The Hunting Party

by Lucy Foley

  Actually, whatever is within, bulging through the clear wrapping, looks a little like sugar: some whitish substance. And then the penny drops. I’m suddenly fairly certain that whatever is inside those packages is something very different from and far more valuable than sugar.

  As in a nightmare, I hear the footsteps behind me.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’ Almost polite, conversational. I drop down in shock, my hands catching the rough wood on the way down, splinters tearing into my flesh. My legs hardly support me; they are suddenly weak with fear. I reach for the rifle and hear rather than feel the loud crack of something hitting the back of my skull. My sight is snuffed out like a blown candle.

  When I come to it takes several seconds for my vision to clear. When it does, I make out a figure standing over me. At first I don’t even recognise him, through the haze of pain in my head, and because of what he’s wearing: a huge down jacket, even bigger than mine, that makes him look almost double his normal size. His face is pinched with cold, blue about the lips. He looks like someone who has been sleeping rough. But it is Iain.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I say, stupidly. ‘I thought you were at home. Where have you—’ I stop, because I see that he is carrying a gun. He holds it loosely, at the moment, but he hefts it in his hands. The gesture, I am sure, is to show his ease with it – and how simple it would be to lift it and aim it at me.

  ‘I told you not to come up here,’ he says. ‘I told you to keep away.’

  ‘Because you said it wasn’t safe,’ I say.

  ‘Precisely. It isn’t safe, as you see.’

  ‘You told me it was because of the building, because it might fall down. Not because—’ I don’t know how to express it, whether it’s safe to do so: Not because there is something in here you don’t want me to see.

  ‘Yes. You’re either less stupid than I had banked on you being – or a lot more stupid. I’m trying to work out which. I think it’s probably the latter.’

  Why – why – did I not just wait for the police, voice my suspicions to them? I am stupid. More than that, I didn’t even tell Doug where I was going. Because you knew he would stop you. I have been a complete idiot. This whole thing, suddenly, looks like a suicide mission. And the thought occurs to me … was it a suicide mission? I think of the oblivion I have contemplated in the past: the pills, the bridge. I have spent a long time thinking that perhaps dying wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. But now – and perhaps it’s just some deep-rooted animal instinct – I suddenly discover I want to live.

  ‘Look,’ I say, trying to sound calm, reasonable. ‘Let’s pretend I didn’t see any of this. I’ll just go away, and it will be like it never happened.’

  He actually laughs. ‘No, I don’t think we can do that.’

  I stare at him. If it weren’t so horrifying it might almost be fascinating, the change that has come over this man, who, from what I gleaned, seemed a simple, uncomplicated sort, if a bit taciturn. But then it isn’t a change, I realise. This is the real him. He’s just worn the other persona like a cloak.

  He steps forward, reaching with his spare arm, and I flinch away. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘We’ll do it like this.’ He raises the rifle. I go rigid, my skin tightening, my throat closing up in terror. I think: This is it. He’s going to kill me.

  ‘Start walking,’ he says. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  He directs me around the other side of the stable block. Keeping the rifle vaguely trained in my direction, he reaches for the keycode. This is my opportunity, I think. This is the bit where I could try and run. But run to where? There is just gaping whiteness, all around. He couldn’t hope for a clearer target. So I can only wait while he opens the door and ushers me inside, into the darkness.

  Immediately, I realise that it’s much warmer in here than I expected. In the corner of the room, I see, he has set up a generator.

  ‘How nice of you,’ I say, trying to sound less afraid than I feel. ‘To think of me.’

  He sneers.

  ‘And what have you got there?’ I ask. ‘Brown paper packages tied up with string?’

  I am talking, because the talking – the effort of not screaming, of forming the words – seems to be keeping me calm.

  ‘Exactly,’ Iain says. ‘And you definitely don’t need to worry your little head about what’s inside.’

  But I need to keep him talking. I have to find a way to stay alive – and at the moment, distracting him from the business of killing me is the only card I have up my sleeve. There’s no point in promising him I won’t tell anyone about what I’ve seen. He won’t believe me. He would probably be right.

