Tombstoning Read online

  ‘Shut up, you fucking slag,’ said Neil.

  ‘Now, that’s not very civil, is it?’ said Nicola. ‘I think we all have to try to stay calm.’

  ‘Don’t fucking patronize me.’

  Just then David seemed to realize something. ‘Nicola, where’s the rescue party?’

  ‘You’re looking at it,’ said Nicola.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry, were you expecting the fucking cavalry? I didn’t have time to get anyone else roped into this ridiculous escapade. You should thank your lucky stars you’ve got me.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said David.

  ‘When you two lovebirds have quite finished,’ said Neil, ‘there’s the little matter of David’s death to deal with.’

  ‘Fuck off, Neil,’ said David, struggling to free himself. Neil jabbed the knife into his stomach, and David felt a sharp, precise pain in his abdomen.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Neil, you stabbed me!’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, it’s only an inch yet. Any more struggling and I’ll finish the fucking job.’

  ‘You fucking stabbed me!’ David’s face was going white.

  ‘You’re not going to kill him,’ said Nicola quietly.

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because if you try to, I’m going to shoot you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have the bottle. And besides, you probably don’t even know how to fire a fucking gun.’

  ‘I can assure you I do have the bottle, and I know full well how to fire a gun. But if you don’t want to take my word for it, well, that’s a chance you’re going to have to take, isn’t it? This is a bit like that scene in Dirty Harry, isn’t it? Or Reservoir Dogs.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Neil.

  ‘Yeah, maybe a little less of the cinema comparisons, eh?’ said David weakly.

  ‘Are you still in the huff I didn’t bring a superhero to rescue you?’

  ‘I’m not in a huff,’ said David, feeling tears welling up in his eyes despite himself. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

  ‘Very touching,’ said Neil. ‘You pair are fucking pathetic, you know that?’

  ‘And what are you?’ said Nicola. ‘A cowardly killer who won’t even face up to his own psychological problems? Instead you go around murdering your old schoolfriends just because you can.’

  ‘Here we go with the psychiatrist bullshit again,’ said Neil.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Nicola. ‘I’m sorry. It’s way past that, isn’t it?’

  There was silence again for a moment. The rain beat down on them. Neil and David were at the cliff edge; Nicola was pointing the flare gun at them from about five yards away. Behind them she could see the blinking of the Bell Rock lighthouse, miles out to sea. She tried to use the quiet to weigh up her options. If Neil tried to kill David, she would have to pull the trigger. She didn’t even know if you could shoot someone with a flare gun, let alone whether this particular flare gun actually worked or if it was loaded. And for that matter, she had no idea how to use it, whether there was a safety catch on it or something. But if push came to shove, she would have to use it. She looked at David, who seemed petrified. His face was going a grey colour that matched the sky and the expanse of sea behind them. How accurate were flare guns? If she shot Neil, would she also shoot David? Was that better than having him stabbed to death, or the pair of them tumbling over the cliff? She couldn’t even begin to imagine what David was thinking, let alone try to second-guess Neil. They had both clearly been expecting a rather more impressive rescue party, but, well, they were all just going to have to make the best of the situation, weren’t they?

  ‘It seems we’re at something of a stalemate,’ she said after a while.

  ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ said Neil.

  ‘Why are you doing this, Neil?’

  ‘It’s a bit late in the day to be trying to engage me in dialogue, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m genuinely interested,’ said Nicola. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I went through all this bullshit with droopy-drawers here,’ said Neil. ‘You people and your reasons, your fucking cause and effect, your fucking motivations. It makes it easy for you in your safe little lives if people like me do what we do because of broken homes, or abusive parents, or bullying, or what we’ve seen while fighting in the army. Well, it doesn’t work like that. Sometimes in life the past doesn’t affect the present. Sometimes people just do stuff, do bad things, because they can and because they don’t see any reason not to, and because they can get away with it. Your past doesn’t make you who you are; it doesn’t turn people into monsters. It doesn’t give people excuses for bad behaviour; you don’t need an excuse for bad behaviour.’

  ‘Are you saying you admit that morally your behaviour is bad?’ said Nicola.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Neil, tightening his grip on David’s collar. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  He took another small step backwards, so that both he and David were standing right over the edge of the cliff. David made the mistake of looking down behind him, and felt dizzy at the huge drop to jagged rocks below. He quickly looked back towards Nicola. She seemed calm; her face was pale but beautiful. Her hair was plastered across her face and there were flecks of mud across her cheeks and on her hands. But her face seemed to glow in the downpour, it seemed to David like a beacon in the dark, a lighthouse beaming out a signal that, if he could only follow it, would lead him to safety. He felt blood oozing from the wound in his stomach. He had no way of knowing how deep it was or how much blood he’d lost, but he didn’t feel too good, whatever was happening in his gut.

  ‘And what about that?’ said Nicola to Neil, pointing the gun at David’s wound.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I presume you deliberately made the first two deaths look like accidents. Well, if you push David off, it’s never going to look like an accident now, he’s got a fucking big gash in his stomach.’

