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Cursed

Chapter 2

THE sea was an enemy. Tide on the turn. He should have carried her beyond the high-tide mark, but training had told him that would be a mistake. The dictate warning against contaminating a crime scene had been drummed into him as a cadet at police college in Tulliallan, all those years ago.

His legs felt heavy, as if the marrow had been scooped out and replaced with lead. He followed the same path as on his descent, but it now seemed impossibly steep, the bracken denser, brittle heather like rabbit snares wait- ing to trap his feet. Sweat stung his eyes. He swiped a sleeve across his face. The skeletons of black houses leered at him. Laughter rose from their ruined maws, a cacophony that climbed in pitch until it was almost unbearable.

Angus needed to think, but his mind went back to those green eyes. The eyes of a girl on the cusp of womanhood. So much life unlived. All that potential snuffed out.

You could have saved me!

Within the hour, the waves would creep up the beach to claim the girl’s body. Perhaps he should let the sea take her. Return to his cottage, to his pills and his tidy life, climb into bed beside his wife, and pretend it had all been a dream. That it was all in his head, like his father had told him.

But even as the thought formed, his hand fell on the wrought-iron gate of the Old Manse. He froze, momentarily confused. When had he decided to come here? On the flight from the beach? When he had first seen the girl’s body? No, his path had been set long before that.

He hauled open the gate and ran towards the sanctuary of the ivy-coated house, boots slapping on the herringbone-pattern slabs of the path he’d helped Gills lay five summers ago: hard toil in the sweltering sun, cold beers on the bench under the apple tree afterwards, warm breeze keeping the midges away.

He slumped against the door, gasping for breath, and pressed his forehead into the cold wood. He saw the girl then, brushing the chestnut-coloured mare in the stables at Dunbirlinn. He drove his forehead against the door.

“All . . .” Thump! “In . . .” Thump! “Your . . .” Thump! “Head!”

There was a high-pitched ringing in his head, like a scream. Manic bark- ing joined the symphony—Bran and Sceolan, Gills’s excitable border collies.

He staggered backwards and saw a light flick on in the upstairs dormer window. He swayed, his vision slowly returning to normal. The pain felt good.

He heard feet stomping down the stairs inside the house. A second later the door creaked open and there was Gills, a sight in fur-lined moccasin slippers and a tartan dressing gown, white hair standing on end.

Angus choked back tears. A dawning realisation crept across the crags of Gills’s face. His keen blue eyes, so often lit with humour, misted over. Gills sighed, a breathy, drawn-out sound, like wind soughing through the boughs of the yew tree in the cemetery where his mother lay buried. He placed a bony hand on Angus’s shoulder.

“Ah, my dear boy.”

He let Gills pull him into an embrace. The old man’s body felt thinner than he remembered, no longer the great oak that had enveloped him and held him tight when he awoke from his nightmares.“I’m sorry.” A sob escaped his lips.

Mollaichte!”

He was cursed.


Next Chapter: Clay Corpse