He knew he should recognise the captive woman, but he couldn’t place her. Like someone he hadn’t seen for a long time, her name wouldn’t come to his lips. All the same, he felt a desperate need to save her. Not just from the man who held the gun to her head, but something else – a forgotten tragedy that wouldn’t form in his mind.
‘What are you going to dae now, arsehole?’ The man’s face was still in shadow, but Daley knew the voice.
‘Leave her alone!’ It was feeble, but all he could find to say.
‘Oh, aye, just you gie it your best shot, Jimmy boy. You always were a useless prick. Lucky, that’s all you’ve ever been, eh? But everyone else has had tae pay the price. Well, no’ this time, wanker!’
The young woman struggled in his grasp, her blue eyes wide, pleading.
‘You can’t save her, Daley. Like he said, you’ve been lucky until now, but your luck has just run out. I always knew it would.’
Still holding the gun out straight ahead, Daley turned to face the figure behind him. John Donald sneered, a malicious, venal expression. He was enjoying this, Daley could tell. ‘I know I’m dreaming, John,’ said Daley, his voice wavering.
‘You think you know everything – you always did. How can you be so sure? Life isn’t the same for you these days – not for any of us. Can’t you see? You’re hovering, Jimmy, hovering between two worlds. You know that, I know that.’ He paused. ‘And they know that.’ John Donald nodded to the menacing figure and his struggling prisoner. As he did so, the man with the gun held to the blood-red hair of the woman stepped into the light. It was James Machie.
The woman let out a whimper. ‘Please help me, Jim.’ She looked at him, all the sadness in the world reflected in her wide blue eyes.
‘Come on, what are you worried about? Take the shot, arsehole! You’ve done this before, you piece of shit. Try it again!’ Machie held out one arm, as though beckoning Daley to fire. ‘You might hit me, then again, you might kill her. You’ve killed us all already, so what does it matter?’
‘He’s right, do it!’ said John Donald in Daley’s ear. His breath reeked of death and decay, the smell that had stalked the detective since his first visit to the mortuary as a young cop.
‘I’m going tae make your mind up for you. One, two . . .’ Machie forced the pistol against the woman’s skull, making her scream. Distantly a bell rang, echoing around the buildings of Main Street.
Daley closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.
He felt something fall at his feet. He looked down. The girl was lying on the road beneath him as the pistol smoked in his hand, blood flooding down her face like an enveloping mask. She mouthed some words. Daley knelt by her side to hear what she said with her last breaths.
‘You killed me,’ she sobbed. Then the light left her eyes.
The two men stood in front of him, Machie beside Donald now, both clapping slowly, the crack of their applause syncopated with the distant toll of the bell.
‘It’s time to pay your dues, Jimmy boy,’ said Machie. The pair howled with laughter.
‘Jim!’
He was sitting up in bed drenched in cold perspiration, his wife holding him to her chest. In the doorway, his son stood in the shadows, a teddy bear hanging loose in one hand.
‘I’m okay,’ said Daley. ‘It was just a dream.’ But he could feel his heart throbbing in his chest, see the pulse in his eyes as it raced, making him feel light-headed.
‘You’re sweating,’ said Liz. ‘I’m going to get the doctor.’
‘No doctors!’
‘Who is Mary, Daddy?’ asked his son.
‘Nobody. Go back to bed!’ replied Daley sharply.
In the doorway, James Daley junior began to howl.
Back in his dingy room in the County Hotel, Mike Strong dialled the number once more – still no reply. He knew he shouldn’t have arranged to have whisky left in the cottage for Chiase. Strong resolved to rise early and call again. If the worst came to the worst, he would have to go and get the man personally. Who knew how well mobile phones worked in this bloody place.
But despite his irritation at the lack of contact with the American, he felt as though, at last, he was about to achieve what he’d come here to do. There were still obstacles to be overcome, but at least he now knew the road ahead.
