Archive of Our Own

THURSDAY & FRIDAY

Ellie, being an eternal optimist, still held out hope that Alec Hardy would one day begin behaving like a normal human being.  But oh, how difficult that optimism was to maintain, every time her DI insisted on being his typical curmudgeonly self.

"Right, I'm off to Scotland," Ellie announced one Thursday evening, appearing in the doorway of Alec's office.

"Off to Scotland?!"  Alec glanced up at her, scowling, his wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

"My calendar's shown for months that I'm on holiday all of next week," Ellie reminded him (Jesus, had he forgotten already?!).

"Yes, but why in god's name are you going to Scotland, Miller?"  Alec's scowl deepened as he contemplated his home country.  "It's a rainy, depressing, bleak place."

"Oh, I don't know," Ellie retorted, "maybe because it's also beautiful and green, and closer than bloody Florida but still about 800 miles away from you, sir?"

"Scotland is not 800 miles away," scoffed Alec, ignoring the insult.  "Trust me, I should know."

"Well, bully for you, it just so happens that Lerwick is 800 miles away, according to the internet."  Ellie dumped a stack of folders onto Alec's desk.  "I'll be back in a week.  Please, don't bother getting in touch while I'm gone."

Alec watched her depart, his arms crossed, his brow furrowed.

"Lerwick," he repeated to no one, as if testing the contours of the word with each drawn-out consonant.

Ellie had never been to Shetland before, and about ten minutes after stepping off the plane, she decided that this omission was one of the great mistakes of her life—up there alongside marrying her fucking ex-husband, and kicking the shit out of her fucking ex-husband while he was in police custody, and lending money to her idiot sister with the worst possible timing, and shagging that truly unimpressive bloke during that questionable night out with Claire Ripley, and possibly not having challenged Alec Hardy to a duel to the death over the Detective Inspector position in Broadchurch when he first arrived.  Even on the drive into Lerwick in their rental car, Ellie's breath caught at the stunning vistas of sea and cliffs, so familiar and yet so utterly unlike Broadchurch.  Tom, being a teenager and so inevitably insufferable, spent the entire ride with his eyes down and his thumbs tapping out frantic texts on his phone to his friends back home; but Fred was as delighted as Ellie by the natural scenery and by the quaint little stone houses and colourful boats along the harbour in Lerwick.  The boy's glee only intensified when Ellie revealed that their accommodations for the week were a room at a lighthouse.

"I LOVE Shetland!" Fred yelled, flopping down on one of the beds in the hotel.

"Shetland is boring," Tom grumbled.  "How long do we have to stay here?"

"Everyone here talks like Alec," Fred commented happily, pronouncing Ellie's boss's name the way the Scot would himself, with a satisfying click at the end of the word.

"No they don't, you idiot, Alec's from Glasgow, and they sound totally different here," scoffed Tom.

"Tom, don't call your brother an idiot," Ellie snapped.  "Shall we go get something to eat, and maybe then walk along the beach a little, before it gets too dark?"

It had seemed like such a nice idea to Ellie, to be able to take a walk along the shore and enjoy the water, without being tormented by memories of Beth Latimer screaming as Ellie held her back from the taped-off portion of the beach.  It occurred to Ellie that perhaps she didn't spend enough time away from Broadchurch and on other cheerier coastlines, if her first association with the word 'beach' was 'crime scene'.  At least here, in Shetland, the beaches weren't haunted, however haunting they were.  Her stomach happily digesting a good plate of tandoori chicken, and a salty breeze whipping across her cheeks, Ellie sighed with contentment as she watched Fred race along the sand as fast as his little legs would carry him, Tom lagging sullenly behind her a few metres away.  This was what holidays were for, to get away from the horrifying reality of the world and simply savour the moment.

"Mummy, I found something!" shouted Fred, who had scrambled to the top of a large rock and was squatting on it, peering over its edge.

"Fred, dear, be careful!" Ellie called after him, and she pulled her orange windbreaker a little tighter around her as she stepped over pieces of driftwood and masses of decaying kelp to reach Fred.  "What's this you've found?"

Ellie climbed up the rock after her son and looked down into the crevice.  Her eyes immediately widened.

"Come on, love, we're not looking at that," she said quickly, taking Fred's hand and pulling him down off the rock after her.  "Let's go back up into town, shall we?"

"It looked like a coconut, Mummy!" Fred insisted, excited.  "What's a coconut doing on a beach in Shetland?"

And Ellie wished that she could simply focus on trying to find a plausible answer to Fred's question, instead of wondering what a severed head was doing on a beach in Shetland.

Ellie didn't expect anyone to be in the Lerwick police station at six in the evening on a Friday, but when she knocked on the door, it opened a few moments later to reveal a man with a serious but honest face.

"Can I help you?" he asked Ellie.

"Er, so sorry to bother you this late at night, but I need to report a likely homicide," Ellie said awkwardly.  "Could we come in?"

The man's eyebrows raised a hair, but he stepped back and let Ellie and her two sons through the door.

"In here, please," he said, gesturing through a door into an interview room.  "What kind of a likely homicide?"

Ellie glanced at her boys, and the man took the hint.

"Would you and your brother mind waiting out here while I speak to your mum?" he asked Tom.  "We won't be long."

Tom shook his head, and the man closed the door and sat down across from Ellie.

"Decapitation," Ellie explained.  "My younger son saw the head lying in a crevice on the beach, although thankfully it was face-down and he mistook it for a coconut."  Ellie scowled and glanced towards the door.  "No doubt my elder son is being a prat right now and explaining to poor Fred what he actually saw and why we're here."

The corners of the man's mouth twitched upwards.

"You're in law enforcement yourself, I'm guessing?"

"DS Ellie Miller," Ellie said, holding out her hand.  "Is it that obvious?"

"DI Jimmy Perez," replied the man, shaking Ellie's hand with a steady grip.  "Well, most kids would find being at a police station much more exciting, wouldn't they?  A lot more questions, all that.  Besides, in my experience, only a police officer, an emergency department surgeon, or a war-zone veteran could possibly report a decapitation as calmly as you just have."

"Yeah, I've been pretty well desensitised to corpses on beaches, by this point in my career," Ellie shrugged.

This time, Jimmy allowed himself a small puff of laughter.

"Me, too."  He glanced at Ellie.  "You here on holiday?"

"Oh, technically, but it seems like crime scenes follow me across the British Isles, no matter how far away from them I try to get," Ellie sighed, before flinching.  "I'm joking, by the way.  Oh, god, you're not going to make me a suspect on account of my terrible sense of humour and my big mouth, are you?"

"Not likely," Jimmy reassured her, clearly bemused.  "I was just going to say, I don't want to cut into your time with your family, but if you wouldn't mind coming down to the beach with me and my team, so you can show us where the body is...?"

"Of course."  Ellie paused.  "The boys..."

"Ah."  Jimmy furrowed his brow.  "Well, if it's not too strange an offer, my daughter's almost certainly currently curled up in front of the television, watching some rubbish that's rotting her brain, so I could ask her to come over and stay with them?  It doesn't look like your elder needs much supervision, but even just someone to help them navigate around town, if they need to get anything..."

"That would be great, thanks.  Not too strange at all."

"Aye, well."  Jimmy shrugged.  "When you're not from a small town, those sorts of offers can come across as presumptuous, you know."

"Lucky for you, I'm from a small town," Ellie smiled.

Jimmy nodded, then pulled out his phone.

"Hey, Cass, can you come down to the station as soon as possible?  Have a few young lads who need looking after, while their mum helps us with a case... right, see you soon, then.  Love you.  That's squared away, then," he added to Ellie as he hung up his phone.  "She's heading over.  You'd best come meet the rest of the team, then."

Jimmy led Ellie into an open office space where a young woman was typing frantically at her computer, her face glowing blue from the light of the screen.  Across the way, a young blond man re-entered the room.

"Everything all right, Inspector?" he asked.

"Sandy, can you see if Cora's free to come down to the beach to investigate a possible homicide?" Jimmy asked, and Sandy nodded and picked up his phone.  "Tosh?"

The young woman stopped typing and sighed.

"Any chance you can take a break and come out with us?" Jimmy asked.

"I've still got three pages to go," Tosh moped, her eyes still glued to her computer screen.  "Curse our resident Luddite for accidentally deleting the draft right at closing.  It's worse than being back at uni and having your laptop crash right before a big paper's due, you know?  Or did you even have laptops when you were at uni?  'Back in the era when dinosaurs roamed the earth,' is what my dad would say, if he were here..."

"Filing's not due until midnight," Jimmy reminded Tosh, "and Rhona's got plans this evening, she won't be reviewing anything you send her until a few hours from now, anyway.  Besides, it shouldn't be your job to retype something that Billy accidentally deleted."

"Except that it'd take Billy five times as long to retype everything."  Tosh shook her head fondly.  "Lucky for him that I've found enough pity in my heart to help him out.  Besides, he already knows he's going to owe me big for this.  Fancy mochas from one of the local cafés every morning for the next month, that'll be my expected payment for everything."  She finished typing a paragraph and finally looked up, which was when she noticed Ellie.  "Oh, Jesus, you've got to tell me when we've got company, before I start blethering on like that!"

"Tosh, meet DS Ellie Miller, who's just alerted us to a potential homicide on the beach."  Jimmy tipped his head towards the door.  "It's getting dark out there.  You coming?"

Tosh sighed and, hitting the save command three times in a row on her computer keyboard, leapt up and grabbed her coat.

Cora was waiting in her scrubs in the car park for Jimmy, Ellie, Tosh, and Sandy when they arrived, and together they set off down the beach, Ellie leading the way.

"Right down there," she said, standing on top of the rock and pointing down into the crevice.

The Lerwick team clambered to the top of the rock themselves and glanced down into the crevice, where the head lay embedded in sand, the rising tide lapping weakly at it.  Undaunted, Cora pulled out a torch and shone it into the darker corners of the crevice.

"Rest of the body's in there, too," she reported.  "What do you think, Jimmy?  I don't think we'll have time to examine everything if we leave it in situ, not with the tide rising like it is.  We'll have to risk moving everything up to higher ground."

"Right, well."  Jimmy sighed and, with a glance at Sandy, he grabbed a pair of latex gloves from Cora and lowered himself carefully into the crevice.  Sandy followed suit, and with a grimace of distaste, the young man lifted the severed head up for Cora to receive.  The pathologist took it in her own hands and carefully turned it over.  And Ellie let out a startled scream.

Alec was rubbing his eyes at his desk when his phone began to ring.  He scowled as he picked it up—why was anyone ringing his desk at seven o'clock in the bloody evening on a Friday?

"Yeah?"

"Alec!" Ellie gasped through the line.  "Oh, thank god."

"Miller?"  Alec's scowl deepened with concern—something must have really rattled his DS for her to forget that she wasn't allowed to call him by his given name.  "Everything all right, Miller?"

"Yeah.  Yeah."  Ellie took a deep breath.  "Just... had a momentary scare.  Something came up here, and I was afraid something had happened to you, and I just wanted to ring and... and make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine," Alec promised.  "Sorry you got so worked up over nothing."  He paused.  "You, er, enjoying your holiday?"

"Oh!  Yes!"  Ellie's voice sounded somewhat artificially bright, but if she had decided to put on a brave face for Alec, he wasn't going to call her out on it.  "Shetland's lovely.  I expect that, once this incident is cleared up, we'll have a very nice and quiet holiday here.  Fred and I think it's gorgeous, at any rate."

Alec nodded.

"All right, well, you take care, then, Miller."  He cleared his throat awkwardly.  "Ring me if you want or need to talk, all right?"

"Will do.  And sir?  Look after yourself."

Ellie hung up her phone and walked back to where the Lerwick team was hauling the headless body out of the crevice.  Cora and Tosh had seized it beneath the arms and were dragging it onto a tarp to lie next to the head that looked so alarmingly like Alec Hardy's.

