Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
“When they had gone, I ran down the beach to where Johnny was kneeling over Peter’s body. The tide was breaking all around them. Blood on the sand, foam still pink. And I knew then what an animal sounds like when it mourns for the dead. Johnny was inconsolable. I have never seen a grown man so distressed. Wouldn’t even let me touch him. I told him I would go for help, and he was on his feet in a moment, grabbing me by the shoulders. I was scared.” She glanced at Tormod. “It wasn’t Johnny’s face I saw looking into mine. He was possessed. Almost unrecognisable. He wanted me to swear on my soul that I would never breathe a word of this to anyone. I couldn’t understand. These boys had just murdered his brother. I was almost hysterical. But he shook me hard, and slapped my face and said they’d made it clear that if he ever told what happened here they would come back for me.”
She turned towards Fin and Marsaili.
“That’s why he was going to do what they said. They’d told him to get rid of the body himself and never breathe a word of it to another living soul. Or they would kill me.” She opened her palms in front of her in pure frustration. “Right then I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted him to go to the police. But he point-blank refused. He said he would bury Peter himself where no one would ever find him, and then there was something he had to do. He wouldn’t say what. Just that he owed it to his mother for letting her down.”
Fin looked across the ruin to where old Tormod had gone and sat on the remains of the front wall, staring vacantly out across Charlie’s beach as the sun slipped, finally, from view, and the first stars began to emerge in a dusk-blue sky. He wondered if Ceit’s words, so vividly recreating the events of that night, had penetrated his consciousness in any way. Or whether simply being here, all these years later, would in itself stir some distant memory. But he realized it was something they would almost certainly never know.
Thirty-eight
Thirty-eight
It is so hard to remember things. I know they are there. And sometimes I can feel them, but I can’t see them or reach them. I’m so tired. Tired of all this travelling, and all this talk that I can’t follow. I thought they were taking me home.
This is a nice beach, though. Not like those beaches on Harris. But nice. A gentle crescent of silver.