The operator wanted more details but Scope was tiring of the conversation, especially now he knew that Jess had yet to call the police and wasn’t answering the phone he’d given her. So he wrapped things up by telling the operator he was calling from the cottage’s landline, reiterated the need for the police to get here as soon as possible, and hung up.

He turned to see Casey standing in the doorway watching him. ‘Have the police found Jess yet?’ she asked.

‘Not yet, no.’

‘I’m scared for her.’

So was Scope. ‘I’m going to need to go and find her and make sure she’s all right,’ he said as calmly as possible. ‘The police are on their way now but I want you to wait here for them, okay?’

‘On my own? What about that horrible man?’

‘I’ve locked him in the shed. He can’t get out.’

‘But what if he does?’

Scope smiled at her reassuringly. ‘He won’t. I promise. I’ve made sure he’s in no position to hurt you.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You haven’t killed him, have you?’

He laughed. ‘Of course not, but he knows what I’ll do to him if he does anything to you. You’ll be fine. The police may take a little while – they’ve got a long way to come – but when they get here, you tell them everything that happened, and they’ll look after you.’

‘You’ll find Jess, won’t you?’ She looked at him with real hope in her eyes.

‘I’ll do everything I can, I promise.’

And he knew he would. Even though it meant risking everything.

Forty-six

Today 21.35

‘ONE MILLION THREE hundred and twenty thousand pounds.’ Mo Khan whistled through his teeth. ‘It’s a lot of money.’

Bolt nodded. They were talking about the life insurance payable on the death of George Rowan. ‘Add that to roughly one and three-quarter million pounds in other assets, and you’ve got a tidy amount of money. Worth killing for.’

They were sitting in the small, old-fashioned bar of their hotel in Inverness – the only two in the place, aside from an ancient barman who was reading the paper. A clock ticked far too loudly in the room and, for a Saturday night, the place was worryingly silent, although after the foul meal the two of them had had, Bolt wasn’t surprised. He was now on his second pint of the evening as he and Mo continued to toss around their theories on the case.

‘But I’m still stuck,’ said Mo, taking a drink from his orange juice and lemonade. ‘How could she have set it all up? How could she have hired a killer – a man we know was responsible for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman fifteen years ago? I mean, it wasn’t like she could advertise, and she’s hardly the type of person who moves in those kinds of circles. And how could she know the MO of The Disciple? She doesn’t know anyone on the inquiry.’

‘That’s my problem too. It still doesn’t make sense. The problem is, none of it does.’

‘There’s something else as well. Amanda Rowan was attacked by the killer at her house. She was caught on film on the house’s CCTV camera. It even shows the killer slashing her with the knife, an injury requiring – what? – two dozen stitches. And her neighbour witnessed the killer chasing Amanda through her home. How do you fake all that?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s impossible.’

Bolt nodded slowly. Mo’s reasoning seemed sound, but still his doubts persisted. Earlier he’d re-read Amanda Rowan’s statement of how she’d discovered the bodies of her husband and Ivana Hanzha, and it threw up unanswered questions. ‘I know, I know,’ he said to Mo, ‘but there are still things bugging me. According to Amanda Rowan, when she got home that night she heard a sound, which she described as ‘a faint, sudden gasp, like air escaping from a tyre’. She reckoned it was the sound of someone – either her husband or his lover – dying, and clearly it was coming from the bedroom where the bodies were found, because we know they weren’t moved afterwards.’ He frowned. ‘So the implication is that the killer was still in the process of murdering the couple when Amanda arrived home, which means he was still in the room with them. According to Amanda’s statement, she called out a couple of times to let her husband know she was back, then proceeded up the stairs towards where the sound had come from. Now, you’ve been in the room where they were murdered. It was the end bedroom.’ Bolt paused.

Mo nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘But if you were the murderer and you were going to ambush her, or even if you were just going to try to hide and slip out unnoticed, you’d stay put, wouldn’t you? Which is in the room along with the victims. So that, if Amanda had gone into the room where the bodies were lying to investigate, you could simply stand behind the door and ambush her. That way, you get three victims for the price of two, and no annoying witnesses.’ Bolt threw up his hands. ‘I mean, surely the last thing you’d do would be to creep along the landing to the other side of the house, and hide there. I remember those floorboards. They creaked like crazy. And yet, according to Amanda’s testimony, that’s what he must have done, because he tried to ambush her from the other end of the landing and, by doing so, he allowed her to escape. It just doesn’t make sense. Nor does the fact that, having completely messed up his ambush, he chased her all the way to the next-door neighbour’s house fifty yards away and, rather than stopping then, he risks everything by actually chasing her through the neighbour’s house. We always said that’s not how The Disciple operated, didn’t we? And yet that’s exactly what happened.’

Mo looked puzzled. ‘So you’re saying it’s a set-up, boss? That somehow the whole thing was faked to make it look like The Disciple’s work so that no one would think of looking closer to home for a motive? Because it still leaves us with all those other issues we talked about. Like, where did she find a murderer from? And how did she know The Disciple’s MO?’

Bolt sighed. ‘I’m not saying it was a definite set-up. But I’ve thought through all the possible scenarios – we both have – and none makes sense. George Rowan and Ivana Hanzha died for a reason. Amanda had at least three million pounds’ worth of motive, as well as the knowledge that her husband was cheating on her and might well have left her for this other woman.’

‘She’d still have been left with money, even if they’d divorced.’

‘But a hell of a lot less. Fifty per cent of the assets, tops, and none of the life insurance. So probably a maximum of three quarters of a million, which is less than a quarter. And she’d have had the humiliation of everyone knowing that her old man had gone off with another woman.’

Mo shrugged. ‘But it could still be the work of The Disciple.’

‘Except there’s no way there were two killers at the scene. If The Disciple had been there along with the killer of Beatrice Magret, Amanda would never have made it out of there in one piece.’ Bolt shook his head. ‘This killing wasn’t the work of The Disciple. I’m convinced of it.’

‘But the MO, boss? If that’s the case, how did the killer know The Disciple’s MO?’

Bolt sat back in his seat and stared up at the ceiling. ‘God knows,’ he said at last.

Mo put down his pint of orange juice and lemonade. ‘I’ve always thought I liked cases like this one, when it’s not your run-of-the-mill murder involving some low-life who you catch five minutes later because he didn’t even make an attempt to cover his tracks, but where it’s actually complex. But in reality I hate this case, because I get the feeling we’re never going to get to the truth, and that someone somewhere is laughing at us.’

‘You’re right,’ said Bolt, taking a big gulp from his pint, grimacing at the hint of sulphur in the flavour. They obviously didn’t clean the pipes very often in this bar. ‘I’d really like to have another chat with Amanda Rowan. I don’t like the way she’s suddenly gone AWOL.’ He’d been trying to get hold of her every hour since they’d stopped by her house, and he’d now left three messages on her landline phone, and two on her mobile. All to no avail.