The Cliff House by Chris Brookmyre

Author:Chris Brookmyre [Brookmyre, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2022-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

Jen

Jen’s eye was drawn briefly to the passing swallows, then her gaze returned to the headland, wary that the quad bike might appear again. She knew it was unlikely, though. He looked to be heading somewhere with a purpose rather than merely on the lookout. With that thought she reached for the walkie-talkie.

‘This is Jen,’ she said. ‘We’ve just seen a guy in a ski mask on a quad bike, heading north. Not sure where he’s going, but he was going there in a hurry. Anybody else got anything to report?’

There was a couple of seconds of silence, then a squelch of static.

‘This is Lauren. Nothing so far but we’ve not reached the croft yet.’

Kennedy’s voice was next. ‘Nothing new on the chat app. Guess that’s a good thing.’

Jen waited through a few more seconds of silence before she spoke again by way of a prompt. ‘Michelle? Helena? Come in? Anything to report?’

There was still silence.

‘Michelle? Helena, come in?’

Beattie sent Jen a concerned look at the lack of response.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jen said. ‘There’s plenty of reasons they might not be responding: out of range, dead battery. Could be anything.’

But it was the unspoken reasons that remained at the forefront of Jen’s mind. While she didn’t know who this was about, she didn’t know who was in the greatest danger.

Her mind was pulled back to what she had come to think of as the haunted playlist: the same songs played over and over, with intentional significance, but for whom? One seemed unmistakably directed at her, but even as she thought of why, she remembered that she wasn’t the only woman present whose husband had disappeared never to be seen again. There was that Manic Street Preachers song which made her question whether the choices were by way of accusation or mere cruelty. ‘Celebrity Skin’, for instance, was clearly goading Michelle over her sex tape. She could only speculate as to the significance or intended targets of others, but suspected the Reaper knew things about all of them.

With that thought, it was as though two more of the songs suddenly revealed themselves.

‘Drive’ by the Cars.

‘Crash’ by the Primitives.

Perhaps that car accident of Beattie’s wasn’t as simple as it had appeared. The guy was found to be coked out of his tree and blind drunk, but maybe his family couldn’t accept the official verdict. Beattie of all people should be familiar with that.

Jen knew she could go crazy thinking this way. It was as though her instinctive mistrust had spiralled her towards this ultimate moment of suspecting absolutely everybody, seeing even her closest friends as secretive and duplicitous, every one of them a possible threat.

Nonetheless, if there was one thing life had taught her, it was that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you. It takes a long time to get over having a brick flung through your living-room window. It terrified Jen in a primal and fundamental way, reducing her to tears as she crouched on the carpet, throwing protective arms around Calum.

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