‘HELP! CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME? PLEASE HELP. PLEASE.’

My voice comes out reedy and thin. There is no one coming to help. The only person at large, the only one who can hear me, is the person who bolted the door, the person who now has my child, and that thought makes me feel sick with terror.

‘MARK! COME BACK AND LET ME OUT. YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME. PLEASE, MARK!’

I shout again a few more times but there is nothing. It’s hopeless.

I ease myself back on to the ledge, but as I go to close the window something on the inner ledge catches my eye. I lean forward to take a closer look. It’s a book of some sort. I reach out and grab it as a gust of icy wind strikes the glass and sends the pages fluttering. Holding it to my chest, I step carefully back down on to the chair.

The book is damp and yellow, bleached by the sun. I turn it over in my hands. It’s leather-bound and has the remnants of some kind of gold lettering across the front. A name perhaps? It reminds me of the diaries I used to get from my parents every Christmas, the ones with a lock and a tiny key and my initials embossed on the front. I place it on my lap and open it up. The first few pages are damp and stuck together. Whatever handwriting had been there has been dissolved. The last few pages, however, are intact. I flatten the book out and point the torch closer. The handwriting is messy and smudged but I can just about make it out.

I start to read and a chill flutters right through my body as I realize that this isn’t some childish diary, it’s a first-hand account of a murder.

38

Grace

I want to write one last entry in this book before closing it down for good. In thirty minutes I’m due to meet Isobel at the crag and after that I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me.

I am no longer an elite soldier but an assassin. It’s not going to be like shooting rabbits or sheep. This is the real thing. Serious. But I tell myself not to lose my resolve, to think about the vixen and her broken body, of never seeing Isobel again. I have to go through with this.

It’s just begun to snow. Light flakes for now but I can tell from the change in the air that it’ll become much thicker as the night goes on. He always loved the snow. Said it reminded him of when he was a boy and his granddad used to take him up to the hills to build a snowman. I can’t imagine him being a boy.