The door of Yester Kirk was open as the two cars swept through Gifford village, their speed moderated.
People stood on the pavements of its wide main street, in groups of two or three, some in deep conversation, others staring at the sky, as if awaiting a slow-motion replay of the disaster.
A white-collared minister waited outside the Kirk. Skinner thought that he looked stunned, as if trying to reconcile his faith with the reality of what his Saviour had allowed to happen on his doorstep.
The cars swept up the hill out of the village, climbing towards the moors. At first the road was lined with trees, clinging to the last of their autumn colours in the wan morning sun, but gradually woodland gave way to cattle-dotted fields as the slopes began to level out.
The transition from farmland to moorland was almost instantaneous. The cars rumbled across a cattle grid, and past a final copse of trees; suddenly, the pasture grass had been replaced by acres of brown and purple heather, rolling and undulating in a strange alien landscape. Skinner looked ahead as a mottled valley opened out before him. On the far side, in the middle distance he could see three, no, four thin columns of black smoke rising towards the sky.
The smoke grew nearer, the columns thicker as they drove on over and through the bumps and hollows of the otherwise featureless moorland. At last they came to a fork in the road, with twin signs each pointing to Duns, via Cranshaws, and via Longformacus.
A uniformed Sergeant stood by the signpost, as if on guard. Skinner flashed his headlights at his escort car, and pulled to a stop himself. The officer approached as he climbed out.
Skinner recognised him at once. 'Hello, Sergeant Boyd,' he said, but without his usual affable smile of greeting. 'Where is everyone?'
The whey-faced, forty-something policeman gave him a loose, wavy salute. 'Chief Superintendent Radcliffe took the rest of the lads up the Longformacus Road, sir. He left me here to divert the traffic and to direct. So far there's only six of us here.'
Skinner grunted. 'That's a start. But in just a few minutes this place is going to be like Princes Street at the Fireworks.' Footfalls sounded behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw PC Reader and his partner approach from their parked car.
`You two,' he said, not unkindly, beginning to feel guilt over his savaging of Reader, who, after all, had been only doing his job, if a little over-aggressively. 'Stay here with Sergeant Boyd. Use your car as a road block, and divert any traffic from Gifford down the Cranshaws Road. As our people and the other emergency services get here, send them on up the road.' He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'Others, and especially the press and telly, hold here. Don't let them past you, and don't let them head on down the other road where they can get round behind you. I don't want cameras all over the scene, at least until the rescue operation's well under way… Sergeant, get on your radio and make sure that this road's being blocked at the other end too. I'm off to find Mr Radcliffe.'
He folded himself back behind the wheel of the white saloon and headed off down the narrow roadway, towards the four columns of smoke. They were beginning to spiral on a light morning breeze, which Skinner guessed would have been triggered by the turning of the tide in the estuary a few miles distant. On either side of him, the heather was thicker than ever. The Longformacus Road was steep and twisting as it plunged and climbed in and out of a succession of featureless gullies. At first the smoke beacons were dead ahead of him but as he grew ever nearer, they veered round to his left with the curving of the road.
As he drove he was concentrating more on the smoke signals than on the road, and so, when his eye was caught at last by the shapeless, mangled body he had to brake hard, throwing himself painfully against the restraining seat-belt.
The thing lay across the roadway, blocking most of it, only a few yards short of the crest of a steep climb. At first, Skinner registered only a red, torn mass beyond the bonnet of the BMW. Breathing heavily, he squeezed his eyes shut as he composed himself. Then, running his fingers through his steel-grey hair, he braced himself and stepped out of the car.