The Second Stranger, page 16
I checked the darkness in there, my imagination populating every fold with Coben-shapes. The screen of my watch was cracked and fogged, impossible to read. I dug for my phone. How long had I been unconscious? How long had I spent digging for Jai? Coben could’ve moved freely through the wreck of the avalanche during a lost… I didn’t know, I guessed an hour maybe. She’d been prowling, looking for Foley. Or setting traps for us. Inside the building, I imagined slim silhouettes, armed and hell-bent. My skin goosebumped. Coben or not, we had to get inside. Jai worked to wrestle a tooth of glass free, pushed aside a curtain of twigs and we proceeded, checking carefully as we stooped and crunched our way into the half-dark of reception.
‘Jai,’ I whispered as we straightened up. ‘Did you see who shot Gaines?’
He shook his head. ‘Came from the roof, I think.’
I told him about Coben. He stiffened in response. ‘The other guest? Shit. She’s an accomplice? Plus she’s armed?’ He turned to examine the night through the chaos of the fallen tree. ‘You think she’s out there? Or in here?’
‘Haven’t seen her. Guess she went to try and dig her boss free.’
Jai covered his eyes with a trembling palm. ‘Fuck,’ he hissed. His breath came rapidly and he gave me a queasy look. ‘We’re not out of this by a long way.’
‘I don’t think so.’ I knew I needed a plan but my thoughts were scattered and my attempts to piece them together felt slow and ungainly.
Then something changed outside. Whatever it was, it was enough to send a rush of heat through my system. Jai saw me watching and narrowed his eyes. I’d seen a faint glow against the broken glass. There was a light outside. Not the stable brightness of a streetlight, the low bob of movement between still-standing trees. A torch.
‘That’s her,’ I said. ‘She’s searching for Foley.’
‘Or coming for us. We have to hide.’ Jai’s face was creased with exhaustion. If his was anything like mine, it was bone-deep. He ran his good hand down his trousers, located and pulled out the radio. ‘Still working,’ he whispered, examining the screen. ‘Let’s try and call for help. Storm’s gone; we might be able to raise someone.’
‘The roof’s best,’ I said. ‘Up where Gaines was.’
We left the crown of the fallen larch and crossed to the curved reception desk by the blue glow of its inlaid lights. I picked up my Midbow and hefted the stick in numb hands, then headed past the decorator’s trolley down the long main corridor towards the lifts. Such was the silence, I could hear the whirring of the grandfather clock’s springs and coils. I wonder what an observer would have made of us; two exhausted figures nursing bruises and scrapes, shivering against the cold in wet clothes, standing shoulder to shoulder and whispering.
‘I was wrong,’ Jai confessed. ‘I’m sorry. I thought Foley was the first guy.’
‘The second one would have fooled anybody. We couldn’t have known,’ I whispered.
Jai gripped his forehead and stared at the floor. ‘We gave him everything he needed to kill Shelley Talbot. We told him about the radio contact, collected maps and walking gear for him. And he gladly took us along so we couldn’t hook up with the real cop and try to escape while he was away.’
The regret came as a desperate ache. ‘I kept her talking on the radio,’ I breathed, ‘giving him time to get to the crash site first.’
‘You couldn’t have known. If I hadn’t heard her on the radio in the first place…’
‘It’s not your fault. We were manipulated, Jai. This is what he does.’ I felt more certain with the passing minutes. ‘Listen. Foley killed Shelley, not us. He killed the young officer we found in the boot of the car…’ I swallowed hard. ‘And he murdered my brother.’
You won’t find a lot of psychology on the subject of vengeance. My colleagues back at Edinburgh would have argued it’s a social phenomenon, the concern of anthropologists, and maybe at some early point in my life I’d have been inclined to agree with them. But the night I took a hockey stick to Danny Franks’s hand I’d been burning with emotion – more than just a retaliatory impulse, I was alive with a passion, a desire for justice. Psychologists might disagree: simple pain or grief or shame, they’d say. But I don’t buy it. Passions are more persistent and my new one was for some sort of closure, some kind of revenge. It had started on the steep climb to the mountain road when Shelley Talbot had confirmed it was Foley’s boys who’d killed my brother. Now, with Gaines dead and Troy Foley exposed, it burned brighter than ever.
