‘Why did he kill his sheep?’

‘One morning, back in January, while Jimmy was up on Tòrr Dìseart, he saw Robert with his flock in the nearby croftland. Saw him crouch down behind the eastern cemetery wall for a few minutes before taking off on his ATV. Jimmy didn’t think anything of it till he was walking back a few hours later and found a ewe in that exact place, with what looked like a deep knife wound to her belly. When he realised there was nothing he could do for her, he found me and Kenny. But when we went back up there, she’d disappeared.’

Charlie closes his eyes. ‘Robert … he had all these … interests. Obsessions really. Norse mythology mostly. I don’t know if he believed in all of it, deep down, but … he was a man who needed to feel in control because he never did. He needed his superstitions, his rituals. His talismans. It was Mary who told me about the vándr-varði. She was worried about him. He’d had some kind of breakdown in Aberdeen. But we didn’t listen to her either. Not really.’

‘He told you about the storm in ’77, that he thought he’d killed all those fishermen.’ I try and fail to keep the anger out of my voice. All the lies Charlie has told me while dangling tiny crumbs of truth over my head. ‘I saw the lighthouse, Charlie.’

He gives me a look then, desperate, as if needing me to understand something I can’t. Or won’t.

‘People are complicated, Maggie. I know you know that. I think that as a boy he believed he’d killed those men because he thought that his mother believed it. Maybe she was afraid of what might happen to them if their friends and neighbours heard his wild claims, because the only way people get through these kinds of tragedies is if they stick together, help each other. Or maybe she was just mad with grief. I don’t know. But whatever the reason, I think it was why Andrew invented a thin place full of gods and ghosts where it could be true. Where you could fire wee rocks at a one-hundred-foot-high lighthouse and have it break – just because you wanted it to.’ He sighs. ‘But she died when he was eighteen, and maybe then he felt like he could finally be free. He left. He found a wife who loved him. A life. A future. Robert suffocated Andrew.’

‘You think that he murdered a little boy because he hated himself? Because he believed in gods and ghosts and thin places?’ But I can’t summon much outrage, because I know exactly what hating yourself feels like. A thick and impermeable skin you can’t ever fight your way out of; endless vicious circles you can’t think your way free of.

Charlie nods. ‘He told me that’s what happened. I think that when Robert revealed his real name, his real history, he brought Andrew back.’ His gaze is suddenly calm, unblinking. ‘And I didn’t do anything. I was the only one who knew about him. I saw Robert get worse, and I didn’t do anything. So when Lorne died, I wanted to do something.’