by R. D. Nixon
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she whispered, and looked frantically around for Maddy.
Just to be sure, she went over to the desk. ‘Excuse me, were those two men looking for a Mr Stein?’ she asked. The receptionist hesitated, but that was enough. ‘Never mind.’
She reached the door in time to see the Discovery pulling out of the car park, turning onto the main street, and she hissed in frustration.
‘Bloody hell, Maddy, where are you?’
‘Here,’ Maddy answered, appearing at her elbow. ‘I’m sorry, it was too risky letting them see—’
‘Look, Stein’s already gone, and they know where he is, which means they’re about to find Jamie. We’ll never catch up now; there’s no point trying.’ Despair crept into her voice. ‘What are we going to do? Mackenzie could only tell us it’s on the Wallaces’ estate.’
‘Which is massive.’ Maddy chewed the inside of her lip. ‘Have you tried calling him back yet?’
‘I’ve got no phone, and I don’t know his number anyway.’
‘I’ll do it now.’
But after a moment she ended the call. ‘Not answering. Not gone straight to voicemail either, so he must just be out of signal.’
‘So what now?’ Charis knew she sounded whining and helpless, but her re-awoken fears for Jamie, and now for Mackenzie, were getting in the way. She literally couldn’t think straight; it was all tumbled and twisted, and all she wanted to do was hide until it was all right again.
‘Doohan,’ Maddy said, suddenly decisive. ‘We call him, and get him to tell us whatever it was that he told Paul. Come on, the number’s at the office.’
‘Well why the hell didn’t we do that before?’ Charis followed her out to her car at a run.
‘There was no need before!’ Maddy shot back. ‘Just shut up and get in.’
While Maddy searched among the papers on her desk, Charis borrowed her phone and kept trying Mackenzie’s mobile, to no avail. Maddy found Doohan’s number dialled it on the desk phone. ‘Recorded message,’ she reported. ‘Currently a fault at the number, and engineers are working to correct it. We’ll just have to go out there ourselves. The address is in my phone. Wait for me then!’
Maddy grabbed her car keys and caught up with Charis on the stairs. She took back her phone, and found the message in her sent folder before passing it back. ‘That’s the address.’
‘Ayonatch view, Spean Bridge,’ Charis read aloud, hurrying to catch up again as they went out onto the street.
‘We generally say Annock, but that’s it.’ Maddy slid behind the wheel of a grubby and dented Corsa. ‘Paul had a fairly good start on Bradley and his mate, so there’s a good chance he’s already reached the cottage, found Jamie, and set him free.’
Charis felt a flare of hope. ‘D’you think so?’
‘Well, we don’t know how far up in the hills the cottage is,’ Maddy pointed out, ‘but Stein made it back to Abergarry in pretty short time last night.’
‘Yeah, he did.’ Charis buckled her belt with trembling fingers. ‘God, I hope you’re right. It does make sense, doesn’t it? I wish Mackenzie’d call though.’
‘He’ll be in touch soon enough. I just hope he’s out of danger himself.’
The road went on forever, and Charis’s eyes strained past Maddy in the driving seat, through the trees on their right. ‘There!’ She saw Maddy jump and the car slowed. ‘Behind those trees. I can just see the chimney. There must be an entrance just up here – slow down!’
‘I can’t go much slower!’ Maddy shifted down another gear, and after a moment they turned in to where a small gateway led into a larger yard. There was no car parked outside; maybe he kept it in the big shed? He’d certainly need some kind of transport, living all the way out here. Charis looked at the wet ground and her spirits slumped; there were two sets of tyre marks in the muddy yard – one set was doubtless the usual resting place for whatever vehicle Doohan owned.
‘Maybe someone else took his car out,’ she ventured. ‘Family?’
But the hope was short-lived. Maddy knocked loudly on the front door, and then louder still, calling Doohan’s name and getting no response. Charis grew restless and went around to the back, peering through the old-fashioned sash window into a kitchen that looked as though a rhino had been let loose in it. She selected a sharp-edged stone from those scattered around, just as Maddy came around the side of the house, her eyes widening.
‘Don’t you dare!’
