I zip up my yellow mac, turn away from the village, and jog back towards the main road without looking at Alec again. About halfway to Ardcraig the heavens open, and I pull up my hood, lean into the rising wind. I hear something suddenly – a new sound, out of place – and I spin round, searching the gloomy road, the stony foothills of Ben Wyvis. There’s nothing, no one. I resume walking, a little faster, and then it comes again. Footsteps, maybe hooves. Something moving and then stopped. Something that definitely doesn’t belong to the wind or the rain.

I spin round again, wrench down my hood. The sea fog is back, curling white smoke across the tarmac, obscuring the Coffin Road and the mountain behind completely.

‘Alec?’ My voice is echoless and thin. I turn again when I think I hear the sound again, this time out towards the west and Ardcraig. I swallow, suddenly feeling as stupid as I feel exposed or freaked out. ‘Sonny?’

A kite or buzzard cries loud somewhere over my head and I jump, heart drumming. Look up into the grey-white sky, the rain cold against my skin.

‘Screw this.’

And then I don’t just jog but run, keeping my head down and eyes trained only on the road all the remaining way back to the blackhouse.

*

Maybe there is someone following me. And maybe the same someone left strange dead crows on my path. And ran around the blackhouse in the dead of night, tapping on its windows. Maybe Alec. Maybe someone else. Maybe – maybe – the person who murdered Robert Reid. If Robert Reid was murdered.

But what good does maybe do me? What good does worrying do me? By the time I get ready for bed, I’ve managed to convince myself that even if there was someone in the fog, even if they’re spying or trying to intimidate me, it doesn’t matter, so long as that’s all they do. I’m trying to take each day as it comes, without falling into old patterns of anxiety. I’m trying to be careful. Besides, the only alternative is to leave. To give up. I think of Will’s thumb moving circles on my skin; Kelly’s wide grin. That photo of me standing in front of the Valley of Ghosts, hair whipping around my head.

In the bathroom, I open my pill bottle with only a small hesitation, swallow the lithium with water before brushing my teeth. I pick up the town hall photocopies from the dining table, resist reading them through again; I know them almost by heart already anyway. Instead, I fold them in two and go over to the bedside table, reach down to open its only drawer.

And then I let out a shriek that hurts my throat as I stumble backwards, almost falling. Because inside that drawer, next to a couple of rusty keys and a pile of old coppers is another dead bird. It’s the same as the others. A crow, black and grey and muddy brown, head turned to one side and feet curled into claws. Its chest is pitted with little black dots.