5

Indie music was pounding from the speakers in the white sitting room at Rosscarron House, but the two men with beers in their hands seemed inured to the level of sound.

‘Cigarette?’ Gillis Crozier leaned forward to hold out a packet to his guest. He had been virtually chain-smoking for the last half-hour.

‘Got my own, thanks.’ Joss Hepburn took out a packet of Marlboros and lit one, leaning back in an unyielding black chair and reflecting with a sort of desperate boredom that at least it gave him something to do. Sitting here while Crozier twitched wasn’t his idea of entertainment, though admittedly, trying to arrange a pop festival without Internet or even phone would make anyone twitch.

But then, it had been a crazy idea in the first place, and he’d been crazy to allow them to twist his arm. He was regretting it now, though it had almost been worth it just to see Madge Laird’s face. A copper – who’d have thought it!

‘So, you’ve absolutely no idea what time the rest of the band are arriving?’

‘No,’ Hepburn said for the fourth time. ‘The arrangement was, they’d call when they landed. Never crossed my mind this would be a dead spot. I guess they’ll have your landline on a schedule somewhere, though that’s not exactly a whole heap of use at the moment.’

‘It’s a right bugger, this entire thing.’ Crozier crushed out his half-smoked cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. ‘Someone trying to tell me something, do you think? I can’t get confirmation of times of arrival for equipment or supplies or the other first-day groups – I don’t know where anyone is and they can’t tell me. Alex was taking time off from his legal duties in London to do a job for me and was to report back, but he’s obviously been delayed and can’t let me know, and the bands we’re expecting can’t warn me if there’s a problem. If I’m honest, I’m not sure how we’re going to cope, given the weather. Never seen rain like it at this time of year.’

‘Not just a huge amount you can do about it now, is there – artists on their way, kids starting to party out there already. But—’

The door opened and a woman came in. She was small and slight, in her mid-thirties perhaps, with a cloud of fair hair and unhealthy-looking skin with a hectic flush. She was clearly distracted.

‘Have you seen Declan? I need him urgently.’ Her words were slightly thickened and she licked her lips as if her mouth was dry.

Hepburn, after a swift glance at her eyes, drooping and red-rimmed, dropped his own and made a business of stubbing out his cigarette.

Crozier’s voice was strained. ‘Gone up the hill to the campsite to see how many people have arrived, I think.’ She left before he finished his sentence.

He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘My daughter, Cara,’ he said, then as Hepburn made a noncommittal noise, burst out, ‘I know, I know. You don’t have kids, do you?’

‘No. I never go looking for trouble.’

‘Wise man!’ Crozier said with feeling. ‘I found her stash yesterday and I got rid of it. Pointless, probably – she’ll get it from somewhere else. My adored only child and I’m helpless. I’ve tried everything – keeping her short of money, bribing her, threatening her – but she’s not interested in kicking it. All she says is, “I can handle it, Dad,” and then she gets upset with me. I may have to do something drastic, or she’s going to kill herself.’ He shrugged. ‘Before, I knew she maybe dabbled a bit, but recently . . . After all that’s happened to her, I can understand why she tries to blot it out.’

With a sinking feeling, Hepburn finished his beer. Agony uncle really wasn’t his scene; there was nothing bored him more than other people’s personal problems, but he couldn’t exactly say, ‘Sure, sure,’ and walk out.

He continued the discussion reluctantly. ‘Well, hard for kids, growing up in our kind of world. You can’t stop them meeting guys who’ll put the stuff their way.’

‘Like her husband,’ Crozier said grimly.

‘Declan? Oh, he’s not so bad. I’ve had a bit to do with him, off and on.’

‘He doesn’t do drugs himself, but she makes him get them for her.’

It likely wouldn’t be tactful to say, ‘Oh well, keeps it in the family.’ Instead, he gave a discouraging, ‘Mmm.’

Crozier barely heard him. ‘After the baby, of course.’

‘Of course.’

