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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  During his 20-year career in Glasgow with a Scottish Sunday newspaper, Craig Robertson has interviewed three recent Prime Ministers, attended major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, been pilloried on breakfast television, beaten Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, been among the first to interview Susan Boyle, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India. His debut novel, Random, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger.

  Also by Craig Robertson

  Snapshot

  Random

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Craig Robertson, 2012

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Craig Robertson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978-0-85720-416-5

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-85720-418-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CIP Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY

  To Debbie, Harvey, Jade, Karen, Lewis and Victoria

  November 1993

  Everything was bathed in blue. That’s what he remembered most: a cold, rich Persian blue that washed over land and sky and lake, and made it all shiver. It made it almost magical, like a neverland that was never quite dark and never quite light – and would never be quite the same again.

  It shimmered, this strange new world, where you could walk on water and all sorts of astonishing possibilities lay ahead. Some of what might happen scared him but he was excited more than afraid. There was no uncertainty about what he was going to do; he’d already made his mind up about that, and could feel the exhilaration and anticipation building in him.

  The ice kingdom had winked at them on their arrival: a teasing glimpse framed between the old church on one side and the arthritic arms of a barren chestnut tree on the other. As they inched closer, almost fearful of its wonder, it unfolded before their eyes and they were assaulted by its sights and sounds. From the shore it looked like a Lowry painting, thick with matchstick people, graphite grey and black against the icy canvas, with only vague flashes of colour breaking up the monotone sketch. The collective breath of those gathered on the frozen lake fogged the air above them and offered an enchanted border to the blue.

  The noise was terrific. The sum of its parts was raw excitement, its constituents the roar of curling stones across the ice; the screams of children’s laughter; and cheers from all corners. There were people everywhere, clad in ski gear, climbing outfits, jeans and kilts, every head covered in a hat.

  Getting closer, they could see the ice world contained colours after all. A little girl in a scarlet jumpsuit sat giggling on a sled pulled by a panting Springer Spaniel; a green-kilted warrior whooped as he followed his curling stone down the hastily formed rink; two men with bright yellow hats and beaming red noses shared the national drink from a metal hipflask. Blues and browns and purples and oranges all whirled and birled and skirled in a cacophony of sound and fury.

  The skaters, the curlers, the sliders and the walkers extended all the way to Inchmahome Island, a ghostly shape far across the ice. A carnival of people were taking advantage of something that hadn’t happened for fifteen years and might never happen again. They’d been walking to Inchmahome, half a mile away across the lake, ever since word spread that the ice had frozen solid, possibly a once-in-a-lifetime chance both to defy and take advantage of nature.

  By all accounts, the two days before had seen even more people on the lake – as many as 10,000, it was said. There were fewer now: some of them had gone back to work; others were scared off by temperatures that had crept back up towards zero. More were leaving with the approach of the day’s end.

  He was relieved that she had been easily talked into staying near the shore for a while to enjoy the last of the people-watching before they took their own turn to venture across to the island. It was nearly dusk and the fading light was accompanied by surface water dancing and glistening on the ice, signalling that the frozen bridge to the island might soon disappear. The sensible thing would have been to go immediately and not run the risk of waiting any longer but a smile and wink were enough to persuade her of the benefits of waiting for it to be dark and quiet over there.

  Only the brave and the reckless were still attempting the walk to Inchmahome. She was one of those and he was the other. God, she was only a few years younger but she had an innate wonder about her that he envied. Life was still an adventure to her, a world to be explored. For him, it was already beginning to be a chore but he was compensated by the knowledge that he wouldn’t need to be jealous of her innocence much longer.

  Finally, as the numbers crossing the lake dwindled, he gripped her hand, feeling the threads of her pink gloves lightly tickle his bare skin, and they both took a deep breath before making their first stride. Suddenly it seemed so much further away, the expanding dusk adding distance and doubt.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked her.

  ‘Ready,’ she laughed.

  Every step took them further from the shore, the lake deepening beneath them and making them both acutely aware that all that was holding them up, keeping them alive, was a quirk of science. Still they pushed on, through the diminishing crowds, deeper and darker into the lake.

