Written in Bone

by Simon Beckett

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  clatter as Strachan’s knife flew from his hand, and then I was knocked against the wall. Pain burst in my shoulder as the stones shuddered under the impact. Everything was shadow and confusion as Strachan and another figure struggled on the floor. In the half-light I made out the granite features of Brody. Strachan was younger and fitter, but the older man had size on his side. Using his weight to pin him, he smashed his fist into Strachan’s face. There was a meat and bone impact, then another as Brody hit him again. Strachan went limp even before Brody hit him a third time. I thought he ’d stop, but he didn’t. He carried on, putting all his weight into the blows.

  ‘Brody!’

  It was as though he hadn’t heard. Strachan was no longer resisting, and as Brody drew back his fist once more I caught hold of his arm.

  ‘You’ll kill him!’

  He shrugged me off. In the light from the entrance I could see the grim intent in his face and knew he was beyond reasoning. I pushed myself off the wall, driving into him and using my impetus to knock him off the unmoving Strachan.

  Fire lanced through my injured shoulder. Brody tried to push me aside, but the pain maddened me. I shoved him back.

  ‘No!’

  For an instant I thought he was going to attack me, then the rage seemed to drain from him. Panting, he slumped against the wall as the fit passed.

  I knelt down next to Strachan. He was bloody and dazed, but alive.

  ‘How is he?’ Brody asked, breathlessly.

  ‘He ’ll live.’

  ‘More than the bastard deserves.’ But there was no energy left in the words. ‘Where ’s Fraser?’

  ‘Back at the car. He couldn’t make it up.’

  I looked round for the knife. It was lying by the wall. I used one of the remaining freezer bags to pick it up. It was a folding fishing knife, its blade five inches long. Big enough.

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  But as I looked at it something stirred at the back of my mind. What is it? What’s wrong?

  Brody held out his hand. ‘Here, I’ll look after that. Don’t worry, I won’t use it on him,’ he added when I hesitated. A nagging sense that I was overlooking something persisted as I passed it over. There was a groan from Strachan as Brody put the knife into his pocket.

  ‘Help me get him up,’ I said.

  ‘I can manage,’ Strachan gasped.

  His nose was broken, making his voice sound hollow and adenoidal. I went over anyway. So did Brody, but it wasn’t until he wrenched Strachan’s arms behind his back that I saw he ’d produced a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Souvenir from when I retired.’ He snapped the cuffs round Strachan’s wrists. ‘Call it a citizen’s arrest.’

  ‘I’m not going to try to get away,’ Strachan said, making no attempt to resist.

  ‘Not now you’re not. Come on, get up.’ Brody roughly pulled him to his feet. ‘What’s wrong, Strachan? Aren’t you going to plead innocence? Insist you didn’t kill anyone?’

  ‘Would it make any difference?’ he asked, dully. Brody looked surprised, as though he hadn’t expected him to buckle so easily.

  ‘No.’ He pushed him towards the entrance. ‘Outside.’

  I ducked through after them, blinking as I emerged into the daylight. The freezing wind took my breath away as I went to examine Strachan. His face was a mess. The blood and mucus that smeared it was superficial, but one of his eyes was puffed almost shut. From the way the cheek under it was also swollen, I guessed it wasn’t only his nose that was broken.

  I felt in my pockets for a tissue and began trying to staunch the blood.

  ‘Let him bleed,’ Brody said.

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  Strachan gave a travesty of a smile. ‘Ever the humanitarian, eh, Brody?’

  ‘Can you make it down?’ I asked him.

  ‘Do I have any choice?’

  None of us did. Strachan wasn’t the only one in bad shape. The climb and fight had taken its toll on Brody. His face was grey, and I doubted I looked any better. My shoulder had started throbbing again, and I was beginning to shiver as the wind cut through my firedamaged coat like icy knives. We all needed to get off the exposed mountainside, fast.

  Brody gave Strachan a shove. ‘Move.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ I told him, as Strachan almost fell.

  ‘Don’t waste your sympathy. He would have killed you back there, given a chance.’

