Val Mcdermid - Killing the Shadows

Caroline gave a reluctant nod of agreement. “I promise. OK?”

“Mean it.”

Caroline held Fiona’s eyes for a long moment. “I swear on Lesley’s life.”

Fiona ducked her head in acknowledgement. “That’ll do me. Like I said, I should be able to call for help myself if I need it, but it might be that I can’t figure out how to work the sat phone. You’re my back-up.” She handed over the directions and took a deep breath. “Wagons roll.” She climbed into the Land Rover and started the engine. Her hands were sweating on the wheel, her stomach a tight clench. She knew the odds were stacked against her. They’d had a head start on her. They could have made it to the bothy an hour or more ago. She already knew the killer wasn’t totally committed to verisimilitude. Maybe he would drain Kit’s blood in one swift act rather than torture him for days, with all the attendant risks.

Maybe she was already too late.

The smell of coffee woke Steve. He blinked for a moment, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, suffering the dislocation of waking in an unfamiliar place. He pushed himself upright and saw Terry sitting at the table, a mug in her hands. “I was beginning to wonder if last night was too much for you and you’d slipped into a coma,” she teased.

“What time is it?” he asked, unaware as to how late he’d slept.

“Twenty past nine.”

Steve swung his legs to the floor and jumped to his feet. “You’re kidding,” he exclaimed, sounding more shaken than delighted.

“It’s Saturday, Steve. People sleep late.” She grinned. “Even coppers.”

“I can’t believe nobody’s phoned. The surveillance…Neil should have called to say he was going off for the night,” he said, talking more to himself than to her. “And the AC, his plane’s supposed to have been on the ground two hours ago.” He crossed to his phone and pager. He stared dumbfounded at the blank displays. “What’s wrong?” he said, grabbing his phone and frowning at it.

Terry came up behind him and put her arms round his waist. “I switched them off. You need to let go, Steve.”

He pulled away and swung round, his face a mixture of anger and incredulity. “You did what!” he shouted. His mouth opened and closed, words for once failing him.

“The world won’t end if you’re out of reach for a night,” Terry said, a note of uncertainty in her voice.

“I’m in the middle of a major operation,” he yelled. “I’ve got a team on a murder suspect. Jesus, Terry, anything could have happened. How could you do something so fucking irresponsible?” As he spoke, he was reaching for his clothes, pulling on boxer shorts and trousers.

“You didn’t tell me,” she blazed back at him. “How was I supposed to know? Last time we were interrupted, it wasn’t even your case. You gave me no indication that you had anything important on the go.”

Steve paused halfway through buttoning his shirt and gave her a livid glare. “It’s confidential, that’s why I didn’t say. I don’t talk about my work to civilians.”

His words cut like a whip. But rather than making Terry flinch, they sharpened her response. “Unless they’re Fiona Cameron?” she raged.

“Is that what this is about? You’re jealous of Fiona?” Steve couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Terry’s voice dropped and she stared evenly at him. “No, it’s about trust, Steve. It’s about openness. It’s about not treating me as if I’m a child. All you had to do was mention at some point that you had something going on that might just interrupt our time together. Fucking hell,” she exploded again. “What about common courtesy?”

Steve thrust his arms into his jacket and grabbed his coat. “I’m a senior police officer. People need to contact me out of hours.”

“Mr. Indispensable. You don’t want a lover, Steve. You want an audience.”

He shoved phone and pager into his jacket pocket and made for the door, shaking his head. “I don’t fucking believe this.”

“You should have told me, dickhead,” she shouted, her anger directed as much at her own impulsiveness as his taciturnity.

His only reply was the slam of the door as he walked out. By the time he got to his car, his hands were still trembling with the adrenaline surge of pure rage. “Fucking unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath as he threw himself into the driver’s seat. He switched on his pager. Five messages. Steve cursed under his breath as he scrolled through. Two from Fiona from late last night. One from Neil just before eleven. One from Neil a few minutes after six. “Shit, shit, shit,” he said, as the last message revealed itself. The Assistant Commissioner had paged him over an hour ago.

He turned on his phone and called his home number, then keyed in the combination that would release his messages from the answering machine. Fiona again, requesting an urgent call back. Neil, announcing he’d decided to stay on Coyne all night, just in case. Neil again, reporting that he’d handed over to Joanne and would be at the Yard if he was needed for an arrest and search. And a message from the AC, saying he was expecting Steve’s call.

He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to calm down to the point where he could make his case for the arrest of Gerard Coyne. After a minute of deep breathing, he decided he was as ready as he’d ever be. He’d just have to lie and say his pager battery had died without him noticing. The hour he’d lost probably hadn’t made much difference. But it could have done.

As he dialled the AC’s number, he felt a pang of regret. He’d had such high hopes for him and Terry. And, as usual, it had crashed and burned.

He could only hope he’d have better luck with Coyne.

Four hundred miles away, Sandy Galloway was picking at a bacon roll in the canteen at St. Leonard’s. He’d been waiting for Fiona Cameron for almost two hours, and he wasn’t best pleased. The woman had been at panic stations when she’d rung him the previous evening, but now she couldn’t even be bothered to make their appointment on time. She hadn’t even left a message for him, either with force control or at the reception desk of her hotel. The hotel that his budget was paying for, he reminded himself crossly.

He’d spoken to Sarah Duvall, as he’d promised. He’d watched the end of his cop show, then called her at Wood Street. She was a bright lassie, that one. She’d gone through the discrepancy between Redford’s statement and what the Dorset police had found in some detail. She’d explained why she’d initially been uneasy, then ran through the reasoning she’d gone through since. It had clearly stilled her qualms, and he was inclined to think she had jumped the right way.

Which meant, of course, that Fiona Cameron was barking up the wrong tree altogether. Galloway was just fed up that she hadn’t bothered to keep him informed of her plans.

It had never occurred to him to check the fax machine that sat behind the secretary’s desk in his outer office.

The directions were carved in her memory like a grave inscription. “Take the A839 out of Lairg.” Back out of the town centre, across the narrows of the River Shin before it opened out into one of the two inlets at the bottom of the loch. Down the river bank for a short distance, then a turn west, a rounded hillock on her right. Fiona checked in her rear view mirror that Caroline was still behind her.

“About a mile out of the town, you’ll see a track on the right signed Sallachy.” Yes, there was the metal led track. Conveniently, there was a phone box on the other side of the road. Fiona pulled up and pointed exaggeratedly to the kiosk. Caroline gave her the thumbs-up and gestured at her watch, overtaking Fiona, to park right by the phone. Fiona checked the time. 9.37. She had an hour. Moving off, she swung hard right to make the turn.