The Night Hunter (28 page)

I find the side door and close it behind me, locking them in.

It is raining so hard now, it is almost blinding. It is very dark up here, no light pollution, no starlight, just an ongoing empty sky. I see a pile of something lying in the dirt track: Billy.

I want to stop, go over. But he would want me to get away.

So I run.

As fast as I can. The big jacket hampers me; it is not cold, the wind has fallen. Then I feel the storm in my legs and slip the jacket from my arms and I am flying. Sailing through the air; my feet barely touch the ground. I have no idea how long I run for. I feel like I am on top of the world. I am invincible. I am free, alive and flying. I will get help. I will get help for Gillian, for the woman in the drawer, for Sophie.

Then my breath is gone, the air is pulled from me. A vice grips my chest and I am on the ground, the heather prickling at my face. I roll as I fall. I can’t help it. Lights drift in front of me, foggy drifting lights, and I see two feet floating in the fog, slowly coming towards me. Walking like a teddy bear.

It is Eric. The light gets brighter, he is coming straight for me.

It is over.

T
he lights over my head flash past, head-to-toe, head-to-toe, strobing my face as I pass underneath. My heart clicks with a precise rhythm, the back beat provided by the echo in my ears. I am going somewhere else, somewhere warm, somewhere that is easy, and I have left Billy behind, left him on the track with the dogs and the rain and the rats. I see the dogs tug at his skin, tearing at his flesh. It rips open and red spills into the brilliant light. The light overhead starts to strobe red then white then red. Quickly. Quicker.

I am unable to move or breathe. The light is fierce, it blinds me through my closed eyelids, the tape on my mouth constricts my lungs, regulating my airflow while my brain starts reaching around, testing itself, trying to find sense in it all.

I didn’t get away.

Eric came out of the light, walking towards me, taking me by the arm, holding me down …

‘Stop that, you’ll pull the drip out, you silly cow.’

The voice drifts up through my consciousness.

‘Lie still, Elvie.’

Not Eric. This is Costello, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. I open my eyes, she has a misty outline like a renaissance Madonna. She lets go my arm and pulls her chair closer then produces a notebook and a pen.

‘You look like shite,’ she says with her usual honesty as she removes a tube from my mouth, picking off the tape that secured it. I am aware of all the tubes on my face, in my arms, up my nose.

‘Billy?’ The name tumbles from my tongue.

She shakes her head. ‘He would have been proud of you, you did a great job. God knows why he got out of the car, looking for you probably, never saw the dogs. We got all the women out and that was all he wanted. Gilly is home and that was the thing that was important to him. And he would want you to keep going, he would want you to get Sophie back. So get well.’

If I am crying I don’t feel the tears. Figures walk back and forth past the door, hospitals never sleep. A phone is ringing unanswered in some distant corridor, there is the sound of a trolley being pushed around.

Costello puts her hand back on my arm; her skin is warm, mine is cold. ‘Gilly is safe; the other girl is in High Dependency, septicaemia. She wouldn’t have lasted another forty-eight hours.’ She pauses. ‘But there was no sign that Sophie was ever there. Sorry.’

‘She is there. You must go back.’ I grab her hand. ‘Eric was coming to get me … I saw her, she was sitting …’

‘No, Elvie, Eric died in the watergate. You saw a porcelain doll of Magda, that’s all. Sophie was never there. Do you remember running? You were wet, cold and tired, you ran miles on that hill, following the track, and you ran right into my headlights, frightening the shit out of me. Your heart …’

‘So where is Sophie?’

She shuffles in her seat. ‘Elvie? Do you know what day of the week it is?’

‘No idea.’

‘It’s Thursday, you’ve been here for days. A lot of shit has come down the line recently. We need to talk.’ She hesitates as if struggling where to start. ‘Grant is not good, he has had some kind of psychosis. He’s a mess, Elvie. Rod has had to move back in to look after your mum.’

I nod.

‘We are still trying to piece it together. Did you see the freezer full of body parts, all that road kill, in the hall at Eric’s? You had been in the Land Rover so you noticed the straps that pinned his victims against the side. Gilly said they were so tight, she couldn’t even kick. Is that how you worked it out? Is that how you knew?’

It’s easier to nod.

‘And you had figured out that the link was Eric being the architect. Courtesy of Parnell’s firm, he got to know the movements of the victims, their running schedules. Gilly says she went out running and was grabbed on the back of the leg by the dog. Eric pretended to offer her help, a run home in the Land Rover. It was too late when she realized her mistake.

