SOMEHOW I MANAGED TO FREEWHEEL ELSPETH'S BIKE BACK down the road to where my car was parked. I struggled to get my bags and the bike into the back and start the engine. I think it would have been tricky even if I hadn't been sobbing.
It started to rain as I set off back towards Lerwick. I couldn't stop crying. I thanked God it wasn't quite dark because I had to drive fast. They'd look for me on this road. Once I hit the edge of Lerwick it would be easier to hide. They'd never guess where I was going.
Tora [Dana's note had said]
Just spoke to your mum-in-law. Is she always like that?
Your message very helpful. Things are starting to come together.
Assume you're heading back here. Don't stay home by yourself. Come to my house. Let yourself in and wait.
Worried about you! Get in touch soon, please.
Dana
She'd put both the date and time of writing in the top corner. Twelve noon that day. I realized it would be crucial in establishing time of death and that I ought to hand it over to the police immediately. Knowing my luck, I'd have the opportunity some time in the next five minutes.
But no patrol cars pulled me over on the short drive back to Lerwick. Once I was off the highway I felt a bit safer. It took me a few more minutes to get to the Lanes and, driving past Dana's usual car park, I headed for the next one along.
The front door had been repaired – quick work, guys – but the key still worked. Dana's hallway seemed still, silent. I stood for a long moment, listening, and realized the house wasn't silent at all. Houses never are. I could hear faint gurgles of water heating up; a soft buzz of electronic equipment; even the ticking of a clock. Nothing to send my already racing pulse-rate into orbit. I'd brought a flashlight and, switching it on, I walked through the hall to the kitchen. The room was spotless. The floor looked freshly scrubbed, the stainless steel around the sink area was gleaming. Without really thinking what I was doing – maybe I was hungry and acting subconsciously – I crossed to the fridge and opened it.
Dana had been shopping. The salad tray was full. A giant tub of apricots sat on one shelf, several wrapped Continental cheeses on another. Natural yoghurt by the bucketful. Two litres of skimmed milk, a litre of cranberry juice and a bottle of good white wine sat in the fridge door. Above them nestled a row of organic eggs. No meat or fish. Dana had been vegetarian.
I thought about eating but knew I couldn't. I closed the fridge door and left the kitchen. I had to go upstairs.
One step at a time, I retraced the last journey I'd made in this house, thinking, as we all do at such times, if only… If only I hadn't panicked on Unst; if only I'd gone back to Richard and Elspeth's house and stolen Elspeth's car instead of her bicycle, I'd have been back on the main island in a couple of hours, I could have been here before Dana…
The bathroom door was closed. I pulled my jacket up over my hand and pushed at it. Then I shone the flashlight all around.
Spotless.
The bath had been scrubbed. I remembered small pink splashes on the tiles from earlier in the day. They had gone. The ceramic tiles on the floor were clean but, as far as I could remember, they had been earlier. Dana had been as neat and clean in death as she had been in life. I backed out and pulled the door shut. There was nothing for me in here.
I walked past Dana's bedroom. I was heading for her spare room, where I'd slept briefly a few days earlier and which I knew doubled as a study.
Her desk was practically empty. I knew she kept her case notes in a pale-blue folder but there was no sign of it in the room. I pulled open the desk drawer and counted twenty folders in hanging files. Each was labelled in lilac ink on a buff-coloured card: House, Car, Investments, Pension, Travel, Insurance… and so on. I thought of the three battered box files at home that served as my own filing system. Maybe if she'd stayed around longer, Dana could have taught me to be tidy, to be organized. Maybe just a few hints.
I closed the drawer. I was probably wasting my time. Anything pertaining to the case would have been removed already by the police. I was sure I remembered a desk-top computer from my previous visit but it was gone now. Only a printer remained and a few trailing leads. And a pile of books stacked neatly to one side.
The top one caught my eye because I recognized the author. Wilkie Collins, I read, remembering Richard's taunt about Wilkie Collins being suitable for a retarded reader like myself. The Woman in White. I'd have dismissed it as Dana's bedtime reading, except it wasn't by her bed, and she'd marked several pages with little yellow Post-it notes. I picked it up.
Next in the pile was Shetland Folklore by James R. Nicholson. Again, some pages had been marked with Post-it notes. Then I found British Folklore, Myths and Legends by Marc Alexander. The title on the bottom of the pile was familiar, although I hadn't seen a copy before. I flicked open the hardback cover and saw that it was a library book; very recently taken out judging by the return date stamped inside. It was the book that I'd found several references to in Richard's study, the one that might tell me more about the Kunal Trows. Dana had taken my comments about local cults seriously. The book held a lot of Post-it notes. I sat on the bed and started to read.