  So instead, I ask, ‘Is this what you’ve been doing the whole time? The jobs about the estate – were they just a ruse? I can imagine this is probably a bit more lucrative.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he says. And then he gives a sort of ‘why not?’ shrug – which cannot be good. If he’s deciding it’s OK to tell me things, he has also decided that I won’t have an opportunity to tell them to anyone else. No point in thinking like that. Just buy yourself time. Time is life.

  ‘If you must know,’ he says, ‘I like to think of this as just another one of my jobs. I build a mean dry-stone wall. I can re-grout a windowpane in ten minutes. And I make a pretty good … delivery man.’

  ‘I see,’ I say, slowly, as though I am fascinated by his genius. ‘You bring it in on your truck from—’

  ‘Let’s just say from somewhere,’ he says, faux-patient.

  ‘And then you keep it here and then—’ I try to think beyond the wailing panic alarm in my head. What would be the point in bringing it here, one of the remotest places in the UK, with no way of getting it anywhere else?

  And then I think of the history of the place. The old laird, insisting they build him his station. ‘Then you put it on the train.’

  He doffs an imaginary cap to me with his free hand. ‘Straight down to London.’ He smiles, and the expression makes him look all the more sinister. I wonder how I could ever have thought he was a normal, simple-living guy. He looks like a maniac. He looks more than capable of strangling that woman. I won’t ask him about that yet, though. I’ll keep him talking on this.

  The radio, I think. If I could just get my hand to the transmit button, I might be able to get through to Doug. I could keep my finger on the button so there won’t be any giveaway feedback. He’d hear everything. Perhaps I could even say something that would let him know exactly where I am.

  ‘Straight down to London,’ I say. ‘How very clever. Like the whisky, in the old days. Of course – they think the laird himself was in on that, did you know?’

  Iain doesn’t say anything. But he does give me a look. Duh.

  ‘Oh.’ The realisation hits me like a punch to the gut. ‘The boss is in on this too?’

  Iain doesn’t answer – he doesn’t need to.

  It’s just like the old times: the laird taking a cut from the smuggled whisky. And I’ve spent the last year blithely going about my business in the office – wondering, would the boss like to advertise the Lodge a bit more widely? Of course he didn’t want to. The business must have been a nice blind for him – but too many visitors, and people might start noticing things.

  I have been a complete fool. They must have been laughing at me, all this time. The idiot in the office, not seeing what was going on under her very nose.

  ‘And how do you get it on the train?’ I ask. ‘Without anyone noticing?’

  He gives me another look. Of course: that station guard, Alec. I think of how he behaved when I went to look around the station, the way he stood in front of the door up to his flat. Because he had something to hide.

  Doug, I think. Does he know? Am I the only one here who has been kept in the dark? It might have been a kind of quid pro quo: turn a blind eye to the goings-on here, and we’ll turn a blind eye to your criminal record.

  If I radio him, now, will he simply ignore me? He wouldn
’t want me to die, though, would he? I think of how open, how vulnerable he was with me back at the Lodge. But that could all have been an act. Because the truth is, I realise, it was all a brief fantasy. I don’t actually know him at all.

  I have to try; it’s my only chance. In incremental movements, so as not to draw attention, I inch a hand up my body, towards my pocket. Iain doesn’t seem to notice. He’s studying the gun as though it were a particularly fascinating pet.

  I slide my hand into my pocket, slowly, slowly. My fingers brush the antenna of the radio, feeling for the hard body of it.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  His face is dark with anger. He strides over to me in a couple of steps. ‘N-nothing.’

  ‘Take your hand out of your fucking pocket.’ He reaches roughly into my jacket and grabs hold of the radio. He looks at it for a couple of seconds, in mute rage, and then throws it at the wall with more force than I would have thought a man of his size capable of. It falls to the stone floor with a clatter, and in two pieces.

