Thunder Bay E-Book und Hörbuch

Douglas Skelton

• E-Book-Herausgeber: Polygon
  Hörbuch-Herausgeber: Isis Audio
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: The Rebecca Connolly Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 489

Beschreibung

LONGLISTED FOR THE MCILVANNEY PRIZE 2019 When reporter Rebecca Connolly is told of Roddie Drummond's return to the island of Stoirm she senses a story. Fifteen years before he was charged with the murder of his lover, Mhairi. When he was found Not Proven, Roddie left the island and no one, apart from his sister, knew where he was or what he was doing. Now he has returned for his mother's funeral – and it will spark an explosion of hatred, bitterness and violence. Defying her editor's wishes, Rebecca joins forces with local photographer Chazz Wymark to dig into the secrets surrounding Mhairi's death, and her mysterious last words of Thunder Bay, the secluded spot on the west coast of the island where, according to local lore, the souls of the dead set off into the after life. When another murder takes place, and the severe weather that gives the island its name hits, she is ideally placed to uncover the truth about what happened that night fifteen years before.

Leseprobe

A note on the author

Douglas Skelton was born in Glasgow. He has been a bank clerk, tax officer, taxi driver (for two days), wine waiter (for two hours), journalist and investigator. He has written several true crime and Scottish criminal history books but now concentrates on fiction. His novel Open Wounds (2016) was longlisted for the McIlvanney Award. Douglas has investigated real-life crime for Glasgow solicitors and was involved in a long-running campaign to right the famous Ice Cream Wars miscarriage of justice.

Also by Douglas Skelton

Non-fiction

Blood on the Thistle

Frightener (with Lisa Brownlie)

No Final Solution

A Time to Kill

Devil’s Gallop

Deadlier than the Male

Bloody Valentine

Indian Peter

Scotland’s Most Wanted

Dark Heart

Glasgow’s Black Heart

Amazing and Extraordinary Scotland

Fiction

Blood City

Crow Bait

Devil’s Knock

Open Wounds

The Dead Don’t Boogie

Tag – You’re Dead

The Janus Run

THUNDER BAY

Douglas Skelton

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.polygonbooks.cox.uk

1

Copyright © Douglas Skelton 2019

The right of Douglas Skelton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978 1 84697 473 1

eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 178 7

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

‘We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea . . . we are going back from whence we came.’

—John F. Kennedy

PROLOGUE

She felt sand beneath her feet and a warm breeze on her face, yet around her she could hear the shriek of a much fiercer wind.

She opened her eyes and saw the water, so blue, calmer than she had ever seen it before. Where it met the rocks, it was more a kiss than a slap. Even the seabirds seemed less predatory. They did not dive for prey but hung against the clear sky like a child’s mobile, as if to pierce the smooth surface of the water would be nothing short of a sin.

She closed her eyes again, breathed in the air. It was sweet with no salty snap, no sense of the damp stench of rotting seaweed that could be all-pervading.

She was happy here. She was always happy here. They used to come to the bay when they were children, the five of them, leaving their homes early in the morning to walk across the island. The journey took them hours but they always made it. And no matter how tired they were they raced down the trail from the clifftop, eager to be the first to hit the soft sand, the wind catching their hair and carrying their laughter to join the echo from the rockface. More often than not she won the race because she was always the fastest runner, the boys too busy trying to best each other to notice she was way ahead of them.

Then they would wolf down the lunches their parents had packed, or in Henry’s case some housekeeper or other, and they would splash at the water’s edge and play on the rocks that fringed the bay, seeking out sea creatures and discarded shells, daring each other to see how close they could swim to the caves, but no one actually attempting it. They were young but they knew it was too dangerous, even for immortals like them.

But they weren’t immortal. She knew that now. They all knew that now.

Voices.

She heard voices.

Distant. Incoherent. Swirling around her within the fierce wind she couldn’t feel.

They said there were beings that lived in the winds, elemental creatures that breathed and sighed around the land and the beaches and the bays. But she didn’t believe that. It was a tale of the old island, along with the witches on the mountain and the creatures in the water and petrified sisters standing watch on the shore.

And yet . . .

Voices on the wind, surrounding her, calling to her.

Mhairi

Her name. She heard her name, muffled and remote but she heard it. She looked around the bay, but she was alone, only her footprints in the sand. She didn’t remember walking down the track. She didn’t remember driving here. She didn’t remember . . .

Mhairi

Louder now, more distinct. A woman’s voice. She scanned the clifftop but saw no figure etched against the sky, so blue, so very blue and peaceful. She looked out to sea – perhaps a boat? – but nothing bobbed on the silky surface.

It looked so inviting, the water, and she felt that, for the first time, she would be able to swim out past the jagged rocks, out to sea, far out to sea, where all was calm and she was free of pain. And there was pain, she noticed it now, dull certainly, but it was there. She hadn’t been aware of it until she heard the voice, but there it was. An ache that spread from her head to her face and throughout her body. And something else now, something warm seeping from her hair and trailing down her forehead. She put her hand up, wiped it away, saw the red on her fingers. She was bleeding. She’d hurt her head and she was bleeding. How did that happen?

She tried to ignore the voice and knelt to scoop up a handful of water from where it lapped against the land. It felt so cool, so comforting. She dabbed her face with it, washed the blood from her fingers. The waves crept around her but she didn’t mind. They took some of the ache away and she felt at peace here.

But the voice kept calling to her. Stronger now.

And there were other voices, men talking but not to her. Only the woman spoke to her. Saying her name, over and over and over and over . . .

Mhairi

Mhairi

Mhairi, can you hear me?

