‘Blame Oscar. He dragged me here.’
‘Oscar, you bully, how could you?’ She fussed the dog, which had started to prance excitedly around her. ‘All right, calm down.’
She looked across at me, waiting for an introduction. Her brown eyes were so dark they were almost black.
‘This is David Hunter,’ Strachan said. ‘David, this is my wife, Grace.’
She smiled and held out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, David.’
As I took it I could smell her perfume, subtle and delicately spiced.
‘David’s a forensic expert. He’s come out with the police,’ Strachan explained.
‘God, what an awful business,’ she said, growing serious. ‘I just hope it’s no one from here. I know that sounds selfish, but…well, you know what I mean.’
I did. When it comes to ill fortune we’re all selfish at heart, offering up the same prayers: not me, not mine. Not yet.
Strachan had got to his feet. ‘Well, nice meeting you, Dr Hunter. Perhaps I’ll see you again before you leave.’
Grace arched an ironic eyebrow. ‘Don’t I even get a drink now I’m here?’
‘I’ll buy you a drink, Mrs Strachan.’
The offer came from Guthrie, the man with the ponderous gut. I had the impression he’d beaten Kinross and several others to the punch. Beside them, all but forgotten, Karen Tait’s blowsy face was pinched with jealousy.
Grace Strachan gave the big man a warm smile. ‘Thank you, Sean, but I can see Michael’s raring to go.’
‘Sorry, darling, I thought you wanted to get back,’ Strachan apologized. ‘I was planning to cook mussels for dinner. But if you’re not hungry…’
‘Sounds like blackmail to me.’ The smile she gave him had become intimate.
He turned to me. ‘If you get a chance before you leave, you should take a look at the burial cairns on the mountain. There’s a group of them, which is unusual. Neolithic. They’re quite something.’
‘Not everyone’s as morbid as you, darling.’ Grace shook her head in mock-exasperation. ‘Michael’s fond of archaeology. I think he’d rather have old ruins than me, sometimes.’
‘It’s just an interest,’ Strachan said, growing self-conscious. ‘Come on, Oscar, you lazy brute. Time to go.’
He raised his hand in response to the respectful goodnights that accompanied them to the door. As they went out they almost bumped into Ellen coming the other way. She checked, almost spilling the steaming plate of stew she was carrying.
‘Sorry, our fault,’ Strachan said, his arm still round Grace’s waist.
‘Not at all.’ Ellen gave them both a polite smile. I thought I saw a flicker of something else on her face as she looked at the other woman, but it was gone before I could be sure. ‘Evening, Mrs Strachan.’
It seemed to me there was a reserve there, but Grace didn’t appear to notice. ‘Hello, Ellen. Did you like the painting Anna did at school the other day?’
‘It’s on the fridge door, with the rest of the gallery.’
‘She’s got real promise. You should be proud of her.’
‘I am.’
Strachan moved towards the door. He seemed impatient to leave. ‘Well, we’ll let you get on. Night.’
Ellen’s face was so devoid of emotion it might have been a mask as she set the plate in front of me. She acknowledged my thanks with a perfunctory smile, already turning away. As she went out I reflected that Brody wasn’t the only person on Runa who didn’t seem overly impressed by the island’s golden couple.
‘Bitch!’
The word seemed to ring in the quiet of the bar. Karen Tait’s mouth was pressed tight with bitterness as she glared at the door, but it wasn’t clear which of the two women who’d just left the insult was aimed at.
Kinross levelled a warning finger at her, eyes angry above the dark beard. ‘That’s enough, Karen.’
‘Well, she is. Stuck up-’
‘Karen.’
She subsided resentfully. Gradually, the ordinary sounds of the bar began to fill the silence. The clicking of the domino players’ pieces resumed, and the tension that seemed to have momentarily been present was dissipated.
I took a forkful of the mutton stew. Ellen was as good a cook as Brody had said. But as I ate, I suddenly felt someone’s eyes on me. I looked up, and saw Kinross staring at me from across the bar. He held my gaze for a moment, his expression coldly watchful, before he slowly turned away.
When I woke the hotel room was dark. The only light came from the window, where the street light outside lit the drawn curtains with a diffuse glow. There was an unnatural hush. The wind and rain seemed to have stopped, leaving not a whisper in their wake. The only sound was my own breathing, a steady rise and fall that could almost have been coming from someone else.
I don’t know when I realized I wasn’t alone. It was more a dawning awareness of another presence than a sudden shock. In the dim light from the window, I looked at the foot of my bed and saw someone sitting there.
Although all I could make out was a dark shape, somehow I knew it was a woman. She was looking at me, but for some reason I felt neither surprise nor fear. Only the weight of her mute expectation.
Kara?
But the hope had been nothing more than a waking reflex. Whoever this was, it wasn’t my dead wife.
Who are you? I said, or thought I said. The words didn’t seem to disturb the cold air of the room.
The figure didn’t answer. Just continued its patient vigil, as though all the answers I would ever need were already laid out for me. I stared, trying to fathom either its features or its intent. But I could make out neither.
I jumped as a gust of wind shook the window. Startled, I looked round, then turned back, expecting the shadowy figure to be still at the foot of the bed. But even in the darkness I could see the room was empty. And always had been, I realized. I’d been dreaming. A disturbingly realistic one, but a dream none the less.
For a long time after my wife and daughter had been killed, I’d been no stranger to those.
Another gust shook the window in its frame, driving rain against the glass like handfuls of gravel. I heard what sounded like a cry from outside. It could have been an owl or some other night bird. Or something else. Wide awake now, I got out of bed and went to the window. The street lamp below was visibly shaking in the wind. I caught a flash of something pale flitting on the edge of its yellow corona, then it was gone.
Just something blown on the wind, I told myself, when it didn’t reappear. But I continued to stare into the dark outside the window until the cold air sent me shivering back to bed.
CHAPTER 6
WHILE I WAS wondering what I’d seen outside my bedroom window, out at the cottage Duncan wasn’t happy. The wind had picked up, buffeting the camper van like a boat in a high sea. He’d already taken the precaution of putting the paraffin heater in a corner to stop it from tipping over. Its blue flame hissed only a few feet from where he sat wedged behind the camper’s small table. Still, even though the cabin was cramped, it was better than spending the night either in the Range Rover or huddled in the cottage doorway. Which was where Fraser would probably have put him, he reflected. No, it wasn’t having to stay in the van that bothered him.
He just couldn’t stop thinking about what lay in the cottage.
It was all well and good Fraser laughing, but he wasn’t the one having to stay here. And Duncan had noticed the sergeant hadn’t offered to linger after he’d brought out his supper. No doubt in a hurry to get back to the bar, because judging by his breath he’d already made a start on the whisky. Duncan had watched the Range Rover’s lights disappear with a feeling he’d not had since he was a kid.
Not that he was afraid of being out here. Not as such, anyway. He lived on an island, and once you were out of Stornoway town there were plenty of places on Lewis where there was no sign of a living soul. He’d just never had to stay out in the middle of nowhere by himself before.