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“I suppose we could bury him,” Agnes, one of their middle sisters, said.
“We can’t bury him here.” Isobel gestured to the rock-strewn beach. “Even if we do manage to dig a hole, the tide will unearth him in a day or two.”
Mairi looked up at the steep, rocky path behind them, the only route down from the bluff where the tiny town of Arness sat. “We’ll never get him back up there. He looks like he weighs a ton.”
“And he’s wet.” Agnes nodded. “That makes you heavier.”
“Aye,” Mairi said. “Water retention.”
Isobel and Agnes stared at their sister.
“What?” Mairi said.
With shakes of their heads, Agnes and Isobel turned their attention back to the body.
“How do you think he died?” Agnes said.
“I suppose we should look him over and see if we can tell.” Isobel didn’t like the thought of touching the man, let alone examining him for clues as to his cause of death.
“Does it really matter how he died?” Mairi said. “I mean, it isn’t going to change the fact that he’s dead. Or that he was left here by the boat people.”
“The boat people?” Agnes looked towards heaven and seemed to be counting to ten. Again.
Mairi shrugged, her long red hair shifting with the movement. “What else are we to call them? And he was left here by the boat crew. Isobel saw them while she was spying.”
Isobel adopted her patented “haughty eldest sister” look—it helped take her mind off her shaking hands and the fear gnawing at her stomach. “I wasn’t spying. I was looking out of my window and saw them carry him off the boat and dump him here.”
“You were looking out of your window with the aid of binoculars,” Mairi reminded her.
She had a point. “What I don’t get is if these boat people are so keen on going unnoticed, then why are they dumping bodies on the beach?” Isobel said. “I mean, they only come in the dead of night. And we know they’re up to no good.”
“Smuggling,” Mairi said with a decisive nod.
Agnes walked around the prone man and looked back out at the choppy waters behind them, then up at the hill leading to town. “Do you think they meant for him to be swept out to sea? Or to be eaten by the crabs?”
“If they wanted him to be swept out to sea, why not dump him out there in the first place?” Isobel said. “And I don’t think half a dozen crabs are enough to eat a full-grown body. At least not fast enough to get rid of the evidence.”
“Even then,” Mairi said, “there would still be the bones.”
They nodded in agreement, and Isobel couldn’t help but notice that her sisters were struggling to hide their shaking hands, just as she was doing.
“I think we should call the police.” Seeing as Agnes wasn’t the most law-abiding member of the family, it said a lot that she was the one to suggest calling them in.
“I can’t.” Isobel tugged at the sleeves of her oversized purple cardigan and wrapped her arms around herself. “They’ll find out that I sold the stuff I found, rather than reporting it to them in the first place.”
“I told you, you shouldn’t have gone to the pawn shop in Campbeltown,” Mairi said. “Too many people know us there.”
“I wanted rid of it fast.”
Plus, she’d needed the money to pay off the loan shark who was hounding her over her ex-husband’s debt. Seeing as the man couldn’t find Robert, he’d decided to make Isobel pay in his stead, with cash or her body, making it clear that her family would suffer if she didn’t comply. That was the reason Isobel’s moral judgment had been silenced when she’d found the stolen goods on the path—the thought of handing over her body to pay her ex-husband’s debt made her ill. But she’d do it if she had to. She’d do just about anything to make sure her kids were safe.
“Enough of this.” Agnes crouched down and turned the body over.
He flopped onto his back, and the cause of death was instantly clear. There was a wide, gaping slit where his throat used to be.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Mairi covered her mouth and turned her back on the body, making gagging sounds as she did so.
“Don’t,” Agnes ordered. “You know I’m a sympathetic puker. If you start vomiting, we’ll both be doing it.”