  A couple of hundred yards from shore, a noise stolen on the breeze made them turn to see a slim skater clad in black, a spinning silhouette against the falling gloom of blue. The girl whirled as another shadow stood twenty yards from her, filming the scene. She was mesmerising to watch: a vision that spun on one axle, arms high and locked together, then turned out gracefully in a wide arc before returning to her mark to spin once more, finally sliding to the ice like a dying swan.

  There were dogs out there too, chasing wildfowl and their own tails as they slid and slipped across the surface, the darkness beginning to envelop them, scooping them up. She laughed to see them careering over the ice, giggling as they spun on their backsides, their paws unable to keep up with the haste of their minds. He tried to laugh along with her but he was tenser than she was, more nervous.

  They picked their way round the bore holes that were dotted over the lake, peering down into the depths through the cracked circles left where the ice had been tested to make sure it was thick enough for the grand match, the great curling bonspiel that had been promised but had not taken place. Twenty thousand people had been set to descend on the lake for the once-in-a-lifetime match between the north and the south of Scotland but it had fallen an inch short of being held – six inches of ice were measured rather than the required seven.

  Almost all the people they were passing now were on the return journey to the shore and the warm promise of the hotel bar. She gripped his hand tighter, the first sign of anxiety at their adventure accompanied by nervous laughter. He squeezed her hand in return, his own
nerves having been replaced by adrenalin and a pounding in his heart in anticipation of what was going to happen.

  The island’s shoreline was just yards away now and they could see the tiny wooden jetty where the ferry tied up in the summer months. A few more steps and they’d be there. With a final, exultant leap they left the ice behind and landed with a crunch on the snowy shore of Inchmahome, celebrating with a hug and a look around to see who was still there. They were both thrilled to see there was no one in sight.

  Just twenty minutes later, he was walking back across the ice on his own, every step washing away behind him, every footprint slipping softly into the lake. The crunch of foot on snow and the glide of boot on the icy bridge to neverland disappeared without trace. All he and she had ever been were ghosts and every sign of them had become lost in the blue.

  Almost all of the ice revellers had left the lake – just a noisy rump of curlers remained near the shore and a straggle of kids sliding recklessly on the wet ice by the edge. None of them paid any attention to the last shadow that walked back towards the hotel, the lone spectre that slipped into the night.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  Acknowledgements

  Witness the Dead

  CHAPTER 1

  Nineteen years later.

  Saturday 17 November 2012. Glasgow.

  ‘So tell me again why we’re going away for the weekend?’

  Rachel Narey didn’t take her eyes off the road to answer him but instead exhaled testily, then shook her head.

  ‘What’s so hard to understand, Tony? We’re just going away for a day or two, just like any normal couple.’

  Tony Winter let loose a snort of derision.

  ‘But we’re not a normal couple,’ he retorted. ‘Sometimes I’m not even sure that we are a couple. Not a public one at any rate.’

  A patently false smile stretched across Rachel’s face as Winter watched her drum her fingers against the steering wheel. She was not only containing her anger but making a show of doing so – a tactic both designed and guaranteed to annoy him.

  ‘Well, we are this weekend,’ she finally and tersely replied, her brown eyes pointedly fixed on the road ahead. ‘You’re always moaning we never go out together, and now that we are, you can’t just be happy.’

  ‘Rachel, you haven’t even told me where we’re going.’

  She blew a thin burst of exaggerated exasperation between pursed lips and shook her head. It had become a familiar pose of late and Winter wasn’t sure whether that said more about him or about her – or about them. All he was sure of was that it was becoming a pain in the ass. Where were they going? Maybe that was too big a question to answer.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Shut up,’ she told him. ‘There’s a bar and a big bed. What more do you want?’

  It was unarguably a winning combination and he laughed despite himself. Time for the voice of compromise and geniality.

  ‘Fair enough, you win. Right, driver, let the mystery tour continue. How long until we get to wherever it is?’

  Rachel smiled.

  ‘Not long. Another forty-five minutes or so.’

  It had been a little over ten minutes since they’d left Rachel’s flat on Highburgh Road in Glasgow’s west end and they were now heading out of town on Great Western Road. Narey’s black Renault Megane held three bags in the boot, two of hers and one for Tony, plus his camera bag. Pack casual things for during the day but something smart for dinner was all the information she’d offered him. With a bemused shake of his head, he’d thrown jeans, trousers and shirts into the bag and given in.

