There was a calendar on a hook by the door, the kind with a long narrow page for each month, and a line for each day that you could write on. A stubby pencil hung on a string from the same hook and there were markings on various days in cramped handwriting: reminders about bins, prescriptions and appointments. Anna peered closely at this week’s entries, including today which was the seventeenth:

  Monday 14th: 2.50 GP

  Tuesday 15th: blue bin out, car in garage, 4 p.m. L.H. tel.

  Thursday 17th prescrip. ready

  Friday 18th aft. library books back

  Anna took a photo of the notes on her phone, considering in particular what she assumed had been a phone call on Tuesday. She returned to the hallway and looked at the pad beside the telephone. It was blank and the top few pages had been torn roughly away, leaving the stubs of pages on the glued spine. She estimated maybe ten or so had been removed, and the tear-lines were consistent – as if several pages had been ripped away together.

  She crouched and shone her torch on the top leaf, looking for indentations that might have been made on the missing pages, but saw none.

  She lifted the phone receiver and pressed R for ‘redial’. The line rang seven or eight times before it was answered by a quavery, elderly woman’s voice, saying, ‘891269. Who is calling, please?’

  ‘Hello?’ Anna said. ‘I’m a police detective and my name is Anna Vaughan.’

  ‘It’s very late!’ the querulous voice said, with reason. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m working on a serious investigation, and I wonder if you could help me.’

  ‘I shall certainly try. What was your name again?’

  ‘Anna Vaughan. May I ask your name?’

  ‘I’m Virginia Moncrieff,’ the old lady said, ‘Mrs Virginia Moncrieff.’

  ‘Mrs Moncrieff, do you know someone called Ellen McIver?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ellen McIver. A resident of Baldrishaig.’

  ‘Baldrishaig, by Tarbert?’

  ‘That’s right, yes.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Where do you live, may I ask?’

  ‘Lochgilphead, The Larches, on Craven Avenue. Now, what’s this all about?’ She was getting annoyed now. ‘Who is this Ellen person?’

  ‘I believe she may have phoned you recently.’

  ‘Did she? When?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t speak to her.’

  ‘Do you live alone, Mrs Moncrieff?’

  ‘I do now, yes. You say she phoned me?’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I have no idea. I’m sorry. Perhaps I could give you my number in case anything comes back to you.’

  ‘You can, but I doubt it will. I shall find a pen. Just a minute, now.’

  It took the best part of five minutes, but at last she was able to end the call. Next, she dialled 1471. A robotic voice informed her the last person to call had done so at 3.28 p.m. but had withheld their number. She replaced the receiver.

  The last door from the hallway gave into a vestibule that led to a small bathroom. There was a second low door in the vestibule. Anna tried the handle and found a narrow wooden staircase behind it, rising steeply. She found a light switch then climbed up to a floorboarded attic room under a sloping ceiling. The little room was starkly lit. At the back was a curtainless dormer window which must look out into the woods behind the house. Set on a tripod in the window was a pair of powerful binoculars, pointing not up at the stars but horizontally, into the woods. And – though it was impossible to tell in the darkness – perhaps not into the trees, but through them, towards the fields and the beach, even to the lane where the owner of this house had met her death.

  There was a notepad on the windowsill, a pencil beside it. Beside that was a book about birds. Anna picked up the notepad and found cramped pencil jottings recording the dates the writer – presumably Ellen – had spotted particular birds with colourful names, many of which were unfamiliar:

  velvet scoter

  common goldeneye

  red-breasted merganser

  black-throated diver

  dunlin

  She replaced the pad just as her phone buzzed into life. She answered.

  ‘Boss? It’s Jo. The officers covering the next shift have arrived in the village. Sam Stewart will be going off duty soon.’

  ‘I’ll come now,’ Anna said.

  She came out to find Jo a little way along the lane, talking to the driver of a battered-looking old Mini which had stopped, headlights blazing, its engine still running. Jo listened to whatever the driver said then shrugged. Anna went over and saw in the light of a streetlamp that the driver was a thin-faced middle-aged woman with masses of curly greying hair. Her eyes widened with what looked like alarm when she saw Anna.