The waves built around her, the level rising quickly, but she wasn’t alarmed. The water was her friend, it soothed her, she would become one with it and it would take away all the pain. It would heal her. She let its coolness take her under, but it was deeper than she thought, for soon it enveloped her and she floated there in the welcoming gloom, looking up at the sunlight playing on the surface before it fractured and stabbed down towards her. She didn’t want it to touch her – she was happy here, she was safe, she was free – but she could still hear the voice beckoning to her and she knew if just one of those beams of bright light touched her it would drag her back. She wanted to push away through the rippling water but she couldn’t move. All she could do was dangle, yet her body did not feel loose. One arm was bent away from her, it didn’t look right; the other was draped across her stomach. She saw her fingers trembling, still covered in blood – hadn’t she washed that off? – while one leg was trapped beneath her body. She could feel it wedged there. She was underwater, she liked it here, so why didn’t she drift? Why couldn’t she move?

The light reached down for her and touched her like hands. Not rough, not like before, but gentle. Caring. Comforting.

And she heard the voice saying her name again as her twisted body was drawn slowly back to the surface, back to the light, harsher now, not sunlight, not warm and pleasing and filled with the laughter of summer. She wanted to stay, she wanted peace, but she couldn’t fight it. She had to go back, she knew she had to go back, if only for a short time.

The wind shrieked and howled as she broke through the surface, but where she lay wasn’t warm and comforting and soft, it was hard and unyielding. Her vision swam. She didn’t know where she was at first, but she knew she wasn’t in the sea. Everything was blurred, the light so bright it hurt her eyes and she couldn’t see anything clearly. And there was pain, real pain, agonising pain, coursing through every part of her. She wanted to scream, to eject the hurt with sound, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even move.

Stay with us, Mhairi.

The woman, still distant but she heard her clear enough, reaching out to her through the blinding whiteness. But then her voice muffled again, merged with the others, only certain words rising to the surface, words she didn’t understand.

Open-vault fracture

Zygomatic

Frontal sinus

She tried to speak, but no words came. She knew they were talking about her. She knew she was in trouble and she longed to be back in the bay where she was safe, where the pain could be washed away. But she couldn’t go, not yet. One thing came into her head, a name, and she had to know. She forced herself to focus on that name, to say that name. It was a fresh sting, sharp and fleeting, that helped her.

‘Sonya.’

A face emerged from the light. It was a kind face. A caring face.

‘She’s fine,’ said the face. ‘Your baby is fine.’

Relief then, and it seemed to wash away some of the agony.

‘I’ve given you something to ease the pain,’ said the voice. ‘You need to stay with me, Mhairi.’

‘Ask her who did this.’ Another voice. A man. Gruff. She knew the voice but couldn’t place it. Couldn’t see him. Just a shape behind the woman who was helping her, blurred, indistinct despite the unforgiving glare from the overhead light. Too stark. Too severe. She saw irritation flash across the woman’s face.

‘Not my concern right now, Jim.’

‘It’s important.’

The woman turned her head. Mhairi saw her brown hair was cropped tight. ‘Jim, not my concern right now.’

Mhairi saw now, not clearly, but she recognised his heavy dark uniform. Sergeant Rankin. Everyone on the island knew him. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew it would be flushed and the whisky on his breath would nestle beneath a coat of mouthwash. He smoked too much and he drank too much, that’s what her mum said. He’d never see sixty, she said.

Neither would Mhairi. She knew that now.

Whatever she had been given was bringing her further into this world. The wind she heard at the bay but could not feel was throwing itself against the cottage. She could see a blue light strobing against the windows, could hear the logs hissing and crackling in the grate, although she could not feel its warmth. The thought made something within her wince. The logs . . .

She remembered.

The policeman was bending over her now. ‘Tell me who did this, lass. Who did this to you?’

She tried to turn her head but the pain screamed at her. Even moving her eyes was agonising. Whatever she had been given wasn’t enough. But she had to see if he was there, she had to let them know.

And then she saw Roddie.

He was standing just behind Sergeant Rankin, another policeman at his side. She had seen Roddie like that once before, wedged between two officers, when he’d been arrested for shoplifting back when they were children. He hadn’t done it, of course; it had been Henry. It was always Henry, getting them into scrapes and getting away with it.

No, she was wrong. He hadn’t been quite like this back then. There hadn’t been blood back then, covering his clothes, his hands. Her blood, she knew that. Her blood.

She looked straight at him, saw the fear in his eyes as she tried to speak, as she tried to tell them, but the effort was too great. She felt herself slipping away, could hear the splash of the waves and the cry of the seabirds, urging her to return. And she longed to return. There was too much pain in this world, too much heartache, too much disappointment. She wanted the water to lap at her body again, wanted it to caress her and wash everything away. She could tell them later, tell them later . . . Now she needed to simply bask in the sunlight, away from the groaning wind and the numbing pain and the paralysing terror.

But still she heard the policeman’s voice, asking her again who did it, and the woman telling him to back off. Mhairi knew that she had to give him something about that night – he had a right to know, it was important that he knew – but she was so comfortable back in the bay. That was where she belonged, where the breeze carried the promise of contentment. Where memories lived and laughed like old friends.

She managed two words before she once again felt the sand between her toes and was welcomed by the water as it washed softly back and forward against the land.

Back and forward

Back and forward

Back . . .

. . . forward.

1

The present day

The woman’s face rippled as she battled her emotions. Her chin twitched. Her cheeks developed a tic. Her eyes became reservoirs. But she maintained the ritual of pouring tea. The well-used strainer was carefully placed on the rim of the china cup bearing a blue floral pattern. The matching tea pot was hidden under a knitted cosy with only its curved handle and spout showing. The tea, perfectly tanned, fell steadily into the cup, even though the electric impulses that thrummed around the woman’s facial muscles conducted along her arm and made the pot tremble.

