With the job done, exhaustion set in, leaving Alice on the edge of tears. The pain in her nose had returned with a vengeance, and she felt dirty and dishevelled, in need of fresh air. She collected her coat from its hook, listening, as she did so, to the sounds of hearty laughter coming from the murder suite, all tension now spent and a trip to the pub imminent. But she had no stomach for celebration.
She left the car near the Palace of Holyrood and walked slowly, with Quill at her heels, towards the ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel. She followed the eastern path to Dunsappie Loch and then climbed more steeply to Salisbury Crags. By the time she reached the cleft at Cat’s Nick, dusk had fallen and the cold light of the full moon had turned the rock crimson, deepening the shadows between the columns and silvering her route. Gentle rain began to fall, but she persevered, undeterred, until her feet were on the summit of Arthur’s Seat, and only then, breathless, did she allow herself a rest. Her bodily aches and pains had not silenced the insistent voices in her head, demanding an answer. How could Mair have seen so much and yet so little? How could such a man have killed so many people? She had no answer.
Alice looked down onto the myriad lights of the city twinkling benignly below her, and watched as a single, flashing blue one moved slowly and inexorably in her direction.
GILLIAN GALBRAITH
Grew up near Haddington in Scotland. For several years she practised as an Advocate specialising in medical negligence and agricultural law cases. She was the Legal Correspondent for the Scottish Farmer and has written law reports for The Times. Blood in the Water, her first book, was published in 2007. A second Alice Rice mystery, Where the Shadow Falls, was published in 2008. She lives deep in the country near Kinross with her husband and child, cats, dogs, hens and bees.
