Bridge of Sighs, Excerpt Two:
Monday the 11th of May

Sookie had expected dinner to be excellent and wasn’t disappointed. This was their third night at the Plockton Inn and there was no reason to think that the food, service and ambience would be any less good than it had been during their stay so far.

‘That was lovely, Rollo,’ said Sookie. ‘With the coffees gone, should we move through to the bar for a drink or two?’

Rollo looked at his watch. Sookie tried not to let her irritation show, but must have failed.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Rollo. ‘You have my undivided attention. I was just checking how much daylight we have left. The answer is that there’s still plenty. Do you fancy a walk round the harbour instead? The wine with dinner was excellent, but after sharing the bottle, I wonder if I’ve drunk enough for now. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you later, in bed.’

Sookie giggled. ‘That wasn’t a problem after we stayed late in the bar last night. I’ve not noticed it being a problem any time since we met, come to think of it. A walk does sound nice, though. Perhaps we should go back to the room first, to get the midge repellent? I’m still itching from venturing out after dinner on Saturday.’

‘It was damp and still on Saturday evening,’ said Rollo, ‘ideal conditions for the little bastards. They don’t like sunlight, and they especially don’t like wind. There’s a good breeze from the east forecast for this evening. Nothing uncomfortable or cold, but enough to keep the midges at bay.’

Sookie thought that she probably knew more about the habits of the Highland midge than Rollo, but didn’t say anything. She had spent a string of summer holidays as a child on the west coast or the islands and was quite an expert on the subject. To her mind, the evening sun was now low enough to offer only limited protection from midges. But she’d not looked at a weather forecast and knew he was right about the deterrent effects of a breeze, especially as an easterly would be blowing directly onto the main street of the village from Loch Carron.

As far as Sookie was concerned, Plockton was one of the most beautiful places in Scotland. She had first visited with her parents and two sisters during trips to the Isle of Skye and loved it. Not that she’d said so to Rollo. He liked to think that he was the senior partner in their relationship. He was, in most ways, but not in as many as he believed. The idea that she might know more than he did about something that he considered important would puncture the illusion.

The pavement alongside the road down to the harbour, which was also the only road into the village, was narrow. There was little traffic, but Rollo suggested they avoid it altogether. He pointed to the start of a lane opposite the inn that he said led towards the shore of the loch. Sookie knew that Rollo’s sense of direction and his spatial awareness really did surpass hers, so she was happy to follow his lead.

They held hands as they walked. Sookie saw that Rollo was looking at her, and they exchanged a smile.

In some ways, they made a good couple. Rollo was a little taller than her, nearly six feet in height. He had black hair and beard, and eyes that were nearly as dark. He was a naturally athletic man who worked hard to keep himself in shape. He was also an excellent lover who had a generous disposition and, usually, a good sense of humour. At times, he could be a little pompous and self-important, but those were relatively minor drawbacks as far as Sookie was concerned.

If you got very close, the odd grey hair was beginning to appear in Rollo’s beard, and she thought that before long, he’d need to shave it off to stop it betraying his age. Despite this, he looked far younger than his 48 years, which was as well because that made him only four years younger than her father.

Sookie had met Rollo two months earlier when she’d been doing some database development work for his wealth management firm in Edinburgh. She’d just emerged from a two-year relationship with an earnest accountant who was the same age as her, 27, but who she’d come to realise was simply too boring to spend the rest of her life with. They’d probably still be together if he hadn’t proposed. But the shock she felt when she realised that she didn’t want to marry him brought things to an abrupt conclusion.

Rollo wasn’t perfect, but as someone she could spend time with and share a bed with while she worked out what she wanted from life, he was a pretty good find. She knew what he saw in her without needing to ask. She’d been blessed, though sometimes it felt more like a curse, with classically blonde good looks. She’d grown used to seeing men’s eyes light up when they looked at her, and she’d known from the moment she met him that Roland Dunne desired her.

One of the things she appreciated about Rollo was how uncomplicated he was. The first time they’d gone out for dinner together, he’d told her that he was married, but separated from his wife. He also told her that he had a son and a daughter who were both at university. He’d never mentioned either his wife or his children again and that was fine with Sookie.