He lay in bed, revelling in the thought of his cocky young partner Blair Williams spending the night behind bars. He wouldn’t be there for ever, but by the time all was revealed Mike Strong would be far away. Far away from his irritating wife, far away from the rain and biting cold of Edinburgh, far away from a slow decline into old age and back to – as close as he could reconstruct it – his youth. After all, you could do anything with money, just about. He knew he had some years left, and he intended to ensure that those years were going to be the best of his life.
He switched off the bedside light and turned on to his side. Outside, even at this late hour, cars swished through the wet slush. He could hear laughter and singing coming from late night revellers in the street.
Mike Strong closed his eyes. These were mere distractions. As always, he had the big picture in mind.
Though the Subaru was cold, Ginny Doig was able to switch the engine on from time to time, turn the heater to maximum. She’d found a rug tucked behind her seat, and was now wrapped in it. The hunting rifle was cradled to her breast like an infant. But her thoughts were far from maternal; rather those of hatred and revenge.
The vehicle was on a narrow forestry track amidst the trees that faced on to Thomson’s Hill. As she stared into the shadows, the bright moon illuminated the snow-covered cliff from which her husband had plunged to his death. It loomed like a ghost in the pale moonlight. Beyond, the sea shimmered, cold and black on this winter night.
Ginny Doig had seen many winters, maybe too many. She wasn’t particularly bothered if she saw any more. All that mattered was to rid herself for good of the daughter she so despised. She’d always known Alison was alive. Parents could tell instinctively, she was sure. So Ginny was also unsurprised when her runaway child returned. To her, it had always been inevitable.
She could see Nathaniel in her mind’s eye, standing with his arms outstretched, toppling slowly backwards to his death as the police had described in their written report.
He wouldn’t be the last person to meet their end before this business was over – not if she had anything to do with it.
She pictured her home, out of sight far below the cliff of Thomson’s Point. No smoke from the chimney this night. Her eldest son and her husband dead, her other sons in custody, there was nobody left to light the fire. As she drifted off, flames at the edge of the cliff spat and swirled in her dreams, while out at sea an unfortunate mariner saw the light and rejoiced, not knowing his end was nigh.
Alice Wenger was back at the Machrie House Hotel. A chink of light escaped the heavy curtains, shining directly on the corner where she had tried to save the fly from the spider’s web. She lay staring at the spot, draining the last drops of a glass of whisky. She didn’t often need something to help her sleep. But tonight – well, tonight things were different.
She’d packed up her belongings ready to head for the first home she’d known in the morning. She recalled its drab, damp misery; the ridiculous rules that her parents had made for her and her brothers. She could smell the rotting seaweed; hear the rats as they scratched in the walls at night; feel the cold damp sheets against her thin, frozen body, which could never find warmth. She could hear the summoning toll of Jeremiah’s bell.
The whisky soon did its job and sleep came. Alice tossed and turned as in her nightmare three pairs of arms held her down. But this was no surprise; she’d gone to sleep to that same horror every night for more than thirty years. It had long since lost its power over her.
Ella Scott was applying cold cream to her face as her husband struggled to untie his shoes. ‘You’re like an old man, all that puffing and blowing, Brian.’
‘I am
an old man.’
‘You’re in your fifties, man. Your uncle lived until he was eighty-five.’
‘Billy?’
‘Aye, Billy.’
‘The rest didnae dae very well – look at my faither!’
‘He’d a liver the size o’ a medicine ball! He drank the East End dry – aye, maist nights, tae.’
‘He liked you.’
‘He used tae call me Helen.’
‘He was getting on.’
‘He was forty-seven when I met him! He was puggled. His brain was like a sponge wae all the booze.’
‘You’re getting more hard-hearted the aulder you get, dae you know that?’
‘No’ hard-hearted enough no’ tae worry aboot what you’ll be doing tomorrow.’
‘I’ll be taking a back seat, Ella.’
