‘What on earth is going on?’ Dora asked, fractious.

‘Ms McCreedy,’ her assistant wheezed, reaching them. ‘The press… There are stories – there are stories in the press—’

‘What?’ McCreedy demanded. ‘Spit it out, girl, for goodness’ sake!’

Rachel took the Herald from beneath her arm and shook it out, letting the front page unfurl in front of McCreedy’s eyes so that she could see the headline.

‘I think she means this, Dora,’ Rachel said quietly, and saw the woman’s eyes widen. ‘It’s in the nationals, too. All of them. It’ll be all over the Internet as well.’

The colour bled from McCreedy’s face as she reached out to snatch the paper. The men she’d been showing her fabled site were already leaving, every one of them hurrying down the hill and away.

‘Wait,’ she called after them. ‘This is all a misunderstanding. Let me explain. Wait!’

None of them paused, or even looked back at her.

‘Shall I call Trudy Goodwin now?’ Rachel asked, into the dawn hush. ‘See what she thinks about all this?’

Dora stared at her.

‘If you don’t leave, right now, I’ll call the police,’ Rachel said. ‘I can’t imagine that’ll go too well for you at the moment, will it? Go, Dora. You don’t have any power here. You don’t have any power anywhere, not anymore. The next time I hear about you, it’ll be reading about how long you’re going away for. You’re finished. Leave.’

Forty-Two

Once Rachel had gone, Toby went back to the kitchen and stood staring out of the window into the garden until his tea was cold. He imagined what Sylvie would say about the latest mess he’d made of his life, and decided that was a thought he could do without having in his head. It was time for him to get back to work, because if nothing else, he had proven that he still had something to offer in that department, and besides, what else was he going to do?

His phone rang and when he pulled it from his pocket, he didn’t recognize the number. He frowned at the screen for a moment, wondering if it was another paper following up on the Dora McCreedy story. He was in no fit mood to talk to anyone, but he answered anyway.

‘Hello?’

‘Mr Hollingwood?’

The voice was young, female and Scottish. Toby didn’t recognize it. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s Stephanie. Stephanie Warren. From the Great Dunbar Historical Society?’

‘Oh,’ he said, and thought he could feel her sudden awkwardness across the phone line. ‘Stephanie. Yes.’

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ she said in a rush, ‘but it’s about the Braecoille papers.’

‘Right,’ Toby said, rubbing one hand over his eyes. ‘Well, look, that’s not really—’

‘I kind of carried on looking through them, you see,’ she went on, and he could hear the nerves in her voice. ‘I found them so fascinating that day that you came over and, well – once I started I didn’t want to stop. The very idea that I’m looking at something so old, that someone actually handled – and yes, it might be mundane, but it was part of someone’s day, like me unlocking the door to this place or filling in the visitor log, or—’