Cold Grave (41 page)

She still had a vague sightline on the figure she was sure was Deans, gaining ground on him all the time as he walked and she ran. She was determined to bear straight for him, fearful of losing him if she was forced to change direction. A couple loomed in front of her and she barged apologetically into the shoulder of one of them as she hurtled by. Narey ran on but only another ten yards before her right foot slipped from under her on the ice and she crashed down onto her left knee, pain shooting through it. She got up but it felt as if she were the only one in the world standing still as the rest of the crowd whirled round her. She ran on again but slower now, the ache in her knee signalling some damage. The man in the black ski hat was ahead though and that drove her on.

Abruptly, she saw movement from the corner of her eye and glanced over to see a string of young skaters in their early teens swoop round in a giggling chain. They were arcing across the ice, eight of them hand in outstretched hand, forming a fifteen-yard human barrier. Narey continued to run even though they were only a short distance away from her. She shouted at them to move but the kids were too engrossed in their fun to hear until it was too late and she burst through their chain, sending three of them sprawling onto the ice with angry, high-pitched yelps. It was the combined complaints of their friends that did it though. The noise was enough to make Narey’s prey turn on the ice to see what the commotion was.

The reddish hair peeked out from beneath the ski hat and the eyes were wide. Deans stood for a moment, taking in her presence before turning again, this time breaking into a run. Narey took off after him, her injured knee being compensated for by her fewer years and greater fitness. She was still gaining on him.

As she watched, Deans moved off to the side towards a family group of parents and two children. For a moment, he vanished from sight and, although Narey was within ten yards, she worried she’d lost him among the crowd.

Just as suddenly, Deans reappeared, holding something large in his hands. She didn’t have time to work out what it was before Deans heaved his arms back then forward, letting the object hurtle across the ice towards her. It was a child’s sledge, all wood and metal runners, and it was on her before she knew it. Perhaps if her knee hadn’t been hurt in the fall, she might have hurdled it but she’d barely got her feet off the ground when the sledge crashed into her shins and sent her flying face first onto the ice.

Narey managed to get her left hand down to break her fall but ended up wishing she hadn’t. She still smacked the side of her head against the rock hard surface but also had an aching pain spreading from the heel of her hand. As she picked herself up again, there was no sign of Deans. The family whose sledge had been taken from them pointed towards Inchmahome but Narey was already sure that was where he’d be heading. She limped towards it, the frosty shores of the island still a hundred yards away across the lake.

The boathouse loomed large in front of her and Narey lifted herself off the ice and onto the snow-covered jetty and the island. Memories came back of her midnight trip there with Tony, their eerie visit in the mist to see the ghosts of nineteen years before. This was different though — very different. One of the ghosts of that winter was here and alive.

There were others on the island too, a handful of couples and groups moving quietly through the newly misty glades and ruins of Inchmahome as if cowed by their surroundings. The only noise that came from them was the sudden breaking of twigs, an unexpected cough or irreverent laughter that echoed off the ancient walls of the priory. They paid Narey no attention and she guessed that they’d been the same when Deans had slipped by them. She’d slowed her pace now, wary of everything and everyone around her and far more concerned by who might step out from behind cloisters, a tree or the remnants of a wall.

Narey tread carefully past the old kitchen and on to the chapter house, the number of shadowy visitors thinning as she went deeper into the far corner of the island. As their numbers decreased so did the noises they caused to jump out of the mist, meaning she could hear her own breathing all the more clearly, heavy and laboured and advancing before her in the chilled air.

There was still a mass of footprints in the crisp snow but she couldn’t be sure whom they belonged to. Not that it particularly mattered — she was sure where he’d be and had been convinced of it even as she’d stood between the church and hotel and surveyed the scene on the lake. The murderer returning to the scene of the crime might have been a cliché but it was often no less true for that. Deans was going back to the dark corner where he’d killed the girl who became Lily who became Barbie.

