Stay Alive (30 page)

‘Listen, I can explain,’ said the guy, putting up a hand and backing away from Scope. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’

‘Yes it is,’ said Scope, letting fly with a left hook when he was within range.

The punch connected perfectly with the guy’s chin and he flew backwards, his head striking the wall with a hard smack. Scope watched as he slumped to the floor, unconscious, feeling a cold anger that someone could do this to a young, defenceless girl who’d come here looking for help. He turned to her and, seeing that she’d stiffened and looked ready to make a run for it, he smiled. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Your sister Jess asked me to come looking for you. Your name’s Casey, right?’

The little girl looked up at him with a suspicious expression, which didn’t surprise Scope, given what she must have been through today. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

It was imperative he got her to trust him, which meant telling her the truth. ‘My name’s Scope. I work for the canoe company you rented the canoes from.’

She nodded slowly, as if she was thinking through this information. ‘Is Jess okay?’ she asked eventually.

‘Yes. I helped her escape from the bad men, then gave her my phone so she could call the police.’

‘What about Amanda? Is she okay?’

Scope frowned. ‘I didn’t see anyone else. Who’s Amanda?’

‘She was being chased by the bad men too, and she jumped in Auntie Jean’s canoe, and that’s when it all started.’

‘So it’s Amanda that the bad men want. Do you know why?’

Casey shook her head. ‘No. She said she doesn’t know either.’

This was interesting, thought Scope. At least now he knew why the gunmen were here, and who they were after.

‘Scope’s a funny name,’ said Casey.

He shrugged. ‘It’s kind of my nickname. No one calls me anything else.’

‘Do you work for the nice man in the hat?’

‘Yes. His name’s Jock.’

‘That’s right. I remember him saying. Can you tell him we’ve lost the canoes?’

‘Don’t worry about them. In fact, don’t worry about anything. You’re safe now.’

‘That’s what
he
said.’ She nodded in the direction of the guy in the pyjama bottoms. ‘He locked me in here and tried to hurt me.’

‘I know he did.’

‘But I don’t know why. I didn’t do anything to him.’

Scope sighed. It broke his heart to see a young child’s innocence taken away from her in such a cruel manner. ‘Some people are just nasty,’ he told her. ‘But always remember, there aren’t very many of them. Most people are good. I promise you that.’

The man in the pyjamas started moaning and rubbing his head, although his eyes were still closed.

‘What are you going to do with him?’ asked Casey.

‘I’m going to make sure he can’t do you any more harm. Then I’m going to call the police and get them here as fast as possible. You just stay where you are.’

‘Can I go downstairs? It smells funny in here.’

He smiled. ‘Of course you can, but stay in the house. Those other bad men might be out there somewhere.’

Casey said she would, even managing to give Scope a small smile in return, and got up off the bed.

Scope waited until she’d left the room, then hauled the guy to his feet. He was a big guy, but one who was well out of shape. He still looked dazed and it was possible he was concussed, given how hard he’d hit the wall. Scope didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, someone like him deserved everything he got. He half dragged, half carried him from the room and down the stairs. The guy’s moans were becoming louder and more pronounced now, and Scope could tell from the way he was tensing in his grip that he was regaining strength.

‘Where are you taking me?’ the guy asked in a spaced-out tone.

Scope ignored the question as he manoeuvred him out through the back door. He’d spotted a coal shed next to the fence a few minutes earlier, and he dragged the guy over to it now, pleased to see that the door locked with an outside bolt.

‘What are you doing?’ asked the guy as Scope released the bolt, and this time his tone was indignant and he began to struggle.

Scope punched him in the gut and, as the guy doubled over, he drove a knee into his face, before flinging him into the darkness of the shed. The man landed on a pile of coal, holding his bloodied nose with both hands, an expression of angry surprise on his face, as if he knew what his rights as a criminal were and couldn’t believe that someone had had the temerity to infringe them.

That was when Scope felt the cold rage grip him. He clambered inside the shed, grabbed the guy round the neck with gloved hands, and began squeezing.