But there was something else in me, beating with equal insistence as I dug my phone out. It was 2.55 a.m. In eight hours I was going to be in Aberdeen for my flight at eleven. I’d made a promise to myself and to Cameron. Madrid by lunchtime, then overnight to Santiago. I was not going to be in the Burnett Road police station answering endless questions, writing out statements and reliving every horrific moment. Which meant I had to be careful. Where Jai might greet the possibility of rescue with joyous relief, I’d have to stay guarded. Plan a way out of this.
The torch in the darkness outside had vanished but I could feel Coben; sense her prowling the outer edges of the slip, finding a way to dig Foley free. We rode the lift to the third floor. On the way, I found adrenaline had begun to sharpen my senses so that the low light became a diamond-hard gleam as I showed Jai to the roof-access door. We shouldered it open, pushing fresh snow back, then closed it behind us. The night felt alive, electro-magnetised, as if something about the aftermath of the slip had changed the fabric of the air. It smelt different; a petrichor of broken wood and rainfall that put me in mind, unlikely as it sounds, of freshly dug earth as we climbed the metal steps to the roof gantry. Up there I breathed deep, wondering if turned-over snow released suspended minerals or compounds, and noticing other things that had changed too; the darkness was fogged in silence, a thickly wadded nothingness punctuated only by woodland crow-calls. We stood beneath a canopy of stars. And looking ahead, up the hill, the world appeared broken and remade. Farigaig had shrugged its huge shoulders, and by moonlight I could make out a vast, broken V-shape that had opened up down the hillside. Inside the gash, moonlight washed over steep swathes of moorland heather, lightly snow-dusted. Further down I could follow the trail of destruction left as the mountain dumped its freight. The drive was intermittently exposed, but the hill above the hotel was mostly a cargo of smashed blocks. And the wave had gathered momentum, crashing over the garages and across the car park where, due to the angle of our view, it disappeared beneath us.
* * *
Up on the roof was a fenced walkway. Jai leant against it and set to work on the radio. Perhaps responding to the curious atmosphere, he kept his voice low. ‘Hello? This is an emergency call. We need help. Repeat, SOS.’
The storm was gone, the night sky a clear, marbled dome. We’d be transmitting for miles in the silence. I listened to the night, fancying I might be hearing the sound of Coben digging somewhere in the snow below. The woods moaned and clattered as the world settled into its new posture. My heartbeat had slowed a little, until I remembered Jai’s unfinished confession.
Haloed in his own breath, my companion was going at the radio. ‘Can anybody hear me? This is an emergency call.’ The receiver emitted a dull note, then a burst of white noise. Nothing. He went again, repeating his plea, changing channels, trying again. For minutes, the monotonous rhythm of bleep and hiss. I saw shapes in the stars and listened to Cameron’s remembered voice point out constellations to me. Then finally a spirit from the white-noise rose and spoke. For a disorientating moment, I thought it was Cam. Relief rushed through me and I listened, alert and energised, trying to make out the words.
‘Hello?’ Jai said, stiffening. ‘I can’t hear you well. This is an emergency call. Can you send help? You have to send help.’
Another explosion of interference. Then a distant woman saying matter-of-factly, ‘Confirm your position please.’
It was a female voice; one of those which immediately suggest calm authority. This was no civilian, this was a police officer. Which meant Inverness. The realisation brought a tumble of interconnected feelings. The giddy potential of escape; the chill certainty that I had to leave before help arrived. I had to be in Santiago by the correct date. I’d promised Cameron. My personal clock was ticking now.
‘I’m a member of the public,’ Jai said. ‘I’m at the Mackinnon Hotel. We need help here.’
More interference. Then a reply; ‘The connection keeps dropping out. So if you could—’ followed by more silence until ‘—keep your finger pressed hard against the shoulder button and speak clearly. I repeat, is this an assistance call?’
Jai took a breath, looked at me with wide, grateful eyes. I took the radio from him. ‘Yes. Yes! Assistance call,’ I said.
