Gordon Pirie's shift had been over for an hour, but he'd stayed around the office after midnight talking to the blonde policewoman who worked on Ralph Slater's team and who was three years older than he was, wondering if he should ask her out. He was too new to the job to realise that she was surreptitiously involved with Sergeant Thomson whose divorce papers had come though only a month before. She recognised and even appreciated the young recruit's interest and chattered to him amiably while she typed up her reports. He took the hint when she pointed out that he was getting unpaid overtime and should either be home in his bed or in the back room of the County Bar whose rear alleyway door was always open, no matter the hour, to off-shift policemen.
He got his hat from the stand and adjusted it self-consciously, struggled into his still-new coat and went down the corridor towards the fire-door which led to the front office. Before he pushed through, he could hear raised voices out at the reception desk and when he opened the door, a barrage of noise erupted. Close to the front entrance, a man was bawling at the top of his voice, while two policemen were trying to calm him down by the time honoured method of getting him in a head-lock and bending him forward, one arm up behind his back, so that his head almost touched his knees.
At the desk a woman in a faded grey coat was screaming as loudly as the pinioned man was, her shrewish face screwed up and red from the effort. A drop of saliva spat out from a mouth which showed long stained teeth. She was using words which Gordon Pirie had heard many a time, but had rarely used himself. Beside her, two small children in dirty fake-fur-lined anoraks were crying almost loud enough to drown their mother out.
"That's the last time I bail you out," she screamed. "Ungrateful shite," she screeched. "Just you wait 'til I get you home.
"Aye, well just don't bother your arse next time, bitch that you are," the man bawled back, still struggling against the two policemen. "And get your fuckin' hands off me you shower of bastards." He lashed out with his heel and kicked fresh air, but on the back swing, his heel caught one of his captors right on the shin. From where he stood Gordon heard the crack and he winced in sympathy.
"Get off me you swines," he snarled.
"Aye, leave the wee bastard alone," the woman shrieked. "He's not worth the bother."
"See you, you ugly bitch. You're nothin' but a po-faced shrew like your mother."
"Don't you bring my mother into this." She turned to the snivelling children. "That's your granny he's talking about, God rest her soul. Have you ever heard the likes? Just don't yous listen to him."
Gordon stood bemused, watching the tussle as the small man in the greasy donkey jacket and outsize navvy's tackety boots writhed and twisted like a cat in a sack while the two big policemen tried to get a firm grip of him, one of them still hopping on one foot. Bobby Thomson, behind the desk, was trying to keep the smile from his face.
"Domestic bliss," he remarked jovially, whereupon the woman rounded on him.
"Just you shut it. He never did anything wrong," she hooted, diverting her wrath at Bobby, who merely shrugged and failed to keep his face straight.
Just at that moment, from down the other corridor, another blast of noise erupted. The sound of a man shouting hoarsely came reverberating up the passage, followed by a loud, violent banging. Gordon turned round just as the man's voice rose to a yammering scream.
"I thought this would be a quiet night," Bobby Thomson said with a long-suffering sigh.
"I suppose that's another one you've been kicking lumps out of, you big bastards," the woman yelled.
Down at the cells, the shouting rose to a crescendo and the furious hammering on the door resounded up the passageway.
"Here, son," Bobby said. He reached behind him to the green board and unhooked a tangled bunch of keys which he slung onto the desktop. "Away and see what's eating him. Tell him if he doesn't shut up and get to sleep I'll come down and give him something to shout about."
"Aye, that's typical of you lot," the woman shouted. "Folk that never did you any harm. You should be out looking for the nutter that's killing those bairns, instead of picking up decent folk just because they've had a wee drink." She turned to the ongoing struggle at the door.
"Hey Hughie, stop your nonsense and get yourself home before I take my hand off your face."
Gordon stood with the keys in his hands, wondering what to do. Bobby glared at him and told him to get moving.
"But I'm just going off..." Gordon began to protest, but stopped when the sergeant simply stared him down. Bobby's moustache was beginning to bristle. The young man turned and went down the corridor towards the cells where the racket was almost deafening in the enclosed, narrow space. He followed the sound and stood outside the metal door.
