The Night Hunter: An Anderson & Costello police procedural set in Scotland (An Anderson & Costello Mystery)

by Caro Ramsay

  It’s easier to nod.

  ‘And you had figured out that the link was Eric being the architect. Courtesy of Parnell’s firm, he got to know the movements of the victims, their running schedules. Gilly says she went out running and was grabbed on the back of the leg by the dog. Eric pretended to offer her help, a run home in the Land Rover. It was too late when she realized her mistake.

  ‘The clever thing is, she had no idea who Eric was. She had never set eyes on him until that moment. I bet none of the victims had. And that rules out Sophie, doesn’t it?’ Costello shivers although the hospital is hot. ‘Lorna had worked out the door trick. She nearly made it, brave girl. How did you work it out?’ she asks.

  ‘I saw the model at Eric’s.’ My mind is firing around for some semblance of the life I had before. ‘Mary?’

  ‘Fine, left the bastard. She was never abducted, of course – you guessed that. She just ran away from him and cut the chip out herself. Alex thought quickly, I’ll give him that. He turned the escape into a kidnap. Mary and Eddie had thought it through. She had packed a rucksack with a change of clothes and tore off those she wore as she ran. A few comments about Sophie running away gave her the idea, running from a situation she could not tolerate.’ Costello fills a plastic cup of water and offers it to me.

  I shake my head.

  ‘She said she was thinking of you as she ran. One of the best feelings she’d ever had. Freedom. Exhilaration. Can’t imagine what her life with Alex was like if running over a hill naked makes her feel better. But that Alex is a clever wee shit. He did the demand, he staged his own failed drop at the flashmob. Two of his security guys took the money down and put it in the hut where Eddie keeps the meter. He wanted to get Mary back and make himself a hero. All he needed was you to run with the idea that Mary was taken by the Night Hunter. Your love for Sophie would blind you. He knew McTiernan’s record, he knew Matilda would follow the clues, but Billy suspected it was all too easy – the DNA on the envelope, the stain. Billy was a good cop, he was a wily old fox. He said that envelope was a fricking map! Real crime is never that easy. So Alex sent us to bring Mary back and get Eddie arrested. Wrongly. I don’t like being used, especially not by that bastard. But he played you brilliantly. You were programmed to be a Lizzie, you had to go and save a Laura. But don’t worry. Mary and Vera are giving us enough evidence to charge him.’

  The sheets are warm, I am comfortable. But there is no peace. ‘Sophie?’

  ‘No sign of her, Elvie. We have carried out a sweep of the land; there are no areas of non-growth that might indicate where a body is buried. So Sophie is not up there. That might be good news.’

  She’s not convincing herself any more.

  ‘We’re going to try something else. It’s a technique called plucking at straws. We need your help and we need it now.’

  She is a wolf again. I nod. Although I don’t want this conversation.

  ‘Let’s start with Mark Laidlaw.’

  Piney aftershave, in my kitchen, my hand on the weight bringing it down on his head …

  ‘I’ve been chatting to Belinda at the refuge, she knew Mark well.’ I can read her, Costello is pretending to be conversational as she baits her trap. ‘Belinda says that Mark’s wife came to the refuge with a litany of complaints about Mark, just as he was attending hospital with the injuries she had given him, both as bad as each other.’

  ‘Billy thought the kid was drugged.’

  She was not to be side-tracked. ‘He was right. But we are talking about her dad. And Sophie only ever saw Mark to advise him of his rights. She was helping him through it, he had terrible communication skills and anger management issues. He was the sort of man that likes things black and white, unable to cope with change or subtleties. They were just friends, Elvie. Sophie was only trying to help him. Soph was good with people like him. She had coped with you all her life.’

  I am not going to fill this silence. I know the way he grasped my shoulders, I remember the violence in his eyes. He was going to hurt me. He was about to do the wrong thing. The weight was in my hand …

  I think she is finished but she takes a cup of water for herself and turns a new page in her notebook. ‘Do you think he just went up to the reservoir and sat there, thinking about Sophie? I bet she had become his anchor, one person he could rely on. Not so odd that he should sit where her car was found, thinking, not realising he was slowly dying, that little bleed in his brain …’

  Our eyes meet.

