‘Yes.’ Her voice was flat, dismissive.
‘Oh.’ He retreated into silence; he felt a bit wounded. Surely politeness cost nothing?
Hanlon looked out of the window of the car at the gorse and the bushes of alder and mossy spindly trees stunted by the wind and spray. Fields full of sheep staring incuriously at the taxi and dry stone walls. Grey rocks covered with light green and yellow-gold lichen rose above heather and fronds of bracken.
‘I’ve seen this so many times before, usually in drugs and alcohol… You’re the first person I’ve met with a violence dependency. Most of my clients are quite pleasant.’ As opposed to me, thought Hanlon. ‘But it’s like all addictions. Like I said before, starting off as fun, then a steady escalation, there are a well-defined series of stages, until we have total addiction, an inability to live without it.’
Get out of my head, Dr Morgan, in your chichi Hampstead study with your repro Giacometti sculptures and cubist art. And your fucking Mondrian rug.
The driver, studying her face in his mirror, saw her scowling furiously; her lips moved occasionally. God, she looks like trouble, he thought.
She wrenched her attention back to Islay. There was a feeling of enormous space and emptiness about the island, which she guessed might partly have explained the taxi driver’s garrulousness.
‘So you’re staying on Jura?’
‘Yes.’ She finally took pity on the taxi driver and tossed him a crumb of conversation. ‘I’m looking forward to swimming. The beaches are lovely, I hear.’
He pulled a face. ‘Too cold for me,’ he said. ‘I’m more of a Mediterranean man.’ He laughed, relieved that they were having a normal conversation. He didn’t enjoy driving morose, irritable people around. She was probably stressed, he decided. So many people on the mainland were these days.
‘Mind you don’t swim in the Corryvreckan.’
She frowned. ‘The Corryvreckan?’
‘Aye. It’s a whirlpool, just off the north of Jura.’
‘Really? Is it far?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, not really. It’s at the tip of the island – there’s another island to the north and it’s halfway between them. It’s the third biggest whirlpool in the world, or so they say…’
I’d like to see that, she thought.
The driver added, ‘Ye can doubtless hire one of the fishermen to take you. It’s kind of impressive, but you would nae want to fall in.’
They drove over the brow of a hill and there was Jura in full glory.
‘Wow,’ said Hanlon, her troubles momentarily forgotten.
4
As the small ferry crossed the narrow strip of water between Islay and Jura, the water an incredible ultramarine blue, the hills on Jura, the Paps, seemed to rise up massively in front of them.
The boat got closer to the Jura side and Hanlon could see a Land Rover with police markings and an ambulance as well as several other vehicles waiting to board. She stood impatiently, her suitcase next to her. Several other foot passengers were waiting; they all seemed to know each other. The bow door on its enormous pistons descended with a muted clang onto the concrete of the landing area. Above the roar of the engines, a member of the crew shouted instructions to the drivers in their vehicles and then waved them down towards the slope that led up to the road above. Three cars and a delivery van disembarked, the metal ramp clattering and clanking below their wheels as they drove off, then it was the passengers’ turn to walk off and up to the road.
Hanlon looked curiously at the police standing by their vehicles. Professional interest. Something had happened, you could see from their body language, a tell-tale tension. The Land Rover was driven by a uniform and there was a tall slim man with red hair standing by the passenger door. He was a commanding presence. She was too far away to see him properly, but he had that kind of calm self-assurance that the good-looking so often have.
The police presence and the proximity of an ambulance. A death? Not an accident – nobody seemed in a hurry. She wanted to go up to them, the tug of curiosity was almost irresistible. But she didn’t.
Various vehicles met her fellow passengers, greetings were exchanged and car doors slammed. Engines started and cars drove off. In five minutes, everyone who she’d been on the ferry with was gone.
Now it was the turn of the police car, the ambulance and the other vehicles to drive onto the ferry. She looked in through the passenger window at the red-headed man. He was talking on the phone, his features fine-chiselled, his mouth full. He was as good-looking as she had suspected. He looked intently lost in thought as he terminated the call and said something to the uniform who was driving. The vehicles were on board, the bow was raised, and the waters churned white and blue as the CalMac ship reversed away from the terminal. She watched as it headed back towards Islay then she turned and looked around impatiently for the car from the hotel that was supposed to be there to pick her up.
No sign of it. Hanlon felt anger rising inside her. She hated inefficiency, and this was plain sloppy. She looked at the single-track road, the absence of vehicles. You could hardly blame traffic for being late on Jura.
Hanlon took her phone out of her pocket and glanced at it. No network coverage. The detective who had been on the phone must be on a different network. She swore in irritation and looked up at the road just in case the hotel car might be visible. Nothing.
There was one vehicle still parked there in the ferry car park, an old Volvo. The door opened and its driver got out, a woman who looked to be in her early thirties, short, slim with long dark hair and a thin, pinched face.
‘You OK?’ she called to Hanlon. Hanlon frowned; she must have been looking lost. She hated showing weakness. She recognised her as one of the people
