Three injured and seven dead?” “That’s right.” Linklater said: “That means someone’s missing”

Finn stood looking out the window as the kettle filled the room with noise. When it clicked off he went to the cupboard to get a mug and noticed it was half empty. He opened the dishwasher. It hadn’t been emptied. He frowned and stepped into the hall. “Mum?”

He walked to her closed bedroom door, angled his ear towards it. “Mum?”

Just the creak of a floorboard under his feet. He turned the handle and opened the door. She was in bed and he knew right away she was dead. Something about the lack of tension in her skin, the stillness of her, felt completely different to sleep.

He shuffled to her and reached out a hand, touched her cold cheek and kept it there for a long time, staring at her face. Eventually he lowered his hand and backed out the room, his arms hanging useless at his sides, staring at the carpet under his bare feet.

When the ambulance came they confirmed what he already knew. He rode with her to hospital, though he couldn’t see the point. Weren’t hospitals for the living? But they said they needed to do a post-mortem, make it official. After she was taken away he had to get a taxi back from Ninewells. He put off calling Ingrid for three hours, wanted it to be just his thing for a little longer.

Painless

Two days later someone from Ninewells called and gave a fancy name to Sally’s death. A cerebral aneurysm had ruptured, causing a subarachnoid haemorrhage, leading to a massive stroke and brain death. It would’ve been painless, the woman said down the line, as if it mattered. Maybe it did.

By then Ingrid was with him in Dundee, busying herself around the flat, talking to funeral directors, emptying the dishwasher. The next part of Finn’s life had begun, without anyone asking him if he wanted the last part to end.

Looking out the ambulance into the gloom now, he saw a crowd of emergency vehicles beyond the body on the tarmac. Two fire engines were next to the front half of the severed plane, firefighters in clumpy boots and bulky uniforms stamping around. An ambulance and three police cars were parked in between, a couple of guys in uniforms placing cones around the area, unwrapping that yellow tape they used.

Finn looked at the plane. One wing was still attached to the fuselage, but the tip was missing. It looked like a giant injured bi rd. The rear of the aircraft was relatively intact compared to the front half. The cockpit had crumpled into a snubbed nose, glass missing from the windows.

There was a smattering of debris around it. The right engine and wing sat jutting out of the cabin just behind the cockpit, reminding Finn of the metal spike sticking out of the guy’s back. His stomach tightened and he struggled to breathe. He put his head down on the stretcher and heard voices outside the ambulance.

“Seven confirmed dead,” Magnus said. “We can’t handle this,” Linklater said. It sounded like she was close to tears. “You’ll be all right, Morna, just follow procedure.”

“What’s the procedure for this?”

Finn imagined Magnus putting a comforting arm around her. Orkney was such a small place, everyone knew each other.

“Do you want us to move the bodies?” Magnus said. “Wait for forensics. I’ve called for help from down south. God knows when they’ll get here.”

“Can they even land with all this here?” “They’re coming by helicopter. Air and sea rescue are helping.”

“I’ll get these two to hospital,” Magnus said. “Eilidh’s already headed to the Balfour with the stewardess in the other ambulance.”

Silence

There was a moment’s silence between them, just the thrum of machines and the ambulance engine ticking over. “Three injured?” Linklater said. “Yes.” “And seven dead?”

“That’s right.”

Linklater said: “That means someone’s missing.” “I won’t lie to you, this is going to hurt.”

The badge on her white coat said “Dr Flett”. Finn felt a jab as she injected a large amount of liquid into the side of his hand from a big syringe. The liquid went in and his skin stretched tight and bulged like something out of a horror film. Finn imagined the skin rupturing and spraying blood all over the treatment room.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said. The woman smiled. She was early forties, about the age Sally would’ve been if she were still around. Strawberry-blonde hair cut into a short bob, green eyes.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “That was just the painkiller and local anaesthetic. We need to wait a couple of minutes for you to lose feeling in your hand, then I’ll reset the fingers.”

“Reset them?”

She nodded at the X-ray on the backlit screen. A close-up of Finn’s hand, two rogue fingers off at a tangent to the rest. “The knuckle is crushed, the bones in the fingers are fractured and twisted. If I don’t reset them they’ll fuse squint and you might lose the use of them altogether.”

“Right.”

“It’s called a boxer’s fracture, although the gloves normally protect real boxers. Mostly we see it in pub fights. Have you been punching someone?”

Finn didn’t speak. “It’s none of my business,” Flett said. “I’m sure the police will talk to you.”

She tapped the side of his hand and wiggled his pinkie finger. Pain shot up his arm and he flinched. “I guess you can feel that.” “Yes.”

“Give it another minute.”

Overcrowded

She got up and swished away through the blue plastic curtain around the booth. Finn looked round. X-ray display, treatment table covered in a plastic sheet, low shelves stuffed with medical supplies and paperwork.

The ambulance had delivered him to A & E at the Balfour Hospital on the southern outskirts of Kirkwall. It was little more than a pebbledashed hut down a side alley, tagged on to the sprawl of low concrete buildings that made up the overcrowded hospital, skulking in a residential area.

Cars were parked all over and the ambulance had to squeeze past them before doing a five-point turn at a dead end so it was pointing the right way to get out again.

Finn was able to walk to the waiting room, which was an improvement. The A & E team took Oil Guy first, wheeled him through to a consultation room deeper in the building. Finn wondered if he was OK.

He thought about Charlotte too, the stewardess. Were her injuries serious? The pilot and co-pilot were dead. He wondered if Charlotte knew them well. Maybe she had a thing going with one of them. Maybe she was heartbroken.

More tomorrow.