What had really attracted her to Rollo were his stories about flying. Although Sookie was very good at what she did, she had always harboured a secret desire to become a pilot. It hadn’t happened for a variety of reasons, a slight eyesight issue being prime amongst them.

Rollo had enjoyed the sort of life she’d wanted for herself as a girl. After studying Spanish at Edinburgh University, he joined the RAF as a pilot. By late 2010, he was a squadron leader flying Harrier jump jets. At the end of that year, the aircraft was retired from the RAF, far too early and for misguided budgetary reasons, according to Rollo. He’d hoped to continue flying in another type of aircraft, but it hadn’t happened immediately, and there was no guarantee it would at all. The following year, he reached the end of his twelve-year commitment to the RAF and left to join his father’s firm. As he put it, if he was going to have to work behind a desk, he wanted it to be on his own terms and in return for far more money than he’d been earning while wearing a uniform.

Rollo had carried on flying after he left the RAF, at the Edinburgh and Fife Aero Club near Glenrothes in Fife. He’d later purchased a quarter share of a light aircraft, a Cessna 172. He took Sookie for a flight the weekend after they met, and she could tell he was both surprised and pleased by her enthusiasm.

When he’d suggested a few days away, touring the west coast and islands in the Cessna, she’d jumped at the chance. On Saturday afternoon, they’d driven from his apartment in Edinburgh’s Quartermile to Fife Airport in his Range Rover and then flown to the small airfield at Plockton, where they landed in dismal weather just after a shower had passed through. Rollo had arranged for a taxi to meet them and take them the short distance to the Plockton Inn.

On Sunday, they’d flown south in beautiful weather to an airfield near Oban, then taken a taxi into the town for a couple of hours. For lunch, Rollo had flown them to a grass airstrip next to a hotel on the Isle of Mull. Then they’d returned to Plockton.

Today, Monday, Rollo had flown them north up the west coast of Wester Ross and Sutherland and then along the north coast before landing at Kirkwall in Orkney. They spent some time wandering around the town and its beautiful cathedral and had a light lunch. Rollo also had the Cessna refuelled. That afternoon, they’d followed the east coast down to Inverness, then flown across country back to Plockton. ‘The North Coast 500 in a day,’ Rollo called it.

The track they were following from the inn led to the shore, as Rollo said it would, and they turned left towards the bay around which much of the village of Plockton was built. Although Sookie loved this place, she didn’t think she’d ever seen it looking this enchanting. She wasn’t by nature a particularly romantic soul, but there was something about the evening light and the atmosphere that meant that when Rollo turned to kiss her, she responded wholeheartedly.

‘Should we go back to the hotel?’ she asked, smiling.

Her heart sank when she saw Rollo look at his watch again.

‘I’ll walk you back,’ he said. ‘But I think I need to go to the airfield to take a quick look at the Cessna’s exhaust. It’s not far beyond the inn and it shouldn’t take me long. Sunset isn’t for another hour yet, and it won’t be properly dark for three-quarters of an hour after that.’

‘Do you have to?’ she asked, smiling winningly. ‘That kiss has got me excited. I was looking forward to taking you to bed.’

‘You still can,’ said Rollo, smiling back. ‘But the smell of hot oil on the trip back from Kirkwall was a little worrying, and I’d like to take a look. We’ve had problems with the exhaust before and, although they were fixed, it seems best to check it now rather than in the morning. I’ve got a toolbag in the aircraft for eventualities like this.’

‘I’ll make it worth the wait when you get back,’ said Sookie. ‘Meanwhile, I have some work I can usefully do on my laptop.’

...

Sookie sat at the small desk in the corner of the bedroom between the window facing out over the street and the one in the inn’s end wall. When she became immersed in a technical challenge, she often lost track of time, and it was with a jolt that she realised that it was getting dark outside. Her watch told her it was a few minutes before 10 p.m. and she knew from what Rollo had said that sunset had been nearly half an hour earlier.

