by Lucy Foley
More than that, she was frightened of him. He could see it as he moved towards her, to try to comfort her – because he hated to see her cry. She had backed away, thrust the bag she was holding in front of her like a shield. She moved away; changed her number. His family, too, retreated. The idea that the man he remembers was, in fact, himself, seems too absurd to be real. Better to imagine him as some distant relative.
He saw how they looked at him, the guests, as though he were a curiosity, a freak show. When he has – rarely – caught a glimpse of his appearance in a mirror he has some idea of why. He looks like a wild man, someone on the very margins of society. This is probably the only profession in which looking the way he does, the unbrushed hair and battered old clothes, might actually be considered a kind of prerequisite. Sometimes he wonders whether he should drop this pretence of living like an almost-normal person, and live fully wild. He could do it, he thinks. He’s definitely tough enough: those first few months of training with the Marines quickly sloughed off any softness, and the years since have only toughened him further, like the tempering of steel. The only weak thing about him, the thing he seems unable to control, is his mind.
He has a particular set of skills, knowledge of how to survive in the wild indefinitely. He could take a gun, a rod: shoot and catch his own food. Everything else he could steal, if he needed. He has no qualms about taking a little back. He has given everything, hasn’t he? And most people don’t realise how much more they have than they need. They are lazy, and greedy, and blind to how easy their lives are. Perhaps it isn’t their fault. Perhaps they merely haven’t had the opportunity to see how fragile their grip on happiness is. But sometimes he thinks he hates them all.
Except for Heather. He doesn’t hate her. But she’s different. She doesn’t move around in a cloud of blithe obliviousness. He doesn’t know her well, true, but he senses that she has seen the dark side of things.
He climbs out of bed. No point in pretending he’s ever going to sleep. As he opens the door to the living room he rouses the dogs, who look at him from their bed in sleepy confusion at first, then dawning excitement, leaping up at him, tails wagging furiously. Maybe he will take them for a walk, he thinks. He likes the more profound silence of this place at night. He knows the paths nearest to the Lodge just as well by darkness as he does by day.
‘Not yet girls,’ he says, reaching for the bottle of single malt and sloshing some – and a bit more – into a glass. Perhaps this will take the edge off things.
NOW
2nd January 2019
HEATHER
I call the police, to tell them about the body.
The operator (who can’t be older than nineteen or so) sounds ghoulishly animated.
‘It doesn’t look accidental,’ I say.
‘And how did you work that out, ma’am?’ There’s a faint but definite note of facetiousness to his tone – I’m half-tempted to tell him who I used to be, what I used to do.
‘Because,’ I say, as patiently as I can, ‘there is a ring of bruising around the neck. I’m … no expert, but that would suggest to me a sign of something, some force.’ Such as strangulation, I think, and do not say. I do not want to give him another chance to think I’m getting ahead of myself.
There’s a longish pause on the other end of the line, which I imagine is the sound of him working out that this is something above his pay grade. Then he comes back on. His tone has lost all of its former levity. ‘If you’d wait a few moments, madam, I’m going to go and get someone else to speak to you.’
I wait, and then a woman comes on the line. ‘Hello, Heather. This is DCI Alison Querry.’ She sounds somehow too assured for a little local station. Her accent isn’t local, either: a light Edinburgh burr. ‘I’ve been seconded to the station to assist in the investigation of another case.’ Ah, I think. That explains it. ‘I understand that what we have is a missing person situation that has now, unfortunately, turned out to be a death.’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you describe to me the state of the deceased?’
I give the same description I did to her junior, with a little more detail. I mention the odd angle of the body, the spray of gore across the rocks.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘OK. I understand that access is currently proving impossible, due to the conditions and the remoteness of the estate. But we’re going to be working hard on a way to get to you; probably via helicopter.’
Please, I want to beg her, this Alison Querry with her calm, measured tones, get out here as quickly as you can. I can’t do this on my own.
