Dragging her to the car, he shoved her into the passenger seat. Seconds later they were bumping their way down the dirt track, the smoke funnelling towards them through the glen. The wind had turned, she realized, and brought the fire with it.

Greg

His earlier fears had been well-founded. He knew these hills and glens, just as he knew the winds that visited them.

The westerlies were warm and often rain-filled, different from the snell blasts that occasionally came from the north and east. The westing wind had gone, a cooler east wind replacing it, changing the fire’s course, driving it towards the green lochan, carrying showers of sparks across to ignite the ancient pines on the other side.

They’d been working in teams of beaters. Identifying breakouts and beating them to death, or that was how he saw it.

His group consisted of Josh, Finn, Fergus, their driver on the truck and himself. Finn had joined them as soon as the police had let him go. He was back to his subdued self. Nothing like how Joanne had described him when he’d deposited her back at Beanach.

As for Josh, he too had changed from the Mr Angry of the village hall, perhaps concentrating all his fury on the fire. Greg had even taken him back for food at Beanach earlier in the proceedings, when they’d believed the blaze to be under control.

How wrong they’d been about that.

You could dig firebreaks, blast water, even drop it from above, but you couldn’t control moving air and the oxygen it pumped into keeping a wildfire alive and kicking.

Even now, should they manage to put it out on the surface, it had already set the underlying peat alight. They could smell the powerful scent of it smouldering as they worked.

The peat would burn on, likely for months. Huge holes would have to be excavated and water pumped into them to put it out. Even then, it might reignite, until autumn rain or a clothing of winter snow suffocated it at last.

He paused for a moment, wiping away the sweat from his dripping brow, thinking what a strange team they made. Three men who’d all been accused of being involved in the death of Ailsa Cummings. Perhaps not guilty, but not wholly innocent either.

Josh had pursued her and got what he wanted when it had suited Ailsa. Finn had watched from afar, coveting her, but had been spurned, or so it seemed.

As for himself? He’d believed himself immune at least for a while, but his fall from grace had been the worst one of all.

At this point in his thoughts, a shout from Fergus urged them together.

‘The fire’s jumped An Lochan Uaine. Orders are we’re to head for Ard Choille.’

‘It’s got as far as the house?’ Greg said.