In the distance we heard sirens coming from the direction of the airport. For a moment I thought John might jump. He hesitated on the brink of the cliff, his arms held stiffly a little way from his sides. Perez – because that was the strange detective’s name – did nothing to stop him. But John Sinclair didn’t jump. He sat on the snow and put his head in his hands. He waited until a couple of uniformed officers scrambled up the bank and took him away.

Perez saw me onto the plane. He’d talked to me immediately after Billy’s death and I’d remembered the exotic name. I thought I might be in trouble because of the knife, but he only referred to it obliquely, saying that stabbing was a horrible way to die. ‘You wouldn’t want to do that even to a man like Sinclair.’ I wondered if he’d lost someone close to him, if that was the reason for being on compassionate leave.

The sun was still up when the plane took off. I saw the white, snow-covered island beneath me, and the glitter of the water, and remembered Perez’s last words. He’d taken my hand in the airport building. ‘You’re a fine writer,’ he’d said. ‘But I could do with something more cheerful now. A bit lighter, eh? Maybe it’s time to move on.’ Then he’d grinned again and walked away.

The Spinster

She twisted the carded fleece between the fingers of her left hand and fed it into the spinning wheel. Her right foot rocked on the pedal and kept the rhythm smooth and regular. The view from her window was of her neighbour’s croft land towards the sea. She’d grown up in this house and usually she took the scene for granted, but now Stuart’s digger was biting into the peaty soil and preparing the foundations for his new home. It wouldn’t block her whole view, and he’d come to her, very polite and quiet, explaining that – with the new baby on the way – the old house wouldn’t be big enough.

‘Much easier to start from scratch,’ he’d said. ‘The planners have given their permission.’

She’d seen that, even if she objected, the house would be built, and Stuart had always been a good neighbour. She’d known him since he was a bairn and she didn’t want to fall out now. So she’d smiled and said of course they needed a bigger place and it would be good to see a child playing from her window. Joan was a spinster and there hadn’t been a child in Holmsgarth since she and her sisters were young.

But the sight of the digger made her uneasy. It disturbed the rhythm of her spinning and when she looked at the yarn it was uneven and bobbly. It would knit in an interesting way, but it wasn’t how she’d intended it to be. She set her spinning aside and went to the kitchen to make her tea, but even from there she could hear the rumbling of the machine, and she fancied that she could feel its vibration under her feet.