Killing the Shadows

FIFTY-SIX

Caroline looked at the police constable behind the counter in the Lairg police station and despaired. He looked about twelve. A gawky, awkward twelve at that. He had dark-blond hair that had been cut by someone with no feeling for the job. His face was a pale moonscape of lumps a bumpy forehead, prominent cheekbones, a thin nose with an angular bridge and a curiously round tip, jawbones like chestnuts, a sharp jut of chin and an Adam’s apple the size of a ripe fig. He’d actually blushed when she walked in and said she needed his help.

“This is going to sound kind of strange,” she said. “But it’s a matter of life and death.” Oh fuck, I already sound like a nutter.

He picked up a pen and said, “Name, please.”

“Dr. Caroline Matthews.” Sometimes, having a title helped. Sometimes, even the wrong assumption that went with it helped. “Look, I don’t want to be difficult about this, but can we leave the form-filling for now? My friend’s life may be in danger, and I think you need to deal with that as a matter of urgency.”

His mouth set in a stubborn line, but five seconds of Caroline’s cold blue glare reduced him to submission. “Aye. Right. What seems to be the problem, Doctor?”

There was, she realized, no point in attempting the whole story. “A friend of mine has a cottage locally. Kit Martin? The thriller writer?”

The young policeman’s face lit up in a smile. “Oh, aye, out at Allt a’ Claon.”

“The thing is, he’s been receiving threatening letters and his partner was worried about him because she couldn’t make contact. She’s afraid he’s got a stalker and that something must have happened to him. Anyway, she went out there about an hour and a quarter ago. She said if she wasn’t back in an hour, I was to go to the police.” She gave him her warmest smile. “So here I am. And I really think you should head out there and see what’s what.”

He looked doubtful. “I’m going to need to go and talk to somebody about this,” he said, in the tone of voice that indicated he was suggesting something monumentally difficult.

What’s keeping you, then? Caroline wanted to scream. “Make it quick. Please?”

He scratched his forehead with the end of his pen. “I’ll go and talk to somebody, then.” He unfolded his long, thin body and crossed to a door in the far wall. “You just wait there, I’ll be back.”

Caroline closed her eyes. She could have wept. With every passing moment, her dread grew. Please God, keep her safe, she prayed to a deity she had never believed in. He hadn’t kept Lesley safe; deep in her heart, she knew he’d be no use to Fiona either.

But there was nothing else she could do.

The news from the team searching Gerard Coyne’s flat was distinctly encouraging. Steve began to feel slightly less anxious as he listened to the preliminary report from the officer in charge.

Underneath the bathroom carpet, they’d found an area of floorboarding that had been cut and glued to allow a section to be lifted clear of the rest. Inside the cavity, they had found a plastic zip lock bag stuffed full of newspaper cuttings. The stories covered every one of the rapes Terry had identified as being part of the cluster, as well as a couple of general pieces in North London free sheets about the prevalence of sexual attacks in the area. Even more significantly, there was a thick wedge of clippings relating to Susan Blanchard’s murder. There were no other crime reports in the bag.

Also in the cavity was a Sabatier kitchen knife with a sharply honed blade. It was already on its way to the Home Office labs where it would be exhaustively tested for the slightest trace of Susan Blanchard’s blood. “I can’t believe he held on to the knife,” Steve had said, still capable of being astonished by the stupidity or arrogance of offenders.

“We don’t know yet that it is the knife,” his colleague cautioned. “It might be the one he used on the rapes. It’s not necessarily the same one he used on Susan Blanchard.”

Among Coyne’s clothes, they had found several lycra cycling garments, all of which had been bagged up and sent for analysis.

They also found several trophies and certificates for cycling races that Coyne had won. There was no question that he could have been the cyclist hammering down the paths of Hampstead Heath that morning.

He had both the skill and the stamina to have carried it off without even breaking sweat.

Steve walked into the observation room and settled down to watch the two officers he’d chosen to interrogate Gerard Patrick Coyne begin their work. The questioning had just begun when the call came through from Sarah Duvall.

Looking at the map, Blake could see only one possibility. No way they’d head down to the loch side road. They knew he had wheels at his disposal and they’d have no chance of avoiding him. The only other option was to hike out across the shoulder of the hill. That way they’d hit the road into Lairg near some cottages where, presumably, somebody would have a phone.

