What the hell were they doing?
They were tying more twine around his ankles. More twine around his wrists. He could smell strong aftershave, cutting through the stench of pig shit. And then, in the gloom, there was the flash of a knife, and the original twine that had tied his wrists to his ankles had been sliced away so that now, thank Christ, he could straighten his body, but before the relief of it had transmitted from his muscles to his brain he was being hauled by rough hands, dragged across the floor, through the shit and out into the cold air and he was falling, his face was smacking on tarmac, and pain was screaming through his head.
His nose had bust.
There was blood in his nose, in his throat.
He was screaming, he was trying to scream but then he was just trying to breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he was choking on the blood-soaked gag, trying to heave in just one breath –
‘Oops-a-daisy.’
The gag was whipped away and he could breathe, but he didn’t scream. All he could do was sob. All he could do was gasp. All he could do was repeat, over and over: ‘Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!’
One of them grabbed his legs and one his shoulders and they lifted him, and the torch went out but there was a bright harvest moon, and for the first time he could see where they were. In the wash of moonlight, he could see that they were parked up against the bollards that closed off the Old Bridge of Spey. The bridge was closed to traffic because a structure built in 1754 for carts and wagons and marching soldiers wasn’t up to carrying modern traffic. He knew it was built in 1754 because he was into that stuff, he was into military history, he knew all about the network of military roads and bridges constructed to pacify the Highlands after the Jacobite Rebellion. Bonnie Prince Charlie and all that.
They carried him, quickly, half-running, through the bollards and up onto the hump of the old bridge.
‘Aw, no!’ he sobbed through the blood. ‘Christ, please, no!’
He had wet himself.
‘Up we go,’ said a cheerful voice. ‘Up and over!’
They dropped him.
And then his back exploded in pain, and thank God, they’d dropped him not over the edge but onto the stone parapet, and he was squirming away from them, he was begging: ‘Please… Please!’
They were laughing.
The bastards.
The absolute bastards.
But he was laughing too, weakly, hysterically. They weren’t going to drop him over the bridge into the water below, into the River Spey, into that swift-flowing mass of water he could hear roaring under the bridge and away. They weren’t going to kill him. All they were doing was putting the fear of God into him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he choked. ‘I’ll go. I’ll go and I won’t come back.’
‘You’ve got that right.’
And now they were manhandling him again, flipping him onto his stomach, his head and shoulders out over the edge of the parapet so he could see the black water moving below, black touched with silver where the moonlight caught the churned-up surface as it roiled and swirled its way past the massive stone supports of the bridge. There had been rain. There had been a lot of rain in the last two days, and the river was swollen with it.
He tried to find a purchase with his hands, with his fingertips, on the rough wet stone of the parapet. He tried to cling on as his legs were hauled up over his head but he couldn’t, he couldn’t get a proper hold, and then his fingertips were ripped away and he was tipping right over and past the edge of the parapet until he was dangling, blood dripping off his face and down, down onto the roiling black water.
‘Don’t let go! Don’t let go!’ he shrieked.
As the hands holding his ankles released him and he fell, he heard her, up on the bridge, he heard her shout his name:
‘Owen!’
CHAPTER 1
‘Noooooo! Dad, tell her she can’t!’ Max staggered back against the worktop, as if the shock of seeing the ingredients Phoebe had assembled on the table had sent him reeling. ‘Please, you have to assert some sort of control here.’
‘I’m out of control!’ Phoebe shouted happily, dancing across the kitchen waving a wooden spoon in each hand, the oversized Bake Off apron impeding the execution of the moves she was attempting.
Bram saw it happen as if in slow motion: Phoebe’s ill-conceived decision to go for a high kick; the long apron catching at her legs; the inevitable fall to the unforgiving Caithness slate floor, on which her nine-year-old skull would crack like an egg.
He shot across the kitchen, his dad-bod physique transformed into that of a superhero, leg muscles powering him into position, arms flying out with supernatural speed to catch her as she fell.
‘Oof! Thanks, Dad!’ She clutched at his shirt as he righted her, smiling up at him as if he really were her superhero.
He held on to her a moment before letting her go. ‘Careful, Phoebs. It’s a kitchen, not a dance floor. You shouldn’t really be messing about in here.’
Maybe slate flooring hadn’t been such a great choice for the kitchen after all.
‘They mess about on Bake Off all the time,’ Phoebe objected, the wooden spoons now drooping in her hands, her big blue eyes fixed on Bram reproachfully. Unless he was careful, they’d be streaming with tears in a second. Phoebe’s moods were mercurial things, will-o’-the-wisps, giddy flames that flared and were gone.
Bram swept her up in his arms, making her squeal like a much younger child as he set her down on the table next to her chosen ingredients. Max had picked up the jar of jam.
Phoebe snatched it back. ‘Peanut butter and jam is a classic combination.’
‘Not in a quiche!’
‘You’re not the boss of me, Max.’ Her brother may have been nine years older than Phoebe, but she had never let the age difference carry much weight. ‘Each competitor gets to choose her or his own ingredients. Don’t they, Dad?’