cliffs kept the Foulans going for centuries.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Look. See here –’ The Shetland officer was pointing at some distant atoms of birdlife, halfway down the enormous rockwall. ‘Puffin yonder, they nest on the cliffside. In the old days, when food ran low after a long winter, the local men would climb down the cliffs and steal the eggs and the chicks. It was a vital source of protein in the bad times. Baby puffin is very tasty – lots of fat, ye see.’
‘They’d climb down these cliffs?’
‘Aye. They actually developed a strange deformity. Like a kind of human subspecies.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The men of Foula. And Saint Kilda too.’ Hamish shrugged, his rust-red hair riffling in the wind. ‘Over the centuries they developed very big toes, because they used them for climbing the cliffs. I suppose that was evolution. The men who climbed best happened to be the ones with big toes, so they got wives and had well-fed children, and passed on their big toes.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Quite serious.’ Hamish smiled serenely.
But Simon was not feeling serene; the talk of the weird toes of the Foulans had brusquely reminded him. What he saw. The old woman’s bare feet. He had to mention it.
‘Guys. Can we, ah, get out of this wind?’
‘Of course.’
The two policemen, and the journalist, walked down to a hollow, then lay back on the dewy turf. Simon said: ‘You mentioned toes, Mister Leask.’
‘Aye.’
‘Well. It’s funny but…Julie Charpentier’s toes…Did either of you notice?’
Leask looked blank. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You didn’t see anything unusual about the victim? Her feet?’
‘What?’
Simon wondered if he was making an idiot of himself.
‘The toes of her right foot were deformed. Slightly.’
Sanderson was frowning.
‘Go on, Simon.’
‘I think the word is syndactyly. My wife is a doctor.’
‘And syn…’
‘Yes. Syndactyly. Webbed toes. Two of the old woman’s toes were conjoined, at least partially. It’s rather rare, but not unknown…’
Sanderson shrugged. ‘So?’
Simon knew it was a big guess. But he felt sure he was onto something.
‘Do you remember the woman in Primrose Hill? What she was wearing?’
The change in Sanderson’s expression was sudden.
‘You mean the gloves. The fucking gloves!’
Before Simon could say anything else, Sanderson was on his feet and speaking on his mobile; the DCI took his phone a few yards down the sunlit slope, talking animatedly all the while. The wind was too boisterous for Simon to hear the conversation.
He sat in the cool yet dazzling sun, thinking of the woman’s pain, her lonely screaming pain. Hamish Leask had his eyes shut.
A few minutes later, Sanderson returned, his normally ruddy face whiter; quite pale with surprise.
‘I just called Pathology in London.’ He turned towards Simon. ‘You were right. The gloves were concealing a deformity; Pathology had already noted it.’ He looked away again, staring at the distant ocean. ‘He said it was digital syndactyly. The Primrose Hill victim had two…webbed fingers.’
The sea birds were calling from the cliffs below.
They took the Bidasoa Road through the misty green valley, chasing the tumbling river downhill, and then shaving a sudden right, up into the hills, into another Basque Navarrese village, past the obligatory stone fountain and the deserted grey fronton. David could sense the small tightness of anxiety: what did José Garovillo know? What was he going to say?
The village was called Etxalar.
David said the word Etxalar out loud, practising the pronunciation; Amy smiled, very gently.
‘No. Don’t say the x like an x, you say tchuhhhh.’
‘Etch…alarrrr?’
‘Much better.’
They were stalled behind a cattle truck. Amy seemed distracted. She asked him, apropos of nothing, about his past life, London, America, his job. He sketched a few details.
Then she asked him about his lovelife.
He paused – but then he confessed he was single. Amy asked why.
The cow in the truck stared at them, reproachfully. David answered:
‘I guess I push people away, before they get too close. Perhaps because I lost my parents. Don’t trust people to hang around.’
Another silence. He asked, ‘And you? Are you attached?’
A silence. The cattle truck moved on, and they followed, accelerating past small orchards of pear trees. At last Amy said, ‘David, there’s something I should tell you. I’ve been lying. At least…’
‘What?’
‘I’ve not been giving you all the information.’
‘About what?’
The green-blue of the mountains framed her profile. Her conflicted thoughts were written on her face. David offered:
‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.’
‘No,’ she answered, ‘you deserve an explanation. And we are going to meet José, Miguel’s father.’
Amy turned and regarded David; there was a tension and yet an audacity in her expression.
‘We were lovers. Miguel was my boyfriend. Years ago.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I was twenty-three. I’d just arrived in the Basque Country. I was alone. Young and stupid. I never mentioned it…Because I guess I am…ashamed.’
David turned the wheel as they drove around a corner; the trees and hedges shivered in the slipstream as they passed. He had to ask: ‘You knew he was ETA. And
