A hoard of Pictish treasure had been found there and, though the originals were in Edinburgh, replicas were on show at the museum in Lerwick. Occasionally Rhona went to look at the brooches, the feasting bowls and the ornamental weapons, when she was in the museum for lunch and found herself lusting after the originals with an intensity that took her breath away. She longed to drink wine from the bowl and to feel the old silver against her lips, to pin a jewelled brooch onto a plain black dress and know that it had last been worn hundreds of years before.

Liz, the crofter from Bixter, had towed the yoal and the trailer behind her old Land Rover. It had been launched earlier and tied to a temporary pontoon. The team stood looking at it. A different boat. How would they cope with that? All around the talk was of the murder. ‘Fancy you finding the body!’ Liz said. ‘What chance would there be of that? A strange kind of coincidence.’

The Fiscal was about to protest that of course it was a coincidence, what else could it be? She felt suddenly scared and flushed. But Liz continued before she could speak. ‘I mean, you’re the Procurator Fiscal. It’s your job to supervise a murder investigation. It’s like someone’s saying, “Here’s the body, get on with the job.”’

And Rhona laughed at the idea with the others, and rolled up her jeans ready for the start. Theirs was the last race of the day. In the yoal she pulled on her gloves and started to row. She loved the sensation of skimming over the water, losing herself in the task of rowing and the strange clarity of the light. No space for thought. That smell of salt and tar and damp wood. They finished halfway down the field. If it had been any other race, Rhona would have been disappointed by that, but today it seemed unimportant. It had been enough to escape her anxieties for a while. The other competitors commiserated. It was hardly surprising, they said, when the team had to get used to a borrowed yoal. The Aith vets had been cheered across the finishing line by a sympathetic crowd.

Rhona had helped the others load the boat onto the trailer and was about to drive home when she saw the detective from Inverness among the crowd. The inspector had bought a veggie-burger from the barbecue and was drinking black tea from a paper cup. She could have been a tourist come to watch a local event, or a relative up from the south. Relaxed and informal, she fitted in.