Chapter 11
Roberta hurled one of the soggy high-vis jackets at Moore, struggling into her own as they hurtled around the side of the hotel, gravel crunching beneath their feet.
Then a hard left, running across the squelchy grass, rain crackling against her back and soaking into her hair as they made for the gap in the trees where the unknown sneaky bugger had vanished.
Roberta zipped herself up. ‘You got your cuffs on you?’
‘I’m in civvies!’
‘How are we supposed to arrest them without cuffs?’
The grass got longer closer to the woods, snatching at their legs with long wet tendrils, then whooooomph, they were in beneath the canopy of pine and beech.
Gloom wrapped itself around them – what little sunlight there was, banished by the thick lid of leaves. That dark brown earthy smell of damp vegetation and waterlogged earth. A toilet-cleaner whiff of pine.
No sign of their mysterious figure, but a thin trail twisted off into the forest ahead.
Roberta lumbered down it, getting slower, each breath more of a struggle than the last. Sweating like a bastard in this rotten high-vis too. Puffing and panting. Till a dagger lanced in under her ribs, yanking her to a halt, one hand clutching her side. ‘Arg . . . Stitch, stitch!’
Sergeant Moore pushed past. ‘Get out the way!’ And he was off, running full tilt along the path, disappearing into the woods.
She bent double, clutching her knees and wheezing like an elderly Jack Russell terrier.
Should really . . . should really exercise more . . . Join . . . join a gym . . . Eat fewer . . . pies.
Pfff . . .
Getting old, Roberta.
Old and slow.
Finally, the ache in her side faded and she straightened up. Puffed out a few hot breaths and wiped the mix of rain and sweat from her face. Rummled her hands through her wet hair. Managed a sort of limping jog, following the path again.
It twisted and turned, around trees, bushes, more trees.
Probably not even a path. Probably a rabbit track.
Completely unsuitable for fully grown women who were a bit less fit than they used to be.
It vanished under fallen logs, only to reappear on the other side, jinked around swollen mounds of sickly mushrooms – their yellow domes glistening like unsqueezed plukes.
And then it disappeared completely.
Because why not make things even worse than they already were?
Roberta did a slow three-sixty, peering out into the dark woods.
No sign of anyone. The only sound: the patter of rain filtering through leaves to drip onto the loam below.
‘Sergeant Moore?’
No reply.
She did another slow-motion pirouette.
Where the hell had the idiot got to?
She cupped her hands either side of her mouth and dragged in a deep breath. ‘SERGEANT MOORE!’
There wasn’t even an echo – the forest swallowed it whole.
Oh, well done, Roberta. Take the daft sod out into the woods and get him killed by some murderous maniac.
Another deep breath. ‘SERGEANT MOORE!’
Still nothing. Just the dripping and the gloom and the eerie rows of bone-grey trees beneath that dark lid of branches and leaves.
‘Come on, Roberta, think!’
Well, standing here wasn’t helping, was it?
She picked a direction at random and pushed on, deeper into the woods. Past more fallen trees. He must’ve left a trail, right? Broken twigs and footprints and all that malarkey. Shame she never paid any attention to that kind of crap in the Brownies.
A lump of rusted twisty machinery loomed out of the forest, like the skeleton of a long-dead beast.
‘SERGEANT MOORE!’
On. Deeper.
A noise up ahead.
Roberta hurried forward, struggling through a thicket of branches and brambles, out into a tiny clearing – no more than twenty foot across, knee-deep in sodden bracken.
A stone circle festered in the middle of it.
Not a big swanky photogenic one, like on Outlander, but a small mean one, with lichen-furred stones.
The kind of place you could sacrifice children to the Elder Gods without waking the neighbours.
She stepped out from beneath the forest canopy into the proper rain. It drummed a tattoo on her high-vis shoulders.
Mountains reared up behind the woods, their top two-thirds lost in the grey misty clouds. Whole place couldn’t be more remote and primeval if it tried.
‘SERGEANT MOORE!’
Didn’t matter how much she strained her ears, only the rain replied.
Maybe her voice wasn’t carrying through the woods? What she needed was something to make bigger noises with . . .
Roberta picked up a fallen branch and whacked it against a thin beech tree at the edge of the clearing with a loud clack. ‘SERGEANT—’
A whole heap of water cascaded from the tree’s shaking leaves, most of which crashed down on top of her.
‘Gah!’
She danced backwards, away from the deluge, but something grabbed the back of her heel and crash, she was flat on her back in the long wet bracken.