  Neil seemed to consider this for the first time.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, and David felt a surge of relief. ‘It makes no difference now if I just stab him properly, then push him off the cliff, does it? Like you say, the game’s up on the accidental death thing, so it hardly matters how he dies now, does it?’

  David looked at Nicola.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ he said quietly in her direction. ‘Thanks for pointing that out for him.’

  ‘Sorry, love. That line of argument didn’t quite work out exactly as I planned.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Neil, staring at Nicola’s hand with a look of increasing incredulity. ‘Is that a flare gun?’

  Nicola just stared at him, her mouth a thin line.

  ‘A fucking flare gun?’ said Neil. ‘You were going to try and kill me with a flare gun? That is fucking hilarious. You can’t kill someone with a flare gun, you fucking stupid cow. Jesus Christ. I really have had enough of you pair.’

  Neil turned to face David and gripped the knife firmly in his hand.

  ‘David! Look out!’

  David felt the blade against his soft belly flesh again, and tried to get his hands in the way, feeling the edges of the blade slide along his hands, cutting his palms as it glided. There was no pain, not yet. He felt unsteady on his feet, felt Neil pushing him towards the cliff edge, felt his feet slipping on the wet grass, on the crumbling edge of the cliff. He watched in slow motion as Nicola moved towards the pair of them, skidding across the damp earth like an ice skater, the flare gun raised and pointing at Neil. He was holding on, something in him was keeping him upright, keeping his feet on the edge of the earth, and he watched in amazement as Nicola grabbed at Neil’s arm to try and bring the knife out of his stomach, spinning Neil slightly away from David’s body so that he was briefly facing Nicola, and then David’s eyes were momentarily blinded by a flash of orange light so bright the force of it almost pushed him over the edge. There was an intense burning smell, like fireworks, and he saw a look of shock on Nicola’s face as Neil slowly toppled backwards t
owards the edge of the cliff, clutching at his stomach which was ablaze, the scorching, luminescent orange flame shedding a trail of frantic, fizzing sparks as he stumbled back. He watched Nicola try to grab for Neil, but she couldn’t reach his hands which were scrabbling at his stomach, trying desperately to claw out the distress flare firmly embedded there. He caught a glimpse of Neil’s shocked face as his footing finally gave way and he fell from the cliff, down through the rain, his stomach blazing like a furious sunset, all the way down to the sea, where his body jolted horrendously on a jutting sandstone outcrop. He lay there, sprawled on his back at an impossible angle, the glow in his stomach gradually petering out like a used-up sparkler.

  Nicola couldn’t believe she’d shot him. She couldn’t take her eyes off the dead body at the bottom of the cliffs, the glow in Neil’s stomach fading like an untended fire in the grate overnight. The flare gun hung hot and limp in her hand, and she could smell the firing mechanism, the acrid taste of it burning her nostrils and throat. She felt a hand touch hers and turned to see David looking at her, a lost look in his eyes. She looked down and saw the knife still sticking out of his guts. She slowly guided him away from the edge of the cliff and sat him down on the wet grass. She wiped his brow gently with her hand, then braced him and pulled the knife out. He squirmed, then passed out. She laid him down, took off her jacket and held the material against the gaping wound in his stomach. With her other hand she pointed the flare gun into the sky and pulled the trigger. A flash of orange arced across the evening, illuminating the two of them, slumped on the drenched clifftop. She settled down to wait for the coastguard to come, pressing as hard as she could on David’s stomach, and wishing the rain would stop.

  16

  The Last Tombstone

  The sunlight glinted off the glistening marble tombstone, making David wince. High above a jet trail puffed lazily across the pure blue, as the heat of the sun created a shimmer at the edge of his vision. David could smell the grass and imagined he felt a thrum of energy under his feet from the sun’s rays.

  They were about a hundred yards from Gary’s grave, a little closer to Colin’s, and only a stone’s throw from the neat line of marines’ graves. Neil was not welcome in the chalky ranks of marines’ epitaphs and had no family left, so after the routine post-mortem David and Nicola, surprising themselves, had clubbed together to pay for the funeral.

  Here they were, seven days after the three of them had last been together on the edge of Arbroath cliffs in the rain, on the verge of ending each other’s lives. The sun was shining, and it struck David once again that sunny weather was wholly inappropriate for a funeral, but he said nothing. As the minister started the brief burial ceremony, he and Nicola exchanged glances. They were the only people here.

  Nicola held out her hand and David took it gently, wincing at the pain in his hand. He could feel the sweat underneath the bandages on both his hands, and wanted to scratch them, but held himself back. The itchiness meant they were healing, the nurse had told him. His stomach wound wasn’t anywhere near being itchy yet, it was still just brutally sore, but at least he’d weasled some morphine out the doctors for the pain. He looked down and could see the bulge of the bandages under his creased white shirt and tatty suit jacket. He looked at Nicola, who reminded him of Jackie Kennedy in her shades and rather prim-looking suit. It was a good look, and it suited her. She always looked good at funerals, he thought, and he’d seen her at plenty of them. He looked like he felt – shit. Shit, yet ecstatic to be alive, and holding the hand of this beautiful woman.