Inside, hardly muffled by the thick steel, he could hear the prisoner screaming incoherently. There was a loud thump and the door quivered on its hinges. The young policeman flipped back the cover on the peephole and put a wary eye up close to the door. There was nothing to be seen. The cell was pitch dark, but the man's screams soared upwards in a harsh cacophony. Something hit the door again, making it ring like an anvil. He rattled the key in the lock and gave it two turns to the right. The mortice snicked back and he pulled the door open.
At first there was nothing to be seen. The overhead light, which should have been on continuously, was out. The hard cot against the wall was empty. In the corner next to the re-inforced window-grate, the prisoner was bawling dementedly, and from the sound of it, he was thrashing on the floor.
He kept the door open with his foot, letting the wan light from the corridor shine against the wall of the cell while his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness. He snaked a hand on to the outside wall and checked the old brass switch. It was in the on position.
"What's going on?" he called out.
"Keep away from me," the man screeched, the first coherent words Gordon had heard from him. "Keep away for the love of Christ." Something moved in the far corner and rolled in the gloom towards the cot. There was not enough light to see what it was, but he got the vague impression of a man's form writhing on the floor.
"What's all the noise about?" the young policeman asked, stepping forward. He crossed to the wall and hunkered down beside the hunched shape. As soon as he touched him, the man lashed out with a fist and caught Gordon a sharp crack on the cheek.
"Keep away from me. Get." the man squawked. He was kicking and struggling. One foot hit the side of the cot with a thud and his head rapped against the cold tiles of the wall. All the time he kept repeating his demands to be left alone.
"Hey, hold on," Gordon said. The blow on the cheek had made his eye water and he could feel the flush of heat spread round to his ear. "Come on now. Get a hold of yourself."
Behind him, the heavy door swung very slowly until it clanged against the post. The light faded to a deep gloom. Through the thick and dirty glass on the cross-hatched window, there was hardly any light at all from the nearest street lamp. Gordon groped forward in the dark and felt the man's shoulders, They were shivering violently as if a shock of high voltage was running through him.
"Come on and I'll help you up."
He pulled at the man who jerked back as if he'd been scalded.
"No. Oh please, no," he screamed. "Don't touch me. Keep your filthy hands off me. You're a fucking devil."
"No, no, it's alright. I'm a policeman."
Gordon hadn't heard about the arrest that day. He didn't know why the man was in jail. He assumed he was a drunk who'd been hauled in from the street or one of the benches at the Cenotaph grounds. He also thought the man might be suffering from the DT's, although he'd never seen that happen, only heard about it. He wondered if he should go back and tell the sergeant.
Ignoring the man's frantic writhing, he grabbed him under the armpits. "Come on man, get up," He tried to lift the fellow, bending right down over the slumped form, when a foul smell suddenly filled the cell. At first Gordon thought the reek was coming from the man on the floor and he drew back, disgusted, throat gagging.
"Dirty bugger, have you shit yourself?" he gasped through the throat-puckering stench.
He let the man fall to the ground, turned away, almost retching.
Beneath him, the man was moaning and blubbering. By now the words were all jumbled up and incomprehensible. Gordon dived a hand into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief his mother had pressed into a neat square. He clamped it over his face.
Then the room got colder. It wasn't like a draught, or a breeze from an open window. In one quick moment of time, the temperature of the cell simply plummeted. Gordon breathed in through his mouth and he felt the sharp glacial air catch in his lungs.
"What the hell?" he mumbled though the handkerchief. The cold was so intense it was already numbing his fingers and nipping at his ears. He straightened up, eyes widening, trying to see in the dark, when something moved in the corner just to the right of the door.
"Eh?" he said. For some reason he couldn't quite understand, his whole body was instantly singing with unaccountable tension. He whirled round, trying to make out the movement. Just at his feet, the man whimpered. Gordon took two steps.
"Don't." the man blubbered. "Stay away. Oh please, get away from here."
Gordon thought the prisoner was talking to him. He half turned towards the man when his peripheral vision caught a sudden movement in the gloom. The blackness just reached out to him, a shadow that simply expanded out of the darkness. Before he had time to flinch, it elongated with rippling speed and seized him by the neck with such force he heard his own larynx collapse.
A muted squawk of sound was forced out of his mouth as the pain tore across his throat.