He couldn’t believe that Martin had the stamina or the strength to make it that far. She’d probably leave him at the bothy and set off to find help. That would suit him perfectly, he thought with satisfaction. If he drove round to the end of her escape route, he could climb higher up the hill and find a vantage point where he could take her out with the shotgun. There were plenty of places to hide a body in a landscape as wild as this.

Then he could make his way back across the hill to the bothy and finish what he’d started. It would be a bonus, allowing him to get back to The Blood Painter. Much more satisfying than if they’d perished in the ravine.

It looked like the gods had decided to reward him for his patience. He deserved it, but it wasn’t often in this life that people got what they deserved. He’d been changing that lately, and it was nice to see the universe joining in on his side.

Blake turned the key in the ignition and smiled with satisfaction as he set off back down the hill towards the dark waters of Loch Shin.

Few of the officers who worked with Steve Preston had ever seen his temper. But there was no doubting the towering anger that had him in its grip as the hapless officers who had been responsible for the surveillance on Francis Blake stood before him. Joanne and John, pulled off the interrogation of Coyne before it had even begun, and Neil, summoned back from the suspect’s flat before the search was complete, were in no doubt that they had not so much fallen down on the job as collapsed in a disintegrating heap.

“It’s beyond belief,” Steve raged, his face pale apart from two spots of high colour on his cheekbones. “You’re supposed to have had this man under tight surveillance, yet according to the City Police, he’s been in and out of his flat at will, without any of you knowing. You have no idea what he’s really been up to, have you?”

“Nobody told us about the bike,” John said stubbornly.

“All this time, Blake’s had a ten-speed racing bike in the back yard, a key to the back door, access to the van way that runs along the back of the row of houses. In all the time you were supposed to be watching him, did none of you think to take a look at the back of the premises?”

Neil stared at the floor. Joanne shrugged helplessly. “We didn’t realize you could access the back door from Blake’s flat, sir,” she tried.

“You’re supposed to be detectives,” he spat, his voice heavy with contempt. “A uniformed probationer would have had more nous than the three of you put together. As it is, City think we’re a complete bunch of tossers.” He slammed the flat of his hand on the desk. “Does anyone have any idea where Francis Blake is right now?”

No one responded. Steve closed his eyes and clenched his fists. He needed this like a hole in the head. Kit appeared to be on the missing list, Fiona was God knew where in the Scottish Highlands doing God knew what, and he couldn’t do anything about it because the Susan Blanchard case was suddenly alive and kicking again. It was his worst nightmare. He opened his eyes and growled, “When was the last time any of you logged him in or out of his flat?”

“He went to the paper shop on Friday morning,” Neil said. “It was a miserable day, so when he didn’t come out again, I wasn’t too surprised. The light was on in the flat all day.”

“It could have been on a timer switch, couldn’t it?” Steve snapped. “So the bottom line is, we have no idea where Blake has been since yesterday morning? And we have no idea when he’ll be back?”

Again, none of them replied.

“Has anyone any idea where he’s gone?”

They exchanged looks. No one spoke.

“Brilliant.” Steve took a deep breath, trying to get a grip on his anger. He took a cigar from his desk drawer, unwrapped it and lit it. The nicotine hit seemed to go straight to his very soul, calming him with its familiarity. “Neil, I want you round at Blake’s flat. Talk to the neighbours, see if you can get anything out of them that City have missed. And you two go and have a coffee, get your heads on straight and get back here in twenty minutes. We’ve got a suspect to interrogate, even if City don’t.”

As they filed out, his shoulders slumped. This was rapidly turning into the worst day of his life. And it could get a lot worse before it got better.

Fiona rounded the outcropping of rock where she’d left Kit fifteen minutes earlier. He was sitting on a flat stone, leaning against the boulder, sipping a can of Coke. His face was still ghostly pale, but he appeared more alert than when she’d helped him the few yards from the Land Rover to his resting place.

“How did it go?” he asked.

Fiona rubbed her shoulder where she’d landed awkwardly. “Let’s just say it looks a lot easier in the movies,” she said.

“But it worked?”

