Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

Her face coloured. She said nothing as we forged against the wind to where a rust-smeared old Mini was parked, looking like a poor relation next to Strachan’s Saab and a black Porsche Cayenne I took to be Grace’s.

Maggie was struggling out of her oversized red coat as I climbed into the car. ‘The heater’s stuck on full, so you’ll cook if you keep your coat on,’ she said, unceremoniously dumping hers on the back seat. The down-filled red fabric billowed obscenely, like a bag full of blood. I kept mine on. It had taken long enough for me to get it over my sling as it was.

Maggie scowled as she tried to start the car, tugging on the old-fashioned choke. ‘Come on, you bloody thing,’ she grumbled as the engine coughed and whined. ‘It’s my gran’s, but she never uses it any more. Heap of junk, but handy when I come back.’

The car chugged into life. She scraped into gear and set off down the drive towards the road. I stared through the window at where the windswept moors were already beginning to disappear in the gathering gloom.

‘Well, aren’t you going to say it?’ she said, suddenly.

‘Say what?’ I’d been so preoccupied thinking about what course the investigation would now take that I hadn’t really noticed the silence. But Maggie had obviously misread it.

‘That I lied on the ferry. When I told you I was a novelist.’

It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about. The pause seemed to make Maggie even more defensive.

‘I’m a reporter, I was just doing my job. I don’t have to apologise for it.’

‘I didn’t ask you to.’

She gave me an uncertain look. ‘No hard feelings, then?’

I sighed. Under the brash act there was an appealing vulnerability. ‘No hard feelings.’

She seemed relieved. The look of innocence I was coming to suspect spread over her features.

‘So, off the record, what do you think happened out at the cottage?’

I laughed despite myself. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

She grinned sheepishly. ‘I was only asking. It was worth a try.’

The last of the reserve between us disappeared. I didn’t have the energy to be angry. And by this time tomorrow she’d find herself with a far bigger story than she’d imagined. I felt a stab of guilt at the secret knowledge of the chaos I’d called down on this remote island. Runa didn’t know it yet, but its peaceful existence was about to be shattered.

But even I had no idea just how shattering it would be.

AFTER MAGGIE HAD dropped me back at the hotel, I’d gone looking for Ellen to apologise for running her car off the road. She’d waved away my apologies.

‘Don’t worry about that. The main thing is you’re all right. More or less,’ she’d added with a smile as she looked at my sling. ‘Not everyone who gets lost out on these islands is so lucky.’

I didn’t feel lucky as I flopped down on my bed. I felt tired and bruised, and my shoulder throbbed like toothache. I took a couple of the ibuprofen that Cameron had given me, and then tried once more to call Jenny on the hotel phone. There was still no answer from either her mobile or her flat.

I left messages on both, giving her the hotel number and asking her to call me. As I hung up I wondered where she could be. She should have been back from work now, and even if she was out she would have had her mobile with her.

Feeling flat and out of sorts, I went online to check my emails. I’d just finished replying to the last one when there was a knock on the bedroom door.

It was Fraser. He was still wearing his heavy coat, soaking wet and radiating cold from outside. He eyed my sling unsympathetically.

‘Made it back all right this time, eh?’

There didn’t seem much I could say to that. ‘Have you spoken to Wallace?’ I asked.

He gave a snort. ‘The likes of me don’t get to speak to superintendents. But he’s passed word down the line, let’s put it that way.’ He regarded me sourly. ‘So you’re saying it’s murder.’

I glanced along the hallway, but there was no one to hear. ‘That’s how it looks.’

He shook his head in disgust. ‘The shit’s really going to hit the fan now.’

‘Are the remains OK?’ I asked. I’d been worried about them lying out in the ruined cottage with only Duncan to watch over them.

‘Oh, aye, they’re peachy,’ Fraser grumbled. ‘I’ve had the station radioing every five minutes, yelling for me to make sure the site-sorry, “crime scene” now-is properly secured. You’d think we were guarding the crown jewels.’

I wasn’t in the best of moods to start with, and his carping was beginning to wear thin. ‘There’ve been enough mistakes made already.’

‘Not by me,’ he retorted. ‘I just follow orders. Speaking of which, Wallace wants this kept quiet until the support team gets here tomorrow. So that means Mr ex-DI Brody’ll have to be kept in the dark along with everyone else.’

There was a mean satisfaction in his voice. I didn’t think there would have been any harm in letting Brody know, but that wasn’t my decision. And I supposed everyone would find out soon enough.

Fraser was scowling. ‘Going to be a bloody nightmare trying to run a murder inquiry out here. Still, can’t see it being hard catching whoever did it.’

‘You think so?’

He missed the irony in my voice and rolled his shoulders authoritatively, warming to his theme.

‘Place this size, how hard can it be? Someone’s got to know something. And whoever killed her can’t be the sharpest tool in the box. Surrounded by bloody sea and moorland, and he burns the body and leaves it where it can be found?’ He gave a wheezing laugh. ‘Aye, that’s some genius, all right!’

I didn’t feel so complacent. This had come close to being dismissed as an accidental death. Whether her killer was cunning or just lucky, we couldn’t afford to take any more chances.

Duty done, Fraser bad-temperedly stomped off to take Duncan’s supper out to the camper van. There was no reason for me to go with him, so I went back to my laptop, hoping to distract myself with work.

But my heart wasn’t in it. The bedside cabinet made a poor desk, and the small room had started to crowd in on me like a monk’s cell. As I stared blankly at the screen, I caught a faint scent of Grace Strachan’s perfume on my clothes, and what little concentration I’d been able to muster vanished.

Closing my laptop with a snap, I took it downstairs. There was no point sitting in my room waiting for Jenny to call. If she did, Ellen would let me know.

It was still early and the bar was almost empty. The two old domino players sat at what was obviously their customary table. They gave cautious nods as I went in.

‘Feasgar Math,’ one of them said, politely.

I said good evening in return, and they went back to their game as though I didn’t exist. The only other person there was Guthrie, the big man who Brody had told me was the island’s odd-job man, and Kinross’s occasional helper on the ferry. He was slumped at the bar, staring morosely into his half-empty beer glass. The flush on his face told me he’d probably been there for some time already.

He gave me a baleful glance as I chalked up a whisky for myself on the slate, then went back to staring into his glass. I took my drink over to the table by the fire that I’d shared with first Brody and then Strachan two nights before.

Opening my laptop, I positioned it so no one else could see the screen, and called up the missing persons files I’d received from Wallace. I’d not had a chance to look at them yet, and though I doubted I’d find anything useful at this stage I’d nothing better to do right then.