Contents ( 57)
- 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
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by Sharon Gosling
Tired of his own reflection, he went out instead, taking his satchel with him as if he were on any other assignment.
Outside, dawn was coming on, despite the heaviness of the sky. The air smelled wet. It was not raining, although it had been recently. He brushed against bushes overhanging the path and felt the spray from their leaves on his cheeks.
The cottage Toby had rented was at the western end of Newton Dunbar’s main street. In fact, the place was small enough that the main street was the only street, aside from a few short spurs that led off into fields or were cut off by the river that ran the length of the valley in which the village had been built. Newton Dunbar nestled in the northern foothills of the Cairngorms, between bens that rose in staggered drifts into the distance on either side of the small collection of houses and shops. The road continued along the banks of the River Dun, which coiled around the village. If Toby got into his car and drove west, he would eventually end up in Grantown-on-Spey. If he drove east and crossed the bridge over the river, within ten miles he’d meet Great Dunbar, Newton Dunbar’s larger and far more cosmopolitan cousin, and from where it was possible to join the A944 and then the A96 into Aberdeen.
Newton Dunbar was a tiny place, hidden away, unknown and largely without note. Except of course for the fact that it had a lighthouse that was not a lighthouse at all. The tower was at the east end of the village, behind a short row of cottages and a small, square gatehouse that edged the base of the hill on which it stood. In the typical ostentation of the Victorian period, Toby had read that it had been built as the library for Braecoille, the grand mansion house that had once stood master of this valley but that had long since crumbled into ruins now hidden by the forest that spread beyond the hill. He could imagine why the master of a once-grand estate would choose to build a lookout in that spot – from the top of the tower it must be possible to see the whole of the village and the valley in one direction and, on a clear day, the distant conglomeration of Great Dunbar in the other.
Toby walked with slow determination, aiming not for the tower built by the unfortunate James MacDonald but for the forest on the other side of the hill on which it stood. By the time his stuttering gait had reached the first tangled bank of trees there was just enough natural light to see gradients in the blue-black shadows beneath them. A waist-high wooden fence blocked the way and Toby recalled McCreedy’s declaration that she owned the woods. Well, she wasn’t here now. Toby swung his satchel from his shoulder and dropped it on the other side of the fence before following, cursing his leg as it refused to act how he wanted, cursing again at the inevitable pain.