Stranger in the Woods: A tense psychological thriller Page 4

  “There she is,” Craig announced. “Greer Crowley. Bold as a thistle.”

  I wondered if that was a compliment or insult. It was hard to tell with him.

  He parked the car. “I’ll get your bag, love.” He kept talking as he stepped around to the back of the car to fetch the bag, something about the weather and the government.

  “You’re a marvel, Craig Langley” Greer said, taking the bag from him. “Got her here in one piece and everything, you did.”

  “Well, I do try my best.” He winked at me.

  “And Isla! There you are!” She rushed over to me, encasing me in a firm hug before darting back and studying my face. “A breath of fresh air to Braithnoch. It’s wonderful to have you here.” She spoke with a whooshing sort of warmth, each word pushed out of her lungs with gusto.

  It was more of a welcome than I’d been expecting, and I warmed to her immediately. I’d been greeted like lost-long family.

  “Craig’s a friend of my father’s,” she told me. “So naturally I knew you’d be in good hands. He drove cabs for decades before he retired. Have you eaten? Of course you haven’t. It’s a long drive out here. After you’ve had a chance to freshen up, I’ll take you into town for some lunch. Not that you don’t look fresh, mind. I’d be fair dead travelling all this way.” She took half a breath to add, “Alban and Jessica are away overnight, but they’ll be back tomorrow. Anyway, I’ve got my car just inside the gate. I’ll take you up the driveway to the house—it’s quite a long one.”

  Craig blinked his eyes open wide. “You’re a windbag, Greer. I couldn’t follow the half’o’that. I hope Isla did.”

  “Oh, you!” Extending an arm, Greer gave him a friendly shove on his shoulder. “Everyone knows I talk ten to the dozen. Och well. Thanks again for looking after Isla. I do appreciate it.”

  Craig nodded at her. “It’s no trouble at all. She was good company.”

  Their banter had relaxed me.

  I thanked Craig warmly for the ride and then left with Greer for the drive to the house. What had she called the property—Braithnoch?

  My photographer’s eye instinctively framed up potential images along the way. We passed a tiny cottage and a woodshed just inside the gate. I guessed that the cottage was where I’d be staying.

  A sense of disappointment brushed over me as the house came into view. It wasn’t the old stone building I’d been hoping for. A traditional house would have been a delight to photograph. But of course, Alban McGregor was an architect and he’d have wanted to show off what he could do with his design skill. His house was a very modern collection of glass and soaring straight lines. But I had to admit that it was creative, with views straight through the glass roof lines to the mountains and a mossy grass covering other parts of the roof. The vertical wooden cladding on the exterior of the house was a nod to the forest setting. It was stunning, despite lacking old-world charm.

  High, wide clumps of white, pink, and rich purple flowers grew everywhere, softening the modern look of the house, giving a dreamy look to the property.

  “The flowers—what are they?” I asked Greer.

  “It’s a variety of heather that blooms in the winter. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  As the road curved, I caught glimpses of a part of the house I hadn’t yet seen. I almost gasped with happiness. The modern part of the building had been joined onto the original—a low, greyish, stone cottage that was almost exactly what I’d been imagining.

  Immediately, I felt more positive about the house. “It’s lovely,” I said.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she agreed. “Alban is brilliant with his work.”

  A set of still figures on a distant hill caught my eye. “Are those scarecrows?”

  Greer smiled, hitching a finely arched eyebrow. “They call them tattie bogles around here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. As far as I know, the tattie part of it is for potatoes, from back in the time when potatoes were the staple food item.”

  “Do the scarecrows belong to this property? I mean, the bogles?”

  “They’re right at the intersection of four properties. Imagine a plus sign dividing four lots of land. The spot that they intersect belongs to all of them. You’ve got Alban McGregor’s land here. And next to his is that of the Keenans—they’re an older couple. The two properties behind to the left and right belong to the Flanagans and the Chandlishes. The Flanagans have a son—a police officer. The Chandlishes are old money and well known around these parts, and not always for the best reasons.” She drew her eyebrows together in a mock frown.