  Strachan looked over his shoulder at me. ‘I don’t want any sympathy. But you were never in any danger from me.’

  Brody snorted. ‘Aye, right. That ’s why you’d got the knife.’

  ‘I came up here to kill myself, not anybody else.’

  ‘Save it, Strachan,’ Brody told him roughly, steering him down the slope.

  But the feeling that something wasn’t right about this, that I was missing something, was stronger than ever. I found myself wanting to hear what Strachan had to say.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘You’ve murdered three people. Why suddenly decide to kill yourself now?’

  The desolation on his face seemed genuine. ‘Because enough people have died. I wanted to be the last.’

  Brody’s next shove sent him to his knees on the hail-covered grass. ‘You lying bastard! All the blood on your hands, and you stand there and say that? Christ, I ought to—’

  ‘Brody!’ I quickly moved in between them.

  He was trembling with anger, all his fury focused on the man kneeling in front of him. With an effort, he made himself relax. His fists unclenched as he stepped back.

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  ‘All right. But when I hear his self-pity, after all the lives he ’s ruined. Ellen’s as well . . .’

  ‘I know, but it’s finished. Let the police handle it now.’

  Brody drew in a long, shaky breath, nodding assent. But Strachan was still staring at him.

  ‘What about Ellen?’

  ‘Don’t bother denying it,’ Brody told him, bitterly. ‘We know you’re Anna’s father, God help her.’

  Strachan had scrambled to his feet. There was an unmistakable urgency about him now.

  ‘How did you find out? Who told you?’

  Brody regarded him coldly. ‘You weren’t as clever as you thought. Maggie Cassidy found out. Seems like everyone on the island knew about it.’

  Strachan looked as though he ’d been struck. ‘What about Grace? Does she know?’

  ‘That’s the least of your worries. After this—’

  ‘ Does she know? ’

  His vehemence took us both aback. I answered, feeling an awful apprehension start to bloom.

  ‘It was an accident. She overheard.’

  Strachan looked as though he ’d been struck. ‘We have to get back to the village.’

  Brody grabbed hold of him as he turned away. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  Strachan shook him off. ‘Let me go, you bloody idiot! Christ, you’ve no idea what you’ve done!’

  It wasn’t his anger that convinced me, it was what else was in his eyes.

  Fear.

  And all at once I realized what had been bothering me. Why the sight of the knife had sparked it. It had been what Strachan had said: I butchered them all like pigs! It had been a sickening, distracting image, especially after seeing the vicious slashes on Maggie ’s burned body and the blood spattering her car. But although Maggie had been

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  killed with a knife, had been butchered in a very real sense, none of the other victims had. So either Strachan hadn’t meant what he ’d said, or . . .

  Oh my God. What had we done . . . ?

  I fought to keep my voice steady. ‘Take his handcuffs off.’

  Brody stared at me as if I were mad. ‘What? I’m not going to—’

  ‘We don’t have time for this!’ Strachan broke in. ‘
We need to get back! Now! ’

  ‘He ’s right. We have to hurry,’ I said.

  ‘Why, for God’s sake? What’s wrong?’ Brody demanded, but he still started to unlock the handcuffs.

  ‘He didn’t kill them,’ I said, willing him to hurry. The enormity of our mistake was starting to dawn with appalling, bell-like clarity.

  ‘It was Grace. He ’s just been protecting her.’

  ‘Grace?’ Brody echoed, incredulously. ‘His wife?’

  A look of self-loathing crossed Strachan’s battered face.

  ‘Grace isn’t my wife. She ’s my sister.’

  CH APTER 27

  THE JOURNEY BACK to the Range Rover was a nightmare. Although the hail had stopped, the mountainside was littered with white pellets of slowly melting ice, turning the slope into a frictionless slide. The light was fading and the wind that had tried to slow us on the way up now chased us back down, making the descent even harder. Hindsight is the cruellest luxury. We ’d been right, and yet hideously wrong. The intruder at the clinic, the wrecked yacht radio and attack on Grace, that had all been Strachan. He ’d been stalking us from the first day we ’d arrived on the island, watching our progress, even sabotaging us at times. Yet he ’d been doing it to protect his sister, not himself. He wasn’t the killer. She was.

