by Lin Anderson
The pig had heard him, because his breathing changed, a little, but enough.
The van dipped as he entered, and her arm dropped free of her body and hung there. He could feel the pig tense, though he strove hard not to show it.
His own movement was swift and practised and the needle found an entry point behind the right knee. The man tried to wrench the leg back, but too late.
He exited and re-locked the door. Unsure how much he had managed to inject, he would have to wait.
McNab writhed on the floor, his arms and legs knocking against the bed and a chair. Much better to be shot or knived than to be rendered useless by this creeping sensation as the drug overtook him. He began to thrash, not from choice because his body was no longer his own. Then it came again, that sense of freedom and oblivion. A place where he no longer cared, about himself or anyone else.
A man, arms and legs outstretched within a circle. Lines from the head, feet and hands criss-crossed to make a five-pointed star. The image symbolized many things. Man’s place in the universe, Jesus’s death on the cross. The head, pierced hands and feet, were the points on the circumference of the circle, within the sacred pentagram.
He had kept the single point at the top. There was nothing sacrilegious in his offering. Those who had died sacrificed themselves to the common good.
The man he placed to the north, the woman south of the central stone, their fingers touching. Their moans as he impaled them were only a whisper on the wind that had sprung up after the storm. He stood for a moment before photographing the scene. In that moment the hidden moon chose to show herself, casting her rays over his handiwork.
It seemed to him that his work had been sanctified.
She stumbled as she reached the summit, dreading what she would find there. Moonlight encased the stones, the circle reflected by its light so that it appeared to dance with energy. An aurora borealis of stone.
Approaching, Rhona encountered such a powerful force of energy that she was stopped in her tracks. As a scientist she had no evidence to believe in the energy lines that such places signalled or created, but she felt it now, or else her fear fuelled it.
As she stepped inside the circle, the central stone seemed to shimmer. Then she saw them. The image that Magnus had first shown her, only doubled.
Two naked bodies. Male and female. Spreadeagled within the circle, fingertips touching.
It was a scene from heaven. Or a scene from hell.
As she sprang through the stones, she tripped, caught by a wire strung out between them. She fell, hitting the ground hard enough to drive the breath from her body, the torch flying ahead to bounce and extinguish. As she struggled to rise, the weight of a man’s body drove her flat against the ground, his hands on her shoulders.
He bent his face to hers. ‘You worked it out.’ He sounded surprised.
Rhona tried to draw breath. ‘The police are on their way.’
He gave a harsh laugh. ‘They won’t get here in time to save you, or them.’
Rhona let her limbs go lax. There was no point in physically fighting him. She had to engage him, delay him, until Bill and Magnus arrived. It was an old trick but, played well, might yet win the game.
His hands moved to encircle her neck.
‘Tell me why your mother killed herself.’
His hands faltered then tightened their grip on her throat.
‘That bastard,’ he motioned to the pale, lifeless form that was McNab, ‘killed her.’
‘Your mother tried to save you from your father.’
His laugh came from hell itself. ‘I did what he asked. That night. I did what he told me.’
Rhona had no idea what he meant, but kept on, nonetheless.
‘You did it to save her,’ she tried.
‘No, to please me.’
His fingers tightened and she choked, trying to drag in air. Even as she strove to remain conscious, she could see, in her mind’s eye, the marks of his fingers on Iona’s pale throat.
Focussed on her neck, he’d forsaken her hands. Rhona withdrew McNab’s scissors from her pocket and thrust them into his side with as much force as she could muster.
She felt the points pierce the cotton of the T-shirt, then his skin.
He grunted, the force and power she’d used impacting. Reaching for his side, he loosened his grip on her neck.
Coughing and spluttering, Rhona attempted to scramble out of reach. He grabbed at her leg to pull her back, and she twisted round and lashed out. The scissor points sliced down his cheek. He screamed an obscenity and threw himself, full bodied, at her.
It was what she’d hoped for.
As he fell, she aimed the point at his neck.
74
His cheek cushioned by grass and earth, his eyes focussed on a moonlit sky, spreadeagled in supplication, he felt no pain, although he was aware that both his outstretched arms were pinned to the ground.
And in that moment, he understood everything about who he truly was. Why he was here. What he had done, and what he would do in the future.