The guy made a desperate choking noise, but Scope squeezed even harder. He wanted to kill this man. For a few dark seconds it was as if nothing else mattered. Once again an image of Mary Ann flashed across his mind. Mary Ann when she was Casey’s age. She’d had the same blonde hair, and had been a cute, beautiful, innocent kid, just like Casey. And Scope had no doubt that this man would have killed Casey to cover his tracks and avoid detection. Maybe even have put his hands round her neck, just like Scope was doing now.

The guy’s eyes were bulging, his face darkening to the colour of wine, and he was grabbing uselessly at Scope’s arms. But he just didn’t have the strength to even begin to break the grip.

And then a voice in Scope’s head told him to stop what he was doing. The man beneath him was a pervert. He might well have killed Casey but, in the end, he had no proof of that. He couldn’t simply murder him. He was better than that.

He released his grip, and the guy slid down the pile of coal, choking and coughing. Livid red marks were already appearing on his neck, but Scope hadn’t finished with him yet. He might not deserve to die, but he didn’t deserve to be treated with much in the way of mercy either.

Scope leaned his face in close to his. ‘I’m going to leave you here until the police turn up. If you make a noise or try to get out – in fact, if you do anything at all, I’m going to come back here and finish throttling the life out of you. Do you understand?’ The guy didn’t immediately respond, so Scope grabbed him by the chin, forcing him to look into his eyes. ‘I said: do you understand?’

‘Yes, yes . . . I understand,’ he gasped.

‘And if you say a word to the police about those marks on your neck, or where you got them from, you’re a dead man.’

The guy nodded wildly – he could see Scope meant it – and Scope let him drop onto the coal pile before backing out of the shed and bolting the door behind him.

He knew now he had to call the police, even though it was going to leave him with some pretty inconvenient questions to answer. The thought of being charged for the murder of either of the two men he’d killed today scared him, although less than he’d thought it would. In the end, he’d done the right thing, and if these kids survived because of his actions, it was worth suffering for. He tried not to think about how long he might have to spend behind bars if he was found guilty.

When he got back inside the house, and had found the landline, the first call he made was to his mobile phone, hoping that Jess might answer. But she didn’t. He hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.

Taking a deep breath, he made his second call, dialling 999.

As soon as the operator answered at the other end, Scope told her that there had been a series of shooting incidents in the Tayleigh area and that the police should send out armed response teams as soon as possible. ‘Is this the first call you’ve had about the shooting?’ he asked.

‘Yes it is,’ she answered, sounding sceptical. ‘Can I have your name please, sir?’

But Scope continued talking as if she hadn’t asked the question, telling her that there were multiple victims involved, and at least two perpetrators who were still on the loose. ‘There’s also a young girl of ten who’s with me at a cottage on the Tayleigh Road, about five miles south of the town. She’s shaken and tired, but otherwise unhurt.’

The operator wanted more details but Scope was tiring of the conversation, especially now he knew that Jess had yet to call the police and wasn’t answering the phone he’d given her. So he wrapped things up by telling the operator he was calling from the cottage’s landline, reiterated the need for the police to get here as soon as possible, and hung up.

He turned to see Casey standing in the doorway watching him. ‘Have the police found Jess yet?’ she asked.

‘Not yet, no.’

‘I’m scared for her.’

So was Scope. ‘I’m going to need to go and find her and make sure she’s all right,’ he said as calmly as possible. ‘The police are on their way now but I want you to wait here for them, okay?’

‘On my own? What about that horrible man?’

‘I’ve locked him in the shed. He can’t get out.’

‘But what if he does?’

Scope smiled at her reassuringly. ‘He won’t. I promise. I’ve made sure he’s in no position to hurt you.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You haven’t killed him, have you?’

He laughed. ‘Of course not, but he knows what I’ll do to him if he does anything to you. You’ll be fine. The police may take a little while – they’ve got a long way to come – but when they get here, you tell them everything that happened, and they’ll look after you.’

‘You’ll find Jess, won’t you?’ She looked at him with real hope in her eyes.

‘I’ll do everything I can, I promise.’

And he knew he would. Even though it meant risking everything.