  ‘Good evening,’ Anna said.

  The woman said quickly to Jo, ‘I’ll let you get on,’ then her window purred up. Anna stood aside as the vehicle moved on, heading west out of the village.

  ‘Who was that?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Harriet Maxwell,’ Jo said.

  As they watched, the Mini’s brake lights came on, red eyes in the gloom. It made a sharp right turn up an unseen track and disappeared, its retreating lights glimpsed between trees and ferns rising opposite Ellen’s cottage.

  ‘She’s an artist,’ Jo said. ‘Her house is up in the woods. Recently divorced. Her lad’s a bit of a tearaway. There was some trouble.’

  ‘With Ellen McIver?’ Anna asked instinctively.

  Jo nodded. ‘Sam knows more than me.’ In the car, she asked, ‘Did you find anything in the house?’

  ‘I’m not sure. You said the landlady of the pub and another woman were in there to see Ellen this morning?’

  ‘That’s right. Morag Robertson and Carol Baillie.’

  ‘I’d like to ask them if they noticed anything.’

  ‘I’m not sure they were there that long,’ Jo said.

  ‘Still,’ Anna said, pointedly.

  ‘By the way,’ Jo said, ‘I spoke to the officer who went down to Slipway Cottage. Turns out it’s the owner who’s there. A Mr Clark. He arrived from Glasgow this evening. Seems he’s thinking of selling the place and he’s got an agent coming over to view it. He got there around six, he reckons. Saw the police cordon as he drove into the village and lights from the lane, but he had nothing to tell us.’

  ‘Good to check,’ Anna said quietly, feeling disappointed.

  ‘Here are the troops,’ Jo said brightly as they came into the village to find two more marked cars parked and uniformed officers standing waiting for them.

  5

  ‘Harriet Maxwell’s boy, Leo?’ Sam asked. ‘Oh aye, Ellen had it in for him, all right.’

  They were standing by Anna’s car, over the road from a prefab building with a sign outside that read ‘Village Hall, Shop and Tearoom.’ Jo had briefed the newly arrived officers, putting one on duty at the cordon, sending two down to the crime scene to take over a night watch, and the fourth along to Ellen’s cottage to relieve the PC there.

  ‘Had it in for him, how?’ Anna asked quietly, though they were well out of earshot. The nearest house was a good hundred metres away, at least. It was just them and the rustle of leaves in the dark trees.

  ‘His driving,’ Sam said, as if he was surprised she hadn’t heard about it. ‘Speeding through the village in his Vauxhall Corsa, blaring music. Oh, and chucking litter out of the window. She had me out, sitting in her living room, while she detailed every incident, making sure I wrote it all down. I went and had a word with Leo. He was embarrassed, especially when his mum got back early. Harriet told me she’d handle it. But, of course, that wasn’t enough for Ellen. On to me every day for a week, about his latest misdemeanours. I rang Harriet. She said on three of the days, Leo hadn’t even had use of the car. She’d been using it while the Mini was in the garage. I went back to Ellen, and on it went. Then one day, she turned up at the police house in Tarbert, shaking with anger. She said Leo had tried to run her over.’

  ‘Did she?’ Anna shoulders tightened. ‘When was this?’

  He took a moment to think about it. ‘Three months ago. Aye, that’s right. Start of April.’

  ‘What did she say happened?’

  ‘That she’d walked to the village shop, in the hall there.’ He pointed over the road at the prefab building. ‘She was making her way home when Leo came tearing towards her in his car. That she waved a fist at him to slow down, and that he did, after he’d passed her – only then he made a turn and came back the same way, sitting on his horn and coming right for her, and she nearly fell into a ditch to stop getting run over.’

  ‘I take it you spoke to him again,’ Anna said.

  ‘Of course! Complete denial. This time he asked his mum to join us. He was raging and so was Harriet. Accused the old woman of outright lying.’

  ‘Any dashcam?’

  ‘No, but Harriet said she’d order one that day and get it fitted. She threatened to go see Ellen herself, only I warned her off.’

  Anna said nothing for a moment, then asked, ‘Do people round here know about the incident?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure. Ellen kicked up a fuss when I didn’t take it further. Threatened to report me. I’m sure she’d have told other folk. Harriet probably did too.’

