Chapter 37 #2
‘Well, we wanted to find out what he knew certainly. Then once we got here, and realised how fucked up you were, well the rest is history. You make a very compelling and convenient scapegoat, Eilish. Now, enough of this. We have a rendezvous to make.’
‘Wait, what?’ I’m panicking now. I don’t have a plan.
‘It was my idea to convince you of your own guilt. Quite a clever plan, if I do say so myself. Almost worked – your amnesia was useful, so thanks for that. It’ll make a great story – the forensic psychologist who puts away murderers to atone for her own murderous past …’
We’re walking now, towards the jetty. I have no idea how much time has passed since I set out, how long we’ve been talking.
The cold is settled deep in my bones in a way I know isn’t good, and my limbs feel clumsy.
I walk with deliberation, stretching every muscle and sinew, trying to flush blood back to my muscles.
I’m going to need every ounce of my strength.
‘Ah,’ says Kimmy conversationally as we approach the loch. ‘They’ve beaten us to it. That’s your fault – keeping me gossiping.’
My head snaps up and I peer through the veil of snow and fog. We’re by the banks of the loch now and I can feel the cold rising from the surface of the water. The jetty is slimed in ice, jutting out into the water.
There are two figures standing there.
*
Euan has his gun trained on Jameson. ‘Good job,’ he tells Kimmy as she prods me forwards with her gun.
Jameson looks defeated. There’s a new bruise on his cheekbone, but I’m pleased to see that Euan is not unscathed from whatever went down between them at Tarnmore. He’s bleeding from a cut beneath one eye, and his nose is swollen. Still, he has the gun, the upper hand.
You can’t bring fists to a gunfight and hope to win …
Or kickboxing skills either.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jameson tells me as I move to his side, almost losing my footing on the slick planks. His arms are bound again, behind his back this time. I reach for him, but Euan barks at me.
‘Don’t touch him.’
I put space between us.
‘So,’ Euan says. ‘Change of plan. Just as well I’m adaptable.
You and Alex kind of fucked up our nice little money-making scheme, but so be it.
We’ll think of something else – we always do.
New plan is murder–suicide. Eilish, you lured Jameson out here to recreate some twisted version of your first night together before you killed him … ’
I glare at him, loathing in every fibre of me. How does he know about our first night together?
Euan smirks. ‘Bex told me about your little romance-movie moment out here. Skinny-dipping in the loch. So cute.’
‘So, how exactly am I going to murder him?’ I say dully, refusing to let him rile me.
Euan nods at the loch swirling around us. ‘Easy. Push him in. Won’t last more than a few minutes in water that cold, and with his hands tied, swimming might be a problem.’
I spare a glance at the freezing loch, the waters black and menacing below me. ‘And then what? How am I going to kill myself?’ My voice quivers, betraying how scared I am. I don’t want to drown.
‘I vote she blows her head off,’ Kimmy says, clapping her hands together. God, she’s psychotic.
Euan smiles indulgently at her, and the brief moment their eyes are locked is enough.
I slide the phone out of my pocket and let it slip off the jetty into the snowbank to my right.
If I’m going into the water, I don’t want it in my pocket.
No one might find it, or they might not be able to retrieve any of the data on it if they do, but it’s my last rebellion; it’s all I’ve got.
Jameson murmurs something so quietly I don’t catch it.
Euan and Kimmy are still looking lovingly into each other’s eyes, turned on by the thought of me blasting my brains out.
They’re discussing the various ways I might end myself, but the guns are still pointing at us and I know they’re not distracted enough for us to try anything.
We’re trapped on the jetty, nowhere to run but into the water, or right at them, into a blaze of gunfire.
‘What?’ I say to Jameson, out of the side of my mouth. I don’t want them to see us talking.
‘Becca,’ he whispers. ‘Is awake.’
‘Okay—’
‘Rifle,’ he adds. I don’t know what he’s talking about – has Becca been shot? Has she got a rifle and he’s trying to tell me there’s hope after all?
The third gun.
There was a rifle in the cabinet too and it was also missing when we checked.
Euan shifts his attention back to us. ‘Sorry to disappoint my girl’s bloodlust, but a shooting really would be messy, and not your style, Eilish. You’d definitely be the drowning yourself type.’
Panic claws up my throat.
‘She’s afraid of the water,’ Kimmy reminds him. Crap. She was paying attention to me.
‘Details,’ Euan says. ‘Actually, maybe that works. She’s afraid of the water, because she has the urge to drown herself any time she goes near it.’
Jameson’s temper snaps. ‘She’s afraid of the water because she watched her mother, and her best friend, die in it, asshole.’
I want to tell him not to bother – there’s no point appealing to Euan’s humanity; he doesn’t have any.
‘Exactly, she really is fucked up, isn’t she?’
‘Tell me,’ I say, stalling for time so I can think. I don’t know how to save us, or if it’s even possible to get out of this, but every instinct is to stay alive as long as possible, every cell of me begging for just another minute of life. ‘Tell me why you killed Genevieve.’
‘How about you tell me, Ms Psychologist?’ Euan says. ‘And after you do that, you can give me the photograph.’
‘What photograph?’ I deadpan. Here it is – a chink, an opportunity. ‘I don’t know anything about a photograph.’ Mist drifts across the loch and behind Euan and Kimmy, the fog clears.
I see her then, a flicker of movement as she darts from one gorse bush to the next: a lick of chestnut hair blowing in the wind, the gleam of the rifle barrel, and, incongruously, the pink pom-pom on her knitted hat bobbing.
Becca.
‘Yes, Euan, what photograph?’ Kimmy asks, in a cool voice. ‘Tell me you weren’t stupid enough to leave any evidence linking you to Johnny Metcalfe and Genevieve.’
He scowls. ‘There’s a photograph of me and Gen as kids. Just one. I burned anything else that could identify me as Metcalfe, but that photo’s been missing since yesterday. Alex took it, but I haven’t been able to find it. I’ve searched everywhere—’
‘Not everywhere,’ I say coolly, enjoying his discomfort. ‘And you didn’t burn everything.’
‘Idiot!’ Kimmy hisses. ‘Why did you keep photos?’
‘Because unlike you he’s sentimental,’ I say, earning myself a glare from Euan. ‘And because he was in love with his stepsister … until she started blackmailing him that is. Isn’t that right, Euan … Johnny … whatever your name is?’