dressed for the weather. She's not got a coat on. Look, can you get an ambulance or a doctor or something? She's really hurt, man."
"And you just happened to find her in the middle of a blizzard, eh? Have you been drinking, son?" The words were patronizing, but the voice betrayed anxiety.
Alex didn't imagine this was the kind of thing that happened often in the middle of the night in douce, suburban St. Andrews. Somehow he had to convince this plod that he was serious. "Of course I've been drinking," he said, his frustration spilling over. "Why else would I be out at this time in the morning? Look, me and my pals, we were taking a shortcut back to halls and we were messing about and I ran up the top of the hill and tripped and landed right on top of her." His voice rose in a plea. "Please. You've got to help. She could die out there."
The policeman studied him for what felt like minutes, then leaned into his car and launched into an unintelligible conversation over the radio. He stuck his head out of the door. "Get in. We'll drive up to Trinity Place. You better not be playing the goat, son," he said grimly.
The car fishtailed up the street, tires inadequate for the conditions. The few cars that had traveled the road earlier had left tracks that were now only faint depressions in the smooth white surface, testament to the heaviness of the snowfall. The policeman swore under his breath as he avoided skidding into a lamppost at the turning. At the end of Trinity Place, he turned to Alex. "Come on then, show me where she is."
Alex set off at a trot, following his own rapidly disappearing tracks in the snow. He kept glancing back to check if the policeman was still in his wake. He nearly went headlong at one point, his eyes taking a few moments to adjust to the greater darkness where the streetlights were cut off by the tree trunks. The snow seemed to cast its own strange light over the landscape, exaggerating the bulk of bushes and turning the path into a narrower ribbon than it normally appeared. "It's this way," Alex said, swerving off to the left. A quick look over his shoulder reassured him that his companion was right behind him.
The policeman hung back. "Are you sure you're no' on drugs, son?" he said suspiciously.
"Come on," Alex shouted urgently as he caught sight of the dark shapes above him. Without waiting to see if the policeman was following, Alex hurried up the slope. He was almost there when the young officer overtook him, brushing past and stopping abruptly a few feet short of the small group.
Ziggy was still hunkered down beside the woman's body, his shirt plastered to his slim torso with a mixture of snow and sweat. Weird and Mondo stood behind him, arms folded across their chests, hands tucked in their armpits, heads thrust down between their raised shoulders. They were only trying to stay warm in the absence of coats, but they presented an unfortunate image of arrogance.
"What's going on here, then, lads?" the policeman asked, his voice an aggressive attempt to stamp authority in spite of the greater weight of numbers arrayed against him.
Ziggy pushed himself wearily to his feet and shoved his wet hair out of his eyes. "You're too late. She's dead."
Chapter 2
Nothing in Alex's twenty-one years had prepared him for a police interrogation in the middle of the night. TV cop shows and movies always made it look so regimented. But the very disorganization of the process was somehow more nerve-wracking than military precision would have been. The four of them had arrived at the police station in a flurry of chaos. They'd been hustled off the hill, bathed in the strobing blue lights of panda cars and ambulances, and nobody seemed to have any clear idea of what to do with them.
They'd stood under a streetlamp for what felt like a very long time, shivering under the frowning gaze of the constable Alex had summoned to the scene and one of his colleagues, a grizzled man in uniform with a scowl and a stoop. Neither officer spoke to the four young men, though their eyes never strayed from them.
Eventually, a harassed-looking man huddled into an overcoat that looked two sizes too big for him slithered over to them, his thin-soled shoes no match for the terrain. "Lawson, Mackenzie, take