27

Tam MacNee’s spirits rose when his phone rang and he saw the number. The boss must be at home; she’d taken her time to phone him, but he’d forgive her.

When he answered it, though, it was Bill Fleming’s voice at the other end. He liked Bill; they didn’t meet often enough. It crossed his mind, as Bill made the usual polite enquiries, that Marjory might have mentioned his enforced time off and this was a kindly gesture. Well, he was always on for a pint.

But Bill didn’t sound like a man making a social call. He sounded concerned as he asked whether Tam knew where Marjory was today.

MacNee looked at his watch. ‘I know where she’ll have been,’ he said. ‘She said she’d be going to Rosscarron House in the morning, but she’d be back by now.’

‘That’s just the thing. She isn’t. I’ve been trying to get through on her mobile, but she’s not answering, so I phoned the station, but she wasn’t there. They even tried Rosscarron House for me, but they said she’d left.’

It wasn’t like Bill to get worked up about his wife’s whereabouts. ‘There’s lots of places where there’s no signal,’ MacNee said soothingly. ‘She’ll likely be back for the briefing at six.’

‘Yes,’ Bill said, but he sounded unconvinced. MacNee thought he was going to ring off, but then he said, ‘Tam, I know she would kill me if I made any sort of fuss, but you know this Glasgow hitman that’s been seen in the area – Badger, she said they called him?’

Suddenly MacNee went very still. ‘Hitman? No.’

‘Oh, perhaps I shouldn’t . . .’

‘Go on, Bill. You can’t stop there.’

‘That girl, Lisa Stewart. She was killed yesterday in a hit-and-run – you knew about that maybe? Well, Marjory had been a bit worried before because that Hepburn creature had threatened her to try to make her drop some enquiry she was making about Crozier’s business, and she was scared they might have taken out a contract on her. But she told me this morning the girl seemed to have been the target after all and it was nothing to do with her. She was embarrassed, said she’d been overreacting, but it struck me—’

‘I can guess. There might be more than one target.’ MacNee’s face was grim. ‘I’ll get right on to that.’

 

The larder door didn’t open fully. Before Fleming could launch herself at it, Nico’s face appeared round the corner.

‘What are you doing?’ he said, with curiosity rather than surprise. ‘I heard you banging on the door.’

Fleming drew a deep breath, trying to slow her thumping heart. ‘Just waiting for you to let us out,’ she said. ‘There’s a sort of prize for doing that, if you do it the right way.’

Nico’s eyes narrowed. ‘What?’ he said.

Her mind went blank. ‘What do you like to do best?’

‘Play computer games. They’re cool.’

‘If you don’t tell anyone you’ve let us out, you can choose the best computer game you can think of and I’ll give it to you.’

‘How do I know you will?’

Despite the cold, Fleming could feel sweat beginning to bead on her brow. ‘I promise. I’m a police officer, and if we don’t tell the truth, we get put in jail.’ And how overcrowded would the prisons be if that passed into law?

He still looked unconvinced. She tried again. ‘So if you don’t get it, you can go to see my superintendent and he’ll arrest me.’

Nico smiled. ‘That’ll be good. All right.’

He stood aside. Grabbing Kershaw’s arm and pulling her to her feet, Fleming walked out of their prison. ‘Where are your mum and dad?’ she asked.

‘In the sitting room. I heard them talking.’

‘The deal is that you don’t tell them you saw us.’ Fleming closed the door and turned the key in the lock again. ‘OK?’

Nico nodded. ‘OK. They’re stupid, anyway.’

‘Is there a back door?’

He pointed, and still holding Kershaw’s arm to propel her along, Fleming hurried along the passageway and opened the door on fog and blessed freedom. Now all they had to do was work their way round the house unseen and back to the car. If they met Black on the way down to the bridge, they’d just have to—

Using what for car keys? Fleming stopped in dismay. They were in the shoulder bag she had left in the sitting room where Cara and her husband would be sitting even now.

 

As the black Toyota took the twisting road towards Kirkcudbright and Rosscarron, the fog grew thicker and thicker. It was low cloud now, really, implacably thick and on this windless day not even swirling into occasional clear patches so you could see to overtake. Black was prepared to take risks, but when you came up behind an elderly Allegro with what looked like an equally elderly driver, you were trapped. You couldn’t overtake unless you had a death wish.

