The Night Hunter by Caro Ramsay Page A

else’s. She was simply trying to get away. Didn’t matter if that was uphill or downhill, she would run towards where she thought she would get help. The emptiness up here – hundreds of square miles of it – would focus her mind.
    It’s certainly focusing mine.
    They talked me through it. I will be followed, and they will check for any evidence that Lorna also passed this way. I will have a camera on my skip cap to record what I’m looking at. Later they will clarify the images to examine any
places of interest,
as they put it. Sounds a load of cack to me.
    At twenty past midnight we are still gathering on the hillside.
    I’m dressed in my usual black leggings, wearing trail-running boots to protect my ankles from the clumps of heather. I feel good as I jog past the Land Rover that dropped me off, past the huddle of people taking notes. They are looking up at the sky, looking at their watches and wondering why their phones have no signal. It’s going to be a very wet and windy night. Sipping my water, I head off down the track, loosening up my limbs, wishing these men would get their finger out so that I can get on with it. It will take us an hour or more to walk to where Lorna fell before I can start to run. I jog on past a police tape that separates nothing from nowhere and look back, they’re still milling around. I go on, waiting for it to happen, getting my anger up, my own little roid rage. I roll my neck and shoulders until I feel it creeping along my arteries and I move away from the lights, into the dark shadows. I have no fear about the run; the bigger fear is that we might miss something.
    Something moves in the darkness; I hear the breathless wheeze of unfit lungs behind me. I turn round quickly, he puts his arms up to protect himself. He is an older man, wearing a coat ill-matched to this weather.
    ‘What’s going on?’ he asks. ‘I know she was here.’
    Of course she was or we wouldn’t be here. I take a minute to read his body language; he is no threat. Not only is he scared of me, he’s trying to hold back the tears.
    ‘Please?’ His hand reaches out towards me, shaking. His skin is red with exposure to the cold and the rain as he holds a creased piece of paper in a clear plastic folder out towards me. That Ali McGraw smile. It’s a million miles away from the face that lay in my lap and ceased to breathe, so thin that the skin looked painted on her bones. His thumb grips the photograph tightly in case the wind should catch it and take it from him, as fate had taken Lorna.
    ‘Mr Lennox? We will find the man who did this.’
    ‘So what is happening? What are you looking for?’
    ‘Whatever we can find. You should go home.’ I can’t tell him that his daughter spent her last hours on earth in this dark, lonely, desolate place.
    ‘Three days shy of six months.’ He shakes his head. For a minute his face is impassive, then he nods. ‘And it comes down to this.’ He coughs. I think that might be to hide a tear. ‘Just tell me if she suffered.’
    Tell me if she suffered.
I recognize that type of question; he does not want to know the answer. ‘She was doing her best to get back to you,’ I say. We have been spotted, someone shouts to us. I say quickly, ‘I’m Sophie McCulloch’s sister …’
    His head jerks up at that. ‘Oh?’
    ‘Can I ask you a question?’
    ‘Aye? Whit?’ His eyes narrow, I have his attention.
    ‘Your daughter’s running schedule?’ It comes out as a formal question but he answers it.
    ‘Well, she’d been up for the marathon, but she injured her foot. She got a pool thing built at her house so she could run in water. Nothing like that in our day. But she was fit enough when … when she was taken.’
    I smile what I hope is an understanding smile. ‘She went missing on a Thursday night, out running?’
    He nods. None of this is news to him.
    I nod back, he thinks we have empathy. ‘I’ll let you know how this goes.’ I can say that confidently as