‘When,’ I ask, instead, ‘do you think that will be?’
‘I’m afraid we’re still not sure. As long as it keeps snowing like this, it’s rather out of our hands. But soon, I’m sure of that. And in the meantime, I’d like you to keep all of the guests indoors. Tell them what you need to, obviously, but please keep any of the details you gave to me out of the picture. We don’t want to alarm anyone unduly. Who’s there at the moment?’
I struggle to count past the tide of tiredness – I haven’t slept now for twenty-four hours. I have spent that time veering between exhaustion and surges of adrenaline. Now my thoughts feel treacle-slow. ‘There are … eleven guests,’ I say, finally, ‘nine in one group from London, and a couple from Iceland. And the gamekeeper, Doug, and myself.’
‘Just the two of you, to manage that big place? That must be a bit of a strain, mustn’t it?’
She says it sympathetically, but it feels as though there’s something behind the enquiry – something sharp and probing. Or maybe it’s just my sleep-deprived mind, playing tricks on me.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘we manage. And, there’s one other employee, Iain, but he left on New Year’s Eve after finishing his work for the day. He doesn’t live here, you see – it’s just Doug and me.’
‘OK. So as far as you know the only people on the estate that night were you, your colleague the gamekeeper, and the eleven guests? So: thirteen.’
Unlucky for some … I seem to hear.
‘Well, that keeps it simple, I suppose.’
Simple how? I wonder. Simple, I realise, because if it really was a murder, the culprit is probably among us. Twelve suspects. Of which presumably, undoubtedly, I must be one. The realisation shouldn’t surprise me. But it does, because of DCI Querry’s easy manner, the sense she has given – the pretence, I realise now – of putting me in charge in her absence.
‘So,’ she says, ‘to summarise: keep everyone where they are. In the meantime, it would be a great help to me if you could have a good hard think about anything you might have noticed over the last forty-eight hours. Anything that struck you as odd. Maybe you saw something, maybe you heard something – maybe you even noticed someone about the place that you didn’t recognise? Any detail could be significant.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’ll think.’
‘Anything that comes to mind now?’
‘No.’
‘Please. Just take a moment. You might surprise yourself.’
‘I can’t think of anything.’ But as I say it, I do remember something. Perhaps it’s because of where I am standing while I speak to her: at the office window, looking out across the loch to the dark peak of the Munro and the Old Lodge, crouched there like some malignant creature. I get a sudden mental image, almost the same scene I see before me but in blackness, viewed from my window at some ungodly hour in the morning – if you could call it that – of New Year’s Day. I shut my eyes, try to clarify the image. Something had woken me: I couldn’t work out what at first. Then I heard the guests’ baby wail. That might have been it. I staggered to the loo, to splash some water on my face. As I looked out of the little bathroom window there was the towering shape of the Munro like a cut-out against the night sky, blotting out the starlight. And then something odd. A light, moving around like a solitary firefly – a wayward star. It was moving in the direction, I thought, of the Old Lodge. Traversing its way slowly across the
side of the dark slope.
But I can’t tell her this. I’m not even sure it was real. It’s all so nebulous, so uncertain. I can’t even be sure exactly when I saw it, just that it was at some point in the early morning. As I try to sharpen the memory in my mind, interrogate it for anything else I might have forgotten, it fades from me until I’m almost certain it was nothing more than my imagination.
‘And one more thing. Just informally, for my picture of things so far. It would be so helpful. Do you remember what you were doing, the night the guest went missing?’
‘I was – well, I was in bed.’ Not quite true, Heather. It isn’t a lie, exactly – but it’s not the whole truth, either. But as you’ve just remembered, you were stumbling around at God knows what time of night.
New Year’s Eve. The loneliest night of the year, even if you’re with people. Even before my life fell apart I remember that. There’s always that worry that you’re maybe not having quite as much of a good time as you could be. As you should be. And this year, the sound of all the fun the Londoners were having – even if I had told myself I didn’t envy any of them – didn’t help. So I’d had quite a lot more to drink than usual: forgetting that trying to get drunk to assuage loneliness only ever makes you feel lonelier than before.
