by Lin Anderson
Where the hell was he?
He strove to interrogate his brain but it refused to respond. He had all the intelligence of an amoeba. He could move his body parts a little but think he could not do. He was dumb and dumber.
Then he heard it. A moan.
He reached up with his right hand and felt something soft like a cover. He stretched a little further and found flesh. It was an arm, hanging off a bed. He attempted to rise. His limbs felt numb and he couldn’t feel his knees against what he now knew was a metal floor. His world suddenly shook and rattled, then threw him to the right like a fairground ride. He grabbed at the bed and the limp arm swung loosely against him.
He felt for the figure on the bed and knew quickly that it was female. Somewhere in his head he recalled that he was looking for a female and imagined for a moment it was Iona, then Rhona’s face appeared before him. The hallucination was so powerful, he gasped. When it passed he tried to focus on the face in the dark. He ran his fingers over the nose, eyes and jawline.
He was looking for a girl.
His voice appeared from nowhere and said the number five. Something about the number five was important. The fairground ride dipped and he slumped back onto the floor, hitting his head a glancing blow, yet feeling no pain. A wave of euphoria hit him and he no longer cared that he was on a ride in the fair with a woman in the dark.
Then the fairground ride stopped.
69
The thin one was growing jittery, his jaw moving like an old man missing his teeth. The other two were less affected. The booze they’d consumed had seemingly dulled their need in the short term, or else they weren’t so far down the road as he was.
Rhona rose from the couch.
‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’
‘The toilet.’
‘Like fuck you are. Sit down.’
‘Please,’ she tried.
He studied her from behind heavy lids then nodded. ‘Leave the door open.’ He motioned to one of the other two. ‘Watch her.’
Rhona walked swiftly to the toilet, her eye catching sight of her mobile outside the bathroom door. She nudged it inside as she entered, then tried to close the door, but a foot stopped her. Conceding defeat, she allowed it to stay open a fraction, pocketed the mobile, then ran the tap at a rate that sounded like someone urinating, flushed the toilet and made a big show of washing one hand while she rummaged in the cabinet with the other. The first object she fingered turned out to be a razor, its protective cover rendering it useless as a weapon.
It wasn’t until the third shelf that she found something useful. The nail scissors were small but sharp. She’d just grasped them when the door was thrown open.
‘Out! Now!’
Rhona exited and headed back into the sitting room where the skinny one was pacing and muttering.
‘We could try him again,’ Rhona suggested.
‘Maybe he likes the gear more than you,’ he said sneeringly.
‘Or maybe he never had the holdall in the first place.’
He tried to process that idea. ‘No way. The fat guy told us he saw him take it.’
‘Steve Munro lied because he was threatened by Josh Kearney.’
He tried to compute this and couldn’t. All his brain could think about was his next fix. He suddenly made a lunge at her, knocking her back onto the couch. Then he was on her, his sinewy arm tearing at her clothes. Rhona did not fight back but concentrated on positioning the scissors in her hand.
She waited until his fly was down and his penis emerging, before she stabbed at his testicles. The reaction was instantaneous. He literally flew off her, screaming abuse, then started to dance, cradling his balls, as blood spurted between his fingers.
Open-mouthed, the other two stared at him in disbelief. Rhona took advantage of their consternation and made a dash for the toilet. In the background the skinny one was screaming like a banshee. Telling them to get the bitch and slit her throat.
She was back inside before they sprang into action. She’d already spotted that the lock was an old-fashioned turnkey, with a brass handle. It would hold longer than a modern bolt. She hoped it would be long enough.
She shouted her 999 call over the pounding of the door.
70
The photograph was of a woman lying spreadeagled and face down, a man lying on top of her. Both were naked, their faces turned from the camera, but Magnus was in no doubt who they were. The photo looked as though it had been taken in a dark room, but a mock stone circle had been digitally sketched around the bodies.
Below was the caption: Buried in plain sight.
Kearney was mocking them. He had no intention of killing them at a Neolithic site. Or, if he did, he had already left the city again, taking his victims with him.
Magnus studied some of the online attempts to guess the next location. Most, to his mind, were nonsense, but others had validity. Some had even worked out the sacred pentagram aspect and were suggesting the police head for the islands of Iona and Lindisfarne on the east–west baseline of the five-sided figure.
One gamester was convinced the puppetmaster was headed for the centre of the pentagram, an island in the middle of Loch Moy, south of Inverness. The island was heavily wooded, with an ancient history. Lying at the centre of the sacred pentagram meant the energy lines met there.
Magnus gave this credence for all of five minutes until he discovered how difficult it would be to transfer two bodies by boat onto an island, miles off the main A9 road.
He stopped looking at other people’s solutions and tried to think of one of his own. To his mind the perpetrator would want to finish the game at a stone circle, but he could only do that if he left Glasgow.
Then again, his obsession with McNab seemed to be centred round his mother, her imprisonment and suicide, which he apparently blamed the detective for. According to an update from DI Wilson, they’d checked Kearney’s family home and were pretty certain that’s where the two men had arranged to meet. That Kearney had chosen the location where it’d all begun, seemed important.