Something in the way he spoke must have betrayed his ignor-ance. Crozier looked at him sharply. ‘Don’t you know about the baby? Didn’t Declan tell you?’

‘We didn’t have that sort of relationship.’

Crozier got up and walked to the window, turning his head away. ‘And I suppose it didn’t make the news in the States, like it did here. That was part of the hell of the whole thing.’

Hepburn got to his feet too. ‘Hold it right there, Gil – we can’t have this sort of conversation without a glass in our hand. What you need is a Scotch. Where do you keep it?’

‘Oh . . .’ Crozier looked at him blankly for a second, then said, ‘Cris – ask Cris. He’ll get it for you.’

‘Great!’ Hepburn went out, rolling his eyes and groaning quietly as he shut the door.

The music had changed to a mordant Leonard Cohen number. Crozier stared blankly out of the window. He wasn’t thinking about the baby. He was thinking about Kenna, when he had seen her that last time, after she had so terribly betrayed him: the burnished copper of her hair, still without a thread of grey, springing from her head as if its energy had drained the colour from her face and life from her wasted body. It should have been a time for love and grief, not for accusation and anger.

The door opened again behind him and Hepburn’s head appeared round it.

‘Gil, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to break up our talk, but the boys will have landed by now and be trying to raise me. I figured that if I headed off towards Kirkcudbright, I could pick up a signal and get you an ETA. And I’m almost out of Marlboros too – don’t know if they’ll have heard of them out here in the boondocks, but I sure hate smoking anything else. Hold the thought, will you?’

‘Of course,’ Crozier said bleakly. He had been naïve to try to open up about his personal tragedy to Joss Hepburn, whose ruthless disregard for anything except his own interests was one of the secrets of his professional success. And anyway, talking didn’t change anything.

 

DS Andy Macdonald knocked, a little hesitantly, on the door of Superintendent Bailey’s office. On the few occasions when he had entered this sanctum he’d been summoned. He hadn’t been the bearer of bad news either, and he certainly didn’t trust the super not to shoot the messenger. In response to an impatient, ‘Come!’ he took a deep breath and opened the door.

Bailey scribbed a signature on a paper in front of him, then looked up. ‘Macdonald?’ He was clearly surprised.

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir. It’s DI Fleming.’

‘Yes, Fleming! Where is the woman? I need to talk to her about a statement on the Rosscarron Cottages, but I can’t get hold of her.’

‘No, sir. We think she and DS MacNee went to Rosscarron House.’

‘Yes. I sent her. Should have been in an ideal place to send back a report.’

‘There’s no signal there for mobiles, as you probably know.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Bailey was always reluctant to confess to ignorance. ‘But she’s got a radio, hasn’t she?’

‘That’s just it, sir. The communications room has reported that DI Fleming’s car radio has gone dead.’

‘Gone dead? What on earth for? Oh, malfunction, I suppose.’

‘We don’t know, sir.’

‘I need to speak to her.’

Bailey was chewing his lip. He was, Macdonald guessed, under pressure from somewhere; generally, he wasn’t bad as supers went, but he tended to lose it when things went wrong.

He went on, ‘Phone the man – what’s-his-name – Crozier. Ask where she is.’

Macdonald shifted uneasily. ‘The phone lines are down too, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, this is ridiculous!’ Bailey slammed his fist hard on the desk. ‘I don’t know what Fleming thinks she’s playing at. The press are getting very restless – how can I release a statement when I haven’t had a report from her?’

Pleased that his guess had been accurate, Macdonald said helpfully, ‘Well, I’ve been to the scene. Perhaps I could . . .

‘For heaven’s sake, man, why didn’t you say so? Have you something down on file?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘Then get it down, Sergeant. You’ve got half an hour. Less, preferably. All right?’

‘Sir.’ Macdonald turned to go, then paused. ‘And do you want someone to check on DI Fleming?’

