Cold Grave (42 page)

‘And for not screwing you.’

‘They argued,’ Deans ignored Narey’s jibe. ‘They were only on the island a few minutes and they were arguing. Laurence tried it on and she knocked him back. The bitch said no even though she’d been such a slut the night before. I was… it just wasn’t…’

‘Fair?’

‘I don’t really know what happened. Laurence left and the next thing I knew I was standing over her. I’d hit her. And hit her. Over and over. There was blood everywhere. The snow was soaked in it. I got this tree branch and just… hit her. I don’t know how many times. She was… she was dead.’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘What?’

‘You hit Barbie twenty-two times. Quite the big man.’

A troubled silence fell between them, broken only by the whisper of the wind and the call of a pair of geese overhead. Narey’s head throbbed and she wondered how much blood she had lost.

‘What did you do with the branch?’

‘I threw it as far across the ice on the far side of the island as I could and left it for the lake to melt. Then I went back to the bothy. I got there before Laurence and no one knew I had left.’

‘So was the rest of what you told me true? About making a pact not to talk about it because she was under sixteen?’

‘Yes.’

‘And who told them that she was only fifteen?’

He laughed inanely.

‘I did. I told them that Barbie had told me she was fifteen but it wasn’t true. Paddy and Adam nearly shit themselves. Laurence too. She was never mentioned again.’

‘Until this year.’

‘Yes. Until those adverts in the Sunday papers. Then those emails. Everything was fine until then: my wife, my daughter, my job. Everything had been perfect until then. It was all going to be ruined. She’d have left me. I told you that. Couldn’t let it happen.’

‘So you assumed it was Paton, Mosson or Bradley? The only ones who knew you had all been with the girl. And you decided to take them out.’

‘Yes.’

‘You made Paton and Mosson look like accidents. You even faked an attack on yourself, you sick bastard.’

Narey suddenly let out a tired, ironic laugh. This one, unlike the others, not done by design to wind Deans up even further. This one she simply couldn’t help.

‘What’s so fucking funny?’

‘It’s not so much funny as sad, Deans. You see, I don’t think it was any of them who were blackmailing you.’

‘What? But… then who?’

‘I’ll tell you after I arrest you,’ she taunted him. ‘Right now all you need to know is that you killed Paton, Mosson and Bradley for no reason. All that trouble and all you did was fuck up your own life as well as theirs.’

Deans sat in sullen silence, chewing on her words.

‘What about Bradley?’ she asked him.

‘Fuck you.’

‘The rumour that “Lily” was a gypsy girl. That was no coincidence, was it? You started that rumour because you wanted to find out where Bradley was. You couldn’t find him, so you used us to track him down.’

‘I started that rumour years ago, the first time I heard that Paddy had married into travelling folk. I wanted to know where all three of them were. I needed to know — just in case. I knew if Paddy was with gypsies, then he’d go off the radar. I wanted a way of being able to bring him back in.’

‘Very clever.’

‘But not as clever as you, is that right, Sergeant Narey?’ he growled. ‘Well, it seems there’s something you’ve forgotten.’

Narey heard not just the renewed confidence in Dean’s voice but also realised that it was stronger than it had been.

‘And what’s that?’

‘You remember what happened to Paddy Bradley?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘So you tell me: how do you think I managed to slit his throat with a golf club?’

Narey’s heart stopped for a second. As much as she didn’t want to, she sat up and looked over at Deans. Like her, he was propped up on his elbows but his right hand held a knife — a large kitchen knife. He’d been telling her the truth about what had happened in order to buy himself time to recover from the punch that she’d delivered to his throat.

Deans got to his feet, the knife held before him. Narey scrambled towards the golf club but he was on her before she could pick it up, slicing at the back of her hand with the blade and drawing a bright red line that bled from her knuckles to three inches above her wrist. Clutching at the cut, she was forced to fall back and he was on top of her, pinning her to the ground.

Deans used his weight to hold Narey in place, making sure she couldn’t swing her legs at him this time. To seal the deal, he held the knife to her throat.

‘You came to my house,’ he snarled. ‘My wife was in. I’d spent nearly twenty years trying to do the right thing, to make it all right. Then you came and threatened to ruin everything.’

