Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

Fire lanced through my injured shoulder. Brody tried to push me aside, but the pain maddened me. I shoved him back.

‘No!’

For an instant I thought he was going to attack me, then the rage seemed to drain from him. Panting, he slumped against the wall as the fit passed.

I knelt down next to Strachan. He was bloody and dazed, but alive.

‘How is he?’ Brody asked, breathlessly.

‘He’ll live.’

‘More than the bastard deserves.’ But there was no energy left in the words. ‘Where’s Fraser?’

‘Back at the car. He couldn’t make it up.’

I looked round for the knife. It was lying by the wall. I used one of the remaining freezer bags to pick it up. It was a folding fishing knife, its blade five inches long. Big enough.

But as I looked at it something stirred at the back of my mind. What is it? What’s wrong?

Brody held out his hand. ‘Here, I’ll look after that. Don’t worry, I won’t use it on him,’ he added when I hesitated.

A nagging sense that I was overlooking something persisted as I passed it over. There was a groan from Strachan as Brody put the knife into his pocket.

‘Help me get him up,’ I said.

‘I can manage,’ Strachan gasped.

His nose was broken, making his voice sound hollow and adenoidal. I went over anyway. So did Brody, but it wasn’t until he wrenched Strachan’s arms behind his back that I saw he’d produced a pair of handcuffs.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Souvenir from when I retired.’ He snapped the cuffs round Strachan’s wrists. ‘Call it a citizen’s arrest.’

‘I’m not going to try to get away,’ Strachan said, making no attempt to resist.

‘Not now you’re not. Come on, get up.’ Brody roughly pulled him to his feet. ‘What’s wrong, Strachan? Aren’t you going to plead innocence? Insist you didn’t kill anyone?’

‘Would it make any difference?’ he asked, dully.

Brody looked surprised, as though he hadn’t expected him to buckle so easily.

‘No.’ He pushed him towards the entrance. ‘Outside.’

I ducked through after them, blinking as I emerged into the daylight. The freezing wind took my breath away as I went to examine Strachan. His face was a mess. The blood and mucus that smeared it was superficial, but one of his eyes was puffed almost shut. From the way the cheek under it was also swollen, I guessed it wasn’t only his nose that was broken.

I felt in my pockets for a tissue and began trying to staunch the blood.

‘Let him bleed,’ Brody said.

Strachan gave a travesty of a smile. ‘Ever the humanitarian, eh, Brody?’

‘Can you make it down?’ I asked him.

‘Do I have any choice?’

None of us did. Strachan wasn’t the only one in bad shape. The climb and fight had taken its toll on Brody. His face was grey, and I doubted I looked any better. My shoulder had started throbbing again, and I was beginning to shiver as the wind cut through my fire-damaged coat like icy knives. We all needed to get off the exposed mountainside, fast.

Brody gave Strachan a shove. ‘Move.’

‘Take it easy,’ I told him, as Strachan almost fell.

‘Don’t waste your sympathy. He would have killed you back there, given a chance.’

Strachan looked over his shoulder at me. ‘I don’t want any sympathy. But you were never in any danger from me.’

Brody snorted. ‘Aye, right. That’s why you’d got the knife.’

‘I came up here to kill myself, not anybody else.’

‘Save it, Strachan,’ Brody told him roughly, steering him down the slope.

But the feeling that something wasn’t right about this, that I was missing something, was stronger than ever. I found myself wanting to hear what Strachan had to say.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘You’ve murdered three people. Why suddenly decide to kill yourself now?’

The desolation on his face seemed genuine. ‘Because enough people have died. I wanted to be the last.’

Brody’s next shove sent him to his knees on the hail-covered grass. ‘You lying bastard! All the blood on your hands, and you stand there and say that? Christ, I ought to-’

‘Brody!’ I quickly moved in between them.

He was trembling with anger, all his fury focused on the man kneeling in front of him. With an effort, he made himself relax. His fists unclenched as he stepped back.

‘All right. But when I hear his self-pity, after all the lives he’s ruined. Ellen’s as well…’

‘I know, but it’s finished. Let the police handle it now.’

Brody drew in a long, shaky breath, nodding assent. But Strachan was still staring at him.

‘What about Ellen?’

‘Don’t bother denying it,’ Brody told him, bitterly. ‘We know you’re Anna’s father, God help her.’

Strachan had scrambled to his feet. There was an unmistakable urgency about him now.

‘How did you find out? Who told you?’

Brody regarded him coldly. ‘You weren’t as clever as you thought. Maggie Cassidy found out. Seems like everyone on the island knew about it.’

Strachan looked as though he’d been struck. ‘What about Grace? Does she know?’

‘That’s the least of your worries. After this-’

‘Does she know?’

His vehemence took us both aback. I answered, feeling an awful apprehension start to bloom.

‘It was an accident. She overheard.’

Strachan looked as though he’d been struck. ‘We have to get back to the village.’

Brody grabbed hold of him as he turned away. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

Strachan shook him off. ‘Let me go, you bloody idiot! Christ, you’ve no idea what you’ve done!’

It wasn’t his anger that convinced me, it was what else was in his eyes.

Fear.

And all at once I realized what had been bothering me. Why the sight of the knife had sparked it. It had been what Strachan had said: I butchered them all like pigs! It had been a sickening, distracting image, especially after seeing the vicious slashes on Maggie’s burned body and the blood spattering her car. But although Maggie had been killed with a knife, had been butchered in a very real sense, none of the other victims had. So either Strachan hadn’t meant what he’d said, or…

Oh my God. What had we done…?

I fought to keep my voice steady. ‘Take his handcuffs off.’

Brody stared at me as if I were mad. ‘What? I’m not going to-’

‘We don’t have time for this!’ Strachan broke in. ‘We need to get back! Now!’

‘He’s right. We have to hurry,’ I said.

‘Why, for God’s sake? What’s wrong?’ Brody demanded, but he still started to unlock the handcuffs.

‘He didn’t kill them,’ I said, willing him to hurry. The enormity of our mistake was starting to dawn with appalling, bell-like clarity. ‘It was Grace. He’s just been protecting her.’

‘Grace?’ Brody echoed, incredulously. ‘His wife?’

A look of self-loathing crossed Strachan’s battered face.

‘Grace isn’t my wife. She’s my sister.’

THE JOURNEY BACK to the Range Rover was a nightmare. Although the hail had stopped, the mountainside was littered with white pellets of slowly melting ice, turning the slope into a frictionless slide. The light was fading and the wind that had tried to slow us on the way up now chased us back down, making the descent even harder.

Hindsight is the cruellest luxury. We’d been right, and yet hideously wrong. The intruder at the clinic, the wrecked yacht radio and attack on Grace, that had all been Strachan. He’d been stalking us from the first day we’d arrived on the island, watching our progress, even sabotaging us at times. Yet he’d been doing it to protect his sister, not himself. He wasn’t the killer.