To Rebecca Connolly, more used to a teabag thrown into a tannin-stained mug, the process was old-fashioned, almost quaint, but she understood why it all seemed so important to Maeve Gallagher.

‘Sugar?’ The question was asked without any eye contact. Maeve’s focus remained on the tray in front of her, as if the paraphernalia was something that needed to be closely watched at all times.

‘No, thanks,’ said Rebecca, her voice soft.

‘Milk?’

‘A dash.’

The forced banality of the conversation, like the heightened emphasis on the process, was necessary. The woman needed time. She had to fix on the little things, the everyday matter of simply making and pouring a cup of tea, because it held her steady and kept the grief at bay.

The sing-song of children’s laughter floated in from the street outside. It was a warm autumn day and they were enjoying it. Rebecca saw Maeve glance through the window of her neat, over-furnished front room to watch the group of teenagers walk by directly outside. There was no garden to act as a barrier, just the window facing directly onto the street and, beyond it, the river. There was no irritation in the woman’s slight movement but rather something wistful, as if that laughter was not the laughter she wanted to hear.

‘Tell me about Edie,’ said Rebecca. Her voice was still gentle but she had to get Maeve to talk. That was why she was here.

Maeve said nothing as she handed over the delicate cup and saucer. She remained silent as she offered the tea plate piled with chocolate biscuits, which Rebecca refused with a shake of the head. Maeve carefully laid the plate back down on the tray perched on the wide footstool. Too carefully, as if she was delaying the inevitable. Rebecca gave her time, sipped the tea, waited. After all, Maeve had agreed to speak to her. She had something to say, and now that she had given her a gentle prod Rebecca knew she had to be allowed the time to say it.

Rebecca gave the room a brief scan. There were four large armchairs and a long couch arranged around a rectangular coffee table with a shelf underneath bearing a variety of magazines and a couple of jigsaws. In the corner beside the wide windows a large flat-screen TV sat on a black unit and through its smoked-glass doors she could see a satellite box and a DVD player with a few DVD cases sitting upright beside it. The gas fire in the tiled fireplace was dark, but the room was warm, thanks to the radiator under the window. The gas fire was no doubt only used in winter, which can be harsh in Inverness. On the mantle sat a reproduction carriage clock but its hands were still, as if time had ended at twelve minutes past three. This was not a room that had a lived-in feel, but then no one actually lived in this room, they just sat here on occasion, either on their way to or just back from elsewhere.

Eventually, inevitably, Rebecca’s eyes fell on the heavy sideboard taking up much of the wall beside the door. The piece of furniture looked old, second-hand. It was polished, but she could see scratches and gouges in the dark wood of the doors, perhaps made over the years by carelessly handled luggage. The sideboard itself was not what drew Rebecca’s attention; it was the photograph sitting on it. Encased in a silver frame, a shot of a teenage girl with long dark hair falling in waves to her shoulders. A pretty girl holding a black and white kitten. She was smiling. Her eyes danced with delight. Edie Gallagher.

Rebecca wondered where the kitten was now. It would be older, but not much. Rebecca guessed the snap was a year old. The cat would be in the rear of the house probably, where the family lived. Not allowed here, in the business part of the building, even though the Belle View Guest House hadn’t had a guest for many months.

Rebecca returned her attention to Maeve. She sat erect in the armchair, her cup and saucer clasped in both hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the window, her head slightly cocked as if listening to the fading voices and laughter of the young people, her eyes still misty as she longed to hear that one laugh she would never hear again. On the other side of the street Rebecca could see the River Ness reflecting the blue sky. Across the water church spires punctuated the heavens, but Rebecca knew Maeve wasn’t seeing them. A small sigh, a tiny shiver, and then – finally – a solitary tear erupted.

‘She was my lass,’ she said, the simple statement and that lone tear almost breaking Rebecca’s heart. She blinked, told herself to concentrate on the job in hand. She heard the voice of her own father, still bearing the lilt of the islands, talking about police work but insisting it worked with journalism too.

A good officer doesn’t need emotions, but a great one knows how to use them. Without emotion, we cannot empathise. If we can’t empathise, we cannot understand. And if we can’t understand, then why the hell are we doing the job?

Maeve didn’t move as she spoke again. ‘She used to come in that front door like a hurricane, always full of energy, always full of . . .’

She stopped and her face quivered again. Rebecca knew what she had been about to say.

Always full of life.

Maeve swallowed the word back and spoke again. ‘I would tell her to shut the door behind her, but she never did. Always left it wide open, rain or shine, as she dashed up the stairs, desperate to get her school uniform off and into her jeans and T-shirt, or whatever. Every time I hear that door opening now, I think it might be her.’ Her eyes glistened as she stared into the sunlit street. ‘But it’s not, of course. It’s never her. Never will be.’

Rebecca laid her cup and saucer on the tray. Her pad was tucked beside her, against the arm of the roomy armchair, and she wanted to scribble Maeve’s words down but didn’t want to do anything that might draw the woman from her thoughts.

Her editor had sent her to get Maeve to do something no one else had managed. Get her talking. Get us quotes, something none of the others have.

He’d sent Rebecca because this was what she was good at, getting people to talk, getting people to trust her. It was a skill she’d inherited from her father. At least that’s what her mum said.

He could always get people to open up. It was a gift.

That gift had served Rebecca well during her three years in newspapers. People warmed to her. People spoke to her, told her things. People like Maeve, who had not spoken to a single journalist since her daughter Edie had died.

‘I wonder if he thinks about her?’ Maeve said, suddenly. ‘That man . . .’

Greg Pullman. The London trader who slammed his hired car into Edie while he was high on booze and cocaine. Who left her broken and dying in the street while he roared away in his high-performance dick extender. Who was that day to be sentenced.

