Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

Brody studied the glowing tip of his cigarette.

‘First thing he asked was how I knew. I told him it was just gossip, but I knew that wouldn’t hold up. No one else on Runa had any idea, you see. Lousy timing, too, because right afterwards you announced that the victim was probably some prostitute from a big town. I could see Duncan was already starting to wonder how I’d known. I couldn’t risk it.’

No, I realized, he couldn’t. Now I understood the reason for Duncan’s distraction the last time I’d seen him alive. Perhaps his suspicions were already taking root even then. Brody couldn’t allow that. He couldn’t afford to let anyone suspect he might have been stalking Strachan, that he had a motive for bringing him down.

Even if that meant keeping quiet about his own daughter’s murder.

He sighed, regretfully. ‘It’s the little things that trip you up. Like that bloody Maglite. I’d taken a crowbar with me to the camper van, but Duncan must have seen my torch while I was outside. I could have jumped him once he came out to check, but I waited until he was back inside. Putting it off, I suppose. He left the Maglite on the table when he let me in, so I picked it up and hit him with it.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Seemed the thing to do at the time.’

The disgust I felt only fuelled my anger. ‘The fires were just a distraction, weren’t they? Torching the community centre and the camper van, it wasn’t to destroy forensic evidence. You just wanted us to think it was, so Duncan’s death would look incidental. And you could incriminate Strachan at the same time, planting the broken petrol cap-’

I broke off, staring at him as another missing piece fell into place.

‘That’s why Grace’s car ran out of petrol. You siphoned it off to use to start the fires.’

‘I had to get it from somewhere. If I’d taken his it might have tipped him off.’ Brody had been gazing out at the horizon, but now he turned to me. ‘For the record, I didn’t realize you were still in the medical centre when I started the fire. There were no lights on, and what with the power cut I thought it’d be empty.’

‘Would it have made any difference?’

He flicked ash from his cigarette. ‘Probably not.’

‘Jesus Christ, didn’t you ever think you could have been wrong? That there was something else going on? What about when the yacht radio was smashed and Grace was attacked? Didn’t you wonder why Strachan would do something like that when he hadn’t killed anybody?’

‘Anybody here, perhaps,’ he said, and for the first time there was an edge to his voice. ‘I assumed he was panicking. I thought he wanted to get off the island before the police started questioning everyone. He wouldn’t have wanted them looking too closely into his past.’

‘But it wasn’t his past that was the problem, was it? It was his sister’s. You picked the wrong Strachan!’

He sighed, looking out at the horizon again. ‘Aye.’

There was an appalling irony to it. Because of Brody’s attempts to frame her brother, Grace had believed along with everyone else that there was a killer loose on Runa. She’d even believed she’d almost been a victim herself. So she’d taken advantage of the situation, murdering Maggie and burning her body so it would appear that the killer of Duncan and Janice Donaldson had claimed another life.

Full circle.

‘Was it worth it?’ I asked, quietly. ‘Duncan and the rest. Was it worth all those lives?’

Outlined against the cold blue sky, Brody’s hewn features were unreadable in the morning wind.

‘You used to have a daughter yourself. You tell me.’

I had no answer to that. The anger was ebbing from me now, leaving in its wake a leaden feeling of sadness. And a chilling awareness of my own situation. For the first time I realized how careful Brody had been to put the cigarette stubs back in the packet. He’d left nothing to show he’d been here. Even if I’d had both arms free he was bigger and stronger than me. He’d already killed twice. I couldn’t see him balking at a third time.

I took a quick look at the cliff edge, only yards away. You won’t be leaving Runa today after all, I thought, numbly.

A dark fleck had appeared on the horizon. It was too still to be a bird, hanging apparently motionless in the sky. The coastguard helicopter was early, I realized, but the surge of hope quickly died. It was still too far away. It would take it another ten or fifteen minutes to get here.

Too long.

Brody had seen it too. The wind ruffled his grey hair as he stared at the approaching speck. His cigarette had burned almost down to his fingers.

‘I used to be a good policeman,’ he said, casually. ‘A lousy husband and father, but a good policeman. You start off on the side of the angels, and suddenly you find out you’ve become what you hate. How does that happen?’

I glanced desperately at the helicopter. It didn’t seem to have grown any bigger. At this distance no one on board would even be able to see us. I began trying to work my arm from the sling under my coat, knowing as I did that it wouldn’t do any good.

‘So what now?’ I asked, trying to sound calm.

Something like a dry smile touched his mouth. ‘Good question.’

‘Janice Donaldson was an accident. And what happened to Rebecca will be taken into account.’

Brody took one last draw on his cigarette, then ground it out carefully on the sole of his boot. He put the stub in the packet with the rest.

‘I’m not going to prison. But, for what it counts, I’m sorry.’

He turned his face up to the sun, closing his eyes for a moment, then reached down to stroke the old border collie.

‘Good girl. Stay.’

I took an involuntary step back as he straightened. But he made no move towards me. Instead he began walking unhurriedly towards the edge of the cliff.

‘Brody…?’ I said, as his intention began to dawn. ‘Brody, no!’

My words were carried away. I started after him but he’d already reached the edge. Without hesitating he stepped out into space. For an instant he seemed to hang there, borne up by the wind. Then he’d gone.

I halted, staring at the empty air where he’d been a moment before. But there was nothing there now. Only the cry of the gulls, and the sound of the waves crashing below.

BY SUMMER THE events that had taken place on Runa had started to recede, faded by the blunting effect of memory. The post-mortem into what had happened had produced little that wasn’t already known. At the end of it, as Strachan had said, the dead were still dead, and the rest of us got on with the business of living.

A search of Brody’s house turned up the file that he’d put together on Strachan. It was a good, solid piece of police work, which was no less than I’d expect. He just hadn’t dug quite far enough. Like everyone else, Brody had never thought to question whether Grace might not be Strachan’s wife.

It had proved to be a fatal omission.

But the file still provided a chilling roll call of victims, although there was no way of knowing how many Brody-like Strachan-might have missed. It was probable that the fate of some of Grace’s victims would never be known.

Like Rebecca Brody.

Her father’s body had been recovered from the sea by a fishing boat a week after he’d thrown himself from the cliff. The fall, and the salt water, had carried out their usual disfiguring transformation, but there was no room for doubt. That loose end, at least, could be securely tied off, which I thought Brody would appreciate.

He’d always hated mess.

Not everything had such a neat resolution. Fuelled by spirits from the bar and oil for the generator, the fire had completed the destruction started by the exploding gas canisters and razed the hotel to the ground. A few charred pieces of bone, too damaged by the heat to yield any DNA, were identified as Cameron’s because of their location in the bar. But Grace and Michael Strachan had been together in the kitchen when they’d died. What few calcined bone fragments were recovered were impossible to differentiate.