  Anna recalled the woman in the Mini outside Ellen’s place, her wide, frightened eyes when she saw Anna.

  ‘Who else, Sam?’ Jo prompted.

  ‘Well, Glen Cameron, of course. She moaned about his old dad driving that tractor. Said he shouldn’t be on the road, not with his dementia. But Glen brushed her off. The two of us talked. Dr MacCorkindale said he was okay to drive still. Glen told Ellen to go to him if she had anything to complain about, and to leave his dad alone.

  ‘Then there’s Morag Robertson. Her and her husband Bill have the village shop and the pub.’ He nodded a little further along the road to a white-fronted pub. ‘Ellen accused them of having lock-ins. Private parties that went on after hours, Morag reckoned. This was in the spring of this year. Morag and I chatted. She said she’d make sure any after-hours partying happened in her living room upstairs at their flat in future. Ellen wasn’t having that, though. She wrote to the council and Morag got a visit from a couple of licensing people. They didn’t take any action.

  ‘There’s Scott McKellar, too. Lives along the road in Torinturk with his girlfriend Vonnie. He takes people out on private boats to the islands, trips out to see the whirlpool too on one of those dirigible things – a RIB. He’s been working for the producers of that Dalriada TV programme – showing them where it’s safe to sail the longships they use, how to keep clear of the whirlpool. Anyway, Scott and Vonnie have been renovating their house and Ellen accused him of fly-tipping some of the old kitchen units up in MacQuarrie’s plantation. She reported it to me, and I went to see Scott. Scott was raging. Said she was an interfering cow and that she’d made it up out of spite because Vonnie had given out at her in the Co-op one day. Something to do with Vonnie being a tattoo artist. I made Ellen come with me for a drive up into the plantation. No sign of any dumping whatsoever.’

  ‘How did she react?’ Anna asked.

  He chuckled. ‘She was fizzing. Pure raging. Giving out about having been “tricked”. I stopped the car and we had a “chat”.’ He made quote marks with his fingers. ‘I told her she had to stop this. That she was making people and herself unhappy. She didn’t take that well. Said to take her home, so I did.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘That was only three weeks ago. The last time I spoke to her.’

  So Ellen had been one of those people who blamed others for their own discontent, who inflicted pain on them as a kind of outlet for their misery.

  ‘So, what about the mischief?’ Anna asked now. ‘Jo’s mentioned it to me. What do you know about all that?’

  Sam made an unhappy noise, something between a sigh and groan. ‘Hard to pin anything down,’ he said and sighed. ‘Maybe I should have done more.’

  ‘Just tell me,’ Anna pressed.

  ‘Well, okay. It’s hard to say when it started, because it was just minor stuff. Petty vandalism, the kind of thing kids might do. But then things escalated. Carol Baillie was the first to come to me.’

  ‘Carol Baillie?’ Anna looked at Jo. ‘She’s the one who visited Ellen with Morag this morning?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jo said.

  ‘A nice woman. Relative newcomer,’ Sam went on. ‘Her and her husband moved out here from Glasgow three or four years ago. Earlyish retirement. Her job had been getting too much for her, so Duncan told me once – that’s her husband – so he made her pack it in. Then last year he had a stroke and now she cares for him. Things go in circles, don’t they? Anyway, she makes jam and sold jars in a kind of hutch thing by the side of the road, with an honesty box for passers-by. You know, two or three quid a jar. Well, somebody smashed the lot on Christmas Eve last year. She rang me in tears, embarrassed because it was only jam, but she couldn’t help taking it personally. Poor woman. I went out to see her. She showed me the jars. I counted seven and every single one was broken but get this – someone had emptied them out. Smashed them, with a hammer or something, then tipped out the contents. A neighbour had spotted the mess that morning and let her know.’

  ‘Which neighbour?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Harriet Maxwell,’ Sam said. ‘Lives up the hill beyond Carol’s place. Like I say, Carol was really upset, and it’s not like her. She’s practical, you know? She stopped selling jam after that. She still makes it. She gives me a jar now and then.