Then he was in the air. His feet came right off the ground as he was thrown backwards by an immense force. The darkness whirled around him, cutting off every dim ray of light. The grip on his throat was so fierce he couldn't breathe, and he felt his eyes begin to bulge with the unbelievable pressure inside his head. A hot metal taste of blood filled his mouth. Something else popped in his neck and a jagged pain danced down to his shoulder, followed by an immediate warm, wet flow.
The young policeman's hat flew off and hit the wall and his handcuffs sailed from his pocket to jangle to the floor. The heel of his boot struck the man on the floor on the side of the head, but the policeman did not notice that. He was still travelling upwards in the dark. He felt himself turned, still in mid air and something else took hold of him by the chest and a vast pressure squeezed at him. It felt as if he was being gripped in an enormous, relentless vice which was squashing him flat.
Everything went in ultra-slow motion, on the crest of the sudden tidal wave of fright-induced adrenalin flow. Gordon heard the door close with a low clang so deep it was like a vibration of a monstrous gong. Just in front of his face, unseen in the perfect darkness, something snarled, low and feral and guttural. He was still rising through the air, too frozen to struggle, when he was slammed against the wall. His head went whiplashing back against the glass and one of the tiny, inch-thick panes in the heavy grid cracked. A sickening nausea swelled and rolled in the back of his head and an unbelievable ripping pain tore into his back between his shoulder blades.
Force of the blow expelled the air from his lungs, forcing it past the enormous pressure on his throat to come out in a cough of blood which spurted down his nose and sprayed from between his teeth.
The pressure on his neck vanished and he felt his body sag downwards. The grip on his ribs squeezed once, with ferocious, incomprehensible force, then let go.
Completely dazed, Gordon hung there in the dark, twisting in a sea of hurt which swelled higher and higher, gaining in intensity. Beneath him, his legs kicked out in a palsied frenzy, though, bewilderingly, he felt no pain there. Their spastic dance, however, raised the white hot pain in his back to an incandescent flare. There was something else wrong, but he couldn't understand what it was. Something terrible wrong which he was unable to fathom in the shock of the violence and pain. In front of him, something moved with a scuttering sound. The darkness expanded again and in that dark, a huge bare eye flicked open and stared into his. Even through the blood which clogged his nostrils, he could smell the putrid breath as the darkness exhaled in a ravening growl so deep it shivered the walls. The eye fixed him with its dead stare and he felt as if he was being sucked into it as it grew larger as it grew closer.
The shrieking hurt in his back rived right through him. He couldn't breathe. His chest twitched helplessly and every hitch sent a knife of pain through his chest. The young man's whole body went into a spasm of trembling and as he shuddered uncontrollably, up against the wall. He felt the rending tear of skin and flesh inside him. Gordon's hand came up reflexively, inadvertently brushing against something that was hard and slickly smooth protruding from between his ribs. His hand scrabbled there on the wet fabric of his tunic, his mind reeling in confusion while inside his brain synapses and dendrites were sparking away with urgent unbelievable messages.
He was impaled on the wall. Something had come out of the dark and lifted him up and hung him up on a spike.
In that strange slow motion, stretched-out instant of time, he realised what had happened and the enormity of it dawned on his stunned mind.
The dark had moved. It had shoved him onto a spike and put it right through his body. The realisation of imminent death washed over him in a flow as cold as the air of the cell. In that moment his brain stopped its jangling dance and an icy calm spread thorough him. Beneath his waist, his nerveless legs, cut off from the command centre at the top of his spine by the curve of metal driven through from shoulders to breastbone, continued to dance and quiver on their own. Already the pain was beginning to fade, as Gordon Pirie, brain starved of oxygen because of the enormous loss of blood, began to lose consciousness.
"I'm dying," he heard his own voice, as if from far away, though the words were inside his head. His shattered larynx and the crushing force on his windpipe had made breathing almost impossible. His abdomen still bellowed jerkily and he could hear the hiss of air escape through the gaping hole in the front of his soaked tunic.
"I've only just started my job and I'm going to die," he thought distantly.
Just in front of his face, the enormous, putrid yellow eye glared at him with a light of its own. The absence of any pupil made it look eerily blind, but the young constable, dangling there in the dark, could feel the frigid malevolence in its stare.
