‘I don’t know. Twenty minutes, maybe?’

  ‘Did she see you?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘How close was she to you?’

  Ivy shrugged. ‘Quite close. Not far at all. She might have seen me if she’d been looking, but I was well-hidden.’

  ‘How did she look to you?’

  Ivy thought about it. ‘Excited,’ she said decisively. ‘Smiling to herself, sort of dancing along, all pleased. But not in a nice way. Like she was on her way to cause some trouble.’

  ‘Was she carrying anything?’ She asked it casually, as if it was an afterthought.

  Ivy frowned, her eyes narrowed and off to one side. ‘She had a bag with her,’ she said. ‘A tote bag. Except it was weird. She wasn’t carrying it by the handles. She was sort of cradling it, like this.’ Ivy demonstrated. ‘She kept looking at it too.’

  ‘Looking at it? What do you mean?’

  ‘Just like I say. She was walking along, all happy with herself and she kept looking down at the bag and then she seemed even more pleased.’

  ‘How big was the bag?’

  ‘Hard to say… It was wrapped round what was in it. A kind of box, I think.’

  ‘Bigger than a shoebox?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Could you see what colour the bag was?’

  ‘It was cream.’

  Anna nodded, satisfied they weren’t going to learn much more.

  ‘And where did Ellen go?’

  ‘Through the gate into the lane,’ Ivy said. ‘I watched her. Then I saw the tractor sitting there – you know, where people park? Ellen went through the gate and a few seconds later I heard the tractor turn on, then it started to move.’ She winced and gave a small shudder. ‘I thought to myself, “It’s going to run her over.”’ She put a hand to her mouth. ‘Then I heard her cry out – Ellen, I mean – and the engine revved all the more. I stood up. I saw it driving madly in the lane. Then I panicked. I know I shouldn’t have. I know I should have tried to help, or try to see who was driving the tractor, but like I say, I panicked. I ran away. I ran along the little beach all the way to the big beach, and then up the lanes back home. I was so scared. I was so, so scared.’ She looked from Anna to Jo. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

  Anna walked Ivy back to the pub but waited outside, asking Ivy to send her mum out for a chat.

  Morag appeared a minute later, her face haggard with worry.

  ‘Ivy saw Ellen down at the beach,’ Anna told her. ‘She saw the tractor drive over Ellen but not who was driving.’

  Morag stared in horror. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘She’s very frightened, and sorry she didn’t come forward sooner. We’ll take a proper statement from her later, but for now, look after her, okay?’

  ‘I will. Thank you. And I’m sorry.’

  Anna nodded. ‘Any sign of Mr Jones?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Morag said. ‘It’s half-nine. I might go up and knock. Do you want to wait, or…?’

  Anna thought about it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Would you mind knocking and telling him I want to talk to him?’

  ‘Will do,’ Morag said.

  Standing outside, she phoned Harriet Maxwell and when Harriet answered, asked to speak to Leo.

  ‘I’ll wake him up,’ Harriet said.

  A minute later, a bleary-sounding Leo came on the line.

  ‘Leo, I have a question for you,’ she said. ‘Think before answering. When you met Ellen McIver in Back Lane on Thursday afternoon, when the two of you rowed, what was she carrying?’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘Carrying? She wasn’t carrying anything. Why?’

  ‘Did she have a bag with her?’

  More silence, then, ‘No. No bag. She had a coat on. That black book of hers was sticking out of one of the pockets. She took it everywhere. That’s all.’

  ‘Thank you, Leo,’ Anna said.

  She hung up, feeling a rush of adrenaline. Whatever was in the cream bag Ivy saw her cradling, Ellen had found it in the outhouse at Slipway Cottage.

  But what?

  21

  Marcus Jones wasn’t in his room. Morag had knocked and called through the door, then opened up.

  ‘His bed’s been slept in,’ she said. ‘His stuff’s still there, as far as I can tell. He must have gone out early – so early no one noticed him go. Except his car’s still parked round the back of the pub.’ She paused in thought. ‘Maybe he’s walking off his hangover. He reappeared in the bar after you left last night then propped it up till we closed after eleven. He even bought a bottle of whisky to take to his room. I checked the booking to see if he left us a phone number, but he doesn’t appear to have done. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Anna said. ‘Jo and I are going into Tarbert. Phone me when he reappears, would you?’

