31 December 1999
Emily Corbett flicked the headlights of the Punto on to full beam, highlighting the puffballs of soft drifting grey fog. To either side lay the braes, and high flat bleak moorland, but all she could see was dapples of mist and darkness.
She slowed down. Fifty was too fast for this road, in this weather, at this time of night. She looked at the dashboard clock: 23.20. She would make it home in time to hear the midnight bells herald in the new millennium. She yawned, fighting tiredness, and turned up Robbie Williams on the CD player. She wasn’t sorry she’d walked out of the Hogmanay party, only seething with anger that she’d had to after seeing her boyfriend – her ex-boyfriend, she corrected herself – disappearing into an upstairs bedroom with a bucketful of punch and some peroxided art student with unhygienic piercings. Well, screw him.
So now she was driving back home on this dark moorland road to a houseful of drunken first-footers and a bowl of hot lentil soup, wary of bad bends, potholes and the surface water that pooled dangerously in unseen dips.
Emily concentrated on the tarmac ribbon that seemed to waver in the drifting mist. She heard her dad’s words. It’s too easy to build up speed on a straight road like that, not notice until it’s too late and the car’s aquaplaned into a drystane dyke, and I’ll be getting a call to fetch you from Casualty on the busiest night of the year, and me in my good suit. She’d smiled at him but she hadn’t really been listening. She was eighteen now. She could look after herself.
The road in front of her side-shifted as the Punto was nudged by a gust of wind, and the full beam caught the ghostly shadows of some trees before settling back to the solidity of the tarmac and the drystane dyke. Emily looked at the speedo, watching it drop … thirty-five … thirty … She indicated left, breaking for the dog-leg junction that would lead her to the braes road and home to Glasgow. Ahead of her she saw lights, dull yellow squares in the gloom. The letters on the Paraffin Lamp pub sign had been rearranged and graffitoed to read ‘The Puffing Lump’. Emily smiled, and steered carefully through the small flood at the bottom of the hill, feeling the car slow with the drag of the water. When clear, she squeezed her brakes dry and indicated right. She glanced in the rear-view mirror, her eyes drawn by the lights of another vehicle. Somebody had left the pub car park and pulled in behind her, somebody possibly as nervous as she was about crossing the braes on their own, wanting the guiding security of another driver’s tail lights.
The digital clock on the dashboard clicked to 23.25. The headlights of the following vehicle flashed in her mirror again and disappeared as Emily turned on to the straight road that ran across the top of the moor. It was the quickest way home to Glasgow, though maybe not the safest. She checked the mirror again; no lights. The other car must have gone straight on to Dalry.
As the road gained height, the fog grew denser, blinding. She shivered and turned up the heating. As the needle started to nudge fifty again, she thought she could hear something. A drone from somewhere. A problem with the car?
High up on the braes, close on midnight, was not the time or place to have a puncture. She turned off Robbie Williams and listened intently. The noise was still there.
Coming from somewhere behind her. From outside.
She calmed herself, took a deep breath and pushed her foot down. The needle edged towards sixty.
She jumped violently at the sound of a horn blaring right behind her, blinded as the car filled with light from headlights on full beam inches from her rear bumper. Then back to darkness.
Back to silence.
She closed her eyes briefly to readjust her vision. She could see nothing behind her. Nothing but the fog.
Everything was quiet now, but for the pernicious return of the drone, and the pounding of her heart. She put her foot down.
Sixty-five.
She took another deep breath and glanced at the milometer, trying to figure out how far she still had to go before she saw the lights of Glasgow. She dared to ease her foot off the accelerator a little, watching the needle fall. Then she felt a jarring thud, and the car juddered and ricocheted forward. Emily cried out as a searing pain ripped through her skull. Then lights blinded her again, and a horn sounded deafeningly. Trembling, she changed down.
Ahead the road was clear, the ghosts drifting away. She risked another glance in the mirror. Her eyes seeing the bull bars of the four-by-four closing in on her, the silhouettes of two heads, the teeth of the grille pulling up to her bumper. Tailgating …
And now she could hear clearly, over the panicked whine of her own engine, the deep constant growl of a predator.
Hunting.
Waiting.
Her mind raced. Whoever was in that car could be off their heads on something; they might run her off the road at any moment. She forced herself to stay calm, to concentrate. There was a scout lodge up here, she knew, just beyond the electricity substation, some sort of activity centre where they’d be having fireworks, a ceilidh, with people dancing, celebrating the new millennium …
All she had to do was turn sharp left through the gates, and get up the driveway. And she would be safe.
She imagined she could even see the lights from here.
She slowed again as the road curved, her forearms aching, bracing herself for another shunt from the car behind. Nothing. Curiously, it seemed to have gone.
She breathed out, a long slow breath, dropping her full beam at the flash of a single oncoming vehicle, and slowed to forty. A volley of water broadsided her as the car swept past.
Emily drove on, muttering, Come on, come on, peering into the fog for the electricity pylons. Now she could see, way over to her left, the lights of Lapwing Lodge. Sanctuary. Thirty-five … thirty … The dyke at the side of the road fell away, and she pulled sharply left, putting her foot down once she was off the road.
Crash.
Silence.
Emily realized her mistake as the strong, chained gates of the electricity substation appeared through the haze that climbed over the crumpled bonnet. She sat very still as the engine coughed and died. She closed her eyes, wishing away the scorching pain in her right shoulder where the seat belt had snapped her collarbone, the stabbing pains in her neck. She tried to unlock her fingers from the steering wheel but couldn’t. Through the crazed windscreen she saw the ghosts were back, unfurling from the engine, coiling into the night air.
She had crashed her new car. Her dad would kill her.
But, at least she was all right. She was safe … sore, but safe.
She sighed and tried to take a deep breath.
Then suddenly the car door was opened, and cold air swarmed round her feet. Strong fingers prised hers from the wheel, the seat belt was unfastened, and then something was covering her face. She tried to move, tried to say something, but couldn’t. She could taste blood. Hands were pulling her, gently, firmly, then roughly … too roughly … by the shoulders, then by the hair. She felt the roots rip from her scalp. She screamed but heard no sound, then she was on the ground, on her knees, her head forced down. A boot in her ribs pushed her over on to her back, she felt cold wet pebbles stabbing into her skin as fingers clawed at her belt, the night air icy on her exposed stomach. Then a knee on her chest, a hand over her mouth. Within the black eternity of the blindfold, she sensed rain pricking at her cheek, heard the scrabble of her heels on the stones. A voice: Stay still, bitch.
As the weight on top of her lifted slightly, she let herself go limp, trying to remember her self-defence classes: Go limp, don’t struggle, gain advantage. As the weight shifted to one side, she raised one shoulder and bucked with all her strength, trying to get out from underneath him, and the blindfold slid from her face. For an instant, her eyes looked into his. A snapshot fixed in her memory. Then the blindfold was back in place, pressing on her eyes so hard she thought her eyeballs would burst.
In the distance she could hear faint music, people cheering, the shrieks and bangs of fireworks. She felt her mouth being forced open, and cold metal pressed to her temple.
Click.