‘The clever thing is, she had no idea who Eric was. She had never set eyes on him until that moment. I bet none of the victims had. And that rules out Sophie, doesn’t it?’ Costello shivers although the hospital is hot. ‘Lorna had worked out the door trick. She nearly made it, brave girl. How did you work it out?’ she asks.

‘I saw the model at Eric’s.’ My mind is firing around for some semblance of the life I had before. ‘Mary?’

‘Fine, left the bastard. She was never abducted, of course – you guessed that. She just ran away from him and cut the chip out herself. Alex thought quickly, I’ll give him that. He turned the escape into a kidnap. Mary and Eddie had thought it through. She had packed a rucksack with a change of clothes and tore off those she wore as she ran. A few comments about Sophie running away gave her the idea, running from a situation she could not tolerate.’ Costello fills a plastic cup of water and offers it to me.

I shake my head.

‘She said she was thinking of you as she ran. One of the best feelings she’d ever had. Freedom. Exhilaration. Can’t imagine what her life with Alex was like if running over a hill naked makes her feel better. But that Alex is a clever wee shit. He did the demand, he staged his own failed drop at the flashmob. Two of his security guys took the money down and put it in the hut where Eddie keeps the meter. He wanted to get Mary back and make himself a hero. All he needed was you to run with the idea that Mary was taken by the Night Hunter. Your love for Sophie would blind you. He knew McTiernan’s record, he knew Matilda would follow the clues, but Billy suspected it was all too easy – the DNA on the envelope, the stain. Billy was a good cop, he was a wily old fox. He said that envelope was a fricking map! Real crime is never that easy. So Alex sent us to bring Mary back and get Eddie arrested. Wrongly. I don’t like being used, especially not by that bastard. But he played you brilliantly. You were programmed to be a Lizzie, you had to go and save a Laura. But don’t worry. Mary and Vera are giving us enough evidence to charge him.’

The sheets are warm, I am comfortable. But there is no peace. ‘Sophie?’

‘No sign of her, Elvie. We have carried out a sweep of the land; there are no areas of non-growth that might indicate where a body is buried. So Sophie is not up there. That might be good news.’

She’s not convincing herself any more.

‘We’re going to try something else. It’s a technique called plucking at straws. We need your help and we need it now.’

She is a wolf again. I nod. Although I don’t want this conversation.

‘Let’s start with Mark Laidlaw.’

Piney aftershave, in my kitchen, my hand on the weight bringing it down on his head …

‘I’ve been chatting to Belinda at the refuge, she knew Mark well.’ I can read her, Costello is pretending to be conversational as she baits her trap. ‘Belinda says that Mark’s wife came to the refuge with a litany of complaints about Mark, just as he was attending hospital with the injuries she had given him, both as bad as each other.’

‘Billy thought the kid was drugged.’

She was not to be side-tracked. ‘He was right. But we are talking about her dad. And Sophie only ever saw Mark to advise him of his rights. She was helping him through it, he had terrible communication skills and anger management issues. He was the sort of man that likes things black and white, unable to cope with change or subtleties. They were just friends, Elvie. Sophie was only trying to help him. Soph was good with people like him. She had coped with you all her life.’

I am not going to fill this silence. I know the way he grasped my shoulders, I remember the violence in his eyes. He was going to hurt me. He was about to do the wrong thing. The weight was in my hand …

I think she is finished but she takes a cup of water for herself and turns a new page in her notebook. ‘Do you think he just went up to the reservoir and sat there, thinking about Sophie? I bet she had become his anchor, one person he could rely on. Not so odd that he should sit where her car was found, thinking, not realising he was slowly dying, that little bleed in his brain …’

Our eyes meet.

‘Then he lost consciousness, the car rolled. There is such a strong echo of Sophie – the car, the reservoir site. But Mark was a violent man; it’s not so strange that sooner or later somebody landed a fatal blow on him. He was very fond of Sophie, I think. Genuinely fond of her.’

‘So what did happen to Sophie?’

‘I need to show you something.’ Costello reluctantly pulls a large envelope from her handbag. Inside is a pile of photographs.

‘Here is a photograph of your sister. Have a look. What do you see?’

It is the picture from my drawer at Ardno. ‘It’s Sophie, looking happy. At her party. Before she got upset.’

‘She’s not happy. She’s looking past the camera, to someone over the camera’s right shoulder, if you like.’ She covers my sister’s eyes with her hand. ‘That smile is frozen solid.’ She flicks that photo to the back. ‘This one is a close-up of Soph’s eye.’ The picture is now Sophie’s pupil, dark and swirling like a black hole in the heavens. I say nothing. Patterns in my sister’s big blue eyes gather into little diamonds of colour to form an image of the pub curtain, the brass rod, the price list. The reflections on the surface are as clear as looking through a window pane into the rain. More shadows out on the street, people walking by, some looking in. A face is appearing at the window, in a skip cap. It has a slight fish eye distortion from the curve of Sophie’s eye.