The first story to have caught Dana's attention was that of a macabre discovery of a large number of human bones during building work on Balta. Locals had muttered about an ancient burial ground but the bones (all from full-grown adults) had been discovered in no order, just flung together, and there had been no signs of memorial stones. On the accompanying Post-it, Dana had written: Were bones female? Is story true? Can date be ascertained?
On a later page I read about a rock that rises out of the sea near Papa Stour, known locally as the Frow Stack or the Maidens' Skerry. At the time the author was writing, the remains of a building could be seen on the rock. Local rumour held that the Frow Stack was used as a prison for women who 'misbehaved themselves'. Another rock, the Maiden Stack, with a very similar story attached to it, could be found on the east side of Shetland. Dana's commentary read: Island stories of women being imprisoned. Any human remains found on either rock?
A few pages further on and she'd found another story of unorthodox graves: a great number of small mounds on the island of Yell. The whole hillside, according to local tradition, was covered in graves and people avoided the spot. Dana's notes suggested increasing frustration. When? she had written. Dana had wanted facts and evidence, real leads she could follow up with meticulous police work. The book was only offering stories. Interesting stories, though. If the author was right, several times on these islands, hidden and unconsecrated mass graves had been discovered. I wondered how many more there might be. And I was growing more certain by the minute that Melissa had not lain alone on my land.
I lost all track of time as I read on through the books Dana had marked with Post-it notes, learning more and more about the strange and sometimes ghastly history of the islands. I found numerous other stories: of young women, children, even animals being stolen by Trows, their semblances left behind only to die shortly afterwards. The cynical amongst us would claim, of course, that the semblances were nothing of the kind, that the deaths had been of natural (or, more likely, human) causes and that the Trows had had nothing to do with it. One could argue, and half of me was tempted to, that the Trows had taken the blame for an awful lot of human mischief on these islands over the years. But still, the sheer number of stories impressed me. Over and over again, the same theme appeared: someone was taken, a semblance was left behind, the semblance died.
Of course, I didn't believe in semblances. If deaths had been faked in order to conceal kidnappings – which was basically what all these stories boiled down to – then it had been achieved by natural means. I wasn't going down any supernatural route.
Trouble was, I wasn't going down any route. The words were starting to jump around on the page and I was done with thinking for one day. I put the book I was struggling to read down on the floor beside me and allowed my eyes to close.
In my dream, I closed the back door on Duncan and the sound of wood slamming into the door frame rang out around the house. I woke up. It hadn't been a dream. Someone had entered the house. Someone was moving around, softly but quite audibly, downstairs.
For a second I was back in the nightmare world of five nights ago. He'd come back. He'd found me. What the hell was I going to do? Lie still, don't move, don't even breathe. He won't find you.
Ridiculous. Whoever was here, he'd probably had the same idea I had. He was looking for something and soon his search would bring him to the place where Dana worked.
Hide.
I felt beneath me. The bed was a divan. There was no wardrobe in the room. Nowhere someone of my size could hope to go unnoticed. Especially if it was me he was looking for.
Escape.
Only sensible option, really. I sat up. My car keys were on the desk. As I picked them up they chinked together.
I reached for the window. The handle wouldn't move. Of course Dana would lock her windows. She was a police officer. I looked closer. It was double-glazed. Breaking it might be possible but would make too much noise. I had to go down. Get past him some- how.
I reached into my holdall and rummaged around until I found the extra bit of protection I'd brought from home. Grasping it tightly in my right hand I walked to the door, pressed the handle softly and opened it. From downstairs came a faint bump. I crossed the hall, mentally blessing Dana for putting carpets on her stairs and land- ing. Downstairs were hardwood floors and ceramic tiles. But I still had to get downstairs.
At the top of the stairs I paused and listened. Faint sounds were coming from behind the closed kitchen door. I peered over the banister. There were two doors leading from Dana's kitchen, not counting the external back door: the first, the one I was looking at, led into the hall; the second into the living room. I was planning to go that way, throw something back into the hall to distract whoever it was and then, when he went to investigate, slip quietly through the kitchen and out the back door. Once outside I could climb the garden wall and run like hell back to the car.
Five more steps, six. My right hand was sticky with sweat. I checked the trigger. Loosened the safety catch.
The bottom step creaked.
I crossed the hall and into Dana's living room. It was darker than it should have been. Someone had pulled the curtains. I stopped. Listened. My right hand was up now, in front of me, but it was shaking.
Then something hit me square in the back and I went down hard.