She reached over to turn out the light and was asleep almost before she had extinguished it.
She had no idea what time it was when she awoke. The bedside clock was flashing from some power blip that must have happened while she and Ruairidh were away. But she knew that something had wakened her. A sound, perhaps. Or a vibration. Something she had felt more than heard.
She sat bolt upright, sleep banished in a moment. And listened. Intently. There it was again. A sound, or a sensation, like a door closing, as if someone out there were moving around the house. But softly, secretly.
Niamh slipped from the bed, pulling on a black silk dressing gown embroidered with dragons and tying it tightly around herself. She eased open the bedroom door and saw moonlight falling in through the Velux windows in the roof, casting its silver light into the living room. She glanced at Seonag’s door. It was firmly shut. She listened for a moment outside it, but could hear nothing from within. She drifted quickly down the hall, then, and into the living space illuminated by those vast windows that gave on to the Minch. Out on the water she saw burnished moonlight reflected on its surface, like silver poured from the moon.
She went into her office. By the light of the screensaver that animated her computer screen, she cast eyes over the litter of papers strewn across her desktop. Had something been moved? Or was that just her imagination. She couldn’t remember exactly how she had left things.
Then the faintest dull thud came again from somewhere towards the front of the house. She ran back through the living room and into the hall. Nothing. Seonag’s door was still shut.
Niamh returned cautiously to her bedroom, turning on all the lights to be certain that there was no one there. The bathroom, too, was empty. She hurried back to the bedroom and lowered the blinds she normally left raised, and turned the snib on the bedroom door to lock herself in.
When the lights were out she slipped back into bed. But it felt cold now, and sleep a long way away. She lay for the longest time, staring at the ceiling, listening intently. But she heard no other sound than the faintest howl of the wind as it rose from the west, and sometime not long before dawn she slipped away into a troubled unconsciousness.
It was the smell of food cooking that awoke her next. Still she had no idea of the time, but it was daylight now and she padded out in her dressing gown to the kitchen where she found Seonag frying up the bacon and eggs she had brought with her the night before.
She was fully dressed and made up, and glanced towards Niamh as she came in. ‘Thought you might like some breakfast before I head off.’
Niamh’s head was still thick with sleep, and she was confused. ‘Where are you going? What time is it?’
‘It’s after nine, Niamh, and I’m already late. Monday morning. I’ve got to go and open up the office.’
Niamh slumped into one of the breakfast stools and dropped her head into her hands, wiping her eyes and trying to clear her thoughts. She looked up. ‘Were you up and about during the night?’
Seonag shook her head. ‘No, I was out like a light. Wouldn’t have wakened up either if I hadn’t set my alarm.’ She paused. ‘Why?’
But Niamh just shrugged. ‘Nothing. Thought I heard someone, that’s all.’
Seonag slipped a plate on to the breakfast bar in front of her. Two eggs, yolks winking at her and turning her stomach. Several rashers of overcooked bacon. She would wait until Seonag had gone before sliding them into the bin. ‘There’s coffee made,’ Seonag said, and she lifted her overnight bag off the counter top. ‘Is there anything you’d like me to tell Ruairidh’s folks?’
Niamh shook her head. ‘No. As soon as I feel fit to face the world I’ll drive down and see them myself. Donald will have told them to expect me this morning.’
Seonag nodded, stooped to give Niamh a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘Maybe see you later, then.’ But she didn’t leave, and Niamh looked up to find her standing there watching her, eyebrows drawn together in concern. ‘Are you going to be alright?’
Niamh said, ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Well, if you need me. Any time, day or night. Call.’ She implored Niamh with her eyes. ‘Please.’
Niamh nodded acknowledgment.
After Seonag had gone she let her head drop and pictured the scene that lay ahead when she went to see Ruairidh’s parents. And she wondered how she would ever muster the courage to face them.
Chapter Eighteen
It was one of those sticky sultry Paris days that seemed always to announce the imminent arrival of autumn. Low cloud bubbled across the sky and everyone carried an umbrella. If it felt like it was going to rain, then it probably would.
Braque was slick already with perspiration. She wore a T-shirt out over her jeans, black so that the dark patches under her arms would not show. Her hair was sticking to her forehead, and she brushed it back and out of her eyes as she hurried up the stairs to the offices of the brigade criminelle, known more popularly as La Crim’.
Capitaine Georges Faubert was in a foul mood. He was always in a foul mood. Ever since he had been banned from smoking in his own office. He resented the three or four cigarette breaks he allowed himself daily, standing outside in the rear courtyard in all weathers with other ranks. The camaraderie of the smoker had passed him by. It would have reduced him in importance somehow, and so he always stood aloof and alone.
Braque smelled fresh smoke on his breath when she entered his office, so perhaps, she hoped, he might not be too ill-disposed towards her tardy arrival. She was wrong.
He had some kind of psoriasis on his scalp and forehead, and when he scratched it to relieve the itching, which he did often and vigorously, he shed a snowstorm of skin on to his desk. It seemed that he was particularly troubled by it this morning, and so on a scale of one to ten his bad temper ranked around eight.
‘You’re late, Braque!’
‘Yes, boss.’ She really didn’t want to go into explanations, but mere acknowledgment seemed insufficient. ‘My friend who normally takes the girls to school called off at the last minute, and I had to take them myself. The thing is...’
He cut her off. ‘No one’s interested in the details of your domestic dramas, Lieutenant. The only thing that matters here is whether or not you’re up to the job. And there are several voices of concern being raised on that count.’
Braque felt her face redden.
‘If you’d got here when you were supposed to, then you wouldn’t have put yourself under pressure to get out to the airport on time.’ He rubbed his face with the flats of his hands, and more skin flaked off to join the drifts of it on his desk. His eyes were red-rimmed and crusted with conjunctivitis when he turned them back on her.
Braque was at a loss. ‘Where am I going?’
‘A flight to London, with onward connections to Glasgow and then Stornoway. You know where that is?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Well, you’d better get yourself some clarity. Stornoway is the main town on the Isle of Lewis, where the Macfarlane woman comes from. In fact, the only town.’
‘Yes, I knew that, sir. Just not where it is, exactly.’
Faubert shook the skin off a map lying on his desk, unfolding it to turn towards her. He stabbed a nicotine-stained finger at a long archipelago off the north-west coast of the British Isles. ‘Some God-forsaken place on the edge of the bloody world.’
‘And I would be going there why?’