The Night Hunter by Caro Ramsay Read Free Book Online Page A

above the formal dining room. I can make all the noise I want doing my exercises because the dining room is never used. The headlights flash on the western perimeter wall that still bears the scars of the last storm; it looks like a gap-toothed smile. The builders haven’t been for days, and the last time I saw them they were too busy talking to Mary about building Charlie a tree house to be bothered fixing the wall. I notice that the Shogun is not here.
    Eric sees me looking. ‘Mary is at the flat in Glasgow with Alex.’ He pulls the Land Rover to a halt but keeps the engine running as his fingers drum on the dashboard. ‘Do you need any help?’ he mutters.
    ‘No, I can manage on my own, thanks.’ A few spots of rain start to dot the windscreen.
    He looks at the sky, a look of concentration on his face. ‘If you need to chat, in the next few days? I mean, Mary will be in Glasgow a lot. Call me if you need anything. I mean, after tonight. Not that … Well, you won’t, will you … What about a bit of dinner, Loch Fyne? I might even show you round the croft.’
    It’s quite a speech for him. I nod and thank him.
    I go up the stairs and press the buttons for the entry code to my flat, dumping my stuff in the hall before I turn to wave goodbye to Eric. He’s been watching me, making sure that I got in OK. He waves back and I close the door before picking my bag up and nipping upstairs to my kitchen. Before I unpack I press the button on the instant water heater and put some fresh coffee into a cafetière. Five minutes later I’m sitting on the outside step, high up over the garden with a soft blanket draped round my shoulders, sipping a mild Colombian blend and letting myself get wet in the summer rain. I think back on the day and the previous night, wondering what other Goblins are shadow-dancing in the garden, what else is going to happen before I can make sense of it. Everything is unreliable. Dad died, Grant blamed himself. If I’m honest, I blame Grant too. Did that stress spark my illness? Do I blame Grant for that as well? Grant certainly blames us for the mild knee problem which has become the root of all the evil in his universe. My mum gets lost in a bottle and Rod and I pick up the pieces.
    Where does that leave me?
    I should be here sitting with nothing on my mind at all, except my missing sister and what she might be going through. And what the woman who fell from the sky had already been through.
    At moments like this I yearn for the times when I had things to think about apart from Sophie. If that makes me selfish then so be it. Tomorrow will start a whole new round of interviews and I must stay one step ahead. Maybe if I’d said something earlier, maybe if I’d told them the truth straight away – that Sophie had gone of her own accord – if I had not kept Sophie’s secret, then she might be back here with us now. But I didn’t have a crystal ball. I sat for hours at the Goblin Market, on the log by the lily pond, from midnight right until the dawn, waiting for her before I gave up and drove here.
    I have no idea what has happened to her.
    I have no idea what to do.
    I look round at the hills, the rolling summit of Ben Ime in the distance. The closer pointed crag of Ben Lochain. Right on the back doorstep is Cruach nam Mult lying like a sleeping puppy. It makes me think – the hills are unchanging but I am not. I am a transient in the world; we all are.
    It is gone six o’clock when I finally crawl into bed. Every night before I go in search of sleep I look through my photographs. These are just for me, not for the press or the police or the Facebook page where everything is food for public digestion. I have seen these images so many times, but I relish them as others enjoy seeing a close friend. There’s the one of me and Dad digging the garden. Another of Soph and me on a swing, she’s about ten or so. Then again on the same swing aged twenty, very drunk. Second last is an informal shot