  ‘Will do.’

  Next stop, the library in Tarbert, a twenty-minute drive away.

  The fishing village, round its picturesque harbour, was abuzz with Saturday-morning activity. They bumped into Carol Baillie hurrying along the main street, bearing a plastic box. She greeted them cheerfully.

  ‘About to make my rounds,’ she said. ‘Prescriptions for half of Knapdale, by the look of it. I’ll be a few hours delivering this lot. I’m running late too. Duncan wasn’t very good this morning, but he was fine by the time I left him.’

  ‘Will he be all right on his own?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I’ll pop back around one,’ she said. ‘Check he’s fine and give him some soup. I have my route all mapped out. Good old Google!’

  The library was tiny, the size of a small shop, facing the harbour. Anna checked the opening times and saw it opened just two afternoons a week and one morning – today, Saturday.

  There was one old lady in, browsing the crime fiction shelves. A young woman came out from a back room and seemed to understand immediately who they were.

  ‘Sarah-Louise?’ Anna asked.

  ‘That’s me,’ she said, a little breathlessly.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

  ‘We’ll probably be okay in just a minute or two,’ Sarah-Louise said quietly, eyes on the customer.

  And indeed, the old lady made her choice and brought two hardback novels to be scanned. Sarah-Louise ushered her pleasantly out and promptly locked the door.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ she invited, and pulled chairs away from two desks bearing computers and wheeled a third from behind her own desk. She took a large brown envelope out of her bag and rested it in her lap. ‘This is all awful, isn’t it? I’m so shocked. Everyone is. I wanted to help in any way I could.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Anna said. ‘I understand Ellen was in here quite a bit lately.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sarah-Louise said. ‘She was in once every few weeks usually, but lately she was in every week and borrowing more books – and different to her usual taste.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve printed off a list of everything she borrowed. It feels like a data breach, but I don’t suppose it is now she’s dead.’ She went into the envelope and drew out two A4 sheets stapled together and handed them to Anna.

  Anna glanced down the first page, angling it so Jo could see. Lots of true crime books, including Gordon Burn’s Happy Like Murderers about the Wests. In recent weeks she’d also borrowed two books about Dr Harold Shipman, the murderous GP and one about a nurse who’d murdered a number of babies in her care in the early nineties – Angel of Death: Killer Nurse Beverly Allitt, it was called. Angel of death… That was the phrase Morag said Ellen had used in the tearoom. There was another book about a nurse on the list: Unmasking Lucy Letby by Jonathan Coffey and Judith Moritz, and Wicked Beyond Belief by Michael Bilton, about Peter Sutcliffe, also known as the Yorkshire Ripper.

  ‘The Gordon Burn book is still at her cottage,’ Anna told Sarah-Louise. ‘Had she returned the others?’

  Sarah-Louise frowned. ‘Let me check,’ she said, and headed behind her desk. She bent over her keyboard and tapped a couple of times. ‘There are four books still out in her name,’ she said. ‘The Gordon Burn, the one about Beverly Allitt and two about Dr Shipman.’

  ‘Was true crime a new interest for her?’

  ‘I’d say so,’ the librarian said, eyes on the screen. ‘We don’t have our own copies of all those titles. Some of them I had to get sent over from Helensburgh and Dunoon. The last two weeks she was in here both Thursday and Friday, and not just to borrow or return books. First, she wanted old phone books. For private numbers, not the Yellow Pages. She spent a good hour or two going through the local book, writing down name after name. Then she wanted a phone book for Glasgow. Well, we don’t have any of those. “Can we use the computer, then?” she asked. “Of course,” I said. “You’ll need to show me how,” she replied. So I did. I showed her how to look at web pages and how to use the mouse. She asked for help to make an email address. Then she spent hours – the rest of that afternoon and all the next afternoon – going from webpage to webpage, writing stuff down.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I know what websites she was looking at. As soon as I heard she’d been killed, I thought I’d better print off a list, which is here.’

