‘Who is the Doctor?’ Annabelle remembered that terrifying vacancy in his eyes. ‘The little girl, Lily, is she related to him?’
Marcus paused, then glanced around the room. As if he wanted to talk but was wary somebody lurking in the corner of the room might overhear him.
‘We’re family,’ he said finally. Annabelle nodded slowly. The Doctor and Lily looked alike, but neither of them looked anything like Marcus. She remembered the way Lily had spoken so horribly to him, calling him a weirdo, telling him he shouldn’t be outside during the day. It occurred to her then that maybe Marcus didn’t get on with his family. Maybe they had more in common than she thought.
‘And Scott? You said he’s a friend?’
Marcus didn’t reply but looked down at his hands then pushed the amputated tip of his finger against his thumb. ‘We’re more alike than ever now – both amputees. We should start a club.’ He gave a little laugh.
‘What happened?’
‘Let’s just say you’re not the only one who needed the Doctor to operate on them.’
‘Were you in an accident?’
‘Only of my own making. Never a good idea to try taking a piece of bread from Granny Slate’s kitchen without asking. She caught it with a meat tenderiser and squashed it flat, back when they thought I was a girl.’
‘That’s awful.’ Annabelle remembered her mum shouting at her once when she had stolen some biscuits, threatening to take her to be adopted.
‘Lucky the Doctor was around to fix it,’ Marcus said with a fixed smile on his face. ‘These things happen in families, don’t they? And in a way you’re part of the family now too. The Doctor will want to get to know you much better soon.’
CHAPTER 53
Despite the phone number Bill Macdonald had given them, the search for Francis MacGregor became a classic example of frustrating detective work. Monica and the team were desperate to apprehend their only serious suspect, but it took time to access the records for the number. Then time, working late into the night, poring over maps of the Highlands, to find the locations of the towers the phone had connected to. Finally cross-referencing the records against properties associated with Francis MacGregor.
Monica eventually left the office at 3 a.m., frazzled by caffeine, her eyes stinging from staring at maps and lists of addresses. As she pulled the Volvo to a stop outside her flat she couldn’t help feeling the self-doubt familiar to any senior investigating officer. Had she gone too far to get the number from Bill Macdonald? Was the list of possible addresses a wild goose chase? Would they have been better pursuing other associates of Gall and Sinclair? Was there something huge and obvious right in front of them they were missing?
She got out of the Volvo and took a deep breath of the chill early-morning air, colder than it had been recently. She breathed out a cloud of vapour and tried to let the self-doubt escape with it. It was funny how fragile confidence could be, even after years of working on serious crimes. The magnitude of the job, the responsibility to the victims and their families could rise like a wave, come smashing down and leave you doubting every decision. Her first boss’s adage came into her mind: You’re only as good as your last case. Not something to bring comfort when her last case still gave her nightmares.
‘You’re tired,’ she whispered, suppressing the thought. ‘You should talk to Hately again. Get some support.’
She locked the Volvo and glanced around at the other vehicles in the car park, her hyper-vigilance of the past six months kicking in again. The rows of cars put her in mind of those creepy rusting heaps at the garage out at Little Arklow, and for some reason the first BMW, the one with the mascara and the touring map abandoned in it, came back to her. Something about it just niggled. She’d checked with Fisher that afternoon but it still hadn’t been moved to allow them to read the number on the chassis. They say they’ve been too tied up with the garage and Sinclair’s vehicle. They should get to it tomorrow.
Monica shrugged as she walked across the car park towards her block. It was probably nothing anyway.
CHAPTER 54
At some point the Doctor must have decided that she and Marcus had been punished enough because when she next opened her eyes the electricity had been turned back on. Marcus was sitting in his chair, reading the World War Two paperback again. She watched his fingers as he turned a page, the way he shifted his weight. Could she really bring herself to kill him? To ram Scott’s locking knife into his throat. She had already begun visualising the motion. Trying to imagine how it would feel when the knife broke through his skin. Because she really didn’t want to be part of the family; she didn’t want to get to know the Doctor.