‘What’s going on, please?’
‘There’s a man with a gun,’ I said. ‘A dangerous man.’
‘Confirm gunman. Requesting—’ I bit my lower lip and listened as the connection dropped and the radio fell silent again. This time the gap was longer, and the dead-air beep returned before I caught: ‘—further units, can you confirm your precise location?’
‘The Mackinnon Hotel. Can you hear me? The Mackinnon Hotel.’
Jai leaned in until we were hunched over the radio shoulder to shoulder. Once I thought I caught an eddy of noise in the black emptiness, but nothing came back but the beep-beep. We waited another few minutes. I tried again, repeating our plea and location.
Then, sudden and sharp, a fizz followed by, ‘Repeat: can you confirm your location please?’
‘The Mackinnon Hotel!’ I said. Kept repeating it, a tension headache probing behind my eyes. More minutes, more silence; frustration climbing.
Jai leaned against the handrail, his expression tortured. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Instead, his gaze softened and he stilled. ‘What was that?’
We paused our activity, our breath dissipating in slow and fragile clouds as we listened. The noise of movement, nearby and inside the hotel. Too late I realised Coben had a radio too. She could hear us.
The two of us turned our attention to the roof door at the same time. It shuddered in its frame. Someone was pushing at it.
26
Fear pressed against the small of my back and I reversed, slithering. My muscles cramped and my heart gave a single, horrific kick that thrummed through to my fingertips. I pocketed the radio, grabbed my hockey stick and retreated along the raised steel walkway. We were hemmed in by pitched roofs to the left and right. The mesh-metal path was raised above the roof itself, high enough to be almost clear of snow. I could see evidence of previous boot prints. Gaines had been up here only an hour or so ago. Gaines and Coben. Ahead, the walkway took a ninety-degree right-hand turn.
‘Where does this go, Remie?’ Jai hissed, attention caught between the door at the foot of the stairs and the walkway, face drawn and cheeks hollow. I beckoned, not knowing what I was going to do. The path was still dusted with snow and our new tracks became freshly marked signposts as we retreated backwards. I’d never been up here; had no idea where to go. Beneath us was the top-floor corridor – anyone in the hotel directly below us would surely hear the metal reverberate as we moved above them – to our right, a pitched section of roof rose upwards to a chimney stack. I turned away from the roof-access steps and crept forward, the raised pathway no more than a couple of feet wide, slate tiles slippery with ice either side. The noise at the door behind me had gathered into a series of thumps.
‘The tracks, Remie. Fuck.’
I paused, assessed the mess. We could sweep them away in arcs with our boots but the noise against the gantry metal and our direction of travel would be obvious anyway. ‘Nothing we can do,’ I hissed, turning back. ‘Coben was up here to shoot Gaines. She knows the roof better than we do.’
Jai followed, breathing hard. We took a right. Another trench between pitched roofs. Already I was losing my sense of positioning. Ahead, the walkway took another right-hand turn, clearly circling the chimney to one side of us. We crept forward and turned again. Now we were on the far side of the island, hidden from view by the gritstone stack. I crouched and waited.
Life with Cameron had taught me the simple distinction between fight or flight was bogus. Up on the roof, I felt it with fresh certainty. The access door thumped once more – someone was pushing back a dense pillow of gathered snow with each shove – and I felt a fear so sharp and deep I couldn’t move, a genuine freeze-response that locked me in a crouch on wooden legs. My heart slugged at me like a creature in utero. I stared at the toes of my boots for I don’t know how long, my vision a watery mess. Some primeval instinct made me want to play dead – I had to fight the strong urge to curl up on my side and close my eyes. Then a vague awareness: the noise at the roof-access door had stopped. Didn’t know when for sure.
Jai had tentatively risen to a hunched stand. He roused me, shaking me gently by the shoulder. ‘Think we’re safe,’ he croaked.
We crept back the way we’d come. At the corner I stopped, hands in hot fists on my hockey stick, and dipped my head around in a swift movement. The rooftop walkway was empty. A spasm of relief. Nerves rubbed raw, I turned the corner and moved foot over foot back towards the gantry fence, as lightly and silently as I dared, until I’d opened up a line of sight to the door below. It was ajar. The corridor beyond was in darkness. I waited like a creature assessing a trap until Jai joined me.