  I felt sick to think of how much time we ’d wasted. The only faint source of hope was that Strachan had taken both sets of car keys with him, deliberately stranding Grace at the house after learning what she ’d done to Maggie. If she wanted to go to the village, she would have to walk. Even so, she ’d had time

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  to get there by now. I tried to tell myself that she might not have gone to the hotel straight away, but I didn’t believe it. I’d seen how distraught she ’d been when Brody and I had left her. It wouldn’t take long for that to transform to anger. All the unanswered questions would have to wait. Right now our priority was reaching Ellen and Anna before Grace did.

  If we weren’t already too late.

  We didn’t talk on the way down. We didn’t have the time, or the breath. Once we reached more level ground we broke into a stumbling jog, silent except for the laboured rasp of our breathing. Strachan was easily the fittest, but the way he ran with one arm clamped to his side made me think he might have cracked ribs to go with his other injuries. Fraser had seen us coming. He was waiting in the Range Rover, engine running and the heater pumping out blessed hot air. He gave a savage smile when he saw Strachan’s bloodied face.

  ‘Somebody fell down the steps, did they?’

  ‘Get us back to the hotel. Fast,’ Brody gasped, hauling himself into the front passenger seat. ‘We need to find Ellen.’

  ‘Why, what—’

  ‘Just drive!’

  Still breathless, Brody turned round to confront Strachan as Fraser banged the Range Rover into gear and roared off towards the village.

  ‘Talk.’

  Strachan’s pulverised face looked almost unrecognisable. His broken nose was flattened, and the cheek under his nearly shut eye was dark and swollen. He must have been in considerable pain, yet he gave no sign.

  ‘Grace is ill. It ’s my fault, not hers,’ he said, dully. ‘That ’s why I wasn’t planning on coming back down from the mountain. With me dead, she wouldn’t be a threat any more.’

  ‘Why is she a threat anyway?’ Brody demanded. ‘You’re her brother, for Christ ’s sake! Why’s she doing this?’

  ‘Her brother?’ Fraser exclaimed, throwing us against the side of the car as he swerved into a bend.

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  Neither of them answered him. Strachan looked like a man staring into an abyss of his own making.

  ‘Because she ’s jealous.’

  The barren landscape flashed by outside, but it was almost unnoticed now. I found my voice first.

  ‘She killed Maggie because she was jealous?’ I said, incredulously. Strachan’s bloodied mouth twitched involuntarily. He swayed limply with the movement of the car, making no attempt to steady himself.

  ‘I didn’t know what she ’d done until she came back, covered in blood. But Maggie had called to the house twice to see me. Grace might have overlooked the first time, but not the second. She pretended she ’d seen a prowler to get me out of the way, and then slipped a note into Maggie ’s coat arranging a meeting. She even took my car, so Maggie would think it was me.’

  So the prowler had been a distraction after all, I thought. Except it had been Grace ’s own, not Strachan’s.

  ‘You’ve got to understand how it was,’ Strachan said, and for the first time a hint of pleading had entered his voice. ‘When we were growing up, there were just the two of us. Our mother died when we were young, and our father was away most of the time on trips. We lived on an isolated estate, with security guards and private tutors. All we knew was each other.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ Brody told him.

  Strachan lowered his head. The dankness of the broch still clung to him, mingling with the smell of stale sweat and blood.

  ‘When I was sixteen I got drunk one night, and went to Grace ’s room. I’m not going to spell out what happened. It was wrong, and it was my fault. But neither of us wanted to stop it. It became . . . normal. As I got older I thought about ending it, but then . . . Grace got pregnant.’

  ‘The miscarriage,’ I said, remembering what he ’d told me in his drawing room. It seemed an age ago now.

