Читать книгу: «The Hunting Party: Get ready for the most gripping, hotly-anticipated crime thriller of 2018», страница 5

Three days earlier
30th December 2018
MIRANDA

Dinner is served in the big dining room in the Lodge, off the living room, which has been lit with what appear to be hundreds of candles, and staffed by a few spotty teenagers in plaid aprons. We’re two short: Samira and Giles are having supper in their cabin. Samira said she’s heard too many stories about parents ‘just leaving their kids for an hour or so’ when everything goes horribly wrong. Yes, I told her, patiently – but not in the middle of nowhere. Besides, Priya’s hardly going to be wandering off on her own at six months, for God’s sake. Still, Samira wasn’t having any of it.

I almost can’t believe this woman is Samira, who at one party in our early twenties decided to jump the two-foot gap between the house building and the building next to it, just for a laugh. She was always one of the wild ones, the party girl, the one you could rely on to raise the tempo of things on a night out. If Katie’s the one who I go way back with, Samira’s probably much more like me: the one I’ve always felt most akin to. Now I feel I hardly recognise her. Perhaps that’s just because she’s been so busy with Priya. I’m sure the real Samira is in there somewhere. I’m hoping this will be our chance to catch up, to remember that we’re partners in crime. But honestly, when some people have kids it’s like they’ve had a personality transplant. Or a lobotomy. Maybe I should count myself lucky that I don’t seem to be able to get pregnant. At least I’ll remain myself for Christ’s Sake.

I’ve got the gamekeeper, Doug, on one side of me and the other guy, Iain, on the other. Both of them are wearing identikit green kilts and sporrans. Neither looks particularly happy about it. As you might imagine, the gamekeeper wears his outfit best. He really is quite attractive. I am reminded of the fact that, before Julien, I was sometimes drawn to men like this. The reticent, brooding sort: the challenge of drawing them out, making them care.

I turn to him and ask: ‘Have you always been a gamekeeper?’

He frowns. ‘No.’

‘Oh, and what did you do before?’

‘The Marines.’

I picture him with a short back and sides, in uniform. It’s an appealing image. He looks good scrubbed-up, even if I’m sure his hair hasn’t seen a brush any time in the last five years. I’m glad I made an effort: my silk shirt, undone perhaps one button lower than strictly necessary, my new jeans.

‘Did you have to kill anyone?’ I ask, leaning forward, putting my chin in my hand.

‘Yes.’ As he says it his expression is neutral, betraying no emotion whatsoever. I experience a small shiver of what might be disquiet … or desire.

Julien is sitting directly opposite us, with a front and centre view of things. There is nothing like stirring a bit of jealousy to fire things up in a relationship – especially ours. It could be an over-familiar waiter in a restaurant, or the guy on the next sunlounger who Julien’s convinced has been checking me out (he’s probably right). ‘Would you want him to do this to you?’ he’d pant in my ear later, ‘or this?’

If I’m honest, sex has become, lately, a mechanism for a specific end rather than pleasure. I’ve got this app that Samira told me about, which identifies your most fertile days. And then, of course, there are certain positions that work best. I’ve explained this to Julien so many times, but he doesn’t seem to get it. I suppose he’s stopped trying, recently. So yes, we could do with things being spiced up a little.

I turn back to Doug, keeping Julien in my peripheral vision. He’s talking to the Icelandic woman, so I touch a hand against Doug’s, just for fun. I’ve had a couple of glasses too many, maybe. I feel his fingers flinch against mine.

‘Sorry,’ I say, all innocence. ‘Would you mind passing me the jus?’ I think it’s working. Certainly Julien’s looking pretty pissed off about something. To all intents and purposes he might be having a whale of a time – always so important to present the right face to the world – but I know him too well. It’s that particular tension in the side of the neck, the gritting of the teeth.

I glance over to where poor Katie, across the table from me, is seated next to the Icelandic man with the strange eyes, who seems to have taken a bit of a shine to her. It’s a bloody nightmare, them being here too. Are we going to have to share the sauna with them? Judging by the state of the clothes they’re wearing I’d have to disinfect myself afterwards.

The man, now, is leaning towards Katie as though he has never seen anything so fascinating or beautiful in his life. Clearly – judging by his partner – he has unconventional taste.

Though … there is definitely something different about Katie. She looks tired and pale, as per, but there’s that new haircut for a start. At the place she normally goes to, they style her hair à la Mrs Williams, our old school hockey teacher. You would have thought that with her corporate lawyer’s salary, she might try a bit harder sometimes. I’ve been telling her to go to Daniel Galvin for ages – I go for highlights every six weeks – so I don’t know why I feel so put out about her finally having listened to me. Perhaps because she hasn’t given me any credit for it, and I feel I deserve some. And perhaps because I had sort of imagined we might go together. Make a morning of it, the two of us.

