‘Take your hand out of your fucking pocket.’ He reaches roughly into my jacket and grabs hold of the radio. He looks at it for a couple of seconds, in mute rage, and then throws it at the wall with more force than I would have thought a man of his size capable of. It falls to the stone floor with a clatter, and in two pieces.
Now he comes at me with a roll of gaffer tape, and roughly binds my wrists, so hard that the bones bruise against one another, and my ankles. While he’s down by my feet I test the bonds around my hands. I can’t move them at all. He might as well have bound them together with a metal chain for all the give the gaffer tape has. I could try to kick him in the head, I think, while he’s crouched there. But I’m not sure I could get enough force into my legs. He’s not a big man, Iain, but he’s strong enough: all the work he does on the estate. And if I just hurt him slightly, not enough to hinder him – which is the most likely outcome of this – he will only kill me quicker.
Iain stands up, looking proud of his work. Then there is a sudden, deafening bang. He pitches forward, with a look of slack-jawed surprise, and lands on top of me, the rifle clattering to the floor. I can’t make sense of what has just happened. I can’t see anything, either, because he’s on top of me. And then I realise that the front of my grey jacket is wet with dark red blood.
One day earlier
New Year’s Day 2019
MIRANDA
I can’t believe the gamekeeper rejected me. The humiliation of it, when I had thought it might make me feel a bit better about myself.
The pain of it all winds me. I fold over on myself as if someone has actually punched me in the gut, and let myself sink to the ground. The sting of the sharp pebbles beneath my knees feels oddly right, so does the cold on my skin – though it doesn’t feel cold, it feels like fire. I must look completely absurd, kneeling here in my gold dress and stiletto heels. And perhaps it’s just because I’m aware of what a state I must appear … but I have the sudden strange, animal feeling that I’m not alone.
As I look about me I catch a shiver of movement in the trees near the loch. I could have sworn I saw the dark shape of something – someone – in the darkness of the pines. I’m certain now. Someone else is out here with me. Oh, whatever. I don’t care. Normally, I might be unnerved. But nothing can shock me as much as what I just saw, in that sauna.
No doubt my observer, in the trees, is very much enjoying my little display. I think of the Icelandic man’s grin when I spotted them in the woods, his beckoning hand.
‘Go on,’ I shout, into the silence. ‘Get a good long look. See if I fucking care.’
Emma, I think. I’ll go and see Emma. I need to talk to someone. With any luck, Mark is still passed out on the couch in the sitting room of the Lodge. I check through the windows. Yes, he’s there, spreadeagled on his back.
I knock on the door of their cabin. Silence. It’s after four in the morning, after all. I try again. Finally, the door swings open. Emma stands there frowning, looking groggy. She’s in pyjamas: silk, piped ones, not dissimilar to my own set.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Hi, Manda.’
I normally flinch when she calls me that. It sounds too try-hard. Only Julien and Katie really use it, the two people closest to me. No, the irony of that is not lost on me.
‘Can I come in?’ I ask.
‘Sure.’ No questions, no hesitation. I feel a sharp stab of guilt for the way I’ve been with her. She has only ever been nice to me, while, at times, I’ve behaved like such a bitch – showing her up in front of the others, excluding her. Well, from now on everything is going to be different. I’m going to be different.
I follow her inside. It’s almost the same design as ours: the one large room, the armchairs and fireplace, the big four-poster, the dressing table – even the stag’s head mounted on the wall. The major difference is that it’s pin neat, like stepping into an alternative reality. Our belongings are scattered everywhere, we’ve always been such slobs. Our, I think, we. No more: it’s all going to change. The house we bought together, all our plans. All that history. My legs suddenly don’t feel capable of supporting me.
I stagger over to the nearest chair, which happens to be the little stool at the dressing table.
‘Do you want a drink?’ Emma gestures to the cocktail cabinet in the corner. She hasn’t asked me what this is all about yet, but the gesture suggests that she knows something is wrong.
‘Yes, please.’
She pours me a whisky. ‘More please,’ I say, and she raises an eyebrow a fraction, then slugs another inch into the glass. I thought I’d had a lot to drink last night, but suddenly I feel far too sober, my mind painfully clear, the images in it unforgettable, sharp-focused. I want to stop seeing them. I want to be numbed, anaesthetised.
Beyond the window the light in the sauna is still on. How could they have been so stupid? It’s almost like they wanted to be found. Perhaps they genuinely hadn’t appreciated how conspicuous it looks out there in the dark, like a lantern against the night. A beacon. I wonder – even though I know I shouldn’t think about it – what they’re doing, now. Are they discussing next steps, like co-conspirators? Have they even put their clothes back on? I can’t get that image out of my head: her paleness against the tan of his skin, their dark heads together. I take a gulp of the whisky, letting it burn its path down my throat, focusing on the pain of it. But I’m not sure all the whisky in the world will help me to forget how strangely, horribly beautiful they were together.
‘Emma,’ I say, ‘do you have any paper?’
She raises her eyebrows only a fraction. ‘Er … I think so.’ She produces a pad from somewhere – Basildon Bond. It’s so Emma, somehow, to have a pad of writing paper on hand.
Now my mind is oddly clear. As though some other power is guiding me, I go to the dressing table beside the bed, sit down, and write a note to Julien. I’ll give it to Emma, make sure she passes it on.
All I want is to do as much damage as possible, to make him feel the sense of powerlessness that I do. My hand is shaking so much I have to press the pen to the paper to control my writing; twice it rips the whole way through. Good. He’ll see that I mean business. With one fell stroke, he has just destroyed everything I thought I knew. Well, now I will destroy him.
NOW
2nd January 2019
HEATHER
Doug drags Iain off me, as though he were a sack of sand, and leaves him where he lies, moaning like an animal. Then he hunkers down in front of me, and grips my shoulders with both hands.
‘Are you all right? Heather? What the fuck were you thinking? I followed your footsteps, through the snow—’ and then, ‘What did he do to you? Jesus Christ, Heather—’ Something about the expression on his face, the concern in it – the care – is almost too much. So, too, is the feel of his hand – now cupping my jaw, his fingertips calloused but his touch light, brushing the hair back from my forehead, assessing for damage with infinite care. I would not have known such a big man could be so gentle.
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘No – he didn’t hurt me.’
‘He did,’ he takes his hand away from the side of my head and shows me his palm, slick with blood. ‘That fucking—’
He gets up and lifts a foot, as if to kick Iain, who whimpers below him on the ground, his hand pressed to his shoulder, where the blood is seeping through his down jacket in a dark brown stain. He looks as though he might be about to pass out.
It’s hard to watch. ‘Don’t, Doug.’ It seems the old paramedic instinct is still in me: to preserve life.
‘Why? Look what he did to you, Heather. I won’t let him get away with it.’
‘But … we don’t want him to die.’ That’s a lot of blood. When Doug still doesn’t look convinced I say, ‘And he might know something – we have to find out.’
He wavers. ‘Fine.’