Chapter 33 #2
My mind reels as I confront the possibility that Gen was murdered, not by one of us but by her estranged stepbrother.
Because she had something to do with the fire that killed John’s / Euan’s father …
I had to do it.
I know what you did …
I’ll set us free.
There’s still plenty I don’t understand, holes in the picture, but I have the main pieces. I don’t know what to do now. I wish I’d let Jameson in, wish he was here with me, sharing this. My mind flip-flops – trust him, don’t trust him.
Mentally, I walk myself through the forty-eight hours since we arrived at Tarnmore, wondering how Alex got his hands on that photo. Did he just stumble across it, or go looking?
Then I remember the stables yesterday. Alex wandered off while Becca and I were with the horses. We tracked him down in the room where Becca said she and Euan were storing any belongings that hadn’t made the cut in Becca’s minimalist approach to interior decor. Boxes full of Euan’s stuff …
John’s stuff.
I scramble up from the floor and head towards the door, turning back to grab the book, newspaper article and photograph. I can’t leave them here in case my silent visitor returns – the visitor I’m becoming more and more certain is Euan.
The same visitor who snuck in here and planted evidence that made me question and suspect myself, torment myself deep into the dark hours of night. Made me tie myself in knots, turn myself inside out?
Idiot!
I’m a psychologist; I should be better equipped to analyse than most, able to read people. I should have looked more carefully at him, peeled back the skin and peered beneath like I usually do; I should have backed myself.
But my traumatic amnesia has always been my secret shame, my Achilles heel.
I’ve hated it, suppressed it for a long time – couldn’t let myself think about the spaces in my memory where thoughts and remembrances and moments of such import slid away.
It felt like such a failing …
So I kept it to myself.
I’m angry with Euan for taking advantage of my greatest weakness. And with Alex for handing me to him on a platter.
Alex was always known for his theatrics. There must have been better ways to uncover the truth about Gen’s death than dragging us unknowingly, unwillingly, into this lion’s den, baiting the beast.
If I’m right, it cost Alex his life.
I tuck the pieces of evidence inside the covers of Looking for Alaska.
No one will question me carrying a book around; I might simply be heading to the library, eager to pass the time in a fictional world, since the real one we’re living through is stranger and darker than anything I might encounter between the pages of a novel.
It goes against every instinct to leave this room. I’ll be exposed as soon as I step outside.
My hope is that if I continue to pretend that I don’t suspect Euan, and don’t know who he is, then I won’t attract his attention.
Let the others keep thinking I’m the killer if they want – or bicker among themselves and turn on each other to their hearts’ content.
That drama plays into my hands, keeps Euan feeling safe.
I need to slip beneath the radar, search for more evidence.
If Euan kept this photo of Gen’s, perhaps he has other things of hers. It chills me to think of him prowling through her dorm room stealing the photo, raking through the pieces of her life – before or after he killed her?
Following us, watching us. Waiting for his moment.
And now he’s in a relationship with Becca … That’s weird. Surely he’d want to keep well away from the people who knew Gen and might make the connection between them.
I know what it takes to get a murder conviction.
I’ve sat through enough trials, studied enough transcripts.
Ten years on, it will be extremely challenging to prove that John / Euan killed Gen in the waters off West Sands – any evidence is likely to be circumstantial at best. I doubt CCTV footage will even still exist from back then – images which might place him in St Andrews, in the places Gen frequented but with no good reason to be there.
It will also be difficult to prove that he killed Alex, given that the only evidence that seems to exist points towards me as the killer.
I have to try to find something that will at least call his motives into question, give the police reason to investigate.
Of course, a confession would be gold …
But getting one could be very dangerous indeed.
First and foremost, I need to protect myself and the others – Becca in particular. John is here under false pretences, and a false name. I have to assume his relationship with her is a sham. A smokescreen.
But why?
As I pad along the dark, silent hallway towards the stairs, I wonder just how dangerous he is. It’s risky, going to the stables. If I’m caught, perhaps I can plead a headache, a need for fresh air. It’s a long shot, and I know it.
The important thing is not to get caught.
Especially by Euan.
When I step outside, clad in boots, carrying a flashlight and enveloped in a voluminous scarf, I reflect that the air is not so much fresh as sharp-knifed and savage.
My nasal passages are scoured with cold, and I bury my nose in the folds of my scarf.
I proceed across the courtyard with caution.
The high walls are cushioned with snow, like the garden is fleece-lined.
Although the fear is there, it vies with other emotions too: a strange sense of exhilaration that sharpens my mind, a surge of unspeakable relief.
I am not going mad.
I am not a murderer.
The snow is falling thick and fast, feathery flakes landing on my cheeks as I tip my head to gaze upwards. Unbelievably, the sky still hangs heavy, fecund with more. There cannot be much left to come, surely …
The forecast – when we last had access to it – advised a final skirmish overnight, with temperatures rising from dawn tomorrow morning. From the look of that sky, it seems the last battle will be an epic one.
The stable block is a beacon in the storm-darkness, the generator powering a lantern above the door, as well as keeping the building cosy inside.
It’s a relief to slip inside; even with the earthy aroma of animal, the place feels like a sanctuary.
The horses whicker hopefully at my arrival, but I’m not here for them.
‘Sorry, guys,’ I murmur, as I dart past them and into the tight, dog-leg corridor that leads to the storage room where yesterday – only a day ago? – we found Alex lurking.
I remember glimpsing a room stacked high with boxes. It could take me a while to search.
But when I slip inside, shining the flashlight around the room, my heart plummets.
Someone has beaten me to it. At least half the boxes have been displaced, tumbled from their neat stacks, each one torn open, ransacked.
Items spill out, but as I sift through the wreckage, I quickly realise that nothing of any usefulness remains.
Still, I spend a half hour pawing through worn T-shirts and sporting paraphernalia, obsolete electrical cables, magazines, old computer games …