‘I wonder if he considers the life he took,’ said Maeve, her voice low, barely above a whisper. ‘I wonder if he cares at all.’ Finally, she looked at Rebecca. ‘What do you think he’ll get?’

‘A custodial sentence, I think. He’ll do time.’

A tight little nod, satisfied. ‘Good. I’d hate to think that he’d get off with it just because he’s got money.’

He’d been staying in his cottage on the Black Isle for the week and had met up with some mates for a weekend jolly in Inverness. He’d decided that he was fit to drive. He didn’t even remember hitting the teenager, or so he said.

‘That won’t influence the judge,’ said Rebecca. ‘He’ll go away, Maeve. I’m certain of it.’

Another bob of the head, then Maeve’s eyes drifted back to the window and the sunlight and the river flowing across the street, as if seeking out the red brickwork of the castle, where the court sat.

‘Ralph’s down there now. He said he wanted to see it. Wants to see the man’s face when he hears that he’s going away.’ Her gaze swam back towards Rebecca. ‘You’re certain he’ll be jailed?’

Rebecca nodded.

Maeve’s eyes hardened. ‘He’ll get, what? A few years? His licence taken away? But then after those few years he’ll be out again and getting on with his life. He’ll be out again to work and play, have a family. To drink again, to take drugs again, probably even drive again, won’t he?’

Rebecca didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She knew that everything Maeve had said was possible but there was no way she was going to say so because she sensed where this was leading and didn’t want to break the flow.

‘But my Edie can’t, can she? She can’t get on with her life because he took it away. She won’t ever work. She won’t ever have a family, won’t ever grow old. He took all that away from her. He took all that away from me and Ralph. He took it all.’

Maeve placed her untouched cup of tea on the tray, then stood and walked to the window. It was a sudden movement, as if she simply had to move, compelled by the rage building inside her. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about her grief, as far as Rebecca knew. She’d kept it contained, bottled up. Rebecca recalled a snatched shot of her outside the court on the day Pullman was found guilty. The muscles were drawn, the mouth a tight line, her head held so erect Rebecca could see the tendons of her neck standing out like cables. She must have wept, but privately. Now that single tear had breached the dam and it was about to burst. Maeve leaned on the sill, her head slightly bowed, and Rebecca saw her shoulders shudder.

‘Maeve . . .’ Rebecca began to rise but the woman held up a hand, shook her head. She didn’t want Rebecca’s sympathy. She needed to get this out. Rebecca sat back again, feeling she should somehow offer comfort but grateful she didn’t have to.

Her phone, nestling beside her pad, vibrated against her thigh, but she ignored it. Whoever it was would have to wait. The flow, it was all about the flow.

‘I hope he dies in prison,’ said Maeve, her voice strong and not watered down by the tears that now fell freely. ‘I hope some other prisoner kills him. I hope he feels just a portion of the pain Edie felt as she lay there in that gutter. I hope someone guts him, the way he’s gutted me and her father.’

Rebecca sat back. She had her quote. She had the line that would make that week’s splash. She had what no other paper had.

The reporter within her was delighted.

The human being was saddened.

She convinced Maeve to agree to a photograph, which she took with her phone. Newspaper cutbacks. No need for staff photographers; if you were lucky a freelancer would do (though none were available that day). Rebecca was too young to have known how it was in days of yore – those days actually far from yore, being just a few years earlier – but she’d heard from old hands how things had been done. There was a time when a snapper would have been sent out with her, or at least arrangements made for one to visit. But the industry had changed, moved on, become more efficient in the bid to protect profits. She was wise enough to know that ‘efficient’ didn’t mean improved.

The shot she took was typical tabloid: Maeve holding the framed photograph of Edie and looking heartbroken. It was cheesy and it was basic. A professional photographer might’ve been more creative, but Rebecca was a mere scribbler. She waited another fifteen minutes before she made her excuses. She thought Maeve was ashamed of her low-key outburst, of her display of near-public emotion, and was relieved to see her go.

As Rebecca walked towards her car, the October sun welcome after the interview, she glanced back at the guest house and saw the woman at the window, still clasping the framed photograph of her daughter to her chest. Rebecca gave her a small wave but it wasn’t returned. Maeve Gallagher looked so alone, it was doubtful she even saw her. She was lost in the mists of grief and anger and memories of a stolen young life.

Rebecca turned away and dug her phone from her coat pocket. The missed call was from Chaz Wymark. He was a photographer, young certainly but she had no doubt he would have come up with a far better shot of Maeve. She reached her car, settled on the small wall separating the roadway from the riverbank, and thumbed the call back. As it rang she raised her face to the sun. Make the most of it, she thought, winter isn’t far.

‘Rebecca.’ Chaz sounded pleased to hear from her. He always sounded pleased to hear from her. They’d never met face-to-face but had spoken often on the phone.

‘What’s up, Chaz?’

‘Oh, big doings over here, you better believe it.’

Over here. Chaz was speaking from Stoirm, an island off the west coast where he lived. He provided local snippets and photographs in return for a payment so small it made minimum wage look overly extravagant. Storm Island, they called it. Her father had been born there, but the only thing he ever said about it was that it was aptly named. But big doings. On Stoirm? She couldn’t believe it.

‘What’s going on, Chaz?’

He told her. While he spoke, she knew she was on to something. This time, though, there was something new, a quickening of the pulse, the flutter in the gut as nerves prepared to take flight.

This time it was about Stoirm.