"You all right?" Tosh asked as Ellie rejoined them.

"Yeah.  Just needed to check in with a colleague."  Ellie crossed her arms, frowning at the fragmented corpse.  "Jesus.  Really glad the boys are back at the station.  Thanks again for asking your daughter to come look after them," she added to Jimmy as Tosh helped pull her boss from the crevice.

"No trouble."  Jimmy glanced at the body.  "What do you think, Cora?  Deliberate?"

"You could at least let me do an examination somewhere with better lighting, before asking me for any conclusions!" Cora grumbled, her nose about three inches away from the body's neck as she peered at it with the meagre light of her torch.

"Well, the corpse's ending up in that crevice certainly was deliberate, if nothing else," Ellie pointed out.  "The end of the crevice where the sea washes in is too narrow for a body to be swept through there, and if you look at where the kelp lines on the rocks are, you can see that the tide doesn't rise high enough to have swept the body over the rocks.  And I honestly don't see why someone would hide a body that had been decapitated accidentally."

Jimmy turned to Ellie, his eyebrows raised.

"Sorry," Ellie mumbled hastily, shoving her hands into the pockets of her North Face.  "I'll stop talking now."

"Aye, your reasoning seems absolutely right," Jimmy agreed.  "Well, let's get him back to the station, then, so Cora can do her examination and we can try to ID the body."

But as Sandy and Tosh lifted opposite ends of the tarp, the coat jacket on one of the corpse's arms slid upwards, revealing a tattoo on the forearm.  Tosh, upon seeing it, stopped dead in her tracks.

"What's wrong?" Ellie asked, her eyes following Tosh's.

Jimmy too turned, and after a moment he let out a long sigh.

"The fish, the tree, the bird, and the bell," he muttered.  "Ah, Christ, not these bastards again."

Jimmy made sure to check in with Tosh before they left the station that evening.

"You're sure you don't want to take a step back from this investigation?" he asked her in a low voice.

Tosh hesitated, then shook her head.

"No," she said, taking a deep breath.  "Not right now, at least."

"All right," said Jimmy, "but if that changes, you tell me right away, okay?"

Tosh nodded.

"Sir?" she added after a moment.  "If someone needs to go talk to Monro down in Glasgow..."

Tosh's lower lip trembled, and Jimmy put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"You won't have to go," he promised her.  "Not unless you decide you want to.  And I'll finish typing up that report for Rhona tonight; you should go home."

"Thank you," Tosh whispered.  "I'll see you back here tomorrow, then, assuming you'll need me."

Jimmy watched her depart, his arms crossed, until Cassie tapped him on the shoulder.

"The Millers have just driven off in their rental car," she informed him.  "And Sandy just told me that you haven't had anything to eat since lunchtime."

"Aye," replied Jimmy as he suddenly realised just how hungry he was.  "You eaten?"

"I was about to put a casserole in the oven when you rang, so I'm famished."

"Thanks again," said Jimmy, wrapping an arm around his daughter's shoulders.  "For rushing down here at short notice.  I hope it wasn't too dull?"

"Nah," laughed Cassie.  "Fred, the little one, he's a real charmer.  Kept asking me to tell him stories, so by now he knows just about all of the Shetland lore that I can remember from the stories Mum used to read me.  Unfortunately, though, I think that Tom, the teenager, has a bit of a crush on me; I kept on catching him watching me all evening, and then looking back at his phone as soon as he saw that I'd seen."

"Jesus," Jimmy chuckled.  "Well, as long as he's not planning to ask you to run off to the other side of the world with him..."

Cassie nudged Jimmy with her shoulder.

"Come on, Dad," she said, "let's get some food into you before you get any snarkier."

SATURDAY

Ellie spent all evening wondering if she should ring Alec back; he had told her to, so he couldn't be that much of an arsehole if she took him up on it.  Long after Fred and even Tom had fallen asleep, Ellie lay awake, itching to pick up her phone and creep outside into the chilly night air.  It would be more productive than lying in bed, trying to sleep but being jarred back into consciousness every time she closed her eyes and saw once more the severed head that looked so like Alec's.

So by the following afternoon, Ellie was half-convinced that it was merely a willful product of her imagination, when she spotted Alec halfway down the block in Lerwick.

"Miller!  Hey, Miller!"

Ellie stopped as Alec stalked towards her, the wind ruffling his hair and making him look even more like a disgruntled golden eagle than usual.  Unusually, he was wearing jeans and a button-up, and a backpack was slung over his shoulder.  It suddenly struck Ellie as peculiar that she found it jarring to see one of her closest friends in anything other than a suit and tie.

"Mummy, look, it's Alec!" yelled Fred happily, and even Tom looked up from his phone to stare in confusion at the DI.

"What on earth are you doing here?" Ellie asked.

Alec stopped before her, cleared his throat, and looked down at the ground.

"Headed to the police station," he explained.  "Follow-up for the incident last night.  I'm sorry that it gave you a shock like it did, and I hope that the rest of your holiday is much calmer."

Ellie stared at him, confused, as Alec nodded to Fred, then turned and began stalking away in the direction of the police station.

"Wait, sir...!"  Ellie grabbed Fred's hand and the two ran after Alec as fast as the little boy could.  "Can I come with you?"

"Miller, didn't you specifically tell me not to drag you into police business while you were away?" Alec reminded her with a wry smile.

"I dragged you into this, though!" Ellie argued.

Alec sighed.

"No, you didn't, Miller.  And honestly, it's probably easier if..."

"With all due respect," hissed Ellie from between her teeth, "at this point, I'm fully invested in knowing why my son found a body on the beach, and especially why that body happened to look just like you, so if you'll stop being such an insufferable idiot for once in your life and just let me be there for you..."

She stopped as Alec strode up to the police station door and knocked, then stepped back with his arms crossed.  When Jimmy Perez opened the door, he looked surprised to see both of them there.

"DS Miller?  What..."

Jimmy stopped and stared at Alec with his brow furrowed.

"Inspector Perez, this is DI Alec Hardy," Ellie sighed, gesturing at her infuriating boss.  "He says he's here for some follow-up regarding last night's incident."

"Aha."  Jimmy opened his mouth, glanced from Ellie back to Alec, and gave Ellie a bemused half-smile.  "Well, I can surmise why he's here, just from the look of him; but if you didn't invite him, I don't have a clue who did..."

"That would be me," said a curt voice from behind Jimmy, and he stepped aside to let an exhausted-looking woman through the door.  "Hey, Alec."

"Rhona," said Alec stiffly, and when Rhona wrapped her arms around him, it only took him a moment before he accepted the gesture with good grace and returned it by means of an awkward pat on the back.

"I'm so sorry," murmured Rhona, pulling away.

"Eh, well," Alec sighed.  "I'd say 'don't be', but you'd probably scold me."

Rhona shot Alec a small smile and squeezed his arm.

"Not at a moment like this," she told him.  "Come on, you look like you could use a cuppa."

Ellie shot Jimmy a bewildered look, but when he gestured for her to follow everyone else inside, she did so.

"Is Cassie here?" Tom asked Jimmy, trying to look nonchalant about the matter.

"No, sorry," Jimmy answered, trying and failing to hide his amusement.  "She has plans this afternoon, so I'm afraid you and your wee brother will just have to wait right here.  Hopefully, we won't need your mum for long."

"Excuse me, wait, I still don't understand what DI Hardy's doing here," Ellie said to Rhona as they made their way into the centre of the office.

"He's related to the victim," Rhona explained, stopping in front of a board already covered in a number of photographs and names scrawled in chalk.  "David Hardy.  Cora, our pathologist, would've ID'ed him eventually, but of course I recognised my cousin the instant Jimmy sent me a photo of the crime scene last night."  Rhona shuddered slightly, glancing at an image on the board of the head lying out on the tarp.  "Only thought it would be right to ring his younger brother and give him the news, though I certainly didn't expect him to fly all the way up to Shetland in response," Rhona added pointedly.

Alec, who was grimly examining the photographs of his brother's body, crossed his arms and ignored Rhona.

"Anyway," sighed Rhona, running a hand over her face, "Jimmy, if you can reiterate what you were just saying Cora's examination found..."  She glanced at Alec.  "Alec, do you want to step outside for this?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Rhona, I'm a bloody DI, aren't I?" grumbled Alec.

Rhona let out a huff of exasperation, then glanced quizzically at Ellie.

"And this is my DS, Miller," Alec added, gesturing towards Ellie with a flail of one hand.  "She's the one who found the body, she can handle whatever he's about to say."

"Right, well," sighed Jimmy, "obviously the identity of the victim's been established.  Cora's estimated the time of death to be around three in the morning; when the body was thrown into the crevice is unclear, as is the location of the killing itself.  It appears that the decapitation was very intentional," Jimmy added, with a quick glance at Alec, "given that it appears to have taken several strokes from a sharp instrument not entirely suited to the purpose."

Ellie made a face, then noticed that Tosh was making an almost identical face, and nearly laughed at an extremely inappropriate moment.

"Dare I ask why Robbie Morton and Michael Maguire are back up on the board?" Rhona asked, her voice suddenly sounding as fatigued as her physical bearing.

"Because David Hardy has the same tattoo on his arm that both Robbie Morton and Michael Maguire had," Jimmy explained.  "Now, at the time of the Maguire case, maybe I assumed that the tattoo was a family tradition, but I'm increasingly convinced that it's a gang tattoo."

"So," Rhona sighed softly, "Arthur McCall again."

Jimmy nodded.

Ellie glanced at Rhona, whose face was tilted to the ground, her expression simultaneously pained and wistful.  Tosh stood next to her, also staring at the ground, and clearly working very hard to maintain her composure.

"Well, if it's related to organised crime, I hope you've already gotten back in touch with Tommy Monro," Rhona said finally.  "Let me know if you need anything from me.  DS Miller, thank you so much for all of your help to date.  Alec?"

Alec sighed and followed his cousin into her office.

"Who's Arthur McCall?" he asked

"Heroin kingpin down in Glasgow," Rhona explained heavily.  "Our team had a nasty series of interactions with him a while back.  Suffice to say that none of us are at all thrilled at the idea of crossing paths with him again."  She turned to face Alec with her arms crossed.  "You all right?"

"Well, Jesus, Rhona," Alec snapped, "I just learned that my estranged brother's head was whacked off piecemeal by someone who most likely is part of the Glaswegian underworld—how do you think I'm feeling?!"

"I know."  Rhona's closed her eyes.  "I know.  Look, it's almost the end of the work day, anyway, and I can finish things up remotely.  You haven't booked a room anywhere, have you?"

Alec shook his head.

"Let's get out of here, then," Rhona suggested.  "Get you something to eat, give you a moment to freshen up and get some rest.  You're more than welcome to stay at mine for as long as you're around."

"How long does it usually take?" Alec asked.

"How long does what usually take?"

"Fully investigating a case like this.  I mean, down in Broadchurch, it usually takes us around eight weeks to conclude an investigation, and we don't have all the resources in the world..."

"Here, I'd say it usually takes around six weeks, at the most.  Sometimes only two, depending on the case.  Why's it matter?"

Alec rolled his eyes.

"I didn't fly up to Shetland for tourism, for god's sake.  I'm here to help figure out who killed my brother, and why, and I intend to stay for as long as it takes."

Ellie was sitting outside a small café in Lerwick with her boys when she noticed the commotion.

"Dad, come home, it won't help things at all..."

"It's the only thing that can help against them, now that iron's failed us, you ken that from the tales, lass..."

Ellie watched as a woman with a golden-red braid seized hold of her father's arm, only to have him wrest it away as he charged in the direction of the kirk.

"Oh, for god's sake, Dad," the young woman sighed, jogging to to catch up to her father.