‘You will? It’ll be the first time.’
‘They’ll have somebody fae the Tactical Firearms Unit babysit thon Wenger lassie.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
‘I dae what I have tae.’
‘Is it no’ time Jimmy put himsel’ in harm’s way?’
‘He just managed off that pontoon and nae mair. I think he’s had enough excitement for a while.’
‘What is it John Donald used tae call you?’
‘What did he no’ call me?’
‘Jimmy’s loyal wee dog – that was it.’
‘That was one o’ the nicer things he had tae say, aye.’
‘Brian, you’ll never learn.’
‘Och, I’m off tae sleep. I cannae be listening tae this pish.’
‘Sleep well.’
‘You too.’ There was silence for a few moments. ‘And I didnae run o’er that wee boy at the skiing. Just a bump, that was all. I was trying tae stop.’
‘You ran right intae him and the two o’ yous went hurtling doon the slope. You’re supposed tae have your skis in a V shape tae stop. Yours were like a pair o’ tram tracks.’
‘I couldnae control my legs!’
‘No’ for the first time, neithers.’
‘Right. Goodnight, Ella.’
‘You promise me you’ll stay oot o’ danger tomorrow.’
‘I’ll be sitting wae a cup o’ tae watching it all on some video feed. Mind I’m an inspector these days. Inspectors don’t get their hands dirty.’
‘No’ the ones called Brian Scott.’ She sighed, switched off the light and snuggled into her husband’s back. Though their bickering made it sound otherwise, she loved him to the ends of the earth. Then he began to snore, so she poked him just hard enough to rouse him sufficiently to stop the racket.
49
A grey dawn greeted the new Kinloch morning. The skies had cleared overnight making the lying snow and slush freeze into a treacherous surface for those earliest on the go.
Jay Blue the bakery driver was the first victim as he slid his length outside Black’s toy shop. He cursed as he got to his feet, damning the weather, as once more snow clouds gathered over the town.
Felicity Watson, who regarded herself as indestructible, left for her early morning run, only to find herself in Kinloch hospital with a fractured ankle, sustained when she slid on a patch of black ice and toppled over a bench on the seafront, much to the amusement of Charlie McLean the milk boy as he made his deliveries.
Jim Daley too was awake. He’d spent half the night sitting up in bed staring into the darkness. Not only did the nightmare haunt him; worries about his health and what was to happen later that day fought for prominence at the front of his mind. The nearer the clock ticked to seven, the more thoughts of Alice Wenger and Ginny Doig kept him awake.
Sick of trying to find sleep, he padded on bare feet across to the window. Throwing the curtains open wide, he was greeted by a scene from winter wonderland. What wasn’t still covered by yesterday’s snow was now coated in a blanket of hoar frost. The sky was filling in again, and already tiny flakes were beginning to fall.
He donned his dressing gown and headed for the shower, the reassuring low hum of the central heating easing his shivers. Nonetheless, as he towelled himself down, he could feel a knot in the pit of his stomach, and he noticed that his hand trembled as he tried to shave.
He opened the bathroom cabinet and sorted through various packets and small bottles until he had a collection of pills of varying shapes, sizes and colours in his large hand. A red and white capsule for his blood pressure and to help keep his heart pumping, a tiny pill to hold his pulse steady, a white one to counter the side-effects of the first two, tablets to make him pee. The list went on. But for Jim Daley, this was now his life.
He could picture Rowan Tree Cottage – or, as he preferred to think of it, Hamish’s black croft. He resolved to ensure that the papers contained within Nathaniel Doig’s metal box were all read and noted before the attempt to lure Ginny Doig and Vito Chiase to the remote dwelling began.
He hated the thought of this operation, and willed the skies to open and send a blizzard over south Kintyre. At least that would give him time to think, plot and perhaps persuade his superiors to dump their ridiculous plan. But back in the bedroom, as he dressed in a shirt, suit and tie, he saw only a flutter of snowflakes. The weather was bad enough to be a nuisance, but not bad enough to stop everything in its tracks. The worst of both worlds, he reckoned.
