Page 59 of Watching You
‘There’s a process,’ the chief executive said. ‘It’s unavoidable. No one wanted this to happen.’
‘That’s not quite right,’ Beth said as she opened her door and stepped out into the corridor. ‘One person definitely did.’
Chapter 40
Body Seven of Eight
Ten and a Half Months Earlier
Since leaving the hospital, all Beth had been able to think about was getting away. It had taken her a week of sitting around watching and rewatching the horrific video of herself talking cruelly about people whose only crime was getting addicted to products that had been specifically designed and marketed to make them want more, before she’d realised she either had to get active or dissolve in the mire of social media.
There had been television and radio interviews about her, she’d received death threats, and someone had thrown unbelievable amounts of dog excrement at her door in the middle of the night. Even if the hospital found that she’d not been responsible for the video and accepted that it was a deep fake, her relationship with patients was going to suffer terrible damage. Rebuilding the trust would be near impossible.
In desperation, she’d gone online and found a property to rent for a few days near Balquhidder in the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park. She’d packed everything she could think that she’d need – her brain wasn’t in great condition for effective planning – thenset off, only stopping for a coffee in Stirling because she needed to buy matches and milk. It took her two hours to drive from Edinburgh to Balquhidder, another half hour to locate the cabin that was set a short walk back from the banks of Loch Voil, and fifteen minutes more to figure out exactly where the key had been hidden. Judging by the dampness of the limp curtains and the mossy smell in the air, no one had stayed there for a while.
It turned out that the wood store was drier than the house, which was lucky as the open fire was going to be her only source of heat. It was a two-way fireplace that she could feed from the sitting room at the front and from her bedroom at the back, and the second she struck the match and the kindling caught, the scent of apple wood, pine and heather filled the air. She sat close to the fire and huddled there, staring into the shifting flames.
Beth had no idea how long she’d stayed in that position until she tried to unbend her knees. They protested. She stopped trying to get up. It was all too much effort. The fire was starting to weaken and she couldn’t even be bothered reaching out a hand to throw on another log. Her mouth was parched from the heat, but even thirst couldn’t induce her to move.
A sob erupted from deep in Beth’s gut, as if some invisible strongman had performed the Heimlich manoeuvre on her. Her body was rocked by it and even the flames died down momentarily. Her loneliness was an enormous spider hanging in the corner of every room she entered. She’d thought her career would be enough to save her, but now she knew she was wrong. Then there had been the delusion that the passage of time would make her feel better, but empty rooms were ghosts and eating alone was a virus.
She’d feel better after some exercise, she told herself. That was why she’d chosen a remote hideaway, after all. There were endless trails around the loch, footpaths through the forest, andso few houses for miles that she could go for hours and see no one. All she needed were trainers and a hairband. Just those two things and she might survive the next hour, and if she could survive the next hour then she could probably make it through to the next day. That was as far ahead as she could imagine.
Beth found a band in her coat pocket and tied her hair back before shoving her feet roughly into trainers and dashing out of the door. No need to lock up. If anyone could find her cabin there in the middle of nowhere then they were welcome to the few supplies and the tatty clothes she’d brought with her.
Slamming the door shut, Beth took several deep breaths then set off up the heavily wooded slope, searching out a high point on the crest of the tree line from which to gaze down at the loch. Street running hadn’t prepared her for the gradient, though. Her thighs were aching within a minute. Three minutes more and she had a stitch, clutching her side as she pushed onwards and upwards.
At the top, she sought out a place to sit, finding a fallen tree and perching on it, careless of scattering beetles and spiders. Looking down on Loch Voil it was easier to get things in perspective, to understand the smallness of her place in the world. Beth breathed in the scents of earth and mulch, and freshly produced oxygen, and breathed out the city, its pollutants and the bodies that she treated and fixed or treated and lost. She didn’t mind the natural cycle of life. That was all part and parcel of her job. What she minded and hated – despised, loathed, a voice inside her whispered – was the interference of man in that cycle.
Beth forced herself to close her eyes and just be in the moment. She was becoming consumed by her hatred and it was festering no less than any physical wound might. Standing, she took one last look at the loch below, superficially beautiful and calm while the current beneath the surface was lethal. The similarity to how she felt wasn’t lost on her.
Beth took the return trip slower, the gradient hard on her knees. Twice she slipped, once landing on her coccyx, the next trying to avoid a repeat of that and going down onto her left hip. Still, she could see the roof of her cabin in its tiny clearing below and inside the fire was waiting, along with a kettle and bathtub. Sanctuary.
Taking the slope steadily, going from tree to tree to keep herself upright, she made her way down. Sunset was staining the sky from bitter orange to pomegranate.
He hit her from behind as she paused one last time to turn her face into the dying sun.
‘Wha—’ was all that came out of her mouth before barrelling sideways and smacking her right temple into a branch then crashing to her knees and falling face first into the dirt.
‘Bitch!’ the man who’d emerged from behind a tree screeched. ‘You fucking bitch. You killed her!’
He pulled back a leg and went to kick her, losing his footing on the slope with the movement and shoving his foot downwards into her chest, sending her rolling over and over, protecting her head with her arms. He slid after her.
The trees weren’t the only hazard. There were thorns, roots and rocks to contend with too. As fast as the world blurred when she opened her eyes for a fraction of a second, he was still coming after her, the two of them crying out as they snagged their skin or took a blow.
She had time to wonder who the hell it was who’d jumped out and pushed her, another second to process what he’d screamed at her, and a few moments to finally – in slow motion which was ironic given how fast her body was moving – figure out the identity of the man trying to kill her.
Beth’s journey ended when her abdomen hit a tree trunk, her legs wrapping around one side, her arms around the other.I’m a ragdoll, she thought, as she hung around the tree, her hands feeling nothing but air the other side. She realised the tree that had stopped her was leaning over the edge of a steep drop-off.
She turned her head, the vertebrae in her neck crackling, to watch his incoming body fly down the slope at her, and immediately shut her eyes again. His body was a ball of flesh and cloth hurtling at a speed that would surely end him if he hit a tree headfirst.
‘Die,’ Beth wished for him, as she braced for impact.
Something snapped.
He screamed, more animal than human, and that cry was pain. Beth had heard it enough times to know. Then there was a crunch, not of impact but the crushing, crumpling sound of tangled undergrowth. And not-quite-silence. A whistling. The sound of moving air.
Beth’s eyes flew open in time to see the end of the human cannonball’s flight off the edge and into a line of smaller, younger trees below.