2

This was the longest he had been apart from his wife since before they were married. The hill on which he stood had been Mary’s favourite spot on the island. You can see the world, she used to say. Her world, anyway. Below him lay Portnaseil, the only sound the grumble of the morning ferry as it prepared to set off across the Sound, which on this fine autumn day was a refreshing deep blue. Portnaseil was the largest settlement on Stoirm, its buildings nestling around the sheltered harbour, while the other villages clung to the eastern coastline. There was nothing to speak of on the western side, for that was where the weather so often lashed at the land and the cliffs. Not today, though. He lifted his eyes towards the dark bulk of the mainland across the water, where white splashes of villages reflected the sunshine. Behind him was the island, the houses and crofts dotted across the grasslands and heather until they gave way in the west to the corrugated hills that shouldered the sky on either side of the island’s mountain, Beinn nan sìthichean. That’s where the fairies live, Mary used to tell their children. They let you visit in daylight but not after dark. That’s their time, and anyone caught on the mountain after nightfall is theirs forever.

The breeze whispered through the reeds and tall grass around him. Spirits, Mary would say, singing to us from the other side. He listened carefully but he couldn’t hear her voice among them. He longed to hear it again, even if only once. Maybe, someday, he would.

Two days.

That’s how long she’d been gone.

Just two days.

It felt like a lifetime.

The church stood above Portnaseil, the old graves scattered around it like standing stones, the newer burial ground off to the side more ordered. For all her love of the old stories, Mary had been a believer, never missed services. The wind could be sharp enough to cut her in half, while the rains could attack as if it was personal, but every Sunday she would pull on her coat, grab her Bible and head out. She’d be back in the kirk soon enough, he thought. Only this time she wouldn’t come home and start preparing the roast. This time she wouldn’t stop for a chat with the ladies. This time she wouldn’t come up to this hill if the weather was fine, just to find a moment to herself and listen to the spirits singing in the grass. This time she’d stay in the kirkyard forever.

He closed his eyes and concentrated again on the soft sigh of the breeze. Just one word, he prayed. Just my name. Just one more time.

‘Dad.’

For a moment he thought it was Mary. Just a brief flash of something like hope. She always called him that in front of the children. Never Campbell, never darling, never anything but Dad. But that would mean his prayer had been answered and he’d long ago given up on any help from that quarter.

He turned and saw his daughter Shona heading up the hillside. She’d always favoured her mother – the same smile, the same laugh, the same look when she was irritated with something he had done – but now she was in her late thirties she was Mary’s double. Even her own daughter was showing a strong resemblance. Shona had defied modern naming traditions and called her only child Mary. That pleased him, because it meant a little something of his Mary would live on.

He said nothing to Shona. He knew why she had come to find him. He stared across the Sound, his jaw clenched.

She reached his side and stood for a moment, following his gaze.

‘She loved it here,’ she said.

‘Aye,’ he said.

There was another silence between them while around them the world played its own symphony. The soft melody of the breeze. The glissando of the waves as they caressed the yellow sand at the bottom of the hill. The bass rumble of the ferry engine as it pulled away. The percussive cry of a gull.

Shona slid her hand into his and squeezed. He squeezed back. He loved her but he didn’t want to hear what was coming next. He’d seen it in her eyes as she’d climbed the hill. He’d felt it in the touch of her hand. He already knew.

She said it anyway, her words so subdued that they were almost swept away by the wind and the waves and the cough of the ferry.

‘He’s coming back,’ she said.

3

Barry Lennox had been editor of the Highland Chronicle for a year. He was a big man, probably muscled at one time but those had long since turned to fat, and he kept his hair in a mullet. He dressed in jeans and denim jackets and he thought he looked like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. He didn’t. He’d been in newspapers for more than twenty years – first with the dailies, then a time with a Sunday tabloid – and Rebecca thought he’d come to the Highland Chronicle to stay out of the rain, probably in the belief that working in weekly newspapers would be easy. He’d barely deposited his widening backside in the editor’s chair when he was landed with overseeing two other weeklies in the north of Scotland, the owners in London deciding that one editor was enough for all titles on the frontier of their empire. Lennox thought he could manage, because he still believed life in the weeklies was a holiday camp compared to the cut and thrust of national journalism.

He now knew that wasn’t the case.

He looked tired and harassed and, Rebecca noted, extremely pissed off. That seemed to be his fall-back position these days. To his credit, he didn’t take his frustrations out on his staff, or rather what was left of it, for the owners’ cutbacks did not stop at editors and photographers. Profit margins had to be defended and that meant staff had to go, even though they produced the product that created the profits. There didn’t seem to be any reduction in management, Rebecca had noticed; there was always somebody new appointed to come along and tell them all how to do their jobs.

When the previous editor, a smart, tough and funny woman named Elspeth MacTaggart, had finally decided she’d had enough she fired off a stinging memo to the suits in the south outlining exactly where she thought they were going wrong and how much they were damaging not just the business but journalism as a whole. They ignored it and waved her goodbye. Lennox was her replacement.

He looked up from his computer screen as Rebecca walked into his office. ‘How did you do?’

In the car, Rebecca had scribbled the quotes on her pad before she forgot them. She read them back and saw the beginnings of a smile on his broad face.

‘Get it written up, three hundred words for page three but we’ll splash on the front. I’ll send you a box.’ He began to punch the keys again. It didn’t matter if a story called for more words or less – that was the way the designer had formed the page and that was it. Lennox would read her piece, though, and tweak it – knowing him, make it more sensational. He could also amend the page design if he had to, but that was a complicated business and, truth be told, an art he had not yet fully mastered. Only one person in the office had been adept at manoeuvring the intricacies of the page design system but he had been made redundant two months before. The new system, said management, who had never punched a key in anger, was so wonderful sub-editors were no longer needed. So the suits started to call them ‘content managers’ and that made them feel a whole lot better. Rebecca could write neat, clean copy but she had news for them – subs were needed, no matter what they called them. Barry had two content managers but one was on holiday and the other spent much of her time on Mondays and Tuesdays dealing with the various sport pages, meaning the bulk of the news fell to Barry. Hence his current mood.

‘You get a pic?’ asked Lennox.

