by Peter May
She cursed herself for not paying more attention when Gunn had driven her up to Ness the day before. At the end of the road she turned her car and headed back the way she had come, making another wrong turn that took her this time to the settlement of Five Penny and closer, she saw, to the lighthouse. Following the road took her on what felt like a long loop, past some sort of social club where cars stood parked beneath sodium street lamps, and then a school, before rising again to what she was sure was the road she had left earlier.
Which way to turn? She went left, and then to her relief saw a sign to Skigersta. She turned right, up through Crobost, and headed south into darkness until she saw the tiny clutch of street lights around the settlement at Skigersta itself. From this point, she was fairly confident, she would soon find herself at the road end, and the beginning of the track that led out to Taigh ’an Fiosaich.
Out here, if anything, was even more exposed to the wind, and she felt waves of it battering her car. She clung, white-knuckled, to the steering wheel and leaned forward in her seat to peer through the rain that washed relentlessly across her windscreen, straining to see in the darkness that lay ahead. A darkness barely penetrated by her headlights.
It was almost with relief that she found herself on the pitted and potholed track that stretched away across the moor, her car lurching and pitching from one hole in the road to the next. She never got out of second gear the whole way, and spent much of it in first. She could have walked faster.
Finally she reached the shielings at Cuishader. Tin huts and caravans, that somehow miraculously survived everything this climate could throw at them. A red light flickered momentarily in her peripheral vision, and she thought for a moment her lights might have caught the rear reflectors of a vehicle tucked away behind the old rotting bus. She glanced towards it but saw nothing in the darkness, then forced her concentration back to the track, which dipped down across the concrete bridge at the foot of the hollow. The stream it spanned was in full spate, and for a moment Braque thought her car might get washed away. Then she was over it and climbing the other side, only to be hammered again by the full force of the gales that swept unrestrained across the moor from the west.
Gunn, she was sure, must be back in Stornoway by now. And he would have seen the video. She wondered if he might follow her up to Ness, and wished now that she had waited for him. Driving all the way out here in a storm to see Niamh Macfarlane seemed like the worst idea she had ever had. She checked her mobile phone. No signal. No point in turning back now. She was almost there.
She navigated the bend in the track at Bilascleiter and to her relief saw the lights of Niamh’s house burning into the night, like tiny welcoming beacons of hope. She let her car trundle down the hill, then, to pull it into the gravel apron at the house. She sat for a moment, lights on, engine idling, and wondered where Niamh’s Jeep was parked. There was no sign of it anywhere. So how could she be home if her car wasn’t here? It was possible, she realized, that the lights could be on a timer, set to come on when it got dark. That would make sense if you were returning at night.
She was just about to switch off the ignition and get out of the car, when the house was plunged suddenly into darkness. She was startled. Had there been a power cut? Or had someone inside turned off the lights? Then they flickered, several times, and Braque saw the blades of the two wind turbines at the side of the house spinning manically in the wind. Backup power, perhaps, in the event of a mains failure. But if that was their purpose then they failed, for the house remained in darkness.
Braque decided to leave her engine running and the headlamps on. That would at least provide some light inside the house through the windows. She ducked out into the storm, fighting to close the door of her car against the power of the wind. Then dashed for the house. The door was unlocked. On the drive up yesterday, Gunn had taken great pride in telling her that islanders felt no need to lock their doors. Niamh, obviously, was no exception.
Braque pushed the door shut behind her and stood dripping in the hallway, amazed at how the insulation of the house immediately snuffed out the storm. It seemed now like a very distant threat. The house warm and dry inside, almost silent.
Light from the car outside permeated faintly through the back windows, casting deep shadows in their reflected illumination. She could only just see along the length of the hall to the large living–dining–kitchen area she knew lay beyond. The darkness there seemed impenetrable.
“Hello?” The sound of her voice calling into the dark was swallowed by the silence of the house. “Is there anyone home?” She leaned to her right and opened the door into Niamh’s bedroom. Yellow light from the window lay across an unmade bed. She turned back to the hall. “Madame Macfarlane, are you there? I believe I know who killed your husband.”
Saying it out loud, even to no one, seemed to make it more real. She really did know who had killed him. Or, at least, ordered his execution. Though she had no idea why.
“Madame Macfarlane?”
Still no response. Braque debated what to do. She could wait, but had no idea when, or if, Niamh would be home tonight. If she left, she might pass Gunn on the road without seeing him. And that would be stupid. Even if Niamh didn’t show up, Gunn would. Almost certainly.
She moved forward carefully towards the living room at the end of the hall, fingertips on the wall so as not to lose her orientation. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the faintest of light provided from the outside by her headlamps. Furniture began to take shape around her. The breakfast bar off to her left.
Then suddenly a shadow rose up straight in front of her. A face, barely lit, but burning with some inner intensity. A face she had seen on CCTV video footage barely two hours ago. She had no time to react before she felt the blade punching into her abdomen. Ice-cold, razor-sharp. Once, twice. The third time it slid between her ribs and up into her heart. She dropped to her knees, clutching feebly at her wounds and feeling the blood running warm through her fingers. The life ebbing out of her.