The uncle’s house was also being forensically examined, in the assumption that Kearney had hidden the van in the lock-up on his return to Glasgow. What forensics couldn’t tell them was where Kearney and McNab were now.
Magnus studied the caption again. ‘Buried in plain sight’ was a common enough phrase, but what did it mean in the context of Kearney’s psychology? If he was right and it had something to do with the death of Kearney’s mother, then the word ‘buried’ had a secondary meaning.
Understanding came in a flashback. He’d been examining the photographs taken in the Kearney kitchen. He’d focussed on the mother staring at the posy of flowers on the window ledge. He’d thought she was trying to blot out the scene of her creation – the body of her husband, her distraught son, desperate in his eagerness to take the blame.
Suddenly Magnus knew what he’d missed, because it had been in plain sight.
The photograph that showed the posy of flowers on the kitchen windowsill, had also shown something else.
‘I’ve seen the photos,’ Bill said. ‘It’s definitely McNab and the girl Helena. The Tech department think it was taken inside his van. They were able to make out some computer equipment in the background.’
‘I’m talking about the photographs taken in the kitchen …’ Magnus hesitated, ‘on the day of the murder.’
‘What about them?’
‘I only just remembered. Through the window I saw a hill and on it was what looked like a cemetery.’
‘Sighthill cemetery lies behind the house,’ Bill said, puzzled. ‘It’s called that because of the view from the highest point.’
Magnus hesitated. ‘It’s just, the recent photographs posted online had the caption “Buried in plain sight”.’
A moment’s silence fell as DI Wilson realized the possible importance of this.
‘If Kearney’s mother is buried there,’ Magnus said, ‘that could be a mea
ningful location to end the game.’
71
This was where the idea had come to him. This was the place where he’d decided to create the game. Focussing on writing the game had kept the demons at bay. Living in a Druid past had made his present bearable.
The Druids believed in sacrifice. That there was no life without death. At first he had been content to make the deaths merely symbolic, a drug-induced unconsciousness from which the player would eventually awake, but it hadn’t worked out that way. The first one had died, and it seemed so right, so clean, when that happened, that it was inevitable the others would follow.
Those who live by the game must die by the game.
He chose the stone with the white cross, and sat down, his back against it. It was still warm from the day’s sunshine, although clouds now amassed on the horizon. He could taste moisture on his lips. The rain would come soon and wash all evidence of him from this place.
Between the hill and the southern watches of the city, the lights of the motorway linking east to west streamed past in parallel lines. Up here, he was safely encircled by the stones, their energy encompassing him.
He roused himself. The girl was slim and light and, in her current state, easy to drag. The man would be more difficult. Even the power of the drugs wasn’t enough to prevent him fighting his way back to consciousness. The man they called McNab was the enemy, yet at times he felt like a version of himself.
Josh stood up and walked the short distance to the parked van.
72
They had given up at the sound of the sirens. When she’d opened the bathroom door they’d gone, although the place still reeked of them. The skinny one had dripped blood everywhere, but he wouldn’t die from his injury, although sex might be a problem for a while. Rhona had smiled at the thought.
She’d refused any treatment from the paramedics. There was nothing wrong with her, apart from a slapped cheek which had resulted in bruising and some puffiness. She’d got off lightly, no thanks to McNab. Once again he’d asked her to come and meet him here, then left her in the shit. It was getting to become a habit.
Back in her own car, she tried both numbers he’d used to call her. Neither answered. As she rang off, a call came through from Bill, who’d obviously been told about her incarceration.
‘What the hell happened?’ he said.
‘McNab texted me to meet him at his place. When I turned up he wasn’t there but a trio looking for the holdall was. Have you found him yet?’
‘We’re on our way to Sighthill cemetery.’
Rhona’s heart stopped. ‘Why?’
‘Magnus thinks Kearney’s going there and he has McNab and Helena in the van.’
‘Alive?’ she said.
‘We don’t know.’
She swore under her breath. It was always like this with McNab. Her fear for him was mixed with fury. Why the hell did he always have to play the hard man and go it alone?
‘I’ll meet you there,’ she said.
As she joined the motorway, a flash of lightning lit up the distant outline of Cathkin Braes. Another downpour, she realized, was inevitable after the heat and humidity they’d endured over the past week. Sure enough, moments later, the first drops of rain met her windscreen. Rhona turned the wipers to fast as, shortly after, the heavens opened. The stream of cars started to slow as the drivers struggled to make out the road in front of them.
Rhona applied the brakes as the tail lights in front flashed.
Minutes later the line of vehicles drew to a grinding halt.
She tapped the wheel impatiently. If she had been in a police car, they could have put on the siren and taken to the hard shoulder. She would give it five minutes and if they hadn’t started moving by then she would take to the hard shoulder anyway.
The deluge resounded on the roof in a deafening roar. Peering out the driver’s window, the motorway seemed to undulate as surface water quickly accumulated.
She put the car into neutral, turned off the engine and called Bill. There was no answer, so she tried Magnus. When he responded, she could barely hear his voice above the rain.