"Wait here a moment," said Ellie to Tom and Fred, pushing her chair back and setting down a corner of a sandwich.  " 'Scuse me?"

The young woman turned.

"Everything all right?" Ellie asked as she approached the woman.

"Yeah, my dad's just..."  The woman sighed.  "Being a stubborn old man, I suppose."

"It's not being stubborn," the old man insisted, rounding on his daughter with wild eyes.  "It's only taking necessary precautions against any more harm caused by da guid folk, which I wouldnae expect a stranger to understand," he added, glowering at Ellie.

Ellie, unsurprisingly, blinked in surprise.

"Has something happened?" she asked, fully aware that she was still on holiday and it wasn't her place to inquire.

"No," sighed the young woman.

"Aye!" growled the old man.  "So the fiddler is taken from us, and now they decide to take the fiddle, too?"

"Please excuse him," whispered the young woman.

"Well, if something's been taken, shouldn't you file a report with the police?" said Ellie reasonably.

The old man laughed bitterly.

"Not until the police discover how to fetch a fiddle from the trowie knowes," he told Ellie.  "Come, Jessie, the minister's the one we need to resolve this..."

Jessie cast a beleaguered smile towards Ellie, then hurried after her father.

"Mummy, can we go back to the lighthouse soon?" Fred called from the table where he and Tom still sat.

"In a bit, love," Ellie called back and, her brow furrowed in confusion, she returned to her boys and her sandwich.

"I could just stay at a hotel," Alec repeated for the umpteenth time, even as he closed the boot of Rhona's car and followed her to her front door with suitcase in hand.

"Alec, you numpty, I wouldn't have invited you to stay at my place if I didn't genuinely want you to," Rhona reminded him with an exasperated laugh, opening her door.  "Just so long as you don't mind commuting into town on my schedule, although we can hire you a car, of course."

"Well, it's also that Daisy wants to fly up," Alec explained.  "I mentioned that there'd been a family emergency, and she's on holiday next week, so she asked if she could come join me for a few days.  Sweet of her, I suppose."

"I'd love to have Daisy come stay, as well."  Rhona smiled.  "She was, what, five or so, when last I saw her?  Very excited about ponies, if I recall correctly."

"Well, she's grown out of that phase by now, thankfully," Alec scoffed.

"Mmm, as I'd only expect, given it's been about a decade.  By the way, this is what happens when you never come back for any of our family reunions, my not having a clue what's going on with you and your life.  Thanks to your persistent absence, my mum's stopped thinking of you as being the responsible cousin of the lot of us."

"Responsible?"  Alec made a face and dropped onto one end of the sofa.  "Why did she ever think I was more responsible than you, Ms Procurator Fiscal?!"

"Because she had to put up with my wild teenage years," Rhona reminded him.

Alec snorted.

"Yeah, fair point.  A series of blackouts at parties that required my coming to your rescue every other Saturday; plus that time you nearly failed Chemistry because you were so caught up in pining over your headmaster's daughter; plus all of those snarky girlfriends brought home throughout uni, who even you have to admit were truly terrible choices, in retrospect."

"I won't deny any of that."  Rhona sighed.  "Well, I guess some things never change."

Alec raised his eyebrows.  Rhona hesitated, then retreated behind the island of her kitchen.

"Drink?"

"No, thanks."  Alec laced his fingers over one knee as he watched his cousin pour herself a slug of whiskey.  "You all right, Rhona?"

Rhona downed half of the whiskey in one go, then took a seat on the sofa next to Alec.

"Look, you might as well hear it from me before you hear it from anyone else, given the way this case is trending."

Alec's eyebrows twitched upwards.

"Uh-huh?"

"The last time we dealt with the gang that Jimmy mentioned earlier, it... the investigation ended up exposing some rather unsavoury dealings between this crime lord's lawyer and the senior fiscal in Glasgow."  Rhona grimaced.  "The latter of whom happened to be my significant other, at the time."

"Oh," said Alec.

"Yeah.  Needless to say, things did not end well for her."

"Or for you?"

"Or for us."  Rhona smiled sadly.  "The point is, I expect Jimmy to be keeping a constant eye on me, making sure I'm holding up well enough, given some of the old wounds this will be opening.  And I just thought I would explain why he might be doing that for me and... for some of us who were especially impacted by that case."

Rhona paused as if on the verge of adding something else, then finished off her whiskey instead.  Alec cleared his throat.

"Do you... want to talk about it, at all?" he asked tentatively.  "Happy to lend a sympathetic ear, you know, speaking as someone who once transferred away from his station in disgrace for a procedural cock-up."

"Not right now, thanks."  Rhona leaned back against the sofa with her eyes closed.  "Need some proper rest first, before I can force myself to go through it all again.  I can't say I slept much last night, after receiving that photo from Jimmy.  Jesus.  Poor Davie."

"It was his own bloody fault," Alec muttered spitefully.

"Alec, you can be as angry at him as you want for any number of reasons, but no one deserves an end like that."  Rhona rubbed her eyes with her hand.  "I keep wondering..."

"Don't," Alec told her.  "What even is the point of wondering, when he's already gone?  You'll just lose even more sleep."

"Fair."  Rhona opened her eyes again and shot Alec a serious look.  "You're sure you want to help investigate this case?"

"He was my brother," Alec insisted, staring stubbornly back at Rhona.  "Of course I want to help find the bastards who did this to him."

"Okay, then."  Rhona sighed.  "But you'll have to let Jimmy take the lead on this, Alec.  This is his turf.  You'd want him to grant you the like courtesy, even if the victim were someone he'd once been close to."

Alec nodded, and then he sighed heavily and leaned forward, covering his face with his hands.  And Rhona put a hand on Alec's shoulder, just to remind him that he wasn't facing his grief and guilt all alone.

MONDAY

Despite spending most of Sunday prowling along the cliffs near Lerwick, mulling over his thoughts, Alec was still in a foul mood on Monday morning when he and Rhona arrived back at the police station.

"Miller, why are you back here?" he snapped at Ellie as she appeared at the door.

"Good morning to you, too," Ellie replied.  "Is DI Perez around?"

"How should I know?" grumbled Alec, before rounding on Tosh as she walked through the door.  "Oi!  You know where Perez is?"

"Not a clue," replied Tosh, sitting down at her computer.  "Hey, Sandy?"

"Mmm?" said Sandy, walking in from the other room with a mug of coffee.

"You seen Billy?"

"It's Monday, Tosh," Sandy reminded her.  "When was the last time you saw Billy in early on a Monday morning?"

"Well, when you do see him, remind him that he owes me my first mocha today," Tosh explained.  "Can we help you, DS Miller?"

"Erm, perhaps," Ellie said, taking a few steps towards Tosh's desk.  "Is DI Perez in yet?  I might have another crime to report."

Tosh's eyebrows edged upwards.

"Bad luck follow you around or something?" she joked.

"Maybe I'm just observant?" Ellie offered.

"No, bad luck definitely follows her around," opined Alec unnecessarily.

"Bad luck in the form of this human raincloud," Ellie clarified, jerking her head towards Alec, who scoffed and wandered across the room to go look out the window moodily.  "Look, I overheard something on the street on Saturday, but it didn't seem urgent, so I thought I'd wait until you were officially back on Monday to bring it up.  Sounded like a home burglary, although one of the parties kept saying words that I couldn't understand..."

"Hmm."  Tosh's brow furrowed in concentration.  "Sandy, wanna come listen to this?"

Sandy and his coffee mug wandered over to Tosh's desk.

"Can you describe the parties?" Tosh asked Ellie.

"One was an older man.  Really intense blue eyes, really dark brows, dark hair and a bushy gray beard.  He's the one who kept on using terms I'd never heard before.  And then there was his daughter, looked to me like she was in her late thirties or so, really pretty reddish-gold hair.  I think he said her name was Jessie or something?"

"Jessie McClanaghan," Sandy muttered, nodding.  "And her dad, Alistair."

"At any rate, he was saying something about a fiddle having been taken, but he didn't seem to want to report it to the police," Ellie concluded.  "Said a minister was the only person who could get the fiddle back.  Thought it might be worth following up, just to see if anything's amiss."

"Noted."  Tosh finished scribbling on a legal pad and looked up with a firm nod.  "Thanks so much, DS Miller."

"Ellie's fine, really," Ellie added.

Everyone turned as Billy McCabe entered, accompanied by some loud scrabbling noises.

"Billy!" Tosh exclaimed.

"Here you go, lady," Billy said, leaning over to hand her a mocha.  "And look who's come to work with us, for the time being!"

A rather handsome young man followed Billy through the door, grinning shyly at Tosh, but Billy was clearly referring to the excited German Shepherd who was straining at the lead as she bounced all around Billy.

"Look at this bonnie lass!" Billy said happily as the dog reared up on her hind legs and put her paws on Billy's chest, her tongue panting out of her jaws.

"Down, Morag!" the young man ordered the dog, tugging at the lead, and the dog obediently dropped down and sat.  "Sorry, she's really excited to meet new people."

"Oh, you're making Billy's day," Sandy reassured him with a grin.  "He's been quietly sulking ever since he was asked to stop training service dogs because he couldnae resist spoiling them rotten with biscuits and the like.  DC Sandy Wilson," he added, holding his hand out to the young man.

"DS Iain Boyd," said the newcomer, taking Sandy's hand.  "Don't think we've met in person yet.  How're things, Tosh?"

"Oh, fine, thanks," said Tosh demurely, looking down at her keyboard.  "I take it you're in the Dog Unit, now?"

"Aye," said Iain, "but when Monro asked if I'd come up to Lerwick to brief you and the boss, of course I couldnae say no.  Even if it meant bringing this braw scoundrel with me," he added, patting Morag on the side as she thumped her tail on the floor happily.  "Is DI Perez here?"

"Someone say my name?" Jimmy asked as he entered with Rhona.  "Boyd!"

"Good to see you in the flesh, boss," said Iain, shaking Jimmy's hand.

"You, too."  Jimmy smiled.  "Oh, our fiscal, Rhona Kelly..."

"Hello," said Rhona.

"Hello," replied Iain, who clearly had some inkling of who Rhona was, but was trying not to make it too obvious.  "This the entire team, then?  Sorry, I don't think I caught your name?" he added to Ellie.

"Oh, I'm, er, not part of all this," Ellie muttered awkwardly.

"This is DS Ellie Miller," Jimmy cut in.  "She's not part of our police force, but she's certainly been instrumental in assisting us with this case."

Ellie quirked a smile at Jimmy and nodded her head gratefully.

"DI Alec Hardy," Alec added, stepping forward.  "Also not part of this police force, but will be joining for the duration of this case."

Jimmy's eyebrows shot upwards, but he said nothing.

"Nice to meet you," Iain said with a nod, and then he cleared his throat.  "Right, so.  Organised Crime in Glasgow sent me over to assist you however I can, given my familiarity with McCall's crowd and with some of the work that I did on the Dolos project before it got shut down.  There are two fairly pertinent pieces of information that I thought you should know, going into this latest homicide, just in case they're related."

"Right."  Jimmy glanced cautiously at Tosh, then back at Iain.  "Go on, then."

"Well, the first involves our old friend Brian McDade," Iain said, likewise glancing at Tosh.  "When we took him into protective custody, he gave me an SD card that Michael Thompson gave him during their brief conversation, which Michael Thompson said would supplement what he would testify against Arthur McCall.  McDade didnae want to hand it over on the record—not the bravest soul, as you'll recall, was clearly afraid that he'd only become a bigger target if McCall found out what he'd had.  But he clearly felt that he'd be safest if McCall were put away for good, and he clearly believed that this card could do that.  Only problem is, when we tried running the card, there was nothing on it, only some generic photographs of Glasgow."

"But, why would Michael Thompson have given it to him, then?" Sandy asked, confused.