  Now he comes at me with a roll of gaffer tape, and roughly binds my wrists, so hard that the bones bruise against one another, and my ankles. While he’s down by my feet I test the bonds around my hands. I can’t move them at all. He might as well have bound them together with a metal chain for all the give the gaffer tape has. I could try to kick him in the head, I think, while he’s crouched there. But I’m not sure I could get enough force into my legs. He’s not a big man, Iain, but he’s strong enough: all the work he does on the estate. And if I just hurt him slightly, not enough to hinder him – which is the most likely outcome of this – he will only kill me quicker.

  Iain stands up, looking proud of his work. Then there is a sudden, deafening bang. He pitches forward, with a look of slack-jawed surprise, and lands on top of me, the rifle clattering to the floor. I can’t make sense of what has just happened. I can’t see anything, either, because he’s on top of me. And then I realise that the front of my grey jacket is wet with dark red blood.

  One day earlier

  New Year’s Day 2019

  MIRANDA

  I can’t believe the gamekeeper rejected me. The humiliation of it, when I had thought it might make me feel a bit better about myself.

  The pain of it all winds me. I fold over on myself as if someone has actually punched me in the gut, and let myself sink to the ground. The sting of the sharp pebbles beneath my knees feels oddly right, so does the cold on my skin – though it doesn’t feel cold, it feels like fire. I must look completely absurd, kneeling here in my gold dress and stiletto heels. And perhaps it’s just because I’m aware of what a state I must appear … but I have the sudden strange, animal feeling that I’m not alone.

  As I look about me I catch a shiver of movement in the trees near the loch. I could have sworn I saw the dark shape of something – someone – in the darkness of the pines. I’m certain now. Someone else is out here with me. Oh, whatever. I don’t care. Normally, I might be unnerved. But nothing can shock me as much as what I just saw, in that sauna.

  No doubt my observer, in the trees, is very much enjoying my little display. I think of the Icelandic man’s grin when I spotted them in the woods, his beckoning hand.

  ‘Go on,’ I shout, into the silence. ‘Get a good long look. See if I fucking care.’

  Emma, I think. I’ll go and see Emma. I need to talk to someone. With any luck, Mark is still passed out on the couch in the sitting room of the Lodge. I check through the windows. Yes, he’s there, spreadeagled on his back.

  I knock on the door of their cabin. Silence. It’s after four in the morning, after all. I try again. Finally, the door swings open. Emma stands there frowning, looking groggy. She’s in pyjamas: silk, piped ones, not dissimilar to my own set.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Hi, Manda.’

  I normally flinch when she calls me that. It sounds too try-hard. Only Julien and Katie really use it, the two people closest to me. No, the irony of that is not lost on me.

  ‘Can I come in?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure.’ No questions, no hesitation. I feel a sharp stab of guilt for the way I’ve been with her. She has only ever been nice to me, while, at times, I’ve behaved like such a bitch – showing her up in front of the others, excluding her. Well, from now on everything is going to be different. I’m going to be different.

  I follow her inside. It’s almost the same design as ours: the one large room, the armchairs and fireplace, the big four-poster, the dressing table – even the stag’s head mounted on the wall. The major difference is that it’s pin neat, like stepping into an alternative reality. Our belongings are scattered everywhere, we’ve always been such slobs. Our, I think, we. No more: it’s all going to change. The house we bought together, all our plans. All that history. My legs suddenly don’t feel capable of supporting me.

  I stagger over to the nearest chair, which happens to be the little stool at the dressing table.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Emma gestures to the cocktail cabinet in the corner. She hasn’t asked me what this is all about yet, but the gesture suggests that she knows something is wrong.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She pours me a whisky. ‘More please,’ I say, and she raises an eyebrow a fraction, then slugs another inch into the glass. I thought I’d had a lot to drink last night, but suddenly I feel far too sober, my mind painfully clear, the images in it unforgettable, sharp-focused. I want to stop seeing them. I want to be numbed, anaesthetised.