  ‘Then he lost consciousness, the car rolled. There is such a strong echo of Sophie – the car, the reservoir site. But Mark was a violent man; it’s not so strange that sooner or later somebody landed a fatal blow on him. He was very fond of Sophie, I think. Genuinely fond of her.’

  ‘So what did happen to Sophie?’

  ‘I need to show you something.’ Costello reluctantly pulls a large envelope from her handbag. Inside is a pile of photographs.

  ‘Here is a photograph of your sister. Have a look. What do you see?’

  It is the picture from my drawer at Ardno. ‘It’s Sophie, looking happy. At her party. Before she got upset.’

  ‘She’s not happy. She’s looking past the camera, to someone over the camera’s right shoulder, if you like.’ She covers my sister’s eyes with her hand. ‘That smile is frozen solid.’ She flicks that photo to the back. ‘This one is a close-up of Soph’s eye.’ The picture is now Sophie’s pupil, dark and swirling like a black hole in the heavens. I say nothing. Patterns in my sister’s big blue eyes gather into little diamonds of colour to form an image of the pub curtain, the brass rod, the price list. The reflections on the surface are as clear as looking through a window pane into the rain. More shadows out on the street, people walking by, some looking in. A face is appearing at the window, in a skip cap. It has a slight fish eye distortion from the curve of Sophie’s eye.

  ‘You have said yourself that she was a bit different these last few weeks.’ Costello does not give up. ‘Elvie, this is the picture of the person who put that look on your sister’s face. It’s the picture of the reflection in her eye.’ She shows me another picture, the image bigger, less defined, but the face is up at the curtain, looking right into the pub, right at my sister. There is a beanie hat, sunglasses, a short wispy beard shaved in stripes.

  ‘And we both know who that is, behind those glasses? And that hat?’

  I know. I think I have known all along.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elvie.’

  I close my eyes.

  ‘I had to show you that otherwise none of this will make sense.’ She pulls her hair back, checking that I am OK. Her voice drops. ‘When we tested Sophie’s dressing gown, we found Grant’s semen. It shows that some kind of sexual activity took place much earlier.’ Her hand rests over mine.

  I open my eyes and look at the ceiling.

  ‘Your mum wasn’t as unaware as you think: she knew something was going on. Your mum and Rod tried to keep them apart but they just couldn’t separate them. They were trying to protect your sister but Sophie thought she could help Grant and just kept coming back for more.’

  ‘That sounds like Sophie, thought she could solve the problems of the world with her smile.’

  ‘Well, Rod suspected the depth of Grant’s obsession. That’s why they tried to send him to America, but he made sure that was not going to happen. In the end, he raped her.’ She sighs. ‘So it’s no wonder Sophie ran.’

  I keep my eyes on the ceiling, concentrating on the dirt gathering in the corner of the light fitting. This is all wrong.

  ‘Rod was doing his best, Elvie, whatever that was. He’s sorry if he got it wrong but he had no idea what to do. He followed her around, making sure that Grant was not where she was. And Sophie, she must have been terrified that Grant would walk into her party and declare his undying love for her. Sophie had no real place to go, so she ran. Rod sent us the ankh to keep us focused on the misdirection. The whole Facebook campaign was a …’

  I i
gnore her, hearing Sophie. Her words slam into my head. I think I’m going to have to disappear. I have to go away. I shake my head, and the pain in my cheek rattles through my skull. My mum saying, Can’t you leave Sophie alone?

  Costello is missing the point. I stare into her cold grey eyes. ‘So where is my sister?’

  The doctor comes in and smiles in that way we were taught to when we are about to give bad news and someone is looking. She is thinking about sitting down but Costello has nicked the chair. The pasty-looking nurse slides into the corner behind her like a forgotten schoolchild.

  ‘Miss McCulloch. Can I call you Elvira?’ The doc tilts her head on one side. She has very shiny brown hair and that healthy-looking olive skin that means she never has to try too hard. I think that if I was some poor bugger up on the cancer ward, vomiting rings round myself and devoid of my hair and my dignity, I would kill the bitch.