‘Sod this pussy-footing around.’ Charis shielded her eyes in the crook of her elbow. ‘If he knows where Jamie is, I’m getting in there.’ She smashed the glass and just managed to hold on to the rock, with which she began knocking out ugly shards that stuck out from the wooden frame.
‘Don’t be stupid! What good will that do if he’s not there?’
‘And you the intrepid detective?’ Charis gave a derisive snort as she tossed the stone away. ‘He might have got a map out to show Mackenzie, or drawn a quick plan to describe the area, anything.’ She fumbled inside and released the catch, and ran the broken window up on its cord. ‘You stay here if you like.’
‘Bugger that,’ Maddy said. She stepped forward and made a stirrup to boost Charis up.
There were no maps, no hurriedly drawn plans, nothing at all to see except total devastation. Charis stared around in dismay; what had happened here? She pushed at some twists of newspaper that littered the floor near the fireplace, evidently from inside the decorative fire surround that had pulled away from the wall. The only thing that appeared deliberately placed, in the entire room, was a phone directory that lay open on the one chair that remained upright.
‘Who still has these?’ she mused. ‘More to the point, why’s he looking up numbers, when his phone’s not working?’
Maddy crossed to the book and put one hand on the open page to stop it flicking closed again. Then she crouched beside it and studied the page.
‘He wasn’t,’ she said at last. ‘He was looking for an address.’
‘What address?’
‘He’s been checking out nursing homes, look. He’s an old friend of Paul’s dad, so I found out the other day, and The Heathers is listed right here. This looks like too much of a coincidence to be one; Paul’s being here must have sent him to Frank for some reason. Now we know where to find him, if we’re quick.’
Following blindly, Charis felt hope propelling her onward again. She and Maddy raced to the car, and Maddy had pulled away before Charis even got the strap of her safety belt across her shoulder.
‘Why’s he in a home?’ Charis said, holding on to the door and closing her eyes as Maddy swerved along the lane.
‘Stroke. Years ago, when Paul and his brother were very young. The lads went to live with their grandmother since there was no other family.’ Maddy hit the little hump-backed bridge with a jolt, and Charis swore under her breath, but saw the light of determination on Maddy’s face and decided to keep quiet about the woman’s driving skills; at least they were moving, and fast.
The Heathers was midway between Doohan’s house at Spean Bridge and Abergarry, and as they turned up the long driveway Charis felt herself tensing up, ready to leap out the moment the car stopped.
The house was large, and seemed more like a hotel than a hospital, with its beautifully maintained gardens and wide, sweeping entrance.
Inside was plush and quiet; only the occasional glimpse of a white coat gave away the underlying medical nature of the place. Maddy went up to the desk, and a moment later she returned, accompanied by a nurse, who regarded at them both with interest.
‘He’s got someone with him at present. Nothing wrong, I hope?’
‘No,’ Maddy said briskly. ‘Is the visitor a Mr Doohan?’
‘I can’t tell you...’ The nurse checked herself, looking at Maddy’s uniform. ‘Aye, that’s him.’ Her curiosity clearly roused even further, the nurse nevertheless forbore to ask any more questions and led them through the halls for what seemed like miles,
then tapped gently at one of the doors.
‘Well now, Frank, here’s someone else to see you.’ She stepped aside to allow Maddy and Charis to enter, and her reluctance to leave might have been amusing under different circumstances.
‘Well, just press the buzzer if it all gets too much,’ she said at length, and drifted away as Maddy and Charis went in. The two men were not friends – that much was clear; maybe they had been once, but the tension in the air now was thick enough to taste. Mackenzie the elder, recognisable immediately by his broad stature, sat up straight in his chair by the window. Rob Doohan was at the far end of the room with a canvas bag at his feet, an angry kind of desperation twisting his face and making him look far older than he probably was.
‘We don’t need the police,’ he said, at sight of Maddy. ‘I’ve done my time, aye? So you can—’
‘Shut up, Rob.’ Mackenzie shook his head irritably. ‘It’s just Paul’s…friend.’
‘Mr Doohan?’ Charis crossed the room quickly to stand directly in front of him, commanding his full attention. ‘I need your help. Please.’
