She nodded.

  ‘Been chatting to any locals?’

  ‘A few,’ he said. ‘People seem to know what’s happened. Word gets round fast in places like this.’

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘Folk are shocked! I mean, everyone knew her.’

  ‘Including you?’

  ‘I live at Tarbert, and this is my patch, so…’

  There was something telling in his tone. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Tricky,’ he said with a dry chuckle.

  ‘Tricky enough to get herself mown down by a tractor?’

  He hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. She was difficult. Could be unpleasant. Spiteful, even. She had a habit of reporting people for anything – speeding, parking, littering. Some of it was made up, too. She’d fall out with a neighbour, next thing you know, the neighbour’s been reported to the police – could be for anything.’

  ‘So she had a few enemies. Anyone expressed a theory as to who’s responsible?’

  Sam nodded, somewhat unhappily. ‘A few folk think it was the old man, Wullie Cameron.’

  ‘What folk?’

  ‘One or two. I can’t see it myself. Aye, Old Wullie is confused, but he’s not off his head.’

  She heard a car then saw headlights approaching slowly along the cordoned-off lane. The lane was barely wide enough to accommodate it.

  ‘Here’s Jo,’ Sam said, and went to remove the cordon.

  A car emerged, stopped and its driver got out.

  ‘DI Vaughan?’ she asked and Anna recognised her voice from their phone call.

  ‘That’s me. Jo?’

  ‘That’s right.’ In the streetlight Anna made out a short but sturdy young woman with bright eyes and blonde hair clipped neatly back. ‘If you want to get in, I’ll drive us down to the scene.’

  Anna got in and put her belt on.

  ‘I’m so happy you’re here,’ Jo McLean said once they were on their way. ‘This is my first murder inquiry. The first where I’m the crime scene manager, I mean. It feels wrong – in a place like this.’

  ‘Murder never feels normal anywhere,’ Anna said drily.

  The lane was like a tunnel, with high foliage and trees on both sides. In places it was so tight it was barely passable. Jo went slowly and bushes dragged along the sides of the car.

  ‘Besides,’ Anna went on, ‘this is my first murder inquiry since I moved to this division. We can keep an eye on each other.’

  After a few hundred metres the foliage fell away and they were passing between dark fields, the headlights sweeping over fences and hedgerows.

  Eventually Jo slowed the car and pointed ahead.

  ‘That’s the Camerons’ farm,’ she said.

  Anna made out buildings across a field, silhouetted against the barely glowing sky. Outdoor lamps shone here and there, lighting walls and gables.

  They drove on another quarter mile or so then made a final turn, left into a lane with hedges on either side. It looked like hawthorn in the headlights. Jo slowed the car and Anna saw the lights of two torches up ahead. As they neared, the headlights revealed two figures, looking their way, and beyond them, a black shape on the tarmac. At the far end of the lane Anna could make out a red tractor, tilted at an angle where it had been driven off the road. One of its back wheels had a sheet over it.

  Jo stopped the car.

  ‘I’ll leave the engine running so the headlights stay on,’ she said.

  They got out and made their way along the lane, their long shadows going before them. She now saw the black shape on the road was shielded by a dark awning, propped on short legs, like a kind of bivouac.

  ‘Lads, this is DI Anna Vaughan,’ Jo said to the two figures, then introduced the officers.

  They said their hellos.

  Jo took a deep breath. ‘Right, ready to see?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Jo led the way to the awning. The officers came too, shining their torch beams on the ground.

  Anna swallowed and steeled herself. Jo knelt and with a swift movement threw back a flap to reveal what was beneath.

  Anna looked at the officer nearest to her, a hand out for his torch, which he gave her. He turned on his spare.

  Anna stepped closer and pointed the beam, which fell on the dead woman’s broken head. Jo had told her the woman’s skull had been cracked open, that there was brain matter, but this was a truly horrible sight. A single eye stared up at her. There was blood everywhere, matted in the woman’s short grey hair and on her clothes – a light blue jacket over a grey cardigan and dark trousers. Her torso was twisted as if her pelvis was on the wrong way round, and one of her arms had been crushed, sinew and bone showing through.

