Except, that time she fell backwards into a sandpit.
I had forgotten. I swear it. I had forgotten that we were standing on the edge of the bridge, some forty feet above the frozen waterfall. When she fell, her head went back and her limbs were loose like a rag doll’s – almost comical, windmilling. Then she disappeared into thin air and there was a long silence.
‘Manda?’ I called, softly. But I think I already knew there was no way she would answer. ‘Manda?’
Only silence.
When I look, there she is. She might almost be sleeping. Except for the fact that her legs are at funny angles, splayed looking – and she is so graceful, my Miranda. And there is the red bloom around her head where it has struck the rocks – a starburst, a supernova of red – and something else, paler, mixed in with the blood, that I don’t want to think about.
I look about me. Has anyone seen? The landscape is completely deserted. There is no one, anywhere. I don’t like the look of the little building, perched just above the waterfall. But there is no one in there, of course, it is just the way it has looked all weekend: the dark windows like blank eyes.
The snow continues to fall, like the curtain coming down after the final act. Or a white shroud – to cover the beautiful broken body in the waterfall below. It covers my footprints, filling them as I step away, as though they had never been.
I begin to cry. For her, for myself, for what I have lost.
NOW
2nd January 2019
HEATHER
‘Doug,’ I say, ‘I’ve got to get back to the Lodge, now. You stay here, make sure he’s all right.’
‘No chance,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to let you go haring off to try to kill yourself again. We’re going together.’
His choice of words stalls me. Kill yourself. It summons an idea that has been on the edge of thought. Because, when I decided to go up to the Old Lodge, I knew I would be in danger. At that point, I was fairly certain Iain had a gun. I knew that there was a chance I might be killed. I was gambling on that chance. Yes, it was as bad as a suicide mission. And no, I don’t want to examine too closely what that means.
Doug helps me to my feet. The sudden movement makes everything lurch – I’d forgotten about the head injury – and I stagger against him. He wraps an arm about me, to prop me up. I can feel the warmth of his body, even through our clothes. I take a step back.
‘What about him?’ I motion to Iain.
‘He’s all right. Let’s leave him here to think about what he’s done.’
‘He doesn’t look so good, Doug.’ He doesn’t – though it’s also true that he’s not looking much worse. The bleeding seems, largely, to have been staunched by Doug’s homemade gauze.
‘I’m not,’ Iain says. ‘I’m not doing so well. Take me with you.’
‘If it were that bad,’ Doug says, brutally, ‘you’d have lost consciousness half an hour ago. You can stay here until we come back to find you, guarding your precious stash.’
It occurs to me that there might be a chance to get a signal on my phone. Every so often, up on the peaks, it flickers into life. I take it out, wave it in the air, turn airplane mode off and on – and finally, with a cry of triumph, I manage to raise a solitary bar.
‘Who are you calling?’ Doug asks.
‘The police.’
Iain shudders, as though someone has just prodded the wound in his shoulder.
In the time we’ve been in here, I notice, it has stopped snowing. The police helicopter can reach us now. But they are not aware of the new urgency of the situation.
‘Please,’ I say to the operator, ‘put me through to DCI John MacBride. I have something very important to tell him.’
EMMA
Who did you think took that rifle from the storeroom? Me, of course! Tada!
I’ve become pretty adept at noticing things, over the years. And I have a memory that might as well be photographic. That passcode was stored in the neat little filing cabinet inside my mind from the second that big oaf of a gamekeeper punched it in.
Seriously, what did Miranda see in him? She always did have terrible taste in men.
There is a phone ringing incessantly in the office across the hallway from the living room.
‘Why doesn’t she pick it up?’ Mark asks. ‘Or him? It could be something important. It could be the police, or something.’
We wait, as the ringing stops, only to pick up again a minute later.
‘I’m going to go and have a look,’ I say, ‘see what’s going on.’
The rest of the Lodge seems particularly quiet. It is the silence of emptiness. Even before I push open the door to the office I’m sure that the knock I give is redundant. They’re not here. Not Heather, not the idiot gamekeeper. The phone is on the desk, still ringing. The sound is so loud it almost seems to vibrate in the silence.
I lift the receiver. ‘Hello?’
‘Is that Heather Macintyre?’ The voice on the other end is almost pre-pubescently youthful. ‘DCI John MacBride asked me to give you a call. I’ve been trying your mobile, too, but it’s just going through to voicemail.’
Some instinct now persuades me to say, modulating my voice to a gentle, Edinburgh burr (I told you I’ve always been a good actress): ‘Yes. It’s Heather here. How can I help?’
‘The DCI is on his way to you, in the chopper.’ There is an unmistakable delight in the way he says this, like he’s enjoying the drama of it.
‘Finally,’ I say. ‘Well, that’s excellent news.’ They have no way of tracing it to me, I think. Even if they can work their CSI magic with DNA and fibres – well, I was wearing Mark’s coat, and our DNA will be all over one another. There would be nothing strange about Miranda having flakes of my own skin on hers, or my hairs on her person. We’ve travelled on a train together, eaten together, danced and hugged over the last few days. I owe it to Miranda not to get myself caught, you see. Because I still have my chance to avenge her.
‘He also,’ the operator coughs. I swear I hear a squeak in his voice as if it’s only just breaking (God, if they’re practically employing children to man their phones I have even less to fear from these goons than I thought), ‘he also asked that you do nothing to alarm the … suspect.’
‘The suspect?’ I ask.
‘Yes … well, of course’ – he’s speaking quickly, anxiously now, as though he knows he’s made a mistake – ‘she won’t officially be that until we have assessed the situation. But the one you say was seen, that night, with the victim.’
She.
I want to ask him to repeat himself, just to be certain … even though I know what I heard. To do so, though, would be to arouse suspicion.
But no one saw. I just stop myself from saying it. My shock is a momentary lapse of control. They might be talking about Katie, I think, wildly. Yes – that must be it. Perhaps Julien dropped her in it to save his own bacon, or something to that effect …
Except, I’m not sure I can afford to think that way.
It’s not prison I’m afraid of. I deserve to pay for what I have done. Though no punishment will be worse than the one I have already had meted upon me, the loss of Miranda: my idol, my lodestar. What I fear is not having time to take revenge on her behalf. Well, I’ll just have to speed things up.
KATIE
‘Katie,’ Emma says. ‘Can I have a word, outside?’ There’s an odd urgency to her tone. I wonder what it was about that phone call she just took. Miranda’s death seems to have hit her, if possible, the hardest of any of us. I suppose Julien and I have our guilt to contend with, which complicates things. I haven’t yet been able to work out which of the two emotions I feel more strongly: grief, or self-hatred. Somehow, this has all felt like our fault. But Emma has spent the day staring at the floor, hardly saying anything. She rushed to that phone as if she was hoping it was someone ringing to say there’d been a terrible misunderstanding: that Miranda had been found alive, after all – that everything else has been a big mistake.