Chapter 39
Friday
We stay awake and feed the fire as the sky begins to lighten outside. We drink brandy and hot tea, and tell Leo and Becca everything. We fill in the missing pieces, trying to map out the night, the past few days, the web of lies spanning the last few years.
We trace it all back to the start. To Genevieve, and West Sands.
Leo cries and rambles in his pain, and we take turns to comfort him.
Becca is surprisingly okay. I mean, I’m sure she’s not okay but I’m impressed with how she holds it together.
It can’t be nice to learn that your chance-encounter whirlwind romance was a set-up, and that your boyfriend is a triple murderer who spotted you whilst stalking his second victim and decided to make a bit of money by turning you into victim number three.
At least that didn’t happen. Becca is alive. Her pride might be damaged, but she’ll bounce back.
Kimmy sits immobile at the table, her hands tied behind her, eyes blank. Even when Leo begs her to tell him if she ever really loved him, she doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even look at him.
‘We should go,’ Becca says, glancing out the window at the breaking dawn. The storm has cleared out, and the sky is milky smooth, streaks of pink showing behind the trees. ‘We need to decide who’s going to walk to the village and call for help, and who will stay here with her.’
Kimmy shifts in her seat. ‘I’d rather take my chances with the police than you lot.’ She wiggles her shoulders – she must be in agony after sitting with her hands bound like that for hours. ‘Oh, just look in my coat pocket. It was there all the time.’
It’s Becca who springs up and plunges her hands into the pockets of Kimmy’s coat, hanging on the back of the chair. When she pulls her hand out, she’s holding a mobile phone. Euan’s phone.
‘It didn’t fall in the ravine like he said,’ Kimmy tells us. ‘He had it all along.’
Becca’s fingers are shaking as she taps the screen three times.
*
Once we know the emergency services are on their way, we leave Kimmy tied to a chair in the cottage and the four of us go outside together to watch the sunrise.
The snow is receding. Tarnmore House is solid at our backs, enduring, the stone a wistful rose-gold in the misty dawn.
‘The place is a mess,’ Becca says. ‘There’s petrol everywhere.
I’ll have to get a company in, to clean it top to bottom before my parents come home. ’
‘At least it’s still standing,’ I say. ‘It could be worse.’
‘Alex is dead,’ Leo says, his voice thick. ‘Things will never be the same—’
‘But we’re alive. That counts for something. You’re right, it won’t be the same, but we’ll find a way to get through this.’
‘Together,’ Jameson says, threading his fingers through mine. We exchange a heated glance.
Becca and Leo have spent the past decade believing that I killed Genevieve, the last two days thinking I also killed Alex. Only Jameson believed in me.
But Becca also saved our lives. There’s a bond there now that can never be unbroken.
‘I’ll have to cancel the wedding,’ Leo frets. ‘We’ve paid deposits—’
Jameson claps him kindly on the back. ‘Mate, don’t think about that now.’
Becca takes a step towards the main house, but I catch at her hand and pull her back. ‘It’s a crime scene, Bex. The whole place. The clean-up will have to wait. Until the police have finished up here, everywhere is off limits.’
Becca looks at me, and I see the moment she starts to fall apart, everything catching up with her.
She’s been so strong, but it couldn’t last. She breaks in my embrace, and we cling together.
When I glance up, I see that Leo and Jameson are hugging too.
A moment later, we’re in a tangled foursome, and all that matters is that we survived and we still have our lives ahead of us.
*
We hear the sirens, see the strip of neon blue above the dark forest. A police Land Rover is first to make it up the track, skiting about on the packed snow.
The thaw started hours ago, but the sheer volume of snow will take an age to clear.
It’s beginning to shrink back in places, from rooftops and bushes, and the wedges that top the wall.
We wait outside, wrapped in blankets, drinking tea from a Thermos flask, taking turns to nip in and check on Kimmy – it will be a relief to hand her over to the authorities, to stop looking over my shoulder waiting for the next plot twist …
But the arrival of the police also makes me anxious. We’re all suspects, for now. This is a nightmare of a crime scene: the house, the ravine, the jetty …
I can tell that the officers who’re first on the scene are taken aback by our tale. We babble at them, trying to make them understand everything all at once.
More officers arrive. They secure the firearms, put cuffs on Kimmy and move her to another room, then shepherd us back into the living room of the cottage, and tell us not to move.
We are given more tea, and someone places a silver foil blanket around Becca’s shoulders.
She’s shaking, crying, talking in nonsensical half-sentences.
I am offered a blanket too, but I refuse.
It will only remind me of the loch where my mum died, and of West Sands.
I need to anchor myself in the here and now. I need to be strong not slipping away. I intend to remember everything this time.
More vehicles churn up the snow on the drive. It can still only be traversed by four-wheel drive but the thaw is in full force now. A helicopter lands on the field behind the house.
For once I’m the confident one, and I take charge.
I tell them where they will find the bodies.
I show them the fragments of documents Euan started to burn in the stove, describe what they will find inside: the trail of Jameson’s blood through the dining room and out onto the terrace, across the snow to the pool, Alex’s phone and bow tie stashed somewhere until Euan could work out how best to use them to frame me.
I warn them about the spilled petrol, hand them the book with its additional contents, and finally Leo’s phone.
The battery is dead, but once they charge it, they will hear everything.
Then I huddle back on the sofa with Jameson and let whatever comes next happen.
It is over.