  ‘After that, more people started reporting stuff, incidents that happened, bits of mischief. See the village shop and tearoom over there? Used to have baskets outside, hanging on those hooks either side of the door – till someone emptied them. Turned them over in the night so the soil and flowers and everything fell on the ground. Morag put it down to someone leaving the pub drunk one night. Didn’t think to report it, till she heard about Carol’s jam. Then Rosie Blake – lives at Crow Cottage along the road – realised it probably wasn’t squirrels emptying her bird feeders and throwing them on the ground.

  ‘People started talking about stuff that had happened, so Morag called a meeting in February. A whole load of villagers met in the tearoom. I went along and we listed all the things that had happened. Of course, people start imagining all sorts, stuff no one could ever prove. Glen’s sheep got into the lane one day because someone opened a gate. I mean, how do you prove a thing like that? Scott McKellar, the boatman, his dog nearly got run over because again someone opened the gate to his yard. Propped it open with a brick.’

  ‘Who did people suspect?’

  ‘Well, no one said an actual name, not at the meeting. How could they, when she was sitting among them?’

  ‘Ellen?’

  ‘Ellen,’ he said. ‘Lapping it up she was, there on the front row, listening to what everyone was saying, eyes sort of… shining. I stood up and said I was taking the incidents very seriously. That I wasn’t going to tolerate this kind of anti-social behaviour and that I expected anyone with information to come forward.’

  ‘Did it make a difference?’

  ‘For a while. Things calmed down. People watched out for each other, talked about it, kept it on the table, if you know what I mean. But then Dr MacCorkindale’s shed went on fire. That was in March. He has the big house in the woods behind the pub. He suspected it was deliberate, but it could have been an electrical fault. He had a plug socket in there that was faulty and the place was full of fuel for his sit-on mower.’

  ‘Was it investigated?’

  ‘The fire people came and looked it over and couldn’t draw any conclusions, but there was a lot of talk. You see, Dr MacCorkindale and Ellen – they’d had a falling out. She wasn’t happy about a consultation she’d had with him. She threatened to report him to whoever you report doctors to. He had his practice manager write to her to warn her about her behaviour. Next thing, his shed was going up in flames.’ Sam shrugged. ‘Then,’ he went on, his tone darker, ‘there were the razor blades.’

  ‘Razor blades?’ Anna felt hairs lift on her arms.

  ‘There’s a path through the woods,’ Sam said, pointing along the road. ‘A kind of short cut just past Crow Cottage. The path goes through the trees and comes out in the fields on the way down to the beach. There’s a fence with a stile over it and someone had embedded blades in the bit of wood you hold on to as you climb over. Olly Blake, Rosie’s husband – who had the bird feeders – he took their girls into the woods one day and cut his thumb open. At that point, we realised things were getting serious again. Escalating. I got the blades out of the wood and taped off the stile. We called another meeting in the village hall. This time I got my sergeant there too. Said the next step would be to install cameras. Again, we asked for information. Morag was pretty vocal. Said it was time this business stopped, and she looked right at Ellen when she said it. Ellen just sat there, hands folded all neat in her lap and saying nothing. Two days later, Morag’s cat ate something and nearly died.’

  ‘Poison?’ Anna said.

  ‘The vet thought so. Morag had found half-eaten tuna in a can in the car park beside the pub, next to the wheel of her own car. The vet tested what was left and there was weedkiller in it. Glysophates, glyphosates – something like that. Morag was badly shaken. She’s usually tough, but you could see she was rattled. We talked about what to do and I said I’d go see Ellen, so that’s what I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She listened, all calm, sitting in the armchair in the living room, eyes half shut, glaring straight ahead, all patient like – just biding her time, waiting for her chance to speak. I said, “Morag believes you poisoned her cat, Miss McIver. What do you say to that?” Then I shut up and just waited for her to say her piece. Only she didn’t speak. Not for ages. She just sat there, seething away. It was weird. A bit scary even. I remember thinking to myself, “My God, she’s properly mad.” Then finally she spoke. She said, “It wasn’t me. If Morag thinks it was then she’ll need to prove it, and she won’t.” I pressed her. I said this was very serious, but she just nodded and sat back, all content. Pleased, almost.