‘Oh, no doubt she’ll turn up. It’s too bad – there’s been enough trouble over her already. I should have thought the least she could do is keep a low profile and get on with her job . . . What are you waiting for, Macdonald?’

 

MacNee’s head was spinning. The scream of futile brakes, the crump of mangled metal, the explosive force of the airbags, the shock of icy water creeping up around him . . . and now a sudden, brutal silence. His eyes shut against the dizziness, he tried to make sense of it.

He opened his eyes as the airbags deflated. He was half suspended by his seat belt, with the Vauxhall at a nose-down angle. But he could move everything – he was all right. He took a deep breath.

‘God!’ he said with a shaky attempt at lightness. ‘Donaldson wasn’t such an old woman after all, was he?’

Fleming didn’t respond.

‘Marjory? Marjory?’

She was slumped against the steering wheel, facing towards him. Her side airbag had failed to inflate; her eyes were closed, and he could see a bruise on her temple.

He stretched awkwardly to feel for a pulse in her neck. The car rocked crazily at his movement and his stomach lurched with it. He still hadn’t got a pulse.

He dared not lean further over. He reached cautiously for her limp hand and at last found the tiny node with its throb of life. Thank God for that!

But they had to get out of here. Water was beginning to build up, but if he dislodged the car, if it tipped, rolled over . . . MacNee could feel the cold sweat standing out on his brow.

There were no lights at all showing on the instrument panel and he was afraid even to try the radio; he was pretty sure it was dead anyway, and he could smell petrol. If the tank was breached, the tiniest electrical spark could turn the car into a fireball. He wasn’t even going to think about other short circuits water might create.

He had to get out. Craning his neck, he took stock of the pos-ition: the bridge above him, tilted at a crazy angle with its metal railing broken and twisted; wooden spars and debris floating in the swirling water; the tail of the car resting halfway up the steep bank on the headland side.

The rain had come on again. In the diminished light, the river seemed colder, darker, more deadly than ever. And it was coming into the car, higher and higher; soon, if the weight shifted, it would dislodge the car anyway.

With another glance at his unconscious companion, MacNee tried, not hopefully, to open the door, but the force of the water was holding it shut, and though the window was just clear of the surface, it was electric. He dared not even try to operate it.

There was a heavy torch in the glovebox. It was under water, but bracing himself against the dashboard and moving with infinite caution, MacNee groped until his fingers grasped it. His first attempt to smash the window failed, but it shattered at the second blow. Clearing the remaining glass rubble from the window frame, he didn’t even notice the dozen tiny cuts it made on his hands until he saw his blood in the water.

Fleming gave a faint groan and moved a little. The car swayed. Good that she was coming round, sure, but MacNee wasn’t so crazy about the moving part.

He’d have to move himself, though. No alternative. He prised off his shoes and undid his seat belt, then hers. If the car ended up on its roof in the river, he didn’t want to be fumbling with straps.

Gritting his teeth in a grimace of concentration, MacNee levered himself up and out through the window space, twisting painfully to get a grip on the roof for purchase, then eased himself out. For a terrifying moment the car rocked, but settled back.

He lowered himself into the fast-running river and, clinging to the edge of the window, tried to calculate the depth – five, six feet? The difference was crucial to a man of his height who couldn’t swim.

It was mercilessly cold. There was debris from the bridge buffeting him, and the pull of the current was a shock. His feet didn’t touch the bottom and for a second MacNee thought he would be swept away. But he grabbed on to the door handle then, kicking out with his feet for buoyancy, worked his way along to the one on the rear door. Beyond that, the tail of the car rose out of the water above him and he paused to catch his breath.

Seven feet, eight feet round below the unstable car to the river’s edge – could he stay afloat that far, with the current against him? The car was shaking now: Fleming must be starting to come round. He didn’t fancy being below it if it was dislodged.