The epiphany lasted seconds, before reality swept back in, swiftly followed by a searing pain that set his hands aflame. His first instinct was to drag them free from the earth, which proved easy to do but made the pain worse.
He uttered every obscenity he could imagine and more, as he pulled out the two nails. On his knees now, he was suddenly aware of the body that lay opposite him in the moonlight on the other side of the central stone.
He crawled towards her.
Pale as a spectre, her lips blue, her skin mottled, he knew she was dead before he felt her neck in search of a pulse. He gently pulled out the nails from the finely boned hands, knowing there was nothing more he could do to help her.
He forced himself to rise as the circle of stones wavered and spun round him like an hallucinogenic fairground ride. Then he heard a voice call his name.
A voice he thought was Rhona’s, yet knew it couldn’t be.
The voice called again.
He traced it to the southern edge of the circle and made out a large shadow on the grass. McNab forced his legs to move in that direction.
She was pinned to the ground by a body he recognized. Kearney’s face nestled in the crook of her neck, like a lover’s.
McNab made to pull him off.
‘No,’ she shouted. ‘He’s bleeding. If the scissors come out of his neck, we’ll lose him. What about Helena?’
‘Dead,’ he said in a dull voice.
She looked stricken. ‘Bill will be here soon. Sit with me.’
McNab did as bid. He reached out and took her free hand. It was cold to the touch. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it.
‘Are you okay?’ he said, knowing what had to happen before the others appeared.
She nodded and Josh Kearney’s head moved a little as though in agreement. An image too terrible for McNab to bear.
He clasped her free hand tightly, then reached for the one that held the scissors in place.
‘No,’ she shouted, trying to free herself to fight McNab off, without success.
He pulled out the scissors, then rolled Kearney’s body off her. The trickle from the artery became a spurt, falling like red rain on the wet grass while McNab watched.
75
One month later
‘It’s a ridiculous idea,’ Rhona said.
Chrissy shrugged. ‘I think it’s a great idea. People have divorce parties. Why not a demotion party?’
Rhona swore under her breath. ‘Where is this party?’
‘I thought Sean would have told you. At the jazz club. Everyone’s invited. You are going?’
‘No way,’ Rhona said with gusto.
Chrissy’s face fell. ‘Look what happened the last time you rejected McNab.’
‘You are not going to blame me for that,’ Rhona said stoutly.
‘Well, it’s tonight after work. Bill’s going to be there.’
‘What?’ Rhona continued to
voice her annoyed amazement that such a thing as a party to celebrate your demotion should ever happen.
There was a moment’s silence as Chrissy interpreted her response.
‘McNab fucked up,’ she said. ‘He didn’t kill anybody.’
Rhona looked quickly away, but it wasn’t swift enough for Chrissy.
‘Did he?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Rhona said. ‘Now let me get on with some work.’
Chrissy flounced out.
Rhona had avoided McNab like the plague since the events at the Sighthill stone circle. He had tried calling her mobile. Had even turned up at her flat one night. She hadn’t answered the phone or the door. If they didn’t discuss it, she could maybe make herself believe it hadn’t happened. McNab had been drugged and half dead. She had been terrified and injured. Everything after she fell into the stone circle was a blur. She had tried to convince herself of that fact, and failed.
She could not, therefore, meet McNab’s eyes.
Chrissy made one last attempt to persuade her before she left for the jazz club.
‘What the hell’s he done?’
Rhona couldn’t bring herself to answer. When Chrissy departed, she made herself coffee and tried to drown herself in report writing.
She never heard him enter the lab. Engrossed in her report, she first realized he was present when he said her name.
‘How did you get in here?’ she said sharply.
‘Harry on security thinks you’ve forgotten there’s a party on tonight.’ He paused. ‘I came to escort you there.’
‘I’m working.’
He stood for a moment, nonplussed. It wasn’t a demeanour she was used to seeing with McNab.
‘I’m back where I belong,’ he said.
‘In prison, for murder?’ she fired back.
‘Kearney killed five people, but he was trying for seven, including you and me. And you were keeping him alive.’ By his tone he wasn’t asking her forgiveness.
‘I can’t work with you again,’ she said.
‘I said that once to you, remember?’
‘What you did was wrong.’
‘Then tell the boss.’
When she hesitated, he said, ‘Okay, if you can’t bring yourself to, I will, if it makes you happy.’
