‘I’ve tracked down Vicki Hewitt,’ he said. ‘She’ll be on the first flight tomorrow. I’ll go out early and pick her up.’ Vicki was the crime-scene manager and had to come in from the mainland too.

‘Follow the sheep track,’ Perez said. ‘That’s the route we’ve all used.’

She saw the standing stone first. It was enormous and shaped into a point, and Willow found her attention wandering. She was thinking about the people who’d worked the monumental lump of rock and fixed it into the peat and was wondering what significance it might have had for them. She thought too that there’d been a settlement on this land more recently than the stone had been erected. Crumbled drystone dykes marked field boundaries and two higher walls formed the corner of what might once have been a house. The land had supported many more families in previous generations in Shetland.

As they got closer Willow saw the woman in the water. She was dark-haired and pale-skinned, and Willow saw what Perez meant about the body having been posed. Even if the victim had been taken ill or tripped into the water, she wouldn’t be lying like this, flat on her back, with her head pointed directly towards the stone. And she couldn’t see how it might be suicide. ‘You say there was a note?’

‘An email,’ Perez said. ‘Sent to one of her friends. Don’t bother looking for me. You won’t find me alive.’

‘You could read that as a suicide note.’

‘Except that the iPhone from which she sent it wasn’t with her. It was found on the hill close to where you left your car.’

‘So the murderer is playing games then, you think?’ Willow thought it was the time of year for games.

Perez shrugged to show that he was reluctant to speculate. She was reminded of the old Perez and wanted to snap at him, And don’t you play games with me, mister. Just give me an opinion.

James Grieve was taking photographs, completely focused on his work and apparently unaware of any tension between them. He looked up suddenly. ‘You do realize that I can’t give you any cause of death until we move the body. I could have had a good night’s sleep in my own bed and come up first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘But then you’d have been deprived of our company this evening.’ Willow thought she could have stayed in North Uist, and felt again the relief of being away from the place, where she sensed her father’s disapproval eating into her confidence from the moment of her arrival.

‘Time of death?’ Willow knew she was wasting her time, but couldn’t help asking.

James Grieve glared. ‘Tell me when she was last seen, and when her body was found, and it’ll be somewhere between the two.’

‘You can’t blame a girl for trying.’ She flashed a grin at him, never quite sure when she was pushing him too far. ‘We’ll leave Sandy here, shall we, Jimmy, and have a word with your suspects?’