Night. A small creel boat, Aurora , rocks against a concrete pier in Whalsay. No lights. No hail on marine radio. At dawn, harbourmaster finds the skipper, Callum Williamson, slumped over a pot of tea in the wheelhouse – dead. No obvious wound. No water in lungs. Just a single, deep scratch on his wedding ring and a torn page from a tide table clenched in his fist.
DI Ruth Calder (back on loan from Police Scotland) and DS Alison “Tosh” McIntosh are already stretched thin. A missing Norwegian student, a stolen boat from Lerwick, and now a quiet murder in a community that whispers but never speaks.
In a disused salmon farm, Calder corners the killer: a widowed mother whose son was the “drowned” man from ’09. The son had tried to expose the council’s toxic dumping. Callum and the others swore a false report. She’s been unpicking the lie, one thread at a time – the student was an innocent witness. Now the tide has turned.
No scene is extra. Every pixel tells the story. x265.
Second death. The councillor’s assistant, found in a submerged car at low tide. Wrapped in the same Norwegian wool as the student’s missing scarf. The case fractures: people smugglers? salvage pirates? or something older – a silence pact from a fishing disaster covered up for fifteen years?