He left her sitting in the kitchen and walked out of the main gate and down towards the voe, imagining a ten-year-old child escaping down this path many years before. This was a precious child conceived in middle age. Spoilt perhaps, doted on, used to getting her own way. The nursemaid would have had problems containing her. Lizzie must have played here before surely, and she would know the shore and the tides. This wasn’t a stranger from the south come to visit relatives in the big house. But if the fog came down suddenly, as it could in the islands, it wasn’t impossible that she lost all sense of direction. Even if the nursemaid followed her down to the beach and shouted for her, sound could be distorted by the mist. Then voices seemed to swirl in all directions, just like the fog itself. It wasn’t the death of the girl that had sparked questions in Perez’s mind, though, but the condition in which she’d been found. She was lying on her back with her hands by her side and she seemed quite perfect. Almost posed, he thought. Just like Eleanor. And a body that had been in the water, even for one night, wouldn’t look like that. Sea creatures would have nibbled at it; she’d be bloated and covered in weed and sand. Of course it could just be a story. Like the story of the ghost. The idea of a perfect body might have been a fiction created to provide comfort for the grieving parents. Besides, he wasn’t here to solve a case that was nearly a hundred years old.

He walked back to the house and found himself sitting in his car. Here he paused for a moment. He should find Willow and tell her what he was doing. She’d be angry if he just drove off without telling her what was in his mind. That would be bad manners. But he started the car anyway and drove up the single-track road to Meoness. Outside George Malcolmson’s croft he paused again and thought that he was being distracted and should concentrate on the present investigation. Then he opened the car door and went to the house. Grusche was in the kitchen ironing. In the laundry basket were clothes that obviously belonged to her son and daughter-in-law.

‘Are you looking for Lowrie and Caroline, Jimmy? They’re away south to Vidlin. They’ve put in an offer on a house there and want to measure up some of the rooms.’ Her eyes were shining.

‘So they’re coming home?’

‘Isn’t it exciting? I couldn’t let myself believe that they might come back here.’

‘It was George I was after.’