleod. They suck the fish out of the cages, sluice them through the fresh water, then put them back.�

�The fresh water kills the sea lice?�

�No, just washes them off. Every so often they have to sail out of the loch to dump the lice at sea. They�ve got their own desalination plant on board, so they make more fresh water, and come back to rinse more fish.� Hendry sat on the floor now, with his back to the wall beneath the window. �They�re pulling out all the stops, because government inspectors�ll be here soon to visit the cages.� He snorted his derision. �Of course, the Marine Directorate never arrive unannounced. So there�s always time to clean up or cover up.�

And Fin realized now exactly why Niall and his son were on the island.

They heard the inboard motor of the RBB starting up at the pier. Hendry had relaxed. He took out his tin and lit another roll-up. �There�s a lot of people pissed off at what�s going on out there, you know. Not least the Linshader estate.�

Fin scowled. �How does it affect them?�

�This plague of sea lice, Mr�Macleod, it�s not entirely confined to the cages. It spills over into the surrounding loch and affects wild salmon returning to spawn upriver. And selling beats on the Grimersta River used to be a lucrative source of income for the estate. Not any more.� He stood up and looked out of the window to see the black RBB leaving a deep green trail in its wake as it headed out beyond the near island.

�How would the estate even know what�s happening at the cages?�

Hendry grinned. �They read my blog, Mr�Macleod. Same as everyone else. Including Bradan Mor. Which makes me a marked man as far as the company is concerned. But they�re not going to be able to stop me posting my documentary on YouTube in a few weeks. And then everyone�s going to know what they�ve been up to.�

Fin shook his head. �They�re not going to be very happy about that.�

�They are not,� Hendry agreed. �The stakes are huge, Mr�Macleod. Farmed salmon is Britain�s biggest food export. Sales of Scottish salmon bring in nearly 1.5 billion pounds annually. But the problems they encounter farming them are creating huge mortality rates � about fifteen million fish every year. And folk could very easily lose their appetite for salmon if they knew exactly what it was they were eating.�

Hendry�s Land Rover lurched and lumbered down the track towards the head of the loch. But it wasn�t until they cleared the stunted rowans that they saw the green Range Rover parked next to Fin�s pale blue rental.

�Uh-oh!� Hendry was immediately on his guard. �Who the hell�s that?�

But Fin knew. He had seen that same green Range Rover parked at the back of Niall Dubh�s house on the cliffs at Port of Ness.

Hendry pulled up beside it, and both men got cautiously out of the vehicle. There was a little breeze now, though the midges were still in evidence. Sunlight glittered all across the water beyond the abandoned crofthouse. On a cluster of rocks, a group of shags, wings outstretched to dry their feathers, stood in silhouette against the shimmering loch.

Hendry strode boldly through the curtained door, shouting names as he went. �Alasdair! Jenny!� But there was no reply. Fin followed at a distance, and, when he passed from sunlight into the tenebrous damp of the house, heard Hendry cursing from the far end of the hall. He made his way cautiously along to the computer room, and found Hendry ripping the cardboard from the window, allowing sunlight to stream in, casting shadows among the chaos. Someone had systematically smashed everything in the room. Computer, monitors, video and still cameras, tripods. An orgy of calculated destruction.

Hendry was dismayed. �Fuck, fuck, fuck,� he kept saying as he strode among the remains of his equipment. �This stuff cost a fucking fortune.� He looked despairingly at Fin standing in the doorway. �How am I ever going to replace it?� A pause, then, �Fuck!� at the top of his voice. It resounded around the room. He cast frantic eyes about the wreckage. �The drones are gone.� And he pushed past Fin, through the kitchen and out on to the broken concrete patio. By the time Fin had parted the bead curtains on the back door, Hendry was picking up the shattered remains of the two drones from among the woody tendrils of heather where someone had thrown them.

Off to the left, it looked as if that same person might have taken a sledgehammer to the generator. It was smashed beyond repair.

Hendry appeared to be on the verge of tears. He dropped the broken pieces of his drones back into the heather and stared disconsolately at Fin, as if somehow Fin might be able to fix all this. �Jesus Christ, Mr�Macleod,� he said.

Fin had not particularly warmed to the man in the last couple of hours, but he felt sorry for him now. �Does this mean you�ve lost everything? All your video files?�

Hendry shook his head. �All backed up to the cloud.� Though in this moment that seemed to offer him little comfort.

A voice startled them both. �Bit of a mess all this, eh?� They turned to see Jack Dempsey step out from beyond the far gable. There was an ersatz attempt at sympathy somewhere behind a grin that faded as his gaze fell on Fin standing in the doorway. �Mr�Macleod,� he said, nodding his acknowledgement.

�Mr�Dempsey,� Fin said, and stepped out on to the remains of the patio. Joss sticks still stood fanned around the jar, but had long since burned out.

Dempsey turned back to Hendry. �Nice place you have here, Mr�Hendry. I was just passing, know what I mean, and it seems I scared off some kids.� He glanced towards the shattered drones. �Looks like they might have been vandalising your stuff. Maybe you should check if anything�s been stolen.�

�You bastard!� Hendry almost spat at him.

Fin said, �Does Niall know you�re here?�

Dempsey swung around. �What do you think, Mr�Macleod? Though he�ll be surprised to know that you are.�

The smile wrote itself all over his face again and he turned back to Hendry. �It might be an idea, Mr�Hendry, if you were to leave the island. For your own safety, I mean. No telling if those kids might be back.� He nodded at Fin and then turned and vanished around the side of the house.

Fin and Hendry stood in silence, listening as the Range Rover�s engine coughed into life on the far side of the building. And they heard the whine of its gears as it set off on the long trek back to the road. Fin found Hendry staring at him. �You know who that guy is.� Not a question, but a clear accusation.

�He�s Niall Black�s minder,� Fin said. �A thug from Glasgow.�

�And it would seem you�re a friend of the said Mr�Black.�

�We were at school together.� Fin thought about it. �But that doesn�t make us friends.�

�Then how the hell did he know where to find me? There�s only a handful of folk know I�m here.�

Stornoway was enjoying a holiday mood brought on by the extended spell of fine weather, waterproofs and winter jackets abandoned in favour of open-necked shirts and rolled-up sleeves. Tourists in shorts and Jesus sandals roamed the lunchtime streets. Chattering schoolkids wandered around with blazers slung over shoulders. Old ladies perspired beneath summer hats. Flower baskets hanging from shop and pub doorways swayed gently in the warmest of August breezes.

Fin did not share in this festive spirit as he trudged wearily up Church Street, frustrated and depressed by his lack of progress. What he had learned about Bradan Mor�s fish farm could not compensate for his failure to cast light on his son�s guilt or innocence. In fact, he was far from convinced that anything Colm Hendry had told him was even relevant. He needed to talk to Fionnlagh.

The CIO was out to lunch, and the sergeant at the charge bar was initially reluctant to let Fin into the cells. It was only the appearance of George Gunn that settled the issue. �Let him in, Tam,� he told the sergeant. �I�ll take responsibility if there�s any kickback.�

Fin nodded his silent thanks, and the uniformed sergeant unlocked the gate giving them access to the cells. Circular overhead lights cast their shadows on a scarred floor, and the rattle of the officer�s keys was accompanied by the unappetising smell of lukewarm food coming from the cell.

The door swung open to reveal Fionnlagh squatting on his blue blanket, which was folded beneath him on the concrete plinth below the window. He was forking tepid pot noodle from a paper bowl into his mouth without any great enthusiasm. He appeared surprised to see Fin, and used his arrival as an excuse to abandon his lunch. He laid it on the concrete beside him and said, �The least you could have done is bring me a Chinese carryout. I�m going to go insane eating this shit.�

The door clanged shut, and Fin stood looking at his son, almost drowning in a sea of silent mixed emotions. He had no experience of Fionnlagh as a child. He had already reached the age of sixteen when Fin first met him. And now he was a grown man. But somehow, sitting there, with the sunlight falling across him in small squares from the window above, he looked to Fin like a little boy. Six, seven, eight years old, and as lost as Fin had been when his aunt took him from his parents� home to live with her in that lonely house above Crobost harbour.

Fionnlagh found his father�s gaze unsettling. �What?� he said.

�I want you to tell me about Caitlin and Colm Hendry.�

Fionnlagh broke eye contact and cast his eyes towards the floor. �Still playing the cop?�

Fin felt anger spike through him. �It�s a role I played for years, Fionnlagh. And I can still remember my lines.�

Fionnlagh shook his head. �What�s the point?�

�Just tell me about Caitlin and Colm Hendry.�

Fionnlagh sighed and leaned forward. �Hendry thinks he�s God�s gift to women.�

�How do you know that? You only met him once.�

Fionnlagh looked up sharply. �You�ve been speaking to him?�

Fin nodded.

�I heard enough about him from Caitlin.�

�How was she involved with him?�

�He didn�t tell you?�

�No.�

Fionnlagh shook his head in frustrated recollection. �You know he�s trying to discredit Bradan Mor? That�s why he�s here.� When Fin made no response, he said, �Caitlin and Iseabail were swimming out to the cages at night and getting underwater shots for him of the fish inside. Gross stuff. Salmon half eaten alive by sea lice.�

Fin nodded slowly. That made sense now. He said, �I�ve seen the footage.�

Fionnlagh looked up, surprised. �You know it was Iseabail and Caitlin that found all the illegally dumped fish down at Mangersta?�

�I do.�

�Well, it was Iseabail that talked Caitlin into swimming out to the cages with her.� Fionnlagh gasped his exasperation, and it reverberated around the walls of the cell. �Not that she took much persuasion. She was so into the environment. Animal rights. All that stuff. It was her passion.� He paused. �It was one of the things I loved about her.� He looked very directly at his father. �And I did love her.�

Fin saw the painful truth of that in his son�s eyes.

�But I hated her doing what she was doing. It wasn�t just dangerous, it was stupid. She was allowing herself to be used by that guy. They both were.�

�So you went and told him to sling his hook.�

�I did. I didn�t trust him. The girls were spending way too much time up at that old crofthouse. Two attractive young teenage girls, and him ten years older even than me. I figured he was looking for more from them than just swimming out to the cages.�

Fin said, �That�s a bit rich coming from someone who was having sex with one of them.� Which drew a look from his son. �So tell me about the night she was killed. Did you two fall out?�

Remembered anger flashed then across Fionnlagh�s eyes. �I didn�t want her to go.�

�Out to the cages?�

He nodded.

�And?�

�She told me I didn�t own her. If she wanted to swim out to the fish farm, that�s what she would do.�

�And?�

But Fionnlagh just shook his head.

�What happened, Fionnlagh?�

Fin�s insistence provoked an angry response from his son. �What does it matter now? She�s dead. And nothing I can say, and nothing you can do, is going to change that.� His voice cracked, and he dropped his face into despondent hands. �Fucked it up for everyone, didn�t I? Donna didn�t deserve this. And, God knows, poor little Eilidh didn�t. And Caitlin...�If I could turn back the clock, undo it all, I would. But I can�t.� He drew a despairing breath. �I wish to God I was dead, too.�

Fin felt battered as he stepped from the police station. His own son had just wished himself dead. I did love her, Fionnlagh had said to his father. And the death of someone you love, Fin knew, was a loss from which some people never recovered. No matter how wrong that relationship had been, he didn�t doubt his son�s feelings.

Depression descended on him like the heat of the day as he walked down Church Street, sunlight playing on the inner harbour in direct contrast to the darkness in his heart.

�Mr�Macleod. Mr�Macleod.� The voice calling his name barely penetrated his introspection. �Mr�Macleod!� Finally Fin turned to see George Gunn hurrying down the street. He stopped, and Gunn caught up with him outside An Taigh C�ilidh. He was breathing hard, and glanced back towards the police station. �I need to talk to you, sir, but not here. It�s a bit public. Have you had lunch yet?�

Fin shook his head. �No.�

�Well, what about we meet at the Harris and Lewis Smokehouse in, say...� he looked at his watch, �fifteen minutes?� He paused. �Well, maybe it�s called Beckett and Sons, or something like that, now. Anyway, if we sit upstairs, we�ll likely not be seen by anyone from the station.�

Fin parked above the pier at Baile na Mara. It was his third time here in two days. As on previous visits, it was completely deserted. When he and the boys had been making their clandestine outings to steal salmon from Hamish Black�s fish farm more than thirty years before, there were half a dozen fish farms out on the loch, all serviced from Baile na Mara. Fishermen went out regularly to harvest crabs and lobsters from creels. There was the fish processing plant. The harbour had sustained, perhaps, a hundred and twenty full-time jobs. It was likely that there were more people commuting to work every morning to the island of Great Bernera than there were leaving it to work elsewhere.

Now the only folk working out of the harbour were a handful of Bradan Mor employees, and most of their time seemed spent out at the cages. There was a sense of neglect and decay about the place, a tiny corner of the island whose time had come, and gone.

Fin walked around the bay, past empty and derelict buildings, to a crumbling slipway at the point. The carcasses of old fishing boats lay canted at odd angles in the seaweed, next to a ramshackle pontoon draped with ropes and fenders and a solitary orange lifebelt. He turned north then, leaving the path, unhooking a gate and climbing through the heather to the top of the promontory.

