The next car did stop. He waited for the knock on his door, but the men stood by the side of the road, their hands in their pockets, chatting, waiting for something to happen. Then there was a Transit van. It pulled right on to the grass to let other cars past. They manhandled a small generator out of the back and lifted it on to a trolley to pull it across the field. There were cables and two big lights on stands. They all disappeared over the hill and out of Magnus's line of vision. He could imagine what Catherine would look like, pale and frozen under those powerful white lights.
He looked at his mother's clock. Eight o'clock. The plane from Aberdeen would have landed by now. The team from Inverness would be driving north from Sumburgh. They had sent a special team last time, but they'd achieved no more than the local men.
There flashed into his mind the image of a little girl's face, clear as a photograph. Catriona. He said the word out loud because it came into his head. She had long hair, tangled by the wind, dark eyes narrowed in laughter as she ran up the hill. She'd opened the door without knocking and in one hand held a bunch of flowers picked from the garden. That would have been the last day he'd seen her.
He stood up, suddenly restless, and looked out of the window. The police were out of sight. He presumed they were nearer to the body. A patch of cloud shifted and he saw there was a full moon. His mother always said a full moon made him dafter than usual.
Its light formed a path on the still water. He realized he' hadn't eaten all day and wondered if that was what was making him feel confused. It would be that or the moon. In his mind he saw Catriona dancing on the road outside his house. It was a strange sort of jig with her hands held above her head, her arms curved like a ballet dancer's. He imagined that she tilted her head in his direction and gestured for him to follow her.
He knew that it must be his imagination. Even if she'd lived, Catriona would be a young woman now, older than Catherine. But he couldn't stay in the house. It was the moonlight on the water and waiting all day for the police to come back. It was listening to his mother saying ' Tell them nothing and the memory of the little girl.
He put on his boots, fumbling with the laces in his rush to be out. He had a woollen hat which his mother had knitted, and the big jacket she'd bought for him in Lerwick just before she'd died. It was as if she'd known she'd die soon, and she didn't trust him to buy his own clothes. She'd brought back a pile of underpants and socks from the same trip and he sometimes still wore those too.
Out of the house he climbed away from the track until he reached the Lerwick road. In the house by the chapel there was no light. There was a gap at the bed room window where the drawn curtains didn't quite meet, but he could see nothing through it, only a ghostly reflection of his face in the glass. Reluctantly he turned away and started off again on to the hill.
In the shadow of a dyke he stopped and looked back. The police hadn't seen him leave Hillhead. In the moonlight he saw them surprisingly clearly in the field where Catherine lay. The scene spread out below him and he could recognize individuals by the way they stood and the way they moved. They were blinded by the fierce white lights and their concentration on the small body covered by the tarpaulin shroud.
When they turned away from the crime scene it was to look out for headlights from the south. Soon the team would arrive from Sumburgh.
Magnus continued his climb. He walked slowly. He knew he had to pace himself. He'd had a winter of laziness since he'd last been up here. He felt the strain in his knee and a wheezing in his chest. The sunshine during the day had melted the snow in patches, so he could see the peat and the dead heather through it. He reached the top of the bank and ahead of him there was nothing but bare hillside.
They'd told him at school that once, Shetland had been covered with trees. He couldn't picture it. Now the only trees were in folks' gardens. He thought this must be what the moon must look like, if you were standing on it, not looking at it from the earth. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and looked behind him again.
The figures in the field looked less important from here. Beyond them he saw the silver ice on the voe and the houses of Ravenswick. If he had any sense he'd go back to his bed, but something kept him moving. Was this how Catriona had felt when she couldn't stop dancing?
He hadn't been sure he'd know the place, but now, approaching it even in this strange light, it was familiar.
He'd spent much of his youth up here, working with his uncle, his father's elder brother, who had run the croft.
Magnus had helped count the hill sheep, collect them into the cru for clipping and bring them down the hill ready for slaughter. And in the early summer, this was where they'd come to cast peats.
Hard work that had been, peeling back the turf from the bank and cutting into the dense dark earth. The digging had been back-breaking work and even worse was wheeling the peats down to the road in a barrow. Now, if they dug peat, and not so many did, they used a tractor and trailer. His uncle had been proud of him. He'd said Magnus was stronger and a better worker than his own sons. In those days Magnus had had a father and a mother, an uncle and cousins. Then, he'd had a sister. Now he had nobody.
He came to a small loch, where his cousins had come in the winter to shoot geese. You'd hear the birds flying in from the north, calling, a long line of them following each other so closely you could believe they were attached, like the ribbons on a kite tail, and the cousins would be out then with their guns.
Magnus had never been allowed a gun, but afterwards his mother would cook the goose and they'd all come together to eat it. Out on the freezing hillside, he had a picture of them gathered round the table in the Hillhead kitchen and it was so real he could smell the goose fat and feel the heat from the range on his face. Magnus wondered if he had an illness. All these day dreams reminded him of the scenes which play through your mind in a fever.
At the edge of the loch he stood for a moment to get his bearings. The ice was thick. In some places it was clear so he could see the grey water underneath. In others it was white and lumpy and looked a bit like the sweeties his mother had made with dried coconut, sugar and condensed milk. He wondered why it had happened like that, why the water hadn't frozen evenly. The thought distracted him for a moment and he worried away at the puzzle without coming to any conclusion.
His mouth was open in concentration.
Then the need for movement came on him again and he set off up the hill.
He had a map in his head. Like the treasure map in a story they'd read to him at school, though he'd never drawn it or written down directions.
What would the directions say? Walk west from the loch until you reach the Gillie bum. Follow the bum up the hill to the gully where the land always slips after heavy rain.
And it was just as he pictured it. When the thaw came the burn would be full of peaty water. Now it was deep with soft snow. And he came to the peat bank and the mound of rocks which looked like a small landslide. It wasn't unusual for this to happen on the hill, especially after a dry summer followed by heavy rain.
The water seeped into the cracks in the dry earth and loosened it, sending rocks and soil and peat spilling down the bank. Even in the snow he recognized the place. At last he lost the urge to continue moving. He stood with his face to the sky and let the tears run down his cheeks.