I still remember the girl she was back then: flat-chested when everyone else was starting to develop. Lank-haired, knock-kneed, the maroon of the school uniform emphasising the sallowness of her complexion.

I have always liked a project.

Look at her now. It’s difficult to be objective, as I’ve known her so long that she’s practically a sister, but I can see how some men might find her attractive. Sure: she’ll never be pretty, but she has learned to make the best of herself. That new hair. Her teeth have been straightened and whitened. Her clothes are beautifully cut to make the most of her slight frame (I could never wear a shirt like that without my boobs creating the kind of shelf that makes you look bigger than you really are). She had her ears pinned back as a present to herself when she qualified at her law firm. She looks almost … chic. You might think she was French: the way she’s made the best of those difficult features. What’s that expression the French have for it? Jolie laide: ugly beautiful.

Katie would never be wolf-whistled at by builders or white-van men. I never understand why some people think you might be flattered by that. Look, OK, I know I’m attractive. Very attractive. There, I’ve said it. Do you hate me now? Anyway, I don’t need it confirmed by some pot-bellied construction workers who would catcall anyone with a short skirt or tight top. If anything, they cheapen it.

They wouldn’t shout at Katie, though. Well, they might shout at her to ‘Smile love!’ But they wouldn’t fancy her. They wouldn’t understand her. I’m almost envious of it. It’s something that I’ll never have, that look-twice subtlety.

Anyway. Maybe now we’re finally together, I can find out what’s been going on in her life – what it is that has prompted this mysterious change in her.

EMMA

It’s hard not to spend the whole of the meal looking around the table, checking that everyone’s enjoying themselves. I really wish I’d opted us out of this dinner when I’d booked – it seemed like a great idea at the time, but with the Icelandic couple here as well there’s an odd dynamic. And this close proximity to the other guests just emphasises the mess-up over our not having the place to ourselves. I know I should be able to let it go: que sera sera, and all that, but I so wanted it to be perfect for everyone. It doesn’t help that the other guests are so weird-looking and unkempt: I can see how unimpressed Miranda, in particular, is by them. Katie’s sitting next to the man, Ingvar – who is looking at her as though he wishes she were on the plate in front of him, not the over-scented meat.

I, meanwhile, am sitting next to Iain. He doesn’t say very much, and when he does his accent is so thick it’s hard to understand everything.

‘Do you live here too?’ I ask him.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Fort William – with my wife and kids.’

‘Ah,’ I say. ‘Have you worked here long?’

He nods. ‘Since the current owner first bought the place.’

‘What do you do?’

‘Whatever needs doing. Odd jobs, here and there: working on the pumphouse, at the moment, down by the loch. I bring the supplies in too: food, the bits for the cabins.’

‘What’s the owner like?’ I ask, intrigued. I imagine a whiskery old Scottish laird, so I’m a bit surprised when Iain says, ‘He’s all right, for an Englishman.’ I wait for him to say more, but he either doesn’t have anything to add, or is reluctant to do so.

I seem to have run out of questions, so it’s a relief when the Icelandic man asks about the deer-stalking, and the whole table’s attention is turned to that. It’s as if the idea of a hunt, a kill, has exerted a magnetic pull upon everyone’s attention.

‘We don’t hunt the deer just for the sake of it,’ the gamekeeper says. ‘We do it to keep the numbers down – otherwise they’d get out of control. So it’s necessary.’

‘But I think it’s necessary for another reason,’ the man – Ingvar – says. ‘Humans are hunters, it’s in our very DNA. We need to find an outlet for those needs. The blood lust.’ He says the last two words as though they have a particularly delicious flavour to them, and there’s a pause in which no one quite seems to know what to say, a heightening of the awkward tension that’s plagued this meal. I see Miranda raise her eyebrows. Perhaps we can all laugh about this later – it’ll become a funny anecdote. Every holiday has these moments, doesn’t it? ‘Well, I don’t know about all that,’ says Bo, spearing a piece of venison, ‘but it’s delicious. Amazing to think it came from right here.’

I’m not so sure. It’s not terrible, exactly, but I could have done so much better. The venison is overly flavoured with juniper, you can hardly taste the meat, and there isn’t nearly enough jus. The vegetables are limp: the cavolo nero a slimy over-steamed mush.

