I look down at the photo as if it’s going to disagree, come up with some kind of counterargument.

He shrugs. ‘Maybe they decided to stay on a few days, ride out the storm. That’s what a lot of folk did. Those banners generally stay up at least a week.’ He smiles. ‘Doesn’t need to be a festival to enjoy whisky, after all.’

Except that Charlie told me they all headed back to Kilmeray the very next morning.

*

Outside, it’s still only early afternoon, but the ferry terminal is practically floodlit, and the deep curve of the harbour and marina beyond is studded with lights from fishing boats and yachts, piers and pontoons. I walk past pubs, cafés, and hotels painted white and yellow and blue, glowing gold at their windows. The sky over my head is ominously dark, the wind against my face cold and damp.

I feel numb. I feel confused. I’m starting to feel afraid again. Because if Charlie lied – and I don’t see how he couldn’t have – then it can only mean one of two things. That Bobby Rankin is right: they came for the festival and stayed at least two days past the storm. But Lorne died on the Saturday, on the day of the festival; surely there’s no way that Alec and Fiona MacDonald wouldn’t have been told – for another two days – that their son was missing. I take out the photo frame, smear rainwater across its glass, blurring those faces more. Which leaves only the second possibility. That maybe the eight people in this photograph were never here in Stornoway on the night of the storm after all. That they were on Kilmeray. And that they came here, days after Robert and Lorne had died, and posed for a photograph to set up a lie. To make anyone think, like I had, that they were the only ones with a sure and certain alibi. I look at their relaxed and easy faces. All except Alec and Fiona, I realise, who are standing like frozen and unsmiling waxworks behind everyone else. And then I look at Charlie, brandishing his whisky, grinning inside his neon-yellow hood. I haven’t been telling you the truth, Maggie. I know who murdered Robert.

I was right. He’s been protecting someone all this time.

They all have.

And I have no idea who. Or why.

CHAPTER 28

Robert

The sheep have gone. All of them.

When I first found the barn door wide open, I was more pissed off than concerned. Assumed it was my fault. My inattention. Because I’m not sleeping. And I’m drinking too much at night to make me sleep. To escape the storms that are always on the horizon now. The blackness of Mary’s moods. And sometimes, the way she looks at me, with a kind of tired and detached curiosity. As if I’m a bug on a slide; something to be dissected and studied. As if she’s forgotten I’m still her husband.