It continued to watch in utter coldness as the life faded from the boy's eyes.
The last things Gordon Pirie heard was the odd drumming of his heels against the wall, the steady hoarse animal sounds of the dark thing's breathing and the whimpering gurgle of the man on the floor.
The thing continued to watch, glaring right down behind the young rookie's eyes, searching for the crossover moment when all life became extinct.
For a while there was complete silence in the cold dark. Very slowly, the black shape pulled itself down from where it hung on the wall. The great eye closed. The shadow flowed back from the cot in a strange liquid motion, and oozed towards the man on the floor.
Michael O'Day screamed in panic. He was not quite sure what had happened. Something had hit him on the head and the blow had knocked him against the wall, giving him the merciful respite of a momentary daze. He blinked his eyes, feeling the cold steal into his bones, and then the dark came rolling towards him.
"No," he said. "Get away. Leave me alone."
He shrank back against the wall, eyes wide and terror stricken. The shadow flowed over his legs, swelled, then shrunk. Michael O'Day opened his mouth to shriek his fear and the dark elongated towards him and flowed between his lips. He tried to clench his teeth shut, but his jaw was forced open so wide he could hear the muscles creak. An intense cold, even deeper than the now arctic chill inside the cell, flowed into him, a glacier of ice. Michael O'Day gagged, twitched violently just once, and was still.
The dead silence fell like a weight while the man lay, hands held up like claws in front of his face, eyes staring, face contorted in a frozen gape. He lay like that without a sound, without a movement for quite some time.
But after a while, in the dim light of the cell, Michael O'Day's pale Irish eyes blinked once.
He grunted as he turned and shoved himself to his feet. Without a sound, he crossed the cell to the door and pushed it open. The feeble light, a single bulb overhead encased in a heavy mesh, briefly illuminated the wall at the far end of the small room.
Gordon Pirie was hanging against the wall. His lifeless eyes stared out from above the spattering of blood at his nose and chin. His tunic was tented out in the front of his chest, forcing his radio to twist to the side on his lapel. From a gash in the fabric, the upward curved ratcheted spine of the window opening protruded like a blunt sabre. The young man's police boots dangled two feet from the floor. His eyes were unfocussed, but they seemed to be peering onto the far distance.
The thing that wore the body of Michael O'Day closed the door and locked it with a quick turn of the key. It turned, staying close to the wall, avoiding the light, until it got to the mortuary. The door was open, and in the shadows, it slipped inside. A moment later, there was a jangling of keys and a quick snap. The door opened at the back of the station and a dark shape let itself out into the huddle of outbuildings. Down from the station, past College Walk, the shape merged with the shadows of the rhododendrons of Cenotaph Park.
The pale eyes glinted with an inner light which gave them a yellow tinge in the deep shade. It remembered this place. It had been here before.
She woke with such a start that her cry of alarm catapulted Jack out of sleep. For a second, there was a rush of disorientation.
"Whassamater," he blurted. Lorna was struggling in his embrace, squirming in panic. He tried to move but his arm had gone to sleep and was caught between the girl and the back of the couch. He shifted position and pulled free, still dozily confused. Immediately pins and needles sparked painfully down the length of his arm.
The effort of Lorna's attempt to use her unwanted perception had exhausted her and the effect had appalled her. She had slumped back in the settee, rigid with panic and he'd put his arm round her to hold her close again. She hadn't said a word for more than twenty minutes and he waited until the tuning-fork vibration of her body had faded and she'd started breathing slowly again. He still held her close, gently rubbing her arm with his hand in slow, soothing strokes. She mumbled something and he bent his head only to discover she was fast asleep.
Jack wondered whether to carry her into her room and tuck her up in bed, but dismissed the notion on the grounds that she might wake up while he did so and wrongly suspect his intent, and because of the possibility she might wake up and get another fright when she found herself alone. Her breathing deepened and she snuggled comfortably into him. A few moments later Jack dozed off.
When her cry woke him, he didn't know where he was. His eyes were gritty and the back of his throat dry. The pins and needles were stinging under the skin of his arm and his shoulder was stiff. Lorna was writhing to pull free.