He was beginning to have a bad feeling about this one. It was as if someone was trying to tell him something, and if it had just been the money, he’d have bailed out, but it wasn’t. You didn’t tell men like his paymasters that you’d changed your mind, especially when he knew from the money they were paying him, and the target, that this was serious stuff.

Time was passing. If Cara got it wrong, if she hadn’t managed to keep Fleming there until he arrived . . . He swore impotently, then started banging on his horn to force the driver in front to make way.

Deaf as well? He came up close, nudged the bumper once, twice – at last the car pulled in and he swept on, ignoring the shaken fist and the angry tooting.

After that he made better time. That was Kirkcudbright now. About ten minutes to the turn, Cara said.

A quarter of an hour later Black began to wonder if he’d missed it. Twenty minutes later he stopped and looked at the map. Swearing violently, he turned and retraced his route.

 

Fleming had never been round the back of the house before and it took her a moment to orientate herself. They were in a sort of sunken yard, an area of a few square feet between the house and the hill behind. The house itself blocked them to the left; if they followed the path to the right, it would take them past the sitting-room window.

They would have to scramble up the hill. Kershaw was staring around her. ‘What – what’s happening?’

‘No time to explain. Up here.’ Fleming grasped Kershaw’s hand and started dragging her across the yard.

The slope was steep but with plenty of footholds and Kershaw, Fleming saw with relief, was climbing mechanically. With the short perspective near the house, the fog had seemed thinner, but at the top, they emerged into a sea of white.

The fresh air seemed to be clearing her head and fog could be their friend, as long as they watched where they put their feet. It would give them cover to go down through the camping field and access the road to the bridge, but to take the road was danger. That was the way Black would come – if he hadn’t arrived already. Fleming’s heart lurched at the thought.

Every instinct was screaming to get as far away from the house as fast as possible, but that was what they would assume she would do. She had to out-think them to survive.

To her left and below, she could dimly see the shapes of the straggly trees in the little wood where Crozier had died. From its cover, she could check whether there was another car outside the house, in which case the hunt would be on immediately. If not, they would have an indeterminate period of grace before it started. And then what? Fleming didn’t know yet, and she hadn’t time to think now.

‘This way,’ she said, heading down the hill, struggling to keep her balance on the slippery, muddy path, with Kershaw behind her.

It was weirdly silent, in among the trees and bushes. The fog blanketed sound and distorted direction, so that a twig that snapped under Kershaw’s feet had Fleming peering all about her in alarm for a moment. She turned her eyes away from the flattened area, where blue-and-white tape still hung, and tried not to feel that the chill was even deeper here.

‘Cold – I’m very cold,’ Kershaw said, through chattering teeth.

‘Sssh!’ Fleming hissed, then realised that she too was soaked to the skin. Neither had an outdoor jacket and the air was saturated with water particles. ‘We’ll have to keep moving,’ she whispered.

They reached the bottom, where the track led across to Keeper’s Cottage. With a pang, Fleming saw her own car, locked and useless, and the Discovery, but the executioner didn’t seem to have arrived.

The shrubbery began directly opposite, but as a precaution Fleming headed a little way up before running across the track, keeping low, then into the bushes from there. She checked anxiously over her shoulder for Kershaw, but she was keeping up.

The towering rhododendron bushes with their branches thickened with age formed vast banks here, a barrier to progress. They had to force their way round them; the great leathery leaves spilled water on them from above, icy cold, and Fleming felt a jutting twig catch at the sleeve of her jacket. It tore, and when Fleming looked down, there was a streak of bright blood welling up along the scratch. But gradually, through a maze of small gaps, they worked their way along until they were past the house and a little way down the road.

There was still no sign of Black’s car, or sound of it either, though in these conditions you might not get warning until it was right on top of you. Fleming paused to take breath, and to think.

