Reluctantly, Jimmy breaks into a loose jog and she waits until he is close before sprinting on. She can hear him speeding up behind her, their feet skidding on the loose stones that litter the track, and feels a rush of pleasurable terror at being chased, losing the notion of where she is, just escaping into something easier and purer. They crash into the gate at the same moment, out of breath from pelting uphill like children. Layla folds in two, gasping and laughing, dragging in air. She tilts her head, intending to catch his eye, but she is facing the sun and can’t see his expression.

  They catch the horses and groom and tack them up quickly. Layla usually prefers to ride alone but today there is a companionable atmosphere between the two of them. They let loose in a field and she relishes the way the horses match pace, galloping side by side in perfect unison. They stay out for over an hour and she feels able to slough off the stresses of the previous days, the anger and bitter feelings that have raged inside her. It is a relief, this casting away of something she hadn’t realised had taken such a grip.

  Back at the stables, she slides from Duchess and grins at Jimmy.

  ‘Thanks. I needed that.’

  He blushes and she busies herself with untacking the horse and rubbing her down. It feels like he’s being weird again. If only things could be simple.

  ‘Layla.’ He holds the gate to the field open and watches as she releases Duchess, who kicks up her heels and then rolls in a patch of mud. ‘Would you like to go for a drink one night?’

  The suggestion floors her. Jimmy is more like a younger brother to her than someone she would date. The reflex to slap him down is strong but she catches sight of the flush on his neck and feels an excruciating beat of embarrassment.

  ‘Ah, Jimmy. I don’t really…’

  His face clouds over. She can almost see dislike germinating in his eyes. It’s shocking. She steps back.

  He turns away.

  ‘Jimmy, don’t be like that.’

  ‘You’re just a cock tease, Layla. That’s all you are.’

  The vitriol in his words takes her aback. The echo of Stephen. Normally she would retaliate instantly, but something about today when she has let her guard down stalls her and brings tears to her eyes. She says nothing, just watches him walk back down the hill alone. She doesn’t know why she bothers.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CAL

  Cal parks at the top of the track on a wide verge and walks down to the stables, narrating the journey for the benefit of the recording. The stable buildings sit halfway down the long hill, offering a wide view of the fields around them. Most of the surrounding paddocks are muddy, churned by horses over the long winter. He counts twenty of them, grazing impossibly short grass.

  This is the way she rode on that last journey; these are the last views she saw. Did she look back? Did she have some inkling of what was coming? Did she know?

  No one has ever been arrested in connection with Layla’s disappearance. The police interviewed Stephen but couldn’t make a charge stick against him. In such cases as these, it’s usually unlikely that a stranger is involved, but Layla’s case is extraordinary. Was there someone watching Layla as she left that day? Did she cross paths with a killer? Perhaps his fixation with Dubois is colouring his views about the rest of the world. For the millionth time, Cal wonders how Detective Foulds is getting on with the information he emailed her.

  Pushing the thought away, he squares his shoulders and trudges down to the yard, where an old farmhouse is flanked by stables and newer barns. An iron five-bar gate blocks his path. He remembers images of police cars parked on this verge. There was no gate then.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  A woman wearing jodhpurs and a body warmer slides back a stable door, driving the bolt across before she strides towards him. The horse left behind whickers and kicks at the door impatiently.

  ‘Quiet, Star,’ the woman calls. She holds a plastic brush in her hand. The horse shakes its head up and down vigorously.

  ‘My daughter has always wanted a horse,’ he says, displaying his most unthreatening, winning smile.

  ‘They’re not for sale.’

  She must be in her late forties. Her skin is ruddy, weathered, fair hair tied back in a bun, strands held in place with a net and clips as if she is about to go into the show ring. He holds out his press card. She squints at it, waits for him to speak.

  ‘Cal Lovett. Don’t worry. I’m not here for a pony. I’m making a podcast about the Layla Mackie case.’

  The sun breaks out from the cloud cover behind him, striking the woman in the face so that she has to shade her eyes. He sees clearly the distrust for him, this southern journalist at the gate, someone likely to lack sensitivity, determined to blaze in and solve the mystery. But this is what he is good at: changing minds, getting people onside.

  ‘I don’t want to disturb you,’ he ploughs on. ‘But I’m working with her family to try and get some answers and…’

  ‘You’re helping Jean and Tam? They know about this?’

  She still looks suspicious but he can sense a tiny thaw.

  ‘Yes. I’m just hoping to see where she spent so much time. I know this place was important to her.’

  He waits, sees her consider.

  ‘I’d need to check with Jean that what you say is true.’

  ‘It is, I promise. We could call them now?’

  She makes no movement, so he gestures to the gate, pulls back the sprung mechanism to join her on the other side.

  ‘All right then. I’m Bridget.’

  ‘Thanks, I really appreciate it, Bridget.’

  Cal takes a deep breath of relief.

  His feet crunch on large grey stones that line the route down to the grooved concrete outside the stables. Another fast-moving cloud has passed in front of the sun and it is cold in the shadow.

  ‘Were you living here back then?’

  She nods.

  ‘Do you remember Layla?’

  ‘I was thirteen. I remember her.’