Doohan had jerked as she spoke his name, and when he turned she was alarmed to see his collar stained with blood, and a large white pad behind his left ear. ‘Help? How can I? I don’t even know you.’ But she saw something in his expression that told her things were clicking into place in his mind, and that while he might not know her personally, he definitely knew who she was.
‘Yes,’ she said, trying to control the shaking in her voice. ‘It’s my son who’s been...taken. You told Mackenzie where the cottage was, and we—’
‘He’s told me nothing!’ Mackenzie protested. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘Not you, Mr Mackenzie,’ Maddy put in. ‘Paul.’
Mackenzie senior glared at Doohan. ‘You’ve been here hardly two minutes, and so far all you’ve done is babble your filthy apologies and bring this rabble of screeching women with you. You’ve done your worst; you’ve stolen my life and left me alone these past thirty years. Now get out.’
‘Listen, Mick—’
‘Don’t call me that!’ Mackenzie went white, and he gripped the arms of his chair. ‘Nobody calls me that any more. You think you did your time? You didn’t. I’m doing your time for you! You put me here – you stole what was mine. I’ve got nothing left. Nothing!’
‘Hush, Mr Mackenzie, please,’ Maddy said in what Charis assumed was her best soothing tone. ‘Don’t excite yourself—’
‘Don’t excite myself? Don’t excite myself?’ Mackenzie turned on her, his colour returning. ‘Don’t you dare come into my room and tell me how to behave!’
‘Shut up!’ Charis turned on him furiously. ‘You have no idea…’ She stopped, realising she was shouting at a helpless old man. But he didn’t look helpless, not at all. Maybe he couldn’t walk, maybe the stroke had rendered him dependant in a lot of ways she couldn’t see, but helpless? Never. The eyes fixed on hers were hard and bright in the suddenly hushed room.
‘Who. The hell. Are you?’ Each word clipped off through tight lips, a jaw set like iron. She closed her eyes briefly, fighting the frustration, and prepared to explain, but she didn’t get beyond a deep breath.
‘Glenlowrie.’ Doohan said in a low voice. ‘The Wallaces’ place.’
‘Duncan?’ Mackenzie looked puzzled now. ‘What’s anything got to do with him? He’s been dead twenty-odd—’
‘He was the one who had the third share of the collection, Mick,’ Doohan said. He picked up the bag at his feet and came closer. ‘He was the one kept the Fury.’ He turned to Charis. ‘There’s a cottage on the estate, where Duncan’s daughter Sarah used to play…’
Charis seized a much-thumbed atlas from the pocket in the car door and searched the index. Maddy had torn off her high-vis jacket and body armour and thrown it into the back seat, and now she followed it with the distinctive black and white tie. ‘Can’t risk getting stopped in that get-up.’
‘Haven’t you got a sat-nav?’ Charis asked, her eyes crossing as she tried to make out the tiny lines on the map.
‘The agency has one, but it’s broken. Wouldn’t do any good where we’re going anyway; most of the smaller roads aren’t mapped yet, and these estate roads definitely not. Maybe Google maps on my phone will help though, if we think we’re going adrift.’
They headed out of Abergarry again. Maddy’s driving still frightened the life out of Charis, especially once they got onto the narrow road that wound up into the mountains, but it didn’t seem to matter now; very soon she would see Jamie again. The atlas open on her lap, she tried to follow with her finger roughly where they were going, and with the other hand she held onto the car door for dear life. They had left the two old men finally talking to each other in a more civilised fashion, and she realised now that Doohan was risking a great deal just by being there; there was no way he’d have been able to prove he hadn’t known—
‘Bloody tourists!’ Maddy slowed down to crawl past a car, parked haphazardly by the side of the narrow road and taking up half of it. ‘What the hell?’ She slammed on the brakes as a loud hammering on the roof made them both jerk in shock. Charis gasped and clutched at the seat belt as it pulled suddenly tight across her chest and clamped off her breath. She released it, allowing herself to move again, and with a remote feeling of disbelief, she recognised the ‘tourist’.
‘Daniel!’
‘Your ex?’