Rebecca held up her phone. ‘Not a great one. A snapper would’ve done better.’

He shrugged that away, stared at his monitor. ‘As long as it’s in focus and we can see the woman’s face, it’ll be fine. Bung it in the system and I’ll slap it on the page.’

‘Okay,’ she said, fighting down a sigh. She’d only been in the job for three years but even she could see standards were slipping. ‘There’s something else, Barry.’

His eyes flicked a question over the top of his monitor, but he kept banging the keys.

‘I spoke to Chaz on the way back,’ said Rebecca.

‘Chaz who?’ He still wasn’t looking at her.

‘Wymark, the freelance over on the island.’

‘What island?’

Rebecca had never visited Stoirm but she called it simply ‘the island’ like a native. Her father had only ever called it that, even though he rarely mentioned his childhood home.

‘Stoirm,’ she said.

‘Right, okay,’ he said, remembering. ‘The freelance.’

Which is what she’d said. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘he’s come up with a belter of a story.’

Lennox stopped typing, gave her his full attention. ‘Okay.’

‘A woman called Mary Drummond died a couple of days ago, massive heart attack. Her son was Roddie Drummond and fifteen years ago he was tried for the murder of his girlfriend. Acquitted on a Not Proven. He’s not been on the island since, but there’s a chance he’s coming back for the funeral.’

‘Okay, get on the phone, see what you can get. Get that Chaz boy to nose about . . .’

‘There’s still a lot of bitterness over the case, Chaz says. It’s a fairly big island but Portnaseil is a small community, everyone knows each other.’ She immediately regretted using the words ‘small community’ because that translated to tiny sales. She also knew it was unlikely that everyone knew each other, but she thought the idea might strengthen her pitch somehow. ‘But I think this is bigger – prodigal returns, locals resent it. And then there’s the murder mystery, too.’

Lennox sat back, lifted a dagger-shaped letter opener he kept on his desk, even though there were very few envelopes to slit open these days, and twirled it in both hands. This was his habit whenever he wasn’t poking at the keyboard, as if his hands were so restless they simply had to do something. ‘So what you saying, Becks?’

She took a breath. ‘I think I need to be over there.’

His body language had formed ‘No’ before she’d completed her short sentence. ‘I can’t afford to send you over there,’ he said. ‘I need you here. You can do ten stories in the time it would take to get one.’

A story’s not a story unless it can be done on the phone. That was the pronouncement of one of the nimrods sent up from London to tell the staff they were doing everything wrong. It was during her first year on the job but she knew it was bollocks as soon the words came out of his mouth. The thing was, she felt even he didn’t believe it. It was merely the company line.

‘Barry . . .’ she began.

‘Becks,’ he interrupted, ‘you’re not Lois Lane and we’re not the Daily Planet. You’re not going to go over there and solve this mystery . . .’

‘I don’t expect to. I just feel I can get people to talk if I’m meeting them face-to-face. You know I’m good at that.’ A slight incline of his head told her he was forced to agree. ‘So think about this – where’s this Roddie Drummond character been for fifteen years? What’s he been doing? How does he feel about going back home after all this time, with a cloud still over his head? What happened back then? And we’ll get more than one story out of it. I promise you we’ll get a front page splash and a feature piece right off the bat. And who knows what else I’ll trip over. But I need to be there to do that. Some things you can’t do on the phone.’

He dropped the letter opener on the desk and stared at her. She heard his breath exhale as he considered her speech, which, given it was delivered off the top of her head, was a good one. She was bound to have won him over but she hit him with one final blow.

‘And we’re in on this at the beginning, Barry. It’s an exclusive. The P&J, the West Highland Free Press, The Courier, even the dailies won’t have a sniff of this. Not yet. But we need to move on it.’

She had gambled this would appeal to the old-fashioned newspaperman that she hoped still lived inside him. An exclusive. A chance to splash something that no other newspaper had. Journalistic pride. She thrilled at the possibilities. But she had another motive to get to Stoirm. One she wasn’t sharing that with her editor. It was personal.

He shook his head. ‘Can’t swing it, Becks, you know that. See what you can get on the phone. If it’s that exclusive then you don’t need to be there.’

Damn it, she thought.

He turned his attention to his monitor once again and she knew she was beaten. Disappointed, she turned away, then a new thought struck her. ‘Did you hear from Yvonne?’ Yvonne Adams, the only other journalist on the Chronicle team now. She was at court for Greg Pullman’s sentencing.

Lennox didn’t look up from the monitor. ‘He got ten years, banned from driving and a ten grand fine.’

Rebecca left his office, smiling. That was something, at least.

Her mobile beeped just as she was putting the finishing touches to the Maeve Gallagher piece. She had gone straight for the heart, as befitted the story. Even so, she didn’t fool herself that this was news. In university she’d been taught the adage, attributed to some long dead press baron, that the news was something that someone, somewhere, didn’t want printed. Everything else was advertising. It could be argued, she supposed, that Greg Pullman wouldn’t want this printed, but he had other things on his mind now. What it boiled down to was voyeurism. As much as she sympathised with the bereaved mother, this was a chance for the reader to enjoy someone else’s pain. Rebecca knew she was being hard on readers but that was the way it was. And yet, she provided the suds for this particular soap opera. She did her job because that was what she was paid for, it was what she was good at, but stories like this were not what drew her into journalism.

She scanned her words as she answered her mobile without checking the caller display. Her heart sank when she heard Simon’s voice.

‘It’s me.’

She contemplated simply disconnecting, but she didn’t. She couldn’t be that hard, even though she’d made it clear to Simon that it was over.

‘Becks?’

‘I’m here.’ Her voice sounded strained, even to her.

‘I was wondering if you were free for a coffee, or lunch. Or something.’

‘Kind of busy, Simon. Working.’

