‘And if they are not a member?’ Braque asked.
‘Then they are categorized as a PC guest, and there would be no record of their identity.’
‘Then let’s hope they were a member,’ Gunn said. He took a sheet of paper from an inside pocket and unfolded it on the desk in front of them. ‘Here are the IP addresses of the two computers we’re interested in. And the dates and times of use. Could you check that for us, please?’
‘Of course.’ She smiled and handed the sheet to her assistant, who was only too keen to sit down and tap at her keyboard to bring up the required information. It took her about thirty seconds.
She looked up and pulled a face of apology. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Guests on both occasions.’
Braque heard Gunn cursing under his breath. He turned towards the row of computers against the wall behind them. ‘I take it these are the computers?’
‘Not unless your user was a child,’ the librarian said.
‘I think definitely not,’ Braque told her.
‘Then it would be these computers over here.’
They followed her to the back of the library where there were fourteen numbered computer terminals lined up along desks among the Reference shelves. Walls were pinned with maps of Europe and leaflets about VAT moving online, and notices warning against eating or drinking or using mobile phones in the library.
‘They are all linked to the main server in the Council offices,’ the librarian said. ‘And there are restrictions on use. Pages that cannot be accessed online. Pornography, for example.’
Braque said, ‘Restrictions that could no doubt be worked around by someone with a little expertise in computers?’
The librarian shrugged defensively. ‘I am no expert on that. You would need to talk to our IT people.’
Gunn said, ‘Can you show me the two computer terminals that we are interested in?’ The emails to Niamh and Georgy Vetrov had been sent from the same computer at the same time nearly three weeks ago. The email to Ruairidh had been sent from a different terminal less than seven days ago.
After a consultation with her assistant, the librarian identified terminals three and twelve. Braque scanned the ceilings and seemed disappointed. ‘Are there no security cameras in the library?’ she asked.
The librarian smiled. ‘I’m afraid not, Security is not really an issue here.’
Again Braque exchanged a look with Gunn. It seemed that they were having no luck at all. Gunn scratched his head thoughtfully, disturbing his carefully gelled hair, and he cocked an eyebrow. ‘A wee thought,’ he said. Then turned to the librarian. ‘Many thanks, Ma’am.’ And he steered Braque back through the library towards the door. ‘You realize,’ he said, ‘that there were at least three folk of interest to us who were on the island when those first emails were sent.’
Braque stopped. ‘Who?’
‘Lee Blunt. Niamh’s brother, Uilleam. And Iain Maciver, the boy Ruairidh caught poaching all those years ago. He’s still living here, at least.’
‘And we know that Blunt was back on the island last week. What about William?’
Gunn shrugged. ‘That, Ma’am, remains to be seen.’ He stopped at the door. ‘And it might just be possible for us to see exactly that.’ He held the door open for her to step out into Cromwell Street and a breeze that was growing stiffer on this grey funeral morning. Lights burned in the Baltic Bookshop opposite. McNeill’s pub next door was still locked up securely. Too early yet for Stornoway’s drinkers to be out. ‘There.’ He pointed, and Braque followed his finger. Fixed to the wall, high up on the corner with Francis Street, hung a black globe in a bell-shaped hood. A CCTV multi-camera security orb that would provide a perfect view of anyone entering or leaving the library.
Braque understood the significance of it immediately. ‘Where can we access the footage?’
‘At the police station, Ma’am. It’s all held on a hard disk, as far back, certainly, as we’re going to need it.’ He smiled. ‘We do keep up with the latest technology, you know, even if we are just a wee island.’
‘We can check it now, then?’
Gunn pulled back the sleeve of his anorak to look at his watch. ‘Well, Ma’am, it’ll take a wee while to set it up. And we don’t want to be late for the funeral. And who knows who we’re going to see there, that we might not otherwise recognize on the CCTV footage. Best we go to the funeral first, and check out the footage this afternoon.’ He grinned. ‘After all, it’s not going anywhere.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Just as she had driven up the west coast yesterday afternoon in the rain, so Niamh drove down it again this morning in the rain. A light rain, finer than drizzle. A smirr. Almost a mist, blowing in off the sea.
In the middle of the night, after lying in the dark for so many sleepless hours, she had finally got up to wander through to the kitchen and make herself a cup of tea. Anything to calm her growing sense of paranoia. For the first time since she and Ruairidh had built their house out there on the cliffs, she felt unsafe in it. That, in spite of having locked every door and secured every window.
The tiniest sound, or creak, or muted gust of wind, caused a flutter in her chest. It had occurred to her sometime in the small hours that whoever had tried to kill her might be the same person who had killed Ruairidh. Though the why of it escaped her. Just trying to make some kind of sense of it all had given her a headache that the tea did nothing to alleviate.
Eventually she had gone back to bed to lie tortured and afraid, stricken still with grief for the man she was going to lay in the ground in the morning.
Sometime, not long before the arrival of daylight, she drifted off into a shallow sleep that was interrupted immediately, it felt, by the alarm she had set the night before. Just that short period of sleep, while blessed in its fleeting relief, had left her feeling worse than if she had remained awake all night.
Now she found it hard to focus on the road. The smear of rain across her windscreen in poor light forced her to blink repeatedly to stay awake. Why, she wondered, could she not have felt this sleepy the night before?
Balanish was deserted as she drove through the empty main street. Away to her right, beyond the protective arm of the peninsula that sheltered the harbour, she saw the ocean rolling in, relentless white tops crashing all along the coast.
As she parked on the road above the house where she had grown up, and stepped out into the wind and rain, she felt like a ghost revisiting a past life. Wraithlike and insubstantial as she walked down the path, past the loom shed to the back door. She almost expected that her mother would not see her when she opened it.
‘Since when does a daughter of mine have to knock on the door of her own house,’ her mother reprimanded her. And Niamh was almost relieved that she was not invisible after all.
In spite of the oil-fired central heating, and the peat fire smouldering in the hearth, the atmosphere in the house was frigid. Uilleam sat by the window at the back of the sitting room and would not even meet her eye. Her father was installed in his habitual armchair by the fire, the morning paper folded across his thighs. He glanced at her over his reading glasses, and all that Niamh could see was his embarrassment.
‘So...’ her mother said. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’
‘You know it’s Ruairidh’s funeral today.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Of course.’
‘Uilleam tells me you plan not to attend.’
Her mother glanced at her son, who turned his head to look out of the window. ‘Did he?’
‘Is that true?’ Niamh turned towards her father. ‘Dad?’
‘Your father’s not been feeling so good.’