The birds are gone. My canvas rucksack is gone. But even if I’m still reluctant to lean too hard against my own judgement, both Detective Constable Scott and Charlie saw them – saw the vándr-varði. And someone took them.

‘I get why you’re doing this, all right?’ Will says. ‘I get why you want to find out what happened.’

Yesterday, I finally told him what Charlie had told me, that he knew who’d murdered Robert.

‘Robert Reid went missing on the same night as Lorne, there’s no way one isn’t anything to do with the other. And I mean, Jesus, whatever happened to that wee boy, however he died, someone – probably from this island, this village – buried him in the ground and left him there for twenty-five years.’ Will’s expression tightens. ‘I know these people, Maggie. I’ve known them pretty much all my life. And if one of them …’ He shakes his head. ‘If they were waiting for you last night … if that’s what …’ He takes my hands again. ‘We need to talk to the police.’

‘They won’t believe me, Will. Especially when they hear the whole bloody saga about me coming here as a kid, what I said. It’d be pointless.’ I start walking towards Blairmore. ‘I just need to get Charlie to speak to me again. Then maybe I’ll get some answers.’

And this time, I’m not asking because of that person in the blackhouse. I’m not asking to salve my own conscience or to grieve my mother. I’m doing it because I owe Robert. I never wanted to prove that he’d been murdered for his sake – and when trying to prove it threatened my happiness, I threw him away like rubbish. Somehow Mum had known who he was, that he’d changed his name, even that he’d been murdered – but when knowing that didn’t get her what she wanted, she abandoned him too. So I have to see this through. I have to find out what happened. Not for me this time, but for Robert.

*

No one answers when I knock on Charlie’s door. I peer through the letterbox and see only a dark empty hall. ‘Charlie. Charlie!’

‘Well, if he’s in there, he’s clearly not in the mood for visitors. Come on,’ Will says, turning back for the gate. ‘If he won’t help us, we’ll go to Stornoway. Do what you said.’

When we push through the doors of Am Blàr Mòr, the pub is empty even behind the bar. We still creep towards that red wall of photographs like furtive thieves, and as soon as I find the photo, I quickly take it down.

‘What ya doin’?’

‘Jesus,’ both Will and I say in unison, springing away from the wall and each other.

‘Caught rotten.’ Kelly grins in delight, folding a bar towel over her shoulder. ‘Well, come on, you have to tell me now.’

Feeling something between embarrassed and defensive, I hold out the photo of those smiling people in waterproofs standing under the Stornoway Whisky Festival 1994 banner. ‘Everyone in this photo was in Stornoway the night of the storm – the night both Robert and Lorne died. So …’