the distillery, she wanted to see the place.’
‘So she was just unlucky to be in the car when you crashed.’
‘We were all pretty bloody unlucky, don’t you think?’
Ritchie examined his fingernails calmly.
‘So, back to the crash.’
‘Jesus, I’ve told you everything.’
‘You waited at the car all night.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Setting it on fire to create a smoke signal?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And the fire burned all night?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How?’
‘What?’
‘How did you keep it going all night?’
‘We found a canister of petrol in the boot.’
‘And that was enough to keep it going all night?’
‘We had to ration it, we didn’t know when we would be found, if at all.’
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that you had a smoke signal going all night, but no one saw it till morning?’
Adam shrugged. ‘It’s pretty remote out there. I don’t suppose many folk are out and about on the Oa at night in the middle of winter.’
Ritchie gave him a sideways look. ‘So you didn’t see anything while you waited there.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know, you tell me.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You didn’t see any boats out at sea?’
‘Boats?’
‘Yes.’
Adam shook his head, thinking of the police speedboat. ‘If we’d seen a boat, we would’ve tried to get their attention, wouldn’t we?’
‘So you didn’t see anything out at sea the whole time you were there.’
Adam shook his head again.
‘And you didn’t see any smoke or flames round the coast to the west?’
‘From this illegal still, you mean?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Nothing. We were pretty much concentrating on trying to stay warm and stay alive, you know.’
‘So you don’t know anything about the still?’
‘We’ve been over this already,’ Adam said, getting angry. ‘If we were there, wouldn’t there be some evidence of that?’
‘Don’t worry, a forensic team is on its way from the mainland to examine the scene.’
Adam swallowed hard, struggled to breathe. He felt incredibly hot. ‘Well, if they come up with anything, which they won’t, we can chat again then.’
Ritchie watched him closely. Silence buzzed around the room.
‘Do you know how many suspicious deaths there have been in Islay in the last twenty years?’ Ritchie said eventually.
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘Before last night, none.’
‘So what?’
‘So you don’t think it’s a little odd?’
‘What?’
‘That not one single person has died in strange circumstances for twenty years in the whole of this island, then suddenly two separate incidents within five miles of each other throw up three, probably four, dead bodies?’
‘There is such a thing as coincidence, you know.’
‘In my line of work, coincidences almost always turn out to be connected. So I’m wondering if these two incidents are really coincidental at all.’
‘I can assure you they are.’
‘Can you?’
‘Yes.’ Adam stuck his chin out in an act of defiance he didn’t really feel. ‘Look, are we finished here? Any chance I can go and get some sleep? I’ve been through a pretty traumatic experience, you know, I don’t need all this bullshit.’
‘You’re free to go, Mr Strachan. We have your details. Please don’t leave the island until we’ve finished our inquiries.’
‘I have got a life to get back to, you know.’
Ritchie glanced at him. ‘But of course you’ll want to stay until the coastguard have finished their search for your friend?’
Adam blinked, his eyelids heavy as slabs. ‘Of course.’
‘We’ll be in touch again soon, once forensics have taken a look at the two sites.’
‘You do that,’ said Adam, heading out the door as calmly as he could. He felt his legs shake beneath him and hoped he would get out of sight before they gave way.
40
Adam drifted in and out of a fitful sleep in the back of the police car, harrowing images gnawing at his mind. He jerked awake as they bumped over a pothole, his eyes focusing on the officer at the wheel. It was the kid who’d been called out by the old woman to the crash site earlier today. Adam could see nasty boils lining the back of his neck at his collar line, and felt the urge to reach forward and squeeze.
He looked out the window. The same flat expanse of heather, bracken and moor stretching for miles, yet somehow it all seemed so different from the first time they’d driven along here, stopped by Joe for speeding. Back then it had been a land waiting to be discovered, an adventure waiting to happen. Now it was just the backdrop for a nightmare that would forever be playing in his head.
The snow from yesterday had all but melted, tiny pockets of ice and slush lurking in the shadowed crevices of the land. He was suddenly sick of this place, sick to death of the wide open spaces and the never-ending skies and the stench of peat everywhere.
They drove past the airport then past thousands of geese hunkered against a driving wind. He remembered last night and the geese on the frozen loch, everything drenched in eerie purple light from Joe’s flare, a cacophony of noise as the birds filled the black sky.
He wondered about forensic evidence, about tracks in the snow, discarded flares, the hole in the ice, the farmhouse they’d broken into. Shit, he was still wearing someone else’s clothes, for Christ’s sake. His heart tripped over itself as it dawned on him. Fuck, his clothes. His clothes were still sitting in a wet pile in the hallway of that farmhouse. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of it before? All that worry about forensic evidence at the still and the car crash, what about the farmhouse?
He tried to get his fatigue-drenched mind to work. There was nothing to identify him amongst that stuff, nothing obvious like a wallet or phone, but it was surely covered in his DNA. What if the break-in had already been reported, his clothes already handed in to the police, the farmhouse added to the list of places to be forensically examined?
He tried to calm down. The house didn’t seem to be occupied for the winter, it might be months before his