She nodded. “I left the driver’s door open, I put it in first gear, wedged the rock halfway on the gas pedal and jumped. And as you predicted, the door shut behind me and the Land Rover carried on in a straight line. On to the bridge and down into the gorge. I don’t think he can have seen a thing.”

Kit managed a wan smile. “You did well, Fiona.”

“It was fucking scary, let me tell you.”

“Are you hurt?”

She pulled a face. “Shoulder. I caught it on a rock as I rolled. Nothing serious, I don’t think, but I’ll have a hell of a bruise. Now, we need to start making tracks.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Kit said. “I’m still so dizzy.”

“I don’t know if you can either,” Fiona said. “But I’m not leaving you here. If Blake has rumbled our little ploy, he’s going to come after us. And I’m not leaving you alone and vulnerable. Let’s get as far along the hill as we can. And if you can’t go on, we’ll find somewhere safe where you can lie up and wait till I fetch help. But this is far too near the bothy. We’ve got to put some distance between us and Blake.”

She folded out the Ordnance Survey map and together they studied it. After she had spotted the problem with the bridge, Fiona had driven the Land Rover back to the bothy, then as far as she could across the rough ground behind it, where she’d unloaded Kit. According to him, it was possible to walk from here to the main road near where she’d left Caroline. It was a distance of between five and six miles, she reckoned.

On her own, it would take her a little over two hours. With Kit in his present state, it could be more like four or five. But they had to make the effort. At least he didn’t seem significantly concussed, which would have put the whole idea out of the question.

She got him to explain the route to her, then went over it again for her own benefit. For the largest part of the trek, they would be more or less level, staying on the contour line above the forestry plantations. According to Kit, there was a rough path little more than a sheep track most of the way.

“OK, let’s do it,” Fiona said, stripping off the wax jacket and helping Kit into it. It would help conserve his body heat, and she suspected she’d soon have no need of the extra warmth. She tucked herself under Kit’s right shoulder and heaved him to his feet. With the stick in his left hand, he slowly started to drag himself along the track. Fiona walked on the heather by the side of the narrow path, her eyes on her feet to avoid loose rocks and treacherous roots. At least the weather was on their side, she thought. In Kit’s condition, a cold wind and even a shower of rain could be fatal. But the sky was more or less clear, the sun shining still, and hardly a breath of wind disturbed the cool air.

The rasp of Kit’s laboured breathing was all she could hear, the weight of his body against her all she could feel, and the low thrum of his anxious fear all she could sense. They wasted no energy on speech, concentrating simply on putting one foot in front of the other.

After half an hour, she called a halt at the first suitable point, a long low escarpment of striated schist a dozen shades of grey against the heather’s brown. She lowered Kit into a sitting position, then sat down beside him. “Five minutes,” she said. “There’s some high-energy bars in your jacket. Can you manage to eat one?”

Kit nodded, too tired for speech. He fumbled a bar out of his pocket, but his numbed fingers still couldn’t manage the unwrapping, so Fiona took it from him and opened it. “You’ll be OK,” she reassured him. “It’s just that nothing’s working properly yet. It’s the shock to the system.”

He ate slowly, munching every mouthful carefully before he swallowed. He offered the bar to Fiona but she shook her head. When he’d finished, she got to her feet. Time to make a move. By her reckoning, they’d covered about a mile, and it wasn’t enough.

Again they plodded on, Fiona taking as much of his weight as she could bear. The ability of the human body to respond to crisis was amazing, she reminded herself. What a fabulous drug adrenaline was. She knew she’d crash and burn when all of this was over, but she also knew that until then, her capacity for endurance would be more than she could have imagined possible.

Another half-hour, another break. She could see he was tiring fast, and knew that there was no way he could manage another four miles of such rough going. If she could get him another mile or so along the way, Fiona decided she would seek out a hiding place where she could leave him. Under her own steam, she could cover the remaining three miles in half an hour to forty minutes if she pushed herself. Help couldn’t be far away then, so near to Lairg. With luck, Caroline would have persuaded Sandy Galloway to mobilize some sort of local response. They could do the rest for her.