Narey slowed further, aware of the slight limp of her left leg, which dragged through the top of the snow and signalled her arrival. As she passed the corner of the chapter house, she stood and listened, hearing only the merest rustle of the wind through the petrified trees and the distant shouts of skaters who could have come from another world. With no help to be had from the sounds drifting through the air, she breathed deep and turned the corner into the clearing — and saw nothing.

Exhaling slowly, she stood still again, her eyes scanning the scene, every nerve on edge. She saw footprints, possibly fresh ones, stretching all the way to the low wall that had half-hidden the girl’s battered body. There was also — was there, she questioned her eyesight — some sort of disturbance to the snow where she knew the body had lain all those years ago.

She instinctively began to move towards what she saw by the wall but had taken only half a step when she felt the taste of blood in her mouth and the perplexing darkness that came from behind her eyes as her head rang and swirled and crashed. The view in front of her dropped dramatically as she pitched forward and the world ran psychedelic and out of focus until her head came thankfully to rest on a cooling pillow of snow.

Cold. Cold and dark. And quiet. The first thoughts licked at her consciousness, nudging her awake inch by inch in dark and dreamy tones. She felt wonderfully relaxed, with a warm and woolly glow that defied the strange chill that nibbled at her outside. The warmth was on the inside, circling her head and muddling it, making her wonder if an empty bottle of wine was responsible for the pall of fuzz and fog. But it wasn’t wine; part of her knew that.

She really was cold. Her eyes flickered open but there was no more light than before, just a sea of black. Christ, her head wasn’t warm; it hurt. Cold. Snow. Deans. Memories poked their way through the snow and the fog, stirring proper consciousness. She opened her eyes again, still seeing darkness but this time seeing it shimmer.

She was on the island. Inchmahome. It was dark and yet light. As she struggled to lift a heavy arm to paw at the horizon, she heard the soothing sound of snow landing lightly, like the air being let gently out of a balloon. The noise was at first comforting but as her head cleared, it worried her more. Her arm struggled to move, sluggish like her thinking.

It was only when she felt the cold on her face that a real measure of awareness kicked in. There was dark beyond the immediate light and the wetness of the cold clung to her. Snow. She was under snow. The knowledge had her awake with shock, her arm flailing upwards in panic but held back by the weight of the snow on top of it. She pushed again and felt the snow move, forcing on until her hand was beyond it and in the open air.

She kicked with her legs too, feeling the same initial resistance but then the same movement. As she did so, the ground inches from her head rang with a thud that made it shake. She knew immediately that her hand being seen had triggered the attack and she had to move. She guessed left rather than right and scrambled as quickly as she could to that side, pushing up and rolling away, snow falling past her as she moved. The thud came again, crashing into her right shoulder, the pain dulled by the knowledge that the blow had landed where her head had been.

She continued to roll, desperately trying to move away from the attack that continued to come. A blow caught her on the top of her thigh, pounding into the flesh and sickening her. More swipes missed though, every sound of the weapon against the ground giving her hope as well as saving her from pain. She was on her back now, her hands behind her as she scrambled away, giving her a view of Deans as he stood over her, a golf club in his hand, at least now able to see it coming at her. A glance to her side told her that she’d been lying on the very spot where the girl’s body had been found, a large mound of dispersed snow signalling the makeshift grave that he had tried to form for her.

Deans’ eyes were wild and staring, almost unrecognisable from the man she had seen in the Western or his house in Vancouver Road. He swung the club back and then down, erratically slamming it into the ground as she just managed to move her leg to the side in time. She put a hand to the back of her head and found it wet; bringing it up she saw it was coated in thick red. As she looked up, he’d hoisted the club back above his shoulder, ready to strike again.

‘Why did you do it?’ she stopped him.

‘Never you mind.’

The club came down again, catching her a glancing blow on her foot as she failed to move it quickly enough. The club was immediately raised above his head.

‘You killed the girl, didn’t you? You killed Paton, Mosson, Bradley. They were your friends.’

‘They weren’t my friends.’ Deans strangled the words in a hoarse scream. ‘They would have ruined everything.’

