He hesitated. ‘Yesterday morning. She was on Harbour Street, walking towards the bus stop on the corner.’

‘Did you speak to her?’ Vera thought this was like drawing teeth.

‘Only to say hello. I passed her in the street. I was coming here. I had a charter booked for one of Mrs Dewar’s guests.’

‘Who would want to go out on the water in weather like this?’

For the first time he gave a real smile. ‘A mad professor. They call him Mike Craggs. He works at the university as a marine biologist. He’s researching water temperature, and I take him out to the island for a couple of hours every fortnight. I think he samples the mainland coast too.’

‘What time were you back in the harbour?’

Kerr shrugged. ‘Late afternoon. The weather forecast was bad and the Prof. wanted to get home. It hadn’t started snowing then, but it was almost dark.’

‘And what did you do after that?’ Vera kept her voice patient. This was a conversation, not an interrogation.

‘I went home for a bit. I was frozen and I needed a hot bath and some warm food. Then I went to the pub.’ He looked up, challenging her to ask for details, but she didn’t bite. She could ask at the Coble what time he turned up there.

‘Why were you so upset when you heard about her death?’ Vera’s voice was low and gentle. ‘Had you become friends, like, over the years?’

He leaned forward, wrapped a cloth around his hand so that he wouldn’t burn himself, opened the door of the stove and threw in a piece of driftwood. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. But I suppose she reminded me of my youth.’ He paused again. ‘Good times.’

Chapter Twelve

Holypool was just a couple of miles inland from Mardle, but Joe Ashworth felt as if he was in a different world when he approached it, a world to which he aspired. He’d always liked the village and occasionally imagined himself living in the small development of new executive housing just behind the pub. On either side of the narrow main street there were stone cottages with long, narrow front gardens. In the summer there would be birdsong. The sun and the overnight traffic had cleared the street, but there was enough snow left on the roofs to make the place look like something from a Christmas card that his nan might have sent.

In his head an ear-worm, the song ‘White Moon Summer’ that had made Katie Guthrie famous. The melody swam in and out of his consciousness throughout the drive and he remembered himself and Sal, hardly more than bairns, and that month when they’d both finished their exams and nothing mattered except each other and their plans for the future.