Her first objective must be to get across the bridge as quickly as possible. Once they discovered their captives had fled, they would block it to trap her on the headland. She couldn’t risk the road, though; she’d have to get to the bridge by way of the rugged headland behind her – rough terrain, which would be slow going through heather and bracken and gorse, and over boggy, uneven ground, especially when you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you. And there would be sudden drops – into the sea, even – if they got lost and disorientated. She realised that even through the fog she was hearing it now, a low moaning sound off to her left.

They wouldn’t get disorientated. And they would be very cautious. And quick too, in her court shoes and Kershaw’s – she glanced – smart flats, while not, of course, panicking. And any minute now a pig would fly down and rescue them.

‘Come on, Kim,’ she said, as if she felt confident about what she was doing, and with her constable silent and shivering behind her, she set off on to the moorland veiled in its pale shroud of mist.

 

Tam MacNee too was suffering from frustration as he drove down to Rosscarron. Even the wipers on their highest speed weren’t keeping the windscreen clear and visibility just got worse and worse; he knew the road, and there were sharp corners and unexpected cambers, which meant that only a daftie would try to speed in these conditions. Most of the drivers ahead of him obviously weren’t dafties, but of course their cautious driving irritated him too.

With anxiety churning inside him, MacNee was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and muttering under his breath. He was wrestling too with the decision whether or not to press the panic button. Suppose the boss had gone from Rosscarron to do follow-up interviews in yet another of the areas around here with no mobile coverage – what would she say then, after she had specifically said to Bill that she’d been wrong in thinking she was threatened?

She wasn’t responding to radio messages either, though. He’d got them to check that. It was certainly odd – not just odd, worrying.

And Lisa Stewart was dead, it seemed. Poor bloody kid! He remembered the tense, brittle woman whose resistance to questioning had left him grinding his teeth in frustration – and remembered, too, the brief pretty smile she had given him once. Yes, poor bloody kid. Never had a chance.

He had decided the best thing to do would be to go to Rosscarron House, where Fleming had been this morning, and check it out for himself. They might know where she had been headed.

He was through Kirkcudbright now, and there was the turn-off. MacNee was just signalling to turn on to the coast road when he saw in his mirror a black Toyota come up behind him. It overtook dangerously, forcing him to brake, and swung in left on to the road ahead of him. If MacNee hadn’t had other things on his mind, he’d have gone after him for that. Some folks had no sense at all when it came to fog.

 

The man in the black Toyota didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all, and when he got to the small, narrow road signalled Rosscarron he liked it even less. A single track – a serious threat to the ‘quick in, quick out again’ rule. And the Bailey bridge was the last straw. No one had told him about the Bailey bridge.

The road he was on went up past the bridge, along the bank of the river, though he had no way of knowing if there was a way out at the other end. It looked as if it could peter out in some farmyard miles on. He drove a little further, then found an open area to draw the car off the road, turning and parking it so that it was facing back down the hill. He’d go the rest of the way on foot. If there was trouble, you could easily vanish in these conditions, and the car wouldn’t be blocked in.

 

There was a sense of unreality about all this, Fleming thought, as she struggled through heather and bracken. Perhaps this was just another nightmare – the wet cold, the roots that snatched at her ill-shod feet, the hidden rocks that could trip you, the grazes and scratches and bruises, the light-headedness and pain persisting after her head injury. She was gasping with effort, and she could hear Kershaw’s uneven breathing behind her too. Once or twice, when she looked over her shoulder, she knew a moment’s fear when she didn’t see Kershaw, but then she would appear, having fallen perhaps, or gone a long way round an outcrop. She wasn’t crying now, just huddled with her arms wrapped round her body for warmth and tramping with an expressionless face.

Fleming was used to hill walking, but not in conditions like these. You would have to be insane to go out in weather like this, because in featureless hill country it was so easy to walk in a circle when you believed you were walking straight.

Was that what they were doing now? It had been all right at first, keeping a straight path somewhere parallel to the road, but you couldn’t walk straight when rocks rose in your path, or when the ground fell sharply away. She had hoped she would be able to keep the sound of the sea to her left, but with the effects of the blanket of fog, the monotonous sound seemed to be all around her.

