I gave McDunn the two names last night and told him the respective professions of their owners, then clammed up, just refused to say any more about them or about the body. There was a lot of tooth-sucking for a while as he tried to get me to say more and that was almost funny, given that it was the tooth-sucking that made me think of it in the first place, suddenly thinking. The dentist! Recalling going into Kyle, while I was at Stromefirry-nofirry, and remembering that nightmare vision of the burned-black man after the blevey — Sir Rufus with his black bones, black nails, black wood and his black jaw hinged back and very much a dental-records job — and thinking, How did they identify Andy?

The names worked even better than I expected. I can see a way out now. I feel like Judas, but there's a way out; not with any honour, perhaps, but I've looked at myself pretty closely over the last few days and I've had to admit to myself that I'm not quite as wonderful a guy as I liked to think I was.

I've imagined myself in situations like this, made up speeches in my head, speeches about truth and freedom and protection of sources, speeches I imagined delivering from the witness box just before the judge sentenced me to ninety days or six months or whatever for contempt of court, but I was kidding myself. Even if it's true that I would have gone to prison to protect somebody else or make some dubious point about the freedom of the press, I know I'd only have been doing it to make myself look good. I'm just like everybody else: selfish. I can see a way out and I'm taking it, and the fact it's a kind of betrayal doesn't really matter.

Besides, I'm paying for the betrayal by telling them about the body. By itself it doesn't prove a thing, but it's my way of getting them to take me to Strathspeld for the funeral; I can look McDunn in the eye and tell him the truth and he knows it's the truth and he'll take me. I think.

And, perhaps, with this act of treachery I can finally buy my freedom from the burden of buried horror that bound me to Andy twenty years ago, so that — dispossessed of that trespass — I'm left free to betray him again, now.

McDunn's in very early this morning; we're here in the same old interview room. The place is familiar, becoming home, taking on a tinge of spurious cosiness. McDunn's standing behind the table, smoking. He waves me to sit in the chair and I do, yawning. I actually slept fairly well last night, for the first time since I got here.

"They've both disappeared," McDunn says. He's staring at the table. He draws on the B&H. I'd quite like a cigarette, too, even though it's still early and I've barely got over the morning cough but McDunn seems to have forgotten his manners.

"Halziel and Lingary," he says, staring at me, and he looks really concerned, worried and harried and tired for the first time; yes, it's all change here in Paddington Green. "They've both disappeared," the DI tells me, sounding shaken. "Lingary just yesterday, Doctor Halziel three days ago."

He pulls the seat back and sits in it. "Cameron," he says. "What body?"

I shake my head. "Take me there."

McDunn sucks his teeth and looks away.

I just sit there. I feel in control at last. I suppose in theory I could be lying through my teeth and have some other reason for wanting to go to Strathspeld — maybe I'm just getting homesick for Scotland — but I'm certain he knows that I'm not lying and that there is a body; I think he can see it in my eyes.

McDunn breathes hard, then glares at me. "You do know, don't you? You know who it is." He sucks on his teeth. "Is it who I think it is?"

I nod. "Yes, it's Andy."

McDunn nods grimly. He frowns. "So who was it in the hotel? There's been nobody reported missing up there."

There will be," I tell him. "Guy called Howie… I can't remember his second name; begins with a G. He was supposed to leave for Aberdeen the day I left, to start some job on the rigs. Anyway, a few of us had a drink in the hotel that night, and apparently there was a fight; this was after I got drunk and got put to bed. Andy told me Howie and another two locals jumped a couple of travellers who'd been at the party as well. The local cop was called and he was looking for Howie." I hold my hands out. "I mean, this is all stuff that Andy told me, so it could be just a story, but I'd bet that up to that point it's all true. I think Andy offered to let Howie hole up in the hotel while the cops were looking for him, and everybody else up there just assumes Howie's offshore at the moment." I tap my fingers on the table and look at McDunn's cigarette packet, hoping he'll get the hint. "Grissom," I tell McDunn, suddenly remembering. Couldn't think of it all night but now I have, just by talking about it. "That's who it was. Howie Grissom; his second name was Grissom."

There's a terrible sick, empty feeling in my guts. My hands are shaking again and I put them between my legs. I give a small laugh. "I even saw the local cop outside the dentist's, day of the party. I just assumed he was there to get a tooth filled or something, but Andy must have broken in and switched the records then."

"We're checking the dental records of the body from the hotel with the Army's records," McDunn says, nodding. He glances at his watch. "Should have something this morning." He shakes his head. "And why those two? Why Lingary and Doctor Halziel?"

I tell the DI why; I tell him about two more betrayals; about the commanding officer who had let men die to cover up his own inadequacy (or at least Andy believed he had, which was all that mattered), and I tell him about the locum doctor who couldn't be bothered to attend a patient and then, when he eventually did pay a visit, just assumed her pain was something trivial.

McDunn finally offers me a cigarette. Oh, joy. I take it and suck hard, coughing a bit. "I guess," I tell him, "he's getting personal now because his usual targets have become more wary." I shrug. "And maybe he's guessed I'll put you onto him, or that you'll just work it out for yourselves, so he's settling old scores while he can, before they're warned, too."

McDunn is staring at the floor and turning the gold B&H packet over and over on the table. He shakes his head. I get the impression he agrees with what I'm saying and he's just shaking his head at the sheer extent of human deviousness and spite. I think in a strange sort of way I feel sorry for McDunn.

There's a pause while a young constable comes in with some tea; the man at the door gets his cup, and McDunn and I sip ours. "So, Detective Inspector," I say, sitting back in my chair. Hell, I'm almost enjoying this, sick feeling or not. "Are we going there or not?"

McDunn sucks his lips in and looks pained. He nods.

I trip on something in the ferns, twisting in mid-air as my ankle gives underneath me and I slam backwards into the ground, winding myself. I lie there, gulping for air, terrified of the man coming to get me while I lie there helpless; then I hear a scream.

I get to my feet.

I look down at what I tripped over; a fallen branch, about the size of a man's arm. I stare at it, thinking down the depth of years to that frozen day by the river.

Get a branch.

The scream again.

Get a branch.

I'm still staring at the branch; it's like my brain's screaming at me inside my own head and I don't know what else it is that's listening, except it isn't listening; my brain's screaming Run! Run! at me but the message isn't getting through, there's something else in the way, something else pulling me back, back to Andy and back to that frozen river bank; I hear Andy crying out and I can still see him reaching towards me and he's about to slip away from me again and I can't do anything… but I can, this time I can; I can do something and I will.