Marcus glanced up at her, scowling. ‘What are you looking at?’ In her drug-addled state it didn’t seem unreasonable that he might be able to read her thoughts.
‘I need to use the bathroom.’
He sighed and closed the book, stood up. ‘Well, I’ll take you in the wheelchair this time, but next time you’ll have to use the crutches.’
For some reason the electric lights out in the main tunnel were still switched off. Their path was only lit by the glow of the torch Marcus carried round his neck. As he paused to open the battered bathroom door Marcus turned the torch away and Annabelle caught sight of another light, further down the corridor. She tilted her head to peer at the flickering glow, realising that it was a candle like the one by her bed. The light itself was not actually visible, as if it came from inside a room.
‘What’s down there?’ The medication had loosened her tongue.
‘Shh …’
‘It’s Scott, isn’t it? He’s still here, isn’t he?’
Marcus clicked the brake off and pushed the chair into the bathroom. ‘There’s nothing down there. Nothing that you need to think about at the moment anyway.’
‘He was screaming in pain.’
‘Do you want the Doctor to come and treat you again? You won’t be laughing then, will you?’ Marcus hissed at her. Even to Annabelle’s slightly drugged mind the fear in his voice was unmistakable. He pushed the chair roughly over to the toilet. ‘You’ll be able to get on there yourself now, won’t you?’ he snapped. ‘Now that you don’t have a broken leg any more.’
‘You’re scared of him too, aren’t you?’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think you want to be here either.’ The idea had the power of revelation, and Annabelle felt a new hope flicker. Maybe she didn’t have to kill him; maybe she could persuade him to leave with her? Suddenly the pieces fitted together in her head: the way Lily had spoken to him with contempt, the Doctor hitting him, Granny Slate crushing his finger. In a way he and Annabelle were the same, both at odds with their families, both prisoners. If Marcus wanted her to be part of his family, surely she could persuade him to get her out of here.
CHAPTER 55
‘What do you reckon?’ Crawford asked as he stopped the Volvo at a passing place just ahead of a rusty gate. A mile down a remote dirt track. The huge skies of the morning before outside Bill Macdonald’s house had been replaced by high grey cloud. A rare spring easterly, rolling in to chill away new life. Monica wiped her tired eyes and squinted through the greasy windscreen towards the buildings some thirty yards away. This was the seventh property Monica and Crawford had visited that day. A string of empty houses and flats so far. Fisher and Khan hadn’t had any more luck on their search. Chasing shadows while the trail of their double murderer seemed to drift away with that Siberian wind. Monica was starting to have serious concerns that she had spent the best part of two days steering the investigation down a blind alley.
‘We’ll check it out,’ she said finally, still staring down the track, which was flanked by dense stands of pine trees. Behind the red-brick farm buildings the hillside rose towards Ben Wyvis, the huge, ground-down mountain that dominated the view north from the centre of Inverness. But much nearer now, hovering ominously above as if closing in on them. This was one of the last properties on the list; MacGregor’s phone had connec
ted to a nearby tower just a handful of times.
Monica killed the music in the car. ‘If I Had a Heart’ by Fever Ray. Crawford had been playing it incessantly that day. An abrupt switch from his recent soul phase. It felt somehow appropriate for the search, after what they’d uncovered in the garage. But too close to the bone now. Too sinister, here under the mountain and the dark pines. She opened the car door and got out, Crawford made to get out himself then stopped, eyes fixed on the trees by the side of the track.
She followed his gaze up. A bull’s skull was attached to a tree trunk. A smear of red paint across the grey bone, reminiscent of the biker logo Crawford had pulled up in the Incident Room. There were more of the skulls, she realised, wired high among the trees every twenty feet or so up and down the track.
