Hi. How you doing? Like it was an everyday thing for a known drug dealer to call out of the blue. Two mates, having a natter, arranging to go out for a drink.
Nolan’s voice was urgent. ‘Where’s Rebecca?’
Shit, Chaz thought, he’s going to use me somehow to get to her. ‘No idea, Mr Burke.’
‘Nolan.’ The response seemed automatic now. ‘I need to find her.’
‘Have you tried calling her?’
‘I don’t have her number.’
Well, you’re not getting it from me, mate. He didn’t say that, though. ‘What’s up? Maybe I can give her a message when I see her?’
A pause then. Nolan was thinking. ‘Chaz,’ he said. ‘Is it okay to call you that?’
‘Of course.’ What the hell else was he supposed to say?
‘Listen, I need to find her. Believe me when I say it’s urgent.’
Chaz’s phone beeped another call. Alan. ‘Okay, let me try to reach her and I’ll call you back.’ As he rang off, he realised he couldn’t call the man back as his number was withheld. He picked up Alan’s call. ‘You’ll never guess who I just—’
‘Chaz, have you heard from Rebecca?’ Alan’s voice sounded as urgent as Nolan Burke’s. Something was wrong.
‘No, I’ve just had—’
‘I’ve been trying to call her but she’s not picking up. She’s not at the office, she left early. We need to find her.’
Chaz’s phone beeped again. He hoped it was Rebecca, but it was ‘Number Withheld’ again. Nolan Burke. He ignored it for now. ‘What’s going on, Alan? I’ve got Nolan Burke looking for her too.’
‘Nolan Burke? Why would . . . ? Never mind that now. Get round to her flat, see if she’s there.’
‘Alan, will you stop a minute and tell me what the hell is going on?’
‘I haven’t got time to explain, Chaz. Just get round to her flat now. Call me back.’
Alan hung up, leaving Chaz with the phone still to his ear.
Chaz glanced out the window and saw their car parked outside. Alan car-pooled with a workmate and it was her turn to drive, which meant Chaz had wheels. He looked at the keys in a bowl beside the front door, took a deep breath, felt a phantom pain gnaw at his leg as he realised he would have to get behind the wheel.
As he stepped outside, the first splashes of rain began to fall.
57
Anna did not speak for a minute or two, but it seemed longer. Rebecca’s phone rang again but she let the call go because whoever it was would wait. Probably the office, wanting to know where she was. She could not be distracted. She must not be distracted.
‘I had built this new life,’ Anna said, her voice low, her head slumped. ‘I thought I was a different person. New name, new life, new me.’
Rebecca wasn’t sure what she was talking about but she feared if she asked for clarification the woman would stop. She had to let her talk.
‘But the past is always with us, isn’t it? Wherever we go, it follows, and there is no escaping it. I’m Anna Fowler, an adult, an academic, and yet I will always be that child, that poor, tormented child. I left that room so many years ago, but in many ways I’m still in it. Still in that bed, staring at the door, listening to the footsteps on the stairs. But this time when the door opened, it wasn’t him, it was the boy I saw. And the boy had become him. It was his face I saw, and everything I had carefully created just fell apart. He was using a different name, but then so was I. But he was still Brian and I was still Yvonne. I would always be Yvonne. I would always be the child.’
Rebecca felt the first raindrops brush her cheek like tears.
*
Scott had parked beside the reporter’s car on the patch of ground facing the canal and then watched her move along the towpath towards the bridges. A man with a mutt had walked by, peered through the windscreen at him. Scott wanted to give the bastard the stare, but he purposely kept his face angled away. No need to draw attention. He was just a guy out for a wee twilight drive. Nothing to see here. The dog walker kept moving.
The lassie had crossed the bridge and headed towards a bench where a woman was already sitting. He’d hoped they would have the place to themselves. He wasn’t completely sure what he was going to say to her, but he knew for certain he didn’t want anybody eyeballing them. The lassie had sat down on the bench and Scott drummed the fingers of his right hand on the steering wheel again while he thought what to do next.
