The digger, dressed in dark clothes, was almost invisible, even when headlights swept across the field. The spade gave no reflection, its surface dulled now by the earth. Perez crouched behind a drystone dyke to catch his breath. Just for a moment, because time was flying on, unreliable. In another minute Willow could be dead. He hadn’t been seen, but was close enough to hear the shovel as it sliced through the earth, and the soil landing in the trench below. There was a Maglite torch in his pocket and he held it in his hand, balanced and comforting. He switched it on at the moment that he leapt down from the wall, and the killer was caught in the full beam. Perez had anticipated an attempt to run away, for in the last two days there’d been an increased desperation in the killer’s responses. No matter that there was nowhere to run to – no boats or planes this late in the evening – Perez still expected flight. Instead there was silence and stillness. Simon Agnew threw down his spade and held his hands out wide. A gesture of surrender or resignation, almost that of a charismatic believer giving themselves up to God. Perez was reminded for a second of the third woman in his life, his ex-wife Sarah, who’d been a member of a happy-clappy church. Again time seemed to collide. He knelt on the edge of the ditch.
There were two eyes, blinking as if the torchlight was painful, and a face so muddy that at first he couldn’t tell it was still uncovered. He pushed the torch into the mud at the top of the trench, then slid in beside Willow and pushed the soil away from her neck and body with his hands – careful, like someone moulding a sculpture out of sand, scared that he would hurt her if he used the spade. He glanced back up at Agnew. He hadn’t moved. When Willow’s body was free, Perez put his arm around her neck and lifted her into a sitting position. He found he was murmuring reassurances, the same words he used to Cassie when she had nightmares. He forced himself to stop. Willow wasn’t a child and she’d hate being treated like one. Now at last Agnew dropped his hands to his side, but still he stood motionless.
The next half-hour passed in a blur. Looking back, Perez saw the action as a series of unrelated scenes. Jane Hay taking charge of Simon, despite Perez’s protestations, and pushing him towards Gilsetter. Furious, and showing a courage that would surely keep her family together. Andy at her side, proud and protective. Jane calling back across the ditch, ‘We’ll look after him there, Jimmy, until Sandy arrives.’ So Perez realized he must have phoned Sandy. Or Jane had. Willow fierce and more angry than he’d ever known her, when he suggested calling an ambulance. ‘All I need is a bath and a very large drink.’ A pause. ‘Now!’ Willow stumbling away into the dark, so he’d followed her and wrapped her in his coat and started walking with her up the bank towards his house. Sometimes he was almost carrying her. All the way he was offering a prayer of thanks to a God he’d never quite believed in, even as a child.
He’d worried that he wouldn’t have the strength to get her there, when Kevin Hay arrived in his Land Rover.
‘You need to go back to Gilsetter,’ Perez yelled above the sound of the engine. ‘Jane’s there with the killer.’
‘Don’t worry, Jimmy. The boys are there too, and they’ve locked him into the tractor shed.’ Kevin jumped down from the vehicle and between them the two men lifted Willow inside. ‘You just look after your friend. We’ll deal with all the rest.’
In the house Perez sat Willow in the bath and rinsed away the mud with the hand-held shower. Tender. Grateful that she wasn’t pushing him away. He washed the soil and blood from her hair, using Cassie’s shampoo, then filled the tub with clean water.
‘Shall I leave you to soak?’ He thought she might want to be on her own. He’d prop the door open, so he could hear that she was still conscious.
‘Nah, but bring in the bottle and a couple of glasses.’ A pause and a thin grin that took some effort. ‘I always think it’s wrong to drink on my own.’
Later they sat in front of the fire. She wore his dressing gown and a pair of his thick socks. Her hair was wrapped up in a towel. He could tell she still felt cold. He wanted to hold her tight to him, but since she’d emerged from the bathroom something about her body language, frozen and tight, made him think it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.
‘Shouldn’t you be at the station interviewing Agnew?’ she said. ‘I could stay here, if you’d trust me with Cassie.’
He almost said that she needed someone to be with her, but stopped himself just in time. ‘Nah. It’s about time we gave Sandy some responsibility and they’re sending some of your colleagues in on the first flight from Inverness tomorrow. Besides…’ he lifted his empty glass, ‘… I’m not fit to drive.’ He paused. ‘But you’re a witness. I could talk to you and make a few notes, if you feel up to it. Nothing that would stand up in court of course, but it might help us to jot down a few things while it’s still clear in our memories.’
Willow took a moment to speak and he thought he’d played that all wrong. She wouldn’t want to relive the nightmare so soon and would think he was an insensitive oaf.
‘When did you know it was Simon Agnew?’ she said at last.
‘Not for certain until I saw him standing by the ditch, with the spade in his hand. But I remembered you’d said that Agnew had told Sandy he was speaking in Fair Isle over the weekend. I checked with the Fair Isle Times and he was certainly booked to be there. But he couldn’t have made it. The weather was so bad on Friday and Saturday that neither the plane nor the Good Shepherd would have gone, and there are no planes on Sunday. That was why your phone message made me so anxious. And when Andy Hay told his mother he’d been staying at the manse, it just seemed bizarre that Agnew hadn’t told Jane he’d seen him. She visited this morning. Agnew must have realized that Jane would be worried stupid. Surely he’d have encouraged Andy to go home and talk to his parents, or at least told Jane that the boy was safe. When she went to see Agnew, his door was locked. She thought it was because he was scared, but it was to give him time to hide Andy, if a visitor arrived.’
‘Why did he take the boy in?’
‘I think he supported Andy and encouraged him to confide in him, because it was a way of keeping in touch with the investigation. And Andy needed someone away from the family to talk to. He saw Simon Agnew as a man of the world. Someone who’d understand.’ Perez threw another peat onto the fire. It was as hot as a sauna in the small room already. ‘Agnew pointed us in the direction of the Hay boys, of course. He couldn’t appear too interested in the case himself, and I think it amused him to throw us off-track. He had that sort of arrogance.’ Perez looked at her. ‘But you got to the killer way before I did.’
‘Naturally.’ Willow tried to sound flippant, but didn’t quite manage it. ‘Really I can’t take any credit. Sandy did the legwork. He just has a way of persuading people to talk. He found a witness at the airport who remembered seeing Tom Rogerson take a call just before he cancelled his flight to Orkney. When we checked with the phone company, we found out that the caller was Agnew.’ She held out her glass for more whisky. Perez had stopped drinking, but he tipped a little into her glass. She was suddenly serious. ‘It’s hard to believe all that only happened this afternoon.’
Perez saw that time had gone crazy for Willow too. It must have seemed like hours while she was lying in the drainage ditch, helpless.
She stirred in her chair. ‘Would he have done it? Would he really have buried me alive?’
He waited for a moment before answering. ‘I think he was pleased when I turned up to stop him.’
There was silence. Perez realized that the rain had stopped. He went to the window and saw a thin moon, covered immediately by cloud. When he turned back to the room, Willow was checking her phone. He’d rescued it from her mud-encrusted jacket. She looked up with a smile and began to talk.