‘True,’ he said. ‘I should be back in good time for that. So before long you and I will be reliving last night. OK?’

After he had gone and the sound of the car engine had died away, she stood for a long time with her arms folded and her gaze out of focus. It was one thing to be lonely in life. But it was quite another not to know what you were paying that price for. The chances of ever catching a man like hers cheating were minimal, she knew that, even if she had never tried. His territory was a vast expanse, and he was a careful man, everything in their life indicated that. Pensions, insurance, double-checking of windows and doors, suitcases and luggage, desk always tidy, no hastily jotted notes or receipts left behind in pockets or drawers. He was a man who left little trace. Not even the scent of him remained more than a few minutes after he had left the room. How would she ever uncover an affair unless she put a private investigator on him? And where was she supposed to get the means to do that?

She pushed out her lower lip and expelled warm breath slowly into her face. It was what she always did just before making an important decision. On the riding ground before clearing the highest obstacle. Before choosing her confirmation dress. Even before saying her vows in the church. And before going out into the street to see if life might be any different there in that gentle light.

3

To put it like it was: David Bell, a convivial hulk of a sergeant, liked to take things easy, to sit and stare out at the waves as they smashed against the rocks. All the way up there at John O’Groats, Scotland’s very extremity, where the sun shone only half as long but twice as beautifully. This was David’s birthplace, and it was where he intended to die when his time was up.

David Bell was made for the rugged sea. Why should he then idle away his time sixteen miles further south in the office of the Bankhead Road police station in Wick, when this slumbering harbour meant so much to him? It was a fact he made no bones about.

It was also the reason why his superior always dispatched him to sort things out whenever there was trouble brewing in the communities up north. David would trundle up in his patrol car and threaten the local hotheads with calling in an officer from Inverness. It was generally enough to settle things down again. In these parts, no one wanted strangers from the city nosing about in their back gardens. Much rather horse piss in their Orkney Skull Splitter ale. It was more than enough having folk come through for the Orkney ferry.

Once things quietened down, only the waves remained, and if there was one thing Sergeant Bell had plenty of time for it was the waves.

Had it not been for this man’s characteristic sedateness, the bottle would have been hurled back from whence it came. But since the sergeant happened to be sitting there in his neatly pressed uniform with the wind in his hair and his cap on the rock beside him, it could just as well be handed in to him.

And so it was.

The bottle had been caught in a trawl and glinted slightly, though time had dulled its sheen, and the youngest man on board the BrewDog had seen right away there was something about it.

‘Chuck it over the side, Seamus,’ the skipper shouted when he discovered the message inside. ‘Those bottles bring bad luck. Wreckage in a bottle, we call them. The devil’s in the ink and waiting to be let loose. Don’t you know the stories?’ But young Seamus didn’t, and he decided to hand the bottle in to David Bell.

When Bell finally got back to the station in Wick, one of the local drunks had trashed two of the offices and folk were rather weary of trying to keep the idiot pinned to the floor. That was how David Bell came to remove his jacket so Seamus’s bottle fell out of its pocket. And it was how he came to pick the bottle up and put it down again on the windowsill so he could concentrate his attention on planting his full weight onto the chest of this drunken oaf in order to squeeze some of the air out of him. But as anyone will discover who happens to press down in such manner on the chest of a full-blooded Viking descendant in Caithness, one is quite liable to get more than one bargained for. And so it was that the drunk delivered such a blow to David Bell’s gonads that all recollection of the message in the bottle was engulfed by the blaring sirens and flashing blue lights his nervous system now emitted into the world.

And for that reason the bottle remained undisturbed in the sunny corner of the windowsill for a very, very long time. No one paid it any heed, and no one worried that the paper it contained might deteriorate from all that sunlight and the condensation that with time appeared on the inside of the glass.

No one took the time to read the collection of semi-obliterated letters that appeared uppermost, and for that same reason no one gave a thought to what the word HJÆLP might mean.

The bottle did not come into human hands again until some bastard, who felt himself unreasonably treated on account of a measly parking fine, infected the intranet of Wick police station with a veritable tidal wave of virus. In such a situation, the routine was to get in touch with a computer expert called Miranda McCulloch. When paedophiles encrypted their filth, when hackers covered up all traces of their online banking transactions, and when asset-strippers deleted their hard disks, it was Miranda McCulloch the police kneeled before.

They put her in an office. The staff were moved to tears and treated her like royalty, filling up her Thermos with scalding hot coffee, throwing open the windows and making sure the radio was tuned in to Radio Scotland. Miranda McCulloch was indeed a woman appreciated wherever she went.

Because of the open windows and the billowing curtains, she noticed the bottle on her first day.

What a fine little bottle, she thought to herself, and wondered at the shadow inside it as she dredged through cipher columns of malicious code. When, on the third day, she got to her feet feeling well satisfied, her job complete, and with a reasonable idea of what kind of virus might be anticipated next time around, she stepped across to the windowsill and picked up the bottle in her hand. It was a lot heavier than she had thought. And warm to the touch.

‘What’s that inside it?’ she asked the office lady next door. ‘Is it a letter?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ came the answer. ‘David Bell came with it a long time ago. I think maybe he just put it there for fun.’

Miranda held the bottle against the light. Was that writing on the paper? It was hard to tell because of the condensation on the inside.

She turned it in her hands. ‘Where is this David Bell? Is he on duty?’

The secretary shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid he’s not. David was killed not far out of town a couple of years back. They’d given chase to some hit-and-run driver and it all went wrong. It was a terrible thing. David was such a nice chap.’

Miranda nodded. She wasn’t really listening. She was certain now that there was writing on the paper, but that wasn’t what had caught her attention. It was what was at the bottom of the bottle.

On close inspection through the sand-blown glass, the coagulated mass looked remarkably like blood.

‘Do you think I could take this bottle with me? Is there anyone here I should ask?’

‘Try Emerson. He drove with David for a couple of years. I’m sure it’ll be all right.’ The office lady turned towards the corridor. ‘Hey, Emerson!’ she yelled so the panes rattled in their frames. ‘Come here a minute, will you?’

Miranda said hello. Emerson was a pleasant, stocky man with sad eyebrows.