But it was no longer the middle of the night; no longer deserted. There was nobody in sight, but day was staking its claim. There’d been a couple down by the shore; Emma had seen a dogwalker earlier. The track was empty in both directions, but stilclass="underline" it held the possibility of people in a way that it hadn’t during the hours of darkness.
But she wasn’t sure that made total sense. No way was she going to try it out on Lucas.
Who had moved on a few yards. “Come on!”
Yes.
She moved on, but stopped again almost immediately, and looked to her right.
There, beneath a thick cluster of bushes.
It looked like a patch of snow, but how would snow work its way that deep, with all this overhead cover?
“Oh, fucking hell, what is it now?”
She said, “Stay there.”
“What are you—?”
But she tuned him out.
There were patches of snow either side of the track. There were occasional packets and parcels at head height and above, on top of bushes and nestling in the crooks of tree branches, but not in a lump on the ground, pulled almost out of sight of the path. Which meant it wasn’t snow. A shiver ran through Louisa despite the coat she wore—Emma’s coat—despite the competing sources of warmth: tension. Adrenalin. Fear. What might have been snow, but wasn’t, was her own white ski jacket. That information reached her in a sneaky, underhand way, taking root in her brain before her eyes had finished processing.
Tucked further out of sight, the earth scuffed up to cover blonde hair, was the body.
She’d thought she heard something: a snapping branch, a breaking limb.
A suppressed gunshot.
Emma’s eyes were open, but all life had fled.
Louisa heard movement behind her, and turned to find Lucas at her shoulder, wide-eyed with horror.
“Don’t look,” she said, but it was too late. And she might anyway have been talking to herself: don’t look, don’t see. Don’t know that you’ll be remembering this forever.
But Lucas had fled.
There were five of them; the original couple plus three more, all male, and looking for trouble in a way Lars was familiar with. You came off worst in a scuffle—couldn’t call it a fight—and first thing you did was round up a posse, plan a rematch with the odds on your side, as if that would make for a fairer result. Though it would, in fact, depend on the posse. Lars didn’t think this bunch would give him trouble.
There was Broken Nose himself, of course, who was basically used goods. The woman was there partly because he’d dragged her along, though essentially because of bad choices she’d made earlier in life. And there were three others, dressed for snow, but not enough to disguise their fatboy bodies: people civilians would make room for in a crowded bar, but who to Lars were a casualty ward logbook awaiting transcription: busted knee joints, fractured skulls, pulverised testicles. He even worked out the order he’d take them in. Broken Nose he’d save for last, and snap at least one of his arms.
But he didn’t do any of that. He’d stepped off the track when he’d heard them coming; had cut off his call with Anton and disappeared among the trees. Lars was good at this. He could stand next to a pair of oaks, and within a minute become part of the woodwork. That’s what it felt like, anyway. And if it wasn’t literally true, it was true enough to evade a bunch of fired-up village boys, who went stomping past without detecting his presence.
Once they were gone he rejoined the track and headed for town at a sprint. There was no telling whether those bozos would find the body—he hadn’t hidden it well, but nor had he erected a neon sign—but somebody would before long, and it would be wise to be on the road by then.
It didn’t look like they’d be taking home a pay packet, but there were worse fates.
He called Anton on the move, and told him to head back to the barn.
Then he rang Cyril.
Louisa went after Lucas.
There was nothing she could do for Emma, a voice inside her head offered; nothing that couldn’t be done just as well later. The voice meant well, but should fuck off.
Emma’s open eyes, Emma’s blonde hair. Emma’s chest wound, ensuring nobody would be swapping coats with her again.
But crying was for amateurs. Slow horse or not, Louisa was a pro, and losing Lucas now would mean Emma had died for nothing.
The kid had taken off like he had wings.
He’d headed towards town, which was good in one way, bad in another. Making for the coast would have put him in Harkness’s path. But the fact that they hadn’t met anyone coming towards them meant that whoever killed Emma had gone back that way too. So Lucas’s biggest danger was he’d overtake the man looking for him, and given his speed, you couldn’t rule it out.
None of which made for a comforting soundtrack as she ran along the path, its uneven surface sending dangerous messages up her legs, through her knees, every time her feet hit the ground.
Emma’s open eyes, Emma’s blonde hair.
Emma’s chest wound, ensuring nobody would be swapping coats with her again . . .
Her cramp was back, threatening to split her in two. Heart included.
But nothing hurt like guilt.
And now there were voices ahead, round a bend in the path.
She should have slowed and taken stock, or so the voice in her head remarked, but by the time she heard it she was already rounding the corner: there were five of them, four men and a woman, and they were straggled across the path as if formation had just been broken. By, for example—
“Did a boy just run past?”
“Is he with you? The little bastard—”
Louisa ran on.
Anton called Cyril too, but Cyril wasn’t answering.
The slack bastard might be taking another nap, but Anton, pocketing his phone, didn’t think so. Sometimes things didn’t just happen, they all happened at once. We might have a problem Lars had said, and problems bred like fucking mice. So maybe Cyril had run into one too . . .
So torch the barn.
All kinds of evidence there, if anyone got forensic about it.
The second place he’d checked out had been a wash: empty of life bar a loose plank creaking in the wind round back. Now he was walking down the middle of the road, not far from the crossroads where all this should have ended the first night, and there was still no traffic, except for an electric blue Ford Kia—that was definitely the name—which had ploughed into a ditch, and stuck out against the white background like a hitchhiker’s thumb. Tracks led from the accident up the snow-covered field, but there was no one in sight.
Not his problem.
They’d torch their own car too. Frank would have a back-up plan in place; if not, there was an escape and evasion kit taped behind the cistern in the Battersea flat of an ex-girlfriend of Anton’s. If he couldn’t make it that far, it was high time he found another line of business anyway.
And this looked like Lars now, in that very car; half a mile away, approaching the road from the town turn-off. He was making painfully slow progress, mimicking a camel’s rickety rhythm over the humped and pitted snow, but even so, he’d get back to the barn before Anton.
Good. That meant he could make a start on the clean-up.
And find out what happened to Cyril.
It was a scene from the Middle Ages, or a Swedish film.
Snow everywhere, and a body on the ground.
It lay in front of the barn doors, blood pooled around its head, as if someone had dropped a can of paint on it from a height, which was farcically unlikely. Its throat was as open as the barn behind it, and some doors, having been opened, can’t be closed. There was nothing to do but step through them. Ultimately, that’s what this one had done, though he appeared to have thrashed about on the threshold, unwilling to depart.