He shrugged; Sanderson nodded, distractedly.

'Yes. Yes, thank you.'

Tomasky mused, aloud. 'O moj boze. Holy Mother. The face.' The face.'

Sanderson came back: 'Quite something.'

Simon was puzzled, as well as horrified. He was still thinking about her feet. The weirdness of it all. He turned.

'So the big question is...what links this woman to Francoise Gahets?'

Sanderson was gazing about the room. 'Yup. We're on it,' he said, pensively. 'She was from Gascony. Isn't that right, Hamish?'

'Aye. French Basque Country near Biarritz. Came here with her mother when she was very young, sixty or seventy years ago.'

A sober pause enveloped them; the moan of the ceaseless Foula wind outside was the only noise, carrying the faint bleats of sheep.

'Enough?' said Hamish.

'Enough for now,' Sanderson answered. 'We'll want to speak to her friend, of course.'

'Edith Tait.'

'Maybe tomorrow?'

The Shetland inspector nodded, and turned to Jimmy Nicolson.

The good cheer of the pilot had quite departed. 'She was such a grand old gal. Came here after the war they say. Now look at her.'

He put a shielding hand to his eyes, and walked out of the room.

Leask sighed. 'Foula is a tiny wee place. This has. .h.i.t them hard. Let's go for a walk.'

He led them outside into the cold bright air. Jimmy Nicolson was sitting in his car, pa.s.sionately smoking a cigarette. Tomasky wandered over to join him, but Hamish Leask was already hiking in the opposite direction: up the nearest hill. He turned and called over his burly shoulder.

'Let's climb the Sneug! I feel a need to clear my lungs.'

Simon and Sanderson glanced at each other, then turned and pursued the Shetland officer.

The incline was austere, it was too exhausting to talk as they made their ascent. The journalist found his blood thumping painfully in his chest as, at last, they crested the top of the mighty hill.

The wind at the top was fierce. They were on the edge of a sudden cliff. He edged closer to the drop to have a look.

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!'

Seagulls were wheeling at the bottom of the cliffs, but they were minuscule flakes of whiteness.

'Good G.o.d. How high is that that?'

'One of the biggest sea-cliffs in Europe, maybe in the world,' said Leask. 'More than half a mile down.'

Simon stepped back.

'Very advisable,' said Leask. 'The wind can whip you off these clifftops and just flip you over the edge.' Hamish chuckled, soberly, and added, 'And yet you know what...what is truly amazing?'

'What?'

'These cliffs kept the Foulans going for centuries.'

'Sorry?'

'Look. See here ' The Shetland officer was pointing at some distant atoms of birdlife, halfway down the enormous rockwall. 'Puffin yonder, they nest on the cliffside. In the old days, when food ran low after a long winter, the local men would climb down the cliffs and steal the eggs and the chicks. It was a vital source of protein in the bad times. Baby puffin is very tasty lots of fat, ye see.'

'They'd climb down these cliffs?'

'Aye. They actually developed a strange deformity. Like a kind of human subspecies.'

'Sorry?'

'The men of Foula. And Saint Kilda too.' Hamish shrugged, his rust-red hair riffling in the wind. 'Over the centuries they developed very big toes, because they used them for climbing the cliffs. I suppose that was evolution. The men who climbed best happened to be the ones with big toes, so they got wives and had well-fed children, and pa.s.sed on their big toes.'

'Are you serious?'

'Quite serious.' Hamish smiled serenely.

But Simon was not feeling serene; the talk of the weird toes of the Foulans had brusquely reminded him. What he saw What he saw. The old woman's bare feet. He had had to mention it. to mention it.

'Guys. Can we, ah, get out of this wind?'

'Of course.'

The two policemen, and the journalist, walked down to a hollow, then lay back on the dewy turf. Simon said: 'You mentioned toes, Mister Leask.'

'Aye.'

'Well. It's funny but...Julie Charpentier's toes...Did either of you notice?'

Leask looked blank. 'I'm sorry?'

'You didn't see anything unusual about the victim? Her feet?'

'What?'

Simon wondered if he was making an idiot of himself.

'The toes of her right foot were deformed. Slightly.'

Sanderson was frowning.

'Go on, Simon.'

'I think the word is syndactyly. My wife is a doctor.'

'And syn...'

'Yes. Syndactyly. Webbed toes. Two of the old woman's toes were conjoined, at least partially. It's rather rare, but not unknown...'

Sanderson shrugged. 'So?'

Simon knew it was a big guess. But he felt sure he was onto something.

'Do you remember the woman in Primrose Hill? What she was wearing?'

The change in Sanderson's expression was sudden.