With a sort of frenzied doggy-paddle, MacNee launched himself round the end and across the stretch of water. Greedily, the current snatched and tugged at him with almost animal force, but high on terror, he fought through and at last solid, if muddy ground was beneath his feet. His breath sobbing in his chest, he leaned against the bank. But there was no time to waste – Marjory next.

It was only then he realised that the car’s tail, resting on a curve in the bank, was blocking his access to the driver’s side. He simply hadn’t thought that through. His teeth were chattering with cold, he was aching in every muscle, and now he would have to climb a steep, muddy bank, then come back down again. And quickly – anything could happen to the car. Swearing didn’t do any good, but he carried on anyway.

The bank, eroded by the flood water, shelved in and MacNee, exhausted already, slipped back down again, and again, and again. Even when at last the tufty grass on the top of the bank was within his grasp, a clump came out in his hand and it took a contortionist effort to save himself from falling back to the bottom. He hauled his wet body over the lip of the bank and collapsed, his chest heaving with exertion. At least the effort had warmed him up a little.

But Fleming was still down there, still in imminent danger, starting to move, perhaps. If she moved too much . . . Groaning, he got up, walked round the curve to the other side of the car and dreeped down, lowering himself by his arms as far as he could, then dropping into the water. He had no idea how deep it was here; he could find himself slipping under and having to fight his way to the surface, or landing awkwardly on a rock and ending up a casualty himself.

At last, though, his luck seemed to have turned. He landed on soft ground, in the shallows, and he could wrench the driver’s door open. A flood of water poured out at his feet.

‘Marjory!’ he said sharply. ‘Marjory! Can you hear me?’ He slapped at her hand.

Her eyes shot open. They looked ill focused; she screwed them up in an effort to see. ‘Tam? What’s – what’s happened? Where . . . ? Can’t move!’ The words were slurred; her eyes closed again.

‘Bridge collapsed. Move your hand, Marjory. Can you move your hand?’

She didn’t seem to hear him. Fear grabbing at him again, he picked up her hand and slapped it. ‘Move your hand, Marjory!’

At last, uncertainly, she moved her fingers.

‘And your feet, Marjory – your feet!’

MacNee could see that at last she was coming to, and as she did, he saw panic appear in her face.

‘My feet – yes. But Tam, I can’t sit up! I can’t sit up!’ Her breath was ragged with terror.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right. The car’s nose down, that’s all. Just don’t make any sudden movements and we’ll be fine,’ MacNee said with a confidence he didn’t really feel. ‘Does anything hurt except your head? No? Now look, I’m going to put my shoulder below yours and lever you up, and then you’ll see . . .’

Her mind was obviously clearing and she looked shame-faced when she realised that gravity, not injury, was the problem. ‘Sorry. Not very impressive, that. I’m remembering now. The bridge – should have checked it before, not after.’

‘You’ll know another time. Now, we’re needing to get you out of here before we die of cold.’

They were both shivering violently. The rain was lessening and a wicked little gusting breeze had sprung up, driving the clouds scudding across the sky and bringing greater wind chill, and Fleming’s dismay showed as she realised her position.

Her face was alarmingly pale, apart from the bruising round her temple. Blood clots, depressed fractures . . . MacNee knew enough about head injuries to be afraid she might without warning drop at his feet, but it would hardly help if he started to panic now.

‘Och, you’re fine,’ he said robustly. ‘Now, slide towards me – that’s right, good lassie! Put your arm round my shoulders and I’ll pull you clear.’

Fleming gave a cry of fright as the car tipped, but MacNee, his strained muscles screaming, pulled her clear with a supreme effort and dragged her back through the shallows in case it fell. With a shudder, though, the car settled back.

She leaned against the bank, swaying a little, but with control of all her limbs and clear enough in her mind to start insisting that she was absolutely fine. Which plainly she wasn’t, but at least it was a step in the right direction.

She was also grateful. ‘I could have drowned in there. You saved my life, Tam. I don’t know how you begin to thank someone for that.’

‘Och, havers,’ MacNee said gruffly. ‘Buy me a pint sometime and we’ll call it quits.’

