The Shadows in the Street by Susan Hill Page B

he could stay. The Chief had been generous with the leave but he would not take advantage of that, though there were days when he was so content to sit in the open air, eating a sandwich, drawing, happy in his own company, that he wondered how he could go back.
    He had had the time, space and solitude to clear his head as well as sleep away months of exhaustion, and, equally important, to think about his life – whether he still wanted to do his job, as a DCS and as head of the Special Incident Flying Taskforce, whether he wanted to try and take up again from where he had left off with Jane Fitzroy – wherever that had been. When he had first arrived on Taransay both had seemed complex, difficult areas of life, but, to his surprise, they had sorted themselves out rather quickly. He did want to carry on with his job. He enjoyed it, he was still challenged by it, he found it satisfying. He would never be content as a full-time professional artist, though by now he could have become one – the London gallery wanted to mount a new exhibition of his work, he was illustrating a private press book, and he had more than enough plans for what he wanted to do next, after he had sorted out the Taransay drawings. But he needed the other half of his life, the balance of the two, he was quite sure of that now. And Jane he would not see again. Jane had too many uncertainties and anxieties And, increasingly, he felt that he would never need, want or find a lasting close relationship. The Kirsty Mcleods of this world suited him fine.
    When Kirsty had discovered what his job was she had shrugged and said ‘Great’, but shown no real interest, asked no questions – that was refreshing too. ‘You’d have nothing to occupy you here,’ was the only other thing she had said. It was true. Taransay was crime-free and only boasted occasional visits from the police during the season. They checked gun licences but were otherwise severely underworked.
    An hour later, he walked down to the village. The wind had got up again, pushing at his back. He would find that tiresome through a long winter, the moaning and battering of the gale as it scoured the island for weeks on end.
    The ferry had come in, the only contact with the outside world other than a small passenger helicopter which came twice weekly in the summer. Serrailler had a friend from training days who was now heading up the local force on the mainland and had called in a favour, to get his car mothballed at the police station pound while he was on Taransay. He would fly back soon, to pick it up and start the long drive home.
    But for now, there might be mail and he needed bread, eggs and coffee. As he neared the landing stage he saw Kirsty carrying a couple of large cartons off the boat and offered to help her.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she said, laughing, ‘you just get the next one.’
    He joined the others who were unloading, lifted a heavy box of groceries and headed across the shingle to the post office and shop.
    There was no mail for him. He had hardly had any during his stay, and that suited him perfectly well. In any case, though there was no mobile phone signal here, Taransay, like many other remote places, had been parachuted into modern life and global communication with the arrival of wireless broadband. He had come down to the café a couple of times a week to access emails, mainly from Cat, though quite often from Sam too, and once or twice from his father. He had even received a flurry of them from his brother Ivo, who was a flying doctor in the Australian outback. Ivo wrote no letters, only the very occasional laconic postcard. His emails were equally terse but they were often funny, and Simon realised that he’d had more communication with his triplet during his weeks in the distant Scottish isles than he’d had for years.
    But it was Cat he needed to keep close to him, Cat about whom he worried. He had been so concerned about how Chris’s death had hit her, how she would