  “Let’s get you inside,” said Greer. “It’s getting a wee bit nippy. I’ll bet you’re feeling it, coming straight from Sydney’s weather.”

  I shook my head firmly. “It’s a blessing. I’m not a fan of the heat. And right now, Sydney is an oven.”

  A wry but relieved laugh twisted from her throat. “Well, you’re going to find Braithnoch a treat, then.”

  The interior of the house had clean lines—lots of white and natural finishes. The ceiling was as high as that of a small cathedral, exposed beams extending from wall to wall. Two mezzanine levels gave glimpses of the upstairs rooms.

  Greer took me on a short tour of the downstairs areas. The house was beautiful in every direction.

  I walked with Greer down a long corridor. One side of the wall held dozens of framed family pictures, in both colour and grayscale. A few illustrations that had been drawn by a child also adorned the space. The photos and drawings gave a warm feel to an otherwise stark wall.

  “And this is the family,” Greer told me. “The McGregors.” She pointed each of them out. I didn’t tell her I already knew their names.

  The pictures of Alban commanded attention, the same as they had when I’d looked him up online, his intense eyes staring directly at me.

  Alban’s wife—Jessica—was the image of the perfect wife and mother, smiling widely in almost every picture.

  There were lots of pictures of the dark-haired girl I’d seen on my internet search too—many of them of her running about parks and fields with bright cheeks. The older pictures of her showed a subdued girl who’d acquired a questioning look in her eyes.

  The photos of the younger girl were starkly different, and not just because of her very young age and fair colouring. The photos of her all seemed to have been taken by a professional photographer—lots of studio shots and posed family photographs.

  Greer lightly touched a portrait of the older girl. In this picture, the girl was staring straight at the camera, her expression unflinchingly serious. “This is Elodie. As I mentioned over the phone, she died in tragic circumstances. She was abducted the night that her sister—Rhiannon—was born. Elodie was just eight years old.”

  “She was beautiful,” I said, shocked to hear that her sister was born that very night. “Did the police ever find out who was responsible?”

  Sighing, Greer stepped back from the picture. “A few leads but nothing came of it.”

  I glanced at a set of photographs of snow. They were good—not professional, but whoever had taken them had a nice talent for bringing out the play of light on the white surface.

  “Who did these?” I gestured towards the set of snow images.

  “Oh,” she said. “That was Jessica. She likes winter best of all the seasons.”

  “Great shots.”

  “C’mon, I’ll show you the rest of the house.” Linking her arm with mine, she escorted me along the remainder of the hallway, into the older section of the house. A doorway led to an office, one wall lined with the same wood as the exterior.

  “This is Alban’s office,” she said. “He had the entire floor of the old cottage converted into office space. He spends a lot of time in here. He’s become fairly reclusive. Actually, very reclusive. To be honest, that’s part of the reason that Jessica first had the idea to do a media feature—to get his name out there more and put a fac
e to his work. I agreed with her and began approaching magazines.”

  “Is it okay if I peek inside? Seeing as I’m going to be photographing him, perhaps seeing his office space might help me build a picture of him in my mind.”

  Greer hesitated. “Maybe just a quick look—Alban’s pretty private.”

  I followed her inside.

  A drafting table stood in one corner. Two plush office chairs were parked in front of heavy oak desks—the desks holding a computer and two large-screen monitors. A bar fridge made a low-key hum next to a small table and set of two armchairs.

  “He has his office very well set up,” I remarked. “It looks very comfortable.”

  “Yes.” A worried look crossed her face then. “I should let you know, he doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s in here. I guess it must interrupt his creative flow. But he’s not in here now.” She winked at me.

  The walls of the office, like the rest of the house—apart from the hallway—held no family photographs. Just two pictures decorated one wall, sitting side by side.