He hadn’t finished the job, though. How the hell was he to get her up the bank? MacNee was a small man, Fleming a tall woman; manhandling her out of the car had been hard enough, and he couldn’t see her now doing much to help herself.

Fleming was looking at it despairingly. ‘I can’t get up there. You’ll have to go for help.’

He didn’t want to leave her. She was chilled to the bone already, her knees were buckling, and if he left her, he didn’t think she could stand for any length of time; if she sat down in the water, hypothermia could have set in by the time he got back.

He looked around for inspiration, then realised that with the angle it was at, the open door of the car formed a sort of angled shelf. He wedged it firmly into the bank, which actually stabilised the car too. He should have thought of that sooner.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Rest on that and I’ll scramble up there.’

Sitting down thankfully, Fleming eyed the bank above them. ‘Give me a minute, Tam, then I could give you a leg-up.’

She didn’t look as if she could stand up herself, far less take his weight. ‘Och, no,’ he said. ‘Just give me a wee clap when I get to the top, eh?’

MacNee was eyeing it up without enthusiasm, looking for possible footholds, when a voice hailed them from above, an amused voice.

‘Having fun down there, you guys?’

It was the man Fleming had called Joss. MacNee saw her look up sharply, but he couldn’t quite make out her expression. It certainly didn’t mirror the intense relief he was feeling himself.

 

Jan Forbes, sitting up in bed in a side-ward with one of her sturdy legs in plaster and wearing a hospital nightgown, was looking remarkably chipper, DC Kershaw thought. She was certainly impressively calm by comparison to her fellow victims, with her iron-grey hair neatly brushed and her eyes bright with interest behind her spectacles.

Kershaw took her details. Jan was, she told her, Dr Forbes, ‘but of course I’m not a medic. PhD in botany, specialising in heaths and heathers mainly, so don’t start telling me about your bad back!’ She laughed merrily.

She was a lecturer at Glasgow University and the cottage, it seemed, was mainly a study centre for her, bought some years before but inhabited only sporadically during vacations or when working on a project.

‘Wonderful place, Rosscarron. So quiet, no phone, no TV and of course virgin territory for academic study, though I daresay that’s not what you’re interested in.

‘Now, what can I tell you? Not much about last night, really. It wasn’t that late – seven o’clock, perhaps, but with the weather it was very dark already and I’d had to put the lights on. Then there was this terrible crash, almost like an explosion, and a rumbling that went on and on and on, and of course the lights went out. I couldn’t see much, just a torrent of water and mud pouring through, but I’d have been safe enough if I’d kept my head. I did in my leg by leaping to my feet and taking a header over the coffee table. Serves me right – I should have had more sense than to panic. Then, of course, that poor young couple had this old fool to deal with as well as a crying baby – and they’re barely more than children themselves when all’s said and done. I do trust they’re all right?’

She looked an enquiry and Kershaw attempted to seize the initiative. ‘Yes, fine. Dr Forbes—’

She was corrected. ‘Jan. “Dr Forbes” makes me think of my father. Now, he was a medical doctor.’

Ruthlessness was called for. ‘Jan, I have to ask you about the couple in the cottage on the other side. We don’t know anything about them as yet. Can you help me?’

‘I knew them hardly at all. I only came down here last week, you know. Bumped into her a couple of times and she was perfectly pleasant, but she wasn’t disposed to be chatty. I didn’t know their names or whether they were living there or just on holiday.’

‘Can I press you further on this? What were they like? What was their relationship?’

Jan’s nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘Are you asking me for gossip? I don’t like it. I talk, but I don’t gossip – I’ve seen the havoc it can wreak in university departments.’

‘It would be very helpful – give us a fuller picture.’

‘I see. Very well, then.’ For the first time Jan paused, clearly ordering her thoughts. ‘The girl had a very pale skin and very dark hair – tinted, I would guess – and she was around my own height, five foot four or five. Aged twenty, perhaps. I couldn’t tell you about the man. With the weather we’ve had, we all just rush to our cars with our hoods over our heads.

