Her bare feet ploughed into the cold hard gravel.
‘Ow, ow, ow, ow!’
It was like some sadist had carpeted the world with blocks of Lego.
‘Ow, ow, ow, ow...’ and then her toes squelched onto the wet grass. Bliss.
Nairn disappeared around the corner and she hammered after him, squishing and slipping on the waterlogged turf, down the side of the building.
He was fast. Faster than her, anyway, arms and legs pumping. Probably helped that he had shoes on. But the gap between them was widening as he took a hard left, cutting across the moonlit gardens, making for the coal-black treeline.
‘COME BACK HERE, YOU CREEPY WEE SHITE!’
He didn’t, though, because no bugger ever did.
Nairn was getting away...
Then that gap in the clouds closed up, swallowing the moon whole and plunging the world into darkness again.
She whipped her torch up, the beamjustbright enough to catch the back of Nairn’s roadkill cloak. Even further away now.
Argh...
Roberta leaned into it, huffing and puffing – closing the gap a little... and then Nairn vanished into the woods.
Oh God, it’d been bad enough trying to follow him last time, and that was in daylight. Now? In the dark, at night, when he was very probably armed? Yeah, this maybe wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. But what was she supposed to do,lethim get away?
And then her torch did its stupid cutting-out trick again.
She skip-hop-slithered to a stop and whacked the thing against her palm. ‘Come on, you piece of crap...’
It gave one last sulk of dim yellow light and died. Didn’t matter how many times she battered the wee bugger, it didn’t come on again. Dead.
Well, that kinda put the arsehole on chasing Albert Nairn into the woods, didn’t it?
Still, it wasn’t as if he could actuallygoanywhere.
She hauled in a deep breath. ‘I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!’
Then bent double, grabbed her knees, and wheezed for a bit. Been far too much running about, this holiday. In fact, if she was being brutally honest, this whole trip had been a bit of a wankfest.
Puffing out a heavy breath, Roberta straightened up.
Just have to head out mob-handed in the morning to House-of-Horrors Cottage and arrest Nairn. Three of them, one of him. Should be doable.
After all, what’s the worst that could happen?
As if on cue, a distant rumble of thunder sounded in the mountains, and the rain rushed in on its wake, batteringinto her, drenching her right through on the way back to the hotel.
‘I soddinghateweddings.’
The tartan carpet darkened around Roberta’s bare feet as she hammered on the door marked, ‘THEBALVENIE’. Hair plastered to her head, T-shirt sticking in all the wrong places, jeans being overly familiar with her underwear-free parts, as she dripped. ‘SERGEANT MOORE, OPEN UP!’
The door cracked open and there was Moore, in his Spider-Man pyjamas, yawning and blinking. ‘Time is it?’ He screwed up one eye and peered at his watch. Sagged. ‘Not my shift tillfour.’ Then gave her a peer too. ‘Why are you all wet?’
‘Nairn.’ She ran a hand through her hair and flicked the water against the walls. ‘He snuck in and bashed McKinnon over the back of the head.’
‘Son of a bitch.’ Wiping the sleep from his eyes. ‘What do you need me to do? Is Mikey OK?’