‘Right.’ He sounded deflated and she thought to herself, what did he expect? ‘Yeah, sure, but . . . well . . . I was in the area and I just thought . . . well . . .’

Rebecca looked around to ensure no one else was listening. Who would be, though? Yvonne was still out, Barry was hunched over his screen in his office, the reporters on the other titles, two per paper, were busy, the sole content manager was at the table at the far side making herself a coffee while the advertising department was based in another room.

‘Simon, look – it’s not a good idea, okay? You can’t keep calling me.’

‘I know, it’s just . . .’

‘No,’ she said, firmer than she meant it, so she deliberately softened her voice. ‘This has to stop. You know it has to stop.’

‘Becks, you know how I feel. You know I . . .’

Don’t say it, she thought.

‘Love you.’

And he says it.

‘I can’t let things just end, Becks.’

‘But they have ended, Simon.’

‘Maybe for you.’

‘Yes, maybe for me, but that’s still an ending.’

There was a pause ‘It wasn’t my fault, Becks. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

She could hear his voice beginning to waver and she couldn’t take it. She knew what had happened wasn’t his fault. She knew it wasn’t hers, either. It had simply happened. She certainly didn’t blame him but afterwards she had come to realise there was nothing between them. As the saying went, it wasn’t him, it was her. She didn’t know what she was looking for but she knew Simon wasn’t it. Not now.

She didn’t say any of that, though.

‘Simon, please, let it go. There’s nothing to be said. Sorry, but I’m under the gun here. I’ve got to get back to work.’

She hung up. She felt bad, but she couldn’t get into that discussion again. It had been six months since it had happened. She’d tried not to think about it too much, but his voice always brought it back and she couldn’t have that, not here, not in the office. She moved to the window and looked down into the street, scanned the cars parked on either side. Yup, there it was. Simon’s blue Audi. Simon was a solicitor based in Dingwall. It was possible he was down in Inverness at court but he had no reason to be out in the industrial units where the Chronicle had its office.

She leaned against the wall beside the window and closed her eyes, blocking the memories. She hoped this wasn’t going to be a problem. She couldn’t let it become one.

4

If Rebecca had a guilty secret, it was that she was a fan of Robbie Williams. It wasn’t something she broadcast, he not being cool among the oh-so-cool twenty-somethings who were her peer group. He was on her iPod, swinging both ways, as she sat on the floor of her small flat, bound copies of the Highland Chronicle opened and spread out around her. She had liberated them from the file room before she’d left the office, sneaking them into her car without being seen. The digital archive only went back nine years and so there was nothing online about the Stoirm murder, hence the need for the bulky volumes containing every edition from the year of the murder and then the trial a few months after.

They didn’t tell her much. The Chronicle reports were far from comprehensive – perhaps things weren’t much better in the good old days after all, although there was a very good in-depth feature on the case following the trial. To be fair, a murder like that, the first on the island for fifty years, was well covered by the dailies, and by the time the weekly title came out there wouldn’t have been much that was fresh. She found further reports on the websites of the dailies, but even their digital records from back then were patchy.

She did uncover a lengthy entry on the case on a site detailing unsolved murders in Scotland but knew better than to accept what was there as gospel. Technically, the case was unsolved. Roddie Drummond had faced trial but was acquitted on a Not Proven verdict. It was a controversial issue in Scotland, the infamous third option for juries – ‘that bastard verdict’, it was called, neither guilty nor not guilty. But an acquittal all the same.

She hooked her glass of wine from the floor beside her and leaned against the settee. The A4 notepad on her lap was covered in spidery handwriting which was unreadable by anyone except herself, and sometimes not even then. She liked to scribble notes down, it made her feel closer to the material. She then let her eyes roam towards the open pages of newsprint and finally to the screen of her laptop. A grainy shot of Mhairi Sinclair, obviously scanned in from a newspaper, stared back at her. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. If it had hung loose it would have fallen to her shoulders, as straight as a waterfall.

She had a child, the reports said. She was living with Roddie, although he was not the father. Rebecca flicked back through her handwritten notes. The father was another local man, Donnie Kerr. On her pad she’d written the words FIND HIM and underlined them. Twice.

She stared at Mhairi’s eyes. The photo was in black and white, so she couldn’t see what colour they were. They looked dark. Dark and deep.

What happened back then, Mhairi?

Who killed you?

Rebecca pulled the Chronicle’s trial report towards her and looked for the section detailing Mhairi’s final few minutes. Paramedics from the newly opened community hospital had responded to Roddie’s 999 call. Mhairi had been badly beaten. Rebecca had noted phrases like open-vault fracture, where the hair and scalp had come into contact with the brain, zygomatic and frontal sinus fractures, which meant she had been beaten so badly the bones around her eyes had been smashed, leaving her left eye bulging from the socket, Cushing’s triad, where arterial pressure had increased, probably due to swelling of the brain, while her respiration was irregular and pulse rate down. There were further deep lacerations and contusions where someone had compressed her throat. All of this was reported in the dry, emotionless manner of expert witnesses until the pathologist was questioned about the nature of the injuries. ‘It is my opinion that the individual who did this was suffering from deep and uncontrollable rage,’ he said. Naturally, defence counsel didn’t like that one bit and objected to the speculation, but the thought was already out there.

The paramedics did what they could but they were fighting a losing battle and Mhairi died in the ambulance. She had regained consciousness once, while they were still in the cottage. Rebecca scanned the report, found the passage she was looking for, read it again:

The Advocate Depute asked the witness: ‘And did the deceased say anything before she died?’

The witness replied: ‘Yes. She asked after Sonya.’

‘Sonya being her one-year-old daughter?’

‘Yes.’

‘And where was Sonya at the time?’

‘She was in her cot in the house. She was asleep.’

