Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

It seemed an unnecessarily cruel longevity.

It had been after six before I’d got back to the hotel. Still dark, but there was no point in going to bed. I sat on the hard chair, listening to the moaning of the gale until I heard sounds of movement downstairs and knew Ellen was up. Feeling more tired than I could ever remember, I plunged my head into cold water in an effort to wake myself up, then knocked on Fraser’s door and went down to the kitchen.

Ellen insisted on cooking a full breakfast-a steaming plateful of eggs, bacon, toast, and sweet, scalding tea. I hadn’t felt hungry, but when it came I ate ravenously, feeling energy slowly seep back into my limbs. Fraser came downstairs after a few minutes and sat opposite me, his face pouchy from lack of sleep. But at least this morning he was sober.

‘Radio’s still out,’ he grunted, without being asked.

I’d not expected otherwise. I was long past optimism or disappointment. Now all I wanted to do was see this through.

Dawn had broken, and light was seeping into the sky as we drove back down to the boatyard. It was another filthy day. Waves pounded the shingle and cliffs, flinging sheets of spray high into the air to be carried inland. Kinross’s ferry was still moored in the harbour, bucking violently on the angry sea. At least its owner wouldn’t be taking it anywhere this morning, no matter how badly he might want to. Beyond it, white-tops crashed against the pinnacle of Stac Ross, foaming against each other as though frustrated by their failure to smash its dark rock.

And over it all, the wind ruled. Far from dying down, the storm had gained in intensity. Elemental in its savagery, it buffeted the Range Rover, flinging the rain against the windscreen in such torrents that the wipers struggled to clear the glass. When we climbed out of the car it harried us over to the boatyard. The ashes and skeletal spars of the burned fishing boat stood like a remnant of a Viking funeral, a stark reminder of the night’s events.

Inside the workshop, Brody was sitting in an old car seat. The crowbar was laid across his lap as he faced the door, coat collar turned up against the chill. Behind him, Maggie’s tarpaulin-shrouded body looked childlike and pathetic on the concrete floor.

He smiled wanly when Fraser and I went in. ‘Morning.’

He seemed to have aged overnight. His face was haggard, the flesh more tightly stretched over the bones; new lines were etched in the skin round his eyes and mouth. A frost of silver stubble clung to his chin.

‘Any problems?’ I asked.

‘No, it’s been quiet enough.’

He stood up, joints cracking as he stretched. He gave a little sigh of appreciation as he took a bite from the bacon sandwich Ellen had sent for him. I poured him a mug of tea from the Thermos flask she’d also packed while I told him what we’d learned from Maggie’s grandmother.

‘If Maggie took the car that should make it easier to find where she went. Assuming it hasn’t been moved,’ he said when I’d finished. Neatly dusting crumbs from his fingers and mouth, he drained his tea and stood up. ‘Right, let’s take a look at the cliff.’

‘What about…about that?’ Fraser asked, jerking his head uneasily at the body. ‘Shouldn’t one of us keep an eye on it? In case Kinross decides to do anything.’

‘Are you volunteering?’ Brody asked. He smiled thinly at the reluctance on Fraser’s face. ‘Don’t worry. I found a padlock in one of the drawers. We can lock the doors, and I can’t see Kinross-or anyone else-risking anything in broad daylight anyway.’

‘I don’t mind staying,’ I offered.

Brody shook his head. ‘You’re the only forensic expert we’ve got. If there’s any evidence up there, I’d like you to see it.’

‘That sort of thing isn’t really my field.’

‘It’s more yours than mine or Fraser’s,’ he said.

There was no arguing with that.

Brody hurried home to check on his dog while Fraser and I secured the doors with the oil-smeared padlock. The metallic snick brought an unwelcome flashback of being trapped in the burning community centre. I was glad when Brody returned a few minutes later, and we could set off for the foot of the cliffs.

At their closest point, they lay only thirty or forty yards from the boatyard, but the rain battered us relentlessly as we crossed the open ground.

‘Christ on a bicycle!’ Fraser exclaimed, hunching against it.

The cliffs themselves afforded some protection once we reached them. A strip of shingle ran along their base, broken with jagged outcrops of rock. Leaning into the wind, we made our way along it, treading carefully as we scanned the rain-slick pebbles.

After a few yards Brody stopped. ‘Here.’

He pointed to a rock protruding from the shingle. It had been sluiced almost clean by the rain, but a smear of something dark clung to it. I crouched down for a better look. It was a clot of bloodied tissue, veined and torn. The shingle around it was disturbed, a depression that could have been left by the impact of something heavy. What might have been drag marks ran from it towards the boatyard, disappearing where the shingle gave way to firmer ground.

I’d brought more freezer bags from the hotel to use as stand-ins for evidence bags. Taking one from my pocket, I used the blade of my penknife to scrape up a sample of bloody tissue. If the rain kept up it would have washed most of the blood away by the time the police got here, and the gulls would have scavenged what was left.

Brody was looking up at the top of the cliff, about a hundred feet above us. ‘The steps are further along, but there’s no point all three of us climbing up.’ He turned to Fraser. ‘Makes more sense for you to take the car and meet us at the top.’

‘Aye, you’re right,’ Fraser hurriedly agreed.

Giving him the plastic bag to take back to the Range Rover, Brody and I crunched along the shingle to the steps. They were cut into the cliff face, steep and winding. There was an old handrail, but it didn’t inspire confidence.

Wiping the rain from his face, Brody regarded them, then looked at my sling. ‘Sure you’re up to it?’

I nodded. I wasn’t going to back out now.

We started up. Brody went first, leaving me to follow at my own pace. The steps were slippery with rain. Seabirds huddled against the cliff, feathers ruffling in the wind. The higher we climbed, the more exposed to it we became. It shrieked and flailed at us, as though wilfully trying to fling us off.

We were only a few yards from the top when Brody’s foot slipped on a broken step. He skidded back into me, knocking me out against the handrail. I felt the rusted metal give under my weight, and for a moment looked directly down into the open drop. Then Brody grabbed me by the scruff of my coat and hauled me back to safety.

‘Sorry,’ he panted, letting go. ‘You OK?’

I nodded, not trusting my voice. My pulse was still racing as I started after him again. But as I did, I noticed something on the rock face a few yards away.

‘Brody,’ I called.

When he turned I pointed to where another dark smear tufted a bulging outcrop on the cliff face. It was too far out of reach for me to get a sample, but I could guess how it got there.

This was where Maggie’s body had struck the rock on its way down.

We reached the top of the cliff a few minutes after that. Emerging on to it, we were hit by the full force of the gale. It tore at our coats, filling them like kites and threatening to fling us back over the edge.

‘Bloody hell!’ Brody exclaimed, bracing himself against it.

Below us, Runa’s harbour was revealed as a shallow horseshoe of churning water, hemmed in by cliffs. The view was vertiginous, wind-lashed grey sea and sky blurring together on an indistinct horizon. One or two lone gulls braved the wind, their plaintive caws coming to us as they futilely tried to ride the currents before being swept away. Inland, the brooding slopes of Beinn Tuiridh looked in the distance, while a hundred yards away Bodach Runa, the island’s standing stone, rose from the turf like a crooked finger. Other than that, all there was to see was the treeless moor, grass flattened by the wind. There was nothing to suggest that Maggie, or anyone else, had ever been up here.