"What's happening?" he asked again.
"Get away. Oh please get away from me!" Her cry was deafening, so close to his ear. Jack twisted round and despite the numbness in his arm, he took a hold of the girl by the shoulders. The shivery vibration transmitted itself to him. She was staring straight ahead, eyes wide and unblinking.
"No. Get away," she cried again.
"Hey. Calm down," Jack soothed. "It's alright."
The girl jerked back and her eyes blinked, then fluttered quickly, as if she had just noticed his presence.
She shook her head, obviously bewildered, still shuddering with powerful emotion. "Where? What?" she asked in quick succession.
"It's okay. I think you were dreaming," he said softly.
"Dreaming?" she seemed as confused as he'd been when he woke. Then her eyes widened hugely again.
"Yes. I saw it. I saw it again, Jack." She drew her breath in a backward gasp. "It's hunting again. Oh, it was terrible." She turned into him and grabbed the front of his shirt.
"It's killed someone. It threw him against the wall. Oh, he was in such pain. It got him and lifted him off the floor and he hit the wall and the pain went right through him and he's dead."
The words came out as if she was living the scene, feeling the pain.
"Where was it, Lorna. Did you recognise anything?"
She closed her eyes, trying to see back into her dream.
"It was dark. Not high. The man came in. There's a heavy door and the walls are white. But the door closed and it was dark. Too dark to see. It's a place I've never seen before. Oh, it's awful, I don't know and I can't tell you. I'm useless."
"No you're not," Jack said, though in truth he wished that if she did have some special perception, it would be little more helpful. "We'll get there."
Lorna eased herself out from his embrace, first loosing her grasp on the front of his shirt. Her grip had been so strong that she'd torn one of the buttons off the fabric. It fell between them and slid into the gap between the cushions.
"I must have fallen asleep."
"Yes. You were sound. It's getting late. Maybe you should go to bed." Jack bent to scoop the scattered photographs together and jammed them in the folder. He stood and reached for his jacket.
"Where are you going?"
"I'd better be off. It's pretty late, or early, depending on your point of view. You've had a rough day."
"Please don't go," she said, pushing her way out of the settee to put herself between him and the door. "Please stay with me. I'm frightened. It knows about me. I can feel it. I've got nobody else to help me." Her eyes were wide again and glistening with the promise of tears. The looked so slight and childlike as he looked down at her that Jack felt a powerful, and very masculine surge of appeal.
He hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, sure. It's not as if I've got work in the morning," he said. She took his hand and held it tightly in a meaningful gesture of thanks and pulled him back down to the settee. Then, quite impulsively, she leaned forward, tilted her head and kissed him quickly on the cheek. Just as quickly, she blushed furiously. Quite taken aback, Jack felt his own colour rising and he grinned stupidly, feeling for the first in a long time, like an awkward schoolboy. Lorna pulled away and went into the kitchen. He heard the click as she switched on the kettle. He took the opportunity to use the telephone and spoke to Ralph Slater for a few minutes, giving him what little information he had, convinced it would be no help at all. A few minutes later, she returned with a tray of milky coffee and some biscuits.
Then, without hesitation, and with surprising calmness, she told him exactly what she had seen in her nightmare.
It was close to two in the morning when two-man squad pulled up outside the front door of the station and the second drunk of the night was hauled in, a big, belligerent and red faced man who roared even louder than the previous miscreant and took a swing at one of the policemen, though he only succeeded in knocking his hat off.
"Hanging off the edge of the quay," the policeman said. "Can't get a word of sense out of him. He'd have drowned if he hadn't huckled him."
The two-man crew pinned the big fellow up against the desk and with deft expertise, they unbuckled his belt and drew it through the loops.
"Gerrof," the big man spluttered. They held him tight.
"Alright, McFettridge," Bobby said. "Another free room for the night and your wife round crying her eyes out in the morning."
He reached behind him absently, to unsnag the keys from the hook, but his fingers only scrabbled against the baize on the board.
"Where did I put them?" he asked nobody in particular, scratching his head before he remembered.
"Damn, I gave them to that new boy. Idiot must have gone home with them in his pocket."