From here, he had an unobstructed view across coruscating waters to the twin banks of circular salmon cages to which Niall had taken him yesterday in the RBB. The hydrolyzer was still there, and men working at the barge that distributed food to the fish. A power boat left the farthest of the cages, accelerating across the unbroken surface of the loch. Heading, Fin thought, for the tiny harbour at Breascleit, which appeared to service most of the other operators on the loch.

The breeze was cooling and kept the midges away, and Fin stood for some time gazing out across the water. Somehow, following his encounter with Fionnlagh, he had come to believe that these cages might, after all, hold some clue as to what had happened that night. And it seemed to him that the person closest to the centre of it all, apart from Fionnlagh, was Iseabail Macpherson. He needed to talk to her again. Only this time, he would beard the lioness in her own den.

Breacleit was the largest settlement on Great Bernera, not to be confused with Breascleit over on the main island. It had been home to the primary school, now closed due to lack of pupils, the place where both Caitlin and Iseabail would have received their primary education, and where doubtless they first met and forged the friendship that would see them through schools swimming championships, TV celebrity, and finally tragedy.

Fin drove up from the south, Loch Geal to the west, Loch Breacleit on the east. Past a children�s play park, and the austere little building that housed the Church of Scotland. Beyond the church, Fin saw the school, moss breaking through asphalt in a playground where the girls must once have played together, fenced and gated off now from the outside world.

He turned right into a narrow road that curved away towards the loch that gave the village its name. A war monument that sat up on the left cast a short shadow to the north. And a couple of hundred yards further on, Fin pulled in at the gate of the house where Iseabail had grown up. There were two other vehicles parked there, each facing in a different direction. An old Nissan Micra and a silver Peugeot.

The Macpherson home was a pebbledash bungalow that presented a low profile to the prevailing weather but commanded an impressive view over the loch. Discarded farm machinery lay scattered about an unkempt garden, and a woman stood hanging out washing on a line strung between two crooked posts. She turned as she heard Fin�s car, and watched him climb out of the vehicle and come through the gate. As he approached, she said warily, �Can I help you?� She was about Fin�s age. A handsome woman treated unkindly by the years. But still it was evident where Iseabail had got her looks.

�I was looking for Iseabail,� Fin said. �I take it you�re her mother?�

�I am. And what would you be wanting with my daughter?� She frowned at him. �You�re not the police again, are you?�

�Used to be,� Fin said. �Is she at home?�

�You haven�t told me what it is you want with her.�

�I was hoping to ask her about Caitlin.�

Mrs�Macpherson took the plastic basket of wet clothes she had been holding and laid it at her feet. She straightened up, shaking her head sadly. �Poor, poor Caitlin. An absolute tragedy, Mr...� She squinted at him suspiciously. �You didn�t tell me your name.�

�Macleod. Fin Macleod.�

Suspicion turned to a scowl. �You�re not related to that one they�ve charged with her murder, are you?�

�I�m his father.�

She absorbed this like blotting paper. �Well, you�ve got a damned cheek showing up here,� she said. �You ought to be ashamed of yourself, raising a monster like that. If I�d known the half of what was going on, I would have grounded our Iseabail months ago. Poor Caitlin. Groomed by her own teacher, for God�s sake, and made to have sex with him at that house on the Black Loch.�

�That�s not how Iseabail tells it, Mrs�Macpherson.�

She bridled with indignation. �What do you mean?�

�It�s alright, Mum.� Iseabail came hurrying anxiously from the house to thread an arm through Fin�s and pull him away towards the loch. �I�ll take it from here.� Over her shoulder, she called, �And I�m too old to be grounded!�

�You be careful, girl!� her mother shouted after her. �I�ll be watching. God knows, it might run in his family.�

Iseabail turned her face towards Fin and lifted eyebrows to the heavens. Then hissed, �Why did you have to come here?�

Fin said, �Because you weren�t entirely frank with me this morning.�

Iseabail glanced nervously back at her mother and hurried Fin further from the house towards the shore. �I didn�t lie to you,� she said. Then reluctantly, �There was just some stuff I didn�t tell you.�

�Lying by omission is still lying,� Fin said.

They arrived at the water�s edge and stopped. The loch reflected the blue of the sky, but Fin saw now that there were clouds bubbling up along the western horizon. White, fluffy cumulus that in themselves carried no threat of rain, but were often a precursor, he knew from long experience, to a change in the weather. Perhaps this long hot August was about to end in tears.

�I didn�t lie to you!� Iseabail stood with her hands on her hips and dared him to contradict her.

�You and Caitlin were swimming out to Bradan Mor�s cages to take video of diseased and damaged fish for Colm Hendry.�

Her self-certainty wavered and she glanced back towards the house, where her mother was taking her time hanging out the remaining washing, and keeping an unambiguous eye on them. �For God�s sake, don�t tell anyone that!�

�Why not?�

�Because I could get into serious trouble.�

�Maybe you should have thought of that before you got involved.�

He heard Iseabail�s breath trembling in her chest as she turned away towards the water. She folded her arms defensively, and there was a crack in her voice. �It�s all my fault.�

�What is?�

�It was me that talked Caitlin into going out to the cages. She was always the sensible one. Said it was too dangerous.�

Fin said, �I thought it was Caitlin who was passionate about the environment, and animal welfare.�

�She was. Totally. That was the degree she was going to take at Glasgow. A BSc in environmental science and sustainability.�

�So what was your motivation?�

Iseabail flicked a guilty glance in his direction. �It was obvious to me that Colm was infatuated with Caitlin. I mean, she wasn�t interested. She had Fionnlagh. But...�

Fin finished for her. �You�d fallen for Hendry.�

Iseabail kept her gaze fixed on some imaginary point on the distant horizon, avoiding eye contact. �I didn�t want to swim out there on my own. I thought if I could persuade Caitlin to come with me...�

�You�d somehow get into his good books?�

She shook her head despondently. �Stupid, I know. You can�t make people like you. I mean, not that he didn�t like me. But just not in that way.�

Fin gave vent to his exasperation. �Iseabail, he must be old enough to be your father. What would your dad say?�

She turned now to look at him very directly. �My dad died nearly fifteen years ago. I was only three. Never really knew him.�

Fin closed his eyes, and knew that he should have seen that coming. �I�m sorry,� he said.

She shrugged. �Doesn�t matter.� A pause. �So, anyway, I played the animal welfare card big. To Caitlin, I mean. Persuaded her that getting the evidence was the right thing to do.� She sucked in and bit her lower lip. �I wish to hell I hadn�t.�

�So what happened on the night she was murdered? You were going out to the cages again?�

She nodded. �A lot of the earlier stuff we�d got was unusable. Not enough light. Colm had got us lightweight LED strips that we were to strap around our heads to use with the GoPro cameras he provided. He said they would give more than enough light to get good clear footage underwater.�

�So you went out that night?�

�No.� Iseabail sighed. �We were going to. I was supposed to meet her on the shore at the far side of Aird Mh�r. It was the closest point to the cages. We always took a canoe out with us when we went, swimming one either side of it. For safety if anything went wrong.� She shook her head. �But Caitlin never showed up. It really wasn�t like her. I mean, I waited a whole hour, and in the end I just gave up and went home.�

�Did Hendry know the two of you planned to go out that night?�

�Of course.�

�And where was he?�

�I don�t know. Back at the croft, I suppose.� She looked at Fin with sudden fire blazing in her eyes. �It wasn�t him! Colm didn�t kill Caitlin.�

�How can you be sure?�

�Because he was in love with her.� Saying it out loud visibly had a sudden sobering effect on her, as if framing it in words made it real in a way that it hadn�t been before.

Fin said, �Most murder victims are killed by people who claim to have loved them. Family members. Partners.�

�It wasn�t Colm!� She turned her defiance towards the water. �I mean, what possible reason could he have had to kill her?�

�Maybe she turned him down. Some people can�t take rejection.�

�No!� She waggled her head with certainty. �It wasn�t Colm. I know him.� Then turned back to Fin. �I know I told you I didn�t think Fionnlagh did it. And I don�t. But by your logic, he could have. They were lovers, after all.�

Which came back at him like a slap in the face. Iseabail was nothing if not smart. But she relented.

�I�m sorry, Mr�Macleod. I really don�t think he did. But you�re looking in the wrong place.�

�Where should I be looking?�

�I wish I knew.�

They stood for a long time, then, without speaking. And as the cloud thickened from the west, so the wind grew stronger, sending the water of the loch rippling towards them. Fin glanced back and saw that Mrs�Macpherson had finished hanging out her washing and returned to the house. Sheets and blouses and socks lifted on the edge of the stiffening breeze.

Eventually he said, �Something you said this morning�s been troubling me.�

She scowled at him. �What?�

�When I talked about those cages out on East Loch Roag being Caitlin�s dad�s fish farm, you said something odd.�

She tilted her head into the oncoming wind, evasive now. �Did I?�

�You said, I suppose you could say that.�

She shook her head as if caught in some misdemeanour. �Nothing much gets by you, does it? You can tell you were a cop.�

�What did you mean?�

She folded her arms and sighed deeply. �I suppose it doesn�t matter now. I mean, she�s dead. So I�m not really bound by things she told me in confidence.�

�Such as?�

She turned eyes towards Fin that were filled with regret and resignation. �Maybe Niall Black wasn�t her dad.�

Fin approached Stornoway along Bayhead and on to Cromwell Street. The surface of the water in the inner harbour was ruffled now by the wind, and reflected the gathering accumulation of cloud overhead. Lews Castle still basked in late afternoon sunshine, but the clouds were pursuing their shadows down the hillside towards the harbour and skimming across dark blue water to cast the town in intermittent shade. The heat of the day, however, had not abated. It was, if anything, warmer. Almost suffocating. And Fin was glad of the air conditioning in his rental car.

As he drove across the spit of land that separated the inner and outer harbours, past the Crown Hotel, he saw the deep-water port across the bay. The one-time oil fabrication yard at Arnish now provided berths for cruise ships bringing tens of thousands of tourists to swamp the island every summer. To his left, The Narrows, where he and generations of island teenagers before and since had gathered on Friday and Saturday nights in search of drink and sex and an escape from joyless Calvinism. Right now it was full of tourists and shoppers enjoying the sunshine. But Fin could remember winter nights in the rain and the cold, huddling in the shelter of doorways, sharing illicit roll-ups and hoping for word of a party that might provide warmth and beer and relief from boredom.

It was as if the whole history of his life was here on the island, and all the years he had spent away from it since offered only phantom memories, wraithlike and insubstantial. The only one of those that stayed with him, and real, was the most painful and the one he least wished to dwell on. The death of the son he�d had with Mona. Robbie would have been nearly twenty now, the growing pains of adolescence behind him, all his adult years lying ahead.

Fin nearly choked on the thought, and blinked furiously to keep the tears from his eyes. South Beach floated past on a sea of unwanted memories, sun glancing off the roofs of all the cars parked along the water�s edge, and he drove up James Street to the roundabout at the top of the hill.

Schoolkids were already streaming out of the Nicolson, holding up traffic at the crossings on Sandwick Road. Fin pulled in at double gates that opened into the staff car park. Eilidh stood just inside the gate, a gathering of a dozen or more children on the grass behind her, mostly girls. To his shock, Fin saw tears streaming down her face, shoulders slumped, her schoolbag clutched to her chest. As he wound down the window to call to her, he heard the gleeful chant of the kids behind her. Eilidh, Eilidh, quite contrary, who did your daddy kill?

Anger spiked up his spine like an electric shock. He yanked on the handbrake and jumped out. �What do you think you�re doing, you stupid little bastards?!� And he was almost shocked by his own voice reverberating around the angle of the school buildings.

The chanting faded away to stunned silence, shock and fear in the faces of the children.

�It�s alright, it�s alright,� Eilidh said quickly, anxious to stop any further outbursts, and she hurried towards the car.

Fin was about to get back into the driver�s side when one of the few boys in the group shouted, �Who are you, then, the killer�s daddy?� His voice treacly with sarcasm. Fin slammed the door shut again and strode towards the group on the grass.

Somewhere in his peripheral hearing, he was aware of Eilidh calling after him, �Don�t, Grampa, don�t!�

The children collectively shrank from his angry approach. And Fin stabbed an accusatory finger towards the boy who had called out. �You. What�s your name?�

The boy stood his ground. �None of your business.�

�Grampaaaa!� Eilidh was wailing behind him.

�What�s going on?� A sharp voice cut through it all, and Fin looked up to see a young male teacher marching towards him. �You can�t talk to the children like that.�

�Oh, can�t I? What kind of school do you run here?� Fin shouted at him. �A bunch of kids ganging up on a little girl. Reducing her to tears.� He waved a hand vaguely behind him in Eilidh�s direction.

�I don�t know who you are, or what you think you�re doing,� the teacher said. �But if you don�t leave now, I�m calling the police.�

Fin drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, pulse racing. He used to be the police. What was he doing? He turned abruptly and walked back to the car. Eilidh got in as he slid into the driver�s seat. She sat staring straight ahead of her, tears trickling down pink cheeks. She said, �I have to come here every day, Grampa. You don�t.�

He clutched the steering wheel and breathed his frustration. Angry with himself for losing control. �I�m sorry, Eilidh, I�m sorry.�

She said simply, �Can we go. Please.�

Fin glanced at the group of schoolkids and their teacher standing watching him. He banged the car into first gear, and took off into Sandwick Road with a squeal of tyres. A chorus of car horns sounded from traffic in the road behind him, and he gritted his teeth, accelerating towards the Engebret�s roundabout.