  ‘My God,’ she said. Resisting the instinct to recoil away from the body, she crouched and forced herself to look closer. ‘There’s sand on her boots,’ she said. ‘Was she coming back from the beach?’

  ‘It’d make sense.’

  ‘Did she have a dog, or did she like to just stroll out this way?’

  ‘I don’t think she had a dog, no. I don’t know if she liked to walk. Her car’s been in the garage in Tarbert this week – someone told Sam.’

  Anna studied the body and the area around it.

  ‘No bag?’ she asked.

  ‘No sign of one.’

  Anna turned her attention to the jacket. ‘What about her pockets?’

  ‘A used tissue in one. Nothing else.’

  ‘Did you check down on the shore, in case anything has been thrown in the sea?’

  Jo nodded. ‘I had two officers walk to the edge of the water right along the beach,’ she said. ‘It was still light then. They found the odd plastic bottle, bottle tops, the usual. Nothing that might have been in Ellen’s pockets.’

  Something near the dead woman’s arm glinted in Anna’s torch beam. She knelt and peered closer. She looked back at Ellen McIver’s caved-in skull, at the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Did she wear glasses?’ she asked.

  ‘There were reading glasses by her sofa in the cottage.’

  ‘Here,’ Anna said, and indicated the tiny shards. ‘Broken glass, or it might be shattered plastic.’

  ‘I spotted that. There’s nothing to indicate where it came from.’

  Anna nodded, then began to stand.

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ she said.

  The DC replaced the flap of material.

  ‘You can’t see it very well in the dark,’ Jo said, looking back up the lane the way they’d come, ‘but the verges are flattened, and the hedges have been damaged along there.’ She pointed. ‘We assume it was where the tractor was turned before coming back to go over her again.’

  Anna winced. ‘I want to see the tractor,’ she said.

  Jo led the way.

  The huge vehicle had been driven into a ditch on the right-hand side. Jo went first and lifted a tarpaulin that covered its back tyre. Anna stepped closer and shone her torch on its treads. There was mud dried in the grooves, but something else too, smeared over it, something that had dried recently. Blood. There was hair too, grey hair.

  Anna stepped onto the edge of the grass and shone the torch into the interior of the cab where there was an array of levers and other controls. A key dangled from the ignition.

  She stepped back, feeling suddenly weary. She pulled out her phone and saw it was 11.07 p.m. No signal, but she hadn’t expected one.

  She dropped her phone back into her jacket pocket and walked a little way back along the road, Jo on her heel, so that she was between the body and the tractor, then she stopped and looked about.

  ‘Turn the car engine and lights off, would you?’ she asked. ‘Then come back and join me. And ask your colleagues to turn their torches off too, would you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The DC hurried off. A minute later the car’s lights were off, the officers’ torches too, and the lane was plunged into darkness. With the car’s engine off, the soundscape changed. She could hear the sea now, if not see it, and the calling of birds. Oystercatchers, Anna thought. Nick would know. She felt a sudden pang, wishing he was with her now. Tonight would be the first time she’d spent a night at the cabin alone. The thought unsettled her, and she shivered a little.

  She shook the feeling off, annoyed. She looked about, spotting lights over the fields that must be from Baldrishaig a mile or so away. She looked for the farm they’d passed but couldn’t see it from here. There was one more light, across the fields to the west, seemingly very close to the shore.

  ‘What’s that place?’ she asked Jo, who’d returned to her side.

  ‘Slipway Cottage, according to Sam,’ Jo said, then added darkly, ‘Yet another holiday home. Oh, that’s interesting, though,’ she said. ‘Sam went there an hour ago to see if anyone was staying but it was locked up and dark.’

  ‘Could be a security light,’ Anna suggested.

  But as they watched, the light went off and another came on.

  ‘No, I’d say somebody’s there,’ Anna said. ‘Can you get to the cottage from the beach?’

  ‘I’d say so,’ Jo said. ‘Want to take a walk down that way for a look?’

