McBride lay wide awake in the darkness and tried again to empty his mind. He did not succeed. Instead, he reached out and pressed the button to illuminate the clock beside his bed. It dimly pronounced 1.40 a.m. – seventeen minutes since his previous time-check.
He stared at the ceiling and thought about Ginny Williams and why she had died. He thought also of what had been written about her death. But most of all he thought about what someone had wanted him to learn by apparently keeping it from him. He had deliberated on almost nothing but the excised sentences since leaving the library.
McBride pulled himself from the bed, crossed the room and thrust a Coldplay disc into the CD player. He turned the rod of the window blind until the slats were open enough for the light from the moon to reveal the incoming tide rushing up the beach towards him and again he appreciated the gentleness of the whispers the river brought with it as it washed over the sand. At any other time, he would have lingered at his good fortune to be living where he was but all that crowded his mind was a picture of a New Zealand lawyer lying perfectly attired but even more perfectly dead in her apartment in St Andrews, ten miles away as the seagull flies.
At least he was now fairly certain he did not need to concern himself with the deaths of Nicola Cassidy and Roberta Kerr, disturbing though they were. Deeper reflection suggested greater differences between their murders and those of Alison Brown and Ginny Williams than he had first imagined. Apart from the longer timescale since Nicola and Roberta had died, both had literally perished ‘at the hands’ of their killer, signifying more impulsive, unpremeditated acts than the ones where ligatures had been used. In the case of the call-centre worker, a petty theft had also occurred. A discrepancy with the other victim was the timing – she had arrived home drunk in the early hours after a night on the town with her friends. They really didn’t fit very well at all, he told himself. Besides, no ‘message’ had been sent about either of them.
The music stopped and McBride hit the replay button on the remote. Briefly, incongruously, he wondered how anyone with the talent of Coldplay’s frontman could also be so inconsiderate as to name his children Apple and Moses. It made almost as little sense as the message someone was so painstakingly trying to deliver.
Whatever way he viewed it, he ran into the same brick wall. How could the person who had taken such trouble to so deftly wield the razor be certain anyone would come across the results of their efforts? Was there really any connection between the murders of Ginny Williams and Alison Brown or was a warped mind simply setting up a tormenting game for him to play? And were there any other participants?
He wanted a drink but even he couldn’t contemplate the cold sharpness of a beer after getting out of bed at that hour. He poured an inch of Metaxa brandy into a straight glass and filled it to the top with Coca-Cola. For the next ten minutes, he sipped easily at it and watched as the tide carried two empty detergent bottles back and forth on to the beach.
Then he returned to bed to gaze at the ceiling again – only now he was thinking of Caroline and his beloved bike. Christ, he’d always lectured her about her grasshopper mind and her inability to switch off. At least the new images were preferable to the two dead women who had come uninvited into his life.
The woman who used to share his bed was still in his head when sleep overtook him. It was 3.20 a.m.