He took a back road out of town, and he and Eilidh drove all the way to Ness in a brittle silence. Inside, Fin was seething with anger and regret. He glanced at his granddaughter a couple of times, but she sat with her hands folded in her lap, gazing passively out across the machair, at an ocean transitioning from blue to pewter as darker clouds approached.

When he pulled in outside the bungalow, she got out without a word and ran down the path. By the time Fin had climbed the steps to the kitchen, both Marsaili and Donna were pacing anxiously inside.

Marsaili said, �What on earth happened?�

�She came in without a word,� Donna said, �and ran straight up to her room.�

�We didn�t want to go after her until we knew why.� Marsaili�s glare was accusatory.

Fin�s head dropped. Partially in despair, partially in shame. �The kids at school were chanting horrible things,� he said. �I�m afraid I lost it.�

�What do you mean lost it?� Marsaili�s tone was unforgiving.

�I shouted at them. Well, swore at them.�

Both women were shocked.

�A teacher threatened to call the police.�

�Jesus, Fin!� Marsaili ran a hand back through her hair in exasperation.

Donna shook her head, staring at her father-in-law in disbelief. �Fucking stupid...� She turned and slammed out of the kitchen, and they heard her footsteps on the stairs up to Eilidh�s room.

After several moments of silence, Marsaili said, �What were you thinking?�

�I wasn�t thinking. That�s the problem. I just reacted.�

�What were they chanting?�

He told her.

And her hand flew to her mouth. �Dear God!� Then, �I hope you told that teacher he could go fuck himself.�

Which brought a reluctant smile to Fin�s face. �That�s what you�d have said?�

�Probably worse.� And they shared a moment before their smiles faded and she said, �Where have you been all day, Fin? You�ve been gone for hours.�

Fin glanced from the window. �I think the weather�s going to break later tonight. Why don�t we go down to the beach after we�ve had something to eat and I�ll tell you everything?� He cast eyes towards the door to the hall. �There�s probably stuff it might be better that Donna didn�t hear.�

It was still warm. Abnormally so. Darkening clouds gathered in the north and west, masking the sun and bringing premature twilight. Sunset was arriving increasingly early each night as the earth turned on its axis and the sun headed inexorably towards the equator. Tonight, it would be gone before ten.

Fin and Marsaili walked across the machair to the steep path they had taken many times in their youth from the cliffs down to the beach below. As soon as they reached the sand, they kicked off their shoes and felt the fine, cool grains pushing up between their toes. The tide was on the way out, and they ran over wet, compacted sand, both hopping to pull up the legs of their jeans. They splashed into the water, and despite weeks of sunshine, it still felt cold. But good. And Fin knew that Marsaili�s squeals were a release of tension. She nearly fell, and he caught her arm, and in an instant she had fallen into both of his, pulling him to her, pressing her head into his shoulder, and he felt the sobs that racked her body. He folded her into his arms and held her close, resting his cheek against the softness of her hair, and let his own silent tears fall into the gathering gloom.

They stood like that for some time, the sea washing up against bare calves before sucking sand away from beneath their feet. Further along the beach, Fin saw a man with a black Labrador heading for the port. The only other souls on the otherwise deserted sands. Eventually they broke apart, letting the wind dry salt tears on streaked cheeks, and hand in hand, they sauntered slowly along the tideline, following at a distance in the footsteps of the man and his dog. By the time they reached the port, the dog walker and his Lab were nowhere to be seen, and they turned to wander back along the water�s edge, foam washing sand from their feet and obliterating footsteps in their wake.

�So,� Marsaili said at length. �Tell me.�

And he told her about his encounter at the house with Iseabail, and making his way to the abandoned crofthouse where the anti-fish farm activist Colm Hendry had set up his base of operations. He described to her in detail the activist�s aerial shots exposing the illegal dumping of dead fish, and the zombie salmon, half eaten by sea lice, swimming listlessly around in cages where anything up to twenty-five percent of the fish were already dead.

She listened in horror as he conjured up an image of the stinking maggot-ridden morts, as Hendry had called them, in the skip at the harbour, and the 1,000-litre containers of formaldehyde that a desperate Bradan Mor was using to try to kill the sea lice.

�God, Fin! Are we ever going to be able to eat salmon again?�

Fin shook his head gravely. �Unless it�s pulled fresh out of a river, I think I might have lost my appetite for it.�

Away on the horizon they saw distant flashes of lightning, and a long time later the faintest rumble of thunder.

�Let�s hope it doesn�t come ashore,� Fin said.

They walked slowly as the light faded, and the sea breaking along the sand glowed as if lit.

At length Fin said, �There�s something I�ve never told anyone.� And immediately corrected himself. �Apart from Artair. And that was more than thirty years ago. He told me to shut up about it, and I did.� He could feel Marsaili turning curious eyes towards him. �But, you know, when you keep something inside like that, something unpleasant, it festers. Turns toxic.�

�For heaven�s sake, Fin!� Marsaili�s exasperation at his procrastination rose above the sound of the sea breaking along the beach.

He smiled ruefully. �Sorry.� And so he told her, all about those clandestine night-time drives down to Great Bernera the summer before they left for university, to steal salmon from Hamish Black�s fish farm.

Marsaili expressed her surprise. �And Niall was okay with stealing from his own father?�

�It was his idea, Marsaili.�

He told her about the night of the storm, and Iain being lost. And how his body had been found in one of the cages the following morning. She listened in silence. Rapt. Shocked. He told her about Coinneach Smith passing off the farmed fish they had stolen as wild salmon, and how he had insisted they continue to supply him even after Iain�s drowning. Threatening to expose them if they didn�t.

�What did you do?�

�We stopped, of course. There�s no way we could have gone out to those cages again.�

�And Coinneach Smith?�

Fin hesitated. �You probably don�t remember. But it was in the news at the time. His body was found at the foot of cliffs on the Linshader estate. They figured he�d fallen. Or committed suicide.�

He felt her grip on his arm tighten. �And you thought Niall had done it?�

�I didn�t know, Marsaili. I confronted him, and he denied it.� He turned to look at her. �I asked him again yesterday, when he took me down to Loch Roag.�

�And?�

�Classic evasion. He neither admitted nor denied it. Just said it didn�t matter now because everyone involved was dead.� He stopped and took her by the shoulders. �But it matters to Calum Smith. Coinneach�s son. I met him today at Linshader. He thinks we did it, Marsaili. Me and Niall. And that Caitlin�s murder, and Fionnlagh�s arrest, are the sins of the fathers being visited on their own children.�

�Oh, Fin, that�s awful.� She took his hand, and they continued their slow progress towards the rocks at the far end of the beach. �I can�t believe you never told me any of this.�

�What would you have said if I had?�

She shrugged. �I don�t know. But it would have been a burden halved.� And he realized the truth of that. He felt better already for having shared it with her. She said, �I saw you and Niall walking on the beach yesterday, and I did some research on the laptop today. Just out of interest.�

�Research on what?�

�Niall.�

�And?�

�There�s a ton of stuff about him on the internet. He�s even got his own page on Wikipedia. All about his meteoric rise to CEO of the company he rebranded as Bradan Mor. Moving to Cyprus as a tax exile, though it�s not exactly a tax haven. But you pay less tax in the sunshine. You know, they say he�s worth �780 million.�

Fin exhaled sharply.

�There�s even stuff about the break-up of his marriage to Ailsa, and how they each got custody of one of the kids. The boy went with his dad. Ailsa got Caitlin.�

�Yes, she told me.�

�The son�s a male model, apparently. A bit of a jet-setter from all accounts.�

�He�s here, you know.�

�On the island?�

�His father�s grooming him to take over the business when he retires. But he didn�t seem to me like someone who�d be much interested in running a company.�

�You met him, then?�

�Briefly. He was pretty hostile. I am, after all, the father of the man accused of murdering his sister.� He paused for reflection. �I heard something else interesting today.�

�What?�

�Apparently Caitlin told Iseabail that Niall wasn�t her father.�

Marsaili stopped dead in the sand, and the sea washed over their feet. �Really?� She thought about it. �That would explain the split custody. Assuming Niall knew that Caitlin wasn�t his.� Then, �It wouldn�t surprise me.�

�What wouldn�t?�

�Years ago, long after you�d left the island, and Niall was spending months at a time away in Norway, we used to meet Ailsa occasionally at parties or dances and social events.�

�You and Artair?�

Marsaili avoided his eye and just nodded. �She � this is going to sound coarse � but, well, for want of a better expression, she put it about a bit. Dressed up to the nines. Always drinking too much. Like she was looking for a man, and finding the courage in alcohol to do it.� She sighed, relenting a little on her harsh assessment. �I guess she was just lonely.� Then reflected some more. �If it�s true, who do you think Caitlin�s real father is?�

Fin shrugged. �You�re more likely to be able to make a guess at that than me.�

They started walking again. �Not really. I mean, I can�t say that I ever saw her with anyone in particular. But I suppose there must have been someone. How do you think Niall found out?�

�Who knows. What�s maybe more interesting is how Caitlin found out.�

�Iseabail didn�t tell you?�

�No.�

�And she didn�t know who the real father was?�

�I think she�d have said if she did.�

More lightning flashed along the far horizon, black cloud gathering overhead. And yet it was oddly still. No breeze to speak of. The air humid with lingering warmth.

The shadows of the rocks at the end of the beach lay in simmering darkness, the occasional blink of moonlight peeking through torn cloud to cast silver reflections on rock pools where stranded crabs scuttled through seaweed. There was still just enough light to see by as Fin and Marsaili clambered over canted slabs of gneiss to find the tiny hidden patch of sand where they had made love more than thirty years before, naked under the moon.

They squatted now in the sand, backs to the rock, and Marsaili said, �You don�t really think that Niall killed that ghillie, do you?�

Fin pondered the question for a long time before he said, �I find it as hard to believe as him being worth �780 million. But one of those things is true.�

A thought that both found sobering. They sat wordless for a long time, listening to the gentle breath of the sea as it washed up on the slope of the beach before being drawn out again by the tidal undertow.

Fin slipped an arm around her shoulder to draw her close. �Do you remember that night�?�

She cut him off. �That we made love right here after going skinny-dipping?�

�No, I meant the time I had food poisoning, and couldn�t keep anything down for twenty-four hours.�

She punched his shoulder, and a laugh broke free from his pursed lips. �You bastard!� she said. And as his grin faded, �When was the last time we had sex, Fin?�

He cast his thoughts back over the preceding months.

�See? If you have to think about it, it was far too long.�

He nodded his sober agreement. �It was.�

And she stood up suddenly, peeling off her top, and then her bra, and casting them on to the rocks.

�What are you doing?�

�What do you think?� She pulled down her jeans to step out of each leg, and threw white panties away into the darkness.

�It�s far too cold to be going into the sea,� he said.

�Speak for yourself, old man.� And she went running off into the brine, splashing and shrieking as she went, until she fell forward, toppling into a gentle swell to submerge herself completely.

Fin stood up, briefly hesitant, then whispered at the night, �Fuck it!� And quickly stripped off T-shirt and jeans to go chasing after her. The shock of the cold water very nearly took his breath away as he dived into its deep dusky chill, and found the warmth of Marsaili�s body as she struggled to get to her feet. He pulled her down again, and they crashed into the water, clutched in each other�s arms. Anyone on the beach, even as far away as the port, might have been alarmed to hear raised voices shrieking in the falling darkness, almost in sync with the lightning that flashed and flickered soundlessly now on the far horizon.

As they emerged dripping from the ocean, the warm night air caressed them, like the arms they slid around each other. Lips finding lips, passion unhindered by the cold. Quickly they laid out their clothes on the damp, compacted sand and fell on to the makeshift mattress, surrendering themselves to a lust they had not felt in a very long time.

And when finally it was over, they lay on their backs, side by side, breathing hard and gazing up at a sky pregnant with coming storm. A sky laden, somehow, with disapproval. While their son slept on a hard concrete plinth in a police cell, they were making love on the beach as if all was well with the world.

Smiles faded. Guilt displacing passion. And the longer they lay there, naked in the sand, the more they felt rebuked by the night. Fin found a break in the clouds through which he could see a part of the Milky Way smudging the cosmos. He stared at it for a long time, trying to find the words to frame his thoughts. Finally he said, �We should brace ourselves, Marsaili, for the likelihood that, if this goes to trial at the High Court in Inverness, Fionnlagh�s going to be found guilty of murder, and they�re going to put him away for a long time.�

Marsaili gave voice to her consternation. �Why would you even say that?�

�Because we have to be realistic. The evidence against him is pretty damning. And he�s not helping himself by his behaviour, refusing to talk about it, to us or anyone. The pathologist arrives tomorrow for the post-mortem. If that goes against him, there�s really very little we can do about it.�

She lifted herself on to one elbow and looked at him. Fin kept his eyes firmly fixed on the Milky Way. �You really think he did it, don�t you.� It wasn�t a question.

