Something he’d buried deep in his subconscious?

You heard of people doing that. Protecting themselves from the horror of what they’d done or experienced.

The thought terrified him.

In that moment he remembered Ailsa’s necklace. The one he’d kept in the envelope with the photo of Mac. Why did he have her necklace? Had Ailsa given it to him? Or had he taken it . . .?

The clasp was broken, he remembered. How or why had it been broken?

Had he taken it from her by force or was she already dead and he’d taken it to remember her by?

He tried to find the scene in his memory and replay it, but it changed every time, like all the lies he’d been telling.

Eventually he stopped trying and reached for his wallet. Extracting Snyder’s card, he stared at it for what seemed an eternity, before he took out his mobile and called the number again.

Greg

He didn’t contact Joanne until he was halfway to Inverness. Drawing into a lay-by, he looked out over the loch it bordered and brought up her number.

It rang for a while, and he wondered if she was taking an afternoon nap as she’d been doing since the fire. She answered just as he was about to ring off.

‘Everything all right?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ She sounded sleepy. ‘What happened with Caroline?’

‘We talked. She’s worried about Finn. She knows about the pregnancy.’

‘You told her?’ Joanne’s tone had changed, as though his announcement had fully awakened her.

‘I didn’t. She asked me outright, as though she already knew. I wondered if you . . . she said there was something about you that night you went to her place that made her wonder,’ he finished lamely.

She was quiet for a while. ‘Are you coming home soon?’

He cleared the lump in his throat. ‘I’m on my way to Inverness.’

‘Why?’ she asked, her voice rising in fear.

‘I called DI Snyder. There’s something I need to talk to him about.’

‘They’ve arrested you? Was it something Richard said or did?’ She sounded frantic at such a thought.

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I asked to go in and speak to him. I remembered something about the night Ailsa went missing.’

The silence following his explanation suggested she didn’t want to ask what that something was.

‘I’ll see you later,’ he said.

‘How much later?’ she said.

‘Keep me something to eat,’ he said, trying to keep his tone light.

After the call had ended, he sat for a while, looking at the loch and the mountains that encircled it, remembering how he’d stopped here when he’d brought Joanne from the train. She’d taken photographs, so enamoured had she been by the view. He’d felt at the time that he was looking at it again through her eyes.