Page 29 of The High Island

‘If he did, I didn’t register him. But it was busy,’ she apologized.

Jo thanked her and gave the girl her card. ‘If you think of anything else, please give me a call,’ she said.

‘The fire last night was the area where he was heading,’ the girl said, looking worried. ‘There’s no chance he might have been caught up in it?’

‘We don’t think so,’ Jo fibbed, although it was still at the back of her mind as a possibility, which would only recede once Willie Halcro got back in touch to tell them so.

The girl looked relieved.

‘I wanted to visit the grave of Betty Corrigall, but the guys’ – she gave a sideways nod to her male companions – ‘weren’t to be persuaded. Otherwise, we might have been down that way ourselves when the fire started.’

‘The fire didn’t reach the grave,’ Jo found herself saying.

‘I’m glad.’ The girl smiled in response.

Now back on dry land, Jo checked out the cars in and around the harbour area for the hired vehicle Kris had picked up at the airport. The Stromness Hotel, she knew, had only five designated parking places behind the building and, according to Rachael, the car wasn’t in any of them.

Rachael had assumed that Kris had gone for a drive around Mainland to clear his head. As it turned out, they now had proof that he’d taken the passenger ferry to Hoy and was believed to still be there. So where was the hired car?

At the foot of the steps that led up to the hotel entrance, Jo made a call to the station and asked that anAPBbe put out on the missing vehicle. After which she called Rachael’s mobile to warn of her arrival.

When she emerged from the lift, the girl was waiting at the open door of the room, her expression a mixture of hope and fear.

She thinks he might be dead, Jo realized, so she began with the positive news that Kris had been sighted crossing on the pedestrian ferry to Hoy, and was, they believed, still on the island somewhere.

This news brought some light into Rachael’s eyes, before a sudden memory seemed to replace it.

‘There was a big fire over there last night near to the Mowat croft . . .’ She stopped there and sent Jo an anguished look. ‘Kris couldn’t have been caught up in the wildfire?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ Jo said, praying again that she was right. ‘I’ve just come from the fire site myself.’

Rachael was studying her closely and Jo knew the girl was intuitive enough to recognize her misgivings.

‘How do you know for certain that Kris is still on Hoy?’ she said quietly.

Jo explained. ‘We have no sighting of him leaving by any ferry route.’

Rachael seemed to consider this. ‘Then he’s hiding out until tomorrow, when the will is read.’

‘Why would he feel the need to do that?’ Jo said.

The girl gave a shrug of what looked like despair. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t even know he had a family. I didn’t know his family livedin Orkney until recently, when he mentioned his great-grandfather, Ivor. That’s when he asked me to come here with him. On family business, he said. Then we arrived to find Ivor had died.’ She halted there, fear filling her face. ‘Kris thinks the family found out he was coming here and killed Ivor before they could meet.’

At this moment, Jo’s mobile rang out, startling both of them. Glancing at the caller’s name, Jo answered.

‘Boss?’ she said.

‘I’m on the ferry and will be with you in half an hour. Any developments at your end?’ Erling added.

‘I’m just chatting with Rachael now,’ Jo hedged, then told him she’d put out anAPBon the hired vehicle, because there had been no sighting of it in the immediate area round the hotel.

‘Good idea,’ was the response. ‘See you shortly.’

‘That wasDIFlett,’ Jo said to the girl. ‘He’s on the ferry from Lyness and will be here soon.’ She halted there, but only briefly, before saying, ‘I think there’s more you can tell me. In particular about the will and what Kris suspects or knows is in there. Also, why he took the pregnancy news so badly.’ She rose at this point and, picking up the kettle, went to fill it. ‘Tea or coffee?’ she called from the bathroom.

‘Tea,’ Rachael responded.

Jo set about making the drinks, aware of the silent deliberations going on behind her. At the same time, she was replaying a similar decision she too had had to make regarding a pregnancy. A decision that had eventually brought her here to Orkney and a new life, away from the waves it had caused with both her immediate family and her previous partner.