Deans stuck the point of the knife to Narey’s neck and pushed it forward, drawing blood.

‘I could still have made it all okay. When your DC Corrieri told me where Bradley was, I went after him. To finish it. I wanted to bring him back to the scene of the crime. Have it look like he killed himself here — out of guilt. But there were so many people. I didn’t expect so many. I couldn’t… We were surrounded by people.’

Narey just stared up at him, refusing to show him the fear that coursed through her. Her heart hammered at her ribcage; every nerve jangled. She wanted to buck him off but her arms were trapped by his knees and he was too heavy. And the knife was so close. He pressed it forward again, an inch or two from the first cut, drawing another sliver of blood from her throat.

‘The first cut was for Laurence,’ he told her. ‘The second was for Adam. And this… this is for Paddy Bradley.’

Deans pushed the sharp tip of the knife slightly lower on Narey’s neck, forming a perfect bloody triangle and pushed it so that it broke the skin and sent a cold, agonizing tingle through her. The three lines of red trickled down her throat. He drew the knife away slowly, its blade glinting in the moonlight, and held it over her.

She’d decided that she had one last desperate gambit: if he came in close enough and if she could dodge the knife, then she would head-butt him as hard as she could and try to get out from under him. It was a terrible plan and a terrible option but it was all she had.

‘Even with all the people here, even then I might have got away,’ Deans continued, gibbering now. ‘It was Bradley. Everyone thought it was Bradley. I was going to the island to be safe. Then you… you turned up.’

She tried to shrink back against the snow-covered ground, seeking every inch of space to allow her to move away and up.

‘I’ve cut you for Laurence; I’ve cut you for Adam and for Paddy. And this is for the girl.’

Deans drew the knife back, cold madness in his eyes, and she readied herself to move her head to the side, then to thrust it up and into his with every ounce of strength she had left. Damn, the knife was so close…

It all seemed to happen at once. The shouting, the momentary hesitation by Deans, the flash of dark chrome, the groan and Deans collapsing on top of her, his weight pinning her to the island.

And the knife. The knife being dropped only inches from her throat and piercing her neck as she moved.

‘You’d better not have been there for any length of time listening to what that maniac was saying,’ she snapped at Addison.

‘Christ, that’s the thanks I get for saving your life? And stop moving, will you? How the fuck are they going to stem that bleeding if you keep wriggling about. And no, we only just got here. It’s a long bloody walk over that ice.’

‘Walk? You better not have bloody walked either.’

Addison gave her a weary shake of his head and puffed out his cheeks.

‘You know what, I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t bothered. How about we wake Deans up, give him his knife back and I apologise for hitting him over the head with the baton?’

Narey grinned at him, the movement causing her skin to contract and the wounds in her neck to shriek with pain.

‘Anyway,’ Addison continued, ‘it wasn’t really me who saved your life. It was Tony Winter.’

‘Tony?’

‘Hm,’ Addison watched her reaction. ‘Tony got me on the phone and told me that it was Deans who was behind it all. Otherwise we might have found Bradley’s body and taken that as being the end of it. Tony said that Deans would be heading for Inchmahome.’

‘How did he…?’

‘Well, that’s the funny thing. Tony…
photographer
Tony… was interviewing the parents of the dead girl, Claire Channing. Any idea how that happened?’

Narey gave an awkward shrug.

‘Course you don’t. Anyway, Tony saw a photograph of the girl in the parents’ house. Seems she was wearing this necklace that Tony had seen before. He checked his photographs and, sure enough, Deans’ daughter was wearing the exact same necklace. Seems our man here was sick enough to have kept a souvenir of his big day on the lake and given it to his own daughter. Psycho or what?’

‘Jesus.’

‘I know. Tony tried to call you but couldn’t get a signal because you were out of the range of civilisation. He got hold of me though and told me to get here as quickly as possible. Seems he was really worried about you.’

Narey refused to give Addison the reaction he seemed to be looking for.

‘I’m glad he was or I might not be here. Deans had us all fooled. He even faked that attack on himself at The Rock. I should have wondered why he was going for a drink there when it was so far from home. It was because he knew those steps were perfect for “falling” down.’