‘The Red Death,’ Monica muttered. They were close to MacGregor. Her doubts about the direction of the investigation were immediately washed away. Crawford got out and glanced warily around the trees, hands on hips. Projecting an authority that Monica herself certainly didn’t feel as she remembered the sprays of blood across the groundsheet. Lucy’s smiling face that morning. The pine trees and the skulls and the chill easterly sky.
‘We should go back to the road,’ Monica said, feeling those fingers of intuition, the ones she never ignored, tightening on her neck. ‘We should get armed backup.’
Crawford glanced at her and nodded. Obviously relieved himself.
‘I’ll put—’
A desperate sound broke the stillness and stopped him midsentence. It took a second before Monica understood that it was a scream. It was coming from the farmhouse. The sound of someone out of their mind begging for help. For long moments their eyes stayed locked together in shock before they simultaneously began to move. Crawford ran to the rusty gate and jerked it open and together they dashed towards the house, Monica glancing to either side at the farm outbuildings. Half expecting MacGregor to appear, mad eyes on fire. But there was nothing, no sign of life. Other than the screams, drifting off among the trees.
The front door was locked. Monica took a few steps back. The sounds were clearly coming from inside. The door was thick, solid oak, but to the side was a small window. Her eyes ran over the ground until they landed on the collapsed remnants of a drystone wall. She grabbed one of the stones, needing two hands to lift it, then threw it at the corner of the window. The double-glazed window cracked, a pattern of lines shooting across the pane. The screaming from inside stopped immediately and was replaced by an eerie silence. Just the sound of Crawford’s breath close by and her own pulse singing in her ears. She reached for the rock again and launched it at the damaged window. Repeated the action a second and third time until the glass was mostly gone.
Silence returned.
Monica turned to Crawford, about to ask him to put in a call for backup, when in the distance a sound started up. An engine. Then another two joined it. MacGregor was coming back. The two detectives remained frozen for a second, then Crawford moved first, hoisting himself through the now empty window frame. Using his leather jacket to protect his hands from the glass. The sound of the engines drew closer as he disappeared from sight inside the house. She turned to stare at the dense forest to the south. Quad bikes? Monica wondered. The engines were so loud it seemed they might burst from among the trees at any moment.
She swore under her breath. Eyes scanning the treeline. How the hell had they ended up in such a vulnerable position? Just the two of them, unarmed and miles from backup. She grabbed the phone from her pocket and quickly put a call in for all nearby officers. Behind her she heard the turn of a lock and two bolts being drawn back. The door swung open.
‘Jacket’s ruined,’ Crawford muttered, forcing a stressed half-smile onto his face. She managed to return his smile as she bustled in and pushed the door closed then bolted it. Inside the house was dark. The blinds were drawn, painting the place in a gloomy brown wash.
‘Where was it coming from?’
Crawford shook his head. ‘I’ll try the ground floor? You go up?’ Monica nodded and went for the stairs at the end of the hallway. She took them two at a time, her eyes falling on faded prints hanging on the walls. Agricultural images: cows, bulls, sheep. The upstairs landing ran off to the left and right from the stairs. Wooden floors and panelled walls. All painted in a shiny dark lacquer, lending it a curiously nightmarish quality. She caught the first hint of the smell too. A pungent earthy stink.
Her hand felt around for the switch, found it and clicked it on. Although the single bulb offered little light, Monica could now see that there were eight doorways off the corridor. All closed.
‘Hello?’ Her voice echoed back at her in the silent space. The engine sounds were muffled here, deep in the house. She tried again: ‘I can help you.’
This time she heard the ghost of a reply. Closer to a murmur of breath leaving a body than to a comprehensible word. The hair on the back of Monica’s neck stood up. The sound seemed to come from the far end of the corridor. She swallowed and stepped carefully along the passage, suddenly paranoid about potential traps. A shotgun on a tripwire or a false floorboard with a bed of nails underneath.
