‘And the tie?’

‘Jones left his jacket in the dining room. I took it from his pocket. The men were involved. I wanted them charged with murder.’

Perez looked up. For an instant I thought he would put his arm around me. I would have liked that.

‘You should have gone south with Tammy,’ he said. ‘Escaped when you had the chance.’ And he turned away, leaving me to follow him.

Hector’s Other Woman

On impulse Vera took herself off to Holy Island. She had a sudden craving for crab sandwiches and a blast of sea air. Of course she hadn’t stopped to check tide times, but arrived at Beal just in time. Hector’s Land Rover made it across the causeway as the water was blowing in and the last tourist cars splashed back to the mainland. It was a big tide of the autumn equinox and a blustery north-easterly wind carried sharp showers of rain. As she arrived at the Snook there was a rainbow, and Lindisfarne castle in the distance like an illustration from a child’s picture book.

The hotel looking over the harbour had rooms free and, again on impulse, Vera chose the grandest. It was a little shabby, but large with windows on two sides, one facing the priory and the other the Herring Houses and the castle beyond. The receptionist made no comment. The island was used to visitors of all sorts: trippers and romantics and pilgrims. Perhaps she thought Vera was a nun in mufti, a nun with expensive tastes.

Vera left her bag in her room and walked out. She hated the island when it was full of visitors, but midweek in November once the tide came in there were only locals and the occasional mad tourist. Walking through the village, she saw there was a house for sale right next to the pub. Perhaps she should retire here, once they forced her out of the police service. But she knew she’d never leave the house in the hills, the house where she’d grown up, where she’d lived with Hector. Her father, deceased. The man who most haunted her dreams.

She strode briskly down the straight lonnen, north towards the sea. In the distance there was a lone birdwatcher at the end of the track. He must have disappeared into the dunes because when she looked up again he’d gone. She was heading for the triangular stone that marked Emmanuel Head, for no reason other than that it gave her somewhere to aim for. She wasn’t in the mood for wandering without purpose. She lost sight of it occasionally as she followed random paths through the sandy land, but then she emerged at the top of a dune and she was almost upon it and there was a view along the beaches on either side of it. Gannets were diving not far from shore and a group of scoter bounced in the choppy water. There was nothing to break the wind here and she found it hard to breathe.