you saving money for university?’ he asked, gathering up their empty glasses.
‘You know I am,’ she replied, ‘but that doesn’t mean …’
‘And are you going to bust your ass to become the best doctor ever?’ Joe leaned down to kiss her. The crowd of girls sharing their table rolled their eyes, tutting, jealous beneath their masks of disgust.
‘You’re crazy.’ Lily kissed him back.
‘So am I doing the world a favour by helping Miss Lily Eustis save future lives without starting her degree an extra’ – he looked at the ceiling, calculating – ‘eight pounds forty-six in debt?’
‘I give in,’ Lily laughed, kissing him again then pressing her face into his neck as she blushed.
‘Okay, you got me, I have a thing about women in white coats with stethoscopes. This is my way of secretly funding my own bizarre fetish,’ Joe said. Lily mock punched his arm as he walked away. He didn’t hear the woman staring at him whistle under her breath. He didn’t notice as the girl sitting next to them looked daggers at Lily. They were a couple lost in each other.
Getting to the bar was like climbing a mountain. Drinks spilled down backs as people moved away with their hands too full. Positions were claimed and voices raised when one customer was wrongly served before another. Requests to change the music were yelled, and complaints made that someone was locked in one of only two cubicles in the ladies’. A beer pump ran flat. Joe stood patiently, quick to smile, to forgive the toe-treaders and elbow-jabbers. He had Lily, and she was everything he’d dreamed of.
In his car was everything they needed for the perfect romantic evening. Wood, firelighters, matches, a flask of liquor to warm them up, a sleeping bag. Even the weather had been kind. It would be cold but the rain was going to stay away. He’d even been thorough enough to check out their destination a few days ago. Edinburgh would spread majestically beneath them, its lights a reflection of the stars above, clouds willing. He would, at last, have Lily all to himself, and the time to show her what she really meant to him.
* * *
It was too cold for anyone to have been outside naked. That was Mark McVeigh’s first – and most ridiculous – thought. The scene the drone camera was relaying back into his monitor was nothing like he’d imagined he might capture. The wintry frost and barren rocks, yes. A hard, blank sky with a horizon veiled in layers of fog, yes. A woman sprawled, one knee bent, one leg straight, one arm behind her head, the other slung out across the ground, no. Her long red hair was wind swept, a fluttering veil over her eyes. At her feet were the ashy remains of a fire. Abandoned at her side was a box of matches. He moved the drone closer, trying to convince himself that he might see her ribcage rise and fall. No joy. Mark directed the drone towards her face, hoping he wasn’t about to be accused of some brand of perversion, and wishing to any number of deities that his gut instinct was wrong. Being wrong right now would be good. The drone copter was out of his eye-line over a ridge. He controlled its descent, careful not to bring it down directly over the woman in case she awoke, sat up and collided with it. Closer inspection brought no relief. The drone was fitted with a decent lens, and his screen was filled with shades of blue that had nothing to do with the frost or the winter-dead heathers. The blue was her lips, her open eyes, her veins and oxygen-starved skin.
Mark sprinted, knowing it was pointless as he exerted himself, but the idea of merely walking towards the dead woman smacked of disrespect. He took the ridge on his hands and knees, the longer, gentler pathway around the edge of the hilltop out of the question. He was bleeding by the time he could see her directly, a tableau on the ground, the good people of Edinburgh waking unaware in the distance, Arthur’s Seat above them. Ignoring his skinned knees and cut hands, Mark flew down the scree slope, calling out to her as he went.
His drone was a grounded, whirring mess of plastic and metal a few metres away. He hadn’t even realised he’d thrown down the remote. The mobile in his pocket was playing a game of cat and mouse with his fingers. Then he was at her side, kneeling on the frozen ground, pressing his fingers against her neck, aware that it wasn’t possible for a body that colour to have a pulse. He ripped off his winter coat in spite of his certain knowledge that life had fled her flesh, in order to cover her nakedness. After that he called the police, giving the best description he could of their location within the mountainous landscape that stood regal over Scotland’s capital.
Close-up, Mark could see she was younger than he’d thought, the freezing night having robbed her of the blush denoting her youth. Like him, he thought, she was in that teetering abyss between teenage and adulthood. A tiny diamond in the side of her nose sparkled with the first rays of morning winter sun, off-setting the blonde highlights artfully added to her copper hair. It was all he could do to stop himself brushing the hair from her face, but then he would see her eyes more clearly and he didn’t want that. Mark stood up, peering over the ridge of the hill to check for approaching vehicles, but there was no clear view of any roads. In summer, free of corpses, it would have been a private and sheltered idyll. A waving patch of red in the scrub grass some twenty metres away caught his eye.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said. It had seemed rude not to say anything, even to a dead body. Without his coat, the cold was already setting in. He forced himself into a jog to keep warm, wondering how long the police would take to arrive, given how hard the spot was to access. His own car was a mile away at the foot of the hills, the steep slopes and rocky tracks inhospitable to anything other than four-wheel drives.
The red object turned out to be a shirt, a warm one made from heavy cotton, perfect for nights by the fire and drinking in pubs. He picked it up, looking back at the girl, assessing the rough size as a match for her, coming up positive. A couple of minutes’ walk further down the hillside he found a bra hanging off the edge of a rock, stark white, the metal fastener icy on his fingers.
Mark heard the helicopter before he saw it, the whap-whap of the rotors scaring wildlife and echoing off the rocks. The police circled, getting a location on the body and communicating the scene to the units whose blue lights became visible for the first time below. Mark carried the clothing he’d found back up the steep bank towards the girl.
A face appeared over the ridge, followed by two more. The one in the lead walked directly to Mark, holding out his hand.
‘Good morning,’ he said, his French accent clipped but still obvious. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Luc Callanach. I’m assuming it was you who called this in?’ Mark nodded. ‘Let’s get clear of the scene. How are you doing?’
‘Don’t really know,’ Mark said. ‘Better than that girl, I guess.’
Better than the girl, indeed, Callanach thought, hoping death had found her accidentally, wondering how much time he would spend staring at her face in photos on the incident room board. Did anyone ever sense it, he wondered, when they awoke on the morning they were destined to die? Did they take one extra glance in the mirror before they dashed from their homes to their jobs or studies, feeling that something in the universe had shifted? In a momentary burst of anger, he hated Scotland’s chill air, its damp and greyness. The girl had perished in the freezing cold, watching her last breaths wisp into the air. It was no way to go. A bitter, stark and lonely passing. He could only hope she had been unaware that it was coming.
Five months into her promotion, Detective Chief Inspector Ava Turner was still suffering from chronic impostor syndrome. It wasn’t having so many people under her command, or the meetings she was expected to attend, nor the
