“Each of the women had her own pattern, you know. Usually handed down from mother to daughter. So distinctive that when a man’s body was pulled from the sea, decayed beyond recognition, he could almost always be identified from the knitted pattern of his pullover. As good as a fingerprint, it was.”

She waved at the old man and his dog to whom Fin had spoken earlier, and the Mercedes nearly went into a ditch. But Morag seemed oblivious.

“There’s an old retired priest on the island who’s a bit of a historian.” She laughed. “Nothing much else for a celibate man to do on a long winter’s night.” She swung a mischievous smile Fin’s way. “Anyway, he’s a bit of an expert on the knitted patterns of old Eriskay. Has a collection of photographs and drawings, I’ve heard. Goes back a hundred years and more, they say.”

As they reached the top of the hill she glanced curiously across at her passenger. “You don’t say much, Mr. Macleod.”

And Fin thought it would have been difficult to get a word in edgeways. But all he said was, “I’ve enjoyed hearing your stories, Morag.”

After a moment she said, “What’s your interest in the folk who lived at the O’Henley croft?”

“It’s not really the O’Henley woman herself that I’m interested in, Morag. I’m trying to trace the roots of an old man now living on Lewis. I think he might have come from Eriskay.”

“Well, maybe I know him. What’s his name?”

“Oh, it’s not a name you would know. He calls himself Tormod Macdonald now. But that’s not his real name.”

“Then what is?”

“That’s what I don’t know.”

The rain started as Fin drove north from Ludagh, sweeping across the machair from the open sea to the west. Big fat drops that came first in ones and twos, before reinforcements arrived and compelled him to put his wipers on at double speed. He turned off at Daliburgh on to the Lochboisdale road, his mind filled still with the thought that Morag’s story of Eriskay knitting patterns was perhaps his last chance to track down the true identity of Marsaili’s father. A very, very long shot indeed.

The Lochboisdale Hotel sat on the hill above the harbour, in the lee of Ben Kenneth. It was an old, traditional, whitewashed building with modern extensions, and a dining lounge with a view out over the bay. At a dark reception desk in the lobby, a girl in a tartan skirt gave him keys to a single room, and confirmed that they did, indeed, have a fax machine. Fin noted the number and climbed the staircase to his room.