  She sets the plastic brush down in a tray of horse-grooming equipment.

  ‘Just give me a minute.’

  She strides towards the house, legs long in her riding boots, leaving him with the grumpy horse. He stretches a hand out but thinks better of it when the creature puts back its ears. Instead, he thinks of Layla and tries to picture her here. He has seen a photograph of her jumping a gaping ditch on the back of a horse, hatless, hair streaming out behind her.

  He skirts the yard, peering into empty stables that have sawdust beds a foot high on the floor, raked neatly but still reeking. There’s a picture of Margot riding a pony on a beach, taken before he was born. His mother used to keep it on the mantlepiece but after she vanished it was all cleared away.

  ‘I’ll show you around if you like.’ He has been so absorbed in his thoughts that he hasn’t registered Bridget’s return. She takes him around the tack room and the hay barn, then shows him the riding school – a large covered sandy arena.

  ‘This was open to the elements back then,’ she says, and he pictures Layla schooling horses under an iron sky.

  ‘Will you walk up the hill with me, do a short interview as we go?’

  She nods. ‘Aye, I suppose so. I’ve an hour before the kids come back from school.’

  He has the strange sensation he sometimes gets from people that she wants to talk to him, that there is something unsaid from those days and his arrival is a relief, a chance to unburden herself. He waits, letting the silence weigh between them.

  ‘I remember that day, you know,’ she tells him when they are standing higher up the hill. She runs her hand along a tangled piece of wire, fixing the fence, as if she can’t possibly remain still. ‘No one ever asked me about it, though.’

  He imagines an overlooked teenager, irritated at being ignored.

  ‘Not even the police?’

  She shakes her head. Her eyes are fixed on the stables below where two girls are wheeling a barrow through the lower fields, stopping to lift horse dung into it with large forks.

  ‘At first it was the horse everyone was worried about. Dad was furious – he assumed she’d just stayed out too long. She was always doing that.’

  ‘Horses are valuable.’

  She laughs and it’s a mixture of awe and bitterness that circles them.

  ‘People put up with a lot from Layla. She was an incredible rider and a hard worker, but it was more than that too.’

  He waits.

  ‘A sort of power. It sounds silly, but it felt like everyone was under Layla’s spell. All she had to do was look at a man and they’d fall at her feet. Like they all wanted her but were a little bit afraid of her.’

  ‘Were you afraid of her?’

  She comes back to herself, seems to realise that they are standing on the crest of the hill in the present day.

  ‘Maybe a little.’

  ‘Tell me more about that day.’

  ‘She was supposed to go with Jim – they had to muck out first, but she took off without him. He called her a selfish bitch and worse – said he was going to make her pay. By the time he was done with two people’s chores there wasn’t really time for him to ride. She still hadn’t come back and it was getting dark.’

  ‘Did you see her leave?’

  ‘No. I looked for her, though. We all did. Dad and I drove the roads in the Land Rover. We kept stopping the car and shouting her name. We walked into the fields and listened in case she’d been thrown off and couldn’t move.’

  She looks at him.

  ‘I was even angry with her. I had to miss a trip to the cinema in Aberdeen that I’d been looking forward to for ages. I didn’t realise that while we were bitching about her carelessness…’

  She swallows.

  He knows these thoughts, these dark imaginings. What was he doing at the exact moment Margot went missing? Did he feel it in some imperceptible way? It seems impossible that he could carry on oblivious at such a seismic moment.

  ‘You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘I just wonder. Did she hear us, calling for her?’

  ‘Where did she ride?’

  He hopes the change of subject will jog further memories.

  ‘That way. The only way.’ She gestures in the direction his car is parked, but Cal notes the hesitation.

  ‘You aren’t sure?’

  She shrugs. ‘Where else could she have gone?’

  ‘Do you have a theory?’

  Bridget exhales, as if embarrassed.

  ‘I didn’t think at the time. Only really wondered years later. Layla never did what she was supposed to. She used to jump the craziest things: ditches, walls that shouldn’t have been possible. She took risks no one else would dream of.’

  She points to the trees that sit high above the road – a tangle of pines, some of which seem to have fallen like toothpicks in the wind. He hears an ominous creaking, as if they are alive and in pain. ‘I had a fancy that she went in there. But that’s mad.’

  The wood is overgrown and looks impenetrable, a vertical bank before it.

  He steps forward, curious.

  ‘Will you show me?’

  They climb the bank and wall. Cal catches his hand on a hidden snarl of barbed wire and he swears, sucks the blood that blooms from his palm. When they are over, they thrash their way through ferns as tall as he is. Bridget is right, this is crazy. But then, in the cool darkness, he can see the impression of what once may have been a path. Large boulders are strewn to its sides, covered with thick moss so bright it almost glows, flanked by foliage. No birds sing.

  ‘Where would this come out?’

  ‘Up near the hotel, maybe. But there are fields that touch it at different points,’ she says. ‘It could be possible to go in lots of different directions.’

  ‘Did anyone ever tell the police this?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seems so unlikely. I’m probably being ridiculous.’ She shrugs and he can see she is glad to have shared the burden of the suspicion, however fantastical it seems.