"We assumed the data was encrypted in a way that made it inaccessible to a casual observer," Iain explained.  "Were going to send it to our team of expert hackers, see if they could decrypt it.  Problem is, the card disappeared only a few days later.  Monro says he assumed it was misplaced, or lost, or maybe destroyed, and since we weren't sure how valuable it really was and so much was happening, we didnae prioritise tracking it down.  At least, not until a few days ago."

This time, Iain cast a wary glance at Rhona.

"There was an attack," he explained.  "Phyllis Brennan was under monitored house arrest, and it appears someone broke in and tried to get her to divulge some information.  Clearly didnae get what they wanted, but strung her up from a fixture to make it look like an attempted suicide.  Fortunately, something she was baking at the time started to burn, and the fire alarm scared off the intruder and alerted Fire & Rescue.  They were able to cut her down in time, when they arrived."

Rhona had taken a seat by this point in the story and was clearly putting all her energy into remaining professional.  Ellie, whose hand had subconsciously moved to a protective position over her own trachea, watched as Alec very uncharacteristically put a supportive hand on his cousin's shoulder.

"Do you know why she was attacked?" asked Jimmy.

"Something to do with this SD card, it sounds like," Iain said.  "She still cannae speak very well but was able to give us a partial statement.  Confessed to having taken it from Monro's office, out of fear that something on it could link her to Sarwar.  She refused to tell us anything more, though.  Said she wanted to speak to you, instead.  We'll have to put her under Witness Protection, of course, in light of all of this, now that we know that McCall's people have a reason to want her dead.  But we wanted to give you the chance to speak to her before we did so."

"Okay."  Jimmy sighed.  "I'll fly to Glasgow this afternoon.  Thanks, Boyd.  Tommy said you'd be staying with us until this is all over; feel free to take that desk, if you'd like."

Iain nodded and ushered Morag over to the desk, which conveniently happened to be next to Billy's.  The older police officer reached down and ruffled the German Shepherd's ears as she lay down between the desks.  Rhona, meanwhile, quietly disappeared in the direction of her office.

"No biscuits, Billy," Sandy warned him.  "Shall I book a return flight to Glasgow for you, sir?"

"Two," Jimmy said quietly.  "I think Rhona will want to come with me for this."

"All right, wait," Alec interrupted, waving his hands in the air.  "I appreciate that something's happened in Glasgow, but might I remind you, Perez, that you have an active murder case on your hands, here in Shetland?"

Oh Christ, thought Ellie, because of course Alec was going to be as obnoxious as possible about all of this.

"Yeah, I know," Jimmy replied.  "But in my experience, murder cases require quite a lot of unravelling, and leaving to tug on this particular thread may help."

"When you've got so many threads to tug right here?"  Alec blew out a puff of air in exasperation.  "If I were you, rather than prancing off to Glasgow, I'd start by interviewing everyone on this island, asking them if they saw the victim on the night he was killed..."

"Which is exactly why I'm going to ask you to stay here in Shetland and do just that," Jimmy finished.  "It's probably far more useful for you to ask around, given your resemblance to the victim.  You can take Sandy with you, he knows everyone.  I'm confident that the two of you and Tosh can hold down the fort while I'm off 'prancing' in Glasgow."

Alec bristled.

"Oh, but one thing should be very clear," Jimmy added.  "The orders come from me, not from you, DI Hardy.  This is my investigation you're joining."

"I'm well aware of that, Perez," snarled Alec from between clenched teeth.  "No need to be such a dangleberry about it."

Ellie didn't have a clue what that meant, but she recognised an insult when she heard one, and this was clearly something that the other Scots in the room understood loud and clear.

"You know what, on the other hand, Hardy, why don't you just sit tight here at the station while I'm away, yeah?"  Jimmy crossed his arms, his chin jutting out slightly aggressively.  "Because the way you're behaving, I'm not sure I trust you to work an investigation smoothly without supervision."

Alec opened his mouth to retort, but Ellie grabbed his arm.

"Sir?" she said pointedly, and she dragged him into the hallway.

"What on earth do you think you're doing?" Ellie hissed.

"That bloody arse is supposed to be here, investigating why my brother turned up dead on a beach without his head, and instead he's running off to Glasgow?!"

"You've got to calm down," Ellie insisted, opting not to mention to Alec that she found it perfectly reasonable for Jimmy to want to go to Glasgow to find a reason for David Hardy's being in Shetland at all.  "You look like a right idiot in front of all of these people, you know."

"The sheer incompetence, Miller," Alec groaned.  "I swear, Rhona's like a sister to me, but I'm not sure I trust her judgement anymore, if she chooses to keep these imbeciles around."

"Fine, dig yourself further into this hole," Ellie sighed.  "Or, you know what?  Don't.  We're doing a driving tour of the island today, care to come along?"

"No," grumbled Alec.

"Well, it sounds like your other option is to sit around the police station all day," Ellie pointed out.  "Come on, it'll be fun!  Get your mind off things.  I've packed extra sandwiches, and hopefully we can find ice cream along the way..."

Alec rolled his eyes, but, seeing no other option available, he texted Rhona that Perez had effectively suspended him until he got back from Glasgow and that he was going to play tourist for a bit.  Ellie, meanwhile, politely explained the situation to Tosh, who nodded and said she'd explain things to Jimmy, if he cared enough to ask before he left.  And so Alec Hardy, more willingly than he ever would have admitted, was treated to a day of stunning cliffs and brisk sea winds, to Fred cheerfully pointing out puffins on the rocks and Tom trying not to appear like he was enjoying anything and Miller looking happier than Alec could remember her having looked in a long time.  They managed to find ice cream at a corner shop in a little village on the other side of Mainland, which only made Miller even happier.  It was the most bizarrely satisfying and completely unexpected holiday Alec could remember having in his entire life.  Almost enough to get his mind off of his brother's homicide.

Rhona didn't say much as she and Jimmy made their way from Lerwick to Glasgow.  Jimmy didn't blame her; he could only imagine the unrelenting onslaught of emotions that Rhona must be experiencing at a moment like this.  And, in all honesty, not talking at all made it easier for Jimmy not to want to whinge at Rhona about her obnoxious cousin, who was making it very, very difficult for Jimmy to feel any due sympathy for his situation.  Not until they reached the closed hospital wing where Boyd had said Phyllis Brennan could be found did Jimmy finally turn to Rhona.

"You okay?" he asked.

"We'll see," Rhona replied tersely.

Jimmy nodded.

"I think it's best if I go in alone, get the official police interview out of the way first."

Rhona nodded, and Jimmy moved past her and opened the door of the room.

The hospital room was a cramped, unfeeling space filled with the scent of disinfectant and the quiet beeps of machines.  Phyllis lay on a bed in the centre of the room, covered in a hospital blanket, an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, her eyes closed.  Despite her height, she managed to look somehow small in such a circumstance.

"Phyllis," said Jimmy quietly as he closed the door.  The sound of Jimmy moving a chair closer to the bed woke Phyllis from her dozing, and her eyes fluttered open.  Jimmy watched as she pulled the oxygen mask off and turned to face him with a faint smile.  The dark bruises that ringed Phyllis's pale throat were enough to make even a seasoned law enforcement officer like Jimmy wince.

"Perez," she mouthed.  "I wasn't sure you'd make it."

"I'm here," Jimmy reassured her, trying not to let on how unnerving it was to have a conversation with someone whose trachea was still so badly damaged from recent strangulation that she couldn't even phonate.

"I should warn you, I'm pretty sure they've bugged this room.  Not that they can hear what I say, of course.  But be careful what you repeat."

Jimmy nodded.  No need to ask who 'they' were, in this context.

"DS Boyd from Glasgow's told us how you ended up here," he said.  "But I was hoping you could tell me why it all happened."

"They thought I still had something that could hurt them."

"The SD card?"

Phyllis nodded.

"But you don't have it?"

Phyllis shook her head.

"Did you ever figure out if anything of use was on it?" Jimmy asked in a low voice.

Phyllis shook her head again.

"Okay."  Jimmy sighed.  "And you don't know where it is now, or who might have it?"

Phyllis hesitated, then shook her head.

"Right."  Jimmy sat back.  "Is there anything else you want to tell me, in connection with all of this?"

Phyllis paused again, her expression pained, and then mouthed, "I was wondering if you would say goodbye to Rhona for me."

"She's right outside," Jimmy said, and Phyllis's eyes widened.  "I'll have her come in, if we're done."

Phyllis nodded, and Jimmy stood and held the door open for Rhona.

"Be very careful what you say in there," he muttered to Rhona as she passed him, and he closed the door behind her.

Rhona stayed in the corner of the room by the door, staring at Phyllis, who smiled wanly at Rhona.

"Oh, Jesus Christ, Phyllis," she sighed finally, and she slowly made her way across the room and sat down in the chair that Jimmy had occupied a moment prior.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," mouthed Phyllis, a tear slowly falling from one eye.  "Rhona, if you only knew how sorry I am..."

"Don't."  Rhona's eyes were also filled with tears.  "I wish we had more time to discuss all of it, but we don't, and I already know."  Her voice cracked.  "There's so much I want to say right now, Phyllis, and I just don't know how to express it all, other than to say that I'm so relieved that you're still alive, and I'm so sorry that this all has to end this way."

"I am, too."  Phyllis quirked half a smile at Rhona.  "Wherever I end up, though, I'll keep reading Tolstoy.  And I'll imagine that you're out there somewhere, doing the same, waiting to find out what happens to Natasha."

Rhona gently took Phyllis's hand and squeezed it.

"Goodbye, Phyllis."

"Please try to understand, Rhona," Phyllis answered with no voice.

Rhona went straight to her hotel room after they left the hospital.  Jimmy desperately wanted to ask exactly what Phyllis had said to her, but he figured he could give his fiscal a little time to grieve before resuming such a personal investigation.  Jimmy had only just settled into his own hotel room when he received a call.

"Perez.  I heard you were back in town, asking around about my dealings.  Let's talk in person."

The line hung up before Jimmy could respond.  With a sigh, he left the hotel and drove his rental car to the dingy old pub that McCall used as a hangout.

"That was prompt of you," leered Arthur McCall as Jimmy approached his table.

"What do you want?" Jimmy asked without preamble.

"I want a lot of things, Perez.  But right now, I want you to get on a plane and fly back to your godforsaken little rock of an island, you hear?  Drop all this mess with Phyllis Brennan."

"You tried to have her killed," said Jimmy in a dangerously low voice.

"Oh, hearsay," scoffed McCall.  "A desperate woman in a desperate situation is bound to make up stories to cover up the embarrassment of a failed suicide attempt."

"It must be big, whatever's on this SD card," Jimmy interrupted.  "You wouldn't be so worried about it, otherwise.  How did you find out it existed?"

"Word gets around," McCall sneered.  "Pity for McDade, though.  Squeaky wee fellow.  Hopefully, he won't squeak loud enough that we can track him down, wherever he is."

"Or what?" Jimmy pressed.  "You'll have him killed, like you had David Hardy killed?"

McCall smirked at Jimmy.

"Now, where in god's name did you get the impression that I had Davie Hardy killed, Perez?"

"Don't jerk me around, McCall," Jimmy insisted.  "Why did you send him up to Shetland?  Was it because of this SD card?"

"Well."  McCall shrugged.  "If one of your friends hypothetically happened to be the cousin of someone who might well know where a valuable item was, wouldn't you send him over to do a bit of investigating?  Bit of time to reconnect with the family, you know.  And a chance to see who else around the area might be hiding a secret or two.  All hypothetically speaking, of course."

"So... what?"  Jimmy frowned at McCall.  "You got wind that David Hardy wasn't planning to follow through, and had someone else follow him and cut his head off?"

"Perez, Perez," sniffed McCall.  "You keep putting words in my mouth.  I never said I had anything to do with Davie Hardy's death, did I?  Go on back home to tend your sheep and figure out why the man ended up dead under your jurisdictional watch.  And remember, I can very easily bring another photo of your dead wife to our next meeting, if you make one necessary."

