I broke in before things got out of hand. ‘Nobody wants to lock anyone out, but it won’t be for long. And we did check first with Grace Strachan.’
I offered a silent apology to Grace for invoking her name, but it had the effect I’d hoped. Kinross and Guthrie glanced at each other, uncertainty replacing the belligerence of a moment ago.
Kinross rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Well, if Mrs Strachan said it was OK…’
Thank God for that. But my relief was premature. Perhaps it was the whisky, or perhaps he felt his authority had already been undermined enough by Brody. But for whatever reason Fraser decided to have the last word.
‘You can consider this a warning,’ he growled, levelling a fat finger at Kinross. ‘This is a murder inquiry now, and if you try to interfere again then believe me, you’ll wish you’d stayed on your bloody ferry!’
The entire bar had fallen quiet. Everyone in the room was staring at us. I tried to keep the dismay off my face. You bloody idiot!
Kinross looked startled. ‘A murder inquiry? Since when?’
Belatedly, Fraser realized what he’d done. ‘That’s none of your business,’ he blustered. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish my supper. This conversation’s over.’
He bent over his plate again, but couldn’t stop the flush climbing up the back of his neck. Kinross looked down at him, biting his lip in thought. He jerked his head at Guthrie.
‘Come on, Sean.’
They moved back to the bar. I stared at Fraser, but he busied himself with his food and refused to meet my eye. Finally, he gave me a sullen glare.
‘What? They’ll know soon enough when SOC get out here. There’s no harm done.’
I was too angry to say anything. The one thing we’d hoped to keep quiet, and now Fraser had needlessly blurted it out. I stood up, not wanting to stay in his company any longer.
‘I’d better go and relieve Brody,’ I said, and went to ask Ellen to make me some sandwiches.
Brody was still sitting in the hall where I’d left him, guarding the door to the clinic. When I went in he sat forward, poised on the edge of his seat, but relaxed when he saw it was me.
‘You’ve not been long,’ he said, getting to his feet and stretching.
‘I thought I’d eat down here.’
I’d brought my laptop with me from the hotel. I set it down and took the padlock and chain from my coat pocket. I handed him the spare key.
‘Here. You might as well have this.’
He gave me a questioning look as he took it. ‘Shouldn’t you give the spare to Fraser?’
‘Not after what he’s just done.’
Brody’s mouth tightened as I described what had just happened in the hotel bar.
‘Bloody fool. That’s just what we didn’t need.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Look, do you want me to stick around for a while? So long as I give Bess her evening walk some time, I’ve nothing else to do.’
I didn’t think he was aware of the loneliness his words implied. ‘I’ll be fine. You might as well go and get something to eat.’
‘You sure?’
I told him I was. I appreciated the offer, but I needed to work. And I could do that better without any distractions.
When he’d gone I wrapped the chain through the handles of the community centre’s double doors, then slid the hasp of the padlock through the links and snapped it shut.
Satisfied that the hall was as secure as I could make it, I sat in the chair that Brody had stationed by the clinic door and ate the sandwiches Ellen had made. She’d also given me a Thermos of black coffee, and when I’d eaten I sipped at the scalding liquid, listening to the wind booming outside.
The old building creaked like a ship’s timbers in a high sea. The sound was oddly restful, and the food had made me drowsy. My eyelids began to close, but my head jerked back up as a sudden gust of wind rattled the windows. The overhead light dimmed and buzzed indecisively before brightening to life once more. Time to make a start.
The skull and jawbone were as I’d left them. Plugging my laptop into a wall socket, I switched it on. Its battery was fully charged, but that wouldn’t last long if the power failed. Better to use the island’s main electricity while I could, and trust that the laptop’s surge-protection would hold out against it from the fluctuating supply.
Once the laptop had booted up, I opened the missing persons files that Wallace had sent. This was the first time I’d had a real chance to look at them. There were five in alclass="underline" young women between eighteen and thirty who’d disappeared from the Western Isles or the west coast of Scotland in the last few months. Chances were that they had simply run away, and would turn up at some point in Glasgow, Edinburgh or London, drawn to the chimera of a big city.
But not all of them.
Each file contained a detailed physical description and a jpeg photograph of a missing woman. Two of the photographs were useless, with the subject in one closed-mouthed, and the other a full-body shot that was too low-resolution for me to work with. But a quick glance at the descriptions that accompanied them made it unnecessary anyway. One was black, while the other was too short to be the young woman whose skeleton I’d measured in the cottage.
The other three, though, all matched the physical profile of the dead woman. Their photographs showed them as not much more than girls, caught before whatever event had either caused them to walk away from their lives, or ended them. My laptop had a sophisticated digital imaging program, and I used it to enlarge the mouth of the first picture, zooming in until the screen was filled with a giant, anonymous smile. When it was as large and sharp as I could make it, I began to compare it to those of the skeletal grin.
Unlike fingerprints, which need a minimum number of matching features, a single tooth can be enough to provide a positive ID. Sometimes a distinctive shape, a certain break, is all it takes to reveal an entire identity.
That was what I was hoping for now. The teeth I’d replaced in the skull were crooked and chipped. If none of the women in the photographs showed similar dental flaws, then it would at least rule them out as possible candidates. But if I was lucky enough to find a match, then I might be able to put a name to the anonymous victim.
From the start I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The photographs were only snapshots, hardly intended for the grim purpose I had in mind. Even magnified and cleaned up, the images were grainy and unclear. And the poor condition of the teeth I’d laboriously fitted back into the skull didn’t help. If the victim was one of these young women, the photograph had been taken before her drug addiction had eroded them away.
After a couple of hours poring over the images, I felt as though I’d had sand rubbed into my eyes. I poured myself another coffee, rubbing the kinks from my neck. I felt tired and dispirited. Even though I’d known it was a long shot, I’d hoped to find something.
Wearily, I went back to the original images of the three young women. One in particular drew me, though I couldn’t have said why. It had been taken on a street, with the young woman standing in front of a shop window. Her face was attractive but hard, with a wariness around the eyes and mouth even though she was smiling. If she was a victim, she wouldn’t have been a passive one, I thought.
I studied her photograph more closely. Only the incisors and the upper canines were revealed by her smile. They were every bit as crooked as those I’d replaced in the skull, but none of their characteristics matched. The dead woman’s upper left incisor had a distinctive V-shaped chip in it, yet the one on my screen was unmarked. Give it up. You’re wasting your time.
But there was still something about the picture I couldn’t put my finger on. And then I saw it.
‘Oh, you’ve got to be joking,’ I said out loud.
I clicked on a simple command. The young woman on my screen vanished and then reappeared, subtly altered. Behind her, the incomplete shop sign could now be made out: Stornoway Store amp; Newsag. But it wasn’t what it said that was important, so much as the fact that it was no longer back to front.