Give me one reason why I should help you,” he said. “Why I shouldn’t just hang up”

The plink of his ringtone made Finn flinch. He was surprised to get a signal out here. He slid his phone out with his good hand and looked at the screen. Not someone in his address book and not a number he recognised. “Hello?” Silence for a few seconds, then a voice he knew. “Hi, Finn.”

“Maddie, where are you?”

“I didn’t know who else to turn to.”

“The police are looking for you.”

“I know.”

“You left us,” Finn said.

“I had my reasons.”

“I could’ve been dying.”

“You were OK, I checked,” she said. “Don’t you remember?” Finn frowned. “I’m not sure what I remember. What about the others? Did you check on them?” Nothing down the line.

Eventually Finn spoke. “Were you outside all night?”

“No.”

“Where are you?”

There was a long pause. “I’m in a cowshed.” She laughed under her breath. “It stinks but it’s warm.”

“Are you hurt?”

Leaving

“I’m fine,” Maddie said. “I mean, I’ve been better but I’m OK.” Finn looked at the skulls staring at him. “You need to go home.”

“That’s the last place I’m going.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were married?” “I’m not.”

“So the police have it wrong?”

“I’m leaving him,” Maddie said. “I mean I’ve left him.”

“The police have sent someone to your house, see if you went back there.”

“Christ, that’s all I need.”

Finn walked up and down, dragging his fingertips along the wall. “Look, whatever’s going on, the police can sort it out.”

“I can’t go to the police.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll make me go back.”

“They won”t.”

“You have no idea,” Maddie said. “He manipulates people, twists them round his finger. He’ll persuade them we’re a happy couple, and I won’t get another chance to get away.” “That’s ridiculous.” “You don’t know.” Anger in her voice overtaking the fear. “Take it easy.”

“He’ll paint me as some psychotic case and the police will believe him, especially after all this business with the plane.”

Finn took a breath and heard her do the same. The wind whistled outside the cairn. Finn looked up at the hole in the roof and saw clouds racing east. He put his hand to his rib. “I need your help,” Maddie said. “Why me?”

“I don’t have anyone else. All my friends are his friends. I’m alone.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to get off these stupid islands. I can’t believe what happened on the plane.”

“You just left,” Finn said. “What?”

“You left us there, Maddie, in the plane.”

“I told you, I couldn’t go back.”

“But people were injured. You could’ve helped.” “The ambulances were already on the runway.” “People died.”

“I know.”

Lie low

“Seven people.” Silence for a beat. Finn walked the length of the chamber. The skulls smiled at him. “Give me one reason why I should help you,” he said. “Why I shouldn’t just hang up.”

“I need you,” Maddie said. “I’ve got no one else.” “Go to the police.”

“I’ve told you, I can’t.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“If you don’t help me, I’ll die.”

The last word caught in her throat. Finn closed his eyes, saw two empty glasses on the bar at the airport, the shape of her legs in those jeans. He pictured the cabin jerking and twisting, ripping apart, the propeller slicing through metal like it was nothing. “What do you want me to do?”

“I need somewhere to lie low,” Maddie said. “Until I work things out. I can’t stay in this shed, the farmer’s already been in this morning for milking, I almost got caught. Can you think of somewhere I could hide until I get organised?”

He was almost at St Margaret’s Hope when he saw the familiar sign for the cemetery at St Peter’s Kirk off to the right. Sod it, Maddie could wait in the cowshed another half hour. He turned at the war memorial, went past the houses of Haybrake and Brandyquoy.

He smiled at the place names, Orkney was full of quirky ones. Every stretch of road was like a little found poem in your mouth.

It was only a couple of miles over a rise in the land, sheep and cows grazing in grassy fields. The road was single-track with passing places as he went over a crossroads and past a lone, nameless standing stone surrounded by greylag geese. The North Sea was ahead as the road sloped down to the shore and ended at the kirk, a simple 18th Century block of grey stone with green moss spread across the slate roof.

A track stretched from the church down to the beach and headland beyond. Marram grass was threatening to engulf the track, which disappeared before it reached the sand.

Finn got out and closed the car door. He opened the low iron gate to the graveyard and went in. He felt tiny grains of rusted metal on his fingers. This was a new part of the cemetery, not like the ancient graveyards scattered all over the islands, and yet the elements had already set about the gate, the stone dyke and the gravestones.

Familiar

The area where Sally was buried was still half empty. Finn wondered where they would put people once it filled up. Burying people was unsustainable, wasn’t it? And yet there was no crematorium in Orkney, so that hadn’t been an option.

He and Ingrid had discussed the funeral, but he couldn’t remember much about it. At some point she’d asked about burial or cremation, Dundee or Orkney.

Dundee was Finn’s home but despite 20 years living there it didn’t feel like Sally’s. Finn was fine with her being brought north and laid to rest next to her dad.

He walked to the grave. He’d visited twice in the last week, the polished black granite so familiar to him. He looked at the headstone and tried to conjure something up in his mind. An image of Sally smiling at him over a shared double pepperoni in Pizza Express, the look on her face when he told her he’d been accepted into Duncan of Jordanstone.

He remembered her crying at the end of a documentary about whales. It wasn’t even sad, she was just overwhelmed by their grace in the water.

More tomorrow.