Jimmy glowered, but he turned and stared down the rest of McCall's men as he walked slowly out of the pub.

Fred kept falling asleep in the back of Ellie's car towards the end of their day playing tourist around Shetland, so Ellie decided to drop the boys off at the lighthouse before she drove Alec to Rhona's.

"You can keep an eye on him for a few minutes, can't you, Tom?" Ellie asked as the car wound its way through dark, winding roads.

"Yeah, sure," sighed Tom unenthusiastically.

But when Ellie and the boys arrived at the lighthouse, Ellie was alarmed to see that the door to their room was ajar.

"Stay here," she told Tom in a low voice.  "Sir?"

With Alec following her, Ellie kicked the door of the room open and flicked on the light.  The contents of everyone's luggage was strewn about the floor of the room.  Ellie swore loudly as Alec checked the bathroom to make sure that the intruder really had disappeared.  Then she rang the police station.

"Hello, Tosh?  This is Ellie Miller."

"Even more trouble?" asked Tosh.

"Yeah," Ellie sighed.  "Someone's broken into my hotel room and rifled through all of our things."

"I'll be there soon," Tosh promised, and she appeared shortly thereafter.

"We haven't touched anything," Ellie informed her as Tosh walked around the room, taking photos on her phone.  "But it doesn't look like anything's been taken, oddly enough."

"Right," sighed Tosh.  "Well, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to come down to the station tomorrow to file a formal report..."

"Oh, bloody hell, might as well do it right now," Ellie grumbled, throwing up her hands.  "Tom, come on..."

But Alec stepped forward before Ellie could say anything more.

"I'll stay with them," he offered.  "Not like I have anything else to be doing, anyway.  Can book you a new hotel room, too."

"Sir, that is... incredibly kind of you," Ellie said, beaming, and Alec shrugged in return.

Tosh drove Ellie back to the police station and the two efficiently completed the necessary paperwork and interview.

"Well, this has been a day rife with incredibly shitty moments," sighed Ellie as they trudged out of the police station.  "I think I need a quick drink before I go back.  Want one?  On me, of course."

Tosh followed Ellie into the local pub and ordered a ginger ale.  Ellie smiled slightly at the choice and ordered a screwdriver for herself.

"By the way, I'm incredibly sorry that this morning, my boss was being so... so himself, really."

"No," Tosh insisted, shaking her head, "I'm sorry that my boss is being so temperamental, especially in light of what your boss must be going through.  It's flat-out unacceptable!  I'd have expected better from a man his age."

"It's not his fault that my DI turned up and started acting like such a prat," Ellie grumbled.  "And why the fuck are we apologising to each other for our bosses being such knobs?  We're their Sergeants, not their mothers, for god's sake."

Tosh smiled and held out her ginger ale for Ellie to clink against her own glass.

"So," Ellie continued, taking a much-needed swig of fruity vodka, "can I ask what the history is between you and DS Boyd?  He seemed excited as a puppy to see you."

"Him?  Oh."  Tosh shrugged.  "We worked on the predecessor to this case for a bit together, over in Glasgow.  He's a good policeman.  Very kind."

Ellie raised her eyebrows as Tosh took a sip of ginger ale and looked away.

"Look, I know that you probably are wondering why I'm not reciprocating his attention," Tosh sighed.  "The simple version is that I've been through a lot lately, and I need some time and space before I can commit to anything.  Besides, the last time a handsome police officer expressed interest in me, he turned out to be a Norwegian neo-fascist who was plotting an attack on a literal boatload of refugees."

Ellie blanched, then let out a huff of exasperation.

"Why are men such absolute wankers?!" she ranted.  "You can't trust any of them."

Tosh raised an eyebrow.

"Well, fine, you can only trust a very select few of them," Ellie amended in a grumble, "and the ones you can trust are infuriating arseholes like my DI, who is the best and most reliable man I know, and also someone I want to shove down a well on a daily basis."

Tosh grinned.

"You're not married, then?" she asked.  "Only I'd wondered, given your boys and all."

"Was married."  Ellie scowled and took another gulp of screwdriver.  "Until that tosser had an affair with our son's best friend and accidentally killed the kid.  He was only eleven years old."

"Jesus."  Tosh's earnest eyes had gone wide with horror.

"Yeah."  Ellie crossed her arms.  "Not a great feeling, to investigate a case to the end and discover it was your husband who'd done it.  He pled innocent, too, and somehow got off scot free with everything."  She downed the rest of her screwdriver and gestured to the barkeep for another.  "You sure you don't want anything with more of a kick to it?"

Tosh shook her head.

"I'm driving, after all," she reminded Ellie.  After another sip, however, she added in a quiet, tentative voice, "Besides, the last time I drank too much in public, I let myself be picked up by a man who, it turned out, was sent after me by Arthur McCall's lawyer.  And I never, never want to risk something like that happening to me again."

Ellie was still sober enough that she could easily read between the lines.  She nodded, her gaze turned down towards the top of the bar.

"God, I'm sorry to hear that.  You're really brave, you know, to be willing to work on this case, in spite of all of that."

"You have to find ways to move on with your life."  Tosh shrugged stoically.  "I'm not saying it's easy—it's bloody not, and I'm sure you know that already.  But you can't let one unimaginably terrible experience define you forever.  And in some ways, it's comforting to be working on this case, to be able to stare everything that's happened in the face and realise that, in the end, I'm stronger than what happened to me."

Ellie thought about Trish Winterman; about Beth Latimer; about Mark, and Chloe, and even dim but good-hearted Nige Carter, all struggling to move on in Danny's painful absence.  About Reverend Paul Coates, so desperate to try to help them all retain their belief in something after it no longer seemed possible to believe in divine justice of any sort.  About her own boys, growing up with the unthinkable knowledge that their father was a murderer.  And she thought about Alec Hardy—prickly, irascible, absurd, endearing Alec Hardy—who had stared down the Sandbrook case and, against all odds, prevailed.

"Another ginger ale for my friend, please," Ellie called to the barkeep, and when it arrived, she raised her glass.  "Well, here's to staying strong."

Tosh clinked her glass against Ellie's.

"And to dismantling The Patriarchy, one step at a time," she added, before taking another sip of ginger ale.

By the time Tosh dropped Ellie off at the lighthouse, Tom and Fred had fallen asleep on one of the beds in the new hotel room, and Alec had fallen asleep on the other, the television murmuring softly in the background.  Smiling, Ellie nudged Fred over a bit so that she could squeeze onto the same bed as her boys and, despite the unnerving events of earlier in the evening, she slept surprisingly soundly, knowing that her idiot boss was right there to help her out if any more trouble arose.

TUESDAY

"You going to speak to the McClanaghans?" Sandy asked Tosh the next morning.  "Want me to come along?"

"I was thinking of bringing along Ellie Miller," Tosh explained.  "She's the one who overhead the conversation, after all.  You know them, the McClanaghans?"

"Not well," shrugged Sandy.  "They're just one of those families who've been around for ages."

The phone rang, and Sandy answered.

"What's wrong?" Tosh asked as Sandy hung up.

"Freya Galdie," Sandy sighed.  "Her studio's been turned over again.  I'll go talk to her; you and Miller go take a statement from Jessie and her dad."

"Well, look at you, trying to order me about with the boss absent," Tosh scoffed.  "I still outrank you, you know."

Sandy scowled as Tosh grabbed her car keys and stomped out the door.  Iain watched from his borrowed desk, his eyebrows raised.

"Anything I can do?" he asked Sandy.

"Aye, maybe."  Sandy pursed his lips at Morag.  "How is she at tracking scents?"

Freya was seated on a bench outside her house when Sandy and Iain pulled up.

"Ms Galdie," said Sandy respectfully.  "You all right?"

Freya nodded, her hands balled into tight fists.  The two distinctive silver rings that Michael Maguire had once worn now dangled from her neck on a chain.

"This way," she said, leading the two officers into her studio.

Sandy took photographs as Iain led Morag around the studio, the German Shepherd's nose sniffing along the ground.  Freya, silent, stood to the side.

"Does it look like anything was taken?" Sandy asked.

Freya shook her head, then closed her eyes.

"It's to do with Michael again, isn't it?" she asked quietly.  "Something else from his past, coming back to haunt me?"

"We can't be sure yet," Sandy replied in a soft voice.

Freya nodded, then inhaled sharply, tears spilling from beneath her closed eyelids.

"Do you want us to move you to different accommodations?" Sandy asked.

"No," whispered Freya.  "No, thank you.  Please, just, resolve this as soon as you can.  It's too much to live through it all over again."

As Iain convinced Morag to jump back into the police car, Sandy phoned Tosh.

"We brought the dog along.  Shall we bring her over to the McClanaghans, see if she picks up on the same scent?"

"Yeah, that'd be great," replied Tosh, her phone clamped under her chin as Ellie furrowed her brow at the directions on her mobile.  "See you there."

"I think we missed the turnoff," Ellie informed Tosh as Tosh hung up.

"Oh, bollocks," grumbled Tosh, flipping a questionable U-turn on the road.  "Thanks.  You sure it's okay that I'm whisking you away from your family again like this?"

"Honestly?"  Ellie grinned.  "It's nice knowing that looking after my boys for the morning will keep my boss out of whatever trouble he'd otherwise get himself into.  They can mind each other."

They pulled up in front of an old croft with a thatched roof.  When Tosh knocked on the door, the young woman with golden-red hair answered.

"Jessie McClanaghan?" Tosh asked, and the woman nodded.  "DS McIntosh and DS Miller.  We'd like to have a word, if you don't mind."

Jessie took a step backwards, and Ellie and Tosh entered the croft.  At their host's invitation, they sat down at the table across from her as she cleared away a laptop and several hard drives.

"DS Miller says she overheard you discussing a recent burglary from your home," Tosh began.  "Says your dad mentioned something about a fiddle being taken."

"Oh, yes."  Jessie bit her lip.  "He was... acting a bit mad that day, my dad was.  I'm sorry if he alarmed you, DS Miller."

"Did you want to report the fiddle's disappearance?" Tosh pressed.

Jessie hesitated, then shook her head.

"No use, really," she said.  "My dad's convinced we'll never get it back, and I don't have much hope, either."

"He seemed to want a minister from the church," Ellie recalled.  "Could you explain that for us?"

Jessie glanced from Tosh to Ellie, her brow furrowed in confusion.

"You're not in trouble," Tosh promised her.  "We just want to try to resolve whether we'll need to be on the lookout for other burglaries of a similar nature."

Jessie nodded, then explained, "My dad wanted the minister because, well, he's convinced that the fiddle was taken by the good folk."

"Which are?" Ellie asked, remembering Alistair McClanaghan's use of the term.

"You're not supposed to refer to them by their actual name," Jessie said with a nervous laugh.  "That's why we call them 'da guid folk', after all, to avoid offending them."  She lowered her voice.  "Trows.  Underground dwellers.  My dad believes strongly in the old Shetland legends, including that the trows love fiddle music and steal musicians to bring down to their dens below the ground.  And the stories all say that the power of the trows was taken away by the preaching of the Reformation, that's why he wanted a minister."

Ellie nodded politely.

"Has anything else gone missing?" she asked.

"No," said Jessie quietly.  "Just the fiddle."

"None of the technology?" Ellie confirmed, gesturing at Jessie's laptop and hard drives.

"No, thank goodness."  Jessie smiled.  "I'm a computer programmer.  Work remotely from home, most of the time, so I can be with my dad.  His health's not so good.  I'd be dead in the water, if anyone had taken these."

"Jessie, did your dad know Michael Maguire, who used to live not far from here?" Tosh asked carefully.

"Aye," said Jessie.  "He and my dad used to go for long walks along the cliffs together, when Maguire was home.  Didn't say much to each other, from what I understand, but my dad used to say that Maguire understood him like no one else."