When I’d staggered into the bathroom at whatever time it was – five, six? – I was in no fit state to be sure of what I had seen, or even whether I really witnessed anything at all. And I can’t tell her any of this. Because then I’d have to admit just how drunk I really was. And then what? a little voice asks. You’d have to admit you aren’t the capable, forthright person you’re pretending to be? You’d lose her trust? I am reminded once again that for all her questions about what I might have noticed, her pretence of putting me in a position of responsibility until she arrives, I am one of the thirteen who were here that night. I, too, am a suspect.
‘You’ve gone quiet on me there, Heather,’ DCI Alison Querry says. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes,’ I say. My voice sounds small, uncertain. ‘I’m still here.’
‘Good. Well, let’s keep in touch. Any questions, I’m here. Anything that occurs to you, don’t hesitate to pick up the phone.’
‘Of course.’
‘I will be there as soon as possible. In the meantime, it sounds like you have a very capable grip on things.’
‘Thank you.’ Ha. I remember my sister, Fi: ‘Sometimes it’s OK not to put a brave face on things, Heaths. It can do more harm than good, in the end, keeping everything bottled up.’
‘And I’ll be in touch very shortly with an estimate of timings,’ DCI Querry says, ‘when we think we’ll be able to get the chopper out. We just need this snow to ease off enough for safe flying conditions.’
What do we do until then? I wonder. Just wait here in the falling snow with the spectre of death just outside the door?
And then I ask it, even though I know I probably won’t get an answer. ‘The case you’ve been seconded to,’ I say, ‘which one is it?’
A short pause. When she next speaks her tone is less friendly, more official. ‘I’ll let you know that information if and when it becomes necessary to do so.’
But she doesn’t need to tell me. I’m fairly certain I know. The body, the way it looked. I’ve read about it in the papers. It would have been impossible not to. He has his own chokehold over the nation’s imagination. His own title, even. The Highland Ripper.
Three days earlier
30th December 2018
KATIE
It’s nearly two-thirty in the morning. I’m just wondering if it’s late enough that I could slink away to my cabin without being called a buzz kill, when Miranda flops down next to me on the sofa. ‘Feel like I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you this evening,’ she says. Then she lowers her voice. ‘I’ve just managed to escape Samira. Honestly, I love her dearly, but all she can talk about these days is that baby. It’s actually a bit – well, it’s a bit bloody insensitive, to be honest.’
‘What do you mean?’
She frowns. ‘I can’t even remember if I told you last time I saw you – it’s been ages. But …’ she lowers her voice even further, to a whisper, ‘we’ve been trying, you know …’
‘To get—’
‘Pregnant, yes. I mean, it’s early days and everything. Everyone says it takes a while.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Except Samira, apparently – she says she got magically knocked up the second she came off the pill.’
‘I suppose it’s different for everyone.’
‘Yes. I mean, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, to be honest. It’s the end of everything, isn’t it? Life as we know it. Look at those two. But it’s like … I don’t know, suddenly it’s a rite of passage. Every single person I know on Facebook seems to have a kid, or has one in the oven … it’s like this sudden epidemic of fertility. Do you know what I mean?’
I nod. ‘I stopped checking Facebook a while ago, to be honest. It’s toxic.’
‘Yes, toxic!’ she says, eagerly. ‘That’s it, exactly. God, it’s so refreshing talking to you, K. You’re out of all of it – single, doing your own thing … so far away from even thinking of kids.’
‘Yup,’ I say, swallowing past something that seems to be stuck in my throat. ‘That’s me.’
‘Sorry,’ she says, with sudden sensitivity, ‘I meant that as a compliment.’
‘It’s OK,’ I say – the lump in my throat’s still there. ‘I understand.’
