He owed Jock. And he owed anyone who might have hurt him.
The back of the cottage was dark but, as Scope peered through the frosted glass in the back door, he could see the living-room lights were on. He carefully unlocked the door and crept inside, conscious that he was unarmed and acting with a complete disregard for his own safety. But that was Scope all over. He’d never been able to turn his back on danger, even though he was always trying to convince himself that his days of walking into the lion’s den were firmly behind him.
The back door opened directly into a narrow hallway that led past the stairs and into the living room, with a kitchen on one side, and a spare room where Jock liked to hoard all kinds of junk, on the other. Scope couldn’t see the door that led through to the office from the angle he was at, nor could he hear a thing from anywhere inside. Slowly, and making as little noise as possible, he made his way through the hallway, past the staircase, being careful not to trip on the boxes that littered the floor like obstacles, containing everything from boat engines to old paperbacks. Jock was a hoarder. He seemed incapable of chucking anything away, unlike Scope, whose possessions tended to be few and temporary.
The living room opened up in front of him as he reached the end of the hallway, revealing a scene that made him retreat into the shadows.
Jock lay dead on his front in the middle of the floor about ten feet away, next to the two easy chairs where he and Scope had sat when they’d shared those bottles of whisky. His face was pressed into the carpet, his arms down by his side, and the beanie hat he always wore – indoors and out – was missing. Somehow its absence made him seem much smaller and more diminished than he had in life. He was no longer Jock. He was just a corpse, and the sight of him, hollowed out like this, filled Scope with an intense emotion that he couldn’t quite define. It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t even anger. It was something darker and more hopeless than that, and he had to force himself to suppress it as he took in the injuries that the old man had suffered.
A thin rivulet of blood had run from a deep cut on his nose onto the multicoloured, 1970s-style carpet that had always given Scope a headache, and there was a gaping, messy hole where one ear had been. More blood was clustered round Jock’s right hand, although Scope couldn’t see the cause of it, nor did he want to. One thing was certain, though. Jock had suffered terribly before he’d died, and the man responsible for that suffering was leaning against the far wall next to the door leading out to the office, a pistol with suppressor in one gloved hand. He was short and well built, with the cool poise of a professional killer, and it was clear that he was waiting for Scope to come walking through the door from the office, so he could put a bullet in him.
So it seemed he had been the intended target of the ambush, which meant two things. One, Jock would still be alive if it hadn’t been for him. Two, his days up here in Scotland – days that he’d grown to enjoy – were over, and once again it was time to move on.
There were, however, more immediate concerns. The killer hadn’t seen Scope yet, but he would as soon as he looked round. It looked as if he was working alone, too, since there was no sign of anyone else. Roughly fifteen feet separated them. Scope was unarmed. He didn’t even have his lock knife on him. If he rushed the guy now, he’d never make it, and it was too dangerous to try to creep up on him. There wasn’t enough furniture to cover his approach, and if he were spotted halfway across the room, he’d be an easy target. The killer struck him as the sort who would neither hesitate, nor miss from close range. His whole demeanour was too confident for that.
It left Scope with a simple choice. Go back the way he’d come in, and when he was out of earshot, call the cops and leave it to them. Or deal with it himself. The advantage of calling the cops was obvious. He wouldn’t have to risk his neck, nor would he run the other risk of getting himself into trouble. He could just take off and that would be the end of it.
But there was also a major disadvantage. Round here, miles from the nearest town of any size, it could take hours before an armed response unit turned up, and by that time the man who’d killed Jock would have long since disappeared, leaving few if any clues behind. Jock’s death would go unavenged. And, in the end, Scope just couldn’t have that.
He took a step backwards into the hallway, wanting to get to the kitchen and find a knife, but as he did so his foot hit one of the boxes of junk. Not hard. In fact it barely touched it, but in the heavy silence of the cottage, it was enough to attract the attention of the killer, who swung round fast, gun outstretched, catching sight of Scope immediately.
