Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

When we reached the cliff top we rested. The stone monolith of Bodach Runa stood some distance away, the Old Man of Runa still keeping his lonely vigil for a lost child. The dip where we’d found Maggie’s car was out of sight, but the Mini itself had been moved. Gulls and gannets wheeled and cried in the bright winter sunlight. The wind still gusted, but less strongly, and the clouds that had seemed a permanent cover were gone, replaced with high white wisps of cumulus that skated serenely across the blue sky.

In some regards, at least, it was going to be a beautiful day.

‘This is one of my favourite views,’ Brody said, looking out at the sea stack that rose like a giant chimney from the waves. The wind ruffled his grey hair, mirroring the movement of the waves two hundred feet below. He reached down to stroke his dog’s head. ‘Been a while since Bess has had a chance to stretch her legs up here.’

I rubbed my shoulder through my coat. It was still painful, but I’d almost grown used to it. I’d be able to get it X-rayed and properly looked at once I was back in London.

‘What do you think will happen now? To Runa?’ I asked.

At the moment the island was still in a state of shock. In the space of a few days it had lost four members of its community, including its main benefactor; a tragedy made all the harder to accept because of the shocking manner of their dying. The gale, too, had added to the tally, swamping a fishing boat in the harbour and causing Strachan’s yacht to slip its chain. Wreckage from the beautiful boat would be found days later, but that was the least of the island’s losses. It was the others from which it would struggle to recover.

Brody turned down his mouth. ‘God knows. Might keep going for a while. But the fish farm, the new jobs, the investment, all that’s gone. Can’t see it surviving without them.’

‘You think it’ll become another St Kilda?’

‘Not for a few years, perhaps. But eventually.’ His mouth quirked in a smile. ‘Let’s hope they don’t drown their dogs when they go.’

‘Will you stay?’

Brody shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Not as though I’ve any reason to go anywhere else.’

The border collie had crouched at his feet, head down on its paws as it stared up at him, intently. Smiling, he took an old tennis ball from his pocket and tossed it for the dog. It trotted after it, legs too stiff to run, then brought it back, tail wagging.

‘I just wish we’d been able to talk to Grace, find out why she did what she did,’ I said, as Brody threw the ball again.

‘Jealousy, like Strachan said. And hate, I expect. You’d be surprised how powerful that can be.’

‘That still doesn’t explain everything. Like why she clubbed Janice Donaldson and Duncan, but used a knife on Maggie and Cameron. And the others that Strachan told us about.’

‘Means and opportunity, I expect. I don’t think she really planned anything, just acted when she got the urge. Duncan’s Maglite was probably lying to hand, and I dare say something similar happened with Donaldson. But we’ll never know now.’

The collie had dropped the ball at his feet again. Brody picked it up and threw it, then gave me a rueful smile.

‘There aren’t always answers to everything, no matter how hard we look. Sometimes you have to learn to just let things go.’

‘I suppose so.’

He took out his cigarettes and lit one, drawing on it with satisfaction. I watched as he put the pack away.

‘I didn’t know you were left-handed,’ I said.

‘Sorry?’

‘You threw the ball with your left hand just now.’

‘Did I? I didn’t notice.’

My heart had begun to thump. ‘A few days ago in your kitchen you used your right hand. It was when I told you and Fraser that whoever killed Duncan was left-handed.’

‘So? I’m not with you.’

‘So I just wondered why you used your right hand then, but your left now.’

He turned to look at me, quizzical and a little exasperated. ‘Where are you going with this, David?’

My mouth had dried. ‘Grace was right-handed.’

Brody considered that. ‘How do you know?’

‘When she had hold of Anna, the knife was in her right hand. I’d forgotten about it till I saw you just now. I knew something still jarred, but I didn’t know what. And when I saw Grace preparing food earlier she used the same hand then. Her right, not her left.’

‘Perhaps your memory’s playing tricks.’

I wished it was. For a moment or two I even allowed myself to hope. But I knew better.

‘No,’ I said, with something like regret. ‘But even if it was, we can check to see which hand the fingerprints on her paintbrushes and knife handles are from.’ Even if the prints weren’t clear, their angle would reveal that much.

‘She could have been ambidextrous.’

‘Then we’ll find equal numbers of both.’

He took a long draw of his cigarette. ‘You saw what Grace was like. You can’t seriously think Strachan was lying?’

‘No. I don’t doubt she murdered Maggie, and God knows how many others before they came here. But Strachan just assumed she’d killed Janice Donaldson and Duncan as well. He might have been wrong.’

I was still willing Brody to laugh it off, to point out a fatal flaw in my reasoning. He just sighed.

‘You’ve been here too long, David. You’re looking for things that aren’t there.’

I had to moisten my mouth before I could get the next words out.

‘How did you know Duncan was killed with his own Maglite?’

Brody frowned. ‘Wasn’t he? I thought that’s what you said.’

‘No, I never mentioned it. I’d wondered, but only to myself. I didn’t say anything about the Maglite until SOC got here.’

‘Well, I must have heard it from one of them.’

‘When?’

He gestured with the cigarette, vaguely irritated. ‘I don’t know. Yesterday, perhaps.’

‘They only removed the torch during the night. And no one’s going to know for sure that’s what killed him until lab tests have been carried out. They wouldn’t have said anything.’

Brody stared out across the sea at the black pinnacle of Stac Ross, squinting in the bright sunlight. Two hundred feet below us I could hear the waves crashing on the rocks.

‘Let it go, David,’ he said, softly.

But I couldn’t. My heart was banging so hard now I could hear it.

‘Grace didn’t kill Duncan, did she? Or Janice Donaldson.’

The only answer was the crying of gulls, and the distant crashing of the waves below the cliffs. Say something. Deny it. But Brody might have been carved from the same stone as Bodach Runa, silent and implacable.

I found my voice. ‘Why? Why did you do it?’

He dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it out with his foot, then picked up the stub and put it in his pocket.

‘Because of Rebecca.’

It took a moment for the name to register. Rebecca, the estranged daughter who had gone missing. Who Brody had spent years trying to find. His words came back to me now, clear and awful in their implication: she’s dead. And suddenly everything sprang into focus.

‘You thought Strachan had murdered your daughter,’ I said. ‘You killed Janice Donaldson to try and frame him.’

The pain in his eyes was confirmation enough. He took out another cigarette and lit it before he answered.

‘It was an accident. I’d been trying to put together evidence against Strachan for years. That’s the only reason I moved out to this godforsaken island, so I’d be close to him.’

A gull soared overhead, wings tilting as it caught the air currents. Standing there in the cold winter sun, I felt a rush of unreality, like plunging too fast in a lift.

‘You knew there’d been other deaths?’