Unconsciously, his left rested on the passenger seat, cupping the gun.
‘Some people die when they take a life, but not the child. For the child, the taking of a life was the beginning of life.’
Rebecca still had not said a word, recognising Anna’s need to talk, to vocalise thoughts she had been harbouring for so long. Somewhere along the line she had begun to talk about herself in the third person. She had become the child and yet not. Even her voice had changed, the timbre slightly higher. Rebecca felt her body shiver and not because of the chill or the weak rain that draped itself over them. Fear was at the root of the trembling, but not because she felt at risk. This fear had reached out from Anna like a cold hand and was stroking her flesh with fingers of ice. She was not fearful of the woman but fearful for her. And the child she had become.
‘He was the child’s father but he was a monster. The child loved him and hated him and feared him. And when the child killed him, it felt that love and hate and fear go. And after that, it was numb. Nothing left within. Nothing.’
She mumbled something incoherent which Rebecca strained to catch but it was washed away by the rain. Then the voice grew stronger again, not much, but enough. ‘It became an adult. A new name. A new life. A new person. A life carefully constructed. But still, nothing within. All dead. All dead. All dead.’
Chaz’s phone rang again just as he reached Rebecca’s flat. Nolan Burke. ‘Any news?’
The drive, short though it was, had been difficult. The pain in his side had niggled and tormented him. He knew it was imaginary, but it felt real. The rain had sprayed across the windshield, making the pain worse. It had been raining that night on the island. The pain, the stress, the imaginings had taken a toll on his patience, so his reply to Nolan Burke’s query was curt.
‘Look, what the hell is going on here? I’ve got you in one ear and Alan in the other, all wondering where Rebecca is. And I’m dashing around like a blue-arsed fly with no real clue why. So what’s wrong? Is Rebecca in trouble?’
He knew he shouldn’t have talked to Nolan in such a way, but he’d had enough. There was silence on the line; Chaz feared he’d stepped over a line and that Nolan had hung up. But then he heard heavy breathing. ‘She could be, Chaz. That’s why I need to find her.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
Another silence. ‘If I’m right, the worst,’ he said. ‘Please don’t press me, just believe me. We need to find her. I need to find her. And you need to help me. She’s not at her office.’
‘I know. She’s not at home either. And she’s not answering her phone.’
‘So where could she be?’
Chaz couldn’t answer. He stared at Rebecca’s windows as if he was hoping she would appear. Nolan sounded worried. Alan had been worried. Chaz was battling his fear of driving with his concern for his friend. He tried to think where she could have gone.
‘Text me your number,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a couple of calls I can make . . .’
‘He didn’t recognise the child in the adult, even if he noticed it at all. It had changed, grown into a woman. Even when it bought that poison from him on the set, he didn’t recognise it. But it was still yet the child. That poor, frightened child he did nothing to protect. It wasn’t until it pumped him full of that poison that he realised. It was very easy. So very easy. Follow him, wait until no one was around, brush past him in the street and then wait until it took effect. So very easy. That part at least.’
Anna stopped again, as if reliving what she had done, her words becoming st
ronger, more lucid. The icy fear that had stiffened Rebecca’s flesh was beginning to thaw once more. Anna posed no threat to her, of that she was certain. She had no idea whose blood was on Anna’s hands but she needed to find out, for someone might be in need of medical attention. And yet she was loath to ask even a single question, for she feared she might break the flow of words. The woman needed to get this out now, to purge herself, and all Rebecca could do was listen.
‘They say killing gets easier. It doesn’t. The child knows that now. The father was the first. The son the second. It knew it was wrong. Even as it planned it, it knew what it was doing was wrong. But it had to. That man, the father, and that boy, now grown up, had stolen its childhood. Its innocence. Its love, its trust, its self-respect. It could not let them take what was left of its life.’