  One was a modern painting—just a stark black line moving left and right on a white background. It resembled a child’s first try on one of those old Etch-A-Sketch toys.

  The other picture was an aerial photograph of a winter forest. The photo appeared to be in black and white until I examined it more closely. The lack of colour was solely due to the dark, bare trees contrasting against the snow and wintry sky. Something about the interlocking branches of the forest seemed almost threatening.

  I turned to Greer. “Where is this?”

  Greer sucked in her mouth as if she were deciding how to answer me. “It’s…the section of forest where Elodie was found. The shack that you can see the roof of is where she was taken to the night of the abduction. The shack is just a wee playhouse made decades ago by children.”

  “And he keeps this on his wall?” The words slipped out unchecked and I instantly regretted them.

  “Believe me, I’ve questioned his choice. But it’s sentimental, don’t you think? I think it helps him feel close to his daughter, keeping a view of the place where the poor girl spent her last conscious moment. She never woke after that.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. It seemed morbid to me, even though I was trying hard to frame it as the gesture of a grieving father.

  Greer seemed to pick up on my discomfort. “Let me show you around the rest of this place.”

  She guided me out of the room. I was glad to leave it.

  We stepped through to the other end of the house, out to a wide space. A kitchen looked out to a sunken living room. And then to a stretch of green hills through towering, floor-to-ceiling glass walls. An enormous stone table dominated the dining space next to the kitchen. I counted the chairs. Twelve. I’d never been in a house that could fit a twelve-chair table in it before.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” said Greer.

  “It’s quite a house. Stunning.”

  “Well, I’ll take you back up to the cottage now. You can have a rest and then we’ll go grab some lunch. I know you might want to sleep. But, if you can, it’s best to keep to regular sleep cycles when you’ve travelled across time zones. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  In truth, I was already feeling overwhelmed. I’d arrived at the house of a recluse with a morbid photograph on his office wall.

  I hoped that when I met Alban in person my discomfort would dissolve, and things would begin to make more sense.

  5

  ISLA

  “Hop back into the car and we’ll drive back up to the cottage,” Greer told me. “Normally, you’d walk it, of course, but you’ll be more tired than you think. Best to take it easy.”

  I was happy to let Greer take charge of me. She was right—I was exhausted. Having someone else think for me right now was a relief.

  She drove the short distance along the driveway to the cottage. Taking my bag out of the car, she wheeled it to the cottage. I stepped along the mossy garden path.

  “Mind the blackberry brambles,” she told me as we headed under a garden arch. “Those thorns are quite nasty.” She pointed to a small shed that was attached to the cottage. “There’s a couple of bicycles in there. That’s if you feel like taking one out for a spin at all. I think they’re in working order.”

  The cottage sat at the edge of the woods, covered in vines. It was as cute as I could imagine that a cottage at the edge of a forest could be. Inside though, the cottage wasn’t nearly as quaint. It sorely needed fixing up. But it was better than me having to pay for my own accommodation and transport in the town. The job was right here.

  I put my bag in the small bedroom. Greer opened the cupboards and fridge, showing me that she’d already fully stocked up. It seemed that I had enough here to eat for the next month, without ever even eating out.

  She waited in the cottage until I’d showered and changed my clothing. We sat at the table with cups of tea.

  I picked up a tree cone from a bowl on the table. The cones had been half-painted gold. “Who did these?”

  Greer plucked a cone herself. “Elodie. As I remember, these were meant to be Christmas decorations.”

  “Sad.” I remembered that Elodie had died a short time before Christmas.

  “Well, then,” said Greer brightly, replacing the cone. “Do you like pub food or something a bit more refined?”

  “Pub food sounds great.”

  “Excellent.”

  We drove out of Braithnoch, towards the town of Greenmire.

  Trees marched along the side of the road, crowding together against the sharp cold. There was a sadness about them that seemed to enter my soul. Maybe that was because I couldn’t help but associate the forest with Elodie now.

