Chapter 15 #2
She went left, following the circle of torchlight along the horrible plaid carpet, down the corridor.
You’d think they’d get tired of taxidermy and tartan, wouldn’t you?
Most of the dead animals weren’t even that realistic.
Yeah, they were real, but somehow the stuffing had rendered them like badly drawn caricatures.
The poses stiff enough to make it look as if they’d never been alive in the first place.
Like there was more chance of bumping into one of Nairn’s monstrosities out on the hills than one of these poor frozen things.
Roberta followed the corridor around the corner, only to find some sort of horror shining a torch right in her eyes.
‘Gah!’
She danced backwards until the wall stopped her going any further, grabbed a pheasant in its bell jar from the nearest sideboard and hefted it over her head as a weapon . . .
The monster did exactly the same thing, at exactly the same time.
Oh you silly sod.
Roberta lowered the pheasant and the Roberta in the oversized gilt-edged mirror did the same. Well, it was an easy mistake to make: creepy castle in the middle of creepy nowhere, surrounded by creepy things, hunting for a creepy killer. Was bound to put you a bit on edge.
She scowled at her traitorous reflection, with its rumpled face and hair that looked like an accident in a black-and-white candyfloss factory. Still, on the bright side, if her appearance startled her, it would probably scare the living crap out of anyone else.
The pheasant went back where she’d found it and Roberta stepped through into the conservatory.
Silence.
She stared up at the glass roof – completely clear. It had actually stopped raining. Not only that, a fissure opened in the thick cloud cover, growing as she stood there, flooding the conservatory with soft grey moonlight.
Couches and armchairs were arranged in little groups, orbiting wicker coffee tables – their glass tops glistening as she drifted her torch across them. Another shock-horror: the place wasn’t littered with furry corpses. As if they’d finally run out of dead things to put on display.
She crept around the conservatory, peering behind every couch to make sure no sneaky wee gamekeeper-slash-murderer was hiding there. Which they weren’t. Then checked the French doors out to the garden were locked.
The handle twisted beneath her fingertips and both doors swung open on silent hinges.
That wasn’t good: they’d been locked the last time she’d checked, at the end of her shift – just before the idiot McKinnon took over.
Outside, moonbeams caught the mist rising from the dark world, making it glow like it was haunted. That gap in the clouds widened even further, bathing the gardens in cold dead light . . .
Cheery thought.
She had another bash at whispershouting, ‘McKinnon? Where the hell are you, you useless wee sheep-shagger?’ Silence. ‘McKinnon?’
So what was she supposed to do now? Close the doors and lock them, potentially shutting the idiot outside, or leave them open and risk Albert Nairn getting in?
She turned and frowned back into the hotel.
Assuming Nairn wasn’t already inside, and this was his escape route.
In which case locking the doors and pocketing the key might trap him inside.
Where they could catch the sinister bastard.
But knowing her luck, it would just end up with PC McKinnon hammering on the windows at four in the morning, demanding to be let in before the pixies, or that horned squirrel-thing got him.
Ah well, it was his own silly fault.
She pulled the French doors closed, locked them both, and pocketed the key. Curled her free hand into a fist. Then turned and marched back into the main body of the hotel.
If Albert Nairn really had snuck in, he was in for a nasty surprise.
They’d cleared away the tables and chairs from the wedding, leaving the ballroom empty and hollow. No Albert Nairn.
He wasn’t in the billiard room either, where the only sound was the grandfather clock, ticking in the corner.
Nor in the dining room. Kitchen. Lobby . . .
Roberta stepped into the library, running her torch over the chairs and bookshelves. Moonlight spilled through the windows, painting the tartan carpet in colour-stealing shades of grey.
Beginning to look like PC McKinnon had locked himself outside. OK, so technically she’d done the locking, but that’s what he got for mucking about when he should’ve been patrolling the hotel. Not her fault he was an idiot.
Still, better go back to the conservatory and let him in again. Give him one of her famous motivational speeches about doing what you’re bloody well told. And maybe a free kick up the arse as well.
She turned back towards the door and froze.
Bugger . . .
There was a body, lying face down by the science fiction novels, in full Police Scotland kit, partially hidden behind an antique leather sofa. PC McKinnon.
Roberta hurried over, felt for a pulse.
Nothing.
Damn it!
She hauled him over onto his back. Was he breathing?
How could he be breathing if he didn’t have a pulse.
Yeah, but finding a pulse was notoriously difficult, wasn’t it?
Only one way to check for sure.
She hauled back a hand and gave him a good hard slap.
‘Aaargh!’ McKinnon sat up, hands windmilling, like a small child trapped in a tumble drier. Eyes wide and darting around. Slapped cheek already going red in the torchlight. ‘Where . . .?’
Roberta pulled her hand back for a second go. ‘If you’ve just been having a kip, God help you.’
‘Whhh . . .’ One side of his face scrunched up. ‘Ow!’ Then he reached for the back of his head, fingertips probing at the ginger hair.
She hauled him forward and shone her torch there – blood. Not a heap of it, but enough. It dotted the crown of a proper egg-shaped lump that hadn’t been there before. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘Someone thumped me.’ God, with a razor-sharp mind like that, it was a wonder McKinnon hadn’t been promoted to DI yet.
She helped him struggle to his feet. ‘It’s OK, you’re . . .’
A noise out in the corridor made her spin around.
Someone was lurking in the darkened lobby, but before her torch beam found them, they were off, running.
Nairn!
She let go of McKinnon and he promptly collapsed on the floor again as she leapt for the library doors. ‘COME BACK HERE!’
Out into the lobby, making for the main entrance.
Moonbeams spilled in through the windows, painting cold white bars across the echoing space, making the dark darker.
A flash of grey and the bugger she was chasing leapt across a patch of light – definitely Nairn. Couldn’t see his face, but he was still wearing that spooky pelt-cloak thing, with horns on the hood.
‘YOU CAN’T GET AWAY, NAIRN!’
He skidded to a halt at the front doors and rattled them.
Locked.
Ya wee beauty!
Then he turned the key and shouldered them open, bursting out into the night.
Sod.