The Girls in the Glen

PrologueOn Bield Moss, death is not the end. The boglands fold all in a tight embrace. Time slackens, a sepia tint warms skin and hair. Layers of peat press bone and flesh like flowers in a family Bible. Into the dark ghylls and sykes drain the fear and pain of living, biting through the black soil to run like spent blood beneath heather and pine, until the brine of the Solway washes all clean. The centuries turn and the high moor holds fast. On every surface, life grows upon life.On Bield Moss, the curlew’s warning comes too late. A patch of bog-cotton is a white flag caught among the reeds and starved grass. The pale horseman’s shadow swallows the sky. In the hollow, out of the wind, the girl in the glen passes, her last breath faint as a lark’s wingbeat. High above, a crow soars with a harsh lament and the circling buzzard creeps closer to inspect the meat.On Bield Moss, the shadow moves on. An adder unfurls. Sundews reopen, holding out their fragile fingers, but the girl in the glen is off across the heather with the mountain hare. In the rough refuge of the dead, she whispers to the voles and grouse and the nesting plovers. They are coming. They will find me.On Bield Moss, death is never the end. Chapter 1Detective Inspector Shona Oliver examined the photograph of the skeleton she’d just been handed. The skull showed a sharp groove across the crown, the classic mark of a sharp trauma injury, but was it the cause of death? Stop, she told herself as she passed the picture back to the archaeologist. It’s a 400-year-old killing and, for once, not your problem. Just enjoy your day out.Shona waved to her sixteen-year-old daughter Becca, who was kneeling in a trench in the heather, a look of rapture on her face. Next to her, a fair-haired girl, in a hand-knitted green Aran jumper, held up a shard of blackened pottery. Shona and Becca had met Dr Cameron Armstrong at the University of Glasgow open day the year before. He’d been assiduous in answering Becca’s emails, and eventually offered her some hands-on experience camping with the current students for a week or so.Dr Armstrong slid the photo back into a folder. About Shona’s age, he was lean and not much taller than her own five feet four inches, with messy dark hair and a long, straight nose. Threads of gold and white showed in his scrappy beard. Muscled forearms and quick movements betrayed a life spent not entirely behind a desk in the Archaeology Department.‘Male, approximately between thirty and forty years old,’ he offered. When Shona didn’t reply, a grin creased his suntanned face. ‘Thought I’d hooked you there. Gonna have to try harder, aren’t I?’Despite the grim subject matter, he was definitely flirting with her, and that was okay. He had a wife, Tanya, and a young son, Lewis, still in primary school. Her own husband, Rob, had cropped up in conversation now and again, too. Shona took it as a sure sign he enjoyed her company. Harmless flirting was all it was.‘Nice try. No cigar.’ Shona returned his smile and waved the wad of Float to Live leaflets in her hand. ‘No work for me. I’m on my jollies.’The open day at the archaeological dig at Bield Moss, in the eastern uplands of Dumfries and Galloway, was the perfect opportunity for the RNLI to remind visitors about the dangers of wild swimming in the nearby rivers and lochs. Shona, who volunteered on the Kirkness lifeboat fifty miles to the west, was putting in a stint with the station helm, Tommy McCall. He’d grumbled that when he was a lad, they’d just called it swimming, but agreed that while the RNLI’s remit was saving lives at sea, educating the public about the effects of cold water shock, while doing a bit of fundraising, was a good idea. The moorland was also within Shona’s policing patch, so if today’s exercise saved even a single life, it was win-win as far as she was concerned.‘Anyway,’ Shona said, nodding towards Cam’s folder. ‘Not much mystery how your research subject died. Some big bugger with a sword did for him.’‘I see you’re blessed with both brains and beauty, Detective Inspector,’ he smiled. ‘That would also be my conclusion. It was a common fate for a Border reiver.’ He held out a hand, inviting her to walk the short distance towards the edge of the site and a spectacular view down to the Solway Firth. ‘You know, that’s where the word “bereaved” comes from?’ he said. ‘It’s how you generally ended up if you met one.’When it came to murder, Shona thought, detectives, or indeed archaeologists, would never be out of business. A couple of Cam’s students arrived with a query and drew him back to the trench.She glanced at the RNLI gazebo. No customers. It was the same for the small pottery, a cheesemaker and a local conservation group. Freya, a cheerful blonde in a dark green apron with the twin stags logo of The Douglas Arms gastro-pub, offered Tommy a shot glass. He sipped it and made a polite grimace. Freya said something, and Tommy’s chuckle floated across on the stiff wind.Shona raised the collar of her fleece and replaced her sunglasses against the bright glare of hard blue sky. The lack of visitors was largely the result of Storm Ailsa, which had powered through the area two days before, leaving blocked roads and flooded holiday cottages; her journey time this morning had been trebled by the aftermath. Hillsides looked as if a petulant chess player had swept their arm across them, upending the pieces and conceding the game. Trees lay at jagged angles, pulled up by the roots, exposing the peaty soil beneath.From the high moss, the land rolled down to the Solway. Shona traced the border with England, not evident through any barrier or changed geography and marked only by