  Past the stretch of forest, the land cleared again. A white, country style house stood in a field.

  “That’s the Keenan’s house,” said Greer. “Lovely people. Salt of the Scottish earth types. They’re in their seventies. They’ve got three kids—all adult of course.”

  She drove around a corner. The trees thickened again.

  Greer suddenly swerved as a group of people ran from the forest and straight out onto the road. She screeched to a stop.

  “God Almighty.” Exhaling hard, she shook her head.

  Two women and two men laughed as they leaned drunkenly on the front of Greer’s car. They were the same group who had been in the car that cut across the road in front of me earlier.

  The blonde woman waved at us, her smile wide but lazy and her eyes a little glazed. She was extremely pretty, her hair in long waves down her back. She glanced at me with interest for a second before the man pulled her away and off the road. Greer returned a reluctant wave. “That’s Aubrey Chandlish,” she said to me in a low tone. “And her brother, Diarmid. The red-haired girl is her best friend Bridget. I’m not sure who the other man is—probably one of Aubrey’s boyfriends.”

  Aubrey looked back at me with curiosity as Greer slowly drove away.

  “So, they’re also Alban’s neighbours? I remember you mentioned the Chandlishes.”

  “Yes. Their parents—Gus and Deirdre—go away for three months each year. Travelling. And that’s when the kiddies come to play. Aubrey and Diarmid are usually in Edinburgh, but they come back home once Mummy and Daddy have gone. The Chandlish home becomes one giant party house at this time of year.” She pulled a face. “Lucky, they don’t live next door. Well, technically they do, but at least there’s quite a bit of distance in between.”

  A large house came into view. Mansion sized. White and box shaped.

  “Do I guess that’s the Chandlish house?” I gazed at the multitude of dark windows that were stark against the white brickwork and pale sky.

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “There’s a heap of cars parked out the front,” I remarked.

  “That’s what I was afraid of. The more of them there are, the more they rile each other up. There’s an older b
oy, too—named Peyton. He’s sensible, at least. Look, Aubrey and Diarmid aren’t that bad, really. It’s just that they invite too many people around. Then they all get too drunk and things start going wrong.” She clucked her tongue. “Oh, listen to me. I sound like an old fuddy-duddy. I know that you’re only young once. You know what I mean. You’re about the same age as Aubrey. She’s in her early twenties.”

  I gave a laugh that was meant to sound jovial but instead got squeezed in my chest. “I’m twenty-six. And well, I didn’t really have any wild years. Too staid for that, I guess.”

  She sighed. “That’s the other extreme. You need to have a bit of fun before it all disappears and you’re over thirty. I’m thirty-six, so I speak from experience.”

  “Just coming here is a bit of an adventure for me,” I admitted. “I’m a homebody. But this opportunity just seemed too good to pass up.”

  Greer shot me a warm grin. “We’re very happy to have you here. Your photography is stunning. I can’t wait to see what you come up with. I know it will be very special.”

  I breathed deeply, hoping like hell I could live up to the faith she seemed to have in me. “I’m still pinching myself I got this job.”

  “Of course you got the job. You were the best choice. And while you’re here, you’re one of us. I mean that.”

  I believed her. Her voice had a note of sincerity that few people could muster.

  The road into town was lengthy. Somehow, I’d thought the town would be closer. The sense of remoteness and distance here was intimidating.

  I breathed easier once I caught sight of the town that had opened up in the valley just beyond the crest of the next hill.

  The town was charming with its olde world shops and pubs and the irregular stonework of their facades.

  “We’re here!” Greer parked the car and jumped out.

  She steered me towards a place that didn’t look like much on the outside—only a modest sign—but the interior was large. Surprisingly, it was bustling with people. A Lady Gaga song played over a sound system, clusters of young people standing and nodding along to Poker Face. Older people sat at the bar and tables alone or in couples.