�I think we�re going to have to come to terms with that possibility. Particularly since Fionnlagh refuses to deny it.� He rolled his head to one side, meeting her eyes for the first time, and saw the pain and disappointment in them.

�For God�s sake, Fin! If his own father doesn�t believe in him, what chance does he have?�

She was chittering as she got to her feet and searched about in the dark for her things. Fin sighed his despair and stood up to recover his own clothes and get dressed. They were damp, and did little to banish the chill that had set in. �Marsaili��

But she put a finger to her lips and shooshed him, still-wet hair falling in ropes over her shoulders. �What�s that?�

He frowned and listened to the still of the night, and the soft cadences of the sea. �I don�t hear anything.�

�No, listen,� she insisted. And he focused again. This time he heard it. Like the very distant call of seagulls.

�Gulls?�

�Not at this time of night. They�re sleeping.�

�What is it, then?�

�I don�t know.�

And there came, suddenly, a strange crackling sound reverberating faintly through the night air, almost as if it were washing ashore with the sea. �It sounds like a badly tuned radio station,� Fin said. �Like the old BBC World Service.� And once more the far cries of distant voices cut through thick, warm air, and raised goosebumps on Fin�s neck and arms. �What is that?�

Marsaili was mystified. �Dolphins?�

But Fin shook his head dismissively. �Dolphins must sleep, too, surely?�

Marsaili awoke in the half-light. She had spent most of the night hovering somewhere between sleep and consciousness, watching the painful passage of time on the bedside clock. One o�clock, three o�clock, four-thirty. Now she was startled awake from an unexpected slumber to blink in the grey light that filled the bedroom and wonder what it was that had wakened her. It was five-fifteen. Twenty minutes or more before the official start of civil twilight, and yet darker than usual.

She swung her legs out of bed and sat with hands pressed into the mattress on either side of her thighs, breathing deeply, trying to clear a mind fogged by lack of sleep. Fin lay on his back, mouth slightly open, purring gently. At least he was sleeping now. She had been aware through all her waking hours of him tossing and turning in the bed next to her, tortured no doubt by the same thoughts that prevented her, too, from succumbing to sleep.

She stood up and padded to the window, drawing the curtains on the faintest of light washing across the Minch, and saw immediately why it was so dark. Great bruising clumps of black cloud blew across the island from the north-west, scraping the hills and shedding tears to run down windowpanes, distorting the world beyond. From the chill in the room, she could tell that the outside temperature must have dropped steeply, and she hugged her arms around herself for warmth. A flimsy nightie had been all that was required during the preceding nights, but was wholly inadequate now.

A gust of wind rattled the window frame, and she thought that perhaps this was what had wakened her. But then another sound carried from somewhere out in the bay, blown up from the cliffs on the edge of the wind. A disquieting noise, like breath exploding through pursed lips. A sound of distress.

She dressed quickly, dragging a woollen pullover on over a chequered shirt that she only half tucked into her jeans. From her bag she took a pair of thick socks and pulled on a sturdy pair of walking shoes. Her waterproof jacket hung on the rack in the hall. She slipped it on, and tucked her hair up beneath a baseball cap that she pulled low over her brow.

She went through to the back room, Artair�s dad�s old study, and crossed to the window, from where she knew she would have a better view out across the machair to the beach. She pressed her face to the windowpane, cupping her hands around the brim of her cap to shut out any internal light. It was hard to see anything clearly beyond the rain. And yet there was something odd down there on the beach. Dark shapes huddled in the sand. Dozens of them, spread around the curve of the bay. She screwed up her eyes, trying to see more clearly. And still she was unable to determine what it was she was looking at.

That sound came again, like muted bugling, and she was filled suddenly with a dread sense of foreboding.

She hurried back through the house and out of the kitchen door, closing it softly, so as not to waken anyone. Down the steps and out across the machair. In spite of the rain, it was still rock-hard underfoot following weeks of drought. From here she couldn�t see the beach, the near horizon at the cliff edge obscuring it.

She heard that noise again. Louder now. And she broke into a run, stumbling across tussocks, almost twisting her ankle in a deep dried rut. She reached the path to the beach, wind driving into her face, and kept her focus on each step as she picked her way carefully downwards. It was only when she stepped out on to the sand that she looked up from beneath the brim of her baseball cap, and frowned in complete incomprehension. The beach was littered with huge black and grey shapes, shining in the rain, and spread randomly across two hundred yards of sand above a retreating tideline.

At first nothing would compute. What on earth was she looking at? Before it dawned. With a sudden, awful clarity. They were whales. Like giant dolphins. And she remembered that fifty or more of them had beached on the east coast a couple of years back, attracting international media coverage.

She started running among them. Some appeared to be dead already. Others were exhaling through blowholes, trumpeting their despair. She began to count them, but gave up after twenty. Her sense of urgency was acute. She felt helpless, and had no idea what to do. But understood that it was imperative she alerted someone who would.

Fin awoke to the sound of doors banging, and raised voices. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but figured he must have woken from somewhere in the middle of a deep sleep cycle. His thinking was sluggish, and he was unable to make sense of what he heard. The overhead light came on and nearly blinded him as he sat up in bed.

�Fin! Fin!� Marsaili�s pale face swam into view. She was wearing a baseball cap, wet hair falling from it in a chaos of flyaway strands, and for a fleeting moment he thought how attractive she still was. But he could feel his heart trying to break through ribs with what felt like a sledgehammer.

�What is it?�

�There are whales on the beach. Dozens of them.�

If he had hoped for clarity, neither of these statements provided it. �I don�t understand...�

�They�re pilot whales, I think. They must have come ashore during the night at high tide. And now they�re stranded on the beach.�

He tried to blink the sleep from his eyes, and threw back the covers to plant his feet on the carpet beside the bed. Beyond Marsaili, he could see Donna and Eilidh standing watching wide-eyed from the hall, both still in their nighties. �How? Why?�

�I have no idea. But it must have been the whales we heard last night out in the bay. I don�t know what we�re supposed to do, but if the ones who�re still alive can�t be refloated fast, they�ll die.� Her face reflected her despair. �I think quite a few of them are already gone. Fin, we need help.�

He ran his hands back through his curls, trying to focus. �Okay, okay. First thing we need to do is alert the police.� He reached for his mobile, which was charging on the bedside table. He quickly searched for and found the number of Stornoway police station. It rang twice before a sleepy-sounding duty officer picked up.

Marsaili stood listening impatiently as Fin relayed everything she had just told him. He gave them his name and address and listened for a good thirty seconds before hanging up.

�Well?� Marsaili looked at him expectantly.

He stood up. �They�ll despatch a couple of uniformed officers and inform the coastguard. And whoever else needs to know.�

�A couple of uniformed officers?� Marsaili was incredulous. �Well, that�ll really help.�

Fin put a hand on her arm. �Marsaili, everything begins with a first step. The coastguard will be key in this. He�ll know what needs to be done, who needs to be mobilised.�

Marsaili pulled her arm free. �Fin, it was raining when I first found them, but the rain�s stopped now. I don�t know much, but I know this. If these animals aren�t kept wet and cool, they�ll overheat and their skin will crack up.� She turned towards mother and daughter still standing in the hall. �Donna, we�re going to need blankets and towels. As many as possible. And buckets. Spades, shovels. Anything you have.�

Donna nodded and vanished from view. Eilidh looked alarmed. �What can I do?�

�You can get dressed and help carry stuff down to the beach, Eilidh.� Marsaili turned back to Fin. Her initial panic was giving way to clarity. She was taking charge of the situation. Fin very nearly smiled. This was the Marsaili he knew and loved. �But you can�t get involved, Fin. Fionnlagh has to remain your priority. There are only two days left before they take him off to Inverness and we�ll lose him into the system.� She hurried out into the hall, and he heard her calling instructions to the girls. He reflected that one of those two remaining days was a Sunday. The Lewis Sabbath. And nothing much would happen on that day, save for the singing of Gaelic psalms, and the spouting of righteous sermons on God and hellfire. Which effectively left only today.

Fin began to get dressed. He had, at least, a notion of where to begin, and amid the clatter and clamour of activity elsewhere in the house, he sat on the bed and lifted his phone to search its browser for today�s schedule of incoming flights.

Fin stood in the departure lounge gazing through floor-to-ceiling windows, out across the apron towards the sandbank in Broad Bay. The rain stayed off during the drive from Ness to Stornoway, but the wind had risen, and he saw it battering the Loganair Saab�340 as it flew in off the water. The turboprop lurched alarmingly from side to side as it descended towards the runway, then stabilised just before touchdown.

�Jesus Christ, that flight never gets any better,� Professor Wilson exclaimed when he saw Fin hovering in the arrivals hall next to the carousel. In many ways the pathologist had barely changed in all the years Fin had known him. A tall man, lean, with a cadaverous face lurking somewhere behind the prodigious beard that concealed most of it. Fin had heard him described once as having a face like a burst mattress. The one-time ginger horsehair that escaped it, however, had turned mostly silver now, interspersed with just the occasional strand of copper. �Godforsaken bloody place,� he boomed, drawing glares from locals. �Only compensation is that curry house on Church Street. The one with all the virulently coloured sauces. Is it still there?�

�As far as I know,� Fin said, and held out a hand.

Professor Wilson�s big bony grip almost crushed it, strength developed during decades of cutting through human ribcages. �Good to see you, Fin,� he said, and pulled his chequered cap down over an almost bald head. �Nearly lost my bunnet out there! Now where�s my bloody luggage?�

As they walked towards the sliding doors, the pathologist wheeling his case behind him, he glanced at Fin. �You�re not here in any kind of official capacity, are you?�

�No, Angus. Father of the accused is my only standing in this whole mess.�

The professor sucked on his gums and shook his head. �Aye, I heard that Fionnlagh had been arrested.�

�Charged now,� Fin said.

Professor Wilson cocked an eyebrow. �That�s a bit premature, is it not? I haven�t even done the PM yet.�

�Apparently the CIO thinks he has enough evidence without it.�

�Oh, does he? Which makes my trip out here a waste of fucking time? Who is he?�

�DCI Douglas Maclaren.�

The pathologist snorted.

�You know him?�

�Oh, aye, I know him alright. Snotty little shit.� He smirked. �And I know a thing or two about him that I�m sure he wishes I didn�t.� The doors slid open and they stepped out into a wind carrying the odd icy spit of rain. Professor Wilson raised his eyes to the sky. �Does the sun ever shine here?�

�You just missed about five weeks of it.�

�Hah! Trust my luck.� And he turned his gaze on Fin. �What are you doing here, Fin? You know I can�t discuss the case with you, or anything I might find during autopsy.�

�I know that, Angus. And I wouldn�t ask.�

�Good.�

�Just thought I�d give an old friend a lift into town. Taxis might be few and far between in this weather.�

The pathologist patted his back. �Good man. Let�s do it, shall we?�

You could tell the males from the females. At around six and a half metres in length, the males were a good metre longer than the females, P�draig had told Marsaili. There were more females in the pod, but even so, the presence of so many whales on the beach made it feel crowded, the sheer size of them dwarfing their setting.

There was one final attempt under way to try to refloat one of the surviving males, which was less than a yard from the water. Groups of volunteers had taken it in turns to dig away the sand, allowing the brisk tidal surge of the Minch to flow in and around the stranded creature.

There were fewer volunteers now, as one by one the cold and the sheer energy-sapping effort of it all had forced them to give up, and there were perhaps only a dozen of them trying to move the creature. P�draig was shoulder to shoulder with Marsaili as they leaned into the solid black of the whale�s flank. But try as they might, there simply wasn�t enough incoming water to lift the weight of the beast free of the sand.

P�draig stood back, shaking his head despondently. �We�ll never do it,� he said. �At least, not until the tide comes further in, by which time it�ll likely be too late. This thing probably weighs about two and a half tons. All that weight bearing down on it, crushing the internal organs.�

Marsaili could have wept. When she had first found them on the beach this morning, she�d believed that somehow, some way, they would get the live ones back in the water. But they had failed spectacularly. Almost as if the whales themselves wanted to die here on this remotest of beaches on the edge of Europe, the few that remained sacrificing themselves for family members already gone.

One big sad eye looked up at her, as if it were somehow her fault that they were all dying.

She caught sight of the spectators lining the cliffs. Many more of them now than there had been earlier. Like crowds at a bullfight, she thought, or the rabble that cheered the gladiator as he entered the ring to kill the lion. Eager consumers of the spectacle of death. And she wanted to shout at them. To ask if they were satisfied. But, of course, they weren�t cheering, or satisfied. They stood silent and sobered by the sight of so many deaths on a beach they knew well.

�Hello, Marsaili.�

She turned, startled, at the sound of the voice. A voice that even after all these years still carried familiarity. Like a good wine, Duncan had aged well. A tall, handsome man in his fifties, steel-grey hair swept back from a lined brow. That same brown-eyed gaze framed now by a tanned face that had seen things, learned things, the wisdom of experience etched in all the fine lines around his mouth and eyes. He wore jeans, unpressed, and wellingtons, and a green parka jacket. Her hand went involuntarily to her hair, sweeping it back from her face.

She remembered lying with him naked on a cold, snowy night in Glasgow. Skin on skin. And how she had left early without waking him. Her stomach flipped over. �Hello, Duncan.�

�It�s been a while,� he said.

�It has,� she agreed.