She realized, with a sense of disbelief, that she was going to die. How was that possible? How could this have happened?
She would never catch those flights tomorrow, or tell Faubert what he could do with his job. She would never see her children again, nor they her. The choices she should have made long ago would never now be taken. And as darkness consumed her she knew, too, that there was nothing she could do to stop her killer from taking Niamh’s life as well.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The fog was impenetrably deep. Niamh felt lost in it, wandering about with arms outstretched, hands like antennae feeling the way ahead. Somewhere in the far distance there was a light. So faint it was barely discernible in the mist. But sounds came to her now. Voices and music. Distant, too. Travelling the way that sound does across water.
And then she opened her eyes to a wave of nausea washing over her. It was all she could manage to keep down the contents of her stomach. She retched and gagged and rolled over to see that the light came from a landing beyond an open door. A cold yellow light that penetrated the darkness of the bedroom.
It was with a shock that Niamh realized suddenly that there were two other people on the bed with her. Two young men, barely more than boys, fast asleep and folded into each other’s arms. Fully dressed. As was Niamh. To her relief.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and felt another wave of nausea, accompanied by a searing pain in her head. What in God’s name had been in those drinks they gave her? If not alcohol, something much worse. She sat for several minutes simply breathing, deeply, letting the pain and the nausea pass. She looked around for a clock on a bedside table. But there wasn’t one. Then she focused on her watch and saw with a shock that it was after midnight. She had been unconscious for hours. A small sash window had been left open, and the rain was driving in on to the carpet, soaking curtains that billowed into the room.
Niamh found her handbag on the floor, and got unsteadily to her feet
to stagger to the open window and breathe in deeply, feeling the rain cold and delicious in her face, before sliding it shut. Neither man on the bed stirred.
There was still music pounding away somewhere downstairs as she made her way out on to the landing and a staircase that led down to the next floor.
The vast lounge with the grand piano stood empty but fully lit. People lay around sleeping in the salon and in the TV room. No one else in the house seemed to be awake, or troubled by the music. Bottles lay about the floor, glasses leaving rings on table tops and dressers. Cigarettes smouldering in makeshift ashtrays. It was almost as if someone had pressed a pause button and brought the world to a standstill. All except for Niamh, who drifted through it like a shadow, slipping now down the stairs to the entrance hall, where she stood for some moments listening for signs of life. There were none.
She fell down the steps on to the gravel outside, and immediately emptied the contents of her stomach, almost fluorescent green, on to the chippings. She crouched on her hands and knees in the rain, gulping in air. By the time she had forced herself back to her feet, her head felt less fogged, and her stomach less liable to further retching. She looked around and realized that she had no idea if Lee Blunt had ever returned. But the Range Rover he had been driving at the funeral was nowhere to be seen.
Niamh stumbled to her Jeep, and holding the door open against the wind managed to climb up into the driver’s seat. She knew she shouldn’t drive. That it was madness in this state. But all she wanted was to get away. To escape these people, and this nightmare.
She fumbled in her bag for her key and turned it in the ignition, revving hard before backing out across the gravel and turning on to the road that would take her back in the direction of the old whaling station, and the A859 heading north. To Ness. And home.
The storm had begun to abate a little as she nursed the Jeep through the rain-filled potholes that pitted the track south across the moor to Taigh ’an Fiosaich. It was some time after two, the night as black as sin beyond the tunnel cut through it by her headlights. She felt physically and mentally drained, as if someone had pummelled her with boxing gloves. Her fatigue was very nearly palpable, the longing she felt to fall back on her bed and close her eyes only marginally more powerful than the desire to pull over here and now and let herself fall asleep behind the wheel.
She was not surprised when she navigated past the rise at Bilascleiter to see that there were no lights on in the house. But startled by the presence of a car there, its headlamps reflecting light back from its walls. She pulled up beside it on the gravel apron. The rain had stopped now as she slipped from the Jeep, but the wind still hit her with a force that nearly knocked her from her feet. Holding on to her vehicle, hair whipping into her face, she made her way around it to look at the other car. A saloon car. Not many people would have risked a vehicle like that on the road out here. Its engine was running. And she saw a rental sticker on the rear windscreen. Lewis Car Rentals. She frowned. One of Lee Blunt’s party? But how would any of them even know how to get out here? Where to come.
She felt a sudden foreboding. Someone had tried to kill her yesterday. And now there was someone in her house. In the dark. Someone unknown. For a long time she stood buffeted by the wind, trying to decide what to do. The safest option would be to climb back into her Jeep and drive away. But she had neither the strength nor the will. She was being overdramatic, she decided. If someone had come to kill her, they would hardly leave their car parked outside, engine running, lights on to signal their presence.
She approached the door and opened it slowly, carefully, into the house. The darkness inside was penetrated only by the lights of the car outside. She eased the door shut behind her and reached for the shelf above the coat hooks, fumbling for the torch they always kept there for emergencies. Clumsy fingers knocked it off the shelf and it went clattering to the floor, rolling away into the hall.
