Caro Ramsay - Dark Water

CARO RAMSAY

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published 2010

Copyright Caro Ramsay, 2010

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-193843-1

Dark Water

Caro Ramsay was born in Glasgow and now lives in a village on the west coast of Scotland. Dark Water is her third novel in the Anderson and Costello series, following the critically acclaimed Singing to the Dead and Absolution, which was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Associations New Blood Dagger for best dbut of the year.

Praise for Caro Ramsay

A cracker of a debut Many shivers in store for readers, followed by a shattering climax The Times

Ramsay handles her characters with aplomb, the dialogue crackles and the search for the killer has surprising twists and turns. A most auspicious debut Observer

Undoubtedly one of the most impressive dbut novels in the field in some time Barry Forshaw, Amazon

Among the years best literary thrillers Washington Post

Edgy, fast-paced, this crime thriller is a cleverly understated page-turner Deliciously dark, this well-written dbut will leave you wanting more Woman

Glasgow comes alive in Caro Ramsays dark, vivid and daring thriller Val McDermid

A cracking dbut [4 stars] Mirror

A very sophisticated first novel at once humane, horrifying and exciting Literary Review

A classy example of the genre London Paper

Intelligent, unpredictable and hard to put down Sainsburys Magazine

A thrilling crime read Daily Telegraph, Sydney

With her first novel, Caro Ramsay makes an impressive contribution to the growing ranks of Scottish crime writers Shots-Mag

[Ramsay] is able to write scenes of heartbreaking tenderness nestled amid evocations of such grotesque violence that it is difficult to imagine that they can coexist as such sublime interlocking pieces of the whole Absolution marks the beginning of what certainly will be a major career New York Sun

Proves [that Ramsay] deserves to inhabit the same orbit of Scottish thriller talent as Rankin, McDermid, MacBride and Mina Daily Record

For Jessie Ramsay

19042009

Sleep tight, Snookie Pie

Dark Water is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used entirely fictitiously.

31 December 1999

Emily Corbett flicked the headlights of the Punto on to full beam, highlighting the puffballs of soft drifting grey fog. To either side lay the braes, and high flat bleak moorland, but all she could see was dapples of mist and darkness.

She slowed down. Fifty was too fast for this road, in this weather, at this time of night. She looked at the dashboard clock: 23.20. She would make it home in time to hear the midnight bells herald in the new millennium. She yawned, fighting tiredness, and turned up Robbie Williams on the CD player. She wasnt sorry shed walked out of the Hogmanay party, only seething with anger that shed had to after seeing her boyfriend her ex-boyfriend, she corrected herself disappearing into an upstairs bedroom with a bucketful of punch and some peroxided art student with unhygienic piercings. Well, screw him.

So now she was driving back home on this dark moorland road to a houseful of drunken first-footers and a bowl of hot lentil soup, wary of bad bends, potholes and the surface water that pooled dangerously in unseen dips.

Emily concentrated on the tarmac ribbon that seemed to waver in the drifting mist. She heard her dads words. Its too easy to build up speed on a straight road like that, not notice until its too late and the cars aquaplaned into a drystane dyke, and Ill be getting a call to fetch you from Casualty on the busiest night of the year, and me in my good suit. Shed smiled at him but she hadnt really been listening. She was eighteen now. She could look after herself.

The road in front of her side-shifted as the Punto was nudged by a gust of wind, and the full beam caught the ghostly shadows of some trees before settling back to the solidity of the tarmac and the drystane dyke. Emily looked at the speedo, watching it drop thirty-five thirty She indicated left, breaking for the dog-leg junction that would lead her to the braes road and home to Glasgow. Ahead of her she saw lights, dull yellow squares in the gloom. The letters on the Paraffin Lamp pub sign had been rearranged and graffitoed to read The Puffing Lump. Emily smiled, and steered carefully through the small flood at the bottom of the hill, feeling the car slow with the drag of the water. When clear, she squeezed her brakes dry and indicated right. She glanced in the rear-view mirror, her eyes drawn by the lights of another vehicle. Somebody had left the pub car park and pulled in behind her, somebody possibly as nervous as she was about crossing the braes on their own, wanting the guiding security of another drivers tail lights.

The digital clock on the dashboard clicked to 23.25. The headlights of the following vehicle flashed in her mirror again and disappeared as Emily turned on to the straight road that ran across the top of the moor. It was the quickest way home to Glasgow, though maybe not the safest. She checked the mirror again; no lights. The other car must have gone straight on to Dalry.

As the road gained height, the fog grew denser, blinding. She shivered and turned up the heating. As the needle started to nudge fifty again, she thought she could hear something. A drone from somewhere. A problem with the car?

High up on the braes, close on midnight, was not the time or place to have a puncture. She turned off Robbie Williams and listened intently. The noise was still there.

Coming from somewhere behind her. From outside.

She calmed herself, took a deep breath and pushed her foot down. The needle edged towards sixty.

She jumped violently at the sound of a horn blaring right behind her, blinded as the car filled with light from headlights on full beam inches from her rear bumper. Then back to darkness.