It was already eight o’clock when Mary began the drive down the lane from Brinkbonnie village. It led behind the sand dunes to the Wildlife Trust carpark at the north of the bay where she and Max had parked on the night of their first meeting. She had been held up by an accident on the road outside Otterbridge where the young policeman in charge of controlling the traffic had seemed out of his depth, and she sped through Brinkbonnie, noticing nothing unusual there. The sky was clear and there was a moon. From the lane she saw the Tower and the mass of woodland behind it and the high moors spread beyond. Nearer the track was a pool and flat, grassy fields. She came to the hut where in summer the Wildlife Trust warden stood to collect money for the carpark. She could not see Max’s car but knew it was there. The carpark went on for half a mile, broken into sections by the dunes and the thickets of blackthorn and bramble. He would have parked farther along, she thought, and for a moment she was worried why he thought such secrecy necessary. There was also a feeling of satisfaction that when he was in trouble he had come to her. She drove the Mini only a short distance from the carpark’s entrance and left it in full view, so that if by any chance Max had not yet arrived he would know she was there.

These things—the Mini parked at the entrance to the links, the accident on the Otterbridge Road, which made her late—were to contribute to the outcome of the case.

When she got out of the car, she shivered. She was wearing trousers and a sweater, but there was already a frost in the air and she had been expecting perhaps the same warmth of the night of the Wildlife Trust barbecue. She was very tired and the evening had a dreamlike quality. She was lightheaded and imagined that here, in the same place, she and Max could regain the romantic intensity that had begun the affair. She was already anticipating the elation that followed any contact with Max.

If he’s here, she thought, he’ll be waiting on the shore, at the edge of the water, where I waited for him the last time. She began to climb through the soft sand of the dunes to reach the beach. The silence was impressive. The tide must have been out because there was no sound of water. Uusually at Brinkbonnie, even on the quietest days, there were dogs barking, gulls crying, the noise of a tractor in a distant field. Now there was only the sound of her own breathing and the sand shifting under her feet as she walked. Occasionally she put out her hand to steady herself. The sand was cold and the grains were sharp as ice.