‘You have said yourself that she was a bit different these last few weeks.’ Costello does not give up. ‘Elvie, this is the picture of the person who put that look on your sister’s face. It’s the picture of the reflection in her eye.’ She shows me another picture, the image bigger, less defined, but the face is up at the curtain, looking right into the pub, right at my sister. There is a beanie hat, sunglasses, a short wispy beard shaved in stripes.

‘And we both know who that is, behind those glasses? And that hat?’

I know. I think I have known all along.

‘I’m sorry, Elvie.’

I close my eyes.

‘I had to show you that otherwise none of this will make sense.’ She pulls her hair back, checking that I am OK. Her voice drops. ‘When we tested Sophie’s dressing gown, we found Grant’s semen. It shows that some kind of sexual activity took place much earlier.’ Her hand rests over mine.

I open my eyes and look at the ceiling.

‘Your mum wasn’t as unaware as you think: she knew something was going on. Your mum and Rod tried to keep them apart but they just couldn’t separate them. They were trying to protect your sister but Sophie thought she could help Grant and just kept coming back for more.’

‘That sounds like Sophie, thought she could solve the problems of the world with her smile.’

‘Well, Rod suspected the depth of Grant’s obsession. That’s why they tried to send him to America, but he made sure that was not going to happen. In the end, he raped her.’ She sighs. ‘So it’s no wonder Sophie ran.’

I keep my eyes on the ceiling, concentrating on the dirt gathering in the corner of the light fitting. This is all wrong.

‘Rod was doing his best, Elvie, whatever that was. He’s sorry if he got it wrong but he had no idea what to do. He followed her around, making sure that Grant was not where she was. And Sophie, she must have been terrified that Grant would walk into her party and declare his undying love for her. Sophie had no real place to go, so she ran. Rod sent us the ankh to keep us focused on the misdirection. The whole Facebook campaign was a …’

I ignore her, hearing Sophie. Her words slam into my head.
I think I’m going to have to disappear. I have to go away.
I shake my head, and the pain in my cheek rattles through my skull. My mum saying,
Can’t you leave Sophie alone?

Costello is missing the point. I stare into her cold grey eyes. ‘So where is my sister?’

The doctor comes in and smiles in that way we were taught to when we are about to give bad news and someone is looking. She is thinking about sitting down but Costello has nicked the chair. The pasty-looking nurse slides into the corner behind her like a forgotten schoolchild.

‘Miss McCulloch. Can I call you Elvira?’ The doc tilts her head on one side. She has very shiny brown hair and that healthy-looking olive skin that means she never has to try too hard. I think that if I was some poor bugger up on the cancer ward, vomiting rings round myself and devoid of my hair and my dignity, I would kill the bitch.

‘You can call me Elvie. Are you going to tell me how long I can keep being called Miss?’ That’ll wipe the smile from her face.

Her professional concerned smile does indeed vanish, to be replaced by a small, girly twist of the lips. ‘We were thinking either you had a very poor sense of self-awareness or your medical training had gone badly wrong. But then your GP confirmed he had taken bloods and given you medication to see you through until the appointment with the endocrinologist. An appointment you never kept. You haven’t been taking the medication either. Your testosterone level is through the roof for a female. Why are you not taking it, Elvie?’

‘I’ve had other things to worry about.’

She purses her lips, a flick of the file.

‘I like things in black and white. So tell me, please. Straight. Say something like
you have a tumour, Elvie
.’

‘You have a tumour, Elvie. Not untreatable, though.’

I lie back and look at the ceiling.

‘There are tests we still have to do but you are well, peculiar … You have two types of DNA. This is difficult to explain …’

‘No. So I am two people. If I have two types of DNA, then I had a …’ I run through the options. There are not many, and only one that I would not already know about. ‘Heterozygous twin?’

‘That’s what we think.’

‘That is rare.’

‘Maybe not as rare as you think. But the fact the twin is exerting itself now? That is very rare, so much so we’re keeping you our little secret. There are some doctors at Edinburgh Royal who are doing a study on this and here you are on their doorstep. I have phoned them, for best treatment protocol.’

I take this in, trying to think logically. ‘So in utero I was a twin. The twin that became me absorbed its sibling into my body. So I have their tissue as well as mine. And it was a he. I’m male as well as female – is that it?’