‘Is anyone there?!’ She raised her voice. Beneath her feet the floorboards creaked back at her. But there was no response to her shout. The sweat was standing out on her back when she reached the end of the corridor. The door was bolted shut with a key in the lock. She pressed her ear to the wood, holding her breath to hear. Still there was nothing though, just the smell. Much stronger now. Slowly she drew the bolt back. Then paused again to listen. Still nothing but the sound of those engines now, drawing ever closer. For a split second an image forced its way into her mind. The ghostly version of her father, on the other side of that door, his skin blue now, his teeth black as coal. Standing inches taller than her. Smiling. Monica blinked the picture away and turned the key. She pushed the door open.
The smell inside the room was overpowering. A putrid stink of decay, which someone had tried to mask with a strong floral perfume, making it only more nauseating. The room was darker than the rest of the house, almost pitch-black, its windows shuttered. Monica futilely held one hand over her nose and mouth, as she’d watched Crawford do two days before in the garage at Little Arklow, and with the other hand she reached for the light switch. Her fingers landed on the cold plastic. She caught the sound again. A murmur of breath in the enclosed space, very close to her now. She flicked the light on.
The woman was tied to the bed. Secured by straps around her arms and legs looped through metal rings on the headboard and bedposts. A blanket that must have been laid over her had fallen off into a heap on the floor. Monica stepped closer, the full horror of what she was looking at slowly dawning on her. The woman was naked, and the straps had rubbed her skin red raw. The smell was rising off her, as if her skin was slowly rotting, there where she lay.
‘I’m DI Monica Kennedy, a detective. You’re going to be OK,’ she said softly as she forced herself to step closer. ‘You’re going to be OK.’
In reply the woman’s head rolled to the side. The quad bikes – Monica recognised their high-pitched whine – were much closer now; they would be here any minute. Monica offered up a little prayer that backup would arrive soon.
The woman’s eyes locked on to Monica’s. Blue like the marbles she used to buy from the shop on the corner in the Marsh, and vacant. When she spoke her voice was cracked and dry. ‘Tell us,’ the woman said, clearly out of her mind. ‘Tell us what you know.’
CHAPTER 56
The engines stopped right outside the house. Monica forced herself to take the woman’s hand. It was unresponsive, hot and damp with sweat.
‘I’ll get you out, I promise,’ Monica whispered. In response the woman stared back vacantly and began to moan, her voice rising to the demented cry Monica and Crawford had heard from the gate.
‘The fuck happened here?’ A voice carried up from outside the house.
‘ … better fucking
not have been …’
Monica hurried to the door, pulled it closed on the woman and locked it. She stuffed the key into her pocket and quickly checked her phone for messages. There was still no news on their backup. She had already insisted that they needed support immediately; calling again wouldn’t make it come any faster. She dropped the phone back into the pocket of her coat. Lucy’s face came to mind. And her dream, a woman trapped in a room. Made real in this nightmare house. Slowly Monica made her way back along the dark corridor. Trying hard to keep the image of the two bodies on the autopsy table out of her mind. The gleefully horrible thought forced its way up in a rhyming couplet: Lucy’s dream came true, and now you’re trapped here too. Unarmed with a sadistic double murderer outside. You should have waited. You really should have waited. Maybe they’ll cut you up while you’re still alive. Like the other two.
‘Crawford! Where are you?’ she whispered as she reached the top of the stairs. There was no response. The voices were still outside the front door, though she couldn’t catch the words.
Should she hide? She glanced around at the hallway and staircase. Go into one of the rooms? Hide from them until the backup arrived? She hesitated. For some reason it felt like a very bad idea. She moved slowly down the staircase instead, crouching after a few steps to look through the broken window. Outside she could just make out the side and part of the leg of a man dressed in camouflage clothing. Her conscious mind understood what her subconscious had been grasping at. They had been hunting. They would be armed. They would hear the backup arriving and ambush them. The thoughts spun through her head. What then? Hide? Cancel the backup? Then they would find her, kill her. Or should she try to arrest them singlehanded? Her phone buzzed with a message. She reached for it. Crawford: ‘I’ve got a gun, keep them talking.’
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