The first stramash at the front counter had taken a further ten minutes to resolve. It had almost resulted in the small, dirty and aggressive man being hauled back to the cells, but finally his wife had taken him by the scruff of the neck, after giving Bobby Thomson and anybody else in the vicinity the rough edge of her particularly scabrous tongue, and led her husband off into the night, with the two sniffling children trailing behind.
The duty sergeant cursed under his breath, swearing he'd give the new recruit a real going over in the morning. He unlocked the cabinet and fumbled about in the mess of odds and ends until he found the spare set, and handed them to one of the men now involved in holding up their captive who now looked to be in a state of drunken collapse.
"Sling him in four," he instructed "I've got his particulars from the last time." The men started towards the cells with the man slung between them.
"Oh, while you're down there, check in on number six. The weirdo was making a right racket earlier on."
He bent down to fill in the drunk and incapable form while the others dragged the drunk down the corridor.
Stuart Bulloch, who had been showing Gordon Pirie the ropes on the morning they'd been sent round to the pathway beneath the castle's balustrade and had come across the body of Annie Eastwood on the rocks, helped ease the man down on the cot. All the fight had gone out of him and as soon as his head touched the cold tile roll which served for a pillow, his snores reverberated round the cell. Stuart turned the lock, flicked the spy-hole just to make sure, then slapped it closed. As he turned down the corridor, his regular partner asked him if he wanted a cup of tea, but didn't wait for an answer and headed for the muster room.
The light was off in the opposite cell when Stuart checked the peephole, a natural precaution in the case of potentially violent prisoners, and in his experience, they could all turn out to be fighters.
He popped the lock and shoved the door open. The dim light shone against the shape on the wall.
At first, Stuart thought the prisoner was standing on the cot, trying to peer out of the almost opaque glass.
He walked forward.
"Come on down," he said, when something clicked in his brain and the reality of what he was seeing hit him like a blow.
Gordon Pirie stared into infinity. His mouth was sagging open. Blood saturated his sagging chin and there was a great dripping wash of it down the front of his tunic. The curve of metal from the widow jutted out and up.
Stuart's mouth opened and closed several times. He was trying to say something, but no words would come out.
He backed off slowly until his backside came up hard against the wall and he got such a fright he jumped almost a foot into the air. Without a word he turned round and dashed out of the cell, using the doorpost as a fulcrum to swing him up the corridor. His shoulder jarred against the far wall, though he would not feel any pain for another hour at least. He battered the swing door open and came hurtling out into the front office.
Bobby Thomson looked up.
"Is he okay?"
Steward Bulloch stood there, still unable to make his mouth say the words, pointing behind him like a pale-faced mime artist.
"What the hell's up with you?" Bobby asked him irritably. "I've had enough fun and games for one night."
Finally Stuart got his voice back. "It's that new fellow. Gordon." he blurted.
"Aye, him that's going to get my toe up his arse in the morning."
"It's.." Stuart started, stalled, tried again. " He's...oh fuck sergeant, he's dead."
The fun and games went on all night.
Jack Fallon got a call from John McColl at three in the morning. It was the second time he'd been jarred awake that night. His neck protested creakingly as soon as he moved. Lorna was huddled at the far end of the couch, snug under the eiderdown she'd brought through from her bedroom. She was snoring very softly. His duvet has slipped to the floor and his back ached from the twisted position he'd assumed sometime in the past hour. As he reached for the phone, to answer it before she woke, he was trying to hold the thought that had sprung to his mind in the split second before sleep vanished.
"I tried your sister. She gave me an earful for waking the wee fellow," John said.
Jack rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "She'll blame me. What's up?"
"The shit's hit the fan Jack. Yon Irishman's just killed that new boy."
"Hold on John. What are you talking about?"
"That O'Day fella. The one from the church tower? He's escaped. Bobby Thomson in an awful state. He sent the rookie down to shut him up. There was a bit of a stramash at the front counter with a couple of drunks and by the time it was sorted out Bobby forgot about the boy. Gordon Pirie, that's his name."
"I remember him. Nice lad. So what happened?"
"Ralph's down there at the moment. The place is a bloody shambles, a real slaughterhouse. Young Pirie's hanging on the window. Christ alone knows how he got up there, but he's got a bloody piece of metal from the window right through him. Cowie's down here and he's going berserk. He put out a note to HQ that he'd got the killer. Now he's lost him."
