‘What’s the alternative?’

‘Us!’ It was the young woman. The climbers had been sitting slightly apart, obviously listening in but pretending not to. ‘We’re free for the rest of the day. Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. You can get one of your experts to talk us through it if you want.’ She had frizzy fair hair and she’d tipped back her head to appeal to him. She wore a sleeveless vest with a fleece thrown over it, and he found it hard to keep his eyes away from her breasts. ‘You wouldn’t even know that there was anything down there if it hadn’t been for us.’

And he agreed, because he couldn’t stand the thought of more hanging about. And because if there was a team brought in from outside, they’d have their own leader and he wouldn’t be in control any more. To this couple he was the expert. They’d do what he said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

The young woman grinned at him, excited, like a little girl.

When Taylor turned back to Perez, he smiled too, complicit. It was like the time in the winter, when it had been them against the system.

Later he thought the Shetland climbers were as careful and meticulous as any professionals would have been. He and Perez stayed at the top and watched them quarter the base of the cavern in lines, sifting through the shingle and the seaweed with their fingers. They found one new bone very quickly. It was only a fragment. Perez wondered if it could be animal, but Roger seemed to think it was human. Then nothing happened for a long time. Taylor called down to them:

‘Are you OK?’

‘Apart from being starving.’

Taylor was torn. He didn’t want to miss anything but boredom had set in a long time before. ‘I’ll go and see if I can rustle up some coffee and food for them,’ he said to Perez. ‘And for us.’

‘I’ll go.’

‘No. You’re the local. You stay here.’

The Herring House was closed to visitors, but he could hear movement inside and banged on the door. There was no reply but he persisted.

‘For Christ’s sake, man. Can you not read? The gallery’s closed.’ He’d been expecting Martin Williamson, but it was Aggie, his mother. Because he’d never seen her in the Herring House before it took Taylor a moment to place her.

‘I know,’ he said.

She blushed when she saw who it was, seemed to feel some explanation for her presence there was required.

‘I don’t open the post office on a Monday afternoon,’ she said. ‘I’m helping out with a bit of spring cleaning here while the place is closed.’

‘I’m surprised Miss Sinclair is thinking about the business at a time like this.’

‘Bella didn’t ask me,’ she said. ‘Martin did. She leaves the restaurant to him. He’s out today helping Kenny Thomson with the hill sheep. It seemed a good time to get in.’ She seemed to Taylor to be very flustered. Perhaps his banging on the door had scared her. He supposed everyone in Biddista would be scared by loud noises and unexpected visitors until they found the killer.

‘Would you be able to put me together a couple of flasks of coffee?’ he asked. ‘Some sandwiches. Of course I’d pay.’

‘I don’t know. This is Martin’s business.’

‘He wouldn’t begrudge us a couple of rounds of sandwiches.’

She flinched at the sharpness in his words.

‘I expect I can find you something,’ she said.

She didn’t invite him in, but he followed her into the restaurant and through into the kitchen. He thought she seemed at home there. ‘Do you help Martin out often?’

‘If he’s busy. Preparations for events.’

‘Did you help out before the opening of Miss Sinclair’s exhibition?’

‘Just arranging tables in the afternoon. Folding napkins, that sort of thing. Not on the night. I used to help Bella when she had parties at the Manse, but always behind the scenes.’

He thought she would be too timid to serve the public. ‘What were the parties like?’ he asked. ‘I guess they’d be grand affairs.’

‘You could never tell.’ She gave a little smile. ‘Sometimes I’d turn up expecting champagne and canapés and they’d all be eating beans on toast round the kitchen table. I’m not sure what her guests made of it.’

‘Do you remember any of the guests?’

‘No, not after all this time. The big parties stopped long ago.’ But she spoke so quickly that he wasn’t sure he believed her.

‘Did everyone from Biddista go too?’

‘Mostly it was the men who got the invites,’ she said. ‘Alec, of course, when he was well enough. He was Bella’s brother. And Kenny, though he wasn’t so keen. And Lawrence. Bella always preferred the company of men.’

‘Tell me what it was like,’ he said, ‘growing up in a place like this. I just can’t get my head round it. Everyone knowing your business.’

‘Oh, we all hang on to our little bit of privacy. It’s the only way we keep sane.’

She seemed embarrassed then to have spoken so freely and opened the door of the big fridge. ‘I could do a round of cheese and a round of ham. Maybe some pâté if you’d like it.’

‘Can you make it a couple of each? There are a few of us.’

‘I thought you’d finished up on the hill.’ She was slicing bread and stopped, the knife poised, watching for his answer.

‘Not quite,’ he said easily. Then added, just to see her reaction, ‘Something’s come up.’

‘Why?’ she asked quickly. ‘What have you found?’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t discuss the investigation with anyone.’ He tried to smile reassuringly. She was so anxious, he wanted to put her at her ease, even though he’d provoked the response. He could feel the tension in her like an infection which he was already catching. ‘Is there anything you think we should know?’

She bent her head over the sandwiches, so he couldn’t see her face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not. We just want it to be over.’

He wondered if he should push it, imagined again the whole valley in a conspiracy of silence. But she seemed so closed off from him that he didn’t think it would be any use.

She made a flask of tea and another of coffee and wrapped the sandwiches in foil and cut half a fruit cake from a tin. She wouldn’t take any money. ‘I’m sure Bella would want me to help you.’

She stood at the door of the gallery and watched him walk up the road, as if she wanted to be sure that he’d really gone.

By the time he got back to the hill a large piece of jawbone had been found. This fragment had two teeth attached. But the climbers said they’d only just started. Perez was on the phone to track down a generator and lights. They thought they’d be at it well into the night.

Chapter Thirty-seven

When Perez arrived at the house in Ravenswick it was half-past midnight, but Fran was still up. She’d said that she would be. There’d been a brief guarded phone call with Taylor listening in. He was on the hill and his mobile reception was dreadful, so her words kept breaking up.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she’d said. ‘It doesn’t matter how late it is. I’ve been to see Bella. It’s important.’

She would have told him over the phone what was troubling her, but Perez didn’t want that. He was focused now on the climbers sifting through debris and he didn’t want to prolong the conversation. Taylor was critical enough as it was. He was right: Perez should have organized a more thorough search of the cliff and the cave when Roddy’s body was found. This wasn’t the time for a personal conversation.

When he got to her place, she was sitting at the table reading. The house was quiet. No music. He watched her through the window, one side of her face caught in the glow of a table lamp. She must have heard his car as a background noise in her head, but she continued to read, frowning with concentration, her attention held by the words on the page. She only turned when he tapped at the door and walked in. Then she stood up and put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.