He smiled. �And you never said goodbye.�

As Fin approached the port, he saw the roadblock and the orange flashing lights, and followed diversion signs that took him round past the cemetery. Beyond the gravestones that bristled on the slope of the machair, he saw the Atlantic breaking white all along the shore, and on a whim pulled into the visitors� car park. Sand, like snow, had blown in drifts to pile up around the edges of the asphalt. He felt the icy blast of the wind as he stepped from the car to unlatch the gate. And the machair, softened now by the rain, was spongy underfoot.

It was a long time since he had been here. The older he got, the more aware he became of his own mortality, and the final journey that would lead him, in all probability, to this same place where his parents, and grandfather, and aunt were laid to rest before him. Donald, too. And Artair. And Mr�Macinnes.

And Iain. At only eighteen. A future lifetime squandered by the folly of teenage stupidity.

He found Iain�s grave quickly enough and tried to recall some moment, some happy memory that might define him. And all he could think of was that fleeting glimpse, by the light of a streetlamp, of his bright-eyed wonder at Fin and Artair hearing a corncrake in the middle of the night. Something he never got to hear for himself. And here his teenage bones had lain in the ground for more than thirty years, while for Fin and the others, life had gone on into middle age.

On the brow of the hill, his parents were laid side by side. John Macleod, loving husband of Eilidh, father of Fionnlagh. His parents� car had left the road, apparently turning over several times before bursting into flames. But what shocked him most was how young they had been. Both still in their thirties. Fin had outlived them by more than fifteen years.

He crouched down and kissed the top of his mother�s headstone, and laid a hand on the cold stone they had placed over his father. He thought of how they would have done anything for him. Made any sacrifice. And he wondered if they would have been proud or disappointed by the life he had lived.

When he got stiffly once more to his feet, he walked the half-dozen paces to the grave of his mother�s sister. The aunt who had raised him in that cheerless house, a duty she had borne, not for him, he supposed, but for her sister. A familial obligation. And so he moved on.

It was spitting rain by the time he got back to the car, and he looped around to cut across the main Stornoway road and climb the hill towards Crobost. Cars were parked the whole way along the left side of the road, making it almost impossible for two oncoming vehicles to pass. He could see crowds still lining the top of the cliffs, but his view of the beach itself was obscured. Whatever had happened down there in the course of the last few hours was still unravelling.

Fin turned off and crossed the cattle grid into the car park of Crobost Church. It was very nearly full, though none of those who had parked here had come to worship. He found himself one of the last remaining spaces and walked back through the pedestrian gate, across the road and down over the machair to join the watching crowds.

The scene on the beach below was extraordinary. Golden sands littered with the blue-black and grey carcasses of more whales than he could count at a glance. Moving among them, still, were volunteers in waterproofs, tipping buckets of seawater over blankets and towels laid like ill-fitting shrouds across the few surviving members of the pod.

He ran his eyes over the figures in the sand, looking for Marsaili. And found her, finally, walking side by side with a tall man in a green parka, deep in conversation. Fin strained to focus on the man�s face through the rain. There was something familiar about him. But he couldn�t come up with a name. Until suddenly it dawned. Duncan Macgowan. He had been in Fin�s biology class at the Nicolson. Came top in all of his science and maths subjects. A prefect with silver piping on his blazer. Old-fashioned, self-righteous, conservative, dull. Marsaili told Fin that he had asked her out once, and then teased him by saying she was still thinking about it.

A sudden image came back to him. Of Marsaili and Duncan sitting together on a settee at some party in Glasgow, drinking beer and laughing. He had recognized him then, in spite of the drink and the dope and the bad lighting. Fin had been chatting up a girl he�d met earlier, but still it had annoyed him to see Marsaili with someone else, and he�d found himself all evening stealing glances at the two of them across the room.

For some inconceivable reason, that same green-eyed monster came sneaking up again now to catch him completely off-guard. He watched Marsaili put a hand on Duncan�s arm, and there was such an easy intimacy in it that he found himself turning away to stride back up the hill to the road.

Fin passed once again through the gate to the church car park and looked up at the dark, forbidding silhouette the church itself cast against the greyest of skies. Tall arched windows, unadorned by stained glass that might, God forbid, have lent some colour to dull lives. A bell tower reached for the heavens, flanked by two small turrets. No bells hung in it, or ever had. The peal of bells could be misconstrued. Something joyful that smacked, perhaps, of papism.

For Fin it was a place redolent of an unhappy childhood. Sundays spent squirming on hard wooden benches, the minister thundering from the pulpit, the unaccompanied choral chanting of psalms, led by the single wavering voice of a precentor, like some tribal incantation that reached back across generations of his ancestors. The memory of which still raised the hair on Fin�s neck.

The manse sat proud on a hill to the left of the church and was reached by a flight of steps set into the hillside. It offered an unrivalled view across the north of the island, from the port to the lighthouse and beyond. From here, the weather God willed for the island could be seen coming, allowing time for the minister to compose an appropriate prayer. At one time, that minister had been his childhood friend, Donald Murray. And Donald�s own father before him.

Now it was Alasdair Fraser. Ally Ruadh. A boy Fin had never trusted. A boy who, with the rest of them, had participated in the theft of salmon from the cages of Niall Dubh�s father, and later pursued an adulterous relationship with Niall�s wife, fathering an illegitimate child. The word hypocrisy played unspoken around Fin�s lips, banished by guilt at the behaviour of his own son.

He climbed the steps to the manse with heavy legs, and a heavy heart. At the door he rang the bell and turned to look out across the view. The orange lights of the roadblock twinkled in the poor light of the early afternoon. The odd scrap of sunlight all too briefly lit up the waters of the Minch before being swallowed by fresh rolling waves of black cloud. The wind spat big fat raindrops in his face.

He turned as the door opened, and found himself confronted by a middle-aged woman wearing sensible black shoes and a grey woollen jumper over a Harris tweed skirt. She had a round, smooth-skinned face softened by the dyed brown curls of the perm that framed it. She smiled pleasantly. �Hello. Can I help you?�

Fin nodded acknowledgement. �I was hoping to see the Reverend Fraser.�

�He�s writing tomorrow�s sermon, Mr eh...?�

�Macleod. Fin Macleod.�

The mere speaking of his name cast a shadow on her smile. She became flustered. �I, er, I don�t usually like to disturb him.�

�It won�t take long... Mrs�Fraser, is it?�

�Yes.�

�I�m an old friend. We were at school together.�

Very reluctantly, she stood aside, holding the door open for him. �You�d better come in.�

She showed him into the living room. �I�ll just let him know you�re here.�

Fin stood uncomfortably and looked around. The last time he had been in this room, he and Donald finished a bottle of whisky between them, burying old animosities, rediscovering, at least in part, the friendship they had shared in childhood. For by then they also shared a granddaughter, and it was important to put differences aside in the interests of family.

Everything about the room had changed. The wallpaper, the carpet, the furniture. All physical traces of Donald erased along with his memory. Fin felt inestimably sad.

From somewhere deep in the house he could hear voices. Hers raised, slightly shrill. The softer tones of a calming male voice. There were no words discernible, but the timbre spoke of anxiety, and conflict.

Fin waited a long time before Alasdair�s wife finally returned, colour high on her cheeks. �He can give you a few minutes,� she said.

He followed her through a darkened hallway to a door that opened off it to the right, opposite the foot of the staircase. A brightly lit room with a window that looked out across the moor behind the village. Wooden bookcases lined the walls, the spines of countless books lending muted colour to an austere space where the word of God was interpreted for his parishioners by a self-righteous incumbent.

Alasdair sat behind an enormous leather-tooled wooden desk littered with papers and a laptop computer, and a very large open copy of the Gaelic Bible. As Fin recalled, Alasdair�s Gaelic had never been particularly good, and he thought that his sermons probably required a great deal of work. He spotted Malcolm Maclennan�s etymological dictionary of the Gaelic language standing handily among the books on the shelf behind him.

Alasdair himself was almost unrecognizable. Most of his hair had gone, and the little that remained had lost its vibrant red, lying in wisps and whorls around a narrow, freckle-spattered head. Lines had formed in deep creases on either side of a mouth that was as mean and untrustworthy as it had been when they were teenagers.

He attempted a smile that never quite reached his pale green eyes, and made no attempt to stand or shake Fin�s hand. �Well,� he said. �You haven�t changed.� An echo of Niall�s greeting.

Fin refrained from comment. �It�s been a while, Alasdair.�

�It has.� He waved a hand towards a vacant captain�s chair on the other side of his desk. �To what do I owe the pleasure?�

Fin lowered himself into the captain�s chair and said, �I�m not sure pleasure is how either of us might feel about this meeting.� And he saw the colour rise on Alasdair�s cheeks, translucent skin betraying an increased blood flow to the face. �You know my son has been charged with murder.�

Alasdair looked acutely uncomfortable. �I had heard, yes.�

�Caitlin is the name of the victim. An eighteen-year-old lassie who lived down in Great Bernera. With her mother. Ailsa Black. You remember Ailsa, Alasdair? Used to be married to Niall.�

Alasdair�s face set itself in stone, and he glared back at Fin with naked dislike.

�Until he found out that Caitlin wasn�t his daughter. Did he ever confront you about that? Or maybe he never knew that you were the father.�

�What do you want, Fin?�

Fin leaned back in his chair and looked around the room. �You know, never in a million years would I have put money on you succeeding Donald in this job. Never saw you as minister material, Alasdair. Though, to be fair, I could have said the same thing of Donald. Funny, isn�t it, how a misspent youth so often leads to middle-aged piety. Why do you think that is, Alasdair? An attempt to get into God�s good books again as passage to the next life approaches?�

�I don�t think I like your tone, Fin.�

�Oh, my tone? You don�t like my tone? I�m sorry about that. I thought we were friends. After all, you didn�t seem to mind my company when we were stealing fish together down on Loch Roag.�

The colour on Alasdair�s cheeks darkened.

�But I�m sure your God�s a forgiving one, Alasdair. I mean, where�s the harm in stealing a few salmon? They�re all God�s creatures, after all. Though I do seem to remember that thou shalt not steal was among the commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. You�ll be familiar with those, of course.�

Alasdair stood up. �I think you should go.�

Fin ignored him. �Adultery. Now, that�s altogether something different, wouldn�t you say? Fucking your friend�s wife.�

�For God�s sake, Fin, keep your voice down.�

�For God�s sake or yours, Alasdair?�

Alasdair sat down again, abruptly.

�Now, maybe you think you�ve made amends with your God, and a few more years of pious worship will wipe the slate clean, but I�m not quite so sure how forgiving your own congregation might be. Adulterer. Thief. Liar. Because, let�s face it, you were as complicit in covering up Iain�s death as any of us.�

Alasdair leaned his forearms on the desk in front of him and glowered up at Fin from beneath gathered brows. �What do you want?�

Fin said, �It wouldn�t surprise me at all that a young girl would want to know who her real father was. Probably came as quite a shock to learn that she was illegitimate. But she had nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing to hide. After all, it was hardly her fault.� He paused. �Did she contact you, Alasdair?� He could read Alasdair�s thought processes as clearly as if they were printed on his forehead, and saw him arrive at the realization that there was no point in denying it.

�What if she did?�

�Did she come and see you? An encounter with the father she�d never known?�

Alasdair said nothing.

Fin pressed on. �What did she want? Acknowledgement, perhaps? For the world to know who her real father was?�

�No!� Alasdair almost shouted his denial.

�Then tell me.�

Alasdair sat back, releasing a long, troubled sigh. �She just wanted to meet me, that was all.�

�I�m figuring you didn�t want her to come here.�

�We met on the beach at Dalbeg in the early spring. Before the tourists arrived.�

Fin knew the tiny beach well, almost entirely enclosed by rocks that ringed the bay. It could be reached only by a long drive down a single-track road. �Frightened to be seen with her?�

�I was being discreet. For both our sakes.�

Fin let that one slide. �And?�

�All she wanted to do was meet. Talk.� He seemed to be replaying the moment in his memory. �It was...� he searched for the right word to describe the encounter, �awkward.�

�I bet it was.�

Alasdair glared at him with an intense dislike. �You�ve no cause to be so smug, Fin Macleod. After all, wasn�t Fionnlagh sixteen or seventeen before you discovered that he was yours? And wasn�t he having sexual relations with my girl, one of his own pupils?�

But Fin wasn�t going to be diverted by his embarrassment. �So what did you talk about? What did she say?�

�Not much. What was there to say? She was my biological daughter, yes. But she�d have been a different person if I�d brought her up.�

�You didn�t hit it off, then?�

Alasdair interlocked his hands on the desk before him and gazed at them as if he might find inspiration in their white-knuckled clasp. �I got the sense...� and he clearly found it difficult to say, �that she was disappointed by me.�

�Well, there�s a surprise.�

There was unadulterated hatred now in the green eyes that Alasdair turned on Fin.

�And maybe you thought that your reputation might be safer if she wasn�t around any more. After all, you were already three commandments down. Why not a fourth?�

Alasdair stood up so suddenly that his chair spun away on its castors to crash into the bookcase behind him. All colour had left his face now. �Get out!�

Fin stood up slowly and Alasdair stared at him with a malevolent intensity.

