A sober pause enveloped them; the moan of the ceaseless Foula wind outside was the only noise, carrying the faint bleats of sheep.
‘Enough?’ said Hamish.
‘Enough for now,’ Sanderson answered. ‘We’ll want to speak to her friend, of course.’
‘Edith Tait.’
‘Maybe tomorrow?’
The Shetland inspector nodded, and turned to Jimmy Nicolson.
The good cheer of the pilot had quite departed. ‘She was such a grand old gal. Came here after the war they say. Now look at her.’
He put a shielding hand to his eyes, and walked out of the room.
Leask sighed. ‘Foula is a tiny wee place. This has hit them hard. Let’s go for a walk.’
He led them outside into the cold bright air. Jimmy Nicolson was sitting in his car, passionately smoking a cigarette. Tomasky wandered over to join him, but Hamish Leask was already hiking in the opposite direction: up the nearest hill. He turned and called over his burly shoulder.
‘Let’s climb the Sneug! I feel a need to clear my lungs.’
Simon and Sanderson glanced at each other, then turned and pursued the Shetland officer.
The incline was austere, it was too exhausting to talk as they made their ascent. The journalist found his blood thumping painfully in his chest as, at last, they crested the top of the mighty hill.
The wind at the top was fierce. They were on the edge of a sudden cliff. He edged closer to the drop to have a look.
‘Bloody hell!’
Seagulls were wheeling at the bottom of the cliffs, but they were minuscule flakes of whiteness.
‘Good God. How high is that?’
‘One of the biggest sea-cliffs in Europe, maybe in the world,’ said Leask. ‘More than half a mile down.’
Simon stepped back.
‘Very advisable,’ said Leask. ‘The wind can whip you off these clifftops – and just flip you over the edge.’ Hamish chuckled, soberly, and added, ‘And yet you know what…what is truly amazing?’
‘What?’
‘These cliffs kept the Foulans going for centuries.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Look. See here –’ The Shetland officer was pointing at some distant atoms of birdlife, halfway down the enormous rockwall. ‘Puffin yonder, they nest on the cliffside. In the old days, when food ran low after a long winter, the local men would climb down the cliffs and steal the eggs and the chicks. It was a vital source of protein in the bad times. Baby puffin is very tasty – lots of fat, ye see.’
‘They’d climb down these cliffs?’
‘Aye. They actually developed a strange deformity. Like a kind of human subspecies.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The men of Foula. And Saint Kilda too.’ Hamish shrugged, his rust-red hair riffling in the wind. ‘Over the centuries they developed very big toes, because they used them for climbing the cliffs. I suppose that was evolution. The men who climbed best happened to be the ones with big toes, so they got wives and had well-fed children, and passed on their big toes.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Quite serious.’ Hamish smiled serenely.
But Simon was not feeling serene; the talk of the weird toes of the Foulans had brusquely reminded him. What he saw. The old woman’s bare feet. He had to mention it.
‘Guys. Can we, ah, get out of this wind?’
‘Of course.’
The two policemen, and the journalist, walked down to a hollow, then lay back on the dewy turf. Simon said: ‘You mentioned toes, Mister Leask.’
‘Aye.’
‘Well. It’s funny but…Julie Charpentier’s toes…Did either of you notice?’
Leask looked blank. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You didn’t see anything unusual about the victim? Her feet?’
‘What?’
Simon wondered if he was making an idiot of himself.
‘The toes of her right foot were deformed. Slightly.’
Sanderson was frowning.
‘Go on, Simon.’
‘I think the word is syndactyly. My wife is a doctor.’
‘And syn…’
‘Yes. Syndactyly. Webbed toes. Two of the old woman’s toes were conjoined, at least partially. It’s rather rare, but not unknown…’
Sanderson shrugged. ‘So?’
Simon knew it was a big guess. But he felt sure he was onto something.
‘Do you remember the woman in Primrose Hill? What she was wearing?’
The change in Sanderson’s expression was sudden.
‘You mean the gloves. The fucking gloves!’
Before Simon could say anything else, Sanderson was on his feet and speaking on his mobile; the DCI took his phone a few yards down the sunlit slope, talking animatedly all the while. The wind was too boisterous for Simon to hear the conversation.
He sat in the cool yet dazzling sun, thinking of the woman’s pain, her lonely screaming pain. Hamish Leask had his eyes shut.
A few minutes later, Sanderson returned, his normally ruddy face whiter; quite pale with surprise.
‘I just called Pathology in London.’ He turned towards Simon. ‘You were right. The gloves were concealing a