She was having to fight debilitating panic. It was hard to know how much ground you were covering, but how far could it be to the bridge from the house? A mile at most. Surely, if she had been going in anything like a straight line, they would be heading steeply downhill, approaching the Carron? They weren’t. Not that their problems would be over when they reached it; it was fifteen miles to the police station at Kirkcudbright and she was beginning to worry about exposure. She had no feeling in her hands and feet any more, and the stiffness in her limbs was slowing her down. And she mustn’t think that behind her someone could be stealthily tracking their every movement.

She hadn’t heard Black’s car arriving and surely, even in this situation, she would have heard the engine? That was good, that had to be good, she told herself. And he could have been coming from a distance; they could be safely away before he reached Rosscarron and the Ryans found that the cupboard was bare. She just had to shut her mind to any other possibility, or she wouldn’t be able to think straight. If she was thinking straight anyway.

 

MacNee was still fuming at being carved up as he drove on towards Rosscarron. The man hadn’t been some young tearaway; he’d seen him in the rear-view mirror, a middle-aged man, pale-faced with black hair in a deep widow’s peak. Should have known better—

Suddenly it triggered a picture: the night he’d kept watch by Gillis Crozier’s body, the face that had appeared from the undergrowth, the badger out hunting . . .

Badger. He felt cold and sick. He accelerated, and his mind raced too, as he focused on keeping the car on the road round the unseen corners.

He should have thought of this whenever Bill told him: if Lisa Stewart had been killed to order, the Ryans had ordered it. The information MacNee had given Fleming yesterday had sent her straight into a trap.

Without hesitation this time, he called in immediate assistance, top priority. But Kirkcudbright was the nearest station: he knew how long it would take them to reach here, in weather like this. It was up to him.

 

When Black reached Rosscarron House, he was in an evil mood. The walk from the bridge to the house had been longer than he had thought it would be, and his light jacket was little protection in this sort of weather. He hated the country anyway, and this whole operation was freaking him out. He’d taken more antacids in the last two days than in the previous three months.

The gun in the special interior pocket in his jacket, his familiar Glock 19.9, was a heavy, reassuring weight. He checked that it was half cocked before he rang the bell.

It was Cara Ryan, he presumed, who opened the door, all bright and chatty and offering coffee, for God’s sake.

‘Where are they?’ he snarled. ‘Show me, then get out of the way.’

The woman gave a nervous giggle. He had the gun in his hand as he followed her through the hall. Her shoes were clicking; he grabbed her arm as she went to open the door below the stairs.

‘Tell me where to find them and stay here,’ he said under his breath.

He saw her eyes widen at the sight of the gun, though in excitement rather than alarm. ‘I’ll be quiet,’ she whispered, as she opened the door quietly and pointed to the cupboard.

Black gestured. ‘Bugger off.’ He didn’t wait to check on her obedience, pulling the door to behind him and moving on the balls of his feet as he went towards the cupboard. Another check on the gun, then he turned the key and the handle.

He kicked open the door and for a moment couldn’t take in what he was seeing – an empty larder. He slammed the door back until it banged on a shelf – no one behind it, then. No one above, lying on a shelf. Empty. Had the silly cow told him the wrong cupboard?

But when Black came out again, she was still standing by the door to the hall, and the expression on her face told him that there was no other cupboard.

He strode up to her. ‘What – has – happened?’ he bellowed. ‘Where are they?’

‘I – I don’t know! They were there, secure,’ Cara bleated.

‘Not exactly,’ Black said grimly. ‘Right. How much do they know about me?’

‘Nothing, nothing!’ Cara began to cry. ‘Let me go! I just—’ She stopped.

‘You just what?’

‘It slipped out. I said I knew about Lisa being killed – they probably didn’t even notice. Don’t hurt me!’

Black would have liked to smash in her stupid face, but there was no time. He went icy calm. ‘Then we have to find them. Where could they have gone?’

 

They were definitely lost, moving in some sort of circle. Fleming recognised the rock configuration in front of her, though she couldn’t remember how long ago it was that she had seen it. The cold was getting to her brain and she was so tired she was reaching the stage where just lying down would be worth it even if she didn’t get up again.

