Kelly’s smile disappears. ‘Fuck, Maggie.’

‘I need to do something. I just need to do something.’ I hold out the photo again, but she doesn’t take it. ‘D’you recognise anyone?’

She frowns, shakes her head, though I notice that she hardly looks at it. ‘Why don’t you ask Charlie?’

‘Charlie isn’t talking,’ Will says.

‘I can’t ask anyone in Blairmore about this photo without having to explain why. But last time I was in the town hall in Stornoway, they said there was a guy from Urbost who worked there and who knew everyone back then.’ There’s a restless sense of urgency in me; a feeling that if I stop moving even for a moment, it’s going to be too late to ever catch up with the truth.

Kelly unfolds her arms. ‘I’ll take you.’

‘What?’

‘Jaz’ll lend me his ridiculous Chelsea tractor.’ She smiles a very un-Kelly-like smile. ‘I have to talk to you anyway. There’s something I need to tell you.’

*

Kelly drives fast. The Range Rover roars across the flat bleak inland moors, still gold, still empty, still fierce with whistling wind.

‘You won’t tell anyone about this, will you, Kelly?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I mean, someone must have killed Lorne, right? And I’ve been thinking that Robert knew who and that’s why he died, but what if Robert was the one who did it? And what if someone saw him? I mean, Christ, if Alec saw him …’ I endure a flashback to his blazing black eyes. To Sheena’s You’re not safe here.

‘Or maybe Isla’s husband, Kenny Campbell, killed Lorne? I mean, it’s pretty coincidental that he died a few weeks later, right? Maybe he killed them both and the guilt was too much for him? Or what about Jimmy? I mean—’

Kelly brings the Range Rover to a squealing halt at an empty T-junction, and I shut up. Try to ignore the abrupt panic at my overexcitement; the sense of urgency I still feel in my chest. ‘Sorry. That was too much.’

Kelly turns to look at me, my flaming cheeks. ‘I get it. Wanting to know. Needing to know. I do.’ She shakes her head. ‘God, it’s just that … everything feels so weird all of a sudden, doesn’t it? I keep looking at Fraser and thinking of that poor wee boy alone all those years without even a headstone apart from that lie out at Long Stride, and it just – Christ, the one thing you can always rely on around here is that nothing ever happens. I used to think that was a bad thing.’

She turns on the windscreen wipers as rain starts coming down hard and fast, low cloud turning the moorland into sprinting shadows.

‘The police have been to North Uist to speak to Mum and Dad,’ she says, her voice suddenly different, not sounding like her at all any more. ‘Mum said a major crime unit from Inverness is taking over the investigation.’

I close my eyes, force myself not to say anything more, not to ask her about the police speaking to her parents. ‘And I’m banging on about suspects like I think I’m Poirot,’ I say instead. ‘I’m an insensitive shithead. I’m sorry.’