Niamh cursed under her breath, forced to drop to her hands and knees to find it, reaching out to feel for it ahead of her. Whoever was in the house would know by now that she was back. Her fingers closed with relief around the curvature of the torch’s long handle, and she stood up, feeling for the switch to turn it on.
Its light, cold and hard, was startling. And at almost the same time that she directed its beam along the hall and into the living room, she became aware of an alien odour in her house. Very background, but off-pitch and disquieting. Like rusted iron.
“Hello?” Her voice seemed tiny. She cleared her throat and called again. “Hello? Who’s there?”
The absence of any reply pushed her heart up into her throat, real fear quickly displacing disquiet. She swung the beam of her torch from left to right in the darkness ahead of her, seeing it reflected in the windows all along the far side of the living room. Now she moved forward very carefully, adrenalin heightening all her senses, but it wasn’t until she reached the end of the hall that a shadow on the floor ahead drew her eye.
She directed the beam downwards and released the most feral howl she had ever heard pass her lips. It felt almost as if it had come from someone else. But as she took a step back, the full realization of what she was seeing only now dawning on her, it came again. Quite involuntarily.
Lying hunched on her side, in an extended pool of thick, black blood, lay a woman whose hair fanned out across the tiles. Her cheek was pressed to the floor, and in profile Niamh could see that both her mouth and her eyes were open wide. She recognized her immediately as Lieutenant Braque. The woman who had been there in the Place de la République moments after Ruairidh’s car had been ripped apart in that explosion. Who had interviewed her afterwards in the company of the anti-terror officer. Who had come to her hotel to tell her she could take the remains of Ruairidh home. Polite, efficient, and lacking either warmth or empathy. And here she lay dead in Niamh’s home, more than a thousand miles away from where it had all begun.
Disbelief fought with confusion and panic for space among the turbulent emotions that replaced almost everything else in her head. Her lungs barely responding to the need for oxygen.
She swung the beam of her torch wildly around her, but there was no one there, nothing but furniture and the shadows it cast in the living room and kitchen.
The faintest sound from behind made her turn. In time to see the dark shadow of a figure launch itself at her. She saw light glint momentarily on the blade of a kitchen knife as it arced towards her and she threw out a protective hand. She felt it slice into fingers and the fleshy muscle of her palm, sending blood spraying into her face. But it was enough to deflect the blade from her body. She swung her torch into darkness and felt it connect with solid bone and flesh. Heard a gasp of pain. But the strength of the blow knocked the torch from her hand, and it went spinning off into the living room. She struck out again, blindly, this time with her fist, and felt the pain of connection. Enough to distract her attacker long enough to scramble away, out of the hall, into the living room, where she slipped on the pool of Braque’s blood and fell heavily on to the tiles, knocking all the air from her body.
Her head hit the floor with a sickening thud, and she rolled herself over in time to see the dark form of her attacker falling on top of her, soft and heavy, a strangely familiar scent carried in the warmth and weight of this unexpectedly slight body.
Niamh looked up, her eye drawn first by the blade caught in the reflected light of the torch. It was raised at arm’s length above her, and Niamh knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. Then her gaze jumped focus to the face of this person intent on killing her, and she gasped her astonishment and disbelief.
There was the oddest, twisted smile on Seonag’s ivory-pale face. Her silky red hair hung in flames on either side of it, and her eyes burned with a madness Niamh had never before seen in them.
“Why?” It was the only word she could bring to her lips.
Seonag’s voice was little more than a whisper as she gently shook her head. “It started as
a game. A fantasy. How hard could it be to access the Dark Web? Were there really people out there who would kill for money?” She almost laughed. “It was so easy. And suddenly fantasy became reality.” The smile faded. “I thought with him gone you would want me. Finally.” Her face crumpled as tears blurred her eyes. “But if I can’t have you, no one else will.”
Niamh braced herself for the certainty of death as Seonag’s knife plunged into her heart. But something dark and heavy swung through the light of the torch and crashed into the side of Seonag’s head, hitting her with such force that it knocked her sideways to slam into the wall and lie motionless on the floor. The sound of her knife skidding away across the tiles filled the room as Niamh looked up to see a man standing over her, a wheel brace dangling from his hand. Then, as he turned his head away from Seonag to look down at her, and she saw who it was, she thought that she must be dead after all. That Seonag’s knife had penetrated her heart and taken her life before the blow from the wheel brace. But she was still breathing, and the pain from the deep cut in her hand was still excruciating. This was neither dream nor afterlife. This was real, even though she had absolutely no way of processing what she was seeing.
The man who had just saved her life, yet again, was Ruairidh Macfarlane.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Niamh sat on the floor, her back to the settee. Ruairidh had effected a makeshift bandage for her hand which had, at least, stopped the bleeding.
He sat beside her now in the slowly fading light of the torch. There was a good chance that the batteries would give out before power was restored.