She forced her thoughts back to the noisy plane. Let’s not think about London. It was low tide and she looked down at the muddy banks of the river Clyde, grey and brown, the red and green buoys marking the channel clearly visible from up here. Cranes standing by the sides of the waterway looked like giant metal herons. The sprawl of greater Glasgow gave way to the wrinkled, matt green of the hills, dark, geometric shapes of the conifer plantations with occasional lochans, small lakes, reflecting the gunmetal-grey of the sky, which mirrored the colour of her own eyes.
Well, it certainly made a change from London, the endless streets, the underground, the people.
Below them now she could see the sweeping gold of the beaches and patches of white where the water was breaking. Her view was framed by the thick white strut holding the wing to the body of the plane, and the air was blurred when she looked forward by the circular agitation of the propeller, invisible as it spun, the air almost visible as it trembled in front of her. The noise of the engines, a powerful droning roar, was mind-numbingly loud.
She watched two ferries far below which looked like bath-time toys for children, gaily painted red funnels, white superstructure and blue hulls.
She gazed almost dreamily at the sea, thirsting to be in it, to feel its cold, clean immensity wash everything away, wash her clean. Hanlon loved wild swimming.
She tried to focus on the view. Her thoughts wouldn’t let her. They were leaping around unhelpfully like scalded cats.
She was going to have a psychiatric assessment on her return. Mandatory.
Hanlon believed in preparation. That was why she had paid to see Dr Morgan. She wanted to know the kind of questions that they might ask so she wouldn’t stumble into their traps. Know your enemy.
The trouble was, having seen Dr Morgan, she was uncomfortably aware that the doctor might reasonably say, ‘But you do have a problem. You can’t even get on with people who want to help you. I’m not your enemy, I’m your friend. I’m trying to help you. It’s you who is tearing yourself apart.’
She was going to spend some time staying with her old boss, DI Angus Tremayne, now retired on Islay. He ran a guest house, accommodation in a converted barn away from his house. Generally, Hanlon disliked the intimacy of B&Bs. You might have to make conversation. She hated small talk.
But staying with Tremayne would be fine. He knew her. He would leave her undisturbed while she did what she wanted to. He had provided her with detailed running routes, swimmable lochs, good deserted beaches. He had borrowed a mountain bike for her. She had a triathlon competition in three weeks’ time. It would be her first time as a veteran. She liked the term, ‘veteran’. Someone with experience. Certainly it was a damn sight better than ‘has-been’.
She would spend her days in holistic, natural training in the company of some of Scotland’s most beautiful scenery.
But then the original plan had had to be modified. Tremayne, not the most organised of men, had cocked up the dates and had people booked into his guest house during Hanlon’s slot. She felt she had to get out of London so, until his B & B was free, she had booked herself into a small hotel on the neighbouring island of Jura, the Mackinnon Arms, for a fortnight. It had looked fine on the website.
Now she could see the southern end of the Argyll peninsula. It seemed incredibly neat and tidy from up here. A patchwork of fields and toy tractors and tiny cows and sheep. It was getting cloudy now. The mist and the rain were rolling like smoke over the hills with their muted brown and purple colours with yellow splashes of gorse.
Hanlon gazed bleakly down.
‘I think that you’re addicted to violence. I think you like the adrenaline rush, the danger. I think you like losing control.’
Thank you, Dr Elspeth Morgan, BSc (Hons) Cantab, MSc, CPsychol.
While they had discussed her life history, Dr Morgan had pointed out to her how the violence had started as one-off incidents – policing had been more robust twenty years ago, certainly with men like Tremayne around. Then it had become habitual, she had enjoyed the excitement, the thrill of violence, and then one day she found she had crossed a line, allowed the red mist to descend, and never looked back. She went looking for trouble these days; she was addicted. And she had never tried to do anything about it other than feed the beast. She had sought out dangerous, challenging situations. Dr Morgan had said it was like talking to someone who had become accustomed to breaking into lions’ dens and then complaining when she was attacked. Until now. The dawning of a slow sense of self-awareness.
The plane was descending now through wispy banks of cloud, down onto the runway. And she caught a glimpse of high, conical hills in the background, covered in silvery grey scree, the Paps of Jura.
Her journey’s end.
‘So you’ll be a tourist here?’ asked the taxi driver politely as they drove across the island of Islay, where the plane had landed, to the opposite side where Hanlon was due to catch the small ferry that ran back and forth between Port Askaig and the smaller island of Jura.
He studied the woman in the back of his taxi: slim, her face was attractive but hard, grim-looking. Her grey eyes watchful. She had the kind of mouth that wasn’t built for smiling. She looked guarded and sad. Maybe a bereavement, maybe a divorce, thought the driver. He liked guessing about the background of his passengers.
‘Yes,’ she said. Her tone discouraging any conversation. The driver persevered. He was a genial, talkative man.
‘Did you know that George Orwell lived on
