When Bolt and Mo had left Tayleigh’s tiny police station twenty minutes earlier, only one armed response vehicle had turned up, and the locals were still waiting for further reinforcements to arrive by helicopter from Glasgow and road from Aberdeen, before they were prepared to venture out to the farm, even though the 999 caller had claimed to have been shot and wounded himself. This, Bolt knew, was the way they had to do things these days. Thanks to the incredibly tight rules of health and safety, everything had to be done exactly by the book. Risk assessments had to be taken, and the police would only intervene when it was considered as safe as possible, even if it meant innocent people bleeding to death in the meantime. Nobody liked it, least of all longstanding career cops like him and Mo, who remembered all too well the days when an officer would be allowed to intervene, regardless of the risk to himself.
Amanda Rowan had still not responded to Bolt’s messages, and he’d tried her landline again ten minutes earlier without success, but he’d got sick of hanging round the police station and, if Amanda turned up at home, he wanted to be waiting for her. She had urgent questions to answer about the deaths of her husband and Ivana Hanzha, and Bolt was certain that if a series of shootings had occurred tonight, they had to be something to do with her.
As they stepped inside the front gate, Bolt could see that the lights were on behind drawn curtains on the cottage’s first floor.
‘Well, someone’s in,’ he said, stopping halfway up the garden path that led to the front door.
‘Or they’ve been and gone, and left the lights on,’ suggested Mo.
‘Maybe.’ Bolt pulled out his mobile and once again dialled Amanda’s landline. The phone rang for thirty seconds and went to voicemail, but he didn’t leave a message. He turned to Mo. ‘What do you think?’
Mo stared at the door. ‘It’s possible she’s in there under duress. When did you leave the first message for her on the landline?’
‘Hours ago. After we left Vlad’s place.’
‘It was daylight then and when we first came by, the curtains weren’t drawn. Which means she’s picked the message up.’ He looked at Bolt. ‘Or someone else has.’
‘I don’t like this.’
‘Me neither. Shall we take a look round the back?’
Bolt nodded, and they walked slowly round the side of the cottage. There was a small driveway at the back that led onto a single-track road, and a newish-looking Alfa Romeo was parked there, out of sight of the neighbours’ houses.
Bolt walked over to it, careful not to make too much noise on the gravel, and felt the bonnet.
‘Still warm,’ he whispered to Mo. ‘Do you remember if Amanda drove an Alfa Romeo? I don’t remember seeing one when we went to their house after the murders.’
Mo shrugged. ‘I honestly can’t remember.’
Bolt looked at the back of the cottage. The curtains were drawn there as well. ‘Can you do me a favour and get onto Grier, see if he’s still up, and ask him to run a check on these plates urgently?’
As Mo slipped into the shadow of an old potting shed to make the call, Bolt approached the cottage and listened at the glass. It was silent inside, but he maintained his position for a good minute, and then he heard the sound of a toilet flushing somewhere inside, followed by the sound of footsteps coming closer. Someone was coming into the room closest to where he was standing. Whoever it was cleared his throat, and it was definitely a ‘he’ by the sound he made. Then the room descended into silence once again.
So there was a man in Amanda’s house, and one who wasn’t prepared to answer the phone. Bolt decided it was definitely time to bring in reinforcements if they were available.
And it seemed they might be because, as he crept back towards the potting shed, he heard the distinctive sound of distant rotor blades. Turning, he saw two sets of red and white lights in the night sky a couple of miles away, heading in towards Tayleigh. The cavalry had finally arrived.
He turned back to Mo and, as soon as he saw Mo’s face, Bolt knew there’d been some kind of breakthrough. The excitement was written all over it.
‘You’re not going to believe this, boss,’ he whispered when they were both in the shadow of the shed. ‘The Alfa Romeo’s only registered to our esteemed clinical psychologist, Dr Thom Folkestone.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Bolt, his voice loud in the silence as, suddenly, for the first time, everything in this whole complex inquiry made sense.
Fifty-four
AMANDA ROWAN HAD always thought of herself as a good person, but also one who’d made some wrong choices. And one of those wrong choices was Thom Folkestone.
She’d first met him at university twenty years earlier. Thom had been a real charmer: good-looking; witty and intelligent; interested in philosophy. Amanda had been attracted to him immediately, although it hadn’t been until the second year that they’d started dating. Theirs was an intense relationship. Everything about it was full-on: the sex; the drug taking; and, of course, the arguments. Nothing and no one else seemed to matter when they were together. The whole world was just the two of them.
It had been fun – God, it had been fun – but there’d always been something unhealthy about their feelings for each other. During one of their more intense rows, Amanda had smashed a wine glass against the wall and tried to slash his arm with it. But Thom had been too fast, and he’d twisted her wrist viciously until she’d been forced to let go of the glass. He’d slapped her too. Hard round the face.
What followed had been one of the most savage, brutal and amazing bouts of lovemaking Amanda had ever experienced. Thom had had this way of tapping into her dark side, and bringing it further and further into the open and, in the end, it had only been a matter of time before they’d started talking about jointly inflicting pain on someone else. At first it was just that. Talk. What would it be like to kill a girl? Possess her, use her, then simply discard her, like a used toy. Thom had justified it using the Nietzschean philosophy he was so into, with its core belief that the weak were always going to be devoured by the strong. That was simply the way of the world and all she and Thom would be doing was following the path that nature in its wisdom had intended. If she wanted to go on seeing him, he told her, then she was going to have to be a participant, not just a passive observer. And she’d wanted Thom so badly, she hadn’t turned and run when she’d had the chance. He was like a drug to her. An addiction she couldn’t shake.
And then they’d chanced upon a young French student called Beatrice Magret. The year was 1998 and Amanda had been twenty-two years old. Beatrice had been hitchhiking as Amanda and Thom had driven past her on the way to Glastonbury festival. They’d picked her up, got chatting, and had decided to stop in some isolated woods en route for a joint and a late picnic. They’d smoked a hell of a lot of dope together and time had just seemed to run away from them. Thom had suggested a threesome and Beatrice, as stoned as they were, had agreed.
But Thom had got carried away and had started hurting Beatrice. Amanda had joined in, holding her down while Thom had finished her off.
Afterwards, she’d been in shock. They’d killed someone. Thom had told her not to worry about it, that this was nature’s way of natural selection – the strong ridding the world of the weak. But the guilt had preyed on Amanda and she was hugely relieved when it turned out that the police had no leads.
She’d also forced herself to leave him and break her addiction, and they’d ended up going their separate ways.
It would be many years before Amanda saw Thom again. By that time she was married to George, another relationship that had already run its course, thanks to the fact that there was no prospect of him providing her with children. She’d contacted Thom through Facebook, found out that he was single, and they’d arranged to meet for a drink in London. She knew in her heart that seeing him was a bad move, but she seemed unable to stop herself and, true to form, the intense relationship they’d had before was immediately rekindled.