He welcomed the exercise. He wanted something to take his mind away from Tommy. After a while, he could hear the waves breaking on rocks ahead. So it would be around this point that Ailsa and Holly had seen their monster.

He swung his torch across the loch and let out a gasp as eyes stared straight back at him, eyes red in the torchlight. Then he laughed. Seals, nothing but seals. A whole colony of them. That must have been what Ailsa and Holly saw. He walked right to the sea, nonetheless, without coming across anything sinister.

His thoughts turned again to Tommy Jarret on the road back. It was a shame that one so young should have to die. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that the poor fellow had taken an overdose. Felicity had looked frightened at the sight of Hamish outside Patel's because she was an odd wispy creature who probably lived in some sort of private soap opera.

In the morning, he woke to marvel, not for the first time, at the mercurial changes the weather in the Highlands was capable of. Before he had gone to bed, the sky had been cloudless. Now it was raining steadily, with low clouds shrouding the tops of the mountains.

He did his chores about his croft at the back of the police station and then went indoors and changed into his uniform and phoned Strathbane police headquarters and asked to speak to Jimmy Anderson.

When Jimmy came on the line, Hamish asked if there had been any information from the pathologist. "You're too early, too soon," said Jimmy. "Give the man a bit o' time. You're not still suspecting murder?"

"I reserve judgement," said Hamish. "What was in thon book he was writing?"

"I don't know."

"What d'ye mean you don't know?" demanded Hamish sharply. "He was writing about his experience with drugs. There could have been some useful names in there. I thought maybe you'd taken some pages away."