But after a week of unexpectedly intense activity with the Orkney Constabulary rather than a holiday, it would seem tame indeed to pick up the threads of his life at the Central Office. He might now summon up courage to ask Lizzie to marry him, although he was no longer wholly certain about this, or even that she would eagerly accept. Meeting Inga again had raised doubts that he knew anything at all about women, to say nothing of their extraordinary behaviour as personified by Celia and, now, even by his own mother. You knew where you were with men, he thought, by comparison. They seemed uncomplicated, straightforward creatures. He would have ended his Orkney visit with a lighter heart had there not been a couple of riddles still unsolved: his negative report to Macfie on Dave Claydon’s accident and the artefacts he was carrying to Edinburgh. Or what intrigued him most, the missing year and a day from Thora Claydon’s life a decade ago.