  Beyond the window the light in the sauna is still on. How could they have been so stupid? It’s almost like they wanted to be found. Perhaps they genuinely hadn’t appreciated how conspicuous it looks out there in the dark, like a lantern against the night. A beacon. I wonder – even though I know I shouldn’t think about it – what they’re doing, now. Are they discussing next steps, like co-conspirators? Have they even put their clothes back on? I can’t get that image out of my head: her paleness against the tan of his skin, their dark heads together. I take a gulp of the whisky, letting it burn its path down my throat, focusing on the pain of it. But I’m not sure all the whisky in the world will help me to forget how strangely, horribly beautiful they were together.

  ‘Emma,’ I say, ‘do you have any paper?’

  She raises her eyebrows only a fraction. ‘Er … I think so.’ She produces a pad from somewhere – Basildon Bond. It’s so Emma, somehow, to have a pad of writing paper on hand.

  Now my mind is oddly clear. As though some other power is guiding me, I go to the dressing table beside the bed, sit down, and write a note to Julien. I’ll give it to Emma, make sure she passes it on.

  All I want is to do as much damage as possible, to make him feel the sense of powerlessness that I do. My hand is shaking so much I have to press the pen to the paper to control my writing; twice it rips the whole way through. Good. He’ll see that I mean business. With one fell stroke, he has just destroyed everything I thought I knew. Well, now I will destroy him.

  NOW

  2nd January 2019

  HEATHER

  Doug drags Iain off me, as though he were a sack of sand, and leaves him where he lies, moaning like an animal. Then he hunkers down in front of me, and grips my shoulders with both hands.

  ‘Are you all right? Heather? What the fuck were you thinking? I followed your footsteps, through the snow—’ and then, ‘What did he do to you? Jesus Christ, Heather—’ Something about the expression on his face, the concern in it – the care – is almost too much. So, too, is the feel of his hand – now cupping my jaw, his fingertips calloused but his touch light, brushing the hair back from my forehead, assessing for damage with infinite care. I would not have known such a big man could be so gentle.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘No – he didn’t hurt me.’

  ‘He did,’ he takes his hand away from the side of my head and shows me his palm, slick with blood. ‘That fucking—’

  He gets up and lifts a foot, as if to kick Iain, who w
himpers below him on the ground, his hand pressed to his shoulder, where the blood is seeping through his down jacket in a dark brown stain. He looks as though he might be about to pass out.

  It’s hard to watch. ‘Don’t, Doug.’ It seems the old paramedic instinct is still in me: to preserve life.

  ‘Why? Look what he did to you, Heather. I won’t let him get away with it.’

  ‘But … we don’t want him to die.’ That’s a lot of blood. When Doug still doesn’t look convinced I say, ‘And he might know something – we have to find out.’

  He wavers. ‘Fine.’

  He doesn’t look convinced, but he lowers his foot. And at my insistence he makes a dressing, ripping a piece of fabric from the bottom of his own shirt, pressing it to Iain’s shoulder beneath the jacket, to stop the bleeding.

  Iain watches him with dull eyes, unresisting. His skin is greyish, his body is slumped. Doug keeps a foot on him, just above his groin, in case he were to try for an escape … though he hardly seems capable of that.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ Doug tells him, matter-of-factly, as if he can hear my thoughts. ‘It’s just torn your shoulder. I’ve seen worse. It’ll sting like a bitch of course, but then … well, you deserve it, don’t you, mate?’

  ‘Why did you kill her?’ I ask Iain.

  ‘What?’ He frowns, and then grimaces again, against the pain.

  ‘The guest. Did you push her into that gully because she saw something? Because she was on to you?’

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ he moans.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve never killed anyone,’ he says, breathing heavily between each word, as though running up a hill. I hope Doug’s right about the wound not being that bad. ‘I’ve done some bad things in my time, but I’ve never killed a person.’

  There seems to be a genuine repugnance about the way he says ‘killed’ – as though it really is something he sees as beyond the pale. But then he’s done a fairly good job of acting the innocent up until now.