Edgar to Victor:It’s under control. There’s nothing else to discuss. You should destroy it and get on with your life.
Victor to Edgar:Let me be clear, if you won’t tell them, I will. I’d prefer it if we were in agreement, but I’m giving it to them regardless.
Something clicks in Lucy’s head.Burned into the writing. You should destroy it.The notebook. They’re talking about the notebook. It hovers on the tip of her tongue.
‘There’s more,’ Rachel says.
She hands a sheaf of A4-sized papers over to them. The pages show images, stills from a CCTV camera. Two women, one old, one young, inside a bare stone house, and outside in a landscape that looks barren, remote. One shows a sheep staring straight into a camera. Another shows the old woman collapsed on the floor, what looks like vomit around her. In another, the old woman is standing very close to the young woman, a broken bottle in one hand.
‘What’s this?’
Rachel doesn’t reply. She hands Anna another piece of paper, this one a list of items.
Gairloch order:
Usual food
Almond milk
Chocolate
Whisky x4
Lilies
Lucy looks at the paper blankly, then back at the photographs. She thinks about the email chain, Edgar shutting down discussion. Her eyes return to the list.
‘Where’s Gairloch?’ she says, keeping her voice steady.
‘Somewhere up north. In the Highlands, I think,’ Rachel says. ‘Why?’
A top-secret project in the Highlands, that’s what Edgar said in the car earlier.I’ve got too close to it.Is this what he was talking about? Lucy doesn’t answer Rachel’s question, asks one of her own. ‘Do you know who these women are?’
Rachel nods, once. Her lips are folded tightly. ‘That one,’ she says, pointing to the young woman.
‘Who is she?’ Lucy asks, though she has a good idea.
‘It’s Marie,’ Rachel says. ‘I don’t recognise the other woman.’
‘I think I can answer that,’ Anna says. She points up at the wall opposite, where there’s a collage of newspaper stories pinned to the wall.
KILLER MUM GIVEN WHOLE LIFE SENTENCE
TRAGEDY OF CHILDREN STARVED, BEATEN, BURNED BY THE ONE PERSON MEANT TO LOVE THEM
A mugshot stares out, dark roots, blank eyes; younger, but unmistakeably the woman in the CCTV printouts.
‘Do you know when these were taken?’
‘There are dates on the printouts,’ Rachel says. ‘This one was taken a few weeks ago.’
Anna’s eyes are shifting between Rachel, Lucy, the computer screens, the printouts. She looks as unsettled as Lucy feels. ‘Does that mean she’s been released?’
Lucy is joining the dots. The secret project. The Highlands. ‘My God,’ she says. ‘This place.’ She points at the printouts. ‘It’s a secret prison.’
‘It doesn’t look much like a prison, though,’ Anna says. ‘Look at this shopping list: whisky, flowers. It sounds more like a holiday camp than punishment.’
‘No wonder he didn’t want Victor poking around in Marie’s case,’ Lucy says.
