‘The Basques are very devout, very Catholic. But they were pagan until the tenth century, and they keep a lot of their pre-Christian imagery. Like that. That house – there -’ she gestured to the main window ‘- that’s the exte, the family house, the sacred cornerstone of heathen Basque culture. The souls of the Basque dead are said to return to a Basque house, through subterranean passages…’

David stared. The stained glass tree was burning in the cold glass light.

‘And the woman? In the other window.’

‘That’s Mari, the lady of the witches.’

‘The…’

‘Goddess of the witches. The Basque witches. We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.’ She looked at him, her eyes blue and icy in the hanging light. ‘That was their famous – or infamous – saying. We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.’

Her words were visible wraiths in the chill; her expression was obscure. David had a strong desire to get out; he didn’t know what he wanted to do. So he made for the little door, and exited with relief into the hazy daylight. Amy followed him, smiling, and then immediately headed left. Away from the path, disappearing behind the stage curtains of fog.

‘Amy?’

Silence. He said again:

‘Amy?’

Silence. Then:

‘Here. What’s this? David.’

He squinted, and saw her: a vague shape in the misty graveyard: female and slender, and elusive. David quickly stepped across.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘Another graveyard…With derelict graves.’

She was right. There was a secondary cemetery, divided from the main churchyard by a low stone wall. This cemetery was much more neglected. A crude statue of an angel had fallen onto the soggy grass; and a brown cigarette had been contemptuously stubbed out – in the angel’s eye. Circular gravestones surrounded the toppled angel.

A noise distracted them. David turned. Emerging from the mist was an old woman. Her face was dark. She was dressed in a long black skirt and a ragged blue jumper, over which she was wearing a T-shirt imprinted with Disney characters; Wall-E, The Lion King, Pocahontas.

The woman was also deformed. She had a goitre the size of a grapefruit: a huge tumorous growth bulging out of her neck, like a shot putter holding the shot under his chin, getting ready to throw.

The crone spoke. ‘Ggghhhchchc,’ she said. She was pointing at them, her goitre was lividly bulging as she gabbled, her face vividly angry. She looked like a toad, croaking.

‘Graktschakk.’ She pointed at them with a long finger, and then at the neglected graveyard.

‘What? What is it?’ David’s heart was pounding – foolishly. This was just an old woman, a sad, deformed old woman. And yet he was feeling a serious fear, a palpable and inexplicable alarm. He turned. ‘Amy – what is she saying?’

‘I think it’s Basque. She’s saying…shit people,’ Amy whispered, backing awkwardly away.

‘Sorry?’

‘She says we are shit people. Shit people. I’ve no idea why.’

The woman stared. And croaked some more. It was almost like she was laughing.

‘Amy. Shall we get the hell out?’

‘Please.’

They scurried up the path, David tried not to look at the woman’s enormous goitre as he passed; but then he turned and looked at her goitre. She was still pointing at them, like someone accusing, or denouncing, or laughing.

They were almost running now; David stuffed the map in his pocket as they escaped.

The sense of relief when they made the car was profound – and preposterous. David pressed the locks and turned the engine and spun the wheel – reversing at speed. They rumbled over the cobbles, past the stencil of Otsoko – the silently grinning black wolf’s head.

Amy’s mobile phone bleeped as they crested a hill: the telecom signal returning.

‘It’s José Garovillo. It’s José.’

‘So.’ His excitement was real; his fear was repressed. ‘What’s his response?’

She looked down, reading her message. ‘He says…he is willing to meet you. Tomorrow.’ She shook her head. ‘But…this is a little odd…there’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘He says he knows why you are here.’

7

The tiny four-seater plane soared across the windswept fields of Shetland, heading for the rough blue sea already visible in the distance.

‘It’s just a twenty-minute flight,’ said the pilot, above the loud engines. ‘Might get a bit bumpy when we reach the coast.’

Simon Quinn was squeezed in the back of the minuscule plane alongside DCI Sanderson; sitting next to the pilot was DS Tomasky.

The speed of events was bewildering. Simon had learned only the previous afternoon, while watching Shrek with his son, Conor, that there was another murder case, linked to the Primrose Hill knotting. And already he was here: flying across the lonely, sunlit cliffs, with the words of his excited editor at the Daily Telegraph still reverberating in his mind: you know the cliché, Simon: murder is money. Our readers will lap this up. Go and have a look!

It was certainly a juicy story. He could envisage the headlines – and the byline photo. But there was a mystery here, too. All he had been told was that the new victim, Julie Charpentier, was also old, and she was from the South of France. But the circumstance which had apparently clinched the link, to the satisfaction of the police, was the fact that the woman was tortured. The details of the ‘tortures’ were, so far, unrevealed.

When he’d heard about the murder, he’d had to beg Sanderson to take him along; promising him some very nice coverage in the resulting article. The DCI had yielded to the journalist’s pleas – with a laconic chuckle: ‘Make sure you bring a strong stomach. They kept the corpse there for a few days so we could see it.’

The plane raced over the cliffs, out to sea. Leaning forward, the journalist asked the pilot:

‘What’s it like?’

‘Sorry?’ The pilot – Jimmy Nicolson – lifted one of his earphones, to hear better. ‘Didnae catch it. Say again?’

‘What’s it like, living on Fowler?’

‘Foo-lah,’ Jimmy laughed. ‘Remember what I said. Foula is pronounced Foo-lah.’

‘Yep. Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the pilot answered. ‘We’re used to people not knowing about us.’

‘You mean?’

‘Since they evacuated Saint Kilda, Foula is the most remote inhabited place…in the whole of Britain…’

Simon peered out of the window at the oceans. Chops of foam were mere flicks of whiteness against the enormous wastes of water. For several minutes they flew on in silence. He felt his stomach churn – he didn’t know if it was the nauseating rollercoaster ride of the airplane, or his apprehension at visiting the murder scene. Yet he was also adolescently excited. Headlines. He would get headlines.

‘There,’ said Jimmy Nicolson. ‘Foula!’

Just perceptible through the sea-haze was a small but gutsy outcrop: a looming outlier of treeless, grass-topped rock, surmounted by steep hills. The cliffs looked so enormous and the hills so daunting it was hard to believe anyone could pitch a tent on the island, let alone find enough flat space to build a house. But there were houses there: small crofts and cottages, tucked against the slopes.

And now they were banking towards Foula’s only landing spot. A patch of green turf.

Sanderson laughed. ‘That’s the airstrip?’

‘Flattest part of the isle,’ said Jimmy. ‘And we’ve never had a crash. Anyway if you overshoot, you just end up in the sea.’ He chuckled. ‘Hold onto your bonnets, gentlemen.’

It was the steepest descent Simon had ever made in a plane: they were plunging headlong towards the airstrip, as if they intended to plough up the fields with the propeller. But then Jimmy yanked fiercely on the joystick, and the plane tilted up, and suddenly they were coming to a stop, ten yards from the vandalizing waves.