The man looked up, startled and confused, but readily agreed to her request when Narey showed him her badge. Armed with the binoculars, she hurriedly began sweeping the arctic panorama, desperate for a sighting of Deans. She flew by anyone milling around the middle of the lake or anyone in a group, looking only for the lone wolf, the single needle in the moving haystack. There a stray skater, there a lone walker heading for shore, there a single figure walking to the island but, just as suddenly, the smaller shape of a child could be seen with them. Back and forth, she trained the binoculars, seeing hats everywhere, brave and foolhardy souls in kilts, ski jackets in twos and threes but no… wait. She pulled her glasses back and looked again at the figure she had passed by: a man, on his own, head down under a black ski hat and heading directly towards Inchmahome. He wasn’t stopping to take in the view but was moving, relatively slowly, unobtrusively, towards the island. She had no doubt: it was Deans.
Without a word, Narey thrust the binoculars back into the midriff of their owner and took off onto the ice without a second thought. She made a straight line towards Deans and hurried as fast as the surface would let her. On the ice, the noise was so much greater than it had been on the shore. She was buffeted by the sound of people laughing and screaming, cheering and whooping. And the roar. She knew that curling was known as ‘the roaring game’ but now she suddenly knew why. The rumble of the granite stones being hurled across the hard surface of the ice rose up at her and shouted at her, filling her ears with dire warnings that she ignored. She dashed across one of the makeshift curling lanes, was yelled at by angry players and had to leap over one of the large stones, with its spinning handle, as it sped within inches of her ankles.
She still had a vague sightline on the figure she was sure was Deans, gaining ground on him all the time as he walked and she ran. She was determined to bear straight for him, fearful of losing him if she was forced to change direction. A couple loomed in front of her and she barged apologetically into the shoulder of one of them as she hurtled by. Narey ran on but only another ten yards before her right foot slipped from under her on the ice and she crashed down onto her left knee, pain shooting through it. She got up but it felt as if she were the only one in the world standing still as the rest of the crowd whirled round her. She ran on again but slower now, the ache in her knee signalling some damage. The man in the black ski hat was ahead though and that drove her on.
Abruptly, she saw movement from the corner of her eye and glanced over to see a string of young skaters in their early teens swoop round in a giggling chain. They were arcing across the ice, eight of them hand in outstretched hand, forming a fifteen-yard human barrier. Narey continued to run even though they were only a short distance away from her. She shouted at them to move but the kids were too engrossed in their fun to hear until it was too late and she burst through their chain, sending three of them sprawling onto the ice with angry, high-pitched yelps. It was the combined complaints of their friends that did it though. The noise was enough to make Narey’s prey turn on the ice to see what the commotion was.
The reddish hair peeked out from beneath the ski hat and the eyes were wide. Deans stood for a moment, taking in her presence before turning again, this time breaking into a run. Narey took off after him, her injured knee being compensated for by her fewer years and greater fitness. She was still gaining on him.
As she watched, Deans moved off to the side towards a family group of parents and two children. For a moment, he vanished from sight and, although Narey was within ten yards, she worried she’d lost him among the crowd.
Just as suddenly, Deans reappeared, holding something large in his hands. She didn’t have time to work out what it was before Deans heaved his arms back then forward, letting the object hurtle across the ice towards her. It was a child’s sledge, all wood and metal runners, and it was on her before she knew it. Perhaps if her knee hadn’t been hurt in the fall, she might have hurdled it but she’d barely got her feet off the ground when the sledge crashed into her shins and sent her flying face first onto the ice.
Narey managed to get her left hand down to break her fall but ended up wishing she hadn’t. She still smacked the side of her head against the rock hard surface but also had an aching pain spreading from the heel of her hand. As she picked herself up again, there was no sign of Deans. The family whose sledge had been taken from them pointed towards Inchmahome but Narey was already sure that was where he’d be heading. She limped towards it, the frosty shores of the island still a hundred yards away across the lake.
The boathouse loomed large in front of her and Narey lifted herself off the ice and onto the snow-covered jetty and the island. Memories came back of her midnight trip there with Tony, their eerie visit in the mist to see the ghosts of nineteen years before. This was different though — very different. One of the ghosts of that winter was here and alive.
There were others on the island too, a handful of couples and groups moving quietly through the newly misty glades and ruins of Inchmahome as if cowed by their surroundings. The only noise that came from them was the sudden breaking of twigs, an unexpected cough or irreverent laughter that echoed off the ancient walls of the priory. They paid Narey no attention and she guessed that they’d been the same when Deans had slipped by them. She’d slowed her pace now, wary of everything and everyone around her and far more concerned by who might step out from behind cloisters, a tree or the remnants of a wall.
Narey tread carefully past the old kitchen and on to the chapter house, the number of shadowy visitors thinning as she went deeper into the far corner of the island. As their numbers decreased so did the noises they caused to jump out of the mist, meaning she could hear her own breathing all the more clearly, heavy and laboured and advancing before her in the chilled air.
There was still a mass of footprints in the crisp snow but she couldn’t be sure whom they belonged to. Not that it particularly mattered — she was sure where he’d be and had been convinced of it even as she’d stood between the church and hotel and surveyed the scene on the lake. The murderer returning to the scene of the crime might have been a cliché but it was often no less true for that. Deans was going back to the dark corner where he’d killed the girl who became Lily who became Barbie.
Narey slowed further, aware of the slight limp of her left leg, which dragged through the top of the snow and signalled her arrival. As she passed the corner of the chapter house, she stood and listened, hearing only the merest rustle of the wind through the petrified trees and the distant shouts of skaters who could have come from another world. With no help to be had from the sounds drifting through the air, she breathed deep and turned the corner into the clearing — and saw nothing.
Exhaling slowly, she stood still again, her eyes scanning the scene, every nerve on edge. She saw footprints, possibly fresh ones, stretching all the way to the low wall that had half-hidden the girl’s battered body. There was also — was there, she questioned her eyesight — some sort of disturbance to the snow where she knew the body had lain all those years ago.