Gunn, she was sure, must be back in Stornoway by now. And he would have seen the video. She wondered if he might follow her up to Ness, and wished now that she had waited for him. Driving all the way out here in a storm to see Niamh Macfarlane seemed like the worst idea she had ever had. She checked her mobile phone. No signal. No point in turning back now. She was almost there.
She navigated the bend in the track at Bilascleiter and to her relief saw the lights of Niamh’s house burning into the night, like tiny welcoming beacons of hope. She let her car trundle down the hill, then, to pull it into the gravel apron at the house. She sat for a moment, lights on, engine idling, and wondered where Niamh’s Jeep was parked. There was no sign of it anywhere. So how could she be home if her car wasn’t here? It was possible, she realized, that the lights could be on a timer, set to come on when it got dark. That would make sense if you were returning at night.
She was just about to switch off the ignition and get out of the car, when the house was plunged suddenly into darkness. She was startled. Had there been a power cut? Or had someone inside turned off the lights? Then they flickered, several times, and Braque saw the blades of the two wind turbines at the side of the house spinning manically in the wind. Backup power, perhaps, in the event of a mains failure. But if that was their purpose then they failed, for the house remained in darkness.
Braque decided to leave her engine running and the headlamps on. That would at least provide some light inside the house through the windows. She ducked out into the storm, fighting to close the door of her car against the power of the wind. Then dashed for the house. The door was unlocked. On the drive up yesterday, Gunn had taken great pride in telling her that islanders felt no need to lock their doors. Niamh, obviously, was no exception.
Braque pushed the door shut behind her and stood dripping in the hallway, amazed at how the insulation of the house immediately snuffed out the storm. It seemed now like a very distant threat. The house warm and dry inside, almost silent.
Light from the car outside permeated faintly through the back windows, casting deep shadows in their reflected illumination. She could only just see along the length of the hall to the large living — dining — kitchen area she knew lay beyond. The darkness there seemed impenetrable.
‘Hello?’ The sound of her voice calling into the dark was swallowed by the silence of the house. ‘Is there anyone home?’ She leaned to her right and opened the door into Niamh’s bedroom. Yellow light from the window lay across an unmade bed. She turned back to the hall. ‘Madame Macfarlane, are you there? I believe I know who killed your husband.’
Saying it out loud, even to no one, seemed to make it more real. She really did know who had killed him. Or, at least, ordered his execution. Though she had no idea why.
‘Madame Macfarlane?’
Still no response. Braque debated what to do. She could wait, but had no idea when, or if, Niamh would be home tonight. If she left, she might pass Gunn on the road without seeing him. And that would be stupid. Even if Niamh didn’t show up, Gunn would. Almost certainly.
She moved forward carefully towards the living room at the end of the hall, fingertips on the wall so as not to lose her orientation. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the faintest of light provided from the outside by her headlamps. Furniture began to take shape around her. The breakfast bar off to her left.
Then suddenly a shadow rose up straight in front of her. A face, barely lit, but burning with some inner intensity. A face she had seen on CCTV video footage barely two hours ago. She had no time to react before she felt the blade punching into her abdomen. Ice-cold, razor-sharp. Once, twice. The third time it slid between her ribs and up into her heart. She dropped to her knees, clutching feebly at her wounds and feeling the blood running warm through her fingers. The life ebbing out of her.
She realized, with a sense of disbelief, that she was going to die. How was that possible? How could this have happened?
She would never catch those flights tomorrow, or tell Faubert what he could do with his job. She would never see her children again, nor they her. The choices she should have made long ago would never now be taken. And as darkness consumed her she knew, too, that there was nothing she could do to stop her killer from taking Niamh’s life as well.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The fog was impenetrably deep. Niamh felt lost in it, wandering about with arms outstretched, hands like antennae feeling the way ahead. Somewhere in the far distance there was a light. So faint it was barely discernible in the mist. But sounds came to her now. Voices and music. Distant, too. Travelling the way that sound does across water.
And then she opened her eyes to a wave of nausea washing over her. It was all she could manage to keep down the contents of her stomach. She retched and gagged and rolled over to see that the light came from a landing beyond an open door. A cold yellow light that penetrated the darkness of the bedroom.
It was with a shock that Niamh realized suddenly that there were two other people on the bed with her. Two young men, barely more than boys, fast asleep and folded into each other’s arms. Fully dressed. As was Niamh. To her relief.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and felt another wave of nausea, accompanied by a searing pain in her head. What in God’s name had been in those drinks they gave her? If not alcohol, something much worse. She sat for several minutes simply breathing, deeply, letting the pain and the nausea pass. She looked around for a clock on a bedside table. But there wasn’t one. Then she focused on her watch and saw with a shock that it was after midnight. She had been unconscious for hours. A small sash window had been left open, and the rain was driving in on to the carpet, soaking curtains that billowed into the room.
Niamh found her handbag on the floor, and got unsteadily to her feet to stagger to the open window and breathe in deeply, feeling the rain cold and delicious in her face, before sliding it shut. Neither man on the bed stirred.
There was still music pounding away somewhere downstairs as she made her way out on to the landing and a staircase that led down to the next floor.
The vast lounge with the grand piano stood empty but fully lit. People lay around sleeping in the salon and in the TV room. No one else in the house seemed to be awake, or troubled by the music. Bottles lay about the floor, glasses leaving rings on table tops and dressers. Cigarettes smouldering in makeshift ashtrays. It was almost as if someone had pressed a pause button and brought the world to a standstill. All except for Niamh, who drifted through it like a shadow, slipping now down the stairs to the entrance hall, where she stood for some moments listening for signs of life. There were none.
She fell down the steps on to the gravel outside, and immediately emptied the contents of her stomach, almost fluorescent green, on to the chippings. She crouched on her hands and knees in the rain, gulping in air. By the time she had forced herself back to her feet, her head felt less fogged, and her stomach less liable to further retching. She looked around and realized that she had no idea if Lee Blunt had ever returned. But the Range Rover he had been driving at the funeral was nowhere to be seen.