When we spoke it was in breathless whispers; silent, mouthed shapes so we had to watch each other’s lips. ‘Where are they?’ I said.
Jai followed my gaze. Every threat in our tiny, doomed world seemed coiled up in that black space between the half-open door and its frame. He watched, then turned to me and mouthed, ‘They could be waiting.’
I shuddered at the possibility. It was a horrible thought; an ambush, a single shot in the head, and the last remaining witnesses to Foley’s escape erased. My blue-skinned body splayed across the third-floor corridor carpet, stiff and glass-eyed until help arrived. Help. My mind cleared somewhat. Just moments ago, we’d raised somebody on the radio. But had they heard us say the name of the hotel? If they had, there could be someone at Inverness station putting a rescue team together right now. Part of me imagined waiting on the roof until we saw the lights coming along the mountain road, but a bigger part knew it was hopeless. The route was blocked; would be until the morning at least. I thought of Santiago, of the Atacama and my promise. I couldn’t be here when the police arrived.
Jai nudged me. ‘Is there another way down?’ he mouthed. Not unless you want to descend the way poor Gaines did. I shook my head. We studied the door some more. Around us, broken trees reshared crows. Echoes and pine sap in the wind. ‘What do we do?’ Jai whispered. ‘Wait?’
We backed glacially away again and stood with the hoods of our coats touching so we could raise our voices to a hushed whisper. ‘It could be hours until help arrives, even if it does,’ I said, my breath clouding the space between us.
‘Could we make it through the night out here?’
I examined the stars – heard Cameron’s voice gently explaining their patterns and relationships – then returned to our huddle. ‘Temperatures are going to keep dropping. We have to get back inside.’
‘Then what? We escape via the loch?’
‘Let’s concentrate on getting off the roof first.’
Then, a sound from below. It was a loud noise muffled by distance. The crash and clatter of metal. Something about its position suggested the kitchens, two floors below us. It came again. We looked across the roof, waited. Nothing else. Jai shifted position. ‘Could that be them?’
I imagined the two of them pulling drawers clear, upending a medley of knives across metal surfaces. Paring and chopping knives, finger-length blades in protective sheaths, heavy wooden-handled butchers’ cleavers. Were they planning on carving us up? I tried swallowing but my throat refused. ‘Sounds a long way below us if it is,’ I whispered. ‘They’ve left us up here…’ I was about to ask, why is that? But I bit the question back.
Since the avalanche my thoughts had been fogged in fear and confusion, but clarity was returning. Up on the hotel drive, Jai had been about to confess something to me; something he’d kept hidden since his arrival. Well, I had a secret too. My brother’s storage locker. The locker made sense of a problem I’d been wrestling with all along: Gaines Two was Troy Foley, so why hadn’t he killed us when he’d had the chance? Jai had already pointed out that he didn’t need a gun to finish us off, he could have silenced us whenever he wanted. But he hadn’t, he’d kept us alive – me alive. What if he’d spared me because he knew about Cameron’s bag and the storage locker? It was a possibility that triggered a world of subsequent questions. If it was true, it gave me power and leverage. I just needed time to think about how to use them.
‘Remie? You OK?’ Jai lifted his boots gently, one after the other, in a movement I knew meant painfully numb feet. ‘We can’t wait forever,’ he observed. ‘Not dawn for ages yet.’ I pictured the half-open door at the bottom of the gantry steps; the top-floor corridor bristling with traps. Crouched figures, cocked guns. But if the noise from deep below us was them, we could be penned in by fear alone. Without realising I was doing it, I found myself creeping slowly back to the fence and assessing the dark space beyond the door.
‘I think we need to get back inside,’ I said. ‘Come on.’
I lowered one boot at a time, the maw of the darkness below yawning. Jai followed. Each downward bootstep was a trial. The balls of my feet blazed with painful readiness. I reached the gap, tried blinking away black pinpoints in my vision.