  ‘It wasn’t a miscarriage. I made her have an abortion.’ Now there was no mistaking there was pain as well as shame in his voice. ‘It was

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  a backstreet clinic. There were complications. Grace almost died. She never admitted who the father was, even when they told her she could never have any more children. But she was changed after that. Unstable. She ’d always been possessive, but now . . . When our father died I tried to finish it between us. I told Grace it was over and started seeing another girl. I thought she ’d accept it. But she didn’t. She went to the girl’s flat and stabbed her to death.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Fraser said. The tyres skidded on the wet surface as he threw the car into another bend. He was driving as fast as he dared on the winding road, but it didn’t seem nearly fast enough. Strachan passed a hand over his face, oblivious to his injuries.

  ‘No one suspected Grace, but she didn’t even try to deny it to me. She told me she didn’t want me to see anyone else. Ever.’

  ‘If you knew she was dangerous, why didn’t you tell the police?’

  I asked, holding the grab rail for support as the car bumped over a sudden dip.

  ‘And let everyone know what had been going on?’ Strachan shook his head. ‘The dead are dead. You can’t bring them back. And it was my fault Grace was like she was. I couldn’t just abandon her.’

  We were all jolted as Fraser braked suddenly. The road ahead was full of sheep. The car fishtailed, throwing up sheets of spray as he hammered on the horn, scattering them in front of us. There were panicked bleats as woolly bodies jostled outside the car windows, close enough to touch. Then we were clear and accelerating away again.

  Strachan barely seemed to notice. ‘We left South Africa, travelled around the world to places where nobody knew us. Where everyone would assume we were married. I tried to limit the . . . physical aspect between us. I’d still see other women. Prostitutes, mainly. I can’t afford to be choosy.’ The self-loathing was plain in his voice. ‘But Grace isn’t just jealous, she ’s cunning. She always seemed to find out, and when she did . . .’

  He didn’t need to finish. I willed Fraser to go faster. We hadn’t even reached Strachan’s house yet. Too far. It’s still too far.

  ‘Each time it happened, we ’d move on somewhere else,’ Strachan 294

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  continued. ‘And each time she got that bit worse. That’s why we came here, to Runa. I liked this area, its wildness,
and on an island like this Grace wouldn’t be able to just come and go. We started to feel we were really part of something here. I found myself really wanting to make something of the island!’

  Brody regarded him with contempt. ‘So where did Janice Donaldson fit into your little paradise?’

  A spasm of pain etched itself on to Strachan’s face. ‘She blackmailed me. I’d been seeing her for a while, but hadn’t told her my real name. Then one day Iain Kinross showed up at her flat while I was there. I’d no idea he was another of her clients. He didn’t see me, but my reaction tipped Janice off. She checked up, found out who I was. The next time I went she threatened to tell Grace. I paid her off—

  Christ, I even gave her more than she asked for. But it can’t have been enough.’

  ‘Did you know all along your sister had killed her?’ Brody asked, roughly.

  ‘Of course not! I’d no idea she ’d come to Runa! Even when I heard a body had been found, I didn’t know it was anything to do with Grace. The whole burning thing, the fires, that was new. She just used a knife with the others. But when the constable was killed . . . I couldn’t kid myself any longer.’

  I thought about his reaction when he ’d seen Duncan’s body. It had been genuine after all. But it hadn’t been the shock of seeing a body, it had been the realization that his sister had started killing again.

  ‘Why did she kill him?’ Fraser demanded without turning round, his voice cracked. He was slewing the car round the bends almost recklessly, throwing us from side to side.

  ‘I don’t know. But in the past whenever Grace . . . had an episode, we ’d always moved on. This time we couldn’t. And when she realized there was going to be a murder investigation she must have panicked and tried to get rid of anything that might incriminate her. Duncan must have just been in the way.’

  ‘In the fucking way?’ Fraser snarled, the car swerving as he started to turn round.

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  ‘Easy,’ Brody warned him. His face was like stone as he turned back to Strachan. ‘How many people has she killed?’

  Strachan shook his head. ‘I don’t know for sure. She doesn’t always tell me. Four or five before this, perhaps.’