�You can�t deflect from the sins of your son by accusing others of committing them.�

Fin said, �I�d do anything to protect my boy, Alasdair. But only with the truth. I never knew Caitlin, but if she�d been my daughter, I�d have done everything in my power to protect her, too. It�s a pity you didn�t feel the same way.�

Some time had passed since Marsaili persuaded Donna to take Eilidh back to the house. Both had spent hours trying to keep whales alive in deteriorating weather conditions. Both were close to hypothermia by the time they left the sand, and both in tears of frustration at their failure to save the animals.

Someone had been handing out silver and gold tinfoil rescue blankets, and many of the volunteers were wandering around with them wrapped around their shoulders, sipping on fresh coffee, gathering in disconsolate groups to share their disappointment.

Marsaili, with Duncan and several others, was endeavouring to right one of the few creatures left alive. It was half in the water, but resolutely refusing to move. Marsaili was numb with the cold, but determined to see it out to the end. An escape, perhaps, from the situation awaiting her at home, of grief and uncertainty, and a growing sense of apprehension. The burgeoning fear, which she couldn�t allow herself for one moment to admit, that Fionnlagh had, after all, murdered Caitlin.

�Can I help here?�

She and Duncan looked round to find Niall Dubh hovering next to the group gathered around the whale. He was swaddled in a thick waterproof jacket, stamping his feet and rubbing his hands briskly to keep warm.

�Niall?� Marsaili was taken aback. �What are you doing here?�

Niall nodded towards the big white house on the cliffs above the harbour. �Just got back from the fish farm,� he said. �Thought I�d better lend a hand.�

He and Duncan exchanged nods and Marsaili glanced from one to the other. �You know each other?�

Duncan said, �Vets and fish farmers usually do.�

�What are we trying to do here?� Niall asked. �Refloat it?�

But Duncan shook his head. �Too late for that, Niall. Just trying to keep her blowhole out of the surf so she doesn�t drown. Really, all we can do at this stage is try to make them all as comfortable as possible, making sure the pectoral fins are tucked underneath the body and not splayed out.�

Niall nodded. �Because that would be excruciatingly painful.�

�You know about whales, then?� Marsaili was surprised.

Niall�s smile was bleak. �My degree was in aquaculture, Marsaili. I know that once one of these animals is stranded on the beach, it kicks off a cascade of pathology that�ll kill it in the end, even if it is totally healthy when it comes ashore.� He cast his eyes along the length of the beach and shook his head. Then turned to Duncan. �They�re all going to die, aren�t they?�

Duncan nodded. �I�m afraid they are.�

Marsaili�s despair lifted her voice above the wind. �For God�s sake, is there not anything we can do?�

Duncan said, �Whales lose their ability to carry their body weight when they�re not being supported by the water, Marsaili. So when they�re left high and dry, certain things start to happen immediately. They begin crushing their tissue. So that, even if they are finally refloated, they�ll have suffered the kind of injuries you see in humans who�ve been in road traffic accidents, where their legs get crushed by the car.�

Niall said, �And you end up with a whole load of metabolic toxins being released into the body, essentially killing the person or the animal.�

�Reperfusion injuries,� Duncan said.

A final, collective heave half righted the whale, moving the blowhole well clear of the water. They all stood back, then, and Niall said, �I�ll see if I can lend a hand further along the beach.� He nodded and headed off along the sand. Marsaili and Duncan watched him go, sea spray and fine-grained sand whipped around his legs by the wind.

Marsaili stole a glance at the vet. He looked troubled, sad. She said, �When did you come back to the island?�

�About ten years ago.� He cast a sad smile in her direction. �You had already left. It didn�t take me long to find that out.� His lips set in a hard line. �And that you were back with Fin again.�

She felt the heat of the blood rising on her cheeks and quickly changed the subject. �Where had you been all the years in between?�

He tilted his head back to gaze up at the sky. �Where hadn�t I been, Marsaili?� They started walking towards the far end of the beach, following in Niall�s footsteps. �I spent a few years in North Yorkshire. James Herriot country. You went into a barn at three in the morning and lit a lamp. No electricity. Stone floors, hissing Tilley lamps and the smell of burning paraffin.� He raised his nose slightly as if smelling it all again. �And the heat off them.� He looked at Marsaili. �It was something magical to be able to experience that.�

Marsaili could neither imagine it, nor understand what might be magical about it. But she saw that he was transported by the memory.

�I went out east after that. Indonesia. China. Before coming home.� He chuckled. �When I was a student coming back to the island for the holidays, folk were still cutting hay by hand with a scythe. I can remember coming across the Minch on the ferry. It was the Suilven back then. And halfway across, with a westerly in your face, you could smell the peat smoke. And by the time you got to Stornoway, it was dead fish and diesel.� He turned towards her. �That had all changed by the time I came back to take over the veterinary practice.�

They walked slowly in silence then, between the dead and dying whales, the wind whistling all around them.

�Married?� she asked.

He avoided her eye. �Very happily. For the last twenty-five years.�

�And kids?�

�Two. Boy and a girl. Both grown up now.�

She saw him almost visibly retreat into some dark place in his thoughts.

�Sally�s been taken by early-onset Alzheimer�s.� He closed his eyes. �Jesus, Marsaili, she�s not even fifty. She was taken into care in Stornoway after I stopped being able to cope with her at home. I visit her most days, but she hasn�t known who I am for a while now.�

They stopped and Marsaili took both of his hands in hers. �Oh, Duncan, I�m so sorry. I do know what that�s like. My father had dementia. He spent several years in a home in South Uist, cared for by someone who loved him, who�d known him all his life. He didn�t know who I was, though.� She dropped her head a little. �He died a couple of years back.�

When she lifted her head again, she saw that Duncan was gazing off towards the cliffs. She turned to see what he was looking at and saw Fin approaching across the sand. Almost as if they had burned her, she quickly dropped Duncan�s hands, and wondered why she felt guilty.

Fin�s face was set and grim as he reached them. He took Marsaili�s elbow and kissed her cheek. �How are things?�

�Not good, Fin. We couldn�t get any of them refloated. Most of them are dead. Just a few still hanging on.�

Fin cast sad eyes around the beach.

Marsaili said, �You remember Duncan? Duncan Macgowan? He was at the Nicolson at the same time as we were.�

Fin turned cold eyes on Duncan. �Yes,� he said. �I remember.�

�He�s the vet now.�

Duncan thrust out a hand, and Fin felt obliged to take it. �Good to see you again, Fin,� he said.

Fin looked at Marsaili and spread his arms. �What happened here? How come so many of them beached at the same time?�

�P�draig said that one of them got into trouble giving birth, and the rest followed her in.�

�The pods are like extended families, Fin,� Duncan said. �They hunt together, stay together their whole lives. Sometimes as many as a hundred of them. They�re like packs. Loyalty is absolute.� He looked despondently about the beach. �Even to the extent of sacrificing themselves like this when one of them gets into difficulty.� With a shake of his head, he said, �There�s an annual summer event in the Faroe Islands, where pods of pilot whales are enticed into a suitable bay. The Grind, they call it. Get one, and the rest follow like lambs to the slaughter. The Faroese wade out with big hooks that they slash into the whales. They drag them into shallow water, then cut their throats to let them bleed to death. The sea turns crimson with their blood.�

Marsaili said, �That�s awful! Why would they do that?�

�For food, they say.� Duncan shrugged. �I�ve seen video of it. Looks more like bloodlust to me. They describe it as being like an outdoor slaughterhouse. The worst thing was watching children playing around the dead and bleeding carcasses. Jumping over them as if it was some kind of a game.�

Fin said, �My grandfather used to hunt whales in the South Atlantic when he was young. Spent the rest of his life regretting it.�

Duncan nodded. �There were quite a few men from Ness who used to go to the whaling back in the day. The fifties and sixties. When I came back to the island, there were one or two of them still alive. I used to go and ask their advice if we had a stranding. I mean, I understand the scientific physiology of these creatures quite well. But these guys understood it better, because they had hacked them up for a living.� He pursed his lips. �They�re all gone now.�

He released a long breath of resignation and glanced at his watch.

�I need to go and talk to the coastguard,� he said. �It�s approaching decision time, I�m afraid.�

He nodded and left them to weave his way among the whales, back towards the port. Fin watched him go, thoughtfully, then turned to find Marsaili watching him.

She said, �Are we any nearer to resolving things with Fionnlagh?�

Fin lowered his head. �Afraid not. I�m going to go back to Stornoway. The post-mortem on the girl will be over by now. No one�s going to tell me anything, but I want to be around if there are any developments.�

There was a hint of desperation in Marsaili�s voice. �And you learned nothing else? All day?�

He said, �I learned that Caitlin was the illegitimate daughter of Alasdair Fraser. Remember him?�

She frowned. �Red-haired boy? Freckles? Bit of a clype.�

�In a nutshell. Hard to believe, but he�s now the minister of Crobost Free Church.�

�Alasdair?� Her mouth fell open in disbelief.

�I know.�

�Have you spoken to him?�

�I have.�

�And?�

Fin shook his head. �He was pretty hostile, Marsaili. But I don�t think he killed his own daughter.�

When Fin had gone, Marsaili sat shivering on the rocks at the far end of the beach. Was it really only last night that they had lain among them and made love? It had been unnaturally warm, the sea dark and placid as they splashed into the water. The calm before an unanticipated storm.

She thought of the sounds they had heard, carried on the water in the still of the night. The distant clicks and wailing. The whales, she knew now, communicating their distress, signalling the disaster to come.

She cast troubled eyes across the beach at the stricken beasts, lying singly and in random groups, dead or dying. Only a handful of hardy volunteers remained, still with sheets and blankets and buckets of water, trying to keep the surviving creatures comfortable.

She thought about why she was even here. How only three days ago she had been in Glasgow. Disillusioned with life, wondering how the years had managed to wash her up and leave her stranded there, like any one of the whales lying on the beach today. Fin, stressed by a job he detested. Remote, withdrawn, somehow beyond the reach of arms that had only ever wanted to hold him. Both unaware, beyond their self-absorption, that their son�s marriage was falling apart. That he was sleeping with a girl little more than half his age. A girl he would be accused of raping and murdering.

Gradually, as her thoughts dispersed, she became aware of Duncan striding purposefully across the sand towards her. He stopped in front of her, and when she looked up into his face, she saw that it was taut with tension. Almost grey. He said, �I�ve talked to P�draig.� He swallowed, barely able to get the words out. �We�re not going to get any of these poor things back in the water. Even if we could, it�s too late now. And they�re only going to die a slow, painful death here on the beach.�

�How many left alive?�

�Nine.�

�You�re going to put them down?�

He nodded.

�How will you do that? Injection?�

He shook his head. �Not with animals this size.� He sighed. �I�m going to have to shoot them.�

Police cells, even when heated, somehow always felt cold. All that concrete and steel, Fin supposed. Hard, unforgiving surfaces that retained no heat. Only anger and regret. And fear.

He had sat on an unyielding plastic seat in reception for some time, with the patience of a man who would rather the wait continued than come to an end. The officer behind the glass cast curious eyes in his direction, but Fin barely noticed.

With each mile on the drive from Ness to Stornoway, he had sunk deeper into depression. In two days he had made no headway in casting doubt on Fionnlagh�s guilt. And the fear of losing his son was only compounded now by a sense that he might be losing Marsaili, too. All the unhappiness of these past months crystallizing into guilt and regret. His unhappiness blinding him to hers. Both oblivious to the catastrophic failure of their son�s marriage. All of which had led him to this place in time and space, sitting in a cold and draughty public reception area in Stornoway police station, waiting for permission to see the son he feared was guilty of murder.

The swing door creaked open and a uniformed sergeant beckoned him in. Fin followed him along to the charge bar, where the sergeant drew out keys to unlock the gate to the cells. He let Fin into the corridor before opening the door to Fionnlagh�s cell.

Fionnlagh was sitting on the concrete plinth as before, legs folded and splayed out in front of him. He was leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, head bowed, staring at the floor. He barely looked up as Fin stepped in.

Fin waited until the door had closed behind him and he heard the key turning in the lock before leaning his back against the wall and sliding slowly down it until he sat on the floor. For the longest time he remained like that, looking at the boy he had rescued from the cliffs on An Sgeir. Remembering the pain of Fionnlagh�s uncertainty about his real father. And the DNA results that confirmed him as Fin�s son. There was so much he wanted to say, and yet no words came.

The longer they sat in silence, the more agitated Fionnlagh became. In the end he couldn�t contain himself any further. �What?� he demanded.

Fin just shrugged. �You tell me, son.�

�What do you want to hear?�

�The truth.�

In his best Jack Nicholson voice, Fionnlagh said, �You can�t handle the truth.�

A Few Good Men was a movie they had watched together several times, and it brought reluctant smiles to both their faces, in spite of everything. But the smiles faded quickly, and the silence grew once more between them.

Regarding his son, Fin thought he had lost weight. Even just in the few days he had been here. His face was the colour of putty, like someone who hadn�t seen the sun in years, and the skin around his eyes was panda-dark.

Finally Fionnlagh said, �No, really. What do you want from me, Dad?�

Fin�s head shake was despairing. �I�m running out of ideas, son.�

�Then stop this. You�re wasting your time.�

Fin said, �Did you know that Caitlin was the illegitimate daughter of the minister at Crobost?�

Fionnlagh�s eyes opened wide. �No, I didn�t.� He frowned. �Is that true?�

Fin nodded.