Rebecca’s phone rang for what seemed like the tenth time and she mentally cursed it, regretted having Robbie Williams as a ring tone, his voice bouncing out an upbeat number out of place on this spit of land draped in a sheen of rain and caressed by a chill wind while a woman talked of murder. Moving very slowly, Rebecca reached into her pocket and eased the mobile out, glanced at the screen. Chaz. He would have to wait.
‘Sorry,’ she said, her voice sounding alien after being silent for so long.
Anna didn’t seem to notice she had spoken. ‘He lay there on the heather, staring at the child above him. He couldn’t move, not much anyway. The child sensed he knew what was happening, knew why this had to be. Because he knew the child now, you see. Had seen the child that was in the woman that is. And in him the child saw some kind of acceptance as it raised the claymore and brought it down. And watched him die. It wasn’t like the father. That had been violent, swift even. This death floated into the night as his breath slowed and stilled. And then he was gone, and what he was became vapour in the mist.’
Rebecca’s phone rang again. Chaz. She had to answer it this time, if only to tell him to stop calling.
She didn’t get the chance to say anything before Chaz said, ‘Where are you?’
‘Clachnaharry, but listen . . .’
‘What the hell you doing there?’
‘I’m . . . with someone. I’ll explain later.’
‘Who are you with?’
She shot a glance at the woman beside her, but she was lost in the past again. Distant or recent, Rebecca could not tell. Even so, she turned away slightly and lowered her voice. ‘Anna Fowler, but . . .’
‘Stay there. Don’t move. We’re coming to get you.’
‘Don’t . . .’
Chaz had already cut the connection.
Rebecca gave the phone a puzzled look, as if it knew what the hell was going on, then turned the phone off completely and put it away. She had more pressing matters to attend to. And perhaps Chaz coming wasn’t such a bad idea. Calling the police had crossed her mind more than once. This way she could get him to do it while she kept Anna company. And talking. Because Rebecca wanted to know it all now.
Nolan was still in Barney’s, waiting for Chaz to call back. He paced the back room, a tiny office and storeroom, absently flicking the business card he had lifted from Chaz’s bag during the trouble in the Ferry against his thumb. He felt so helpless. He knew Scott was out there somewhere and he had a gun. He had no way of knowing if he had gone after Rebecca, not for certain, but his gut told him that was the case. He thought about calling Maw but decided against it. She couldn’t do anything. He tried Scott but it went straight to voicemail. No surprise there.
His phone rang and he recognised Chaz’s number. He thumbed the button to green and heard him say, ‘Clachnaharry.’
58
The rain was soft but persistent. It wafted across the lights that marked the towpath like a fine mist. Darkness had claimed the sky now. On the other side of the canal, at the makeshift car park in front of the low terraced houses, a car’s headlights beamed into the night. A dog walker, probably. Rebecca turned back to Anna, her white face and short blonde hair catching the low light. The historian hadn’t spoken for a few minutes. She sat very still, her bloodied hands still deep in the pockets of her coat, staring into the darkness, the water slapping softly against the land, like a clock marking time. For Anna, it was ticking backwards, taking her to times past, both recent and more distant. Rebecca had realised the woman was no longer here. Her body was there, but her mind was lost in the ripples of her life, adrift in the eddies of memory and regret.
Rebecca risked a question. ‘Tell me about Lancaster?’
At first she didn’t think Anna had heard her, and Rebecca wondered if she had been swept away by the tides. Eventually, though, she replied, her voice coming from far away.
‘He was like him, the father. A predator. He deserved to die. The child had to protect itself.’
‘How was Lancaster a threat?’
‘He wasn’t, not directly. But he deserved to be punished. No one would mourn him.’