  As far as he can tell, everyone worked on the assumption that Layla took a particular route. His mind swirls with thought. What if, all this time, they’ve been looking in the wrong place?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jim, the stable boy, now works at a lumber yard near Kintore. Cal drives along the A96 in the direction of Aberdeen. The road appears slashed through the countryside, bypassing villages it must once have weaved through.

  It doesn’t take long to reach the yard, which is silent, deserted as he wanders into it. Vast bodies of trees are stacked high on one side, sawdust carpeting the ground, eddying in the breeze, older flakes clumped in puddles. There is a shout, no words discernible, though the warning is clear, and he looks up to see a man emerging from a Portacabin, wearing a navy boiler suit that is faded and stained.

  ‘You lost?’ The tone of the man’s voice, the aggressive way he comes towards Cal, suggests he has no intention of welcoming a stranger.

  Cal knows instinctively that he needs to play a different role with this man, that openness and friendliness will not crack through the harsh exterior. He holds firm, uses his height to his advantage.

  ‘Maybe you can help? I’m looking for Jim Campbell.’

  ‘What do you want with him?’

  Cal examines the hard angles of the man’s face, the strong arms and the cold, dark eyes underneath overhanging brows.

  ‘I’d need to tell him that.’

  ‘I’m Jim.’

  Now that it’s confirmed, he can see the shadow of the stable boy from the few photographs taken at the time. He wore a flat cap then, jeans with holes in the knees.

  ‘It’s about Layla Mackie.’

  A brief storm of anger crosses the man’s face.

  ‘You polis?’

  ‘Nope, not police. Journalist. I’m doing a podcast on the case.’

  Cal extracts a card from his pocket, takes one step forward and holds it out. The man waits a beat then shakes his head, shoves his hands in the boiler suit pockets.

  ‘Can you not let it rest?’

  ‘Layla’s family want answers. I’m here with their blessing.’

  ‘The quine is dead. They’ll get no more answers than that.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘It’s been more than thirty year. Police at the time couldn’t find anything. How would you do any better, like?’

  Cal squares up a little.

  ‘People remember things differently with time. They don’t always want to protect the people they did back then.’

  ‘Seems to me that being killed turns people into saints and no one will speak the truth.’

  ‘You didn’t like Layla.’

  He is careful to form this as a statement, not a question.

  ‘She was a selfish bitch. Good luck finding anyone to tell you that now, though.’

  ‘You were meant to be with her that day?’

  ‘Aye. Stupid cow left me with all the work.’

  ‘Did you see her go?’

  ‘I shouted after her. She didn’t pay ony attention. That was the way she was. Ay doing what she wanted and leaving others to clean up her mess.’

  ‘Did you actually see her ride along the road?’

  ‘She rode right past me.’

  ‘But did you see where she went?’

  ‘There is only one road out.’ The man shakes his head as if Cal is dim.

  ‘Could she have taken the horse into the forest?’

  ‘The woods at the top?’ He looks surprised for a second, then spits on the floor, glares at Cal while he considers. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past her.’

  ‘So, it’s possible everyone was looking in the wrong place?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Did you not want to follow her – after she left without you?’

  Jim’s face turns a beetroot shade and Cal sees the shadows of the kind of anger that comes with rejection. Maybe he liked Layla a little too much back then. Maybe she turned him down.

  ‘I’ve work to do.’

  Cal holds the card out again. ‘Can I leave my details? In case you think of anything.’

  He knows the man takes it just to get rid of him. Jim folds it over in his palm. It will hit the bin the moment he leaves.

  Cal steps back. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Then he throws out a final question. ‘What do you think happened to her?’

  Again, Jim’s face takes on a belligerent anger. Cal wonders if he was ever a suspect at the time.

  ‘I think some man she was fucking had enough. That’s what I think. It’s what everyone thinks. You ask them up at the hotel what she got up to. Maybe someone up there will tell you what she was really like.’

  He strides away, leaving Cal alone in the sawdust.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Cal hates having to plead for funding. That was one of the anticipated consequences of a big-hit series with Dubois – being able to set his own course, budgets flexing to suit him instead of the other way around. It seems so long since that was a primary concern.

  ‘It’s not that expensive,’ he tells Sarah. In the distance, the hill by the hotel stands purple-grey, wreathed in cloud at the summit.

  ‘But it’s happening on a whim.’

  ‘It isn’t. Layla didn’t go the way they thought she did – she hasn’t been seen since then, so something happened to her and the chances that it’s someone at the hotel, that her body is hidden in the area, are good.’

  Sarah is silent. He waits, hopes.

  ‘We can’t stretch to the full amount. What about the family?’

  Cal thinks of Jean and Tam – their simple surroundings, the way they live cleaved to the land, eking out an existence on the hillside, missing their daughter. He can’t imagine there are bags of gold beneath the mattress.

  ‘They’ve barely got anything.’

  ‘I could authorise half the figure you’re suggesting.’

  ‘Mel has already done us the best deal possible.’ Cal knows he is fighting past the point of sense. Sarah is a decisive person; she rarely backtracks and he can hear by the tone of her voice that she’s digging in.