Even as he pulled the trigger, Scope was turning and diving headfirst into the semi-darkness of the hallway. A second shot rang out as he rolled across the floor, hitting another box. He jumped to his feet, keeping low and trying to make himself as hard a target as possible, as two more rounds flew past him, putting holes in the frosted glass of the cottage’s ancient front door. He could hear the guy coming behind him now and he swung a hard left at the bottom of the staircase, almost tripping up on a box full of oil paintings, and ran headlong into the darkness of the kitchen, slamming the door shut behind him.
He was trapped now. There was no way he’d make it out of the window before the guy caught him, but he didn’t panic. In situations like these, his subconscious always dragged up the words of wisdom he’d been given by a drill instructor during his first days of military training. ‘As long as you’re still fighting, you haven’t lost.’ It had sounded like cheap bullshit at the time, but they’d always served him well. And they did now.
Grabbing a couple of plates and a frying pan still full of congealed fat from the stove, he leaned against a kitchen unit and waited the two seconds it took for the door to come flying open, before flinging the plates straight at the guy, followed a split second later by the frying pan.
Surprised by the ferocity of the assault, the killer managed to fend off the two flying plates, while getting off a wild shot that rattled one of the window frames. But the frying pan caught him under the chin, sending him staggering as he tried to right himself and pick out his target.
Scope didn’t give him time. Crouching down, he sprinted the ten feet across the kitchen and dived into the killer, grabbing his gun hand and forcing it straight upwards as the two of them staggered backwards into the hallway. Scope tried to drive his head into the killer’s face, using his momentum to land a telling blow, but the killer had quick reactions and he turned his head away, so that Scope’s forehead slammed into the side of his head, hitting hard skull. The two of them went crashing to the floor, upending the box of paintings in the process, Scope ignoring the pain as he concentrated on slamming the killer’s gun hand repeatedly into the floor as he tried to get him to release the weapon.
But this guy was good. He was clearly winded by the fall, but he wasn’t letting go of the weapon. Instead, he shoved a knee into Scope’s groin and reared upwards, slamming a fist into his right cheek. Scope’s head reverberated from the pain and he felt a flash of nausea as the killer came close to knocking him off altogether. But then, in one sudden movement, he counter-attacked. Grabbing the killer’s other arm by the wrist, and forcing it back down to the floor so he had him temporarily pinned down, he waited the half-second it took for the killer to rear up again, and in that moment he drove his forehead into the bridge of his nose with every bit of strength and anger he could muster. The killer yelled in pain as his nose broke, and Scope butted him again in the same place. Then, changing tactics, he jumped up, dragging the other man to his feet, and smashed his gun hand into one of the kitchen units. This time the gun went off, sending a shot into a cupboard, before clattering to the floor when the man’s grip on it weakened. But, if Scope thought his opponent was finished, he was mistaken, because in the same moment the killer pulled his other arm free, reached inside his jacket and yanked out a bloodied stiletto with a six-inch blade.
Scope leapt backwards as the stiletto sliced through the air, narrowly missing his
stomach, then threw himself to the floor, grabbed the gun from where it lay a couple of feet away, and swung back round, his finger on the trigger just as the killer fell upon him, knife raised for the death blow.
There was no hesitation. Scope pulled the trigger three times in quick succession, every shot hitting his opponent in the upper body at point-blank range.
The knife clattered to the floor as the killer let out a heavy grunt and rolled over onto his side. He lifted one gloved hand weakly as his body was racked with spasms.
Slowly, Scope got to his feet, still holding the gun. He looked round. There was no other noise coming from inside the cottage, so he’d been right about the killer being the only one here. But he needed to find out who else was after him and where they were, and there was only one person who could provide him with that information.
Kicking the stiletto well out of the way, Scope reached down and turned the killer over onto his back. He looked in a bad way. Two of the bullets had punctured his chest, the other had hit him in the belly, and there was blood dribbling down from his mouth. His eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and shock, but the most important thing was that he was still alive and conscious. Once again he tried to lift an arm, but Scope kicked it down again and pointed the gun between his eyes.
