Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

Brody spoke up before I could answer. ‘You shouldn’t take any notice of rumours.’

‘So it isn’t true?’

Brody just stared back at him, stonily. Strachan gave a tight smile.

‘That’s what I thought. Well, I’ll say goodnight, then. I’m glad you’re all right, David.’

Brody waited until he was turning away. ‘I’m curious. You can’t see the village from your house. So how did you know about the fire?’

Strachan faced him. His expression was controlled, but I could see the anger under it.

‘There was a glow in the sky. And I’m a poor sleeper.’

The two of them held each other’s stare, neither of them giving an inch. Then, with a final nod in my direction, Strachan walked off into the dark.

Brody drove me back to the hotel. Since his house was down by the harbour, he’d rushed up to the community centre in his car when he saw the blaze from his bedroom window.

‘I don’t sleep much either,’ he told me, wryly.

Exhaustion gave me a sense of unreality as we drove through the blacked-out streets. I resisted the urge to lean back against the headrest and shut my eyes. Reaction was starting to set in, and the cuts and burns I hadn’t noticed before had begun to make themselves felt. The stink of smoke and burning clogged my nose and throat. I wound down the window, but the force of the wind made me wind it up again.

‘So how do you think it started?’ Brody asked, after a while.

‘I suppose Strachan could be right.’ My throat was still raw. ‘The power cut could have caused an electrical short or surge. The centre was a fire trap.’

‘Just a coincidence, then, that it burned down a few hours after we’d had an intruder? And after Fraser let slip this was a murder inquiry?’

I felt too shattered to think clearly. ‘I don’t know.’

He didn’t push the point. ‘Did we lose everything?’

Most of what mattered, I thought. As well as Janice Donaldson’s remains, my flight case and equipment had been in the clinic. My camera, my laptop containing all my notes and files, my tape recorder, all gone up in smoke.

But even as I was thinking that, I was already feeling in my pockets.

‘Not quite,’ I said, pulling out the USB bar. ‘I backed up my hard drive earlier. Force of habit. So at least we’ve still got a photographic record.’

‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ Brody sighed.

‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘I know who she was.’

I told him how the flaws in the skull’s teeth had matched those in the photograph of Janice Donaldson, the missing prostitute from Stornoway. Brody gave the steering wheel a little punch of satisfaction.

‘Well done,’ he grinned, enthusiasm briefly overcoming his natural restraint.

‘Well, we’ve only got the photos of the skull left, so it’ll still be better if Forensics can confirm it. With luck they might be able to salvage enough undamaged soft tissue from the cottage to try for a DNA match.’

‘If you say you know who she is, that’s good enough for me,’ Brody said. The implied confidence was flattering. I only hoped Wallace would be as readily convinced.

We were coming to the hotel now. A light on in the hallway told us that Ellen was still up. She’d been woken by the sudden quiet as the blackout had silenced the hotel’s constant heartbeat of central heating and refrigerators. Now the steady background vibration announced that the back-up generator was doing its job.

She looked horrified when she saw me. ‘Oh, my God, are you all right?’

‘I’ve had better nights,’ I admitted. I nodded at the light bulb, slightly dimmer than usual but still working. ‘That’s a welcome sight.’

‘Aye. Provided we’re careful, we’ve enough oil to keep the generator running for three or four days. With luck the power will be back on by then. God willing,’ she added dryly.

While Brody went to rouse Fraser, she ushered me into the kitchen and helped me off with my coat. It stank of smoke and was badly scorched, making her wrinkle her nose at the smell.

‘Shame it wasn’t fireproof as well as waterproof.’

I looked at where the Teflon-coated fabric had charred on the hood and shoulders. I could feel a corresponding sting on my own flesh, but nothing serious.

‘I’m not complaining,’ I said.

Brody returned a few minutes later with a sleep-bleared Fraser, whisky-breathed and still buttoning his shirt.

‘He’s not going to like it,’ he warned, when I asked him to radio Wallace.

He was right. But the superintendent’s anger was mollified to some extent when he learned I had a probable ID for the victim. I’d been going to ask when we could expect help to get here, but the connection was terrible. When it wasn’t cutting out altogether, his voice faded in and out of a wash of crackles.

‘We’ll…alk…orrow,’ I heard him say.

‘Modern technology,’ Brody sniffed, when I ended the call. ‘They replaced the old analogue radios with digital, but they still piggyback the signal off the mobile phone network. Any problems with that and you’re liable to lose the lot.’

Fraser made reluctant noises about going to examine the community centre, but there was no real point until the fire had died down. After taking a brief statement from me, he muttered excuses and went back to bed. Ellen had discreetly left the room when I’d called Wallace, but now she returned and began ushering Brody out as well.

‘Go and get some sleep. You look nearly as bad as David,’ she scolded.

She was right. The ex-policeman was haggard and drawn. He managed a weak smile.

‘I’m not sure which of us should be more insulted. But perhaps I will. It’s been a long day.’

‘We’ve another tomorrow,’ I told him.

‘Aye,’ he said, heavily. But I never doubted for a minute that he’d be there in the thick of it.

After he’d gone, Ellen filled a basin with hot water and brought out antiseptic and cotton wool. ‘Right, let’s get you sorted out, shall we?’

‘It’s all right, I can do it myself.’

‘I’m sure you can. But you’re not going to.’ She began to clean the cuts and grazes on my face. ‘Don’t worry. I used to be the unofficial nurse here before Bruce Cameron arrived.’

The wind moaned outside, but there was an easy silence between us as she worked. I wondered what a young woman like her, a single mother, was doing on a backwater like Runa. Eking out a living somewhere like this couldn’t be easy. Brody had told me she’d met Anna’s father on the mainland, so she’d obviously left at some point. Yet she’d come back out here. Was that because she actually liked the island’s isolation, or was it a retreat from something that had happened out there?

I thought again about the visitor who had been in the kitchen earlier, and who’d left her in tears. There couldn’t be many single men on an island this size, so it was hard not to draw conclusions about the reason for her secrecy.

Then again, what did I know? If I’d any sense I’d have been back home with Jenny now. I wished I could talk to her, and regretted not asking to use Fraser’s radio when I’d had the chance. I wondered what she was doing, if she was worrying about me. Probably. You should never have agreed to do this. What the hell was I doing on a bleak island miles from anywhere, nearly having died of exposure and then being burned to death, instead of getting on with my own life?

Except this was my life, I realized, in a moment of rare clarity. This was what I did. What I was. And if Jenny saw it as a problem, where did that leave us?

Ellen’s voice pulled me back to the here and now. ‘Is it true what people are saying? About the body?’

‘What are they saying?’