‘Look – I’ve got something that will cheer us up.’ She winks at me, and fishes something from the pocket of her jeans. Then she calls out to the others: ‘Does anyone want any pudding?’
‘You baked?’ Nick asks, in mock surprise. ‘Never remember you being much into your cooking, Miranda.’ This is an understatement – which I’m sure is his point. Miranda is a terrible cook. I remember a particularly awful risotto where half the rice had stuck to the bottom of the pan and burned black.
‘But we’ve had some,’ Giles says, quickly. ‘That meringue and raspberry thing at the dinner.’
Miranda grins, wickedly. Now she is the Miranda of university days, the undisputed chief party queen. She has that gleam to her eyes: something between excitement and mania. It sends a jolt of adrenaline through me, just as it did so many years ago. When Miranda is like this she is fun, but also dangerous.
‘This is a bit different,’ she says, holding aloft a little plastic Ziploc bag, a rattle of small white pills inside. ‘Let’s call them our “after dinner mints”. Like a palate cleanser. And for old time’s sake … in the spirit of our all being here together.’
I know immediately that I can’t take one – I can’t handle the loss of control. The one time I did it went horribly wrong.
Ibiza. Our early twenties. A big group. I hadn’t actually been invited, the organiser was someone I’d never known very well at Oxford (read: he didn’t consider me cool enough to invite along to any of the famously debauched parties he held). But the week before the holiday, Miranda’s granny had died, and she sold her place to me, for a discount. Julien was going, and Samira and Mark, and lots of others who have long since fallen away. I’m not sure I could remember many of their names even if I particularly wanted to try.
I liked the long, lazy lunches by the pool. The evenings drinking rosé, getting a tan, reading my book. What I wasn’t so keen on was the part of the evening when the pills came out, and everyone looked at me – when I refused – like I was a parent who’d come along to spoil everyone’s fun. And then they would descend into lesser versions of themselves – hysterical, uninhibited, huge-pupilled: like animals. If only they could have seen themselves, I thought. At the same time, I felt uptight, boring: a poor replacement for Miranda. Samira – always with the ‘in’ crowd – took me to one side and told me: ‘You just need to loosen up a bit.’
By the end of the week, they would hardly get up at all during the day. The house had become disgusting. Everywhere you stood the
re seemed to be dirty clothes, beer cans, used condoms, even puddles of vomit half-heartedly cleaned up. I was on the point of booking a flight home. This was meant to be a holiday, for God’s sake. A respite from the job where I was working eighty-hour weeks. I knew that I would be going back feeling tired, sullied, and angry. But I stuck it out. I found a bit of terrace just out of sight of the main house. I dragged a sunbed there and I spent the last few days reading. At least I’d get a proper tan, finish my book: a simulacrum of what you were meant to do on holiday. At least I’d look – to all my colleagues, my family – like I’d had a good time.
On the last night, by some miracle, everyone mastered the energy to put together a barbecue like the ones we’d had at the beginning of the week, before they all ruined themselves. I drank quite a lot of cava, and then some more. In the candlelight, looking at everyone’s faces, and the dark turquoise glimmer of the sea, I wondered how I could possibly have decided I wasn’t having a good time. This was what it meant to be young, wasn’t it?
So when the pills inevitably came out, I took one. The euphoria hit me shortly after, I felt invincible. Freed from the prison of being me: Miranda’s less fun, less cool friend.
A lot of what happened after seemed to take place in a liberated, not-quite-real place. I remember the swimming pool, jumping into it fully clothed; someone eventually pulling me out, telling me I’d get cold, even though I kept insisting I just wanted to ‘stay in the water for ever’. I remember loving all of it, all of them. How had I not realised how much I loved them?
Later I remember a man, and I remember the sex in the dark poolhouse, long after everyone else seemed to have disappeared to bed. Almost total blackness, which made all the sensations only the more intense. I was driving it, I was in charge of it. When I came, I felt for a moment as though my whole body had shattered into stars. I was at once the most myself I had ever felt … and like someone else completely.