  ‘Yes, you go first.’

  Jo put her torch on and Anna followed, her own beam tracking Jo’s heels. The tarmac of the lane petered out, and they entered a wide, grassy area bound by fence – clearly the parking area. Anna paused to scan the ground with her torch, looking for evidence of tractor tyres or footprints, but could see nothing. There was a rickety-looking wooden gate in the fence. It creaked as Jo pushed it open. She led the way across the lush, soft grass until they came to a drop. The sound of lapping waves came up to meet them.

  ‘The beach is below us,’ she said, pointing her torch down a steep decline.

  She turned off the beam and Anna did the same. She stood very still. A stiff breeze lifted her hair as her eyes accustomed themselves to the twilight gloom. The islands materialised first, the long, low outline of Islay and the rollercoaster mountains of Jura against a violet western sky. The stars seemed to brighten. Their light, together with the light from the new crescent moon, made the shifting sea gleam.

  She studied the house with its single lit room. ‘It looks closer from here,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure you could get to it over the dunes,’ Jo said.

  Was that where Ellen McIver had been heading when she was run over? Or had she just come from there? The sand on her shoes suggested the latter…

  ‘We need to find out who’s there just now,’ Anna said. ‘If it’s a holiday rental, we can’t risk them leaving first thing in the morning.’ She turned and looked along the lane to where two torch beams glowed in the night. ‘We only need one officer here with the body. Let’s send the other across the dunes to see who’s at the cottage.’

  ‘No problem,’ Jo said.

  ‘And while he’s doing that, I’d like to take a look around Ellen McIver’s place for myself.’

  4

  ‘You said there’d been some local mischief,’ Anna said when they were back in Jo’s car, returning through the maze of lanes to the village. ‘Mischief and a cat that was poisoned?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jo said. ‘Sam Stewart knows more about it. I get the impression people thought Ellen McIver was behind it. Seems an extreme thing to kill someone for – unless someone was pushed to absolute breaking point.’

  When they’d chatted at the cordon, Sam Stewart described Ellen McIver as ‘difficult’, hinting she’d concocted complaints against her neighbours. But complaints were one thing, spiteful mischief and the poisoning of a pet – those were of a different order.

  ‘I’d like a proper chat with Sam before he goes off duty,’ she said. ‘He sounds as if he knows a lot about the people round here.’

  ‘Oh, he does.’

  They reached the cordon, and PC Stewart moved the tape for them. Jo drove through, then put her window down. Sam leaned in.

  ‘We’re going to see Ellen’s place,’ Jo told him. ‘Then DI Vaughan wants to hear about everything that’s been going on round here.’

  ‘No probs,’ he said and beamed.

  Jo turned left to drive through the village.

  ‘Where did you say you were staying tonight?’ she asked Anna.

  For a moment or two Anna said nothing, remembering Jo’s sharp comment about second homes when Anna asked about Slipway Cottage. She gave herself a shake.

  ‘Erm, up the coast a bit. My husband and I – we’ve got a tiny place not far from here. A kind of weekend place.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Jo’s tone gave nothing away.

  ‘It’s nothing fancy,’ Anna went on, feeling irrationally awkward. ‘A bit further north from Kilberry.’

  The cabin was a new build. They hadn’t taken a home from a young couple desperate for accommodation… That was what Anna told herself, anyway. But she could almost feel Jo’s disapproval and steeled herself for a comment, but none came.

  They drove on in silence. Half a mile on, there were fewer houses and the woods were more dense, then Anna spotted a marked car parked on the left. Jo pulled in behind it.

  ‘The last house in the village?’ Anna asked, peering at a cottage behind a low fence. A lamp gleamed over a wooden front door. ‘It’s where witches live in fairy tales.’

  ‘Well, that fits,’ the DC said drily.

  They got out.

  A uniformed constable climbed out of the marked car to greet them. He was short, heavily built and breathed wheezily. He eyed Anna warily.

  ‘This is DI Vaughan,’ Jo told him.

  They said brief hellos.

  ‘Anything?’ Jo asked him.

