‘The press will be here as soon as the news gets out,’ she said. ‘They’re always interested in one of their own. We’ll keep the identity to ourselves for as long as we can, Sergeant, so I’d appreciate a bit of discretion when you arrive at the hotel.’

‘Would you like to tell Peter and Maria yourself?’ The last thing Sandy wanted was a drive back to Ravenswick, and the hotel was the smartest in the islands. He always felt out of place there. He imagined that the Fiscal would be a regular in the restaurant.

‘That’s hardly my role, Sergeant.’ She was already moving away from him, and by the end of the sentence the darkness had swallowed her up.

On the drive back to Ravenswick, Sandy ran through the things he knew about Jerry Markham in his head. Markham was a bit older than Sandy, though he’d still been at the Anderson High while Sandy was there. One of the fashionable boys. Editor of the school magazine. Star of the school play. He’d gone away to university and come back to write on the Shetland Times, got bored and miserable and moved south again. Now he wrote for one of those big London papers that had serious stories, and sport only on the back pages. Sandy’s mother had been full of that when Jerry had got the job, and whenever his name was on an article she clipped it out to wave under Sandy’s nose when he went home.

The parents were Peter and Maria Markham. Maria was a Shetland wife. She’d grown up in Northmavine. Peter was an incomer, what Shetlanders called a soothmoother.

What had Peter Markham worked at before they bought up the Ravenswick Hotel? Sandy couldn’t bring it to mind, but thought it was something to do with oil. Then he remembered that there was a military connection: Markham had been stationed at the air-force base in Unst and that’s when he’d met Maria. When he’d left the services he’d flown helicopters from Scatsta out to the rigs. The Ravenswick had been rundown before the Markhams took it over. It had been a laird’s house, built in the eighteenth century, huge and solid and right on the water. Now it was completely refurbished and called itself Shetland’s only country-house hotel. Fran and Jimmy had taken him for a meal there to celebrate their engagement. Only in the bar, but it still seemed awful expensive to Sandy. The food had been good, though, and if Sandy had a woman that he really wanted to impress, he’d take her there at lunchtime when there was a set menu and it didn’t cost so much.