Just after dawn, I rode out towards the village looking for the sheep, and then past Bàgh Fasgach and Loch Tana. Even down to Beinn Donn and Ùrbost. On the way back, I saw Charlie and Jaz watching me from their gardens. It’s been a fortnight since I reported the dead sheep, and still no one has come out from Stornoway Police Station. Not that the carcasses in the freezer are likely much use to anyone now.

When the flock wasn’t out on the croftland or even down on the beach, that was when I started to get concerned. And now, after searching all the western moorland, I’m reduced to peering over the edge of its cliffs to see if I can glimpse any bodies on the rocks beneath or in the loud white surf. When I finally turn my face away from the wind and look across at those tall standing stones on the hill, for the first time they don’t soothe me at all. Because there’s no way an entire flock of sheep has fallen off these cliffs or any other. Sheep are less stupid than most people; they only blindly follow when they know it’s safe.

Someone has done this. More probably, someones. They’ve stolen my sheep because they can. Because I’m not like them. Because I’m not a man that men like. Because I’m not a fucking fisherman. I’m barely a farmer. And because I won’t beg for their help, their fucking approval. I’ve tried. All my life, I’ve fucking tried, and it’s never enough. I am never enough.

But they won’t get away with it this time. They won’t drive me back to the bitter wind and rocks of the North Sea. They won’t take away the peace – the right – that only this land can give me. I won’t let them.

Because I won’t hide any more. Not from storms. From bòcain that whisper saltwater hate into my ears. I don’t need Norse talismans to protect me. I don’t need a cellar full of light and stars. I just need my family. And my will to survive. That’s always been enough, after all. I just need to use it. To fight for what is mine.

But when I get back to the blackhouse, it’s empty. Mary and Calum have gone too.

CHAPTER 29

I struggle to make much conversation on the hour-long journey back to Kilmeray. I catch Kelly giving me curious looks, despite my insistence that Bobby Rankin had nothing interesting to say, but I’m not about to tell her what I’ve started to suspect about the people in that photo. She seems jumpy again, and it makes me more nervous. So much so that when she swerves abruptly into the lay-by before the Blairmore junction, my heart actually skips a beat.

‘Kelly?’

She pulls up on the handbrake. Turns to face me and sighs.

‘D’you remember I had something to tell you?’

‘Shit. Yes. Sor—’

‘I’m leaving. One of David’s friends has a flat to rent in Hillhead. Fraser’s school is happy to take him back, and I can get waitressing work until college starts after the summer. Jaz has offered to manage the blackhouse.’