New Year’s Eve. The loneliest night of the year, even if you’re with people. Even before my life fell apart I remember that. There’s always that worry that you’re maybe not having quite as much of a good time as you could be. As you should be. And this year, the sound of all the fun the Londoners were having – even if I had told myself I didn’t envy any of them – didn’t help. So I’d had quite a lot more to drink than usual: forgetting that trying to get drunk to assuage loneliness only ever makes you feel lonelier than before.
When I’d staggered into the bathroom at whatever time it was – five, six? – I was in no fit state to be sure of what I had seen, or even whether I really witnessed anything at all. And I can’t tell her any of this. Because then I’d have to admit just how drunk I really was. And then what? a little voice asks. You’d have to admit you aren’t the capable, forthright person you’re pretending to be? You’d lose her trust? I am reminded once again that for all her questions about what I might have noticed, her pretence of putting me in a position of responsibility until she arrives, I am one of the thirteen who were here that night. I, too, am a suspect.
‘You’ve gone quiet on me there, Heather,’ DCI Alison Querry says. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes,’ I say. My voice sounds small, uncertain. ‘I’m still here.’
‘Good. Well, let’s keep in touch. Any questions, I’m here. Anything that occurs to you, don’t hesitate to pick up the phone.’
‘Of course.’
‘I will be there as soon as possible. In the meantime, it sounds like you have a very capable grip on things.’
‘Thank you.’ Ha. I remember my sister, Fi: ‘Sometimes it’s OK not to put a brave face on things, Heaths. It can do more harm than good, in the end, keeping everything bottled up.’
‘And I’ll be in touch very shortly with an estimate of timings,’ DCI Querry says, ‘when we think we’ll be able to get the chopper out. We just need this snow to ease off enough for safe flying conditions.’
What do we do until then? I wonder. Just wait here in the falling snow with the spectre of death just outside the door?
And then I ask it, even though I know I probably won’t get an answer. ‘The case you’ve been seconded to,’ I say, ‘which one is it?’
A short pause. When she next speaks her tone is less friendly, more official. ‘I’ll let you know that information if and when it becomes necessary to do so.’
But she doesn’t need to tell me. I’m fairly certain I know. The body, the way it looked. I’ve read about it in the papers. It would have been impossible not to. He has his own chokehold over the nation’s imagination. His own title, even. The Highland Ripper.
Three days earlier
30th December 2018
KATIE
It’s nearly two-thirty in the morning. I’m just wondering if it’s late enough that I could slink away to my cabin without being called a buzz kill, when Miranda flops down next to me on the sofa. ‘Feel like I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you this evening,’ she says. Then she lowers her voice. ‘I’ve just managed to escape Samira. Honestly, I love her dearly, but all she can talk about these days is that baby. It’s actually a bit – well, it’s a bit bloody insensitive, to be honest.’
‘What do you mean?’
She frowns. ‘I can’t even remember if I told you last time I saw you – it’s been ages. But …’ she lowers her voice even further, to a whisper, ‘we’ve been trying, you know …’
‘To get—’
‘Pregnant, yes. I mean, it’s early days and everything. Everyone says it takes a while.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Except Samira, apparently – she says she got magically knocked up the second she came off the pill.’
‘I suppose it’s different for everyone.’
‘Yes. I mean, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, to be honest. It’s the end of everything, isn’t it? Life as we know it. Look at those two. But it’s like … I don’t know, suddenly it’s a rite of passage. Every single person I know on Facebook seems to have a kid, or has one in the oven … it’s like this sudden epidemic of fertility. Do you know what I mean?’
I nod. ‘I stopped checking Facebook a while ago, to be honest. It’s toxic.’
‘Yes, toxic!’ she says, eagerly. ‘That’s it, exactly. God, it’s so refreshing talking to you, K. You’re out of all of it – single, doing your own thing … so far away from even thinking of kids.’
‘Yup,’ I say, swallowing past something that seems to be stuck in my throat. ‘That’s me.’
‘Sorry,’ she says, with sudden sensitivity, ‘I meant that as a compliment.’
‘It’s OK,’ I say – the lump in my throat’s still there. ‘I understand.’
‘Look – I’ve got something that will cheer us up.’ She winks at me, and fishes something from the pocket of her jeans. Then she calls out to the others: ‘Does anyone want any pudding?’
‘You baked?’ Nick asks, in mock surprise. ‘Never remember you being much into your cooking, Miranda.’ This is an understatement – which I’m sure is his point. Miranda is a terrible cook. I remember a particularly awful risotto where half the rice had stuck to the bottom of the pan and burned black.
‘But we’ve had some,’ Giles says, quickly. ‘That meringue and raspberry thing at the dinner.’
Miranda grins, wickedly. Now she is the Miranda of university days, the undisputed chief party queen. She has that gleam to her eyes: something between excitement and mania. It sends a jolt of adrenaline through me, just as it did so many years ago. When Miranda is like this she is fun, but also dangerous.
‘This is a bit different,’ she says, holding aloft a little plastic Ziploc bag, a rattle of small white pills inside. ‘Let’s call them our “after dinner mints”. Like a palate cleanser. And for old time’s sake … in the spirit of our all being here together.’
I know immediately that I can’t take one – I can’t handle the loss of control. The one time I did it went horribly wrong.
Ibiza. Our early twenties. A big group. I hadn’t actually been invited, the organiser was someone I’d never known very well at Oxford (read: he didn’t consider me cool enough to invite along to any of the famously debauched parties he held). But the week before the holiday, Miranda’s granny had died, and she sold her place to me, for a discount. Julien was going, and Samira and Mark, and lots of others who have long since fallen away. I’m not sure I could remember many of their names even if I particularly wanted to try.
I liked the long, lazy lunches by the pool. The evenings drinking rosé, getting a tan, reading my book. What I wasn’t so keen on was the part of the evening when the pills came out, and everyone looked at me – when I refused – like I was a parent who’d come along to spoil everyone’s fun. And then they would descend into lesser versions of themselves – hysterical, uninhibited, huge-pupilled: like animals. If only they could have seen themselves, I thought. At the same time, I felt uptight, boring: a poor replacement for Miranda. Samira – always with the ‘in’ crowd – took me to one side and told me: ‘You just need to loosen up a bit.’
By the end of the week, they would hardly get up at all during the day. The house had become disgusting. Everywhere you stood there seemed to be dirty clothes, beer cans, used condoms, even puddles of vomit half-heartedly cleaned up. I was on the point of booking a flight home. This was meant to be a holiday, for God’s sake. A respite from the job where I was working eighty-hour weeks. I knew that I would be going back feeling tired, sullied, and angry. But I stuck it out. I found a bit of terrace just out of sight of the main house. I dragged a sunbed there and I spent the last few days reading. At least I’d get a proper tan, finish my book: a simulacrum of what you were meant to do on holiday. At least I’d look – to all my colleagues, my family – like I’d had a good time.
On the last night, by some miracle, everyone mastered the energy to put together a barbecue like the ones we’d had at the beginning of the week, before they all ruined themselves. I drank quite a lot of cava, and then some more. In the candlelight, looking at everyone’s faces, and the dark turquoise glimmer of the sea, I wondered how I could possibly have decided I wasn’t having a good time. This was what it meant to be young, wasn’t it?