"And do you know if Maguire ever gave your father anything?" Ellie asked.  "For safekeeping, I mean."

Jessie shook her head at Ellie, confused.

"Not to my knowledge, no."

"Did Maguire know about the fiddle?"  Tosh asked.  "Did he ever see your dad play it, for example?"

"Maguire might've known about it, but not because my dad was playing it," Jessie laughed.  "It was Ainsley's, my sister's, before she died.  My dad wouldn't know how to play a fiddle, if his life depended on it."

"All right."  Tosh's mobile buzzed, and she checked her messages.  "Jessie, if it's all right with you, we'd like to have one of our colleagues bring in a police dog, to try to trace a scent.  And we'd like to take a few photographs.  Would that be all right?"

Jessie nodded, and when Sandy knocked a moment later, she stood up and let him into the croft.  Morag made the rounds as Tosh took a few photographs, but the German Shepherd came up cold, unable to track the same smells she had encountered at Freya Galdie's.  After a few attempts, the officers gave up and thanked Jessie, before heading out.

"Not the same thief as at Freya Galdie's?"  Ellie raised her eyebrows, staring out the passenger window at the cliffs as they drove by.  "Maybe it really was the trows, then.  What're you thinking, Tosh?"

"I'm thinking we really need to talk to Alistair McClanaghan," said Tosh slowly.  "Could answer some questions, about what he knew about the SD card.  Maybe Maguire slipped it inside the fiddle, through one of the little holes on the top?  Stranger things have happened."

Sandy and Iain had followed Ellie and Tosh back to the lighthouse, and Iain had Morag sniff a piece of spare cloth found at the McClanaghans', then see if she could trace the scent to anything in Ellie's hotel room.  To everyone's surprise, Morag raced to the suitcases and began barking.

"So, we have a match."  Tosh exhaled.  "That's something, at least."

Ellie followed the other three police officers out to the car park to say goodbye.

"Thanks again for being willing to come along," Tosh said through her window as Sandy and Iain pulled back onto the road.

"My pleasure, and good luck with everything," Ellie replied, and once Tosh had driven off, she wandered back to her room, where Alec and the boys were waiting for her outside.

"Sorry about the disruption, all."  Ellie clapped her hands.  "Right, you said Daisy's arriving on the late afternoon flight, so what can the four of us do, in the meantime, until it's time to go pick her up?"

As Ellie set off for a half-day trip to Scalloway, with her sons and a bewildered Alec in tow, Tosh pulled up in the police station's car park and was immediately met by Sandy.

"We've got another break-in," he grumbled.  "Maura McDowell, other side of Mainland."

"Jesus," sighed Tosh, leaning her forehead on the steering wheel.  "Right, get in.  Either we have a band of serial kleptomaniacs on our hands, Sandy, or I'm starting to think maybe it is the trows."

"What?"  Sandy wrinkled his nose as he climbed into the side of Tosh's car and Iain and Morag jumped into the backseat.

"Nothing."  Tosh turned the key in the ignition.  "Just starting to think that maybe we all should be going to church more, as a precaution."

Maura McDowell was a silver-haired woman with an elegantly lined face.

"I didn't notice anything at first, when I got home," she explained.  "But then I saw that some things were missing: jewellery, family silver, even some valuable old collectibles that had been gathering dust in my son's closet, trading cards and such.  And I know that the jewellery and silver were there this morning; I was trying to decide whether to use both or either for a dinner party I'm hosting for a few friends tonight."

"And you live here alone?" Sandy asked, watching Iain lead Morag around the house, offering her samples of scents from the previous locations they'd searched.

"Aye, ever since my husband died, five years ago."

"Do you have any connections to Michael Maguire or Alistair McClanaghan, Mrs McDowell?" Tosh asked.

"Never heard of a Michael Maguire.  But Alistair McClanaghan, he and my husband were in boat-building together for years."

In the car as they drove back to Lerwick, Morag panting happily with her head out the window, Iain summed up what they knew.

"It seems that the same person burglarised Freya Galdie's and Maura McDowell's," he said, "and a different person broke into the McClanaghans' and DS Miller's room."

"A divide-and-conquer strategy, maybe?" Tosh frowned into the rearview mirror at Iain.

"It's odd, though," Sandy pointed out.  "Freya Galdie and Maura McDowell are both single women, whereas the McClanaghans and DS Miller's hotel room were occupied by families.  But the MOs don't match up.  If we had one burglar who targeted single women, we'd have the same sort of burglary.  But Freya Galdie and DS Miller's places were both turned over, whereas the McClanaghans' and Maura McDowell's homes were very strategically robbed.  Almost as if whoever robbed both of them knew exactly what they were looking for."

"Why DS Miller, though?" Tosh asked.  "She doesn't even live in Shetland."

She and Sandy exchanged a glance.

"Right, we'll ask her to come in for more questioning," Tosh sighed.

Unfortunately, Ellie's mobile reception was spotty as she and Fred traipsed about Scalloway with Tom and Alec following.  By the time she got Tosh's message, she was already driving Alec to the airport to pick up Daisy.

"I'll swing by tomorrow," she promised and hung up as they pulled into the airport.  "You're meeting your cousin here?"

Alec nodded, and at that very moment, Jimmy and Rhona appeared, with Daisy beside them.  Ellie smiled.

"Play nice with the other cops, sir," she reminded Alec, who rolled his eyes and got out of the car.

"Daisy," he said as Ellie and her boys drove off.

Daisy had been telling Rhona something, and although Rhona looked even more drawn than she had upon departing for Glasgow, she was smiling at whatever her young cousin had to say.  When Daisy heard Alec say her name, she looked his way and immediately walked quickly towards him.

"You doing okay?" she asked, giving Alec a hug.

"Yeah," said Alec shortly.  "Glad you're here safely.  Rhona?"

Jimmy had been watching Alec and Daisy with a softer expression than he had yet cast on his grumpy counterpart, but he turned and quietly told his boss, "Ring me if you need to talk, okay?"

Rhona nodded and led Alec and Daisy to her car.

"How's your stay been, these past two days?" she asked as they drove along the darkening, winding roads.

"Well," sighed Alec, rolling his eyes, "I've gotten to see much more of the scenery than I would have, otherwise.  And was fed an ice cream or two, against my will."

On any other occasion, Alec would have simply offloaded his opinions of Perez then and there.  But Rhona didn't look like she could handle it today, and making her smile with a comment about ice cream seemed like a much kinder thing to do.  And thank goodness for that generous impulse, because when they pulled up in front of Rhona's house, Alec was alarmed to see that the door was open.

"Shit," he muttered.  "Daisy, stay in the car."

When Rhona flicked on the lights of her hallway, she swore loudly.  The entire house had been searched: drawers opened, cupboards ajar, papers scattered across the ground.

"What is it?"  Daisy had ignored Alec and followed them into the house.

"Looks like someone was looking for something," Alec muttered, wrapping an arm around his daughter's shoulders.  "And it looks like we're going to have to find somewhere other than a crime scene to stay for the night."

"Sorry we're crashing here like this," Alec grumbled at Ellie, coming outside to sit down on a bench next to her.

Evening was falling fast over Shetland, and Ellie was watching the waves grow a darker and darker iron under the night sky.  Her feet were pulled up onto the edge of the bench, and she hugged her knees to her.

"I'm sorry that your cousin's place was ransacked like it was!"  Ellie quirked a smile at Alec.  "Besides, not like you didn't inadvertently crash here last night; as long as Daisy doesn't mind, we certainly don't."

"I keep wondering..."  Alec sighed.  "If I'd been there, at Rhona's last night, would whoever wrecked the place have stayed away?"

"Hey."  Ellie swung her feet down off the bench and turned to Alec.  "It's not your fault, you hear me?  It could have happened while you were out and about during the day.  And much better for you to not be there, than to risk your getting hurt by whomever did it."

Alec said nothing.

"Where's your cousin staying?"

"On Perez's sofa.  Suppose it's the safest place for her," Alec added grudgingly, and then he inhaled sharply.  "God damn it, Miller, this whole misadventure is just one round of regret after another."

"You can't blame yourself for what all the arseholes out there choose to do, sir," Ellie reminded him.

"No," Alec agreed.  "But I can blame myself for not working hard enough to change their behaviour."

Ellie fixed Alec with a look of concern as he leaned back against the bench, his arms crossed.

"This about your brother?"

Alec stared out towards the darkening horizon.

"My brother was twenty-five when we lost him," he said finally.  "Davie was always the life of the party, everyone's mate.  Loud and reckless and always laughing.  Quite the opposite of me, in more or less every respect."

Ellie smiled appreciatively at her prickly boss.

"He was training to be a nurse in Glasgow," Alec continued.  "Wanted to spend his life saving other people.  But then he got into a terrible motorbike accident.  Nearly killed himself, actually killed his passenger.  He was a changed man, after that.  Never could live with the guilt of what he'd done.  He started using heroin, to try to bury the shame.  And, when he ran out of money to buy it, he started earning it through dealing."

Alec shifted on the bench.  Ellie's dark eyes were soft with sympathy.

"It's not your fault."

"No, it is my fault," Alec hissed through gritted teeth, his head bowed towards the ground, away from Ellie.  "I should have worked harder to save him.  I used my own studies as an excuse not to be there every time he needed me.  I stayed away, because my idiot self was too afraid to see the big brother I'd always idolised crumble into something lesser.  And then, once he started using, I was so angry with him.  So angry that I decided to wash my hands of it all, and let him dig himself further into his own grave.  Serves me right, to have lost him forever."

Ellie reached out and put a hand on Alec's shoulder.

"Listen, Alec," she said quietly.  "We're gonna find whoever did this, you hear me?  We're gonna find the bastard and make sure he's locked up for a long time to come."

Alec didn't say anything, and he still wouldn't look at Ellie, but for once, he didn't try to shrug off Ellie's hand.  The two sat there long after the sun finally set, their silence speaking volumes.

WEDNESDAY

Jimmy tried to go about his morning routine as quietly as possible, but the calm clink of metal against ceramic was enough to make Rhona stir on his sofa.

"Morning," said Jimmy as Rhona sat up, bleary-eyed.  "Sorry to disturb you."

"No trouble," sighed Rhona.  "Not sure I was sleeping that well, anyway."

Jimmy had already folded up the sheets and spare blanket and put them aside with the pillow, by the time Rhona had washed her face and brushed her teeth and changed out of her pyjamas.  She gratefully accepted a mug of tea from Jimmy and sat down next to him on the sofa.

"We'll have to go back to your place today, go over the crime scene more thoroughly," Jimmy reminded Rhona.

"I know."  Rhona sighed.  "Jesus, the past twenty-four hours have been a lot."

Jimmy nodded sympathetically.

"Can I ask you to recount what Phyllis said to you?" he asked her.

Rhona's eyes filled with tears.

"Just saying goodbye.  It's especially hard, you know, not having even begun to forgive her for what she did.  I assumed we'd have years to work all of that out, even if things never were going to be the same between us.  And now, knowing I'll never see her again..."

"Rhona," Jimmy interrupted gently, "did she give you the SD card?"

Rhona stared at Jimmy.

"No, of course not.  Don't you think I would have told you by now, if she had?"

"What I can't understand is why she would refuse to say anything more to the Glasgow police, and insist on speaking with me, if she didn't think that there was a better chance I'd be able to locate it than they would."  Jimmy frowned.  "But all she told me was that she didn't have it, that she didn't know for sure what was on it, and that she didn't know where it was or who might have it now."

"So, why ask to speak with you at all, then?"

"When I asked her if she had anything else to tell me, she asked me to say goodbye to you," Jimmy reasoned slowly.  "And I think that whatever message she wanted me to convey was some type of clue as to where the SD card might be.  So, what did she say to you, Rhona?  How did she tell you goodbye?  Was there anything unusual, anything that seemed out of the ordinary?"