Which promptly dumped another torrent of water all over her.
Leaving Roberta lying there, looking up at the horrible grey clouds as four million litres of soggy soaked into her.
She’d got Sergeant Moore killed, hadn’t she? She’d dragged him out here, into this bastarding forest, chasing a psycho, MP-murdering bastard, and got him killed. The whole thing was a piss-buggering disaster.
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’ Roberta scrambled to her feet, grabbed her branch and battered the living crap out of the traitorous beech tree with it. Whacking and thumping and howling with rage, because everything was comprehensively—
‘Are you OK?’
She turned – branch still raised, ready for another wallop – and there was Sergeant Moore, limping out from behind a clump of brambles, one hand pressed against the small of his back, breathing hard.
Roberta waved her stick at him. ‘Where the goat-wanking hell have you been?’
He pointed over his shoulder. ‘I fell down a—’
‘Had me worried sick! Sodding off on your own when there’s a killer on the loose!’
Moore looked from her to the branch in her hand, then to the beech she’d been beating to within an inch of its woody life. ‘Did you think the tree did it?’
Roberta lowered her whacking stick. ‘Don’t be a—’
‘Hope you read Mr Beech his rights before you embarked on the police brutality. Don’t want Professional Standards coming after you.’
She treated him to a scowl. ‘I liked it better when I thought you were dead.’
‘Yeah, my ex-wife feels much the same way.’
The branch came up, indicating the general direction he’d emerged from. ‘Anything?’
‘Nah. Whoever it was, they’re long gone.’
Of course they were.
Roberta slumped for a moment, then hurled her stick away into the forest. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’
All this way, in the rain, for nothing.
She squelched across the hotel lawn, every step sounding like her socks were having extremely dirty sex with her shoes. And would it stop raining? Not a chance in hell.
Sergeant Moore limped beside her, grey hair plastered to his head, glasses all steamed up and covered in raindrops. ‘So, were you really worried about me?’
‘You got any idea how much paperwork they make you fill in for a dead sergeant?’ Roberta pulled a face. ‘No’ to mention all the meetings.’
He thunked a hand down on her shoulder and squeezed. ‘You old softie.’
‘Hoy! Less of the “old”. Bad enough we’ve got some nutter out in the woods playing Rambo, without me kicking your nadgers so hard they pop out your ears.’
‘Ah.’ The hand made a swift retreat. ‘Fair enough. Back to interviewing Tories?’
‘Do we have to?’ Because it was enough to make you weep, it really was.
‘You’re Senior Investigating Officer: up to you.’
‘I hate being the responsible adult.’ She sagged a bit. ‘Fine, we’ll go talk to more Tories. But I’m getting dry socks on first!’
The bridal suite, AKA: ‘ROYAL LOCHNAGAR 1972’, was so big it made the dodgy wee Russian’s room look like a dog kennel that’d been decorated by someone who just didn’t love tartan enough.
Whoever committed interior design on this place adored the bloody stuff.
A four-poster bed was visible through the open bedroom door, the canopy draped in Macdonald.
Royal Stewart on the floor. A MacGregor couch and chaise longue, complete with Menzies, Wallace, and McLeod cushions.
To be brutally honest, the overall effect was a bit like standing inside a migraine.
Buchanan curtains framed the bay windows and a view that stretched all the way down a tree-lined avenue, past formal gardens, and out to the heather-wreathed hills. All of it draped in grey and rain and low, low clouds.
The bride and groom posed in front of the window, flanked by those headache-inducing swathes of yellow, orange, red, and green, as if they’d been caught in the middle of a photoshoot. The pair of them in muted greys – probably scared of clashing with the décor.
Douglas Moore put a hand on his new wife’s broad shoulder. ‘It’s been a terrible shock to us all, hasn’t it, darling?’
Tears sparked in the corners of Adriana’s eyes. ‘One can barely put into words the tragedy of losing one’s father. Complete nightmarefest.’
Wonder if she’d kept her own name, taken his, or gone for the full triple-barrel? Bet that’d make ordering a takeaway pizza a right pain in the backside. By the time you’d spelled ‘Adriana Bradbury-Scott-Moore’ for the idiot on the other end of the phone, your twelve-inch meat feast would be cold.
Roberta sank onto the horrible chaise longue, wriggling her shoeless toes in their nice dry socks. And, OK, her jeans were still all soggy, but on the bright side they’d leave a nice damp patch on the ugly furniture. ‘Our sympathies at this difficult time. Can you—’
‘Not to mention the loss to his beloved Conservative Party!’ Douglas gazed off into the middle distance, just the other side of a sparkly chandelier. ‘He was a real character. A true one-nation Tory! To lose a stalwart MP like that and have to run a by-election in the current political climate?’