  ‘Not a thing,’ he said. ‘Couple of folk drove by, but looked like locals to me. No one stopped.’

  Anna surveyed the place. It was a one-storey wooden-clad bungalow, maybe fifty years old, with a neat garden before it, packed with roses still in bloom. Trees grew thickly round the cottage, their branches meeting over its roof.

  She joined Jo at the open boot of her car.

  ‘I’ve only one set of forensic gear left,’ she said, sounding a little sheepish. ‘There isn’t a lot of call for them out here. You’ll need to go in on your own, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ Anna said.

  She took the packet from Jo and got dressed in the light from Jo’s headlights, climbing first into the all-in-one paper crime scene suit, then bending to pull on plastic overshoes. She put on the face mask, positioned the protective glasses and last of all snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

  Jo retrieved a plastic bag containing the cottage’s key from the constable who was guarding the property and handed it and a torch to Anna, then Anna made her way to the cottage’s front door.

  Her muscles were tense as she slid the Yale into the latch. A victim’s home often held the key to a crime, though sometimes the key had to be constructed from myriad minute clues that even the sharpest eye could miss. She held her breath, turned the key, stepped inside then closed the door behind her.

  She turned on the hall light and stood for a moment in the bright silence. The hallway was small, with doors on both sides and two more directly in front of her. A console table held a telephone, the cordless kind, in its charging cradle. Beside it was a narrow cream-coloured notepad, the kind Anna recognised from her grandmother’s house, for taking messages.

  She went first to her right, into a bedroom where a single bed was neatly made in the middle of the room, complete with pink counterpane. There was a dressing table against one wall and a wardrobe beside it, both old-fashioned. Everything was tidy, but the dresser drawers had been pulled out and left hanging open. Papers poked out of one of the drawers and some had tumbled to the dark green carpet. They looked like highly personal papers – letters, postcards and greetings cards – and old, judging by their faded nature and the style of handwriting. On the dresser was a framed photo, possibly of Ellen as a dowdy schoolgirl, holding a certificate and glowering at the camera.

  Anna left the bedroom and went into the room on the other side of the hallway.

  It was a gloomy living room, with an old-fashioned armchair and small matching sofa, flock wallpaper and a swirly carpet. The TV was practically an antique.

  The mantelpiece bore another framed photograph. It looked to be a few decades old and showed a youngish woman in a jacket and skirt and an older man. Both faced the camera, and the man was awkwardly shaking one of the girl’s hands while she clutched a trophy in the other. He beamed while the girl glared, her face a set pudding, her eyes small black stones. There was a line of text on the cream mount: Miss Ellen Josephine McIver, Winner of the Tarbert Community Champion Cup, 1982.

  Anna looked into those hard eyes in the expressionless face and understood a little about the woman depicted: that she was formal, dour and vainly proud of achievement.

  She looked about the living room. A writing bureau stood against a wall. Its drawers had been pulled out too, though nothing spilled from them. In one was a sewing kit, in another a number of circulars and catalogues: one for a horticultural society, another for a wool supplier. She’d nearly missed it, but there was a hardback book on the carpet beside the armchair, open, pages down, looking as if it had tumbled from the arm of the chair. Anna knelt, shone her torch into the shadow beside the seat. The book was in a protective plastic cover, like a library book. She turned her head to read the title and author’s name: Happy Like Murderers: The True Story of Fred and Rosemary West by Gordon Burn. Anna hadn’t read it, but she knew about the Wests, had studied the case during a forensic psychology module as part of her degree. The pair of notorious killers were depicted in a familiar photograph on the cover: hugging, Fred simian and grinning, Rose smiling, motherly and relaxed. So Ellen had been a fan of true crime.

  She returned to the hallway and went through one of the two doors facing her into a kitchen. Apart from a couple of drawers and a cupboard that stood open, the room was spick and span, everything put away and dish cloths neatly folded by a gleaming sink. There was a back door giving on to darkness at the side of the house, a key in the lock. Anna tried the handle and found it locked. The garden could wait until morning.