"No," said Rhona with a pained smile, "it all seemed very..."

"What?" Jimmy asked as Rhona furrowed her brow.

"It all seemed very natural," Rhona repeated slowly.  "But..."

Rhona's eyes widened and she pushed herself off of the sofa.

"I think I know where the card is," she told Jimmy, and the two pulled on their shoes and grabbed their coats and were out the door.

"So, what have you put together?" Jimmy asked as they drove towards Rhona's house.

"Long-distance relationships aren't easy, you know," Rhona told him.  "Phyllis and I tried to find ways to stay connected, even when we were in separate parts of the country.  And one of those ways was reading books together.  You know, choosing a novel, reading it simultaneously from opposite ends of Scotland, texting each other thoughts, discussing it when we were finally in the same place, reading bits together.  Anyway, the one we were working on when—when everything fell apart, was War and Peace.  When Phyllis was saying goodbye, she told me that she'd keep on reading, hoping to find out what happened at the end, and hoping that I'd be doing the same thing, wherever I was.  It seemed like a normal enough sentiment, at the time, but..."

"But?"

"But after saying that to me, instead of saying 'Goodbye', she said, 'Please try to understand'," Rhona recalled.  "At the time, I thought she was referring to what she had done, of course.  But everything fell into place just now, when I remembered that she left her copy of War and Peace at mine, when she went back to Glasgow to confront Ben and give you her statement."

"And you still have it?" Jimmy asked.

"By some miraculous stroke," Rhona said grimly.  "I think I shoved it onto my bookshelf, alongside my own copy, even though I had every intention of binning it.  It's a nice hardcover edition, I thought I should at least give it to a second-hand bookshop.  Hopefully, the burglar didn't make off with it."

Rhona's bookshelves had been upended: tomes splayed across the floor, pages bent, spines cracked.  The burglar clearly had been leafing through as many as possible, trying to see if something was squeezed between the pages.  Rhona heaved another weighty sigh as she examined the damage, but she soon found Phyllis's copy of the Tolstoy, which had been tossed into a corner and lay open and face-up.

"They would have taken anything between the pages," Jimmy muttered as Rhona flipped through the book again.  "Wait, Rhona, the spine."

Rhona carefully opened the book, then peered at the gap between the binding and the cover.  Sure enough, when she seized a pencil from her desk and shoved it into the gap, an SD card clattered to the floor out the other end.

"Well," said Jimmy, carefully picking up the card as Rhona placed the book down next to her, equally carefully.  "There it is."

"And now we just need to figure out what's so important on that card that would be worth killing for," said Rhona.

"Ah."  Jimmy smiled.  "Fortunately, I think I might know who can help."

Angus Tulloch was waiting outside the police station when Jimmy and Rhona arrived.

"Uncle Jimmy," he said with a grin.  "How're things?"

"Could be better, Angus," sighed Jimmy.  "Come on, let's talk inside."

Angus couldn't resist giving Jimmy a bit of grief about the state of the Lerwick police station's technology, but he was more than game to try to crack whatever secrets the SD card might be hiding.

"By the way, looks like you've had an attempted data breach," he added as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

"What?"  Rhona scowled as she peered over Angus's shoulder.  "When?"

"Friday evening, it looks like?"  Angus hit a button and sat back.

"That might explain that document that disappeared on Billy's watch," Jimmy muttered.  "Any way of tracing where the cyber attack came from?"

"We'll have to see."  Angus frowned.  "And, there we go, looks like there was a lot of hidden, encrypted data on this thing."

Jimmy and Rhona leaned in behind Angus to watch as dozens of files suddenly appeared.  Bank records, phone logs, plenty of photographs...

"Jesus," Rhona breathed.  "That's enough to build a case against Arthur McCall ten times over."

"Any way to back this up?" Jimmy asked Angus.  "And to send a secure copy of everything over to Tommy Monro at Organised Crimes in Glasgow, as quickly as possible?"

"Easy," grinned Angus, beginning to type again.

"You know," Jimmy added to Rhona in an undertone, "if this is enough to have Arthur McCall and all his associates put away for life, then maybe they won't have to send Phyllis away.  Worth asking, at any rate.  I can reach out to Asha, see what the typical protocol is for these types of things and whether her case would be an exception to whatever's already in motion..."

"That's very kind of you, Jimmy, but I certainly won't demand that you reach out to your ex about anything concerning mine," Rhona said with a small laugh and the first genuine smile Jimmy had seen her exhibit in days.

Angus, meanwhile, was listening in on this conversation with some interest.

"I'm just glad," Jimmy smiled.  "Glad that, whatever ultimately happens, you'll have time to work through it."

A burst of noise outside made it evident that Tosh and Billy had just arrived at the police station.  Rhona squeezed Jimmy's arm and whispered, "Thank you," and then moved across the room to intercept Tosh.  "Tosh, can you fill me in on everything that happened yesterday, before you and Jimmy head back out?"

"So," Angus muttered to Jimmy, "er, your boss and this Phyllis...?"

Jimmy clapped Angus on the back with a smile.

"Keep sending those files over to Glasgow," he said.  "We'll be back soon."

Tosh filled in Jimmy on her previous day as they drove towards Rhona's, Iain and Morag once more tucked into the backseat.

"Four burglaries in one day?" Jimmy frowned.

"On top of Ellie Miller's hotel room the night before," Iain pointed out.

"Well, let's hope that we're able to link this newest one to one of the two strands," Jimmy sighed.

But the instant Jimmy stepped out of his car, he noticed a figure running from the backdoor of Rhona's house.

"Damn it, make sure he doesn't get away!" Jimmy shouted as he and Tosh immediately set off running after the man.

"He's too far ahead," Tosh gasped.  "I'm not sure even my being a cross-country champion is going to be any use, sir."

Fortunately, Morag could outrun both of them, and by the time they caught up with the burglar, he was gasping on the ground with a bloody leg.  The German Shepherd lay next to him, pounding her tail triumphantly against the ground, her panting mouth giving her a most pleased expression.

"Good lass," Iain muttered as he ruffled the dog's ears, looking down at the man she had caught.  "See, this is why everyone should want to be in the Dog Unit."

Alec insisted on reporting back to the police station, to help the investigation in whatever way he could, and since Ellie also had promised to let Tosh interview her again, the five Broadchurch visitors piled back into Ellie's rental car.

"We should just rent out a room at the police station," Tom scowled.  "That'd save us a lot of time."

"Tom," Ellie growled back at him.  "With any luck, this is the last thing we'll need to do, and then the three of us will be able to go spend a relaxing rest of our holiday without any more criminal interruptions.  Daisy, do you want to go explore the islands with us, while your dad's working?"

"Sure," Daisy smiled.  "That sounds lovely."

But when they arrived at the police station, Sandy met them at the door.

"They've just apprehended a suspect for at least one of the burglaries," he explained, showing them in.  "The Inspector and Tosh are interviewing him now, but I'll let them know you're here, the instant they're done."

"Hello?"  Cassie poked her head the station, and Tom looked her way expectantly.  "Is my dad in, by chance?"

"Cassie!" exclaimed Billy.  "He's in an interview."

"Ah, well, Rhona left her suitcase at ours.  Thought I'd return it."  Cassie rolled the suitcase into a corner, then noticed Ellie and her boys and quirked her head.  "You're all still here?"

"Unfortunately," grinned Ellie.  "I mean, sorry, not unfortunately, your dad's been absolutely lovely, but it has made for a rather different holiday than I'd been anticipating."

Cassie nodded, and then she grinned and knelt down to say hello to Fred.

"And how've you been enjoying Shetland, Fred?"

"It's been very pretty," Fred informed her.  "I haven't seen any selkies, though, so I think you must be wrong about them."

"Am I?"  Cassie grinned.  "Maybe you're just not keeping your eyes peeled for them, in the right way."

Fred looked at her sceptically, but nodded.

"Hi, Cassie Perez," Cassie added by way of introduction to Alec and Daisy as she stood.

"You're Perez's daughter?"  Alec's eyebrows shot up.  "Wouldn't have guessed."

"Guessed what?" Jimmy said as he and Tosh entered the room.  "Hey, Cass."  He glanced at Fred and Tom and Daisy.  "Would you mind maybe taking everyone under the age of twenty out for some fresh air, for a moment?  Maybe go get some tea, or something."

"Sure," Cassie replied, and Fred grabbed her hand self-importantly as she led a startled Daisy and a disappointed Tom out of the police station.

"So?"  Ellie crossed her arms.  "What's happened now?"

"We caught the man who broke into both Freya Galdie's and Rhona's," Jimmy explained.  "Ted McDowell, Maura McDowell's son.  Lives in Glasgow now; was sent up here around the same time as David Hardy to help look for the SD card, because he knew the lay of the land.  He's been staying at a hostel, though—didn't want his mum knowing he was in town, because he was planning to steal some of her valuables to cover his debts.  Here's the thing, though: He claims he didn't kill David Hardy.  Claims he didn't even know he was dead, in fact, only that one of McCall's people down in Glasgow texted him Rhona's address yesterday afternoon and told him to search the place.  And he claims he's not the one who initiated a cyber attack on our station on Friday evening, even though we've been able to confirm that the attack came from somewhere in Shetland."

"And you believe him?" Alec asked.

"Well, I'm certainly not letting him go, until we know for sure.  But, if anything, he seemed scared to hear that David Hardy was dead.  Maybe he was afraid that, if he slipped up, something might happen to him, too."

"So, that leaves us where?" Ellie sighed.  "We still don't know where this SD card is..."

"Actually, we managed to get that," Jimmy corrected her.  "Sorry, early morning development."

"Oh.  Right."  Ellie blinked.  "So that leaves the murder, and also the break-ins at my hotel and at the McClanaghans, ostensibly by the same person?"

"Aye."  Jimmy looked searchingly at Ellie.  "Are you sure you don't know why someone would want to break into your hotel room?"

"I have no idea."  Ellie tilted her head to one side, frowned, and then turned to Alec.  "Unless it was because someone saw me with you, sir, and assumed that I knew something that I shouldn't, about all of this?  The break-in was after we'd been driving around the island all day, maybe someone thought you were your brother."

"That makes as much sense as anything else," Tosh shrugged.  "Well, let us know if anything else occurs to you, all right?"

"Cassie's lovely," Daisy grinned as she and Tom and Fred climbed into the backseat of Ellie's rental car.  "I can't imagine her dad is nearly as awful as you describe him to be, if he's got such a nice daughter."

"Miller, don't you dare say whatever it is you're about to say," Alec growled at Ellie, his eyes on the road, as Ellie opened and then closed her mouth.

"We've got a lot in common, actually," Daisy added.  "Only daughters of single fathers who are cops.  Turns out I'm not the only teenage girl out there who has to check in to make sure her dad hasn't forgotten to eat dinner because he's so busy thinking about the latest homicide."

"Really," grumbled Alec, who clearly was not enjoying being compared to Jimmy Perez.

"Really.  She gave me her number, too, said to let her know if I wanted to meet up while you were off working this case."

"Lucky," muttered Tom under his breath.

"Hey, Daisy, you are not allowed to go around becoming best friends with the daughters of patently incompetent police officers who give the profession a bad name," Alec moped.

"He's not incompetent, he just resolved three burglaries in the span of one morning," Ellie pointed out.  "Not to mention managed to track down a drive with enough information to bring down the biggest heroin kingpin in Glasgow."

"Well, he's still got two unresolved burglaries and a cold-blooded murder to resolve," Alec reminded her.  "Also, what kind of a place is this, anyway?  The islands put together have got a population about the third the size of Weymouth, with a per capita murder rate that's got to be triple that of Glasgow.  And can you think of a time that Broadchurch has ever had more than two burglaries in a week, let alone four in one day?"

