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people go missing every year?’
    Flora leaned her elbows on the table. ‘No. How many?’
    â€˜I don’t know, but thousands.’
    â€˜You think they’re all murdered?’
    â€˜A significant proportion of them.’
    â€˜So where are their bodies?’
    Ranald lumbered round the table filling their glasses. Coline looked at Miss Pink. ‘Your cue, I think,’ she murmured.
    â€˜You could become a mystery writer,’ she told Flora, ‘or a forensic pathologist. You have an enquiring mind. May one ask your age?’
    â€˜I’m sixteen.’ The girl regarded her levelly. ‘What happens to the bodies?’
    Miss Pink wasted no time on surprise; she was now in her element. ‘Murder is easy,’ she said, it’s disposal of the body that’s the difficult part.’ She took a sip of her wine and glanced at her host, who was watching anxiously. ‘A Traminer?’ she ventured. ‘A nice choice.’ She turned back to Flora. There were candles on the table, augmenting the low side lights. The girl still looked twelve years old. ‘Well,’ she resumed, ‘bodies have been put through stone crushers and become part of a motorway; they’ve been baled inside cars and reduced to cubes of scrap metal in a breaker’s yard. You know about corpses in cement foundations, of course, and animal feeding stuffs. Do you want more?’
    Flora smiled. ‘That’ll do for starters.’
    The conversation veered. ‘Why do you need a policeman here?’ Miss Pink asked generally. ‘Surely there aren’t enough inhabitants to justify a constable?’
    â€˜It’s a bigger community than you think,’ Ranald told her. ‘There are large families crammed into small houses. At one time the young people left to find work, but now they stay. Those already in the towns get priority for any jobs and, goodness knows, there’s a high rate of unemployment in the towns.’
    â€˜There were some motor bikes about on Saturday night. They were local youths?’
    He nodded. ‘There are the crofts on the lighthouse road, and a number around that you don’t see, hidden in pockets away from the
    Lamentation Road. But there’s no crime, as such; however, that could well be because of a police presence. And there’s the harbour; boats put in for shelter or to unload a catch. In summer the population can quadruple, what with yachtsmen and caravans and visitors in the holiday cottages. Knox keeps a high profile in the season, particularly where ladies are concerned. The rest of the time I’d be hard put to say what he does, or where he is.’ People smiled at that. Miss Pink’s silence was polite but curious.
    It was Coline who enlightened her. ‘One morning the police car was parked in the nurse’s drive. That was all. I mean very early, at dawn. And it stayed there until Knox collected it, apparently when he got up and realised it wasn’t outside his house.’
    Miss Pink preserved a careful silence.
    â€˜The implication being that he’d spent the night in the nurse’s house,’ Ranald said. ‘Of course, he hadn’t. Who’d go home and leave his car behind, particularly a police car?’
    â€˜A practical joke?’ Miss Pink asked.
    â€˜Rather a naughty one.’ Coline stared into her wine. ‘Knox is a lady’s man, and Anne Wallace ... In a place like this, one has to be quite extraordinarily discreet, and Knox is. I think everyone is, including Nurse Wallace. Putting the police car in her drive was ... offensive; it was the action of someone not just calling attention to an extra-marital affair, but also to the cover-up.’
    A silence followed, until Ranald said tactlessly, ‘We have some amusing moments in Sgoradale. Remember the streaker?’
    Coline said, ‘Like the police car, that was a nine-second wonder, dear. If you’re on the