‘Just drive on,’ Charis urged. ‘God knows what he’s doing up here, but we haven’t got time to find out.’
Daniel crossed to stand in front of the car, and Charis lowered her window an inch so she could shout through it. ‘Don’t hold us up, we’re going to get Jamie!’
‘I hope you’re not expecting to meet your biker boyfriend as well, because it’d be such a waste of time if you were.’ Something about the way he said it made Charis go very still. She exchanged a glance with Maddy and lowered the window further.
‘What are you saying?’
He came around to lean into the car. ‘I can tell you where he is though, if you like?’ Charis didn’t trust herself to speak, but she didn’t have to; it was clear from his expression that he couldn’t wait to pass on his news.
‘Right at this moment,’ Daniel looked over his shoulder and then back at Charis, ‘at this very moment, Mr Mackenzie is lying at the bottom of a very steep hill, with his head on backwards.’
Charis’s vision clouded. ‘What?’
‘He had a nasty accident on his big boy’s bike, and took a bit of a tumble. I saw the whole thing, and I was honest to God just on my way to report it.’ He flashed a grin. ‘He went too fast on a bend and wheeeee...’ Daniel mimed graceful flight, then clapped his hands together. Charis heard her own wordless moan; she felt dry, hollowed out with disbelief, but Daniel’s face held no hint of a lie, cruel or otherwise. He had seen it. He knew. Paul Mackenzie was dead.
Daniel jerked her door open, and she cried out in shock as it wrenched at her fingers. There was no time for an equally stunned Maddy to floor the accelerator before Daniel yanked Charis out of her seat. He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him; too close for her to raise her knee and ram it home, even if she had possessed the strength to do it. She dimly heard Maddy’s car door open.
‘Stay where you are!’ She couldn’t be responsible for anyone else being hurt, and Daniel wouldn’t think twice – she knew that without any flicker of doubt. ‘Don’t get out!’
Daniel’s hand slipped around the back of her neck and gripped tight, sending flares of pain right down to her feet. ‘I know it’s a rotten shame about the biker boy, but now there’s nothing to keep you here, you can come home with me, can’t you?’
‘Aren’t you forgetting your son?’ she managed, through lips that felt as if someone were working them for her.
‘The kid will be okay. He’s just off adventuring. The police will bring him home to us. Home, Charis!’ His voice took on a persuasive urgency, almost wheedlin
g. ‘Liverpool! Not here, not in this fucking stupid...wilderness.’
‘Are you lying about Mackenzie?’ she whispered. She’d hate him for it, but at least her heart would beat again.
‘No, I’m not lying. I’m actually sort of sorry for him. Look, I didn’t like the bloke, but I didn’t want him dead either. Still, when your time’s up, you—’
‘You bastard.’
‘Hey, I just report the news.’
Charis stared at him in bewildered fury; she had shared this man’s bed, his life, borne his child, and now she would have given anything to be holding something, anything, to strike with. She’d kill him. Her expression must have conveyed this, and his eyes narrowed, glancing quickly over her to make sure she had nothing she could use as a weapon. Evidently seeing no threat, he relaxed a little, and now the old Daniel was back. He smiled, and it looked real. He touched her face, and it was gentle.
‘Charis?’ Maddy’s voice held a warning note.
‘Stay there, Maddy!’
Daniel’s smile softened. ‘Come home, Charis-with-a-c-h. You don’t belong here.’ He started to pull her towards his own car, and for a split second she acquiesced, but only until his grip loosened in surprise. Then she jerked her arm out of his grasp and flung herself at him, catching him off guard; she heard the low panting as she struck him time after time, and dimly she wondered why she wasn’t screaming. But her hate was too bright, her grief too sharp to allow that kind of relief – she wanted to hurt Daniel, and all her energy was going into that.
He was starting to fight back, the shock worn off now, and a punch caught her along the jaw. She didn’t even feel the pain, but she stumbled under the impact, knowing he’d not pulled the blow. It would hurt later, but later was something that happened to other people. Now was all there was; this moment, and her desperate need to tear this man apart. She reached for his eyes, trying to dig at them, to rip them from their sockets, to gouge, tear and destroy.