Moments later Rhona found herself in a pleasant room with an equally pleasing view of the surrounding woodland.

‘Welcome to The Shelter,’ he said as he offered her a seat.

‘I know what Am Fasgadh means,’ Rhona heard herself answer testily.

‘Ah.’ Her belligerent tone had seemingly left him unmarked. ‘So you have the Gaelic?’

And that smile again.

‘A smattering,’ Rhona said, as annoyed by her own behaviour as Dr Bailey’s irritatingly kind manner. Gathering herself, she settled back in the chair, at the same time wondering just how much Dr Bailey had been told about her experiences during the sin-eater case. Whatever it was he knew, Rhona had no intention of expanding on it.

She’d turned up here, as requested. No, ordered. That was enough.

Rhona now began her evaluation of Dr Bailey.

He was Irish, by the accent. Probably Dublin, because he sounded a little like Sean, although that was where the likeness ended. No black hair, no blue eyes and probably no saxophone.

‘Where are you from?’ she said, keen to be first in the conversation.

‘Dublin,’ he confirmed.

‘My adopted parents were from Skye, but I’ve spent more time in Glasgow than on the island. Are you based here?’ she asked, before he could get in with a question of his own.

‘Inverness. I do a surgery in Portree once a week.’

‘So you’re kept busy?’

He nodded, beginning to look a little put out by her string of enquiries.

‘So,’ Rhona said, ‘why am I taking up your obviously valuable time?’

‘You tell me,’ he offered.

‘Because I refused to follow procedure and go to Castlebrae. I preferred a holiday here on Skye instead.’

‘So your stay here is a holiday?’

‘Yes,’ Rhona said with certainty.

‘I understood from DI Wilson that you’d recently had a traumatic experience.’

‘I process and analyse violent death for a living, Dr Bailey. Some would say that every day could be considered traumatic.’ She waited, wondering where that remark would take him. Eventually she learned.

‘But you’re not often a victim yourself.’

Rhona took her gaze to the window and thought herself outside again, with the air blowing in her face. With the smell of the sea. With a view of the Cuillin.

‘I am not a victim. A young man and a young woman died on the case I’m assuming you’re referring to. I did not. I’m a survivor and the only reason I’m here now is because I was given no choice.’

‘I see.’

Rhona followed his quick glance at the clock above the door. She suspected he was registering how little had been achieved in the last fifteen minutes.

‘I have to meet someone. So if we’re finished here,’ she said, rising.

Rhona thought by his surprised expression that Dr Bailey might dispute this, but wisely he did not.

‘Same time next week, Dr MacLeod?’ he offered instead.