The following day, Hanlon was up at six-thirty. A forty-minute run with Wemyss bounding along effortlessly beside her, then forty-five minutes in the gym where the other two fitness fanatics in the hotel watched her uneasily from the corners of their eyes. She was a startling sight. A muscular woman with a battered face, her left eye practically shut, a huge livid bruise on her cheekbone and another one visible on her lower back below the crop top she was wearing. Bicep curls, hammer curls, single-handed preacher curls, bench press and some leg work. Hanlon attacked the weights with a practised, vicious, single-minded intensity. Every curl of her muscles was done with revenge foremost in her mind.
The gym had a single heavy boxing bag hanging from a chain and a selection of rather tired-looking gloves in a box. You could help yourself. The two men watched surreptitiously in abashed awe as Hanlon pulled on a pair of sixteen-ounce sparring gloves and did two three-minute rounds, slamming combinations, jab, straight right, left hook, into the hard leather. The bag creaked and swung on its hinges as she saw, not a black cylindrical piece of stuffed leather, but the masked face of her assailant. The sweat poured down her face and her eyes gleamed with bloodlust. I’m so going to hurt you.
I’m going to find you, Mr Aftershave, and kick your bollocks till they shoot out of your nose, she vowed.
Then breakfast, more smuggled sausages for Wemyss, who devoured them greedily. He seemed to be developing a taste for staying in hotels. It had gone half eight. She texted Morag, no reply. Still asleep, she guessed. Her phone pinged, a message from Hamish Cameron. He was staying at the George Hotel, his usual suite, could she call round before ten?
Yes, she could. The George Hotel was just up the road in the New Town from where Morag and Aurora lived.
Hanlon put the dog in her car and drove into town.
‘My usual suite…’ How much arrogance was crammed into those three words? It was so much more than a statement of spatial location. It signified wealth, power, privilege. What it said to her was, I don’t stay in a room, I stay in a suite. I often stay in a suite (my usual suite), I’m that kind of guy. They all know me there. I’m a valued customer.
God, what a prick.
It was Friday morning and the traffic was practically gridlocked.
She drove through the suburbs whose names meant nothing to her and she was now in the prosperous New Town with its wide cobbled streets and high grey tenements. The shops were those of the wealthy Scottish bourgeoisie: cheese shops, delis and expensive children’s boutiques. There were hipster places, a Swedish bakery, bicycle shops and plenty of restaurants. Then suddenly she came to an abrupt halt.
There were three police cars and an ambulance outside the tenement building where Morag lived. She stared at it in shock, thinking, It can’t be, I must have got the wrong street, but she knew she hadn’t. There was the landmark church with the big dome at the bottom of the road; there was the café where Morag claimed to have seen her stalker. There was… The car behind Hanlon angrily honked its horn and she swore irritably, resisting the urge to give the guy behind her the finger, put the car in gear and drove past the police activity. She was thoroughly alarmed now, she prayed to a God she had no faith in that Morag was all right.
Maybe it’s nothing to do with Morag, she thought, but she didn’t believe it. She turned left into the next road and parked. She walked back towards Howe Street down a broad interconnecting street, the grey cobbles of the road slick with rain. A small knot of people was on the pavement outside. Local residents wondering what was going on.
‘Excuse me,’ Hanlon said to a grey-haired woman in a dressing gown and Crocs. ‘Do you know what’s happening? A friend of mine lives in there.’
The elderly woman said, ‘Aye, dear, a young girl’s dead.’
Hanlon’s heart sank. It was what she had been dreading but was hoping was not going to happen.
‘Do you happen to know her name?’
‘McMillan, dear, Morag McMillan.’