'You mean the gloves. The f.u.c.king gloves gloves!'

Before Simon could say anything else, Sanderson was on his feet and speaking on his mobile; the DCI took his phone a few yards down the sunlit slope, talking animatedly all the while. The wind was too boisterous for Simon to hear the conversation.

He sat in the cool yet dazzling sun, thinking of the woman's pain, her lonely screaming pain. Hamish Leask had his eyes shut.

A few minutes later, Sanderson returned, his normally ruddy face whiter; quite pale with surprise.

'I just called Pathology in London.' He turned towards Simon. 'You were right. The gloves were concealing a deformity; Pathology had already noted it.' He looked away again, staring at the distant ocean. 'He said it was digital syndactyly. The Primrose Hill victim had two...webbed fingers.'

The sea birds were calling from the cliffs below.

8.

They took the Bidasoa Road through the misty green valley, chasing the tumbling river downhill, and then shaving a sudden right, up into the hills, into another Basque Navarrese village, past the obligatory stone fountain and the deserted grey fronton fronton. David could sense the small tightness of anxiety: what did Jose Garovillo know? What was he going to say?

The village was called Etxalar.

David said the word Etxalar Etxalar out loud, practising the p.r.o.nunciation; Amy smiled, very gently. out loud, practising the p.r.o.nunciation; Amy smiled, very gently.

'No. Don't say the x like an x, you say tchuhhhh. tchuhhhh.'

'Etch...alarrrr?'

'Much better.'

They were stalled behind a cattle truck. Amy seemed distracted. She asked him, apropos of nothing, about his past life, London, America, his job. He sketched a few details.

Then she asked him about his lovelife.

He paused but then he confessed he was single. Amy asked why.

The cow in the truck stared at them, reproachfully. David answered: 'I guess I push people away, before they get too close. Perhaps because I lost my parents. Don't trust people to hang around.'

Another silence. He asked, 'And you? Are you attached?'

A silence. The cattle truck moved on, and they followed, accelerating past small orchards of pear trees. At last Amy said, 'David, there's something I should tell you. I've been lying. At least...'

'What?'

'I've not been giving you all the information.'

'About what?'

The green-blue of the mountains framed her profile. Her conflicted thoughts were written on her face. David offered: 'You don't have to tell me if you don't want.'

'No,' she answered, 'you deserve deserve an explanation. And we are going to meet Jose, Miguel's father.' an explanation. And we are going to meet Jose, Miguel's father.'

Amy turned and regarded David; there was a tension and yet an audacity in her expression.

'We were lovers. Miguel was my boyfriend. Years ago.'

'Jesus.'

'I was twenty-three twenty-three. I'd just arrived in the Basque Country. I was alone. Young and stupid. I never mentioned it...Because I guess I am...ashamed.'

David turned the wheel as they drove around a corner; the trees and hedges shivered in the slipstream as they pa.s.sed. He had to ask: 'You knew he was ETA. And yet you...?'

'Slept with him?' She sighed. 'Yes, I know. Muy stupido Muy stupido. But I was young like I say and...young girls go for b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, don't they? The bad boy. That Heathcliff s.h.i.t, the older man b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. Even the glamorous violence.' She shook her head. 'I guess it had some juvenile allure. And And he was mysterious. And he's smart and good looking and a famous guy, famously strong and active.' She forced a weak smile. 'He looks a bit like you, actually. Except older and a little thinner.' he was mysterious. And he's smart and good looking and a famous guy, famously strong and active.' She forced a weak smile. 'He looks a bit like you, actually. Except older and a little thinner.'

'Except I don't mutilate, torture and kill people and...I don't hit women in bars.'

'Of course. Of course. I realized this myself after about two months, that he was just a nasty piece of work. And...' She shrugged, awkwardly, then confessed. 'And there was something sick about him, as well. He was kinky. In bed. I dumped him after two months.'

David didn't know what to say; her honesty was disarming.

He tried another question as they sped past a farmhouse.

'Do you still have contact?'

'No. Not if I can help it. But sometimes it's inevitable. Miguel introduced me to his dad, to Jose, who is still a good friend he helped me get my job. And I really love my job...The same way I love these mountains.' She sighed. 'But Miguel is always b.l.o.o.d.y there, lurking, he's pursued me ever since...You know what you did in that bar, that was was very brave.' very brave.'

'Did he hit you when you were together?'

'Yes. That's when it happened. He hit me once and that's when I dumped him. b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

He thought of the scar on her forehead. It didn't quite match a scene of domestic abuse. But he didn't want to pry further. The farms were turning into forests, they were slowly ascending the mountains.