I stand looking at some long, flat gravestones set into the ground with crude depictions of skeletons chiselled into them; other carvings are of skulls and scythes and hourglasses and crossed bones. Most of the horizontal stones are covered in grey, black and light green lichens and mosses.
There are a couple of family plots, where more affluent locals have walled off bits of the little island, and grander gravestones of marble and granite stand proud, if they're not covered by brambles. Some of the more recent graves still have wee cellophane parcels of flowers lying on them; many have small granite flowerpots, covered by perforated metal caps that make them look like giant pepperpots, and a couple of these have dead, faded flowers in them.
The walls of the ruined chapel barely come up to shoulder-height. At one end, beneath a gable wall with an aperture like a small window at the apex where a bell might have hung once, there is a stone altar; just three heavy slabs. On the altar there's a metal bell, green-black with age and chained to the wall behind. It looks rather like a very old Swiss cow-bell.
"Apparently some people nicked the old bell, back in the "sixties," William told us last night, in the drawing room of his parents" house, while we were playing cards and drinking whisky and talking about heading down the loch in the speedboat to the dark isle. "Oxford students, or something; anyway, according to the locals the guys couldn't sleep at night because they kept hearing the sound of bells, and eventually they couldn't stand it and came back and replaced the bell in the chapel and they were all right again."
"What a load of old nonsense," Yvonne said. "Two."
"Two," William said. "Yes, probably."
"Oh, I don't know," Andy said, shaking his head. "Sounds pretty spooky to me. One, please. Thanks."
"Sounds like fucking tinnitus to me," I said. "Three. Ta."
"Dealer takes two," William said. He whistled. "Oh, baby; look at these cards…"
I take the old bell up and let it ring once; a flat, hollow, appropriately funereal sound. I set it carefully back down on the stone altar and look round the walled oblong of hill, mountain, loch and cloud.
Silence: no birds, no wind in the trees, nobody talking. I turn slowly, right round, watching the clouds. I think this is the most peaceful place I have ever been.
I walk out, among the cold, carved little stones, to find Yvonne standing glaring at a tall gravestone. Euphemia McTeish, born 18 03, died 1822, and her five children. Died in childbirth. Her husband died twenty years later.
Andy strolls up, drinking from his flask, grinning and shaking his head. He nods up to where William is standing on the wall of the chapel, looking down the loch with a pair of small binoculars. "Wanted to build a house here," Andy says. He shakes his head.
"What?" Yvonne says.
"Here?" I say. "On a graveyard? Is he mad? Hasn't he read Stephen King?"
Yvonne looks coldly at her distant husband. "He was talking about building a house up here, but I didn't know it was… here." She looks away.
"Tried to persuade the local authority with a really good deal on a bunch of computers," Andy says, chuckling. "But they wouldn't play. For the moment he's had to settle for being allowed to get buried here."
Yvonne draws herself up. "Which might happen sooner than he's expecting," she says, and marches off towards the chapel, where William is staring down into the building's interior and shaking his head.
Hard rain on a soft day; it falls from the leaden overcast, continual and drenching, creating a huge rustling in all the grass, bushes and trees around us.
William's body is laid to rest in the thick peaty soil of the dark isle. According to the pathologist's report, he was clubbed unconscious and then suffocated.
Yvonne, beautiful and pale in slim black, her face veiled, nods to the mourners and their few soft words, and murmurs something of her own. The rain drums on my umbrella. She glances at me, catching my gaze for the first time since I got here. I barely made it in time; I had a hospital appointment for this morning — yet more tests — and had to drive hard across country, towards Rannoch and the west. But I got here, got to the Sorrells" home, met William's father and brother, and saw Yvonne briefly but did not get a chance to talk to her before it was time for us all to set off for the circuitous drive round the mountains and down to the far end of the loch, and the hotel there, and the drive up the track to the slipway facing Eilean Dubh and the two little boats that shuttled us across, the last one bringing the coffin.
The minister keeps the service short because of the rain, and then it's over and we're queuing at the slip while the little rowing boats ferry us four at a time back to the mainland, and Yvonne's standing on those old, smooth stones of the slanted pier, receiving the condolences of the other guests. I just stand there, watching her. We all look slightly ridiculous because as well as our formal black clothes all of us sport Wellington boots — some black, most green — to deal with the mud-slicked grass of the island. Somehow Yvonne looks dignified and attractive even in those. Though of course maybe that's just me.
It's been a funny few days; getting back to work, trying to pick up the threads there, having a long soul-to-soul with a very sympathetic Eddie, getting embarrassing slaps on the back and we-were-rooting-for-yous from colleagues and finding that Frank had run out of amusing Scottish place-name spell-checks for me. I've been staying with Al and his wife in Leith while the police stake out my flat, but there's been no sign of Andy.
Meanwhile I've been to the doc, and been sent for various tests at the Royal Infirmary. Nobody's mentioned the C-word yet but I feel suddenly vulnerable and mortal and even old. I've given up smoking. (Well, Al and I had a pipe or two of dope the other night, just for old time's sake, but there was no tobacco involved.)
Anyway, I'm still coughing a lot and I get a sick feeling now and again, but there's been no more blood since that afternoon we found William.
I shake Yvonne's hand as I wait for my return trip in the wee rowing boat. The fine black tracery of her veil, scattered with tiny black gathered specks, makes her look at once mysteriously distant and rawly seductive, rain or no rain, wellies or no wellies.
Through the trees on the mainland, I can see and hear the cars reversing and manoeuvring and bumping away back down the track to the village and the hotel. The tradition is that Yvonne, as the widow, is last onto the last boat; sort of like a captain and a sinking ship, I guess.
"You all right?" she asks me, eyes narrowed, her sharp, evaluating gaze flitting over my face.
"Surviving. And you?"
"The same," she says. She looks cold again, and small. I want so much to take her in my arms and hug her. I feel tears prick behind my eyes. "I'm selling the house," she tells me, looking briefly down, long black lashes flickering. "The company's opening a Euro office in Frankfurt; I'm going to be part of the team."
"Ah." I nod, not sure what to say.
"I'll drop you a line with my new address, once I'm settled."
"Right; good, okay." I nod. There's a splashing, swirling sound behind me, and a soft, hollow bumping noise. "Well," I say, "any time you're in Edinburgh…"
She shakes her head and looks away, then smiles gallantly for me and tips her head, indicating. "That's your boat, Cameron."