  Winter actually wasn’t sure when they had become a couple, even if not in a conventional sense. Their relationship was a secret from just about everyone around them, much to his irritation. She was a detective sergeant in Strathclyde Police and he was a police photographer, a civilian. Fraternising with the lower species of the crime scene community wasn’t exactly encouraged and, as far as Rachel was concerned, it was easier all round if no one else knew. He’d appreciated that – at first.

  Something had changed somewhere along the way, from the secret first-night kiss to his semi-residential status in her Highburgh Road pad. It was one of those slow-moving rivers of a relationship and he couldn’t pinpoint the place in the bend where his Facebook status changed from ‘Single’ to ‘It’s Complicated’. Hers remained resolutely ‘Fuck off; it’s none of your business.’

  He glanced over at her, seeing her shoulder-length brown hair shine in the glow of the midwinter sun as she drove, and reflected, not for the first time, that whatever their status was, he had done all right for himself. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, although she certainly was. She had ‘been there for him’ too. Maybe he didn’t really know what that meant, given that it was the sort of emotional claptrap that constantly eluded him, but he knew she had. When his demons came to visit, Rachel was always the one who chased them away.

  She sensed him looking and turned to stare questioningly at him.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing. Just thinking. So, an hour or so from Glasgow, heading west. Can we get to Teuchterland in that time?’

  ‘Of course,’ she answered playfully, ‘given that anywhere north of Glasgow is for teuchters.’

  ‘But not your proper Highlands, which would take much longer. Hm. Maybe Inverary or Crianlarich. You could just about do either of those in that time.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Keep guessing. And while you’re at it, turn the heating up a bit, will you? It’s freezing in here.’

  She was wrapped up in a white woollen coat, buttoned almost to the neck, while he sat comfortably in an open-necked shirt. He’d long stopped trying to argue about their differing resistances to cold temperatures and determined he would sneak the dial back down when she wasn’t looking.

  A moment later, Rachel glanced in the rear-view mirror before signalling right at Anniesland Cross and taking the Bearsden road, almost immediately having to bat away further guesses from Tony about their destination. Arrochar? No. Stirling? No? Callander? No.

  They slipped through Bearsden and onto the Drymen road, Tony continuing to be amazed at how you could be deep in the countryside just a few minutes after getting out of the city centre. In no time at all, it was all rolling hills, sheep, cattle and a twisting road to somewhere. Finally, Rachel pulled off the A81 and into the car park of the Lake of Menteith Hotel and he still hadn’t worked out where they were going ev
en though they’d arrived.

  ‘This is it?’ he asked her.

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘But we’re nowhere. The middle of nowhere, in fact.’

  ‘Shut up and get out. We are in what is known as “the country”. You’ll get to like it.’

  Tony got out of the car in exaggerated wonder, sniffing the air and looking around, seeing only big sky, trees and the church that loomed above them. They’d come no distance at all yet they were a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city. He wasn’t entirely sure that he liked it.

  ‘Hear that?’ he asked her.

  ‘What?’ Rachel looked around, puzzled. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s as quiet as the bloody grave.’

  ‘Great, isn’t it?’ she grinned. ‘Come on; stop moaning. I hear the sound of a pint being poured with your name on it.’

  ‘Ah, you always say the right thing. Okay, let’s go.’

  The whitewashed walls of the hotel lay before them and Winter picked up his bag and one of Rachel’s, leaving his camera bag in the car’s boot. He’d return for it almost immediately; he never liked it out of his sight for too long. To his right, in the gap between the church and the hotel, he could see a dark, foreboding glimpse of the lake. It looked bloody freezing.

  ‘Tell me we aren’t going swimming?’

  She grinned again.

  ‘You wouldn’t be tempted by a bit of skinny dipping?’

  Winter shook his head.

  ‘Nope. Not even with you. It’s bound to be almost freezing over out there.’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ she murmured. They skated along the icy paving stones, laughing, to the front door, where a solid white porch supported on black pillars reached out to meet them. Winter dropped one of the bags and opened the door for Rachel, ushering her in with an exaggerated sweep of his arm.

  They tumbled into the hotel, immediately hit by a wave of heat that contrasted with the bitter cold outside. An open fire crackled to their left, with tables near the raised hearth that struck Winter as being the perfect place to sit and sample the range of malts he had already spied in the well-stocked bar to their right.