�She never told me. I mean, I knew there was something off about her relationship with her father, but...�

�Not that it makes any difference now.�

�I suppose not.� But Fionnlagh was still clearly shocked.

Fin braced himself. �They carried out the post-mortem today.�

Breath escaped Fionnlagh�s lips in a muted sigh. �Oh, Jesus.� And Fin knew he was picturing the girl he loved lying butchered on a cold stainless steel table. When the young man had brought his emotions under control again, he looked up and said, �What did they find?�

�I don�t know. Obviously, they�re not going to tell me.� Fin shrugged, staring at the floor, and without any certainty, said, �If we�re lucky, it might have thrown some new light on how she died, who might have killed her.�

When he looked up, he was shocked to see tears shining on his son�s face. �Don�t get your hopes up, Dad.�

�Why not?�

Fionnlagh looked at him more directly than at any time during Fin�s previous visits, and uttered the words his father had never wanted to hear. �Because I killed her.�

Uniformed officers were clearing the beach. And up on the cliffs, the watching crowds were being turned away from their viewpoint. Execution was not a spectator sport.

Marsaili was among the last to leave the bay. It was a desolate scene. The bodies of nearly fifty pilot whales lay scattered about the beach as the cloud thickened over the Minch, dark and ominous and reducing visibility to a few hundred yards. She watched as Duncan came down the steps from the port and began the weary trek to the far end of the beach to start the killing. He clutched a large rifle to his chest and looked for all the world like a soldier advancing on the enemy.

But as he drew close, she saw the tension in his face, dilated pupils turning his eyes black. His knuckles glowed white in the afternoon gloom. The nine whales to be shot were spread out across the sands. Marsaili stood close to the farthest away, which was the nearest to the path she would take back up the cliffs to the bungalow. She felt helpless to offer any real comfort, but thought she should stay to the last.

When he reached her, she said, �You�ve used that before?�

�I have.� He hefted it in his hands, feeling its weight. �It�s a high-powered 30�06 Springfield. An old American military calibre that they used in both wars. And still probably the most popular for hunting. It takes a big, big cartridge, which I hand-load myself. And nowadays, with modern powders, you get incredible performance. Which is what we need.� He paused. �Got to be careful, though. You have to load slowly, incrementally. Don�t want to blow your hands off.�

Marsaili had the sense that he was talking to keep from thinking. Staying professional to stop from becoming emotional. In a tiny voice, she asked, �Where do you shoot them?�

�Find the blowhole, then angle back about forty-five degrees. The problem is that the whales are not always lying square. Then there�s the different shape of the older ones. Lots of things you have to take into account.�

�That all seems so cold,� she said.

�It is. Right now I can�t afford to be anything else. That way I�ll do the job right, and the animals won�t suffer.� He drew a long, deep breath. �You shouldn�t be here, Marsaili.�

�I know. I�m sorry. I�m gone.� And on an impulse she reached out and squeezed the hand that gripped the stock, before turning to run away across the sand towards the cliffs. Not looking back as she scrambled on to the path, beginning the long climb to the top. She was almost there when the first thunderous, heart-stopping bang echoed around the bay, and she closed her eyes.

The silence in the cell was broken only by Fionnlagh�s soft sobbing, and the wind outside that found its way in through every crack and crevice, a soulful mourning for the dead.

Fin felt as if someone had nailed him to the floor. He sat against the wall, unable to move, unable to think clearly. Unable to speak. It was a long time before he could summon any kind of a voice to ask, �What happened?� It came out as little more than a breath.

The tears on Fionnlagh�s face reflected the harsh overhead lighting. He gazed at the floor, unable to meet his father�s eye. There was a crack in his voice when finally he spoke.

�We�d been meeting at that house on the Black Loch for a couple of months. Two or three times a week. Iseabail��

�I know. She gave you the key.�

He flicked a look of surprise towards his father.

�I know everything, Fionnlagh. Except what happened that night.�

Fionnlagh lowered his eyes to stare once more at the floor. �It�s hard to explain this, Dad...�I knew that what we were doing was wrong. Not because what we felt for each other was wrong. But because I was married. Had a beautiful little daughter � and, when I think about it, just six years younger than Caitlin.� He closed his eyes. �But it was so...�so exciting. I suppose in part because, well, because of the adrenalin rush. The risk we were running. Every time we met, it was all so charged. High-octane. Addictive. And I�d never felt like that about anyone. Not even Donna.� He corrected himself. �Never that way about Donna.� He looked up suddenly at his father, as if appealing for understanding. �We were so young, Donna and I. Just children. She was only sixteen. Not old enough to drive. Or drink. Even if no one ever did bother to ask our age at the Social. Not old enough to be trusted with a vote. But old enough to have a baby. What did either of us know about anything? Least of all one another.�

�You don�t have to explain yourself to me, Fionnlagh. There are many things in my life I�m not proud of. We are who we are, we�ve done what we�ve done, and in the end you have to embrace that or regret it. And regret is such a corrosive thing.�

Fionnlagh nodded. �I know. I regret the hurt I�ve caused. To Donna, to Eilidh. To you and Mum. And Caitlin...�God help her.� He drew breath. �She�d still be alive if it wasn�t for me.�

�What happened?�

For a long time he appeared lost in painful recollection. �She was kind of hyper that night,� he said at last. �Passionate. All over me. We had sex...� The stolen glance at his father betrayed his embarrassment. �She could be wild. You know? Uninhibited. She was on the pill, so we never had to take precautions. Which is why I never thought she could get pregnant.�

And the reason, Fin thought, that they had been able to recover Fionnlagh�s sperm.

�Afterwards...�well, afterwards, we would lie in bed and just talk. And drink wine. She was so ambitious. Saw so much ahead for herself in life. University. Campaign work � animal rights, climate change. It used to frighten me. Because I would wonder where I was going to fit into all this. She could project herself so easily into the future, but somehow never saw us beyond the moment. I don�t know what she imagined our future might be. But I could see it all too clearly. At least, for me. Divorce. Losing Eilidh. My job. And if I followed her to Glasgow, what then? Her days would be spent with people her own age. How would she feel about coming home to this old man?� His tiny self-deprecating laugh. �Even though I was barely out of my twenties. And how would I ever be able to keep pace with all that energy?�

�In other words, you knew there was no future in it.� Fin could see it all too clearly.

�Totally head in the sand. I never wanted to think beyond the next time we would meet, the next time we would have sex. I didn�t want to spoil all that. Ruining the present by worrying about the future.� He looked up. �I was in love. Really. I mean, for the first time in my life, I knew what that felt like. I wanted to embrace it, hold it close, keep it precious, because somewhere, deep down, I knew I was going to lose it.�

�So after you�d had sex...?� Fin prompted him, and saw a shadow cross his son�s face.

�She kept checking her watch. Said she couldn�t stay. But wouldn�t tell me why. And I got pissed off. You know? I was the one taking all the risks. Making excuses to Donna so that I could be there. Knowing that if we were caught, I would lose my job. Everything. And she always made light of that. As if it was nothing.� Suddenly his voice filled the cell. �Fuck!� He stamped both feet on the floor and clasped his hands tightly in front of him. �I wish to God I�d just said okay, see you next time.�

�Why did you think she wanted to leave early?�

�Oh, she and Iseabail had cooked up something clandestine with that fucking activist. I knew that without asking. But it didn�t stop me. And in the end, she admitted it. She and Iseabail were swimming out to the cages again. But it was the last time, she said. That would be an end to it. But I knew it wouldn�t and I told her I wasn�t going to let her go.� He swung his head slowly from side to side. �Stupid! You don�t tell someone as headstrong as Caitlin that you forbid them to do anything. She kind of flew off the handle. Told me it was none of my business, and that there was nothing I could do to stop her.� He looked up. �Oh, God, Dad. We had the most terrible fight. First time ever. And for me, I suppose, as much as anything, it was the realization that there was no us. Only Caitlin. And I was just along for the ride. Sacrificing everything. I�m not sure she ever really understood that. Not her fault. I was the one old enough to know better.�

He stood up then, animated, agitated, spooling through it all again in his mind�s eye, pacing the tiny cell.

�She was in tears. Red-faced. Shouting. And I guess I must have been shouting back. Anyway, she ran out of the house, and I could hear her sobbing as she headed out on the path along the cliffs towards the headland. Of course, I went after her. It wasn�t dark yet, but the light was going. I could see her twenty, thirty yards ahead of me. She was fast. But I was faster. When I caught up, I grabbed her elbow and she spun around, breathless. Her eyes on fire. I don�t even remember now what it was we said. But we stood shouting at each other. Until she hit me. Never even saw it coming. The flat of her hand swinging out of the fading light to catch me full on the side of the head.�

He stood with his back to his father, staring up at the cubes of light that fell from the window high in the wall.

�I�ve never in my life hit a woman, Dad. God forgive me. I didn�t even think about it. I was so angry, and the shock of that slap in the face. I...�I just reacted.�

�You hit her?� Fin was shocked.

�Far too hard.� He turned to face Fin and screwed up his eyes. �She was so startled. I could see it in her eyes. Disappointment. Disillusion. That I was not the person she�d thought I was. She took several steps back, staggering, caught her heel on a rock half buried in the turf. We were so close to the edge of the cliff. She just went over. I tried to catch her, I really did. Fingertips touching her sleeve as she fell.� He shook his head. �She must have fallen twenty, thirty feet. Without a word. I didn�t see her hit the water, but I heard it. Even above the surf.�

Fin closed his eyes and pictured his son�s description of then sprinting back along the path to the house, and down the road to the tiny beach below. Fin had followed that same route himself, just yesterday.

�When I got on to the beach, I ran into the water, splashing out as far as I could go. It�s east-facing, so there was very little light. The cliffs and the rocks around the bay just seemed black. When I got out of my depth, I started swimming, as far out as I could go. But there was no sign of her. Nothing. The tide was on the way out. I could feel the undertow trying to take me with it. My wet clothes dragging me under. And I figured if Caitlin had struck her head on the way down, she was probably unconscious when she hit the water. Otherwise she would have swum back in.�

Fin opened his eyes to see the despair on his son�s face as he relived the moment.

�It must have carried her right out into the bay. I didn�t give up, though. Honest to God, I tried everything to find her. Until my arms and legs started to cramp up, and I knew I needed to get back to the shore or the tide would carry me away, too. I staggered out of the water and just collapsed on to the beach, and sat weeping for God knows how long. Till I�d cried every tear it was possible to cry. And then some.�

He raised both hands to cover his face. �I killed her, Dad. Took her life, her promise, her future. And my love for her with it. Destroyed it all in one stupid, mindless moment.� He took his hands away from his face and stared, wild-eyed, at his father. �Whatever they do to me, I deserve it.�

Fin was awash with mixed emotions. Anger, sympathy, frustration, helplessness, and a deep hollowing sadness. Fionnlagh slumped back on to the concrete plinth, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders, and burying his face once again in his hands.

Fin fought hard to clear his thoughts. �What did you do then?�

Fionnlagh looked up, puzzled by the question. �Nothing. What could I do? I�d just killed Caitlin. I didn�t mean to, but I had. I have never felt so utterly devastated as I did in that moment. My legs would hardly support me as I tried to stand up. I must have stood there for...�I don�t know how long. Because I had no idea what to do. It was like my life had ended, too. But I was still there, haunting myself. In the end I went back up to the house, got into my car and drove home. I can�t remember a single thing about that drive. I blinked and I was heading up the road to Crobost. By the time I got to the house, I had more or less dried off. But I must have presented a hell of a sight. Donna knew immediately that something awful had happened. But I wouldn�t even speak to her. Just locked myself in one of the spare rooms. And when I sat on the edge of that bed, with Donna banging on the door screaming at me to talk to her, I knew that my life was over. That I had dragged my wife and my daughter down with me. Through no fault of theirs. I had taken a life and ruined another two, and if I could have exchanged all that for mine, I�d have done it in a heartbeat.�

The wind was gusting through the narrow back streets of the town as Fin plunged, head down, out into the fading light. He was consumed by a numbness like nothing he had ever experienced. He felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. It was as if he, too, had died.

He�d had no words of wisdom or consolation for his son. Nothing that could mitigate the awful truth. Fionnlagh had admitted killing that poor girl. He hadn�t meant to, and he certainly hadn�t raped her, Fin believed that, but it didn�t mean he wasn�t going to spend the best part of the rest of his life in prison. Fin knew that, whatever else, he had to stand by him.

He thought about Donna. As good as widowed. And poor Eilidh, bearing the stigma of a convicted killer for a father, something that would pursue her for the rest of her days. There was no way either of them could remain on the island.

His mind was seething with thoughts that came randomly, without logic or order. He and Marsaili would take Donna and Eilidh back to Glasgow with them. Fionnlagh would be accompanied to Inverness on Monday and placed on remand until the trial. Fin would have to secure the services of the best lawyer he could afford, even if it bankrupted him. He was so lost in his internal turmoil that he did not at first hear the voice shouting his name. It was only the second or third calling of it that broke into his consciousness.