‘I saw her once on the single sunny afternoon we’ve had in this last week, sitting on the seat on the top of the cliff – when it was a cliff.’ Alarm showed suddenly in Jan’s face. ‘Oh my goodness! Do you know where she is? She wasn’t up there when it happened, was she? I saw her going past my door, out along the headland, but my desk is in the window and I was working there all afternoon. I’d definitely have seen her coming back, so I was pretty sure she wasn’t at home. But I never thought . . . Oh dear!’

‘Is there no other way round?’ Kershaw asked.

‘Across the moors, then on to the road on the Rosscarron estate. She could have done that, I suppose, but with the weather . . .’

‘She may well have been located by now. There’s certainly absolutely no reason to think she’s been caught up in this,’ Kershaw said soothingly. ‘But tell me about him. You said he was out too?’

‘Yes, yes, I did. I saw him leaving earlier in the day.’ Jan fell uncharacteristically silent.

‘You mentioned gossip,’ Kershaw prompted at last. ‘What you’ve told me couldn’t be classed as gossip and I think there’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘Oh dear!’ Jan sighed again. ‘Is it really necessary to muck-rake? I can’t see what it can achieve.’

In the face of such determined reluctance, Kershaw could see that disclosure was the only way forward. ‘I think perhaps you may not know that his body was found in the house next door to yours.’

She encountered a very sharp look. ‘And you couldn’t have told me that at the outset, Constable Kershaw?’

Feeling uncomfortable, Kershaw considered saying she thought Jan knew. Under that stern gaze, though, honesty seemed wiser. ‘Sometimes withholding information is a tactical decision.’

‘Indeed?’ There was a chilly pause. Then Jan said heavily, ‘Poor young man. Oh well! There was a quarrel, you know, and she threw him out. There was a lot of screaming – he seemed to be refusing to go at one point. I suppose it was around three o’clock or thereabouts. Eventually he appeared outside wearing a parka and carrying a suitcase, heading for the car park. I couldn’t see her, but the door slammed afterwards so she must have been watching him go.’

‘And was it then she walked past your window?’

Jan thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I think so – or was it a little later? I certainly couldn’t swear to it. I was absorbed in my work, and I try anyway not to pry.’

‘But he must have returned. Did you hear nothing?’

‘The houses are – were quite solidly built. I only heard their row because they were having it at the front door. I put on some music after that, I remember, quite loud music – I’m a Wagner buff. Good gracious, I believe I was listening to Götterdämmerung! Quite sinisterly appropriate! But—’ Jan stopped, struck by an unpleasant thought. ‘If I hadn’t assumed he was out . . .’

‘Wouldn’t have made any difference.’ Kershaw was beginning to believe her own assertion. ‘Were they in the habit of quarrelling?’

‘I couldn’t say. When I saw her, she looked . . . glum, I suppose is the word. If they were on holiday, she didn’t look as if she was enjoying it much.’

‘Who did the house belong to?’

‘I don’t know that either – oh dear, I’m not much use, am I? It was empty when I bought number three, but a while ago there was a woman living there when I came for a break. I spoke to her a couple of times, but she was clearly very ill and I heard she had died. I guess the house was sold – it was empty any other time I was here.’

Kershaw closed her notebook. ‘Right. I think that’s all I wanted to ask at the moment. If there’s anything you think of, here’s the number to call.’ She gave Jan a card. ‘Thanks – I appreciate your help. How long will you be in here?’

‘Oh, they’re turfing me out today. I’m going to friends who run a little hotel just on the coast beyond Gatehouse-of-Fleet. They’re prepared to take on the halt and the lame, so I’ll be well looked after till I can pick up speed on my crutches.’