‘
ONE MILLION THREE
hundred and twenty thousand pounds.’ Mo Khan whistled through his teeth. ‘It’s a lot of money.’

Bolt nodded. They were talking about the life insurance payable on the death of George Rowan. ‘Add that to roughly one and three-quarter million pounds in other assets, and you’ve got a tidy amount of money. Worth killing for.’

They were sitting in the small, old-fashioned bar of their hotel in Inverness – the only two in the place, aside from an ancient barman who was reading the paper. A clock ticked far too loudly in the room and, for a Saturday night, the place was worryingly silent, although after the foul meal the two of them had had, Bolt wasn’t surprised. He was now on his second pint of the evening as he and Mo continued to toss around their theories on the case.

‘But I’m still stuck,’ said Mo, taking a drink from his orange juice and lemonade. ‘How could she have set it all up? How could she have hired a killer – a man we know was responsible for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman fifteen years ago? I mean, it wasn’t like she could advertise, and she’s hardly the type of person who moves in those kinds of circles. And how could she know the MO of The Disciple? She doesn’t know anyone on the inquiry.’

‘That’s my problem too. It still doesn’t make sense. The problem is, none of it does.’

‘There’s something else as well. Amanda Rowan was attacked by the killer at her house. She was caught on film on the house’s CCTV camera. It even shows the killer slashing her with the knife, an injury requiring – what? – two dozen stitches. And her neighbour witnessed the killer chasing Amanda through her home. How do you fake all that?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s impossible.’

Bolt nodded slowly. Mo’s reasoning seemed sound, but still his doubts persisted. Earlier he’d re-read Amanda Rowan’s statement of how she’d discovered the bodies of her husband and Ivana Hanzha, and it threw up unanswered questions. ‘I know, I know,’ he said to Mo, ‘but there are still things bugging me. According to Amanda Rowan, when she got home that night she heard a sound, which she described as ‘a faint, sudden gasp, like air escaping from a tyre’. She reckoned it was the sound of someone – either her husband or his lover – dying, and clearly it was coming from the bedroom where the bodies were found, because we know they weren’t moved afterwards.’ He frowned. ‘So the implication is that the killer was still in the process of murdering the couple when Amanda arrived home, which means he was still in the room with them. According to Amanda’s statement, she called out a couple of times to let her husband know she was back, then proceeded up the stairs towards where the sound had come from. Now, you’ve been in the room where they were murdered. It was the end bedroom.’ Bolt paused.

Mo nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘But if you were the murderer and you were going to ambush her, or even if you were just going to try to hide and slip out unnoticed, you’d stay put, wouldn’t you? Which is in the room along with the victims. So that, if Amanda had gone into the room where the bodies were lying to investigate, you could simply stand behind the door and ambush her. That way, you get three victims for the price of two, and no annoying witnesses.’ Bolt threw up his hands. ‘I mean, surely the last thing you’d do would be to creep along the landing to the other side of the house, and hide there. I remember those floorboards. They creaked like crazy. And yet, according to Amanda’s testimony, that’s what he must have done, because he tried to ambush her from the other end of the landing and, by doing so, he allowed her to escape. It just doesn’t make sense. Nor does the fact that, having completely messed up his ambush, he chased her all the way to the next-door neighbour’s house fifty yards away and, rather than stopping then, he risks everything by actually chasing her
through
the neighbour’s house. We always said that’s not how The Disciple operated, didn’t we? And yet that’s exactly what happened.’

Mo looked puzzled. ‘So you’re saying it’s a set-up, boss? That somehow the whole thing was faked to make it look like The Disciple’s work so that no one would think of looking closer to home for a motive? Because it still leaves us with all those other issues we talked about. Like, where did she find a murderer from? And how did she know The Disciple’s MO?’

Bolt sighed. ‘I’m not saying it was a definite set-up. But I’ve thought through all the possible scenarios – we both have – and none makes sense. George Rowan and Ivana Hanzha died for a reason. Amanda had at least three million pounds’ worth of motive, as well as the knowledge that her husband was cheating on her and might well have left her for this other woman.’

‘She’d still have been left with money, even if they’d divorced.’