Anna’s narrative was fragmentary again, slices of information, but Rebecca was able to forge a narrative. After she murdered her father, after she had served whatever time a child can be sentenced to, she had forged a new identity through the courts, with the help of social services. She had created a new persona and a new life for herself. That was threatened when her brother turned up, even though he didn’t recognise her. She couldn’t be certain that would last, though, so she first bought drugs from him, or had them bought, and then killed him. Anna’s plan had been to muddy the waters as much as she could. The theft of the costumes, the choice of locations and, by luck, even the victims’ links to Spioraid. Anna couldn’t have known Goodman, or Roberts, was investigating them, but she would have known from Rebecca’s own stories that Lancaster was in Dalgliesh’s sights for political purposes. Even her attempt at implicating Donahue was a diversion.
Rebecca felt anger stir, because she had been used by this woman to do it. She thought the historian had been motivated by genuine concern over events but in reality she was only trying to control the situation, pointing fingers all around. Rebecca could not tell if her anger was directed at Anna or at herself for being so gullible. But anger was not what was needed here. There was something else she needed to know.
‘Anna, the blood on your hands – whose is it?’
Alan was on the sidelines, watching as the paramedics treated the woman he had found in Professor Fowler’s office. He knew who she was now, of course. DCI Roach. Rebecca had mentioned her. When he heard the groan, he had rushed off to find someone with a key, finally came upon a janitor. They found her on the floor, groggy, bleeding and incoherent, apart from mumbling that she was a police officer. He had no idea why Anna Fowler had attacked this woman with a book on world history that proved to be both heavy in weight and content. It still lay on the floor where it had been dropped, its pages both literally and figuratively covered in blood.
There had been blood that night too. On Stoirm. All over the seat of the Land Rover.
A paramedic gently probed the bloody welt on the back of DCI Roach’s head with latex fingers, having already tended to another gash on her temple. The police officer was more compos mentis now and was talking to the bald detective who had been first to arrive after Alan dialled 999. A uniformed officer had poked through the coat stand and held up a large, camouflaged waterproof and a dark woollen ski mask.
There had been paramedics too, that night. And police. And Chaz, bleeding . . . he thought dying.
Alan had been told not to move and that was exactly what he had done, apart from trying to contact Rebecca, then reaching Chaz. His phone was in his hand, his palm sweating, and he checked the screen every minute or so, as if he wouldn’t know if it was ringing. He’d tried Chaz again a few minutes before, but he had not picked up. He tried Rebecca once more, but this time it didn’t even ring, it just switched immediately to voicemail.
Rain stroked the window frame, just as it had done that night.
And Chaz was out there, somewhere. Alo
ne.
Chaz had been here before. Behind the wheel. Rain. Lights in the rear-view. But this time a voice. The one in his head. It could happen again.
His fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly it seemed to bite into his palms. His windscreen wipers swept at the rain as it spackled the glass, the slight scraping noise a metronome keeping a beat, reminding him that time was passing. He was still unclear about what kind of danger Rebecca faced – Alan hadn’t said and Nolan Burke had been decidedly mysterious – but he knew he had to get to his friend quickly. He had to ignore the anxiety screaming in his mind.
It could happen again.
He had to ignore the stabbing sensation in his side and leg.
Remember this? Remember the rain and the wind and the lights?
He had to ignore the beams from behind as they burst against his rear-view mirror or blazed from the opposite carriageway.
Always the lights.
And the pain.
He knew there was no pain, he told himself there was no pain, and yet there it was, biting, surging, burning.
Stop now.
Pull over.
Traffic was heavy, as workers flooded from the centre of Inverness to their homes. He swore each time he was brought to a halt at traffic lights or roundabouts. He cursed drivers who were too slow or who lingered too long at a turn. Lights flared, glinted.
Just as they did on the island.
He willed the voices to leave his head. He forced the pain to ebb.
He kept going. He had to.
Anna’s words became jumbled and even more incoherent, but Rebecca managed to piece together what had happened. DCI Roach had spotted something in her office – a raincoat, was it? Then Anna had seen something in her expression that made her believe she had been recognised.
She couldn’t let her go, she said. Couldn’t let her go.
So she stopped her. Left her. Came here, where the air is clear and fresh and she could think. And remember. The breeze rippling her memories as it floated over the water.
The Blood is Still Page 29