‘We’re about ten minutes away, making slow progress,’ he said.
Rhona couldn’t even claim to be that close.
‘Bill’s called for back-up from the Air Support Unit, but they’re out west. Could be an hour before they can get there.’
Rhona asked the question that had been puzzling her. ‘Why do you think he’s going to Sighthill cemetery?’
She listened in distress to the news that a photograph of McNab and Helena had been posted online along with the caption, ‘Buried in plain sight’.
‘He drew a stone circle round the bodies,’ Magnus said.
‘Then why the cemetery?’ she asked.
‘His mother’s buried there and …’
Rhona cut him off, knowing he was wrong. So wrong. ‘He’s not going to the cemetery, he’s headed for the stone circle.’
‘What stone circle?’
‘Sighthill stone circle. It was built in the late seventies. An academic experiment in constructing a modern stone circle that reflected the astronomical layout of the ancient ones. When the Tories came into power, funding was cut and it was never finished. Most people don’t even know it exists.’
She could sense Magnus’s bewilderment. ‘Buried in plain sight,’ he muttered.
‘Where are you exactly?’ Rhona demanded.
‘Almost at the cemetery.’
‘You’ll have to double back. The circle’s just north of the M8 motorway in Sighthill Park. I’m closer than you are.’
She heard him mutter something to Bill, then he came back on.
‘Bill’s sending the other car to the cemetery. We’ll double back and meet you.’ His voice fizzled out as the pounding rain took over.
Rhona put the car into gear, indicated, and drew onto the hard shoulder. A chorus of horns sounded their annoyance as she swept past. She didn’t think she had missed the exit that would allow her access to Sighthill Park. From there she could wind her way up to the top of the hill where the stones were located. How far she would get by car she wasn’t sure.
Peering through the windscreen, her wipers going full pelt, she ignored the angry faces and honking horns and concentrated only on locating the exit. Cars lined the slipway. Rhona swept past them too.
The dark row of trees and bushes that hid the motorway from the park came into view. The rain was easing as she located the entrance. After the lights of the motorway, the single-track road was almost pitch black, dense foliage catching at the car on either side.
Her memory of the hill and the stone circle was sketchy. Her one and only visit had been with an old friend, whose astronomical knowledge had been sought when the place was being planned. She’d been astounded by the level of scientific thought that had gone into the placing of the stones. From what she recalled, there had been fifteen stones to mark various important dates in the astronomical calendar, including the summer and winter solstices, at both sunrise and sunset, and a central stone. Three further stones had been delivered but had never been raised. When Mrs Thatcher came into power the project had been immediately cancelled, because she deemed it ludicrous. There had been moves since to restore it, then she’d heard more recently that it was to be removed altogether to make way for a development.
The road took a sudden turn and she braked, before noting a side track that appeared to climb the hill. Rhona engaged a lower gear and followed it, more slowly this time. The trees melted away as she crested the hill and spotted the jagged outline of the stones set against a purple-red horizon. Thunder still rolled, although the storm had moved further away now, to the north.
Rhona stopped the car and got out.
If Kearney’s van was still here, there was no sign of it. She grabbed her high-beamed torch and set off for the stones.
73
The rain had slowed things a little, but he’d welcomed it nonetheless, because pelti
ng rain would discourage any night-time visitors to the place to drink and have sex among the stones. It would also delay any pursuers, if they’d been clever enough to work out where he might head with his captives. Even as he considered this, he knew that McNab had been nearest to his own way of thinking, and McNab was close to death in the back of the van.
He turned off the narrow road and dimmed his lights, then did a three-point turn and reversed. The track led into woodland, mature enough to shield his presence until daylight at least. Raindrops still pattered the roof from the overhead branches, but the clouds hadn’t parted to allow the moon to shine through. Perfect.
He shut off the engine and doused the lights.
Excitement beat in the nerve at the corner of his mouth as he opened the back door.
McNab was aware he lay with a woman, but in his dreamlike state drifted between pleasure at this, and horror. At its worst moment, the nightmare had him coupling with Iona as a corpse – or was he the corpse and she the living being? At times almost lucid, he fought his way towards the surface and knew that he was in a drugged state. At that moment he knew himself capable of something terrible in his anger. When the drug reclaimed him he was almost grateful.
But its power was lessening and reality returning.
He rolled off the woman, his head sent spinning by the movement. Instinct took his finger to seek for and find a faint pulse in her neck, although her skin was clammy to the touch. The moving darkness told him he was in the back of a vehicle, probably the van that had sent him off the road, and he was seized again by the claustrophobic memory of the sinking car and the weight of the water crushing the air from his lungs.
McNab forced himself to breathe in the stale air, to attempt to slow his heartbeat which seemed to have an erratic life of its own. He began to feel around the surfaces for a weapon of any kind, knowing that his best weapon would be surprise.
The pig still lay on top of the woman. He considered whether the dead weight might have suffocated her and there would be no need to inject her further. As he stood by the door studying them, he knew instinctively that the man was conscious.
‘If you move, even a fraction, I will inject her foot with a fatal dose.’