  ‘You can call me Elvie. Are you going to tell me how long I can keep being called Miss?’ That’ll wipe the smile from her face.

  Her professional concerned smile does indeed vanish, to be replaced by a small, girly twist of the lips. ‘We were thinking either you had a very poor sense of self-awareness or your medical training had gone badly wrong. But then your GP confirmed he had taken bloods and given you medication to see you through until the appointment with the endocrinologist. An appointment you never kept. You haven’t been taking the medication either. Your testosterone level is through the roof for a female. Why are you not taking it, Elvie?’

  ‘I’ve had other things to worry about.’

  She purses her lips, a flick of the file.

  ‘I like things in black and white. So tell me, please. Straight. Say something like you have a tumour, Elvie.’

  ‘You have a tumour, Elvie. Not untreatable, though.’

  I lie back and look at the ceiling.

  ‘There are tests we still have to do but you are well, peculiar … You have two types of DNA. This is difficult to explain …’

  ‘No. So I am two people. If I have two types of DNA, then I had a …’ I run through the options. There are not many, and only one that I would not already know about. ‘Heterozygous twin?’

  ‘That’s what we think.’

  ‘That is rare.’

  ‘Maybe not as rare as you think. But the fact the twin is exerting itself now? That is very rare, so much so we’re keeping you our little secret. There are some doctors at Edinburgh Royal who are doing a study on this and here you are on their doorstep. I have phoned them, for best treatment protocol.’

  I take this in, trying to think logically. ‘So in utero I was a twin. The twin that became me absorbed its sibling into my body. So I have their tissue as well as mine. And it was a he. I’m male as well as female – is that it?’

  ‘Indeed.’ She gives me a well done smile; she’ll be patting my head soon. ‘Your cells multiplied at a normal rate and his did not. As you put it, you absorbed him. But some of his cells remain and have now started to multiply; they’re producing testosterone and that is causing you the problems.’ She is very pretty, she is lovely. We both have sallow skin and big brown eyes; we both have strong features. She reminds me of how I used to be. She looks at her clipboard. ‘It’s the presence of these cells that is giving you the acne, the muscle bulk, the hair growth. But you know all that.’ Her fine fingers touch her smooth jawline, where I know my own has too much dark, downy hair. ‘The treatment isn’t difficult; we have you on a hormone drip as you can’t be trusted with oral meds.’

  ‘What about this?’ I pat my head.

  ‘You had a slight concussion. More worrying is the damage to your cardiac muscle, but once the testosterone and adrenaline are down to normal levels it will cease to be under so much pressure. And keep away from stress, no more running round hills.’ She glances at her clipboard again. ‘You need to get some rest now. I’ll see you on my rounds tomorrow. We’ll talk through your options then.’

  She slides out of the room and takes her soft-soled little pal with her.

  ONE MONTH LATER

  It feels strange to be lying in Sophie’s bed back at Mum’s house. I’ve been in hospital for nearly a month and I am supposed to be better. The shiny doctor thinks that what I need now is more time with my family. She is off her head. It’s three in the morning, I am still not sleeping.

  The game might have changed but it is not over.

  I have to keep my eye on Grant, he is not in a good place. Mum and Rod go round on tiptoes. Their story is that Sophie has run away because she needed to be free of Grant. But her liberation has been my incarceration. What Sophie suffered at the hands of our brother is unclear but the police have their hands tied, there is no complaining witness, just a missing person. Costello agrees with Rod, Grant needs treatment more than anything else. Mum, Rod and I, we are all trying to deal with it.

  I wish Billy was here, he would have a plan, even if that plan was making it up as he went along.

  I hear a familiar noise – Rod going to the loo, no doubt. He doesn’t sleep well either. But the horror of the past few weeks is slowly winding down. I do regret Mark’s death, but he gave me no option. If I was put in that situation again, I would do the same thing. It’s not him I am losing sleep over. Lorna has been laid to rest. Gillian’s family has been reunited. Magda, still beautiful and enigmatic, had been found living in London, alive and well. Some PR guru has signed her up; her looks and her story are a titillating combination. The blonde in the drawer was talking; she was a Norwegian student called Carla Holmen and her family had flown over from Trondheim to be with her. She had asked to see me before she left hospital. No hurry there, she will take a long time to heal.