  She drew out a further single sheet of A4 from the envelope. It was a list of URLs, websites with information about individual pages visited. Anna looked at the website names. Several appeared to be for doctors’ surgeries: Dr Fenwick and Partners, The Laurels Surgery, West Park Medical Centre. There were also websites listed for care homes, one in Giffnock, another in East Kilbride. The individual pages visited appeared to be for lists of GP partners or for care home managers.

  ‘And while she was online she was constantly making and remaking notes,’ Sarah-Louise said, ‘tearing off sheets and throwing the messy versions away. She specifically asked me if the paper recycling bin was secure. I said, yes, it was. It locks. She asked me what happened to the contents. It gets picked up, I said. A company picks it up and takes it to be shredded, then they bring it back. And who has the key? she wanted to know. Me and the company, I said. She seemed dubious, but I showed her the bin and she ripped the notes up before posting them through the slot. When I heard what had happened, I went into the bin and fished them out.’

  She went into the envelope and this time brought out a plastic wallet which looked to contain several strips of cream paper, the same colour as Ellen’s telephone notepad.

  ‘I knew she wrote on cream paper,’ Sarah-Louise said, ‘so I knew which bits to fish out. As I said before, I hope it isn’t a breach of her privacy to share these with you. It doesn’t feel right, somehow.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Anna said. ‘This is an official police investigation, and this is very helpful.’

  She opened the plastic wallet and took out a handful of narrow torn strips. There was black handwriting on them, the spidery kind Ellen had used in her birding notebook. It would take some time and patience to put the strips back together, but Anna already saw there were phone numbers written, recognising area codes for Glasgow and East Kilbride. Among the numbers there appeared, again and again, the same three letters: N.O.K., N.O.K., N.O.K.

  ‘Thank you for this,’ Anna said, fingers tingling. ‘We really appreciate it.’

  Jo headed off to the pharmacy beside the Harbour Surgery, where Dr MacCorkindale had his practice. Anna waited in the car, still peering at those strips of paper.

  She checked her phone and saw someone had tried her three times while it was on silent. There was a voicemail. She dialled and listened.

  ‘Oh, DI Vaughan,’ said a panicked voice, ‘please call as soon as you get this. It’s Morag, by the way. Morag Robertson, at the pub.’

  Anna dialled.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ Morag said.

  ‘What is it, Morag? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s terrible news. Awful. It’s Mr Jones. Bill found him in the car park, behind the bins. Dear God, he’s dead!’

  22

  Jo was already on her way back from the chemist’s.

  ‘Marcus Jones is dead,’ Anna told her when she got into the car.

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘Stabbed, Morag says. The knife’s lying beside the body.’ She reversed the car out of the harbourside parking place and pointed it back towards the main road. ‘He’s round the back of the pub. I’ve called Dr MacCorkindale – he’s closest, and he’s going down there now. Bill Robertson already called 999 so an ambulance is on its way from Lochgilphead. Did you get the records?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jo said. She held up two printed sheets of paper. ‘Carol Baillie’s itinerary for Thursday afternoon. She was busy, according to this. If we decide to check her alibi, all the patients’ phone numbers are listed. It’d just be a case of ringing round to see what time she delivered to them.’

  They arrived back in Baldrishaig to find Dr MacCorkindale deep in conversation with Bill Robertson outside the inn. Bill spotted Anna’s car and the two broke apart.

  ‘Well?’ Anna said to the doctor, and he understood at once what she was asking.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ MacCorkindale said. ‘Looks like it happened several hours ago, if you ask me.’

  ‘Show us, will you?’ she said. ‘You come too, please, Bill.’

  The doctor led the way down the side of the pub and round the back, where there was a small shed and a pair of large metal bins.

  ‘He’s in there,’ he said, and pointed to a dark space behind one of the bins.

  Anna stepped forward, Jo at her side. Bill and the doctor lingered behind.

