And then like a punch in the gut she heard the first familiar strains of the song that had meant so much to her and Ruairidh. That haunting, repeating piano refrain, a counter-melody played on the harp. And then the painfully sad falsetto of the singer who promised to keep her safe. Just like Ruairidh. How could anyone possibly know the significance of that song and those words? She realized, of course, that no one could. It was just one of life’s sick little ironies, designed to turn the knife in an open wound. As if God was not yet finished with her and wanted to inflict yet more pain.
‘There you are!’
She turned to find herself confronted by a wild-eyed Lee Blunt. Eyes glazed and dilated at the funeral were now filled with fire. He had to raise his voice and shout to be heard above all the promises of safety, oblivious to the tears that the music had brought to Niamh’s eyes. She took a stiff pull at her drink. It seemed less sweet and more sour than the last one.
‘Don’t know what you ever saw in that fucker!’ He had lowered his face so that his words were shouted directly into hers. She smelled something rank on his breath, recoiling from the smell of it, as well as from his words.
‘What?’
‘Leave it, Lee.’ She heard Jacob Steiner’s voice, only barely aware of him trying to pull Lee away. Blunt shrugged him off. They had been partying all afternoon and into the evening. Smoking, drinking, snorting, and God only knew what else. Niamh had seen him like this just once before, that afternoon in the pub in Shoreditch when he and Ruairidh had ended up on the floor, punching and kicking each other.
His face was inches from hers, and she seemed unable to back away as others crowded in around them, sensing conflict and drama above the blare of the music. ‘I’m glad he’s dead. Arrogant, shitty little fucker!’
Niamh stared at him in disbelief. ‘And all that sympathy in Paris? If that’s how you felt, what was all that about?’
‘It was about revelling in your grief. Seeing your tears first hand. Laughing behind mine. You can’t begin to know how much pleasure I took from your unhappiness, my little Niamh. Encouraging it. Stoking the fires of your loss so the embers would burn just a little hotter a little longer. Just so you’d know how it felt to have your life totally fucked up.’
‘It was your fault for not paying us. Ruairidh never did you any harm that you didn’t do to yourself,’ she shouted at him.
‘He lost me Givenchy!’ He screamed it in her face. ‘Givenchy! It should have been the pinnacle of my career. My life. And his little rant in the press took that away from me.’
Niamh’s breathing was so rapid she was close to hyperventilating. ‘You told me yourself that your own company would never have done so well if you’d gone to Givenchy.’
But he just shook his head vigorously. ‘Not the same. Not the same at all. Nothing was ever the same again after that. Never.’ And then a strange, sick smile spread across his face. ‘And as for Ranish... All that shit I told you in Paris about doing another collection.’ He pushed his face even closer. ‘I lied. I’ve got a deal with a company to supply me with the real McCoy. Real Harris Tweed. Not that soft, phoney, silky shit that you and Ruairidh made.’
Anger and hurt fuelled the power that Niamh found in the backward swing of her hand, directed then with full force across Blunt’s puce and contorted face. He staggered back with the weight of it, caught completely by surprise. He blinked in momentary disorientation, before hurling himself at her, spittle flying all around his mouth. Her glass was knocked from her hand, foaming green liquid spraying everywhere. And hands grabbed at Blunt from every side, restraining him from hitting her right back.
Steiner was there, somehow inveigling his way between them, but he seemed small and insignificant in the turbulence of this sea of anger. ‘Stop it, stop it!’ he was shouting.
Blunt shook himself free of restraining hands and stood panting and staring his hatred at Niamh. ‘I’m glad he’s dead! I’m fucking glad he’s dead!’ he shouted, and he strode from the room, crashing into the door jamb as he went. Several of his acolytes went chasing after him.
Steiner stood shaking his head in distress. ‘I’m so sorry, honey.’ And he turned to hurry out after the self-proclaimed king of British fashion.
Amidst all the angst and angry words the music had stopped. Nothing replaced it except for a silence that seemed even louder. People moved away from Niamh, like rings of water from the point where a stone has entered it. Her legs felt weak, and she clutched the arm of a settee to lower herself on to the edge of the seat, shaking like a leaf. It was several moments before the black girl sat beside her, placing an arm around her shoulder and another drink in her hand. ‘Here, darling, take this. It’ll make you feel better.’ Niamh gazed into its green intensity before taking a long pull at the glass, to feel the ice-cold liquid salve the burning in her throat. ‘Anyway, pay no attention to Lee. He’s out of his head. You know what he’s like.’
Niamh had no idea how much longer it was before a despondent Jacob Steiner came back into the room. ‘He’s gone off in one of the cars,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t stop him. He’s going to kill himself in that state.’ And the storm outside bowed the rain-streaked windows all along the front face of the castle.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
In the dark, Braque got hopelessly lost. She missed the turn-off to Skigersta at Cross, and carried on until the road descended gently into Port of Ness, with its row of bungalows and its white villa standing in solitary defiance on the clifftop overlooking the harbour. The storm drove the sea with relentless violence into an already shattered harbour wall, breaking fifty or sixty feet into the air, spray joining rain to lash the village. Somewhere away off to her left she saw the intermittent beam of a lighthouse rake the dark, but somehow instinct told her that was not the way.
She cursed herself for not paying more attention when Gunn had driven her up to Ness the day before. At the end of the road she turned her car and headed back the way she had come, making another wrong turn that took her this time to the settlement of Five Penny and closer, she saw, to the lighthouse. Following the road took her on what felt like a long loop, past some sort of social club where cars stood parked beneath sodium street lamps, and then a school, before rising again to what she was sure was the road she had left earlier.
Which way to turn? She went left, and then to her relief saw a sign to Skigersta. She turned right, up through Crobost, and headed south into darkness until she saw the tiny clutch of street lights around the settlement at Skigersta itself. From this point, she was fairly confident, she would soon find herself at the road end, and the beginning of the track that led out to Taigh ’an Fiosaich.
Out here, if anything, was even more exposed to the wind, and she felt waves of it battering her car. She clung, white-knuckled, to the steering wheel and leaned forward in her seat to peer through the rain that washed relentlessly across her windscreen, straining to see in the darkness that lay ahead. A darkness barely penetrated by her headlights.
It was almost with relief that she found herself on the pitted and potholed track that stretched away across the moor, her car lurching and pitching from one hole in the road to the next. She never got out of second gear the whole way, and spent much of it in first. She could have walked faster.
Finally she reached the shielings at Cuishader. Tin huts and caravans, that somehow miraculously survived everything this climate could throw at them. A red light flickered momentarily in her peripheral vision, and she thought for a moment her lights might have caught the rear reflectors of a vehicle tucked away behind the old rotting bus. She glanced towards it but saw nothing in the darkness, then forced her concentration back to the track, which dipped down across the concrete bridge at the foot of the hollow. The stream it spanned was in full spate, and for a moment Braque thought her car might get washed away. Then she was over it and climbing the other side, only to be hammered again by the full force of the gales that swept unrestrained across the moor from the west.