She mustn’t, she mustn’t. Then she heard a sound behind her and turned. Kershaw had fallen and was making no attempt to rise. Fleming came back and shook her. The woman was icy cold, but it seemed as if she had stopped shivering – a serious sign of hypothermia.

She lay down beside her, trying to share their body heat, rubbing her with her own numb hands, trying to generate some sort of warming friction, and felt with relief the shivering start again.

‘Get up, Kim,’ she urged. ‘You can’t lie here. We must be nearly there.’

‘You don’t – don’t understand,’ Kershaw said through her cold-stiffened lips. ‘I don’t care. Go on, leave me.’

At that moment Fleming heard the sound of a car engine, coming closer. They must be near the road after all, and when she turned to look over her shoulder, she could dimly see it passing. It was the Discovery, and it was heading downhill at a steep angle. The steep part of the drive was only a couple of hundred yards short of the bridge.

She stood up. ‘We’re all right, Kim. I know where we are.’ For what good that was, since they would be going down to block the bridge! Then suddenly she remembered the houses in the flooded development – deserted, probably, since no construction would be going on in this weather, but at least offering shelter and a hiding place. She said urgently, ‘Look, I know where we can get shelter. There are houses just down here. It won’t take long. Get up, Kim.’ Then, ‘Constable, that’s an order. Get up.’

She wasn’t sure it would work, but it did. Kershaw got slowly to her feet. Slipping an arm behind her for support, Fleming set a course parallel to the drive, at a distance where they would reach the little road that served the estate.

And there it was just below them, a thin ribbon in the mist, which was slightly less dense here at the lower level. Breathing a prayer of thankfulness, Fleming helped Kershaw down the last slope.

It would be safer to stick to the rough ground instead of the metalled surface, but by now they were so exhausted that she had to take that risk. They would hear the engine of the Discovery anyway and could take cover if necessary.

She was fairly sure now she would have been bound to hear the sound of another car arriving. Perhaps, after all, there wasn’t a professional out there looking for them. Or not yet, at any rate.

 

He had to stay calm. Giving way to temper and taking out the two drooling retards who had got him into this situation wouldn’t help anyone. With the pistol still in his hand, Black walked down the road, listening and looking, though there wasn’t a lot of point in that, when you couldn’t see five feet to either side. He wasn’t going to take to the hills either, though doubtless that was where they’d gone. He wasn’t the outdoor type and you could make a serious fool of yourself, stumbling along after an unseen quarry and probably breaking your ankle in the process.

If the Ryans could be trusted – if! – the women hadn’t been gone long enough to get off the headland. With Ryan dispatched to block the bridge, it would just be a waiting game.

They couldn’t explain how the pigs had escaped and it seemed to have been pure chance that they hadn’t been able to drive away and alert the entire police force. Save him from amateurs! He’d never before relied on anyone else for one of these jobs, and this was why.

Black walked on down the hill, brooding. How long would it be before someone started asking questions about where the inspector was? How long before he decided that whatever the consequences, he’d simply have to abort the mission?

He was soaked through, cold and afraid now too. Afraid not just of the police, but of his clients.

The men who had commissioned him were dangerous – that went without saying. All his professional dealings were with dangerous men. Who else could afford what he charged? But Lloyd and Driscoll were not only dangerous, they were desperate this time, and Lloyd’s cold eyes when he briefed Black had spelled out the price of failure.

It hadn’t bothered him much. Dealing with hicks from the sticks, and good money – seriously good money. Piece of cake! Except it wasn’t.

He was torn with indecision. Lloyd and Driscoll would be vindictive enemies; on the other hand, it was looking bad and putting his head in a noose wasn’t smart either. Very not smart, if he wanted a chance to look at the sky anytime these next twenty years.

He had to play the percentages. When he reached the bottom, he’d tell Ryan he was on his own, pick up the car and head back to the safe anonymity of Glasgow. Unless a miracle happened between here and there.

And then it did. He heard a woman’s voice, from somewhere on the rough ground up to his left, saying, ‘Look, I know where we can get shelter. There are houses just down here. It won’t take long. Get up, Kim.’ Then, ‘Constable, that’s an order. Get up.’

Black smiled. He took back all he’d said about Lady Luck.