As Kershaw left, Jan called after her, ‘I keep thinking about the girl. I do trust she’s all right – but if that’s where she was living, has she somewhere to go? I’m sure they’d have her at Rowantrees, and of course, if money’s a problem, I can take care of that. Let me know if I can help.’

A good Samaritan, Kershaw thought, returning to her car. Sometimes, in this job, you needed reminding that the world wasn’t entirely populated by ratbags.

 

When Alick Buchan came downstairs again, he was quite obviously drunk. His wife was sitting at the kitchen table, which was set for lunch, with three places.

He looked around. ‘Where is she?’

Maidie, her face troubled, said, ‘She’s gone out again. I told her the dinner was ready, but she wouldn’t wait. I made her a sandwich.’ She got up and went over to the stove. ‘Sit down and I’ll call your mother.’

‘Has the girl left for good?’

‘No, I don’t think so, Alick. I told you, she’s got nowhere to go.’

‘Aye, has she! She’ll go to the big house, and that’s flat. He’s plenty rooms and plenty food – about time he did his share. Puts everything on me – bastard! Bodies, even – he’d no right! I’m not taking it from him, I tell you that.’ Alick lurched to the door. ‘I’m away there now. Tell her . . . tell her it’s where she’s to go if she comes back.’

‘Alick, you’re not driving—’ Maidie put her hand on his arm to restrain him, but he pushed her away so violently that she knocked against the wall.

‘Mind the house, woman!’

Rubbing her bruised shoulder, Maidie looked helplessly after him as he walked unsteadily towards the jeep, climbed in and drove away.

There was a sudden yell from Calum in the other room and a moment later the kitchen door opened and Ina Buchan appeared with the purple-faced, screaming child in her arms. She thrust him at his mother.

‘Whatever’s the matter? What happened?’ Maidie asked in alarm.

There were spots of colour in Ina’s cheeks. ‘He got a good skelp from me, that’s what’s the matter. He’s a naughty boy and you can look after him yourself in future. Now, where’s my dinner?’

 

Beth was walking, walking. She had taken the tarmac track this time, tired of struggling with uneven footing, but she had kept her hood up even though the rain had gone off and there were actually one or two breaks in the clouds. She was alone in the wild, silent landscape, but even so she kept looking about her with what was almost a nervous twitch. She was angry with herself for feeling nervous – and deeply, permanently angry with the man who had made fear her familiar companion.

She was so happy, happier than she’d ever been in her life, really, those first days after Lee moved in with her. Love, companionship, laughter – there hadn’t been a lot of that in her life. He made her brave, unafraid to return to normality as they played house in the little flat. She even lost her feeling of being followed.

She knew about Crozier’s threat, of course. Pay in blood, he had said. The newspapers had made much of it and she had been really scared, but when she talked about it with Lee and he told her it didn’t mean anything except that the man was hurting, she began to believe him and put it out of her mind.

So when she switched on her mobile one morning and found the text message, it shattered her cosy idyll. She screamed; Lee, pouring boiling water into mugs for coffee, splashed himself and swore.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’ he demanded.

Tears sprang to her eyes at his tone. ‘See for yourself!’ she said, holding out her phone in a hand that trembled.

‘You think I’ve forgotten? Never. You’re alive, she’s dead.’ The message was stark.

Lee took it, frowning. ‘Oh great! What a sod! They must have kept your number. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just bluster. Look – it’s gone. We’ll get you another phone. He doesn’t know where you are.’

But he did know. The note on the mat a few days later told her that. ‘Murderess,’ it said. ‘I’m watching you all the time, until I’m ready.’

She began sleeping badly again and having flashbacks when she did sleep – the tiny body, white and cold as stone . . .

‘We have to move, now,’ Lee said. ‘The sale’s gone through – we’d be moving in a couple of weeks anyway. You’ve got that house your granny left you.’

She had been happy here, briefly, and there was no way she was going to her granny’s cottage – full of memories, right on Gillis Crozier’s doorstep, if he was at Rosscarron House. But she agreed to move. What else could she do? There was no point in going to the police with the note; they’d made it clear enough where their sympathies lay.

