This isn’t Glasgow, she reminded herself. This is Skye, where everyone knows your business and your whereabouts.

Her parents had never locked their door when going out and neither had she in past times. No one around here had locked their doors. What if a visitor arrived, cold, wet or hungry, and couldn’t get inside?

Perish the thought.

Perhaps, though, things had changed. There were more strangers about. The local population of 10,000 was now dwarfed annually by over half a million tourists. And Skye wasn’t an island any more. It had a bridge to the mainland. Plus, there was crime, although rarely major. And, unlike on Sanday, there was a police station.

All these excuses for her urban-style behaviour caused Rhona’s hand to hover two inches from the keyhole.

McNab would blow a fuse if he knew she was even contemplating leaving the door unlocked. As would Sean.

Conscience assuaged, Rhona slid in the key and turned it. Then, as recompense for her lack of faith in the people of Skye, she put the key under a nearby stone.

Jamie’s borrowed jeep was coated in a spidery film of snow, although last night’s light fall had already melted into the muddy car track.

Rhona checked her watch as she joined the main road. She had agreed to meet up with Jamie in Portree, but before that she had to face her appointment with the trauma counsellor. Despite her protestations that she had no need of such support, DI Wilson had continued to insist. ‘If you’d agreed to go to Castlebrae, this wouldn’t be necessary,’ had been Bill’s exact words.

Castlebrae was a treatment centre for police officers, injured physically or psychologically in the line of duty.

‘I’m not a police officer,’ Rhona had reminded him. ‘But I am due some time off. And I plan to spend it on Skye.’

Bill had backed off then, but Rhona had known he wouldn’t give up. And he hadn’t. She had finally agreed to a meeting with a psychiatrist, more because of Chrissy’s constant urging.

‘What harm can it do?’ her friend and forensic assistant had told her. ‘And it’ll get Bill off your back, and mine.’

So for Chrissy’s sake at least, Rhona had eventually agreed to today’s meeting.

Besides, she liked the hour-long run from Armadale to Portree, which lay roughly halfway up the east coast of the island. Most people visiting Skye for the first time had no conception of just how large the island was, and how little of the landmass was accessible by road.

When she’d shown McNab the large framed map on the sitting-room wall of the cottage, he’d been openly surprised, both by its size and the fact that it was covered with Gaelic place names.

In fact it had been that which had prompted his ‘foreign land’ remark.