Hanlon had no intention of touching him. She had her handbag in her right hand and the torpedo-shaped zip-up hold-all in her left. It was heavy, twenty kilos, and she lifted it to groin level and slammed it into Big Jim’s crotch as she entered the room. As if by accident, but they both knew it wasn’t. He grunted with pain and took a painful step backwards, glaring at her angrily.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Hanlon, her tone blatantly unapologetic.
The room, at least, was unexpectedly pleasant. It was at the end of the corridor and of the hotel itself. Clean, airy, with an en-suite bathroom. The room was flooded in clear light from the two windows, one on the end wall, the other on the side wall that overlooked the front of the hotel, the road and the car-park. She walked over to the large window overlooking the sea, which stretched out limitlessly in front of her. Clouds had started to roll in and the Argyll peninsula was now invisible.
Big Jim looked at her expectantly. What does he think I’m going to do? she thought, with increasing irritation. Make a pass at him?
‘The room’s fine,’ she said. He showed no sign of moving away. Then she noticed that he was staring, not at her, but past her out of the window facing the sea at a sizeable boat that was coming into view. He had obviously forgotten temporarily that she was there; the boat absorbed his attention fully.
‘About time,’ she heard him say. He seemed lost in thought. She wondered if it was the sight of the boat or if he was just drunk. Either way, she wanted him gone.
‘If you’ll excuse me.’ She started to close the door and he finally got the message.
‘Dinner’s at eight,’ he said flatly. ‘Bar opens at five.’
She looked contemptuously at the broken veins in his cheeks, his mottled nose and the slightly yellow tinge to his eyes. I’ll bet the bar opens a lot earlier for you, she thought.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he said. He turned and left the room.
I hope not, thought Hanlon.
A couple of hours later Hanlon was pounding along the road on a five-mile cross-country run. It was less of a run than a mix of jogging along tracks near the beach and some road work. The hotel drive continued way past the Mackinnon Arms itself and the two cottages close by. It became a single-track road that ran towards the northern tip of Jura.
The sun had come out and it was a beautiful afternoon. The sea breeze cooled her as the sweat started to dampen her clothes. She fell into an easy, relaxed stride; her body felt good. The richness of the smell of the island, earth, sea and the sharp tang of pine were strange, new. It was exhilarating. When she bored of the tarmac she went down to the shore and scrambled along the stones and shingle of the beaches and the rocks. She was pleased with her physical condition. Her legs felt tireless and she exulted in the strength in her muscles. She felt she could have continued forever. She was exorcising the ghosts of recent events. This is what I need, she suddenly thought, looking at the grey-blue, limitless sea and the huge sky. The atmosphere of London that had seemed so exhilarating now seemed claustrophobic. She suddenly, for the first time since leaving Heathrow, felt that she had done the right thing in coming here.
As she ran, she wondered which one of the staff had drowned. It had to be one of the two members of staff with Eastern European sounding names. Harriet looked too old to be referred to by Big Jim as ‘a girl’.
She reached the two-and-a-half-mile mark, stopped and stretched her body. She did some breathing exercises and noticed again how the air of the island felt amazing: a mix of salt, seaweed from the desiccated, dark fringe of bladder wrack and kelp at high water mark that lined the beaches, and the damp, peaty smell of the land. It was almost intoxicating. It made what she was used to breathing in the city smell dead and recycled, like the air in a passenger jet.
She slowed to a walk, feeling the sweat running down her body and prickling her scalp under her tangled dark hair. She waved her hand to keep away the swarm of tiny midges, only slightly bigger than a pinhead but eager to make up for their lack of size by weight of numbers. She rounded a corner and now, about a kilometre away, she could see the hotel. It no longer looked so picturesque; its silhouette looked tatty and sinister. The rear of the building was temporarily in the shade from a dark cloud and its sign flapped mournfully in the wind. She thought again of the drowned girl. As she drew close, a shaft of sunlight pierced the cloud and caught the piggy eyes of the boar on the sign and it seemed to grin contemptuously at her as she stood looking up at it.
The path by the side of the road took her to the back of the Mackinnon Arms. She walked past an outhouse, some wheelie bins, a large coal bunker and wood store, into a paved court that backed onto the kitchen.
The boat that Big Jim had been staring at out at sea was now moored on the opposite side of the jetty to the launch that she had noticed earlier. The hotel jetty was a substantial straight piece of concrete that ran into the sea. The craft was a sizeable motor yacht flying a red ensign flag.
‘Lorelei. Portsmouth’ was painted on the bows. Hanlon stared at it with curiosity. It was a large boat, rich-man rather than oligarch or Saudi-prince size, maybe ten to fifteen metres long. It exuded
