Written in Bone

by Simon Beckett

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Brody demanded. I shook him off. ‘I’m going to—’ I began, and then the hotel exploded. There was a flash, and a wall of noise almost knocked me off my feet. I ducked, covering my head as pieces of slate and brick rained down. As the thuds began to peter out, I risked a look back up the hill. Dust and smoke swirled around the hotel like a gauze veil. Its roof had been blown off, and bright yellow flickers were already visible inside the shattered windows, quickly spreading as the fire took hold.

  People were running out of the nearby houses as the hotel began to blaze. I could feel the intensity of the heat even from where I stood. I turned on Brody angrily. ‘I could have stopped him!’

  ‘No, you couldn’t,’ he said, tiredly. ‘And even if you could, he was a dead man as soon as he pulled out the knife.’

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  I looked away, knowing he was right. The hotel was an inferno now, its timbered floors and walls reduced to so much kindling. Like everything else that had been inside.

  ‘What about Grace?’ I asked.

  Brody’s face was shadowed as he stared into the flames.

  ‘What about her?’

  CH APTER 28

  TWO DAYS LATER, the sky dawned bright and clear over Runa. It was approaching midday when Brody and I left his car on the road above the harbour and walked up to the cliff top overlooking Stac Ross. Seabirds soared around the tall black tower, while waves shattered against the rock’s base, flinging slow-motion sheets of spray high into the air. I breathed in the fresh salt air, savouring the thin warmth of the sun on my face. I was going home.

  The police had arrived on Runa the previous morning. As though finally sated with the chaos it had overseen, the storm had blown itself out within hours after the hotel had burned down. Before the night was out, while the hotel ruins still smoked and smouldered, the phone lines had started working again. We ’d finally been able to get word to Wallace and the mainland. Although the harbour was still too rough to allow anything in or out, the sky was still lightening when a coastguard helicopter clattered above the cliffs, carrying the first of

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  the police teams that would descend on Runa in the next twenty-four hours.

  As the island found itself at the epicentre of frenzied police activity, I’d finally got a call through to Jenny. It had been a difficult conversation, but I’d reassured her that I was all right, promised I would be home in another day or so. Even though the island was swarming with police and SOC, I couldn’t leave straight away. Not only were there the inevitable interviews and debriefings to endure, but I still felt there was unfinished business. It would take days or perhaps even weeks to recover the bodies of Strachan, Grace and Cameron from the ruins of the hotel, assuming anything identifiable had survived its destruction. But there had still been Maggie ’s and Duncan’s remains to attend to, and I wanted to be on hand while SOC examined them.

  It wouldn’t seem right to leave without see things through to the end.

  And now I had. Maggie ’s body had been taken back to the mainland the evening before, while Duncan’s remains had been removed from the camper van in the early hours. So had his Maglite, bagged up ready for laboratory analysis. Not only was it the right shape to have made the injury to his skull, but SOC had found what appeared to be traces of blood and tissue baked on to its casing. It would have to be tested to make sure, but I was more convinced than ever that Grace had used his own torch to kill him.

  I’d done as much as I could. There was no reason for me to remain on Runa any longer. I’d said what few goodbyes I had to make; shared an awkward handshake with Fraser, then called to see Ellen and Anna. They were staying at a neighbour’s house for the time being, bearing up surprisingly well after what they’d been through.

  ‘The hotel was only bricks and mortar. And Michael . . .’ There were shadows in Ellen’s eyes as she watched Anna play nearby. ‘I’m sorry he ’s dead. But I’m more thankful for what was saved than what was lost.’

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  it had discharged its cargo of police officers it would take me back to Stornoway. From there I’d fly to Glasgow and then London, finally completing the journey I’d started a week ago. Not before time.