She checked her phone to see if Rollo had texted or tried to ring. He hadn’t. She wondered whether to ring him, but knew that might appear anxious or needy. Rollo had never said as much, but she had a strong feeling that anxious or needy women weren’t his thing.

Then she heard the sound of an aircraft approaching and got to the window overlooking the street in time to see Rollo’s Cessna pass over from left to right, quite low but a little distance away.

The runway at Plockton was aligned roughly north-east to south-west, and she assumed Rollo had taken off to the north-east, as nearly as he could into the easterly wind he’d talked about. If he’d then circled round to the east, it would have put him pretty much where she saw him.

But why was he flying at all? She thought that the red wine he’d drunk earlier would have put him over the limit to drive in Scotland, so flying was surely out of the question. And it was getting dark. Rollo had told her when they’d first arrived at Plockton that the airfield was for daylight use only. Even assuming he’d done something to fix the aircraft and wanted to take it for a short test flight, the light was fading fast.

‘To hell with appearing needy!’ Sookie picked up her phone and rang Rollo. It went straight through to voicemail, as if his phone was turned off.

Sookie’s next thought was to put her trainers on and run to the airfield. It wasn’t far, but it seemed very unlikely there would be anyone there to help. When they’d first arrived, the place had been deserted apart from the taxi driver, and a sign had directed them to put the landing fee in an honesty box. On their subsequent departures and arrivals, there had been no one there at all.

There was one thing she could do, she thought. Sookie launched the Flightradar24 flight tracker on her phone. She’d installed this some years earlier, simply out of interest after wondering one day where the aircraft at the head of a condensation trail she could see over Edinburgh was going. Rollo found it amusing that she used the app, but she thought that her interest in aviation was one of the less obvious reasons why he liked her.

There was very little traffic flying over northern Scotland. One airliner was passing over the island of Rum at 36,000ft on its way from Heathrow to Las Vegas while another, further south, was on its way from Amsterdam to Atlanta. The only other aircraft in the area was Rollo’s Cessna 172. Rollo was heading north-west towards the island of Raasay and northern Skye beyond it.

Sookie saw that if he flew over the Isle of Skye, he’d then be heading towards the Western Isles. She knew there was an airport on the island of Benbecula, and the app suggested that this had runways that were far longer than the one at Plockton, meaning he’d be much better off there. She remembered reading that it also had scheduled flights from, she thought, Glasgow, which suggested it would have landing and runway lights.

Perhaps Rollo, having got the Cessna into the air, had realised that attempting a landing at Plockton in gathering darkness wasn’t a good idea. It looked like he’d decided that Benbecula was his next-best option.

Sookie watched on her phone as the Cessna climbed to 5,000ft and then levelled out, all the time maintaining a straight-line course. She realised that this wasn't pointing directly towards the airfield on Benbecula. Instead, Rollo was heading some way north of it. Perhaps he intended to fly his current course and then turn south to fly over the west side of North Uist? That would enable him to make a final turn to line him up for an approach into Benbecula that was at least partly into the wind. All Sookie could do was watch from a steadily increasing distance.

Sookie’s parents had taken her and her sisters to the Western Isles twice, and she remembered that North Uist had seemed more loch than land. She wondered how it would look to Rollo in the disappearing light. She could see through the room’s windows that it was now dark in Plockton.

Rollo’s Cessna maintained its straight-line course and constant height as it passed to the north of North Uist, over the Sound of Harris. Sookie found herself holding her breath, willing the aircraft icon representing the Cessna on the screen to turn left.

Surely it was someone’s job to monitor air traffic over Scotland? Surely there must be someone looking at a radar screen somewhere who could see that something was wrong with Rollo’s Cessna? Sookie didn’t want the responsibility of being the one to raise the alarm. If Rollo was playing some sort of game, he’d never forgive her for bringing the authorities down on him while he was flying after drinking. On the other hand, if this was Rollo’s idea of a joke, then she wasn’t sure she wanted anything to do with him anyway. After the Cessna continued beyond the last of the small islands in the Sound of Harris, Sookie gave Rollo two more minutes to make his turn south towards Benbecula and, when he didn’t, she called 999.