The fourteenth of August was the day of the lunar eclipse, the day before Yolanda had died. The news must have come out of London Thursday night-why hadn't Clarty learned of it earlier? Then I remembered the head-lamps racing towards the air field as we took off, and thought that perhaps he had received his wire at dawn that day.

I realised someone was addressing me, and raised my head to see the telegraph gentleman gesture at the form on which I'd written to Mycroft. I shook my head and tore the page across: Anything I sent to Mycroft now would be intercepted by Lestrade.

“No,” I said. “There won't be a reply.” I went slowly back to the car. The idea of Scotland Yard raiding the flat of Mycroft Holmes was as puzzling as it was alarming, but I found it difficult to take it as a serious threat. Would Lestrade be walking a beat when we returned, or just fired outright?

And Brothers: Why had he moved about the countryside so much? Was he afraid they would be spotted if they sat in one place too long? Did he fear that Damian would see a newspaper, and finally learn of Yolanda's death? Had he perhaps felt someone on his tail and hoped to shake them off?

Or-what if the person he had been shaking off had been Damian? What if Brothers had taken Estelle and deliberately slipped away from Damian in Aberdeen, after buying tickets for Orkney but before boarding the ship? That would explain why Damian was here in Thurso by himself, a frantic father who had spent the past three days searching the northern tip of Scotland for his daughter and Brothers. And if Damian knew that something was going to happen tomorrow in Orkney, it would explain why he had been desperate enough to buy the services of a young fisherman to take him across.

Back at Magnuson's farm, I paid off the pleased driver and walked to the door, which opened before I could knock. The odour of roast lamb and potatoes swept over me, poles apart from my bleak mood; it was not made any easier by the cheeriness of the woman who urged me inside, tempting me with a hot meal.

“Thank you,” I said. “Mrs Magnuson, is it? I'm not actually hungry, so I won't join you. Can I just ask you for a bit of writing paper and an envelope?”

“Are yeh sure yeh won't have a wee bite?”

“It smells delicious, but no.” Actually, the rich aroma was making me queasy, and I wanted to be alone. She showed me into the cold, disused parlour, lit the fire, and left me with stationery and pen. I warmed my hands in front of the flames, and eventually removed my coat and hat, taking up the pen.

Dear Holmes,

I write from Thurso, about to set off for Orkney. Something must have delayed Brothers on the way-they were seen in Edinburgh on Monday, yet Damian was here just this morning, hiring a local fisherman to cross them over. The wind is powerful, unusually so, and the reproving locals were not sanguine about their chances of success. If I do not make it home, would you be so good as to locate the family of the man whose boat Damian hired, and see that they are recompensed?

R

I looked at the inadequacy of that ending, and added:

P.S.: I do not know if Damian is acting alone and against Brothers, or if he was under duress as the man's agent. If the latter, I can only believe he had good reason.

Again I hesitated, tempted to black the postscript out, or change it for something more affectionate, less bleak, but in the end I sealed the flap and wrote the Sussex address, leaving it with a coin for the stamp and a note instructing Mrs Magnuson not to post it until the end of September. It felt like one of those letters soldiers were encouraged to write before a battle. I regretted the melodrama, but I did not wish to take chances with the young fisherman's family.

I sat in the slowly warming room until I heard voices in the hallway, then went to join Captain Javitz for the final assault north.

44

JAVITZ AND MAGNUSON HAD CLEARED THE FUEL LINE, the culprit in our faltering engine, and used the farmers horse to drag the aeroplane back to the start of the rough field. The laundry was still veering wildly back and forth, but I thought it was not quite so rigid in its pull.

Perhaps that was self-delusion: I decided not to ask.

Once airborne, we turned east, so as to be over land as long as possible, and battled the wind until we ran out of mainland. When there was nothing before us but sea until Scandinavia, Javitz turned due north across the Pentland Firth, and the wind seized us, shaking us in its teeth like a dog with a rat.

I do not think there were ten feet on the five miles between John o'Groat's and the first island when we were flying still and steady. When Javitz turned to study the rudder, his face had a greenish tint. I found after a while that I was reciting, over and over again, a passage from Job that I hadn't thought about since my mother died. Clouds scudded across our windows, pushing us lower and tempting us off-course until Javitz returned to the compass and corrected our line of flight. Glimpses of land teased at us, seeming no closer, although the white wave-caps grew ever nearer. Then suddenly with a moment of clarity, land lay below us again.

Javitz dropped further, seeking protection from the wind, and followed the little island's eastern coast. At the end of it, we passed over a brief stretch of sea to another, even smaller, island, then a landscape that indeed resembled mainland came up underneath us. He directed the nose west again, skimming above countryside that looked surprisingly like England -I don't know what I expected of an island nation ruled by Vikings for seven hundred years, but placid green fields bordered by hedgerows was not it.

In a few miles, a dark steeple rose up in the distance: the cathedral in the centre of Kirkwall, on whose altar chemically liquefied blood had been splashed on the July full moon. Javitz began to examine the passing fields, in an expectant manner I had seen before. Soon, on the outskirts of the town, a length of pasture beckoned. He aimed at it, but it seemed to me he was high-too high, I started to exclaim, then realised that he was making a deliberate pass over it. It was as well he did: Three shaggy cattle grazed in the intended landing strip, solid as a dry-stone wall. As we roared forty feet away from the adjoining stone house, a small boy came running out. Javitz raised the nose and wrestled the 'plane back in a wide circle; when we aimed again at the field, the boy was driving the cows through a gap in a wall.

We hit the ground, rose up, then settled down into a landing as smooth as could be had on uneven terrain. Javitz ran the plane into a wide place at the end of the field, made a wide circle, and shut down the motor.

With quivering fingertips, I uncovered my watch: a quarter past two on Friday, 29 August.

The day before the sun would darken in the north.

“Captain Javitz,” I said, my voice loud in the echoing silence, “I am immensely grateful and in your considerable debt. But I hope to God I never have to fly with you again.”

He laughed, with more than a touch of manly hysteria in his voice.

And only then-because experience had taught me that some things are best done without permitting discussion-did I tell him what I wanted to do.

“This machine will attract a great deal of attention, I should imagine?”

“It's sure to.”

“Our story is, you are offering joy-rides, and I took you up on one out of Wick. You must stay with the machine, talk to people about joy-riding, maybe even offer to take one or two up with you when the wind drops. Can you do that?”