‘Come along in out of the cold,’ he’d said. ‘You must be frozen. Grusche says I’m to take you back to Voxter. She has some soup on the stove for all of you. She’ll let the others know, and you can have some supper with us before you go back to Sletts.’

But when they’d arrived back at Voxter there was no sign of the others. There was just Grusche in the kitchen wearing a strange white nightdress, with a hand-knitted shawl tied around her shoulders. And George disappeared, saying something about needing to get to his bed. And suddenly Grusche was standing behind her, muttering about Eleanor and Lowrie, and the arms that had gained their strength through lifting sheep and kneading dough were holding her as if she were in a vice, and Polly began to scream and at last everything went black.

She regained consciousness briefly and thought she saw a figure at the window. Perhaps it was Peerie Lizzie coming to fetch her into the water. But when the door opened, it wasn’t Lizzie standing inside, but the detective with the wild black hair. Polly had thought that sometimes he looked haunted too.

He walked up to Grusche and his voice was gentle, as if he was talking to a child. ‘This won’t do now, will it? You don’t really want to hurt Polly. What has she ever done to you?’

Polly felt the grip on her neck relax a little.

Then an inside door was opened. George stood there. ‘Woman, let that lass go!’ His voice was as clear as a foghorn and roused Polly completely. Grusche turned to face him. Polly felt the movement of Grusche’s body against her shoulders and again a slight release of tension.

‘It was for Lowrie,’ Grusche said.

‘Was it?’ This was the detective again. ‘You’ve always been honest. That class you did with Fran. The final assessment. She said your art was uncompromising, truthful. Didn’t she?’ He paused briefly and when he spoke again his voice was easy, conversational. ‘So let’s be honest now, shall we? This was about you. About not wanting to end up a lonely woman. Needing Lowrie and Caroline for company and conversation. I know about loneliness. I can understand that. But it has to end here.’ He held out his hand. There was a moment of hesitation, a sudden tightening of the hold on Polly’s neck, then Grusche reached out, twisted her wrist so that the handle was facing the detective and dropped the knife into his palm. Polly saw that his skin was dark, as if he’d been in the sun, and his hand was bony like Marcus’s.