kind of way. He knew he had been early, leaving more time than necessary for his journey up from Glasgow, and he was appreciating the solitude and the music. He had been happy to leave Isla muttering about starting her Christmas shopping, sitting there in her PJs with the Argos catalogue open and a worryingly long spreadsheet printed off at the ready. She had got as far as her brother-in-law’s yearly subscription for What Camera magazine when Donnie’s mobile had bleeped. He had read the text and had been intrigued, and a little frisson of excitement had brightened up his Saturday night in front of the TV. Isla hadn’t questioned it; she had merely looked up from the spreadsheet and asked, ‘Are you going out to work?’ then a quick glance at the clock. ‘You had better wrap up. It’s chucking it down out there.’
He had nodded, kissed her on the cheek and left the warmth of the family home, shouting goodbye to the three kids playing quietly upstairs, then closed the door of his three-bedroomed semi and climbed into the Mini. A man with a mission.
McCaffrey looked around him. It was a lovely, lonely site at the north of the loch, deeply inhospitable in this bloody weather. Why here?
Costello would have her reasons.
He checked his phone again, then the clock on the Mini’s dashboard. Ten minutes to go. He gave some thought to Christmas; all that cooking, all that potato peeling, Isla’s dad.
With a bit of luck, he’d be working.
He was turning that around in his mind when he heard another vehicle, bigger than the small Fiat he was expecting. The air-cooled whirr of an old VW? The oblong shape of a camper was highlighted for a moment as it swung into the car park. Its headlights illuminated the trees and the shrubs that surrounded the café, the arc of brightness shone on the empty shelves and the seats upturned on the tables before being switched off. The vehicle drove behind the line of trees, moving from his sight. McCaffrey looked in the rear-view mirror with professional interest. Was this what he had been summoned to witness? He slid down in the driver’s seat, watching as a figure emerged from the bushes, thin and swift, moved quickly, driven by the weather, but not furtive. He walked like a young man, an impression added to by long slender legs and bulky jacket. He was holding something in front of him as he walked in plain sight round the windows of the café, into the darkness, then reappeared as an outline on the secluded path up to An Ceann Mor. Then he disappeared.
McCaffrey stayed in the Mini, watching out the rear-view mirror, then twisting in the seat to look through the rear-passenger and then the front-passenger window, but the figure had gone, swallowed by the trees and the darkness of the sky. It was bitter cold and as dark as the devil’s armpit, as his mum used to say.
At least the rain was easing. The windows of the car steamed up again. He wished he hadn’t had that last cup of coffee. He’d need to brace himself, get out and have a pee in the bushes. And he’d be better doing that before she appeared. He’d need to be quick before his willy froze.
He switched the CD off, wondering about the owner of the campervan. The driver had looked young so McCaffrey’s mind turned to drugs and God knew they had enough problems with substance abuse around here and in Balloch and Alexandria. And there had been a spate of killings of the wallabies that inhabited some of the islands on the loch. A couple of weeks ago, the carcass of one poor beast had been spotted by a tour boat. It had been skinned and pegged out on a small patch of sandy beach, a bloodied pink mass for the entire world to see.
That had made the front page of the papers, and the drug issue was right in the public eye, now that it was affecting the middle classes and the tourists. And that guy from the campervan had been carrying something. If he was one of the gang killing the wildlife then there would be a small boat ready for him somewhere. The waters of the loch were very dark now.
McCaffrey made a decision, his nagging bladder forgotten. No wallabies were going to be harmed on his watch. He got out the car, pulling up the zip of his jacket before winding the scarf round his neck. He dug his hands deep into his gloves and walked round the back of the Mini, ignoring the bite of the cold wind that scurried in across the water and the reminders from his bladder. It had stopped raining but the chill ate at his muscles. He felt as if he was wearing no clothes at all. He shivered, jogging across the path on to the soft grass and stared into the car park, seeing the distinctive outline of the two-tone Volkswagen camper. When he was a boy, these were the transport of vegetarian peace-loving hippies not animal-torturing psychopaths. He turned, cutting across the other car park to follow the path of the younger man, walking up to An Ceann Mor. The big wooden structure, with its bench seats and central walkway, was easily visible against the skyline.
Maybe if the wind had been quieter, he might have heard the small van pull into the car park, its headlights out and the engine off so the vehicle rolled with the lie of the land. If McCaffrey had looked back to check his car, he might have seen the man get out the vehicle, dressed in black, black gloves, black hat pulled low. He might have seen the long slim blade as he too followed the path up to An Ceann Mor.
VALERIE HAD NO IDEA where she was.
Something rough against her lips, her shoulder numb and her feet very cold, sticking out of her warm cocoon. It seemed she was bound in a cloud of cotton wool; soft and warm, but it bound her all the same. She tried, but couldn’t move any of her limbs, or straighten up, or stretch out. She had no hope of getting up on her feet. Her head hurt. Her legs were burning, her thighs sticky with her own urine. And the room was reeking with the dull smell of faecal matter.
That was obvious at least. She had shat herself.
Opening her eyes, she looked across a green field that stretched forever, until it reached a piece of wooden fence, a flat solid white fence. As she allowed her eyes to focus, in the dark that wasn’t really dark, she began to make sense of it all.
She had fallen on the floor, rolled off the bed taking her duvet with her. From the feel of it she had hit her head on the way down, probably off the small white bedside table, and as she had lain there drunk, her bladder and bowel had voided.
That wasn’t a first.
And then the full horror of it. This was a hotel room, not her home.
Slowly she tried to unwind herself from the duvet, trying not to throw up and add to the mess of the bodily fluids. Another thought struck her through the maze that passed for her intellect nowadays. If this was in a hotel room then house-keeping would be coming in sooner or later. They couldn’t find her like this, in this awful state. Alcoholism is the most private of diseases. It hides in plain sight.
In the end, after about ten minutes of writhing and slow acrobatics, she freed herself and crawled across the carpet on all fours, leaving the duvet, soiled and wet, in a pile near the bottom of the bed.
She got to the door and, holding onto the handle, she pulled herself up on her knees and listened. There was a flash of a memory. Could she recall, vaguely, being here the night before, between the first and second bottle? Doing something like this at some time? She flicked over the plastic sign hanging from the doorknob. On the inside.
Do not disturb.
Not even sober enough to put the sign out.
Still not sober enough to have an accurate memory of it. From last night or this morning? Or this evening? She opened the door as quickly as possible, peering down the corridor, to the right and to the left before she slid the sign out, the scab on the palm of her hand nipping as she slid it up against the wood to the handle.
She retreated inside the room and tucked herself in the corner of the carpet and the door. She closed her eyes and slid down a little more, her body folding onto the floor.