"All right, all right, fair enough."  Ellie smiled.  "Must be all the trows up here."

"Trows!" echoed Fred excitedly.

"The what?"  Alec made a disgruntled face.

"Cassie told me about them," Fred explained eagerly.  "They're da guid folk who live in trowie knowes and teach Shetlanders fiddle music and steal cattle and will curse your house if you're not polite to them or don't keep your house tidy.  And you have to put an iron knife by anything that you want to protect, because iron takes away the trow's power."

"One week in Lerwick, and your son's turned into a museum exhibit, Miller," Alec commented.

"Hang on, an iron knife, you said?" Ellie repeated, turning around in her seat to look at Fred.

"Or a hook!" Fred clarified.  "But it has to be iron."

Ellie frowned for a moment, then phoned Tosh.

"Hey, I was wondering, could you text me the photos that you took of the McClanaghans' place?" she asked, and when Tosh did so, Ellie began flipping through them.  "Wouldn't you find it odd, if someone was really, really superstitious about losing something very valuable to a supernatural force, but didn't follow all of the superstitions that told you how to guard against that force?"

"Come again?" asked Alec.

"Look—or, don't look, keep driving, but here's where this very superstitious family used to keep a very precious fiddle, on a shelf in the croft.  Plenty of space for an iron knife to be kept nearby.  And yet nothing of that nature anywhere."

"Maybe they moved it, after the fiddle was stolen," Alec shrugged.

"Maybe, but why?"  Ellie rang Tosh again.  "Tosh, Jessie McClanaghan said that nothing else had been taken from their house, but I think she's either wrong or covering something up.  Can we go speak with her again, and try to catch Alistair McClanaghan, as well, see if his story lines up?"

As Ellie ended the call, Alec suddenly swerved the car onto the shoulder of the road and got out.

"Sir?"  Ellie clambered out after Alec, who had taken a few steps away from the car and was now staring out over the horizon.  "What's wrong?"

Alec turned back to her, slightly wild-eyed.

"You said Jessie McClanaghan?" he repeated.

"You know her?"  Ellie stared at Alec, amazed.

"I can't say I know her, but I knew her sister."  Alec ran his hand through his hair.  "Her sister, Ainsley, was the girl who died when my brother crashed his motorbike twenty years ago.  The crash knocked her head clean off."

Jimmy and Tosh were waiting at the police station when Ellie and Alec arrived, and they left all of the kids in the company of a delighted Sandy while the four police officers drove off to the McClanaghans.  This time, Alistair McClanaghan answered the door.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, staring in bewilderment at the four officers at his door.

"DI Perez," said Jimmy, flashing his ID, "and these are DS McIntosh, DS Miller, and DI Hardy.  May we come in?"

Alistair nodded and stepped back to let the four police officers in.  Jessie was sitting at the table, typing on her laptop, and she stood up when she saw who had arrived.

"We had a few questions for you, Mr McClanaghan, about the theft of your daughter's fiddle," Ellie began.

"Aye, what about?"

"Could you confirm for us whether that was the only item taken from your home?" Tosh asked.

"Aye," said Alistair.

"What about the iron knife that used to sit right here?" Ellie asked, peering at the shelf where the fiddle used to rest.  Sure enough, the outline of a knife was visible in the dust on the shelf.

"I threw it in the voe," Alistair sniffed.

"You threw it in the voe?" Jimmy repeated.

"Aye, I was angry that it failed to do what it was supposed to do."  Alistair met Jimmy's sceptical stare, daring him to question his evaluation.

"Mr McClanaghan," said Jimmy slowly, "I'm afraid that you may have thrown away a murder weapon."

Alistair quirked his head, confused.

"A murder weapon, you say?"

Alec, meanwhile, had taken a seat next to Jessie, who refused to meet his eyes.

"Hello, Jessie," said Alec quietly.  "It's been a few years."

Jessie said nothing, but all of a sudden, a racking sob shook her entire frame.

"Jessie, lass."  Alistair took a step towards the table, his wild blue eyes wide.  "What's he talking about?"

"I'm sorry, sir," Tosh said to Alistair McClanaghan, "but we need to bring your daughter down to the station for questioning."

"No," said Jessie softly, still not looking at Alec.  "No, he can hear it.  He should hear it."

"So?" said Alec.

After a moment, Jessie sighed.

"You have to understand that when Davie Hardy killed Ainsley, it destroyed our lives.  My dad's never been the same, and I had to move back to Shetland to look after him, leave behind everything I had in Glasgow.  So when I saw him get off the ferry, I couldn't help it, I followed him.  He was clearly up to no good; took a taxi far outside Lerwick to meet for a pint with Ted McDowell, who's always been nothing but trouble.  And I thought, I can't let Davie Hardy hurt any more people than he's already hurt.  Not here in Shetland.  So I came home, and I got the knife, and I waited for him in the car park of the little pub that he'd gone into.  And, when he came out of the pub, I walked up to him and asked him how things were.  God, he was startled.  Think he thought I was Ainsley's ghost, come back to haunt him.  Hadn't seen each other since she was still alive, back when she and Davie were the happiest couple I knew.  Well, you remember."

Alec's face seemed to have frozen.

"So, you drove back to Lerwick together?" Jimmy prompted, noticing the state that Alec was in.

"In my car," Jessie said.  "Knew my dad would be in bed already, he gets up at dawn, you see.  And we sat on the rocks on the beach, sharing a bottle of whiskey, reminiscing about old times.  The more he drank, the more he seemed to regret everything that had happened, not just with Ainsley, but with the rest of his life since.  Said he was here to visit family, but that he wasn't looking forward to what that might mean.  In the end, it was easy to slit his throat, he seemed to be so tired of life.  He just fell, backwards, into that crevice, with something like a sigh.  And I was prepared to let him moulder there, but I made the mistake of jumping in after him, just to make sure that he was really dead, and... and I suppose I must've gone a bit mad, for a moment.  I don't know what I was thinking, but if I could guess, it was probably that he deserved to die as close to how she did as possible."

Jessie wiped her eyes again.  Her father was staring at her, disbelief and horror etched in his piercing eyes.

"And then I came home," Jessie continued with a shrug.  "I'd been wearing dark pants and a black jumper, so I washed the blood out of everything in the bathtub, and then put on a wash.  And I washed the blood off of the knife and dried it and put it back on its shelf, and then I took a long shower and tried to sleep.  Almost thought I'd dreamt everything, the next morning, only the knife didn't have any dust on it.  It was like it was mocking me, you know?  Every time I walked by that shelf, the fact that the knife wasn't dusty started driving me mad.  Maybe I really was going mad, I don't know.  But I knew I couldn't get rid of it, that that would look too suspicious, even to someone as trusting as my dad.  Mid-afternoon, I hacked the police station databases, to try to scrub the system of police reports that linked my sister to Davie Hardy.  No idea if it worked; I was in a haze by that point.  At one point, I got so angry that I picked the knife up and slammed it back down, and that was when the fiddle fell off the shelf and splintered."

Alistair McClanaghan's breath caught.

"I knew my dad would never forgive me," Jessie continued in a very low voice.  "That fiddle was all he had left of my beautiful, wonderful, perfect sister.  What was I, compared to his memory of her?  So I smashed it.  I brought it outside and I took out the past twenty years of anger that was pent up inside me on that fiddle.  It didn't look anything like a fiddle, by the end of it all, but I threw the pieces into the voe when I was done, anyway.  And then, when my dad got home, it only took a little bit of playing on his superstitions to get him to believe that something was wrong with the knife, that the trows must have taken the fiddle and it hadn't done any good.  And he got rid of the murder weapon for me, just like that."

"Why did you break into my hotel room?" Ellie interrupted.  "What did you think I had?"

Jessie turned to her.

"I was trying to figure out how much Alec knew, why he was here.  I saw the two of you driving around Mainland together earlier this week, and I remembered your boy saying that you were staying at the lighthouse, so I accessed their system and figured out which room you were in.  I wouldn't have hurt you or your boys, I promise.  You wouldn't have deserved it."

Alec finally seemed to have recovered his voice.

"My brother did not deserve that," he said quietly.

"Maybe not," said Jessie harshly, finally turning to look at Alec.  "But very, very few of us get what we actually deserve in life."

Jessie McClanaghan was willing to repeat her entire statement for the record, down at the Lerwick police station.  Jimmy and Tosh handled the interview, while Alec stood outside the interview room, his arms wrapped around himself.

"Holding up?" asked Rhona as she passed by him.

Alec just looked at her, and she leaned back against the wall next to him.

"Well, you definitely helped solve the murder," she reminded Alec.  "Less than a week, too—that's got to be a record in both of our jurisdictions."

"I don't know what to do, Rhona," Alec mumbled.  "Everything's just such shit right now."

"Aye, well."  Rhona sighed.  "Hug your daughter to you a little tighter and ride out the storm.  The worst will pass, even if it never truly goes away.  I'm off to go straighten out my house, but if you're still here in a few days, bring Daisy over for dinner, once I've had a chance to make everything presentable again?"

Alec nodded, and Rhona bumped his shoulder with her own before heading back to her office.  A few minutes later, Jimmy and Tosh both emerged from the interview room, looking grim.

"Hey, Perez," said Alec haltingly.  "I just wanted to say, er, thanks.  For getting this all resolved so quickly."

Jimmy nodded, and then added, "Don't thank me, though, I think it was really our Detective Sergeants who solved this case for us."

"And your Procurator Fiscal, and the police dog," Tosh pointed out.  "Basically, the extreme competence of all of the females on this police force solved this case.  You're welcome."

"Tosh," Jimmy added as they walked down the hallway, "you okay?"

Tosh smiled.

"Yeah," she said.  "Probably not too surprising, but knowing that Arthur McCall is going to be put away for the rest of his life is making me feel loads better about the world."  After a moment, she added, "I might even see if DS Boyd has time to grab a celebratory drink before he and the dog head back to Glasgow."

Jimmy smiled as he watched Tosh retreat down the hallway.

"Oh, thank god, she's finally asking that nice young man out," sighed Ellie, who had overhead the end of this conversation as she approached Jimmy.  "Just wanted to say thank you, and goodbye, since hopefully we won't all need to come barging into your police station again."

"Any time, DS Miller," chuckled Jimmy.  "And I hope that the rest of your holiday goes well."

Ellie certainly hoped that it would, as well.  She reached the driver's side of the rental car before Alec did and got in, leaving him to sigh and climb into the passenger seat.

"If you give me the number, I promise I won't text her nearly as much as you do," Tom was sulking from one end of the backseat.

"I can't help it if she wants to be my friend and not yours," smirked Daisy as she responded to a text from Cassie.

"She's my friend, too!" Fred insisted from between Tom and Daisy.

"Yeah, I know, she can be your friend, too, Fred—just not Tom's."

"The joys of being a teenager," Ellie muttered as she put the car in gear.  "So, where to, sir?  Are we getting your things and dropping you back at the airport?"

Alec was silent for a moment.

"Actually, seeing as it's almost the weekend, anyway, and we're all the way up here, I was thinking we might as well stay through Sunday," he said finally.  "Assuming you're all right with that, Daisy?"

Daisy, halfway through another text to Cassie, gave her dad a thumbs-up.

"Are you serious?"  Ellie smirked.  "What, you only hate the air and the sand around Broadchurch?"

"Miller, do you have to make every single one of my life choices a referendum on your stupid little town?"

"It's your stupid little town by now, too," Ellie reminded him.  "I'm glad you're staying, at any rate.  Nice to see you out and about and at least pretending to enjoy yourself."

"Do you have to be this relentlessly chipper, Miller?  Is there any humanly possible way to get you to stop saying cheerful things for one bloody moment?"

"Ice cream might do the trick," suggested Ellie as they wound their way along the coastline, the sun sparkling off the sea far into the distance.