Adriana bit her lip and looked away. ‘Hardly bears thinking about, yah?’
Sergeant Moore didn’t seem to be writing any of this down. Instead he had this weird, someone’s-just-stuffed-a-live-chicken-up-my-bum-and-I’m-not-enjoying-it look on his face. He cleared his throat, shuffled his bare feet. ‘Dougie, surely there’s more important—’
‘I may have to give up my proposed seat and run in poor, dear, Sir Reginald’s constituency instead.’
Adriana put her hand on her husband’s arm. ‘I think Daddy would like that, Douglas.’
A set of tiny wrinkles marred his photoshoot brow. ‘Well, they say Aberdeen South’s looking a bit marginal now, but the important thing is that Sir Reginald’s constituents have someone to champion their causes. Fight for their rights.’
She blinked, nodded, and stepped in for an embrace. Gazing up at the floppy-haired sockwank like he was the second sodding coming. ‘We’ll do it in his name.’
He looked deep into her eyes. ‘In his name.’
To paraphrase that great wordsmith and renowned raconteur Adriana Bradbury-Scott-Moore: vomitarama!
Out in the corridor, Sergeant Moore eased the door closed, shutting the bride and groom in their horrible tartan love nest. He grimaced and marched off, not making eye contact. ‘Before you say anything: don’t, OK?’
She wandered after him, hands in her pockets. ‘No’ so much as a pause between, “Oh, it’s such a tragedy” and “I’m nabbing his safe Tory seat.”’
Moore paused, shoulders down, voice dark and bitter. ‘Takes after his mother, that one.’
Roberta patted him on the back. ‘You must be so proud.’
After the honeymoon suite, ‘STRATHISLA’ was a bit of a disappointment. Mind you, the décor in here was less likely to induce cluster headaches, vertigo, and nausea, so swings and roundabouts.
Mr Norton and his wife were in matching tweed. Which was quite something, given that it was absolutely boiling in their hotel room. What’s worse, she was wearing a cardigan under her jacket too. A nasty thick yellow one.
They clung to each other like drowning, love-struck teenagers, albeit drowning love-struck teenagers with dangly wattle necks, liverspots, a bumper-selection-box of wrinkles, and yellowy-grey hair.
Mr Norton shook his head, setting his turkey neck wobbling. ‘Oh, it was just ghastly, wasn’t it, Catherine? Simply ghastly.’
Mrs Norton nodded, tears sparkling in her boiled-egg eyes. ‘He was such a card, he really was. We’ll miss him terribly.’
Roberta sagged against the balcony handrail, scowling down at the tartan carpet and that stupid massive stag statue.
Supposed to be a romantic surprise break, and now look at it – blood-crusted antlers and a hotel full of angry Tory scumbags, whinging because apparently being confined to your room was worse than having to investigate a murder.
Sergeant Moore settled in next to her. ‘Well, it’s early days, right?’
That familiar gurgling growl rumbled away inside her, like distant hungry thunder. Ending with a couple of pops and a wheezing sound. ‘Time is it?’
He checked. ‘Just gone five.’
And nothing to eat since brunchtime. ‘No wonder I’m starving.’
‘Seventeen interviews down, twenty-nine to go.’
‘Gah . . . Told you we’d be here all weekend.’
Six hours of interrogating smug Tory bastards, and not a single clue to show for it. Oh, he was such a lovely man, so good with children, a great chap, did so much work for charity, salt of the earth. Blowing smoke up a corpse’s arse was second nature to these people.
But that’s what an expensive private education got you, wasn’t it?
None of the buggers could think for themselves.
It was all stock phrases and platitudes.
Or maybe it was secret Tory code for something – like with dating profiles, where ‘great sense of humour’, meant ‘fat’, and ‘bubbly personality’, meant ‘enormously fat’.
So, in Toryspeak, ‘Oh, he’s a real character’ probably meant ‘he’s a bit of a dick’; ‘such a card’ meant ‘tosser’; and ‘salt of the earth’ was ‘complete and utter total wankspasm’.
Would make life a lot easier if they’d just come out and say it.
Sergeant Moore sniffed. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Gin. Tonic. And enough chips to choke a goat. With cheese and gravy . . .’ Her stomach growled again. ‘Come on. Can’t catch killers on an empty stomach.’