  Marcus Jones was fully dressed and lay on his back, limbs sprawled and his head twisted. His eyes were open and he looked surprised. Blood had oozed from a corner of his mouth and dried there. The front of his shirt was clogged with blood. Beside his body lay a bloody kitchen knife: huge and lethal-looking.

  ‘When did you find him, Bill?’ Anna asked over her shoulder.

  ‘Erm… forty minutes ago,’ Bill said. ‘What a shock. Second dead body in two days.’

  ‘Do you recognise the knife?’

  ‘It’s one of ours from the kitchen. I double-checked – it’s missing from the block. Do you think it’s connected?’ he asked, sounding frightened. ‘To what happened to Ellen, I mean?’

  ‘I do,’ Anna said, realising it would be pointless to equivocate. ‘Now, let’s move away from here,’ she said to the two men. ‘Jo and I will seal the area. I’ll call my forensics colleagues in Glasgow.’ She added under her breath, ‘Who will no doubt be thrilled to be invited back for a return visit.’

  The doctor returned home and between them, Anna and Jo sealed off the scene. Jo called Sam and Danny to pause their door-to-door inquiries and return to Baldrishaig to guard it.

  Once they were in place, Anna and Jo returned to their room in the village hall.

  ‘We’ve just had the post-mortem report on Ellen,’ Jo said, eyes on her phone. ‘Plus an email from Dr White with her team’s preliminary findings on the forensics.’

  ‘Read it through and give me the potted version,’ Anna said.

  Jo took a couple of minutes to scan over the reports, then said, ‘Ellen died from multiple injuries caused by repeated impact by wheels of a heavy vehicle. She was in good health, otherwise, vital organs healthy. There are fragments of glass embedded in one of her hands and wrists.

  ‘The forensics report is interesting. The glass under her body was possibly from medical vials. There are scraps of labels on two of the shards. It says, “Testing indicates the vials could have contained epinephrine, adrenaline in other words.” It says there was glass embedded in the victim’s jacket and trousers. That fits with the PM report too.’

  ‘So that’s what she was carrying,’ Anna murmured. ‘That’s what was in the bag. Adrenaline in vials. And that’s what was kept in the outhouse at Slipway Cottage.’

  Jo was still reading. ‘Dr White says there are no indentations to read on the phone pad. She’s sorry.’ She scrolled. ‘Oh, and here’s an email attaching Ellen’s phone records.’

  ‘Forward everything on to me, will you?’

  ‘Will do.’

  She was thoughtful for a minute, then said, ‘Jo, I need you to deal with this latest death – organise forensics, coordinate the crime scene. I want to focus entirely on Ellen’s death for now. I’ll look at the phone records and the list of websites Ellen visited at the library. I feel as if we’re on the verge of something.’

  ‘I agree, boss,’ Jo said, unsmiling. ‘I feel it too.’

  The phone records showed Ellen had called three GP surgeries in the past week, including two in Glasgow’s Southside and one in East Kilbride. There were phone numbers for two care homes as well, and for a number of residential addresses in Glasgow and East Kilbride. Anna compared the names of the surgeries with the list of websites Ellen had visited from the library. They matched. She’d also visited the websites of the two care homes. Her arms were gooseflesh, tingling as if there was static in the very air. And she nearly gasped aloud when she saw the name of one of the surgeries in a news article, headed ‘police conclude surgery inquiry: no evidence of wrongdoing’. She clicked the link and read a brief summary of a police investigation into a possible rash of deaths of elderly patients, though no evidence of foul play was found.

  She checked the strips of torn-up notes, and noticed writing this time, not just phone numbers. There were dates too: June 6th, Ellen had written. March 4th. Dec 12th. Those three letters – N.O.K. – appeared repeatedly, but never beside the numbers of the surgeries or care homes.

  Her skin crept as she realised what they might stand for: next of kin.

  She looked at the time. It was just possible the surgeries had Saturday opening hours. The care homes would definitely be staffed.

  She called the first surgery, Dr Fenwick and Partners in Giffnock, but it was closed. Next, she tried The Laurels in Newton Mearns. It was closed too. But the number for West Park Medical Centre in East Kilbride was answered.