‘So you killed them. Like you killed Barbie.’

‘Fuck you. You know nothing. You were as bad as they were. Would have ruined everything. Would have taken away my family.’

Deans was spitting in his rage, his words burbling out furiously, one tripping over the other. He advanced on Narey, the club high behind his head and gripped tightly in both hands. When he was stood above her, his legs straddling hers, she lashed her feet up and crashed them into his groin with as much force as she could muster. Deans yelped and staggered back, the golf club falling from his grasp and landing a yard away from Narey.

She got unsteadily to her feet, the pounding in her head increasing as she rose. She knew she couldn’t stand for long and doubted she would be able to wrestle Deans for the club. Instead she staggered across to where he stood, massaging his aching bollocks and clearly trying not to throw up. She grabbed his hair and lifted his head up, easily arcing out of the way of his flailing arm, and punched him full in the throat.

The effort was enough to send her crumbling back to the ground but, bad as it was for her, she was able to look up and see that it was much worse for Deans. A violent choke of air shot from his lips and he fell back clutching at his throat, all but immobilised. Narey let her head settle back onto the snow as she caught her breath, safe in the knowledge that Deans had none of his own, safer still that she was a lot nearer to the golf club than he was.

She felt the back of her head throb and wondered if the club that had caused it was also what Deans had used on Julia Corrieri. Christ, Julia. What had that bastard done to her? Narey propped herself up on her elbows, her head spinning and other spots of her body crying out in sympathy: knee, hand, shoulder, thigh, all aching in a chorus of pain.

‘Why did you kill Barbie?’

Deans answered in a hoarse gargle, ‘Fuck you.’

‘You know that you’ve nowhere to go. It’s finished.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Yes. You’ve lost your family. You do know that, don’t you?’

‘Shut up’

‘You can’t sort this.’

There was a long silence from Deans and, when he didn’t respond, Narey started to get back to her feet.

‘Don’t move,’ Deans groaned at her.

‘Why should I do that?’

‘I’ll tell you.’

Narey eased back, as glad not to make the effort to get up as she was to hear what he said.

‘So tell me.’

Deans panted, struggling to talk. When he did, it came out croaky and weak.

‘We all met Barbie in the Lade Inn at Kilmahog. Like I said. And she came back to the bothy with us. Paddy and Adam, they were all over her. They’d made sure she was drunk before we left the pub and when they got back here…’

‘Who had sex with her?’

‘Paddy. Outside while the rest of us were in the bothy. And then, later, after more drink… she and Adam went out for a walk.’

‘And you and Paton?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t want to?

‘No. Well… I didn’t do it with her. Okay? Laurence liked her. A lot.’

‘And you liked her,’ Narey guessed. ‘But she didn’t like you, didn’t fancy you. What was it? Your red hair? Did she not fancy gingers?

‘Shut up. Just shut up!’

Narey laughed at him.

‘I see it now. Your mates had sex with her. You wanted to have sex with her too but she didn’t want you. You were snubbed. Resentful. Angry.’

‘I told you to shut up.’

‘And Laurence Paton… He went with Barbie to the Lake of Menteith. You told the truth about that. Yes. Laurence went with her and you thought he was going to get what Paddy and Adam had got. He probably thought that too.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘But not fuck Barbie, eh?’

‘Shut it. That dirty slut went with them but not me. Then she waltzed off with Laurence. I liked her. I actually liked her but Paddy and Adam, they just wanted to shag her. It was me who liked her.’

‘So what did you do?’

Narey heard something that might have been a sob or a gulp coming from Deans before he answered.

‘Adam and Paddy were going to Bracklinn Falls and I told them I was going to stay at the bothy. But instead I went to the lake. I knew they were going to walk to the island. I wanted… I just wanted to know what they were doing. The place was teeming with people and they probably wouldn’t have noticed me anyway but I walked round and onto the island from the other side. They were walking hand in hand like… like fucking sweethearts. I was mad at her for treating Laurence like that after what she did with Paddy and Adam.’