She got Kit to his feet and urged him on. The landscape was changing now, the heather hillside giving way to rock. The path had more or less disappeared and they had to pick their way more carefully. The route was still clear, but it was rougher going, with patches of loose scree that threatened to send them flying. After about twenty minutes, Kit said, “I need to stop. I just can’t…”

“No problem.” Fiona looked around for a suitable perch. A few yards ahead there was a pair of flat boulders that would do for a seat. She steered Kit towards them and helped him to settle. His breath was coming fast and shallow and a sheen of sweat glistened on his face. It wasn’t looking good. Fiona took deep breaths and tried to stay calm. They must be close to the halfway point, she thought. Time to start thinking about finding Kit a bolt hole She leaned back against the rock and stared at the hillside ahead of them.

Suddenly, something caught her eye. About half a mile away, maybe seventy feet above them on the hill, what looked like a pipe kept bobbing into sight above the ma chair It dawned on her with appalling clarity that it was the barrel of a gun. Blake was no countryman; he clearly didn’t realize that although he was keeping low, the gun barrel was as obvious as a mastiff in a crowd of dachshunds. “Kit,” she said. “I don’t want to worry you. But I think there’s somebody up there ahead of us. On the hill. Is it likely to be somebody local? Or a hill walker…”

“Where?” he said lethargically.

“I don’t want to point in case it’s Blake. But it’s round about where a reasonably fit man would be if he’d driven back to the main road and started hiking in from this end. Over to the left, maybe seventy feet above us. There’s a shoulder of the ridge behind him. He’s maybe forty or fifty yards to the right of it.”

“I can’t see anything,” he said. His voice was slurring again, Fiona noticed with anxiety.

“I saw what looked like a gun barrel bobbing up and down. Could it be a local?”

“I don’t think so. There’s no reason for them to be up here. There’s nothing to shoot.”

“Fuck,” Fiona breathed, getting a better view. “He’s coming after us. Let’s move on a bit and see what he does.”

Wearily, they dragged themselves to their feet and laboured on to the next place where it was possible to sit down, a stagger of about five minutes.

“Has he moved?” Kit asked.

Fiona angled her head so it looked as if she was staring straight up the mountain. But out of the corner of her eye, she was scanning the area where she had seen the barrel. “I’ve got him,” she breathed. “I can actually see the blur of his face. I don’t think he’s moved.”

“Good,” Kit said. “About five minutes ahead, there’s a sort of crevasse. It’s about four feet wide, but from up there, it just looks like a dark line in the rock. It’s about half a mile before it opens out again. He won’t be able to see us in there. Leave me and go on, you’ll have a head start. It’s not that far to the road, you can get away.”

“And what about you?”

Kit sighed. “There’s no way I’m going to make it out of here. I’m practically on my knees now. I can’t go much further. He doesn’t have to get both of us. Please, Fiona. Leave me.”

She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you, Kit. I can’t. Not after Lesley. Dying would be easier, believe me. But I don’t have any plans to die either. Give me the map.”

Kit pulled the map out of his pocket and she spread it across her knees. “Right. We must be about here?” She pointed.

“No, not quite that far along.” He corrected her, jabbing the map clumsily with his finger.

“There’s a stream runs down across this track,” she said. “How far is that from the end of the defile?”

“A few yards. Maybe a dozen?”

“How deep are the banks?”

“I suppose a couple of feet deep…” His voice began to trail away as his energy ebbed.

Fiona nodded. “So if I can get up the stream bed without him seeing me, I should be able to come up above and behind him. I can jump him. Hit him with a rock or something. Deal with him, anyway.”

“You can’t do that. He’s a big strong bloke,” Kit protested. “And he’s got a gun.”

“Yeah. But I’d put money on my will to live being a damn sight stronger than his. And that, my love, is a professional opinion.”

“You’re crazy. He’ll kill you.”

Fiona put her hand in the pocket of her fleece and took out the craft knife. “I’m not exactly unarmed. And I’m willing to use it. It’s our only chance, Kit. I’m not going to sit here and wait to be killed.”

Kit put his hand over hers. “Be careful.” He frowned at the inadequacy of his words. “I love you, Fiona.”

She leaned into him and kissed his cheek. The cold clamminess of his skin reminded her there wasn’t time to delay. She checked that Blake was still in position. Then she stood up. “Let’s do it.”