I’ll make up for it tomorrow evening. I have my wonderful feast planned: smoked salmon blinis to go with the first couple of bottles of champagne, then beef Wellington with foie gras, followed by a perfect chocolate soufflé. Soufflés, as everyone knows, are not easy. You have to be a bit obsessive about them. The separation of the eggs, the perfect beating of the whites – the timings at the end, making sure you serve them before the beautiful risen crest falls. Most people don’t have the patience for it. But that’s exactly the sort of cooking I like.

It’s a relief, to be honest, when the dessert (a rather limp raspberry pavlova) is finally cleared away.

As everyone is readying to leave, Julien motions us all to sit back down. He’s had a bit too much to drink; he sways slightly as he stands.

‘Darling,’ Miranda says, in her most silken tones, ‘what are you doing?’ I wonder if she’s remembering last New Year – in the exclusive environs of Fera at Claridge’s restaurant – when he stood up out of his seat without looking, only to send a waiter’s entire tray of food crashing to the ground.

‘I want to say a few words,’ he says. ‘I want to thank Emma …’ he raises his glass at me, ‘for picking such a fantastic place—’

‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I haven’t really done anything …’

‘And I want to say how special it is to have everyone here, together. It’s nice to know that some things never change, that some friends are always there for you. It hasn’t been the easiest year—’

‘Darling,’ Miranda says again, with a laugh, ‘I think everyone gets the idea. But I absolutely agree. Here’s to old friends—’ she raises her glass. Then she remembers, and turns to me. ‘And new, of course. Cheers!’

Everyone echoes her, including Ingvar – though of course she did not mean him. But even his interjection doesn’t spoil it. The toast has rescued the atmosphere, somehow – it’s brought a sense of occasion to the meal. And I feel, again, that special little glow of pride.

DOUG

About an hour after the dinner there’s a knock on his door. The dogs, Griffin and Volley, go crazy at this unexpected excitement: no one ever comes to his cottage. He checks his watch: midnight.

‘What the—’

It’s the beautiful one, the tall blonde who sat next to him at the meal. Who touched her hand to his, which was, as it happens, the first time anyone has touched his skin in a long time. She smiles, her hand lifted, as though ready to knock again. He can smell trouble coming off her.

Griffin barrels past him and leaps up at her even as Doug roars, ‘Down!’ She throws her arms up, and as she does her sweater lifts, exposing a taut sliver of stomach, the tight-furled bud of her navel. The dog’s nose leaves a wet slick across the skin.

She seems embarrassed by her reaction of fear; she bends to caress Griffin’s head, a show of bravado. ‘Pretty girl,’ she says, sounding less than completely convinced. She grins up at him, all her white teeth. Look at me, the grin says, look how relaxed I am. ‘Hi. Hope you don’t mind my interrupting you like this.’

‘What is it?’

Her smile falters. Too late, he remembers that this is a guest, that he owes her a service, even if it is ridiculously late for her to be asking anything of him. He attempts some damage limitation with the next question. ‘How can I help?’

‘I was wondering if you could help us make a fire,’ she says, ‘in the Lodge.’

He stares at her. He cannot imagine how nine people might not have the skills between them to set a fire.

‘We’ve been trying to make one,’ she says, ‘but without much luck.’ She leans one arm against the doorpost, slouching her hip. Her jumper has ridden up again. ‘We’re Londoners, you see. I know you’d make it much better than we ever could.’

‘Fine,’ he says, curtly, and then remembers again that she is a customer. A guest. ‘Of course.’

He senses that she is the sort of woman who is used to getting her way. He can feel her trying to peer into the interior of the cottage. He is not used to this: he blocks her view with his body and closes the door behind him so quickly that he only just avoids Griffin’s eager nose.

She crooks her finger at him, inviting him to follow. Just toward the Lodge, to light the bloody fire … but still. He knows what she is offering up to him. Not the act itself, perhaps, but the whisper, the hint, the wink of it.

How long has it been? A long time. More than a year – maybe a lot more.

As he follows he catches that scent of her perfume again, the church-like smokiness of it. It smells to him like trouble.

He follows her back to the Lodge. As he kneels in the grate, the big guy – Mark? – comes over and says in a man-to-man way, ‘Waste of your time, mate. She insisted on going and getting you. But I practically had it going. The wood’s just a bit damp, that’s all.’

He looks at the haphazard arrangement of logs in the grate, the twenty or so burned matches scattered around, and says nothing.

‘Want some help?’ the man asks.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Suit yourself, mate.’ The man’s face has reddened in a matter of seconds with either embarrassment, or, Doug suspects, anger. Short fuse on that one, he thinks. Takes one to know one.