So they moved away – and moved again, and again. But always, before long, he found her once more. She changed mobiles too, but always there would be a text message, a note – once, even, a little package on the doorstep containing a grotesque, grinning plastic skull.

‘He’s employing the best in the business, isn’t he,’ Lee said grimly.

Her nerves were shot to pieces. She tried not to irritate him, but he was getting impatient.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he said one night when, yet again, a note had found them. ‘You said he went a lot to a house near your granny’s? Let’s go there and confront him.’

Kenna had died not long after the trial. Thinking of her grandmother still hurt, and she felt guilty as well: she had been too afraid to travel to Scotland to say a proper goodbye. She tried one last protest.

‘I don’t want to go there. It’ll make me sad, and I’d be scared to be so near him. He could easily get me up there, make it look like an accident.’

‘So we carry on like this, with you going steadily mental? I don’t think so,’ he snarled.

Lee had been getting less and less understanding, and then she would lose her temper. They weren’t happy now, like they had been, and sometimes she wondered why he stayed.

Worse, sometimes she thought she knew why. He’d given up whatever it was he did, and if it hadn’t been for the money from the sale of the flat and her mum’s insurance, they’d have real problems. It was disappearing at a frightening rate and when it was all gone, he’d probably be gone too. By then, anyway, she might be dead. Sometimes she thought she would just die of a heart attack, when one of the messages arrived.

Now, he was controlling his irritation with difficulty. ‘We have to get real. He most likely doesn’t want to kill you anyway or he’d have done it by now. It’s like what he wants is to do in your head. So let’s eyeball him. Your granny’s house – Crozier would never think to look there. Once he’s arrived, we’ll go together, surprise him, just walk in and tell him it has to stop. Then we’ve got the rest of our lives together for happy ever after. All right?’

It wasn’t all right. It made her feel sick just to think about it. But she’d been broken down by the endless, relentless pursuit, and when Lee said unpleasantly, ‘If you’ve got a better idea, like moving house every five minutes and screaming in your sleep and twitching all the time, count me out,’ the combination of carrot and stick – eternal bliss or the hell of loneliness – was enough to make her agree.

All this walking and the troubled thoughts that came to her in the silence were exhausting when she was so shattered anyway, but it was preferable to being in that little house, the atmosphere rank with undercurrents of unhappiness. She didn’t know which was hardest to deal with, the old bat’s hostility, Alick’s resentment or Maidie’s bewildered kindness.

And she was scared, very scared. She had nowhere to go, but the longer she stayed here, the more dangerous it would be and the greater, too, would be the chance of exposure. Since it all happened, she hadn’t spent time in the company of other people, except Lee. She didn’t want to go back to thinking about Lee – Lee, dead. It was easier to think about the practicalities.

She had to get out of here. Alick was her best bet. He was as keen to get rid of her as she was to go – she could tell from the way he looked at her. She could ask him to drive her into Kirkcudbright; there was a bank there and she could find out if she’d any money left. At least she had a credit card in the purse in her pocket.

Anyway, she was the victim of a disaster. She could go to the social services, and they’d have to find her somewhere to stay, wouldn’t they? But that would mean the police. No, not the police.

But if she stayed here . . . She was between a rock and a hard place. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, as her granny would have said.

If Granny Kenna wasn’t dead . . . Beth’s eyes brimmed. Granny would have helped her, seen her through this crisis, as she’d seen her through the last. Now there was no one. No one at all.

She had been walking for a long time – aimlessly at first, then with purpose, almost as if she felt inexorably drawn. And there, as she rounded a corner, she could see a house – his house. It was crazy to go closer, and yet . . . The predator could never imagine being stalked by its prey.

There was no one about. With her hood pulled forward and her head down, she went off the track and climbed up to where, from the shelter of some scrubby bushes, she looked down at his house, hatred in her eyes.