  Still, I didn’t feel as elated as I’d expected. Even though I was looking forward to seeing Jenny, I felt oddly flat as Brody and I walked up to the cliff where the helicopter would put down. Brody, too, was silent and lost in his thoughts. Although I’d been sleeping in his spare room, I’d not seen much of him since the mainland police teams had arrived. Ex-inspector or not, he was a civilian now, and he ’d been politely excluded from the investigation. I felt sorry for him. After all that had happened, it must have been hard for him to be brushed on to the sidelines.

  When we reached the cliff top we rested. The stone monolith of Bodach Runa stood some distance away, the Old Man of Runa still keeping his lonely vigil for a lost child. The dip where we ’d found Maggie ’s car was out of sight, but the Mini itself had been moved. Gulls and gannets wheeled and cried in the bright winter sunlight. The wind still gusted, but less strongly, and the clouds that had seemed a permanent cover were gone, replaced with high white wisps of cumulus that skated serenely across the blue sky. In some regards, at least, it was going to be a beautiful day.

  ‘This is one of my favourite views,’ Brody said, looking out at the sea stack that rose like a giant chimney from the waves. The wind ruffled his grey hair, mirroring the movement of the waves two hundred feet below. He reached down to stroke his dog’s head. ‘Been a while since Bess has had a chance to stretch her legs up here.’

  I rubbed my shoulder through my coat. It was still painful, but I’d almost grown used to it. I’d be able to get it X-rayed and properly looked at once I was back in London.

  ‘What do you think will happen now? To Runa?’ I asked. At the moment the island was still in a state of shock. In the space of a few days it had lost four members of its community, including its main benefactor; a tragedy made all the harder to accept because of the shocking manner of their dying. The gale, too, had added to the

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  tally, swamping a fishing boat in the harbour and causing Strachan’s yacht to slip its chain. Wreckage from the beautiful boat would be found days later, but that was the least of the island ’s losses. It was the others from which it would struggle to recover. Brody turned down his mouth. ‘God knows. Might keep going for a while. But the fish farm, the new jobs, the investment, all that ’s gone. Can’t see it surviving without them.’

  ‘You think it’ll become another St Kilda?’

  ‘Not for a few years, perhaps. But eventually.’ His mouth quirked in a smile. ‘Let ’s hope they don’t drown their dogs when they go.’

  ‘Will you stay?’

  Brody shrugged. ‘We ’ll see. Not as though I’ve any reason to go anywhere else.’

  The border collie had crouched at his feet, head down on its paws as it stared up at him, intently. Smiling, he took an old tennis ball from his pocket and tossed it for the dog. It trotted after it, legs too stiff to run, then brought it back, tail wagging.

  ‘I just wish we ’d been able to talk to Grace, find out why she did what she did,’ I said, as Brody threw the ball again.

  ‘Jealousy, like Strachan said. And hate, I expect. You’d be surprised how powerful that can be.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain everything. Like why she clubbed Janice Donaldson and Duncan, but used a knife on Maggie and Cameron. And the others that Strachan told us about.’

  ‘Means and opportunity, I expect. I don’t think she really planned anything, just acted when she got the urge. Duncan’s Maglite was probably lying to hand, and I dare say something similar happened with Donaldson. But we ’ll never know now.’

  The collie had dropp
ed the ball at his feet again. Brody picked it up and threw it, then gave me a rueful smile.

  ‘There aren’t always answers to everything, no matter how hard we look. Sometimes you have to learn to just let things go.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  He took out his cigarettes and lit one, drawing on it with satisfaction. I watched as he put the pack away. 310

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  ‘I didn’t know you were left-handed,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You threw the ball with your left hand just now.’

  ‘Did I? I didn’t notice.’

  My heart had begun to thump. ‘A few days ago in your kitchen you used your right hand. It was when I told you and Fraser that whoever killed Duncan was left-handed.’

  ‘So? I’m not with you.’

  ‘So I just wondered why you used your right hand then, but your left now.’

  He turned to look at me, quizzical and a little exasperated. ‘Where are you going with this, David?’