He looked up, surprised. He had walked several hundred yards along Kenneth Street, past garages and lock-ups, the Masonic lodge with its freshly sandblasted sandstone frontage, and barely noticed. He had left his car parked in the street outside the rear entrance to the Royal Hotel, opposite a private car park belonging to a firm of chartered accountants. He turned to see three figures striding towards him from the direction of Church Street. They must, he figured, have been waiting for him and were hurrying now to catch him up.

�Hey, orphan boy, fucking pay attention!�

Fin�s heart sank. Murdo Macritchie. Another Ruadh whose hair was no longer red, but an indeterminate and thinning grey that he hid beneath a chequered bunnet. Murdo and his brother Angel had been the school bullies in Fin�s day, terrorizing and brutalizing the boys, leering at the girls with crude sexual innuendo and frequent groping. The last time Fin had seen Angel he was lying cut open on an autopsy table, following his murder at the port. And his last encounter with Murdo had been in McNeil�s pub, when a fight initiated by Ruadh had spilled out into The Narrows, along with most of the clientele and enough beer to drown an army.

Twelve years of torment at the hands of the Macritchies had also spilled out of Fin. No longer the skinny orphan boy, Fin had broken Murdo�s nose, taken out most of his front teeth and pummelled his beer belly until he puked all over the pavement. He might have killed him if George Gunn had not intervened to pull him away in time, steering him off into the night before the uniforms arrived, saving him from almost certain arrest. Which would have put a premature end to his career as a police officer.

Murdo looked in even worse shape twelve years on, though his ugly smile revealed a new set of incongruously white front teeth. He was flanked by another equally bulky Niseach, who seemed vaguely familiar to Fin, and a skinny man with a pockmarked face wearing overalls and mud-caked wellies. They looked like extras chosen by central casting for a soap opera on crofting. They were of a generation, and no doubt all members of the Macritchie clique from school. The three men formed a loose semicircle around Fin on the road, and the smell of alcohol blew about them in the wind.

Murdo would almost certainly have avoided confrontation with Fin had he been on his own. But he had backup, and so the bully�s confidence of old had returned. �Did you not hear us shouting?�

�I had things on my mind, Murdo.� Fin took a wary step back.

�Aye, like that fucking son of yours killing yon lassie.�

�What do you want?�

�I want you...� and Murdo jabbed a stubby finger into Fin�s chest, �to stay away from my minister.�

�Your minister?�

�Aye. Our minister.� Murdo took a quick glance at his fellow congregationalists. �Me and Jock and Anndra here are all elders of the Crobost church.�

Fin snorted. �God must be desperate if he�s reduced to recruiting the likes of you. From recollection, drunkenness and bullying aren�t in the job description.�

�Now, see,� Murdo said, �that�s just the kind of shit that�s going to get you in fucking trouble, orphan boy. Alasdair � the Reverend Fraser to you � doesn�t take kindly to folk interfering in his private life.�

And all became clear to Fin. Alasdair had recruited some unsavoury characters from his flock to warn Fin off. Favours owed, or maybe debt extended. Perhaps he didn�t trust Fin to keep the secrets they shared, though he doubted that Alasdair would have imparted the nature of those secrets to these wayward elders. In the end, all it did was confirm for Fin that Ally Ruadh wasn�t fit to walk in Donald Murray�s footsteps.

He didn�t see the first blow coming. A fist that flew out of left field and caught him high on the cheekbone. Anndra, the skinny one. But he had knuckles of steel, and Fin�s knees buckled beneath him. Even as he went down, he knew that this was not what Alasdair had envisaged. This was Macritchie�s revenge.

He felt the full weight of that retribution as Murdo�s boot sank itself into his midriff, and he curled up, arms crooked over his head, trying to protect himself from the kicks that began raining in from all sides. But still, one caught him full in the face, and he felt his mouth fill with blood.

A voice like thunder broke suddenly through the circle of violence. A voice that rang familiar, though somehow very far off, like a storm on the horizon. He rolled over and saw George Gunn squaring up to Fin�s three attackers. He stood, legs slightly apart, feet planted firmly on the tarmac, the wind catching his oiled black hair and lifting it up into a cockscomb. Fin spat out blood and raised himself on to one elbow, trying to clear his head.

Without taking his eyes off the other three, George leaned over to give Fin a hand back to his feet. �Alright,� he said. �Now it�s two against three. Though I doubt if Mr�Macleod�s in any fit state after being kicked half to death by a bunch of cowards. So it�s just me and you.� He smoothed down his cockscomb. �But let me tell you, the first one that comes within reach of my fist will not be getting up again any time soon. And when he comes to, he�ll be in a police cell charged with assaulting a police officer. Enough to see him sent to Inverness for a good few months. If not longer.�

All three men, breathless from their exertions, looked at him uncertainly.

�So, which one of you is going to be first?�

Anndra tugged on Murdo�s arm as he turned away. �Time to go, Ruadh.�

Jock glanced at Murdo, waiting to take his lead. Murdo spat on the pavement and turned a foul look in Fin�s direction. �Next time, orphan boy.�

And he turned to follow after Anndra down the hill towards Bayhead, Jock waddling hurriedly in his wake.

George looked at Fin and shook his head. �Just like the last time, eh, Mr�Macleod? Only then I was saving you from yourself.� He tutted. �We�d better get you cleaned up, and a wee something to take the taste of blood out of your mouth.�

McNeil�s was doing brisk business. Picnic tables outside it, which had been popular with tourists during the long spell of fine summer weather, were deserted. A folding chalkboard struggled to keep its feet in the wind swirling around The Narrows. Coves & Blones, open from 7�p.m., Thu, Fri, Sat, Upstairs Bar. Another, advertising Live Music, Open Mic with Bugsy, had fared less well and was flattened up against the wall of the pharmacy opposite. An ashtray on a stand had spilled its contents all over the street.

Inside, it was noisy and warm and smelled of whisky and stale beer. Gunn had found them a spot in the far corner, and he arrived at their table with a dram and a half-pint for each of them, slipping into his seat and looking speculatively at the damage to Fin�s face. It was bruised and swelling below the right eye. Miraculously all of his teeth had survived. The blood in his mouth had come from biting his tongue. �How are you feeling now?�

�Like I�ve been run over by a steamroller.� Fin had slunged his face with cold water in the toilets and rinsed out his mouth. But no amount of water could wash away his depression or overwhelming sadness. He knew he shouldn�t discuss it with Gunn, but he had to talk to someone, and Marsaili was a long drive away. He took a mouthful of whisky and hung his head. �Fionnlagh�s confessed,� he said.

Gunn stiffened. �I don�t think you should be telling me this, Mr�Macleod.�

Fin ignored him. �It was an accident, George. They had a fight. She slapped him. He slapped her back. She fell. Manslaughter. There was no intent.� He looked into Gunn�s stony face. �He didn�t mean to do it.�

�With all due respect, Mr�Macleod, rape is no accident.�

�He didn�t rape her, George!� Fin�s voice was raised. He immediately glanced around self-consciously and lowered it again. �He absolutely denies that. They�d been having sex for months. And they�d slept together that night before the argument.�

Gunn was acutely uncomfortable. �You realize, sir, I�m going to have to report this conversation.�

But Fin had no chance to respond before a familiar voice crashed into their conversation.

�Well, this is a nice cosy wee corner.� Professor Wilson placed his pint carefully on the table and cocked his head, examining Fin�s face. �I hope you�re just drunk, Macleod, and had an argument with a lamppost. Because you�re far too fucking old to be getting into fights.� He sat down and took a sip of his foaming IPA, then leaned forward to take a closer look. �Nasty contusion, that. You should get yourself checked for signs of concussion.� He looked at the glass of amber in Fin�s hand. �Shouldn�t be drinking either.�

Gunn said, �He�s just had some bad news, Professor.�

The pathologist lifted an eyebrow. �Oh? What�s that?�

Fin took another sip of whisky for Dutch courage. �Fionnlagh�s confessed to killing Caitlin.�

�An accident,� Gunn filled in the rest for him. �But claims he didn�t rape her.�

Professor Wilson snorted. �Well, I could have told you that.� He took a long pull at his pint, and left a line of white foam clinging to his abundantly whiskered upper lip. �The girl wasn�t raped at all.�

Gunn caught the pathologist�s eye, pointing a finger at his own upper lip, and the professor wiped away the foam from his with the back of his hand.

He glanced at Fin and said, �Silly of me. Shouldn�t have said anything in the presence of the father of the accused.� He raised an eyebrow. �You didn�t hear that, did you?�

�Hear what, Angus?� Fin felt the first tiny stirrings of optimism.

�Of course,� the pathologist said, �I have no problem in briefing DS�Gunn here on my findings, as long as you turn a deaf ear, Fin.�

�Hear no evil, see no evil,� Fin said.

Professor Wilson directed his gaze towards Gunn. �The thing is, Detective Sergeant, rape is always notoriously hard to determine. But in this case, someone inflicted vaginal damage post-mortem to make it look like the poor lassie had been. The presence of semen in itself is not an indication of either rape or consent. But the girl was dead by the time the mutilation was carried out. A clumsy effort, I have to say. And in no way indicative of non-consensual sex.�

Gunn frowned and glanced at Finn. �So someone else killed her.�

�That�s not for me to say, Mr�Gunn. But it is clear that she didn�t drown in that little bay on the Black Loch.�

Fin felt a cloud of silence descend on him, muting the voices raised in laughter at neighbouring tables, and all the social interaction around them. His focus on what Professor Wilson had just told them was intense. But still it made no sense.

Gunn gave voice to Fin�s confusion. �How�s that possible, sir?�

�Well, drowning is very hard to establish as a cause of death at the best of times, Detective Sergeant, unless there are absolutely no other obvious causes.�

�And there weren�t?�

�There were several head injuries and contusions to the body, none of which would have been sufficient to kill her. So...�

�You think she drowned.�

�I�m pretty sure she did. But here�s the thing, Mr�Gunn. The water in her lungs was full of sea lice. In a far greater concentration than would ever occur naturally in the open sea, or in a sea loch like An Loch Dubh.�

Fin interrupted, everything he had learned in the last hour suddenly turned on its head. �The cages! She was drowned out in the cages. She must have been. It�s the only place you would find sea lice in any kind of concentration.�

Professor Wilson sat back and took a long swallow of his beer.

Gunn�s mouth fell open. �So someone else did kill her?� he said.

�Again, Detective Sergeant, that�s not for me to say.�

Gunn�s eyes flickered back and forth across the table in front of him, as if he might find some plausible explanation among the beer mats and spillages that masked its scarred surface. �If she was drowned out at the cages, then someone must have brought her body back to dump it on the beach at the Black Loch.�

As if a pause button had been released, all of Fin�s senses were suddenly assailed once more by the world crashing in around him, noise, light, movement, bringing the realization that Fionnlagh�s account of what happened that night was only half the story. �Fionnlagh didn�t kill her,� he said, barely able to trust his own voice. �Either by design or by accident. Even if he thought he had.�

All three were startled by the voice that cut through the hubbub in McNeil�s, and the shadow that fell across their table. �For fuck�s sake!�

All three faces turned up to find DCI�Maclaren glaring down at them, a large whisky in his hand. His smooth face beneath the undercut hairstyle favoured by Premier League footballers was pink with indignation. A colour that almost matched his shirt.

�I come in here,� he said, �at the end of a long day, for a civilized dram. And what do I find? My pathologist and my DS colluding with the father of the man I�ve just charged with murder.� His fury was evident in the clenching of his jaw. He inclined his head slightly and looked at Gunn. �I�m of a mind to suspend you with immediate effect, Gunn.� Then swung his anger in the direction of the pathologist. �And you can rest assured, sir, that I will be reporting you to your superiors first thing on Monday.�

Professor Wilson leaned back in his seat, languid and relaxed. �Is that so, sonny?� He took another draught of beer. �First thing I need to correct. I�m not your pathologist. And I�m wondering exactly what it is you�ll be reporting to my superiors. That I was having a quiet drink in McNeil�s on a Saturday night with two old friends? Because let me tell you, I�ve known Fin Macleod since he was a young DC, and you were still flunking your eleven plus � if they even have such a thing any more. And I�ve been acquainted with DS�Gunn since he turned green at my first island autopsy twelve years ago. Unlike a certain wet-behind-the-ears university graduate who managed to throw up all over my autopsy table, George actually succeeded in keeping the contents of his stomach where they belong.�

Another mouthful of beer sharpened his sarcasm.

�Now, I�m quite sure that the young man involved would rather word of his digestive sensibilities did not gain common currency among his fellow officers, and I am always happy to remain discreet in such matters. But for your information, Detective Chief Inspector Maclaren, Fin Macleod has not asked me one single thing about this case, and so I have not had to embarrass either him, or myself, by telling him that anything discovered during post-mortem is strictly confidential.�

Having had the legs cut away from under him, the CIO hovered uncertainly. Humiliated in front of a junior officer and the father of the accused. Withdrawal with any kind of dignity seemed impossible. But Professor Wilson offered him an olive branch.

�Well, Mr�Maclaren, now that we�ve cleared that up, are you going to join us for a drink, or not?�

Maclaren stood for a long moment, weighing his options, before taking a chair from an adjoining table and pulling it in to join them. He folded his hands on the table in front of him. �So,� he said. �Who�s buying?