‘Coffee, Jim?’
Daley was startled by the question as he walked into the lounge. Liz was sitting at the dining table, nursing a steaming mug. ‘So you couldn’t sleep either?’
‘No, I couldn’t.’ Her voice was short and sharp.
‘I can’t help what I dream, Liz.’
‘Took me ages to get our son to sleep. Do you ever wonder what he thinks?’
‘I can barely remember anything from when I was that age, can you?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, that’s okay, then.’
‘I’m not doing this today. You know how I feel – you must know what I’m going to say.’
‘About me being a hypocrite, you mean?’
It was Daley’s turn to shrug, though he chose not to reply.
‘The difference is that those men – whatever – they didn’t mean anything to me.’
‘Oh, nice.’ The reply oozed sarcasm.
Liz persisted. ‘You loved her; you can’t deny it. You still do!’
He held his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. ‘I have a lot on my plate today. I’m buggered if I’m doing this shit before I even get to work.’ He left the room in search of his overcoat. Now he’d lost so much weight he felt the cold as never before – or maybe it was just another symptom of his heart problems.
‘That’s it, run away, as always. Let’s pretend there’s nothing wrong.’ Liz followed him into the hall.
He turned to face her. ‘Yes, I learned to be very good at pretending there was nothing wrong, remember? If you don’t recall, that happened every time I found out who you were sleeping with, every time I heard my colleagues sniggering as they passed me in a corridor, every night I waited up for you to come home with some lame excuse about where you’d been. I could smell the sex on you, Liz. Do not dare try to bring me to your level.’
‘This isn’t going to work. I’ve known it all along.’
‘What you really mean is you’ve done your bit, Jimmy. I can go back home and carry on where I left off. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t want to leave you!’
‘Well, what the fuck is wrong with you then?’
‘Apart from you pining for that dead girl, you mean?’
‘Yes, apart from that.’
‘Think about it for a minute, Jim. Do you really want our son to be brought up here – educated in the schools in this backwater?’
‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘Huh! Do I have to spell it out?’
Daley walked towards her, staring sadly into her eyes. ‘That’s your problem, Liz.’
‘What?’
‘You just can’t help
yourself. You’re a snob, plain and simple. You want our son to be a clone of you, or people like your brother-in-law. Pains in the arse; shallow bastards with letters after their name, but no soul.’
‘So it’s better to have letters before your name, DCI Daley?’
‘I’d rather that than be a rapist or a philanderer. My son stays with me.’
She shook her head and turned on her heel.
Daley opened the front door and headed into the frozen morning.
*
Symington was busy in her office when Daley knocked on the door. She looked grave when the DCI entered.
‘Problems, ma’am?’
‘The road is blocked at the Rest, and there’s no chopper because of the weather. It’s still much worse up there.’
‘Good. So we can put an end to this little charade.’
‘No, we go ahead, Jim. That comes from above. We have some extra manpower – enough, they reckon. We proceed with care, but the operation still has the green light.’
‘Ridiculous! It was bad enough before, but this is just madness.’
‘They want an end to this before anyone else gets killed.’
‘What about our officers? Let’s not forget we have a ruthless professional killer out there, not to mention a deranged woman who saw fit to stick knitting needles into her children’s eyes to make them pliant.’
‘My hands are tied, Jim. So are yours.’
He pulled up a seat at the desk that used to belong to John Donald, the man who had been so vivid in his dream the night before. ‘Okay, you tell me, then. Who, how and when?’
Brian Scott was tucking into a bacon roll and a large mug of coffee in Daley’s glass box when his friend pushed the door open, walked in, and slammed it shut behind him.
‘Trouble at mill, big man?’
‘Yup.’
‘When is there no’?’
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