She nudged Christianson’s manky body with the toe of her trainers. ‘Can you hear me?’
His filthy, twisted hands came up to cover his face, hiding it from the torchlight. ‘Please...’
‘I’ll make you an offer, John. Someone sent your new roommate and her friend to kill me. Get her to tell you who, and why they want me dead, and I’ll think about letting you go.’ Lucy opened the bag-for-life and poured out a half-dozen clingfilmed sandwiches in front of Christianson. ‘Two egg mayonnaise, two cheese and pickle, one ham and mustard, and a peanut butter.’ A trio of bottled waters bounced and spun on the manky concrete. ‘You’ve got till I get back.’
She locked up, heaved the rusting display unit back over the door, and limped out onto Woronieck Road again. Taking in the scents of diesel, rotting seaweed, and old fish.
MacKinnon Quay’s lights blazed away on the other side of the river, the sweep of Castleview rearing up the valley behind it. The first drop of rain kissed her cheek. Then another, and another. Getting heavier as she slid in behind the BMW’s wheel, turned the blowers up full, and pulled away from the chandler’s warehouse.
Charlie fidgeted in the passenger seat. ‘You know it’s not too late to call this off?’
‘I know.’
‘Only, what if...’ Deep breath. ‘Benedict Strachan was always going on about a mysterious “Them” being after him. And now you’ve been attacked by Dr Meldrum and Dr Lockerby. What if Benedict’s not paranoid and “They” are connected to St Nicholas College?’
She smiled across the car at him. ‘That’s what I’m counting on.’
46
The Bloodsmith checked his watch. ‘How much longer?’
‘Soon.’ Lucy stretched out in the heated leather driver’s seat as the rain drummed on the BMW’s roof. It really was a lovely car; shame she’d have to torch it when they were done.
They’d parked on a narrow track, near the end of the golf course, partially shielded by a thicket of gorse bushes. The clubhouse was in darkness, but there were a few lights in the middle distance, flickering as the rain swept between here and the back of St Nicholas College.
He hissed out a lungful of thick grey cigar smoke. ‘Don’t let the boy get to you, Kiddo. You’re doing what you have to do.’
‘Do you have any idea how much secondhand smoke I’m getting off that thing?’
‘From an imaginary cigar, smoked by a man who doesn’t exist?’
Fair point.
Lucy reclined her seat all the way. ‘Charlie’s disappointed in me.’
A shrug. ‘That’s the trouble with having an externalized manifestation of your superego: it’ll always try to make you walk the straight, narrow path. Whereas I represent your id, getting you to trust your instincts, take chances in life, and live a little. That’s why I’m more fun.’
She risked a gentle prod of the ribs where Dr Meldrum had punched them. Stung a bit, but nowhere near as bad as they could’ve been.
The rain drummed.
The silence grew.
Lucy cleared her throat. ‘Before Neil Black, I was this normal happy person with friends and a great job and a social life. Now I’m... I don’t even know what I am.’
The Bloodsmith’s voice softened. ‘Can I give you a little unsolicited advice? Neil Black was a rapist scumbag and you did the world a favour, smashing his head to a pulp. Don’t ever give him credit for “breaking” you, because he didn’t. Oh, he may have primed the pump, and Dr Christianson opened the floodgates, but they didn’t make you like this, Kiddo. You’ve always been this way.’
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’
‘They forced the real you into remission — shackled you with psychotherapy and drugs, beat the real Lucy out of you every Sunday after church, till you learned to pretend you were the same as all the other people. And, eventually, you started to believe it too. But they couldn’t kill you, Kiddo; you came back.’ He patted her on the shoulder. ‘I’m proud of you.’
Welcome to the asylum.
‘It’s—’ Her phone sang its generic ringtone song and, when she pulled it out, ‘THE DUNK’ glowed in the middle of the screen. She pressed the button, forced her voice to be plain and normal. ‘Dunk.’
‘Sarge? Sorry, I know it’s late. Look, I couldn’t get anyone on the phone at Puller, Finch, and McKeever Advocates, cos it’s Saturday. But I’ve just had a wee brainwave and googled Phillipa McKeever.’
‘Phillipa...?’
‘McKeever. Benedict Strachan’s solicitor? Yeah, only she’s not actually a solicitor, she’s a QC. A proper, full on, Queen’s Counsel, and she’s representing an eleven-year-old in a murder case, but doesn’t even try to get him off? Even worse, she’s a nouveau-posh twat — they made her a “baroness” in 2019.’
Lucy buzzed her seat back up. ‘Thanks, Dunk.’
‘You know what I think? I think someone spent a lot of money making sure Benedict Strachan took the fall for killing Liam Hay. My guess is it was his accomplice’s family. Think they’ll give us a warrant to see Baroness McKeever’s files?’
Not a chance in hell.
‘Worth a go, I suppose. Don’t hold your breath, though.’
The Bloodsmith raised his eyebrows and tapped his watch.
Time to go.
‘Are you OK, Sarge? Only you sound kinda... you know.’
‘I’m fine. Been a long day, that’s all.’ Bit of an understatement. ‘You did good, Dunk. See you tomorrow.’ Lucy hung up, put her phone on silent, and slipped it back into her pocket. ‘Shall we?’ She pulled on a baseball cap and grabbed her rucksack from the passenger footwell. Donned a pair of nitrile gloves and flipped up her hoodie’s hood. Climbed out into the rain.
The Bloodsmith joined her, not bothering with waterproofing, because, as he said, he wasn’t real.
They crossed the boundary from the golf course onto the school’s playing fields.
‘What if they’ve got security cameras, Kiddo?’
‘It’s dark, it’s raining, I’m dressed completely in black, and you don’t exist.’
They squelched their way across two football pitches and the athletics track. The baseball cap’s bill kept the worst of the rain off her glasses, but things were still getting hazier.
‘When we get in there, I don’t want you distracting me, OK?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Sounding slightly offended.
The last playing field gave way to a manicured strip of parkland, complete with picnic benches and trees to lounge under. Then they were hurrying past the dorms and along the back of the school — stables in the far corner, then the gym, then a science lab, then the Moonfall Gate. Lucy crept through it into the quad, sticking to the outer wall, where the shadows were thickest.
Lights glowed pale yellow in a handful of the upper windows, misty in the drifting rain, but there was no sign of life.
‘There’s going to be some sort of fancy security system.’ The Bloodsmith wandered out onto the gloomy path, puffing away on his cigar, hands in his pockets, as if they were out for a Sunday stroll. ‘Can’t just break the glass with a rock this time.’
She stopped in front of the admin tower’s thick wooden door. Swung the backpack off her shoulders and went rummaging inside. The lock was old-fashioned, like the one back at the chandler’s warehouse, so nowhere near as secure as something more modern, but also nothing like as predictable. Maybe the cordless drill—
‘I know it’s going to make me sound a little glass-half-full’ — the Bloodsmith pointed — ‘but have you tried the handle?’