‘And the daughter was unharmed?’

‘She was perfectly fine.’

The Advocate Depute then asked: ‘And did the deceased say anything else?’

The witness replied: ‘She did.’

‘And would you tell the court what that was?’

‘She said “Thunder Bay”.’

The paramedic was asked what she thought that meant and she explained that Thunder Bay was a well-known location on the west coast of Stoirm.

The witness was then asked: ‘And what do you think she meant by that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

Rebecca had printed THUNDER BAY in her notes and underlined those words too. Three times. Thunder Bay. She’d logged into Google Maps and zeroed in on it. There was only a satellite image, no ground-level view. It looked fairly remote, with what seemed like a dirt trail running from the roadway that ran the length of the island, although it was difficult to tell. It might’ve been a tarmac single-track road. Underneath her notes, she’d written one word: VISIT.

If she was honest, she’d decided while she was speaking to Chaz that she would go to the island to follow the story. It didn’t really matter what Barry said. She had hoped he would see the importance of the story and let her go but it seemed any news instincts he might have once possessed were smothered by the need to satisfy the number crunchers and their spreadsheets. On one level Rebecca understood his position but her own instincts told her there was no way she could do it justice with a few phone calls.

There was so much here. The murder fifteen years before. The enduring mystery. Roddie Drummond.

And then there was Stoirm.

The island on which her father had been born. The island he’d left when he was eighteen. The island to which he’d never returned. The island that had fascinated her since she’d first heard of it, even though she’d never visited.

It had been one of the reasons she had been delighted to land the Chronicle job. Though Stoirm was a far-flung area of the paper’s circulation she had always hoped to be sent there, but so far the opportunity had never arisen.

But now it had.

Rebecca found her mum’s number on her phone and made the call. She only glanced at the clock on the wall as she listened to the dial tone. Ten o’clock. Mum would still be up. The phone continued to ring. She began to doubt herself. Maybe she had gone to bed. Or maybe she was out. Maybe . . .

‘Becca, what’s up?’

Her mother’s voice sounded worried. Rebecca visualised Val Connolly sitting in her spacious kitchen in Milngavie. The sound of the TV in the sitting room reached her, some comedy show or other.

‘Nothing, Mum, why?’

‘It’s late.’

‘It’s ten o’clock, Mum.’

‘Still very late for a phone call.’

Rebecca smiled to herself. Her mother hated the phone and wouldn’t even allow it in the living room. It was always in the hall, then, after some petitioning from her husband, in the kitchen. That was a victory for him. At least he could sit at the table to chat.

‘After all,’ said her mother, ‘I could be entertaining a gentleman caller.’

Rebecca smiled. ‘You’re beyond the age of having gentlemen callers.’

‘I’m only fifty-two and that’s no age at all. Anyway, that’s very ageist of you. I thought we brought you up better than that. Even mums have needs, you know.’

‘Mums don’t have needs.’

‘Of course we do – how else do you think you got here?’

Rebecca felt herself smile. She knew her mother was winding her up. ‘Behave yourself, Mum. You know Dad was the only one for you.’

Her mother laughed. ‘Yes, that’s what he used to say too. And I hated it when he was right. It’s the man’s job to be wrong, all the time. So, why are you calling so late?’

‘Sorry, Mum, but this couldn’t wait. I’m heading to the island tomorrow.’

There was a silence. When her mother spoke, Rebecca heard the familiar, guarded tone she always used when the subject came up. ‘Why?’

‘A story.’

‘What kind of story?’

Rebecca told her.

When she’d finished her brief outline, her mother spoke. ‘I don’t know anything about all that.’

‘I didn’t think you would. What I wanted to know was this: why did Dad never speak about the place?’

Despite her pleas for stories from the island, her dad had said very little about the place, except in passing. And further enquiries from her were adroitly averted. He had no photographs to show, nothing of his childhood. It was as if it wasn’t part of him.

There was another silence at the other end of the line, filled only by the faint laughter from the TV. Rebecca made out Stephen Fry’s voice. When her mother still didn’t speak, she said, ‘Mum?’

‘He just didn’t,’ said her mother.

‘Not even to you?’

‘Not even to me.’

Rebecca was surprised. She had meant it when she said that her father had been the only one for her mother. They weren’t merely married, they were connected. She’d never seen two people who cared for each other so much. She really thought that he would’ve shared something with her over the years. ‘But why?’

A sigh. ‘Why do you need to know?’

‘Because it’s a part of him I don’t know about. I know the rest. Going to sea . . .’

Her father’s voice:I went to sea to see the sea and once I’d seen it I came back again.

‘Then joining the police. But I don’t remember him ever once mentioning the island, apart from casually. I tried to get him to talk about it . . .’

Daddy, tell me about the island.

Nothing to tell, Becca.

Can we go and see it?

Nothing to see, Becca. Just a lot of grass and heather and some hills and a mountain. Nothing to interest a wee lassie like you.

‘. . . He just shut me down. Said it was all ancient history. Then he changed the subject.’

Her mum gave out a slight laugh. ‘Yes, that was your dad. He didn’t like to talk about the island, you know that, not even with me.’

‘But he must’ve said something about it. You really don’t know why?’

‘I tried, Becca, many times, but he shut me down too. In the nicest possible way, as only your dad knew how. But it was still case closed, as far as he was concerned.’

Rebecca had encountered that side of her father many times. He had a way of letting you know not to push too far without having to turn nasty. He’d laugh, or say something really stupid, then change the subject entirely.

‘Do we have relatives over there still?’

A pause, then the words came, as if they were being dragged out. Talking about the island – it felt as if she was betraying her dead husband’s confidence somehow. ‘I’ve no idea. Your dad’s mother, your grandmother, died when he was young, his father a few years after he left, before you were born.’