  My mouth had dried. ‘Grace was right-handed.’

  Brody considered that. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘When she had hold of Anna, the knife was in her right hand. I’d forgotten about it till I saw you just now. I knew something still jarred, but I didn’t know what. And when I saw Grace preparing food earlier she used the same hand then. Her right, not her left.’

  ‘Perhaps your memory’s playing tricks.’

  I wished it was. For a moment or two I even allowed myself to hope. But I knew better.

  ‘No,’ I said, with something like regret. ‘But even if it was, we can check to see which hand the fingerprints on her paintbrushes and knife handles are from.’ Even if the prints weren’t clear, their angle would reveal that much.

  ‘She could have been ambidextrous.’

  ‘Then we ’ll find equal numbers of both.’

  He took a long draw of his cigarette. ‘You saw what Grace was like. You can’t seriously think Strachan was lying?’

  ‘No. I don’t doubt she murdered Maggie, and God knows how many others before they came here. But Strachan just assumed she ’d killed Janice Donaldson and Duncan as well. He might have been wrong.’

  I was still willing Brody to laugh it off, to point out a fatal flaw in my reasoning. He just sighed.

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  ‘You’ve been here too long, David. You’re looking for things that aren’t there.’

  I had to moisten my mouth before I could get the next words out.

  ‘How did you know Duncan was killed with his own Maglite?’

  Brody frowned. ‘Wasn’t he? I thought that ’s what you said.’

  ‘No, I never mentioned it. I’d wondered, but only to myself. I didn’t say anything about the Maglite until SOC got here.’

  ‘Well, I must have heard it from one of them.’

  ‘When?’

  He gestured with the cigarette, vaguely irritated. ‘I don’t know. Yesterday, perhaps.’

  ‘They only removed the torch during the night. And no one ’s going to know for sure that’s what killed him until lab tests have been carried out. They wouldn’t have said anything.’

  Brody stared out across the sea at the black pinnacle of Stac Ross, squinting in the bright sunlight. Two hundred feet below us I could hear the waves crashing on the rocks.

  ‘Let it go, David,’ he said, softly.

  But I couldn’t. My heart was banging so hard now I could hear it.

  ‘Grace didn’t kill Duncan, did she? Or Janice Donaldson.’

  The only answer was the crying of gulls, and the distant crashing of the waves below the cliffs. Say something. Deny it. But Brody might have been carved from the same stone as Bodach Runa, silent and implacable.

  I found my voice. ‘Why? Why did you do it?’

  He dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it out with his foot, then picked up the stub and put it in his pocket.

  ‘Because of Rebecca.’

  It took a moment for the name to register. Rebecca, the estranged daughter who had gone missing. Who Brody had spent years trying to find. His words came back to me now, clear and awful in their implication: she’s dead. And suddenly everything sprang into focus.

  ‘You thought Strachan had murdered your daughter,’ I said. ‘You killed Janice Donaldson to try and frame him.’

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  The pain in his eyes was confirmation enough. He took out another cigarette and lit it before he answered.

  ‘It was an accident. I’d been trying to put together evidence against Strachan for years. That’s the only reason I moved out to this godforsaken island, so I’d be close to him.’

  A gull soared overhead, wings tilting as it caught the air currents. Standing there in the cold winter sun, I felt a rush of unreality, like plunging too fast in a lift.

  ‘You knew there ’d been other deaths?’

  The wind whisked away the smoke from his cigarette. ‘I had a good idea. I’d already started to think Becky was dead. I’d been able to follow her trail so far, but then it just stopped. So when I heard rumours about her seeing some rich South African before she ’d vanished, I started digging. I found out that Strachan had moved around, lived in different countries but always for short periods of time. So I looked at newspaper archives of places where he ’d settled. I found reports of girls being murdered or disappearing around the same time. Not in all of them, but too many to be coincidence. And the more I looked, the more convinced I was that Becky was one of his victims. Everything fitted.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell the police? You used to be a detective inspector, for God ’s sake! They’d have listened to you!’

