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other work until he had checked this out. He picked up the phone.
    ‘This missing person from the Headland?’ he asked. ‘She turned up yet?’
    ‘If she has no one’s told us. But, they don’t always, do they?’
    ‘I’ll deal with it if you like. Talk to the family anyway.’
    ‘Why?’ The voice was suspicious. Routine missing persons shouldn’t have interested Ramsay. ‘Something going on there that we should know about?’
    ‘Nothing like that.’
    How could he explain his feeling that something was wrong? He could hardly say, ‘I went there once. The lassie was more worried than someone her age has a right to be. And there were no blackberries.’ He’d be a laughing stock. So he said nothing.
    ‘Well, if you’re short of work you’re welcome to it.’ The voice at the end of the phone had turned sulky. The receiver was replaced with a thud.
    Ramsay drove back down the road along which he’d just travelled. There was a straight avenue of dripping trees before he came to the familiar grey terraces of Heppleburn and the road to the coast. As he drove he half expected to see the ramrod-straight figure of Kathleen Howe marching towards her home, carrying her canvas shopping bag and another excuse for her unexplained absence.
    As on the previous occasion he had to wait at the level crossing. A coal train was rattling slowly on its way to the power station. On the other side of the line, beyond the barrier, a pedestrian was waiting to cross. He was a large man in a black PVC cape and Ramsay imagined the moisture trickling from the greasy collar into his neck. As the barrier lifted and Ramsay drove slowly across, the man peered into the car, sticking his head right up to the passenger window, so close that for a moment Ramsay was afraid he intended to jump in front of the vehicle. It occurred to Ramsay as he drove on towards the club that he should have stopped, and at least asked the man for his name and address. Already he was thinking of Kathleen Howe’s disappearance in terms of a police investigation.
    The Headland was covered with a fine drizzling mist which hid the Coastguard House from view. Ramsay drove slowly past the club and towards the houses of Cotter’s Row. A red minibus loomed out of the fog ahead of him. He had seen it before parked in the street close to his cottage. It collected people who had no transport and took them to the ten o’clock service at the Methodist church in Heppleburn. He pulled in to let it pass and had a glimpse, through windows spotted with rain, of elderly faces.
    He parked outside the Howes’and waited for a moment, suddenly daunted by the prospect of an encounter with Marilyn Howe. He thought he should have brought Sally Wedderburn with him, then told himself he was overreacting. When he knocked on the door Kathleen Howe would probably open it herself.

Chapter Six
    The door opened while he was still sitting in the car so he felt awkward, irrationally guilty, as if he’d been spying. Marilyn stood on the step. She was dressed in clothes which her mother might have worn: a shapeless knee-length skirt, a roll-neck sweater, fluffy pink slippers. Her hair was pulled away from her face. The effect was of middle-aged dowdiness and exhaustion.
    ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you. I heard the car and I thought… Is there any news?’
    He shook his head. ‘Your mother’s not back yet? You’ve not heard from her?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Perhaps I could come in. I’d like a word with you all.’
    ‘I’m the only one here. Dad’s out looking. He went as soon as it got light. I don’t think any of us slept.’
    ‘Is your father a big man? Wearing a black cycle cape?’
    She nodded.
    ‘I think I saw him on the road.’ So the strange figure at the level crossing had been an anxious husband, not a suspect. Not yet at least. Marilyn continued. ‘Claire’s at work. She offered to stay but there didn’t seem much point.’
    ‘Claire’s your aunt?’
    ‘That’s