Roberta spluttered upright in bed with an ear-thrummeling snork and sat there, in the dark, blinking at... Where the hell was she? This wasn’t home.
She rubbed a hand across her face and peered out into the darkness.
Phone. Phone on the bedside cabinet.
Picking it up set the screen glowing, banishing a little bit of the gloom, revealing a tartan bedspread, with murderous threats of further tartan beyond. Ah. Right. Skirivour Castle Hotel. The poncy palace of plaid.
She sagged back into her pillows and let free a jaw-popping yawn. Threw in a little burp for luck. Sighed.
Time was it?
The glowing red numbers on her phone read, ‘02:16’.
Gah...
Far too early for crap like—
Was that voices?
She sat up again as a faint thump sounded somewhere out in the hall.
OK, there was definitely somebody there.
Roberta scrambled from the bed and into her T-shirt and jeans – no time to waste pulling on underwear, this was strictly a commando exercise. Grabbed the torch on her way from the room. Locking the door behind her. Just in case.
Dear Lord, it was dark.
The torch’s beam slid across the tartan carpet and up across the walls. No sign of anything but the creepy stuffed animals in their creepy display cases.
She crept her way down the corridor and eased the door at the end open, stepping out onto the balcony. Stupid torch wasn’t nearly as bright as it’d been when McKinnon handed it over – the light a bit yellow and feeble. And getting more feeble with every minute.
‘Oh, for God’s sake...’
Trust that wee idiot to give her the dud.
Bashing it against her palm a few times made it brighten a little, but not much. Still, better than nothing. She played it across the lobby to the opposite balcony. Nobody there.Nobody down at ground level either. Well, unless they were hiding behind the monster stag.
Roberta picked her way down the stairs and out onto the lobby floor. Checked around the back of the statue, just in case.
No one.
She tried a sort of shouty whisper. ‘McKinnon?’
No reply.
The front-door handles wouldn’t turn when she tried them, so they were still locked – the key sticking out of its keyhole. Not the most robust of home-security measures, but it should stop Albert Nairn getting his key in the other side.
Right. So it was time to play ‘Find The Useless Constable’.
Left or right?
Six of one.
She went left, following the circle of torchlight along the horrible plaid carpet, down the corridor. You’d think they’d get tired of taxidermy and tartan, wouldn’t you? Most of the dead animals weren’t even that realistic. Yeah, they werereal, but somehow the stuffing had rendered them like badly drawn caricatures. The poses stiff enough to make it look as if they’d never been alive in the first place. Like there was more chance of bumping into one of Nairn’s monstrosities out on the hills than one of these poor frozen things.
Roberta followed the corridor around the corner, only to find some sort of horror shining a torch right in her eyes.
‘Gah!’