‘Why did you want to kill me?’ he demanded.
The killer started choking and rolled back onto his side, spitting out a thick glob of blood onto the floor, but Scope wasn’t about to show him any mercy, and he pulled him back round, this time pushing the suppressor into his cheek.
‘I asked you a question. Why did you want to kill me? Did someone pay you to hunt me down?’
The killer looked confused.
‘Answer me, you piece of shit. Were you paid to hunt me down?’
The killer gave a slight, almost imperceptible, shake of his head. ‘I don’t even know who you are,’ he managed to say, his words little more than a strained hiss.
Scope frowned, caught out by his answer. ‘You’re lying.’
‘No.’
‘Then why the hell are you here?’
But he never got a reply. The killer started to choke, and his whole body went into spasm. This time it was Scope who turned him on his side so that he could cough up the blood blocking his airways, but it was too late. After a couple of seconds, the coughing, like everything else, just stopped. Scope grabbed him by his jacket collar, lifting him up, wanting to glean any last bit of information that could tell him what was going on, but the guy was gone.
Scope let him go and stood back up, concentrating on steadying his breathing, as he came to terms with the cold, hard fact that violence had come knocking on his door once again, and he’d responded in kind. He’d never gained any real satisfaction from killing, even when those he killed deserved everything that was coming to them, and he felt none now. Jock’s murder might have been avenged, but it wasn’t going to help him or his family, and Scope just felt empty.
Empty and confused.
The man he’d just killed had had no idea who Scope was, and Scope was sure he hadn’t been lying. There’d have been no point when he was that close to death. And yet he’d obviously tortured Jock to make him call Scope to get him back to the office so that he too could be killed. It didn’t make sense.
He sighed. He was missing something here. And where were the family of canoeists? Jock had claimed on the phone that they’d cut short their trip, but he’d been under duress then, and there was no way they’d have just got out and abandoned their canoes. And yet they’d never arrived in Tayleigh either. Scope thought about this. According to Jock, they were an ordinary local family, so it seemed unlikely they’d be targeted by a professional killer, like the man he’d just killed. But if Scope wasn’t the target, and neither was Jock, then they had to be. And it seemed the killer was determined to cover up any trace of their journey, even going so far as to kill the people who’d hired them the canoes.
Scope needed to locate the family, especially as they had kids with them. There was a chance they were dead already, of course, but he couldn’t assume that. Once again he contemplated calling the police. But things had changed now. He’d killed a man and, regardless of whether the killing was justified or not, he’d still be arrested and questioned, maybe even charged with murder. And all the time that family were out there somewhere. The police would have more chance of finding them, of course, but resources up here were scarce and it would be hours before they could set up a full-scale operation, particularly as Scope had no actual evidence that anything bad had happened to them.
He checked the killer’s pistol. It was a Browning with a ten-round magazine, and there were four rounds left in it. Crouching down, he searched the dead man, trying hard not to think too much about what he was doing. For Scope, there were few grimmer experiences than running your hands over a dead body, especially when it was still warm. The killer had no ID on him, which was no surprise, and he was carrying a spare magazine in one of his pockets, but the magazine was empty, making Scope think he’d already used the gun today.
And then he found the satellite phone.
He remembered the guy he’d seen on the bridge. The scar-faced one, who’d looked out of place, who’d also had a satellite phone. There was no way this was a coincidence. Whatever was going on here, it was a lot bigger than he’d originally thought.
He pocketed the phone, knowing it could prove highly useful where there was no mobile reception and, after rummaging round until he found a small lock knife in one of the kitchen drawers, he left the room and walked back through the house, stopping only briefly next to Jock to say a last goodbye, before emerging into the cool night air.
He didn’t return to the minibus, though. Instead, he walked down to the storage shed and pulled out a one-man kayak. The canoeists, he was sure, had never left the river.
