Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

‘It’s quite simple, Ma’am.’ And the duty officer showed her how to scroll back and forth through the CCTV video using the time-code as her guide. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

For all her training, Braque had never been comfortable with computers. Her girls were more adept with a keyboard and a touch screen. It took her a while to master the scrolling process, and then she found herself absorbed by the images. The familiar frontage of the library, and Bayhead stretching away beyond it. People passing below, oblivious of the eye in the sky watching them from the corner. Stopping, chatting. In and out of shops. In and out of the library. The images were poor if the weather was bad, amazingly sharp in sunshine.

She went first to the earlier date, when the emails had been sent to Niamh and Georgy Vetrov. Then scrolled as quickly through the hours as she could until the time, mid-afternoon, when they had been fired off into the ether from computer terminal three in the library. User unknown. A guest. How far back, she wondered, should she go before the time of their sending? But it was possible the sender could have spent some time at the computer first. She could waste an hour or more if she wound back too far watching for someone going in. So she set the time code to the exact hour and minute, and started the video running at normal speed, banking on the sender leaving immediately after they had finished.

It was a bright, blustery day. She saw coats flapping in the wind. People hanging on to their hats. But bright sunlight slanted down across the street, and although shadows were deep, detail was sharp. Traffic in and out of the library was light. A clutch of giggling schoolgirls in uniform pushing inside. Two elderly ladies emerging with books under their arms, then standing talking for what seemed like an eternity. A young man stopping to exchange a few words with them before hurrying on. And then a familiar figure pushing between them to exit the library and turn right towards the harbour.

Braque nearly jumped out of her seat. She fumbled with clumsy fingers to stop the video. Then rewound it to the point of exit, and managed finally to slow it right down. She had only caught the merest glimpse of the face, but now she held it in a still shot, and had no doubt who it was.

She spooled backwards, then, at speed, knowing who she was looking for, watching carefully as Charlie Chaplin figures retraced their footsteps at a ridiculous tempo up and down the street. Then, suddenly, there it was again, and Braque slowed right down to get a much clearer shot of that familiar face as it came down the street. Past Argos and the Fast Food Chinese Takeaway, to turn into the library and disappear from view.

She sat back breathing hard, sweating now and uncomfortable in her wet clothes. This was not, she knew, proof of anything. That would only come if she could tie the same person to the same time and place for the sending of the second email. The one received by Ruairidh on the RER on the day of his murder. See you in hell.

She entered date and time into the computer, advancing the video nearly three weeks to the afternoon of the previous Thursday, and then scrolling through to the exact moment that the email had left computer terminal twelve inside the library. Hardly daring to breathe, she set the video running and watched as again people came and went up and down the street. In and out of the library and Argos next door, and the Baltic Bookshop opposite. The weather was less good, but it was at least dry.

And then there it was. The face she had seen before. She hit the pause key, then manipulating the arrow keys, managed to zoom in on it, frozen in time as the killer exited the library and turned towards the CCTV camera. Not a single doubt remained.

Braque shook her head in disbelief and sat back again in her chair. What to do? She took out her phone and called Gunn. But it went straight to voicemail and she hung up. He had warned her that he would likely be out of signal for some time. She thought quickly, her mind and her pulse racing, then called his number again. When the beep came to leave her message she said, ‘Detective Gunn, I think I know who our killer is. I’m leaving first thing tomorrow, so I don’t have much time. I’m going to drive up to the Macfarlane house to speak to Niamh tonight. Look at the video when you get back and tell me if I’m right. I’ve left a note of the time-code.’

She closed her eyes and tried to remember where she had parked her hire car. She had barely driven it since her arrival. And then she remembered leaving it next to Gunn’s in the harbour car park the night she arrived. She would, she realized, have to drive it very gingerly on the road out to Taigh ’an Fiosaich, or she would rip the sump from its underside.

Amhuinnsuidhe Castle was to be found precisely in the middle of nowhere. Miles along a single-track road whose dips and curves and swerves and hollows made speed impossible. Past occasional croft houses clinging to hillsides in splendid isolation. An incongruously sited all-weather tennis court set just below the road, within sight of nothing at all. A tiny primary school perched on a bend of the road offering pupils an unrestricted view of island wilderness.

The castle itself came out of the blue. Through stone gates, and hidden beyond a bank of unlikely rhododendrons, it appeared around a bend in the road as if out of nowhere. Scottish baronial in style, with turrets and gables and steeply canted slate roofs, it looked out beyond a crenellated wall with black-painted cannons to the comparative shelter of a sea loch and an almost completely enclosed bay.

Through an archway beyond the castle, the road continued on for several miles to the tiny settlement of Hushinish, where it ended in drifts of silver sand and a handful of crofts. And, of course, the Atlantic ocean.

Lee Blunt and his party had taken it for two nights. Niamh, against her better judgement, drove down to Harris after spending a difficult afternoon at the Macfarlane croft. Family and neighbours had gathered there to eat the cold meats and sandwiches and cakes that Mrs Macfarlane had prepared. The men sipped at single malts with an unusual lack of relish, making them last until they could take their leave without presenting the appearance of undue haste. No one wanted to linger.

Niamh’s own parents, and Uilleam, had disappeared immediately after the funeral. But Seonag was there with her family. She and Niamh did not speak, and barely exchanged glances. Donald sat her down in the porch, with condensation forming on all the windows, and tried to dissuade her from going to Harris for Lee Blunt’s party. She should go home, he said, and lock herself in. Or better yet, stay overnight here. There was a spare bed, still, in the old croft down the hill that they used now as offices.

His odd insistence was making her increasingly uneasy, and she used the excuse of helping Mrs Macfarlane with the dishes as a means of escaping him.

Only after most of the visitors had gone, did she herself finally leave, the pale concern on Donald’s face staying with her as she turned south on to the bridge at the foot of the hill, setting a course for Harris and Amhuinnsuidhe.

The drive, turning right at Tarsaval, past the old whaling station, was the stuff of nightmares. The storm had bled almost all light from the sky. Wind buffeted the high side of her Jeep, driving rain on to a windscreen that her wipers, even at double speed, had trouble clearing. She guessed, more than drove, the length of that road, and several times thought of turning back. Until suddenly, rounding the bend beyond the gateposts, the lights of the castle shone out in the darkness.

Niamh was not sure whether to feel relieved or depressed. A party was the last thing she felt like, and yet Lee had made it seem as if refusal would give offence. He and everyone else had, after all, flown up to the island at great expense to be there for Ruairidh’s funeral. And where else was she going to go? Back to Taigh ’an Fiosaich, and the pain of all the memories that lay waiting for her there? Power to the house was always erratic, but in a storm like this she could expect to spend most of the night in darkness. And with the memory of the attempt to kill her the previous evening still in the forefront of her mind, a night spent in the dark, miles from the nearest neighbour, seemed less than appealing.