"So where's O'Day?"
"Who the hell knows? He's not here. The cell door was locked. I reckon we were wrong Jack. O'Day didn't look as if he could blow his nose without falling over, but it had to be him. How he got that boy up in that spike is anybody's guess, but believe me, it went right through him. It's sticking out of his chest."
"No John. It wasn't him. Believe me it wasn't, but you have to find him." Jack remembered what Lorna had told him. A dark place with white walls and a heavy metal door. Where else could it have been but the old cell down at the station? He cursed himself for not seeing it.
But he had seen something else.
"Listen John, I'm still grounded until I hear otherwise. But it doesn't mean I'm crippled. As soon as you get clear there, find the keyholder for the Town Hall. I need him round there, and I'll need you to come team handed."
In the split second between sleep and wakefulness, when the phone was ringing somewhere in the distance, Jack Fallon had got a flash of his own extra sensory perception. He'd been unable to dredge up the information before, but again sleep had unlocked the filing cabinet of his brain, and the picture had come clear. He'd grown up in this town and he'd seen every building from every angle. The elephant and castle coat of arms had helped direct his mind to the place Lorna had seen when she had closed her eyes and used her weird power. It was a place with a circular window high on the gable wall, with wire mesh over it to keep the pigeons out.
Lorna was still asleep when Jack hung up. He debated whether to wake her, decided against it, and instead wrote a quick message on a page of his notebook and left it on the coffee table next to the settee. He washed his face quickly with cold water from the kitchen tap, then put on his jacket and coat, knowing he must look rumpled and scruffy. He also needed a shave, but that was the last thing on his mind. Just as he went out the front door, closing it as quietly as possible, Lorna turned over in her sleep, mumbled something, then wriggled into a more comfortable position. She did not wake up.
She was still asleep at five when Jack got back from the Town Hall. The caretaker had been very ill-tempered about being woken in the small hours and even more irate when John McColl told him he'd have to accompany the officers round to the old sandstone building on Kirk Street. Grudgingly, he opened the front door. The night was cold and overcast. No moon or stars were visible and a bone-chilling wind was whipping round the corners and moaning in the telephone wires. Jack arrived just as the caretaker turned the key. John McColl had brought six policemen who stood around in the cold, swinging their arms and blowing into their hands. They nodded to Jack, but said nothing.
Inside the elegant marble staircase with its carved wood bannister swept up to the town chambers where the councilmen debated with strenuous argument the minutiae of the Burgh's business and still managed to louse everything up. Jack ignored that and went past the provost's office and through a back corridor to the disused police court where as a nervous rookie himself, he'd first given evidence in a breach of the peace case. Beyond that, there was an even narrower back staircase which twisted upwards. At the top, an old green door barred further progress. John McColl took the keys from the grumbling caretaker and told him to go back downstairs. The man protested some more but all eight policemen stared him down and he clumped back down the stairs, muttering under his breath.
The door creaked open and immediately Jack smelled old paper and mouldering feathers. He and John McColl moved in first and Jack felt a twist of tension as his body prepared itself for fight. He clicked the light-switch down and a fluorescent bar on the store-room wall stuttered fitfully before coming on. It was covered with the dust of years and its light struggled to chase the shadows. The room was filled almost to the ceiling with boxes bearing stickers with the town's fanciful coat of arms. A narrow passage between the stacks led away towards the gable. John asked one of the uniformed men for a torch and sprayed light in front of him as he followed the lane.
Beyond the boxes they found a fairly large space where a storeman of old had come to have a fly drink. A couple of dusty vodka bottles stood against the far wall where the circular air-vent had been barred with wire mesh which was now jagged and torn.
The body of Chalkie Black, his white hair like a dim halo in the wan light hung motionless, his one trainer trailing down close to the floor, brown with dried blood. His head was twisted to the side by the piece of electrical cable conduit that had been torn and bent out from the staples which held it against the wall, and spiked through his neck, just under the jaw. Beside him the two others were suspended in the same fashion, except that Votek Visotsky had no neck to impale. The steel tube went through his left shoulder and jutted out on his back close to his spine. One of his arms was missing.