Addison grinned.

‘I know. Tony’s ahead of you there too. He must have picked up a few tips from me. He reckons Deans must have cut his head with a knife and then thrown himself down those stairs. What a fucking fruitcake! Tony said we’d probably find a knife thrown into the bushes next to the steps above the pub.’

‘Worth a look,’ she admitted.

‘It already has been. I got a call to say they’d found a knife covered in snow but with blood still on the blade. They’re analysing it now but it will odds-on belong to Deans.’

‘Tony,’ she laughed lightly, causing another pain to shoot through the incision in her neck. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

From behind them came the angry convulsing sound of Greg Deans wakening from the baton blow to his head. He was held by two uniformed cops and could do nothing except stare hatefully at Narey.

‘I think you’re entitled to this one,’ Addison told her. ‘Charge him.’

He held out a hand and helped Narey to her feet. She began to walk slowly towards Deans, preparing the charge list in her head, when she stopped and turned back to Addison.

‘What am I charging him with?’

‘What?’

‘How is Julia Corrieri?’

‘Let’s get off this bloody island first. We’ll need to get you properly examined. That wound on the back of your head is even worse than the one at your throat.’

Something in the way he spoke wasn’t right. Showing concern for her like that wasn’t Addison’s way of dealing with things.

‘Cut the bullshit, Addy. What aren’t you telling me?’

Addison swore under his breath and rubbed at his eyes before crouching down so that he was looking Narey in the face.

‘Julia didn’t make it. She died in the hospital.’

Spring seemed the wrong time for a funeral somehow. The new life that pushed up through the earth of the vast cemetery in Whitby appeared to be mocking the ceremony that paraded in front of it. Snowdrops, daffodils and primroses triumphantly announced their rebirth with no thought to the feelings of mourners.

It was the second funeral Tony Winter had attended that week and, even for someone with his peculiar interest in death, it was at least one too many. At Daldowie Crematorium in Glasgow, Strathclyde Police had been out in force to grieve for one of their own. Julia Corrieri’s family were at the helm, clearly still distraught despite the three months that had elapsed. Winter sensed resentment in their mood and a grudging acceptance of the attending police.

Rachel had been devastated by Julia’s death and was wracked with guilt at her own part in it. If she hadn’t stirred things up, if she hadn’t gone after Deans, if she hadn’t been so desperate to find out who Lily/Barbie was: it was the mantra she festered on. If she hadn’t done her job and if Julia hadn’t done hers, Tony had reminded her. They were both doing what they were paid for and what they had chosen to do. It failed to make her feel any better and just gave her the excuse to be mad at him instead — which was what he wanted.

At Julia’s funeral, he’d wanted to go to Rachel, to hold and comfort her. Just to take her hand would have made him feel so much better even if it would only have had a fraction of that effect on her. Instead, he had to stand at the back and watch her hurt.

There were no such issues of perverted protocol in Whitby, however. Tony stood in warm sunshine not far from the pair of Gothic cemetery chapels that were dramatically connected by a pointed archway, its steeple rising to the heavens. Beside him were Rachel, Danny and Rachel’s dad — nothing to hide and nothing to explain. They had travelled down together from Glasgow to pay their respects to Claire Channing and her parents.

Winter had been introduced to Rachel’s dad and been welcomed warmly by him. Inevitably, Alan had forgotten Tony’s name a few times on the long drive to Whitby and seemed confused by his relationship with Rachel at others. He wasn’t the only one, Winter thought.

Rachel had sat her dad down in the nursing home and explained to him everything that had gone on. It had taken a while. The enormity of it had distressed him as much as it confused him.

Alan had broken down when she told him how his instincts had been right about Laurence Paton. For all the things that had slipped temporarily and permanently from his memory, her dad vividly recalled the gut feeling he’d had when he spoke to Laurence Paton. Okay, Paton hadn’t killed the girl but he was still guilty of a silence that could have spared her parents years of anguish and forlorn hope. Alan Narey’s own guilt was that he hadn’t been successfully able to pursue the lead he’d been so sure of.