So that was where he’d start looking for them.
Twenty
Today 18.05
THEY’D BEEN WALKING for a long time, hours probably; and now that darkness had almost fallen, and it was becoming harder to see where they were going, Jess’s unease was growing. She was trying incredibly hard not to think about what had happened that afternoon – the fact that she’d witnessed two murders, and almost died herself. Instead, she put all her concentration into encouraging Casey to keep going. Her sister was exhausted, freezing and terrified, but she hadn’t complained. Not once. She’d followed Jess because she believed Jess would protect her, and Jess would. She’d protect Casey with her life. No question.
The mystery woman, Amanda, had found a trail she recognized some time earlier (it was difficult to tell how long for sure, because the water from the river had made Jess’s watch stop), and it was now leading them up a hill. None of them had talked much during the journey, even though Jess was desperate to ask her why the men had been after her. But, for the moment, they were all too busy trying to save energy and put as much distance between themselves and the river as possible. Jess knew she was taking a chance by relying on Amanda to get them out of here, but for the moment she didn’t feel as if she had much choice, since she had no idea where they were, and at least Amanda did. While they stuck together, they had a chance.
Jess turned round and saw that Casey was beginning to lag behind. She was shivering, too, but still soldiering on without complaint. Jess had done everything she could to encourage her little sister, but she could see that Casey wasn’t going to be able to carry on for much longer.
‘How are you doing?’ asked Jess, slowing up to wait for her.
Casey managed a weak smile. ‘I’m really cold, Jess,’ she said, sounding so tired that Jess could barely hear her. ‘I don’t know how much more I can walk.’
‘We’ll stop soon, I promise.’ She turned to Amanda, who was still marching ahead. ‘How much further is it?’ she called out.
Amanda swung round quickly, and walked back to them. ‘Keep quiet for Christ’s sake,’ she hissed. ‘We don’t k
now who’s out here.’
‘Casey can’t keep going much longer,’ Jess hit back, looking the other woman in the eye to show she wasn’t intimidated. ‘She’s shattered, and she needs a change of clothes. So do I. I’m freezing.’
Amanda’s expression softened. ‘It’s still a good two hours to Tayleigh, but there’s a holiday home round here somewhere. I’ve passed it a couple of times on my walks. It’s always been empty—’
‘That doesn’t matter. We can always break in. How far is it?’
‘I’m not sure. I don’t know the area that well, and it’s hard to see where we are in the dark, but I’m pretty sure it’s off this trail. There’s a waterfall up here somewhere, and there’s a path near the top that leads down to it.’
They all stopped and listened, and Jess thought she could hear the sound of running water coming from further up the hill, but it might just have been the wind through the trees. She shivered and looked up at the sky where only a small piece of moon shone down through the thick canopy of trees, giving them just enough light to walk by.
‘Come on,’ said Amanda, starting off again. ‘We need to keep going. I don’t think it’s that far.’
Jess looked down at Casey, who was staring up at her forlornly. Even in the darkness, her big blue eyes gleamed with life. Jess gave a mock sigh and winked at her. ‘I’m going to carry you for a bit now, Case, but don’t get any ideas, okay? This is definitely a one-off.’
Casey’s face lit up and she fell into Jess’s arms. Jess hugged her tight, wanting to warm her up, then lifted her up like she had when Casey had been a little girl. Together they started after Amanda. It was hard work. Jess wasn’t as fit as she had once been. At school she’d been a promising middle-distance runner and had even competed for the local athletics club at 800 metres, but since she’d started sixth form and discovered boys, bars, and the fun of just hanging out and doing nothing, she’d let things go. Before today, the last time she’d run more than fifty yards was when she’d been late for the bus, and that had been a good three months back. But she was determined to help Casey, however exhausted it made her, and she trudged along in silence, forcing herself to imagine a nice warm fire and a cup of tea.
Stay Alive Page 10
