Lawrence and Bella had been just like each other even then. Headstrong and determined to get their own way. And bright. Fighting to be top of the class in Middleton School, laughing at jokes nobody else could understand, annoying the teachers with their cheek and their quick, slick answers. In competition, but attracted to each other just the same. Kenny had only wanted not to be noticed.

Now there were three of them left in Biddista. Bella had turned into a grand artist. She’d been away to college, studied in Barcelona and New York, but she’d been living in the Manse for more than twenty years. Aggie was back staying next door to the house where she’d grown up. And he was in exactly the same place, doing much the same things as he had as a child. It occurred to him that fifty years ago to the day he could have been in this field helping his father to single turnips. Only two of us escaped, he thought. Alec died while he was still young and handsome. And Lawrence ran away when Bella broke his heart.

He reached the end of the row and straightened his back, felt the muscles pull in his shoulders. If Edith was here she would rub them for me, he thought, pull the tension out of them. And he thought how much more skilled Edith was at touching him now than when they’d first got together. There was a lot to be said for getting older.

Edith’s family hadn’t come from Biddista. He hadn’t met her until he started at the big school. She was a few years younger than him. They’d gone in on the bus together, but he’d hardly noticed her until he was fifteen. She’d had freckles then and curly hair. Mousy brown with a touch of red in it. He’d been too nervous to ask her out and the first approach had come from her. She’d always known what she wanted. Later he brought her to Biddista, and she’d met the others – Lawrence and Bella, Alec and Aggie. She’d never quite fitted in. They’d been kind enough to her, even Bella, but Edith had always kept herself a little bit aloof.

As he straightened he saw that the sun had gone in, covered by a bank of mist which had slid in from the sea. Further inland it was still clear. Standing still after the work he felt the cold air dry the sweat on his forehead and his neck.

In the kitchen he put the kettle on and looked in the fridge for food. At one time Edith always made him lunch. When he was doing building work and it was too far from home she’d pack him up sandwiches, a thick piece of date slice or that chocolate biscuit cake they all called peat. If he was out on the croft, there’d be something hot on the table for him when he came in. Soup usually. Then she got the job in the care centre and even before she was made manager and started at college things had changed.

‘We’re both working now. You’ll have to look after yourself. It’s only fair,’ she’d told him.

Kenny could see the justice in that. It was the sort of thing Bella might say. Bella had never married because she wanted to keep her independence. ‘I like being a single woman. I celebrate being alone.’ Kenny had read that in one of the Sunday papers. An interview with Bella after an exhibition in Edinburgh. Edith had brought back the paper one of the days she was at college and shown him.

There was some cold lamb in the fridge left over from the roast they’d had on Sunday. He sliced it up and made a sandwich with it. By the time he’d finished doing that the kettle had boiled and he made tea. Now the fog was so thick that he couldn’t see anything out of the kitchen window. Not even the wall which marked the end of the garden or his truck standing outside the door. He was glad now he hadn’t taken the boat out. He didn’t have any of that fancy GPS equipment. He’d have been left to find his way back to the jetty using a compass and chart, and he was a bit rusty these days. He hoped Edith would take care driving back from the centre. It would be easy to leave the road in this weather, or to hit something coming in the other direction. Since seeing the man in black hanging in his hut, he’d had death at the back of his mind.

He sat in the easy chair with his plate on his knee and the mug of tea within reach on the Rayburn, listening to the news on Radio Shetland. There was nothing about the dead man. But Jimmy Perez wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet for very much longer. Then he switched the radio to long wave for the shipping forecast. That was habit. When he finished eating he felt himself doze. Half asleep, he found himself remembering the summer he’d met Jimmy in Fair Isle, working in the South Lighthouse. It seemed even longer ago than when he’d been a boy, singling neeps.

Kenny came to with a start and realized that someone had opened the door. He knew where he was at once. It had been one of those afternoon naps that are more like daydreaming than sleep. His first thought was that it must be Edith, home early for some reason, and he decided they might go to bed. He liked sex during the day more than anything. It seemed stolen time to him, illicit. But when he turned, his arms slightly open to hold her, he saw that it wasn’t Edith at all. It was Aggie Williamson. The mist was caught in her hair. Millions of tiny drops of water trapped in the thin, wispy tangle. Silver on grey.

‘Aggie,’ he said. ‘Is anything wrong?’ They had known each other for all that time, but still she had never come into his house uninvited. Even as a child, when she’d wanted to play with them, she’d hung around outside waiting for them to join her. She’d never knocked on the door. Bella and Alec would just have burst in, sat at the table, assumed that the milk and biscuits were for them too.

‘That policeman came by,’ Aggie said. ‘Perez. He told me there was a body in the hut.’

‘I know. I found the man.’ He preferred to think of him as a man rather than a body. Had she just come to gossip? It seemed unlike her. Usually in places like Biddista the shop was the place for gossip, but Aggie never encouraged it. She sat behind the counter. Her book would be face down, but you could tell she was waiting to get back to it. She still seemed preoccupied by the story, indifferent to the rumours being spread.

‘Do you have no idea who he is?’ she asked.

‘I couldn’t see his face,’ Kenny said. ‘It was covered with a mask. A clown’s mask.’

‘Jimmy Perez said that too.’ She paused, fixed him with her eyes. ‘It couldn’t have been Lawrence?’

She waited for Kenny to consider the possibility, watched for a reaction, and when none came she went on. ‘Martin described him to me. He saw him alive. Might have been the last person to see him alive. I just couldn’t help thinking . . .’

‘The dead man is English,’ Kenny said. ‘He spoke with an English accent. Perez told me.’

‘Lawrence has been away for a long time. He might speak differently now.’

‘You’re talking as if you want it to be Lawrence,’ he said.

‘No!’

‘I would have recognized him,’ Kenny said stubbornly. ‘Even without seeing his face.’

‘Would you? Really? How long is it since he’s been here? Years. Certainly he left before Alice was born and I can’t mind any visits.’

Kenny tried to fix a picture of his brother in his mind. To see his height, the proportions of his body. He thought of the man he’d seen the night before loping down the track. Could that have been Lawrence?

‘When’s the last time you heard from him?’ Aggie asked.

Kenny knew exactly, but he wasn’t going to tell Aggie. He wasn’t going to admit that Lawrence cared so little for him that there’d been nothing but a second-hand message left with Bella. ‘Lawrence says he’s going away again. He told me to tell you.’ Kenny hadn’t even been there to say goodbye when his brother left. Perhaps Lawrence had chosen the moment especially. He’d known that Kenny would persuade him to stay.

‘The man in the hut isn’t Lawrence,’ he said.