  He owed her his life. After he passed out on the cliff, she told him she’d fired off a distress flare and waited for help. A lifeboat arrived surprisingly quickly and spotted Neil’s body sprawled on the rocks. She fired another flare to draw their attention, and within minutes a coastguard helicopter had arrived to pick them up. By the time they got to hospital David had lost a lot of blood – they measured it in pints, which seemed like a hell of a lot of liquid to do without – but they quickly stabilized him and saw to his wounds. He was lucky, the knife in the stomach hadn’t damaged any of his main organs. It would hurt like hell for a while yet, but he wasn’t in any danger. His hands were the same, badly cut but no severed tendons, so he wouldn’t lose the use of any of his fingers.

  He had remained unconscious throughout it all, and into the next day. Nicola tried to stay at his bedside but the police took her away for questioning. There was a dead body to account for, after all. She spent several hours in the station, the detectives starting off incredulous, then gradually coming round to her story as they checked it out. They released her by morning. Amy was safe at her friend’s house, so she returned to the hospital. By the afternoon the police had finished examining the derelict cottage and the cave, and told her she was no longer needed for their inquiries. The police refused to tell her what they found in Neil’s two hiding places, and she didn’t push it further. She didn’t want to know, didn’t need to know anything more about him.

  The first David knew of any of this was that evening, but by then Nicola had left to return to Edinburgh and Amy. She phoned that night. He cried down the phone, out of relief more than anything else, and just the sheer joy of hearing her voice. He spent the next three days in hospital being monitored before they released him. Nicola collected him and took him back to her flat, where she and Amy looked after him, one changing dressings and sorting out medication, the other distracting him with silly games and gossip from her school. Still Waters had been at the point of sacking him, but his five-week sick line had bought him a temporary reprieve.

  And now they were back in the Western Cemetery in Arbroath, where three of David’s old schoolfriends were now buried. He was the last surviving member of that daft little drinking crew of theirs. The thought appalled him as he stood by the graveside, and he felt tears sting his eyes. He gripped Nicola’s hand tighter, despite the pain, and swallowed hard.

  The minister finished his spiel, and they both threw a handful of dirt onto the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. Neither of them said anything. It didn’t seem like there was anything to say. People were dead. And for what?

  The minister excused himself and left, and a moment later Nicola and David turned their backs on Neil Cargill’s grave as well, and walked slowly out the cemetery with the sun on their backs.

  ‘So, what now?’ said Nicola.

  They were standing, surrounded by tourists, in what would’ve once been the nave of Arbroath Abbey, the perfect, stripy turf under their feet looking fake green in the luminous sunshine. Up ahead, Amy was skipping and leaping from pillar stump to pillar stump.

  David looked at Nicola. They had changed out of their funeral clothes, and she looked fantastic in a simple tight T-shirt and jeans.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what now?’

  ‘Care to be more specific?’

  ‘Not really. I just meant with our lives. With you, with me. With you and me. All that sort of thing.’

  ‘Right,’ said David. ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘Well, we could start by going on a proper date. So far there’s been a school reunion, a couple of funerals and a kidnapping involving a boat chase and a clifftop stand-off. Now, I’m far from a traditional sort of girl, but maybe we could just go out for dinner and a movie next time.’

  ‘Dinner and a movie sounds great.’

  They walked slowly up the expanse of grass, not talking.

  ‘Did I ever tell you,’ said Nicola, ‘that a David Lindsay was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Arbroath?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Is that supposed to mean anything?’

  ‘Not really. Just thought you’d like to know. It’s something I thought of from the past. It’s not important.’

  ‘The past is important,’ said David. ‘But so is the future.’

  Nicola looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but said nothing. They stood in silence a moment longer
before David spoke.

  ‘Did I ever thank you properly for saving my life?’

  ‘I don’t think you did,’ said Nicola. ‘But forget about it. It’s all in the past.’

  She leaned over, kissed him on the cheek and turned to chase after Amy. David watched her go, and a smile appeared on his face.

  Acknowledgements

  Immense and heartfelt thanks go to Trish for her love, understanding and support, Judy Moir for her crucial encouragement and boundless enthusiasm and Lucy Luck for her kind words and expert guidance.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Tombstoning

  1: The Antiquary

  2: A Declaration

  3: Return to Arbroath

  4: The Cliffs

  5: Tutties Neuk

  6: Reunion

  7: A Body

  8: Drawn Back

  9: Tombstoners

  10: The Funeral

  11: Cruising

  12: The Search

  13: Auchmithie

  14: All at Sea

  15: The Cave

  16: The Last Tombstone

  Acknowledgements