Brody turned down his mouth. ‘God knows. Might keep going for a while. But the fish farm, the new jobs, the investment, all that’s gone. Can’t see it surviving without them.’
‘You think it’ll become another St Kilda?’
‘Not for a few years, perhaps. But eventually.’ His mouth quirked in a smile. ‘Let’s hope they don’t drown their dogs when they go.’
‘Will you stay?’
Brody shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Not as though I’ve any reason to go anywhere else.’
The border collie had crouched at his feet, head down on its paws as it stared up at him, intently. Smiling, he took an old tennis ball from his pocket and tossed it for the dog. It trotted after it, legs too stiff to run, then brought it back, tail wagging.
‘I just wish we’d been able to talk to Grace, find out why she did what she did,’ I said, as Brody threw the ball again.
‘Jealousy, like Strachan said. And hate, I expect. You’d be surprised how powerful that can be.’
‘That still doesn’t explain everything. Like why she clubbed Janice Donaldson and Duncan, but used a knife on Maggie and Cameron. And the others that Strachan told us about.’
‘Means and opportunity, I expect. I don’t think she really planned anything, just acted when she got the urge. Duncan’s Maglite was probably lying to hand, and I dare say something similar happened with Donaldson. But we’ll never know now.’
The collie had dropped the ball at his feet again. Brody picked it up and threw it, then gave me a rueful smile.
‘There aren’t always answers to everything, no matter how hard we look. Sometimes you have to learn to just let things go.’
‘I suppose so.’
He took out his cigarettes and lit one, drawing on it with satisfaction. I watched as he put the pack away.
‘I didn’t know you were left-handed,’ I said.
‘Sorry?’
‘You threw the ball with your left hand just now.’
‘Did I? I didn’t notice.’
My heart had begun to thump. ‘A few days ago in your kitchen you used your right hand. It was when I told you and Fraser that whoever killed Duncan was left-handed.’
‘So? I’m not with you.’
‘So I just wondered why you used your right hand then, but your left now.’
He turned to look at me, quizzical and a little exasperated. ‘Where are you going with this, David?’
My mouth had dried. ‘Grace was right-handed.’
Brody considered that. ‘How do you know?’
‘When she had hold of Anna, the knife was in her right hand. I’d forgotten about it till I saw you just now. I knew something still jarred, but I didn’t know what. And when I saw Grace preparing food earlier she used the same hand then. Her right, not her left.’
‘Perhaps your memory’s playing tricks.’
I wished it was. For a moment or two I even allowed myself to hope. But I knew better.
‘No,’ I said, with something like regret. ‘But even if it was, we can check to see which hand the fingerprints on her paintbrushes and knife handles are from.’ Even if the prints weren’t clear, their angle would reveal that much.
‘She could have been ambidextrous.’
‘Then we’ll find equal numbers of both.’
He took a long draw of his cigarette. ‘You saw what Grace was like. You can’t seriously think Strachan was lying?’
‘No. I don’t doubt she murdered Maggie, and God knows how many others before they came here. But Strachan just assumed she’d killed Janice Donaldson and Duncan as well. He might have been wrong.’
I was still willing Brody to laugh it off, to point out a fatal flaw in my reasoning. He just sighed.
‘You’ve been here too long, David. You’re looking for things that aren’t there.’
I had to moisten my mouth before I could get the next words out.
‘How did you know Duncan was killed with his own Maglite?’
Brody frowned. ‘Wasn’t he? I thought that’s what you said.’
‘No, I never mentioned it. I’d wondered, but only to myself. I didn’t say anything about the Maglite until SOC got here.’
‘Well, I must have heard it from one of them.’
‘When?’
He gestured with the cigarette, vaguely irritated. ‘I don’t know. Yesterday, perhaps.’
‘They only removed the torch during the night. And no one’s going to know for sure that’s what killed him until lab tests have been carried out. They wouldn’t have said anything.’
Brody stared out across the sea at the black pinnacle of Stac Ross, squinting in the bright sunlight. Two hundred feet below us I could hear the waves crashing on the rocks.
‘Let it go, David,’ he said, softly.
But I couldn’t. My heart was banging so hard now I could hear it.
‘Grace didn’t kill Duncan, did she? Or Janice Donaldson.’
The only answer was the crying of gulls, and the distant crashing of the waves below the cliffs. Say something. Deny it. But Brody might have been carved from the same stone as Bodach Runa, silent and implacable.
I found my voice. ‘Why? Why did you do it?’
He dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it out with his foot, then picked up the stub and put it in his pocket.
‘Because of Rebecca.’
It took a moment for the name to register. Rebecca, the estranged daughter who had gone missing. Who Brody had spent years trying to find. His words came back to me now, clear and awful in their implication: she’s dead. And suddenly everything sprang into focus.
‘You thought Strachan had murdered your daughter,’ I said. ‘You killed Janice Donaldson to try and frame him.’
The pain in his eyes was confirmation enough. He took out another cigarette and lit it before he answered.
‘It was an accident. I’d been trying to put together evidence against Strachan for years. That’s the only reason I moved out to this godforsaken island, so I’d be close to him.’
A gull soared overhead, wings tilting as it caught the air currents. Standing there in the cold winter sun, I felt a rush of unreality, like plunging too fast in a lift.
‘You knew there’d been other deaths?’
The wind whisked away the smoke from his cigarette. ‘I had a good idea. I’d already started to think Becky was dead. I’d been able to follow her trail so far, but then it just stopped. So when I heard rumours about her seeing some rich South African before she’d vanished, I started digging. I found out that Strachan had moved around, lived in different countries but always for short periods of time. So I looked at newspaper archives of places where he’d settled. I found reports of girls being murdered or disappearing around the same time. Not in all of them, but too many to be coincidence. And the more I looked, the more convinced I was that Becky was one of his victims. Everything fitted.’
‘And you didn’t tell the police? You used to be a detective inspector, for God’s sake! They’d have listened to you!’
‘Not without proof they wouldn’t. I’d pulled in every favour I could when I was looking for Becky. A lot of people thought I’d lost the plot as it was. And if I’d confronted Strachan he’d have just gone to ground. But Rebecca had been using her stepfather’s name. There was no way he could connect us. So I decided to play the long game and came here, hoping he’d slip up.’
I was shivering as I listened, but the chill I felt had nothing to do with the cold.
‘What happened? Did you get tired of waiting?’ I asked, surprising myself with my own anger.
Brody flicked the ash from his cigarette, letting it disintegrate in the wind.
‘No. Janice Donaldson happened.’
His face was unreadable as he told me how he’d followed Strachan on his trips to Stornoway, inventing business and meetings of his own, taking the ferry to arrive first whenever Strachan had gone on the yacht. To begin with he’d been worried that Strachan had been preparing to select another victim. But when nothing happened to any of the women he spent time with, Brody’s relief turned first to puzzlement, then frustration.