“Quite.” I find my lips are twitching. Even my melodramatic tendencies can’t withstand the fresh air of Carrie’s blunt appraisal. I straighten up and look around. “I wonder how it got here.” Carrie looks confused. “Well, it wasn’t here yesterday, and since it’s been dead awhile, it didn’t just up and walk to our doorstep.”

“Maybe that strange cat brought it? Or another animal? A fox, or something?”

“Could be.” I think of my unease in the living room. Did I see something bringing it then? Could the cat carry something of that size? Surely it would have had to have dragged it? I can’t see any drag marks in the gravel. “Come on, let’s get you to the station on time. I’ll clear it up later; it’s not like it’s going anywhere.”

I go straight from dropping Carrie at the station to the hotel café, and get there a little after nine thirty. There’s no reason to be so early, but also nothing but a maggot-ridden dead bird waiting for me at the Manse, so the hotel café wins. I enter through the dedicated leisure center entrance this time, which takes me past the pool, where I linger for a moment. There’s a lady in her fifties with dyed blond hair piled atop her head doing head-up breaststrokes, and a pale, leanly muscular man with heavily freckled shoulders doing laps in an economical front crawl, but neither of them could be Glen.

The view from the café is just as breathtaking as before, despite it being an overcast day with early-morning fog lying in wisps at the bottom of the valley. I order a black Americano from the same waitress and read the newspaper, glancing up every time I hear footsteps. None of them belong to a man in his sixties. I can’t imagine that Glen McCue will be anything other than civil with me, but I still can’t seem to get through a whole article. By ten minutes to ten I’ve given up on reading and am trying my hand at the cryptic crossword instead, but I can’t concentrate on that, either. My bladder is also feeling the effects of the large coffee, but I don’t want to go to the bathroom in case I miss him.

At five past ten, a man enters who falls into the right age category. He scans the room then nods sharply at me and heads unsmiling directly toward my table. I stand up to greet him, and have a few seconds to study him before he’s upon me. Not as tall as Jamie but built just like both of his children, wiry and compact. I hold out my hand. “Mr. McCue?”