She stood up and realized she had not changed out of her wet clothes. They were now nearly dry. But she decided to change them anyway, divesting herself of damp jeans and T-shirt, and slipping into the shower to wash away the salt and sand carried on the wind at Dalmore. It wasn’t until she was dressed, and drying her hair by the window, that she remembered the CCTV video footage waiting to be viewed at the police station. Gunn had said he would pick her up in half an hour, but that was hours ago.
She glanced from the window across the choppy waters of the inner harbour, boats rising and falling on a heavy swell, rolling in the wind that blew down the hill from the castle. Rain hammered against the window, and the sky was black as night. One of those equinoctial storms that the Atlantic threw at the island this time every year. Brutal and unforgiving. Shrugged off by islanders who were used to it by now. Had seen it all before. And tomorrow, in all likelihood, the sun would be out, shining on wet streets and houses, as if they had just been painted and everything was brand-new again.
Braque felt her jacket, which was draped over the back of a chair. Still damp. Her hair still wet from the shower. So what the hell? She decided just to make a dash for the police station. It wasn’t that far.
In the event, it was much further than she remembered. Especially in the rain. And by the time she had run breathlessly up Church Street from the harbour, and ducked into the warmth and shelter of reception at the police station, she was soaked to the skin once again. She shook the rain from her jacket, to the amusement of the duty officer, and swept rat’s tails of hair out of her face. ‘Better indoors on a day like this, Ma’am,’ he said.
She took out her ID to show him. ‘Lieutenant Sylvie Braque of the Police Judiciaire in Paris. I’ve been working with Detective Sergeant Gunn.’
‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘George was trying to call you earlier.’ And she remembered the phone in her room ringing twice while she was talking to someone on her mobile about booking flights. By the time she got off the phone she had forgotten. Gilles would have called her mobile. ‘I believe he left a message.’
She took her phone from her pocket and saw that there was indeed a message. She replayed it and heard Gunn’s voice. ‘Sorry to mess you about Ma’am. I’ve been trying to reach you. I’m afraid I’ve been called away to an unexplained death down at Uig. More than likely a suicide, but it’s a three-hour round trip, and I’ll probably not have a signal for most of that time. I’ve left a terminal set up for you in the interview room. Any of the duty officers will show you how to use it. I’ll see you when I get back.’
She looked up from her screen and the duty officer smiled. ‘This way, Ma’am.’
He took her upstairs to an interview room at the back of the building. A computer with an external disk drive attached, a keyboard and a mouse sat on a plain white table with a single chair drawn up to it.
‘It’s quite simple, Ma’am.’ And the duty officer showed her how to scroll back and forth through the CCTV video using the time-code as her guide. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
For all her training, Braque had never been comfortable with computers. Her girls were more adept with a keyboard and a touch screen. It took her a while to master the scrolling process, and then she found herself absorbed by the images. The familiar frontage of the library, and Bayhead stretching away beyond it. People passing below, oblivious of the eye in the sky watching them from the corner. Stopping, chatting. In and out of shops. In and out of the library. The images were poor if the weather was bad, amazingly sharp in sunshine.
She went first to the earlier date, when the emails had been sent to Niamh and Georgy Vetrov. Then scrolled as quickly through the hours as she could until the time, mid-afternoon, when they had been fired off into the ether from computer terminal three in the library. User unknown. A guest. How far back, she wondered, should she go before the time of their sending? But it was possible the sender could have spent some time at the computer first. She could waste an hour or more if she wound back too far watching for someone going in. So she set the time code to the exact hour and minute, and started the video running at normal speed, banking on the sender leaving immediately after they had finished.
It was a bright, blustery day. She saw coats flapping in the wind. People hanging on to their hats. But bright sunlight slanted down across the street, and although shadows were deep, detail was sharp. Traffic in and out of the library was light. A clutch of giggling schoolgirls in uniform pushing inside. Two elderly ladies emerging with books under their arms, then standing talking for what seemed like an eternity. A young man stopping to exchange a few words with them before hurrying on. And then a familiar figure pushing between them to exit the library and turn right towards the harbour.
Braque nearly jumped out of her seat. She fumbled with clumsy fingers to stop the video. Then rewound it to the point of exit, and managed finally to slow it right down. She had only caught the merest glimpse of the face, but now she held it in a still shot, and had no doubt who it was.
She spooled backwards, then, at speed, knowing who she was looking for, watching carefully as Charlie Chaplin figures retraced their footsteps at a ridiculous tempo up and down the street. Then, suddenly, there it was again, and Braque slowed right down to get a much clearer shot of that familiar face as it came down the street. Past Argos and the Fast Food Chinese Takeaway, to turn into the library and disappear from view.
She sat back breathing hard, sweating now and uncomfortable in her wet clothes. This was not, she knew, proof of anything. That would only come if she could tie the same person to the same time and place for the sending of the second email. The one received by Ruairidh on the RER on the day of his murder. See you in hell.
She entered date and time into the computer, advancing the video nearly three weeks to the afternoon of the previous Thursday, and then scrolling through to the exact moment that the email had left computer terminal twelve inside the library. Hardly daring to breathe, she set the video running and watched as again people came and went up and down the street. In and out of the library and Argos next door, and the Baltic Bookshop opposite. The weather was less good, but it was at least dry.
And then there it was. The face she had seen before. She hit the pause key, then manipulating the arrow keys, managed to zoom in on it, frozen in time as the killer exited the library and turned towards the CCTV camera. Not a single doubt remained.
Braque shook her head in disbelief and sat back again in her chair. What to do? She took out her phone and called Gunn. But it went straight to voicemail and she hung up. He had warned her that he would likely be out of signal for some time. She thought quickly, her mind and her pulse racing, then called his number again. When the beep came to leave her message she said, ‘Detective Gunn, I think I know who our killer is. I’m leaving first thing tomorrow, so I don’t have much time. I’m going to drive up to the Macfarlane house to speak to Niamh tonight. Look at the video when you get back and tell me if I’m right. I’ve left a note of the time-code.’
She closed her eyes and tried to remember where she had parked her hire car. She had barely driven it since her arrival. And then she remembered leaving it next to Gunn’s in the harbour car park the night she arrived. She would, she realized, have to drive it very gingerly on the road out to Taigh ’an Fiosaich, or she would rip the sump from its underside.