  Nobody knows anything about Katrine, the Girl on the Hill. Somewhere there might be a sister looking for her. I think that disturbs me more than anything, because I am back at square one. I still don’t know where my sister is.

  The creeping round the house goes on. Whoever it is, they’re going along the landing to my old room, the one that is now an office. I think I hear them go down the stairs but I hear no noises from the kitchen.

  I get up and glance out over our back garden and into Eric’s. The first light is tingling on the horizon and I can see his garden is getting overgrown now. When Eric was down here working away, building fountains and water clocks, those women were going through hell locked up in the dark, terrified that he would return. Terrified that he would not. They were alone, naked, waiting for food and water, grateful for any little morsel that came their way.

  Yet Sophie was here in the family home, enduring some hell of her own.

  I look over the bottom of the garden, wondering what will happen to it now that Eric has gone. The house is up for sale. The lower flower beds are crowded with growth, the water in the ornamental pool is shimmering in the darkness. The four upper flower beds are symmetrical – almost. I notice that one of them is almost bald, bare earth. Did Eric have other plans for it? The last time I recall it was as lush as the others. But when did I last look out of this window?

  Four flower beds.

  One devoid of growth.

  I see a movement in the lower end of the garden, bloody Grant again. He has sneaked out the side door; he’s doing his weird sleepwalking thing again.

  I watch as he walks into the middle of the lawn, naked. I expect him to sit down and cry as he usually does, but he keeps moving, walking in his strange way – arms at his side, his legs moving with a languid drift as if he is not on the ground at all. I lean my forehead against the glass to watch. He climbs over the gate into Eric’s garden and is hidden from view by the wall before he reappears at the flower beds up at the ornamental pool. I get an uneasy feeling about what he is about to do.

  But still I watch him.

  This is like watching a train wreck.

  He walks to the side of the water with the grace of an angel. He is quite beautiful in the moonlight. Standing between the two marble pillars, his body becomes a p
erfect sculpture, and the moonlight catches the fine features of his face. He steps into the water, then kneels down and looks up to the sky. Clasping his hands in prayer, he leans forward until he is lying face down in the water. He stays very still, floating with his arms out now in supplication.

  I start to count. By a slow count of thirty he has not shifted.

  By a slow count of sixty I am beside him.

  I step into the cold water, in my bare feet. There is no reaction.

  I think my brother is dead, that he has given himself the peace that he desires. I reach out to touch his shoulder; my wee brother’s skin is cold and wet to my touch. Then, suddenly, his shoulders rise towards me as he straightens his arms; the power takes me by surprise as he punches himself free of the water. He stares at me. We are inches apart.

  It seems like a good time to ask. ‘So, how did you kill Sophie?’

  His voice is clear, clearer than I have heard it in ages. ‘I think you mean, why did I kill Sophie?’

  ‘No, I mean how? You have no justification for it.’

  His eyes flick to the raised flower bed, then my wee brother is back, his intelligence is sharp in those blue eyes. ‘She rejected me. It was always just her and you, fuck’s sake. Never looked at me. So I snapped her.’ He clicks his fingers.

  I try to process what he has said, where he looked.

  ‘I really hate you,’ he says in good humour. ‘And I really loved her. But she had to die. Why are you still here, you sad, ugly fuck? Why did you not just move out and leave us alone? That’s what we wanted. That’s what Sophie wanted. Why did you not stay in your flat? Out of our lives?’ I don’t see his fist come up, but I feel the pain in my chin as something fractures, my teeth rattle and I taste blood. I try to spin round but he learned from the same book I did and catches my ankle, flipping me on to the wall of the pond. I feel a blow on the back of my head, and the stars dance. My mouth and nose fill with grass as I am hauled backwards, then I feel my knees scrape concrete. He is dragging me into the pond. I put my arms down to stop my face going under, bracing myself against the silt at the bottom of the water. Then his foot is between my shoulder blades.