NOW
2nd January 2019
HEATHER

Normally the water of the loch reflects the landscape as perfectly as if the mountains and trees and lodge were peering into a mirror. Sometimes in this reflection they look somehow more crisp, more perfect than they do in reality. But today the surface is clouded, blind, scarred by ice. Please, I think, following Doug around the bend of the path beside the water, don’t let it be the loch. Don’t let him have found the body there.

The loch is my sanctuary, my church.

The first time I wandered into those freezing depths I didn’t intend on coming back out. It was in the early days here, when I realised that I hadn’t been able to outrun everything. But something happened, as my clothes became weighed down, and the cold surrounded me in its terrible grip. Some essential urge, beyond my control, to kick, to fight. Here was life, suddenly: inside me, powerful, insuperable. The feeling was – is – addictive. It is one of the few times that I do not feel that I am drowning.

I have my routine down pat now. I get myself up and get straight into my swimming costume, a chaste one-piece like those we used to wear for swimming lessons at school. I’m not trying to impress anyone, and it’s the most coverage I can get for warmth without resorting to a full wetsuit. I go every morning of the year. I do it especially when it is below freezing – like now – and when I have to break the ice on the surface of the loch. When the water is so cold that it grips you like a vice and squeezes all thoughts from your mind, and your heart seems to be beating so hard it might explode. That’s when I am most myself, without the weight of everything upon me. The one time these days when I really feel alive.

Afterwards I dry off and go back to my cottage. By then every nerve ending in my body is tingling pleasantly. I suppose you could say it’s the next best thing to sex.

I saw Doug swimming in the loch, just once. I have an uninterrupted view of the water from my cottage. He went right to the edge and stripped off down to his boxers, revealing powerful shoulders, skin pale as milk. When he swam – not a moment’s hesitation at the cold – it looked as though his body was a machine specifically designed to cut through the water with the greatest possible speed. When he stepped out his face was grim.

As I watched I felt a powerful sense of shame, as though I had intruded upon some private moment of his, even though all it took was a glance from the window. And shame too, because it felt like a disloyalty. Because I had looked, and kept on looking, and had not been immune to the sight of my co-worker’s body. Because I had held the image of it in my mind when I took a bath, later, and gave myself the first orgasm I had had in more than a year.

Now Doug turns around, to check I’m following, and I feel the heat rise instantly to my cheeks. Hopefully the sting of the cold will be enough to justify it.

We are about to plunge into the thicket of trees that ring the loch on this side. A fringe of dark pines. Some of them aren’t native; they’re Norwegian imposters, planted after the war. They’re much denser than the local Scots pine, and when you’re among them all sound from the outside world seems to be muffled. Not that there are many sounds here, beyond the occasional cawing of the birds.

On my good days, I persuade myself that I love these trees: their glossy needles, the cones that I collect to keep in bowls around the house, the warm, green Christmas scent of the resin when you walk among them. On my bad days I decide they look funereal, like sinister black-cloaked sentinels.

We are out of sight of the Lodge now. Completely alone. I am suddenly reminded that though I’ve worked alongside this man for a year I know almost nothing about him. This is definitely the most time I have ever spent in his company – and quite possibly the most we have ever spoken to one another.

I’m not sure he speaks to anyone. Early on, I kept expecting him to ask me if he could use the Internet: to send an email, perhaps, or check up on friends and family on Facebook. But he never did. Even I check in with friends and family every so often. ‘Your mam worries about you,’ my dad said, at the beginning. ‘Stuck in a place like that all on your own, after everything you’ve been through. It’s not right.’ So I try and go back every few months or so to put her mind at rest, though the experience of re-entering the outside world is not one I particularly relish.

But Doug never seems to leave the estate unless he has to: taking guests into town to visit the shops, for example. I made the mistake of mentioning him to my mum, the lonely existence he leads. Of course, in true parental style, she was worried for me.

‘He could be anyone,’ she told me. ‘What’s his background? Where does he come from?’

I told her the one thing I did know, that he’d been in the Marines. This did not reassure her in the slightest. ‘You need to goggle him, Heather,’ she told me.

‘Google, Ma.’

‘Whatever it is. Just promise me you’ll do it. You need to know who this man is … I can’t sleep for worrying about you, Heather. Running off and leaving us all behind just when you need your family about you most. Not letting us help you like we want to. No word for days, weeks. I need to know that you’re safe at least. Who you’re working with. It’s not fair, Heaths.’ And then she seemed to check herself. ‘Of course – I know it must sound awful, me saying that. What happened to you … that was the most unfair thing that could happen—’

‘All right, Ma,’ I said, not wanting to hear any more. ‘I’ll do it, I’ll google him.’ But I didn’t, not then. Truthfully, the thought of it felt like a betrayal.

