the road. Somewhere quite near. David felt Amy’s fingers tighten on his. The agonizing moments marched slowly by, like a funeral parade. They waited to be found, and shot.
Or worse.
The car engine throbbed again. It was going. The red car was taking off, heading downhill maybe. Silence surrounded them. David allowed himself to breathe.
But his relief was aborted by a singular snap: the sound of twigs, broken underfoot.
10
The old women were singing through their noses, a rising carol of weird sounds; the tremulous voice of the dark-suited man at the front – warbling and waving his hands – led and yet followed the intense humming from the choir of ululating women.
They were still in Foula, about three hundred miles from Glasgow.
Simon and Sanderson and Tomasky had spent an uncomfortable night in Foula’s only B&B, waiting for a chance to interview Edith Tait. The B&B owner, a middle-aged widower from Edinburgh, had been all too excited by the influx of glamorous tourists – of new people to talk to – and he had kept them up, over tots of whisky, with bloodcurdling tales of Foula’s weirdness and danger.
He told them of the German birdwatcher who had slipped on some lamb’s afterbirth, banged his head on a rock, and had his brains devoured by Arctic skuas; he mentioned a tourist couple who had gone to the highest cliff, the Kame, and been swept over the precipice when one of them sneezed.
All this Simon absorbed with a suppressed smile; Sanderson was openly sarcastic: ‘So the tourist death rate, is what, about fifty percent?’
But there was one thing the journalist found truly and deeply interesting: the Gaelic heritage of the isle. As the hostel owner explained, Foula was so isolated it had maintained Norse-Gaelic cultural characteristics that had almost disappeared elsewhere. They used their own Gregorian calendar, they celebrated Christmas on January 6th, and some of the locals still spoke authentic Scots Gaelic.
They did this especially at church, where the services were, apparently, some of the very last of their kind: notable for a capella nose singing, known as ‘Dissonant Gaelic Psalmody’, as the B&B owner explained – with loving relish.
So now they were actually in the kirk listening to the Nasal Celtic Heterophony, waiting for a chance to talk to Edith. Simon was distinctly drawn to this authentic, ancient, possibly pagan tradition; DCI Sanderson was less impressed.
‘They sound like a bunch of mad Irish bumblebees in the shower.’
His sidelong remark was loud. One woman turned around and gave the DCI a stare; she was singing through her nonagenarian nostrils, even as she glared.
DCI Sanderson blushed, stood up, and edged along the pew, and bumbled out of the kirk. Feeling exposed and conspicuous, Simon swiftly followed. He found Sanderson dragging on a cigarette by the graveyard.
Sanderson dropped the cigarette, crushed it under his shoe, and gazed at the Sneck o’ da Smaalie, a great ravine hard by the kirk that led all the way down to the roiling sea, which writhed like a fallen epileptic in a blue straitjacket; the earlier rain had dropped and the sky had cleared.
‘Not religious then, Detective?’
‘You guessed?’ Sanderson’s smile was sarcastic. ‘Went to a church school, because my parents were real believers. Guaranteed to put you off.’
Simon nodded. ‘My experience was absolutely the opposite, my folks were…atheists. Scientists and architects.’ An unwarranted thought ran through his mind: das Helium und das Hydrogen. He hurried the conversation along. ‘So they never forced any belief system on me at all. Now I do have…rather vague beliefs.’
‘Nice for you.’ The DCI was glaring at a white shape. A sheep had wandered into the graveyard. ‘Jesus, what a place. All these sheep everywhere. Sheep. What are they about. Stupid woolly fuckers.’
Sanderson put a hand on the journalist’s shoulder, and looked him in the eye.
‘Quinn. There’s something you should know. If you still wanna write up this case.’
‘Yes?’
‘There was another murder. This morning. Heard on the wire. We’re certain it’s related.’ He frowned. ‘So I can tell you.’
‘Where?’
‘Near Windsor. An old man named Jean Mendia. That’s why Tomasky flew home this morning. To do some knock-ups.’
The nasal singing in the church had stopped.
‘Let me guess, the victim is Southern French? Deformed?’
Sanderson shook his head.
‘French Basque, yes. From Gascony. But no, not deformed. And not tortured.’
Before he could ask the obvious question, Sanderson added, ‘The reasons we’re sure it’s connected are: his age, very old; and the fact he was Basque; and there was no robbery. An apparently pointless killing.’