Dora smiled. ‘Oh, we will get away with it, my love. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.’

‘No one will believe you.’

‘Well, that’s our lookout, isn’t it? You should consider yourself lucky, my love. We were going to take you up to the estate to replace the girl who escaped, and let the lord have his way with you. That would have been a lot worse than this, I promise you. Rory and Stuart have told me what those girls look like after the lord has finished with them. I have to say, it makes very unpleasant listening.’

She looked up at Ash, a mocking smile on her fat face. ‘But we thought it would be easier this way. Girl drinks too much. Girl goes mad with a knife. Girl kills her husband and friends. Girl hangs herself in shame. Hard to explain why something like that would happen, of course, but then …’ She shrugged, kicking the chair and sending it flying. ‘Who can explain such things?’

13

‘MESSY BUSINESS THIS one,’ said DCI Duncan Jarrett of Strathclyde CID, stepping out of the lodge and shutting the door behind him. He was keen to escape the stench of death and decay before it became obvious to his colleagues that it was making him feel sick. He took a deep breath, savouring the fresh forest air, and turned to DS Jimmy Gray, who’d been in charge of securing the scene. ‘Those bodies must have been in there for days.’

‘Four of them, according to the coroner,’ said Gray, scratching at his belly through his shirt.

‘And no one reported them missing? What is it with these English?’

Gray shrugged. ‘One of the couples was from Singapore, and were here on their holidays, so no one noticed they’d gone. The other couple was from London, and you know what they’re like down there. They all ignore each other. It was only the woman’s school that finally raised the alarm after she hadn’t turned up at work for three days.’

‘Anyone got any idea what happened?’

‘Looks like they had some sort of argument, and the woman, Ashleigh Murray, attacked the others. Her fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.’ He stopped itching his belly, leaving his shirt partly untucked. A small roll of flabby white flesh stuck out. ‘There was a lot of booze in her system, so it looks like she sobered up, had a fit of remorse over what she’d done, and hanged herself.’

‘Has she got a record of mental illness?’

Gray shook his head and lit a cigarette. ‘Not that we know of.’

The whole thing didn’t look right to Jarrett. It wasn’t just the fact that a young female teacher of previous good character had knifed her husband and two friends to death. It was the fact that the bodies had been discovered in different parts of the house. Would she really have been able to chase them round with a knife and kill them one by one without being overpowered? If so, why wasn’t there blood all over the walls?

These were all questions that were worth asking, but Jarrett knew not to push it too far. Thirty years of working in Glasgow had taught him that even the most ordinary-looking people are capable of the most brutal things. And that the obvious solution to a crime is usually the right one.

He turned to the big uniformed PC standing a few feet away. ‘Bet you’ve never had one like this on your beat before, have you?’

‘Can’t say I have, sir,’ said PC Rory McLean. ‘It scares me, to tell you the truth. My ma lives on her own a couple of miles from here and she’s in her seventies. Frightening to think this could happen on her doorstep.’

‘Anybody else live round here?’

PC McLean shook his head. He was a big man. His thick, pale arms were covered in highly detailed tattoos. Jarrett thought he’d have made a good rugby player, except for the fact that, with his boyish, pudgy features, he looked soft. ‘No. This whole stretch of country’s empty. It’s what attracts the English. The fact that they’re not going to see anyone when they’re up here.’ He looked towards the lodge. ‘So, do you think you’re going to be looking for anyone? Do I need to tell Ma to be on her guard?’

McLean looked genuinely concerned. Jarrett thought it was nice to see a man being so protective of his mother.

The DCI sighed. ‘No,’ he said, thinking about the pretty young woman hanging from the beam in the living room, and wondering what on earth could have been going through her head, ‘I don’t think we’re looking for anyone else.’

McLean smiled. ‘You don’t know how much better that makes me feel.’

One

07.25

HIS WHOLE WORLD collapsed exactly three seconds after the door opened.

In the first second, her pale, beautiful face peered through the gap, then disappeared as she moved aside to let him in. The next second saw him walking into the cramped front room and, with a rather foolish flourish, lifting up the small bunch of petrol station flowers he’d brought her. And the third was when the man in the hood appeared out of the shadows to his left and pointed a gun at his head while Mika closed the door, plunging the room into semi-darkness.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Akhtar Mohammed in a voice several octaves higher than usual. ‘Take my money, but—’

‘Sit down and shut your mouth.’

Akhtar stole a glance at Mika – his beloved Mika. She was standing in the middle of the room in just a nightdress, her pale skin almost translucent in the dim light, her face set fast in an expression of pure fear. Tears ran down her cheeks and Akhtar wanted to reach out and hold her, tell her that everything was all right, but the gunman grabbed him roughly by the back of his shirt and shoved him towards the nearest chair.

‘I said, sit down.’

Akhtar stumbled into the seat and turned to his assailant, putting his hands in the air so that the other man knew he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. He was neither a brave man nor a foolhardy one, and he was fully aware that the only way he was going to get out of here was by cooperating.

The gunman stepped towards him and pushed the barrel of the gun against the side of his head. It felt cold and hard, and Akhtar swallowed. Was this some kind of divine punishment for his adultery? If it was, then he prayed God would be merciful. He’d never intended to hurt his wife or his children, nor to bring shame down on his family’s head.

‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he said, conscious of the fear in his voice.

‘I’m going to give you a task, Mr Mohammed,’ answered the gunman in a tone that was worryingly calm.

His accent was English, so Akhtar knew he wasn’t Mika’s pimp. So who on earth was he? And how did he know who he was? Even Mika didn’t know his last name.

‘If you carry it out as instructed, you’ll be free to go and you’ll never hear from me again. If you fail to do what you’re told, however, I will kill your girlfriend here. Slowly, and very painfully.’

Mika gasped. She was still standing in the middle of the room, unmoving, and Akhtar wondered why she didn’t try to escape. Then he saw the restraints round each of her ankles, separated by barely a foot of thick chain, and he realized she was as helpless as he was. He gave her a small, hopeful smile and she stared back at him with those big oval eyes of hers that had so bewitched him in the first place, and he wished by all that was holy that he’d never met her.

‘And just in case Mika dying slowly isn’t enough to motivate you,’ continued the gunman, still keeping the gun pushed down on Akhtar’s head, ‘there’s this.’

He held out a remote control and switched on the TV. For a couple of seconds the screen was blank and then an image of two people having sex on an unmade bed appeared – the woman on all fours facing the camera, the man kneeling behind her, his eyes closed. The gunman pressed another button and the couple began moving frantically on the screen, their joyful moans filling the room.