Of course, when my mum asked me what I had found – I could tell it was one of those things that she wouldn’t give up on, a terrier with a bone – I reassured her. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I looked. There’s nothing there. You can stop worrying about me now.’

There was a pause. ‘I never stop worrying about you, pet.’ I put the phone down.

The truth is, she’s right. I don’t know anything about Doug. Just what the boss hinted at during my interview, that his background made him well suited to the job – particularly seeing off any poachers. When he was asked to take his pick of the cottages he chose the one furthest from anything – at the bottom of the flank of the Munro, with no sheltering trees, with no view of the loch. It’s unquestionably the worst of all of them, which would suggest he chose it purely for its position. I understand the need to be alone. But the need for even further isolation within this remote wilderness makes me wonder exactly what it is he is trying to distance himself from.

‘Where are we going, Doug?’

‘Just a little way now,’ he says, and I feel a leap of trepidation, a powerful urge to turn and start in the other direction again, back towards the Lodge. Instead I follow Doug as we tramp further into the trees, the only sound the squeak of our boots in the snow.

Up ahead of us I see the first of the waterfalls, the small wooden bridge that spans it, the pumphouse building a little way further up. Normally it would take us only ten minutes to get here. But in these conditions it has taken the best part of half an hour.

I see the big impressions of Doug’s boots in the snow on the bridge, where he apparently stood the first time, looking down. There are no other footprints, I notice. But then there wouldn’t be. This snow has been falling for hours. Any other tracks – including those of the dead guest – will have long ago been obscured.

‘There,’ he says, pointing.

I step warily onto the bridge. At first I can’t see anything. It’s a long way down to the bottom, and I’m very aware of Doug standing just behind me. It would only take a little push, I find myself thinking, to send me over. I grip the chain rail hard, though it suddenly seems very flimsy in my grasp.

There is a moment of incomprehension as I stare into the void. All I can make out is a lot of snow and ice gathered in the ravine.

‘Doug,’ I say, ‘I can’t see anything. There’s nothing there.’

He frowns, and points again. I follow his finger.

Suddenly, peering down among the rocks, the great pillows of fallen snow, it appears below me like the slow emergence of a magic eye image.

‘Oh God.’ It’s more an exhalation of air, like a punch to the gut, than a word. I have seen dead bodies before in my time, in my old line of work. A greater number than the average person, definitely. But the horror of the experience never leaves you. It is always a shock – a profound, existential shock – to be confronted with the inanimate object that was once a person. A person so recently thinking, feeling, seeing, reduced to so much cold flesh. I feel the long-ago familiar swoop of nausea. At medical school they told us it would go away, after our first few. ‘You get used to it.’ But I’m not sure I ever really did. And I am unprepared, despite knowing what I have come to see. I have been ambushed, here in this place, by death. I thought that I could outrun it.

It almost looks like part of the landscape now: I think that is partly what helped it to blend in. But now I can see it, I can’t believe I missed it before. The corpse has a kind of dark power, drawing the eye. The lower half of it is covered modestly by fallen snow, though the shield of the bridge has protected the top half of the body. The skin is a greyish blue, leached of all blood and human colour. That hair too, spilling behind the head, might just be more dead weed, such as those that poke obstinately through the snow in places.

There seems to be a great deal of skin, in fact. This is not the corpse of a person who came out dressed for the elements. The cold would have killed in an hour – less – if nothing else had. Or someone else had.

I see now, looking harder, the halo of blood about the head: rust-coloured, covering the rocks beneath like a peculiar species of lichen. There is a lot of it. A fall onto rock. That could have been the thing that did the killing, in itself.

But I can see that it is more complicated than that. There is an unmistakable necklace of darkness about the neck. The skin there, even from this distance away, looks particularly blue and bruised-looking. I know very little about forensics – barely more than someone with no background in medicine. My old vocation was in saving life, not examining the evidence left after its loss. But you would not need to be an expert in the field to see that something has compressed the skin there, injured it.

The face … no, I don’t want to think about the face.

I turn back to Doug. His gaze is a blank; as though there is no one behind his eyes. I take a step back, involuntarily. Then I get a grip of myself.

‘I see it,’ I say. ‘I see what you mean. Yes.’

We must wait for the police to arrive, to make their judgements, of course. But I know now why Doug wanted me to come and take a look. This does not look like an accident.