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boss to get her moved, but they wouldn’t do it unless she asked, and rightly so . . . well, I thought that was a shit decision. It had to come from her, but she was far too proud to say that she couldn’t cope,’ Walker said.

      ‘She was very well thought of at her job, and she’s still young. She’ll get back to it, once all this calms down. She’ll get back on track, just needs a bit of time, a bit of support to get off the sauce.’

      ‘I don’t think I can be bothered with her nonsense tonight.’ Walker sighed. ‘Is George really round your house a lot?’

      ‘Too much for my liking,’ answered Anderson truthfully. ‘At times I like him, other times he gives me the creeps. He walks about my house, he drinks tea with my wife, he cuddles my grandchild, but I can’t deny him that, can I? My Wee Moses was Mary Jane’s baby, and he adopted her. I never met the girl, and then I waltz in and take the only surviving relative George has and claim him as my own. Emotionally, Moses belongs to him.’

      ‘You need to think practically, you have a house, a wife, a bank account that can support it all. George Haggerty is a bereaved mess, he lives here and in Port MacDuff, two hundred and fifty miles apart. He shuttles back and forth. Not exactly stable. I think you are doing the right thing, I don’t know that I could do it.’

      They stopped at the corner outside Oran Mor, beside the bus stop, a couple of Jack Russell terriers crossed the road, their double lead tied to the handles of a bike with no lights ridden by a Chinese student. She nodded at them in acknowledgement for clearing the path for her. ‘Yet Costello, a detective whose judgement we both trust, believes in George’s guilt so much she has resigned from her job.’ Anderson smirked. ‘Mitchum said that she told him to take a running fuck!’

      Walker smiled.

      ‘Does she say much in the texts?’ Anderson asked.

      ‘It’s all very civilised.’ Archie pulled out his phone. ‘She never told me that she has resigned though. I guess she thought I would talk her out of it.’

      ‘Do you know what she’s up to?’

      ‘Nope, but I presume she’s after Haggerty.’

      ‘Do you think she’s going to do anything stupid?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So do I.’

      WILMA PATRICK LAID DOWN her knitting and fumbled for the remote before that dreadful reality TV show started, the one where the ‘stars’, who had spent their youth at the best public schools in England, can’t string a coherent sentence together. Wilma had retired for health reasons, having taught primary pupils for over thirty years. Nothing wrong with a bit of ABC and 123 before they started all that vertical learning and companion studies nonsense. She had taken her package before she said something she really meant during a meeting. She blamed Alastair, of course. Being married to him always gave her a different perspective on life. And the lack of it.

      The remote had slipped from the arm of the wheelchair and had disappeared under her ample buttocks. She wriggled around and poked under the cushion, before shaking out her knitting. The remote went flying across the floor. It spun round and spilled its batteries under the dog basket.

      Hamish the Scottish terrier opened one eye, judged there was no food involved in this disruption and wasn’t for moving, so Wilma wheeled over and turned the channels over on the Sky box, poking the button with her knitting needle. There was a new Scandi drama starting on Channel 4 that she wanted to see. She had perfected the art of reading subtitles and knitting a complicated Fair Isle pattern simultaneously.

      She reversed herself back to the sofa. The programme was starting in less than five minutes so she’d wait until the first advert break before she shouted at Alastair to put the kettle on. He always spent a Sunday night doing his guitar homework, though why, she had no idea, as he had a tin ear. He’d had to stop the singing lessons when he made Hamish howl, so he had taken up the guitar now. It was no more tuneful but it was quieter. Wilma understood it was therapeutic for him to plunk away.

      The programme started and she settled back. A young girl, in her early twenties, was walking through a field of corn in the windblown rain. She had the obligatory Nordic jumper on, her red hair and high cheekbones gave her the look of that young constable Morna Taverner that Alastair was working with. The jumper and the actress were being soaked by the rain, and would probably catch the death of cold, thought Wilma. But, knowing these dramas, the girl would be dead by the first advert break anyway. She knitted on, with one eye on her needles and the growing tapestry of colour spilling across her lap, the other on the screen. The girl was running now, her arms pumping. There was no music, only the sound of her ragged breathing and heavy footfall. She was running for her life, obviously. Wilma counted her stitches and listened to the rain battering on the living-room window. The noise deafening, then quiet, as the wind changed direction. The weather had been foul all week. The Portree–Port MacDuff ferry had been off more often than it had been on. She turned her attention back to the television, where a man was now watching the running girl. She was still in a cornfield. He was in a car, a Volvo of course, watching her through the raindrops on the windscreen. The wipers went back and forth, clearing both his and the viewer’s vision of her running away with her wet red hair straggling after her. She was an elusive figure between the sweeps of the wipers. Each time she reappeared she was further away. She might just make it. The girl was obviously running away from him, terror filled, not caring where she went, not looking back. She did the obligatory stumble as she ran, her arms wind-milling to stop her falling. There was music now, helping the drama along. The man stayed in his car, watching as the camera angle swept in so it was right on the girl’s shoulders, as if the audience themselves were chasing her down.

      Wilma liked that effect, she had to resist looking over her own shoulder. She settled for a shiver.

      The girl looked behind her, her small heart-shaped face stared right into the camera. The corn parted, swallowing her. She turned and ran straight into the arms of a big man.

      There was a bang. Wilma jumped. Hamish woke up, ears alert. The screen went black and silent as the opening credits rolled and the image on the screen changed to a fat detective sitting in his office, swinging on his chair, drinking a cup of cold coffee. It always was in these dramas, they never had time to eat and they never went to the toilet. Wilma went back to her knitting, realising she had dropped stitches, and tutting, unravelled it.

      The scene with the detective moved on with no sound. The storm fell quiet allowing the sound of the guitar to float down, a few ragged chords, a song that got so far and then got stuck. It resumed but floundered at the same point. The detective on the TV started shouting down his telephone in Swedish. Or Danish. Or something. The music stopped again. This time it got far enough for her to recognise the song; one of Simon and Garfunkel’s lesser known ones, the one about Emily. It wasn’t one of her favourites, but Alastair had always had a fondness for it.

      The scene on the TV returned to the cornfield. Filmed from a bird’s-eye view that rose until the body of the girl appeared, lying in a small flattened area of corn, as if she was in a nest, comfortable and asleep. A few dots circled round her, policemen like vultures. The girl lay in the middle, a tiny spindle in a big spinning wheel.

      Then the camera plummeted down like a hawk on its prey, crashing into the dead girl’s eye, into the blackness and emptiness of one single pupil.

      Wilma went back to her knitting as the investigation got underway. In forty-five minutes all would be well.

      She heard another bang and looked up. Hamish growled at the front door; she thought she could hear the low rumble of a diesel engine. A car coming up the street, then doing a U-turn, there was a flash of headlamps and a squeal of brakes.

      The music from the TV got louder, more dramatic.

      She heard another bang, this time she knew it was the front door. She thought about ignoring it but that had been twice now. Maybe three times. She checked the clock; it was nearly midnight. Putting her knitting to one side, she wheeled to the window, pulling back her winter curtains by a fraction of an inch to look out into the bitter

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