  ‘Not without proof they wouldn’t. I’d pulled in every favour I could when I was looking for Becky. A lot of people thought I’d lost the plot as it was. And if I’d confronted Strachan he ’d have just gone to ground. But Rebecca had been using her stepfather’s name. There was no way he could connect us. So I decided to play the long game and came here, hoping he ’d slip up.’

  I was shivering as I listened, but the chill I felt had nothing to do with the cold.

  ‘What happened? Did you get tired of waiting?’ I asked, surprising myself with my own anger. Brody flicked the ash from his cigarette, letting it disintegrate in the wind.

  ‘No. Janice Donaldson happened.’

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  His face was unreadable as he told me how he ’d followed Strachan on his trips to Stornoway, inventing business and meetings of his own, taking the ferry to arrive first whenever Strachan had gone on the yacht. To begin with he ’d been worried that Strachan had been preparing to select another victim. But when nothing happened to any of the women he spent time with, Brody’s relief turned first to puzzlement, then frustration.

  Finally, he ’d approached Janice Donaldson in Stornoway one night after she ’d left a pub. He ’d offered to pay her for information, hoping to learn more about Strachan’s habits, perhaps discover a tendency towards violence. It had been the first time he ’d shown his hand against his enemy, a calculated gamble, but he reasoned that the risk was worth it. It wasn’t as if Donaldson knew who he was. Or so he ’d thought.

  ‘She recognised me,’ Brody said. ‘Turned out she used to live in Glasgow, and I’d been pointed out to her when I’d been searching for Becky. Donaldson had known her. She ’d been thinking about claiming the reward I was offering for information, but she ’d been picked up for soliciting before she had the chance. By the time she was back in circulation I’d gone. So she offered to sell it to me now.’

  He drew down a lungful of smoke, blew it out again for the wind to take away.

  ‘She told me Becky had been a prostitute. I suppose on some level I’d already guessed, given the way she ’d been living. But actually being told it, by someone like that . . . When I refused to pay her, she threatened to tell Strachan who I was, that I’d bee
n asking questions. Then she started saying things about Rebecca, things no father wants to hear. So I hit her.’

  Brody held out his hand, considering it. I remembered how easily he had battered Strachan senseless in the broch. I was conscious of the constriction of my sling under the coat, and of the cliff ’s edge only a few yards away. It took a conscious effort not to look at it, or to step away from him.

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  control. Nothing stronger than tea these days. I didn’t even hit her very hard, but she was drunk. We were down at the docks, and she fell backwards, cracked her head on a stanchion as she went down.’

  Not a club after all, then, but an impact all the same. ‘If it was an accident why didn’t you turn yourself in?’

  For the first time there was heat in Brody’s eyes. ‘And be sent down for manslaughter, when that murdering bastard was still free? I don’t think so. Not when there was another way.’

  ‘You mean frame him.’

  ‘If you like.’

  It made a twisted sort of sense. There was no link between Brody and Janice Donaldson, but Strachan was a different matter. If she was found dead on Runa, when it emerged that he was one of her clients—and Brody would have made sure that it did—then suspicion would quickly focus on him. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have been a justice of sorts.

  For Brody that was better than nothing.

  Something else had occurred to me as I’d listened. I thought again how the cracks had crazed Janice Donaldson’s skull without actually breaking it.

  ‘She wasn’t dead, was she?’

  Brody stared across at Stac Ross. ‘I thought she was. I’d put her in the car boot, but I wouldn’t have risked bringing her over on the ferry if I’d known. It wasn’t until I opened it over here and saw she ’d thrown up that I realized. But she was dead then, right enough.’

  No, I thought, she wouldn’t have survived the ferry crossing with an injury like that. At the very least it would have caused haemorrhaging that would have been fatal without fast medical attention, and perhaps even with it.