‘You can never make me happy,’ she said.
Her remark cut him. She could tell. She wanted to take it back but couldn’t.
‘Where does all this leave us then?’ he said.
‘Exactly where we were before. Nowhere.’
He nodded and made to leave. At the door he turned back.
‘I’ll speak to the boss tomorrow, tell him I removed the scissors from Kearney’s neck – if you come with me now.’
She fought herself, unsure what to do.
‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow.’
She heard his firm step in the corridor walking away from her. That’s it, she thought. That was always it.
Her mobile rang. She glanced at the screen to find Sean’s name. She answered.
‘Hi, beautiful. Coming to the party?’
‘I will if you come for me,’ she said.
76
The spiritualist church had greatly increased its membership, judging by the size of the Sunday-morning audience. The warning given by the first victim to his mother had been picked up by the press. Coupled with the online frenzied interest in the search for Stonewarrior, it had sparked a debate about online gaming, stone circles, spiritualism and the afterlife. Which was why Magnus was here.
He still didn’t understand how Patrick Menzies had known of Alan’s murder before anyone else. Nor how he was able to warn the police that those who played the online game with Alan were also in danger.
He had interviewed Menzies after Josh Kearney’s body had been recovered from inside the modern stone circle. Menzies had indicated that he was already aware that the perpetrator was dead. That Amy MacKenzie had had a message from her son to that effect. Since the news had been released almost immediately, that didn’t surprise Magnus.
Yet, here he was, still trying to understand what Menzies was all about.
The hymn had drawn to a close. Magnus had stood and mumbled the words under his breath, but had chosen not to sing, although the sound of so many voices resounded in his head, reminding him again of church services in St Magnus Cathedral when he was a schoolboy. Hymn completed, the audience took to their seats in excited anticipation as the medium appeared on stage.
Menzies wore that same apologetic air, as though he couldn’t believe he had been chosen to do such work. His expression and the soft sound of his voice grated on Magnus. He fought to free himself from preconceptions. If he wanted to study the psychological power of these events, he had to remain objective.
Menzies scanned the audience and Magnus imagined his eyes lit up at the size of it. He welcomed them and gave his little speech about getting in contact with the deceased, and how he could not summon someone to talk to a bereaved relative.
Then his head twitched left and he nodded. ‘God Bless,’ he said, and listened.
Magnus was surprised to find himself impatient to hear who would be singled out. By the expressions on those around him, they felt the same.
‘Is there a Magnus Pirie in the room?’
A hushed silence followed his question as Magnus suddenly registered that it was his name that had been called.
When he didn’t raise his hand, Menzies looked directly at him. ‘Mr Pirie?’
All eyes turned on Magnus.
Suddenly he wished himself anywhere but here. He understood for the first time how Amy MacKenzie must have felt when she too had been singled out.
‘Yes,’ he said, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘I have a message for you, from Morvan.’
‘I don’t know anyone of that name,’ Magnus said quickly.
Menzies ignored his response and listened again to his invisible visitor.
‘Her message is that you should not feed the gulls.’
Magnus’s stomach lurched as he realized why the name Morvan had seemed familiar. It was the avatar of the girl on his jetty. How could Menzies have known about her visit? How could he have known about her dangerous baiting of the gull?
Magnus waited for more, but Menzies’ interest had left him. Once again the medium was listening to a silent voice at his left shoulder. A voice not destined for Magnus.
Paths of the Dead
Lin Anderson has published several novels and one novella featuring forensic expert Dr Rhona MacLeod, which have been widely translated. Her short story Dead Close was chosen for the Best of British Crime 2011 and is currently in development as a feature film. Also a screenwriter, her film River Child won a student BAFTA and the Celtic Film Festival best fiction award. Currently Chair of the Society of Authors in Scotland, she is also co-founder of Bloody Scotland, Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival.
By Lin Anderson
Driftnet
Torch
Deadly Code
Dark Flight
Easy Kill
Final Cut
The Reborn
Picture Her Dead
Paths of the Dead
NOVELLA
Blood Red Roses
First published 2014 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2014 by Pan Books
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ISBN 978-1-4472-4571-1
Copyright © Lin Anderson 2014
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Neolithic stones © Joe Cornish / Getty Images
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