More than five hundred stone forts once sat along the northern stretches of the Highland coast and the islands nearby in the north of Scotland, each in its own way the center of the universe. Their remains haunt the hills; besides the better-known attractions, a hundred walls, foundations, and bits of ceremonial markers lie scattered across many a square mile, some hidden by vegetation, others easily seen. Built during the Iron Age, the brochs remain outposts of distant memory, small and variable bits of the past whose worn rocks can be interpreted in endless ways. A row of stones together in a cow field might have seen incredible glory in the days after they were first chiseled and stacked; or perhaps they witnessed only cowardice and evil. A tourist touching them for the first time might feel his or her breath taken away, the mind recreating battles of kilt-clad warriors wrestling in the morning mist as pipers urged them together. A local growing up nearby might view the rocks as an apt patch for a tryst or a sip of something away from the folks.

All interpretations might be valid in their own way, all shapes, all ghosts. The past, ancient and near, is a country as varied and changeable as Scotland herself. To reconstruct it in a useful way is an act not of imagination but restraint—the possibilities must be winnowed, the ghosts held firmly in their places.

Frank Gorrie had found this true in every case he had ever investigated, from the traffic scrapes to the twelve murders he had seen since becoming a detective. It was not simply a matter of pushing the lies to one side and the truth to another; the lies were most often easy to spot. But the truth—there was a nub of a different matter.

The truth in the case of Ed and Claire Mackay was this: Edward Cailean Mackay had been an arse-chasin’ shit, from a good line of them. He’d been gone from Inverness with his wife for several years, working in Wales and England, the neighbors thought, but his reputation remained. He had picked up where he left off upon his return some two or three months ago, as the loquacious Christine Gibbon claimed. Many would testify to it, though they seemed curiously short on names of current girlfriends.

What they wouldn’t testify to, or maybe just could not admit, was the likelihood that Claire would put out his roving eye with a bullet. Especially with the wee babe in the next room. Most especially that.