Two nights after little Timmy Doyle went missing from the balcony high up in Latta Court Jack Fallon was no further forward. Superintendent Ronald Cowie was piling up the pressure and in one vitriolic session Jack had almost offered Cowie advice on where he could position the investigation with regards to his own person. He did not know what held him back, except for the fact that he had promised Angus McNicol he'd do his best, and he knew if Cowie was put in practical charge, then nothing would ever be solved. he was a politician more than a policeman, a rubber of shoulders, a shaker of hands, and a lifter of the left trouser leg into the bargain.
Cissie Doyle was by now heavily sedated. Ralph Slater had been right about the fingerprints. There were none except those of the family on the balcony. The scrape marks on the concrete were a small mystery. They looked fresh enough, but could have been caused my anything, including the swing gantry of the maintenance machine mainly used by window cleaners, but not this week. That had been checked. The houses upstairs and below had been searched thoroughly by the teams organised by John McColl. Nobody had been able to object to that. The door-to-door men had uncovered half a kilo of cannabis, a full barrel of Ardenmill whisky - and how they had got that up in the lift nobody knew - along with the usual mix of stolen hi-fi equipment, televisions and video recorders. All of that was noted for future reference. Jack told the men not to waste time on peripherals. The baby was the object. A few folk in Latta Court breathed a sigh of relief, although the temporary owner of the half kilo was rushed to hospital four days later with blood frothing from a hole in his ribs after a stabbing incident down on Quay Street, possibly as a result of non-payment for goods delivered.
On the other side of town, not half a mile from where Jack Fallon lived in Cargill Farm Cottage, a group of women were on their third round of drinks in a terrace house on Overtoun Lane. Most of them were very merry by ten o'clock.
Lorna Breck was still red with embarrassment over some of the things she'd seen and handled in the past hour.
"It's all part of your education," Gemma Conroy had said when she'd stopped giggling. One of the other women had shrieked with laughter. "Once you've felt one, you've felt them all."
"If they all feel like that, then I never want to feel another one," Lorna replied in her soft Highland accent. This time everybody fell about. Somebody spilled a glass of wine down the front of her dress and went off into a fit of high pitched hysterics.
"Don't worry dear. Nothing's better than the real thing," Mrs McCluskie had said, planting a beefy hand on her knee, and that really astounded Lorna. Mrs McCluskie, Gemma's next-door neighbour, was nearly sixty years old, and she looked as if the thought of such a thing would never have crossed her mind. The grey haired woman had chuckled, sending ripples down her wobbly fat frame. She picked the plastic object up from the table, thumbed the switch and the peals of laughter started up again.
"If my Bert had something like this, maybe we wouldn't be in separate beds," she announced.
"No. You'd be in a hospital bed," somebody chipped in, the squeals started up again.
Lorna felt her face redden again. The party had been fun. Gemma, her elder cousin had organised it for the neighbours, the kind of party where men were refused admission. The girl with the case had opened it on the table and it had started with lacy nighties and silky briefs. Then, after a couple of glasses of wine, when everybody was feeling fine and dandy, she'd brought out the knick-knacks which had brought the house down as they had passed from hand to hand.
Lorna was the only one of them who wasn't married. She was twenty six years old. She'd come to live in Levenford only six months before, and brought with her the lilting softness of the west highlands. Living in a town this size had taken some getting used to, and she still found herself taking a wrong turn on the maze of alleys and vennels that radiated off River Street. It was different from the farm where she'd grown up, different from the small country town where she'd gone to school. She had a delicate, oval face and a childlike pert nose smattered with freckles and hair the colour of dark amber. The most striking thing about her was her wide grey eyes, which, on cold winter mornings took on the sheen of brushed steel, bright and sparkling under curved brows.
"Oh, don't let them kid you, Lorny," one of the women said. Cathy Galt had her fair hair drawn up high on her head. She was a blowsy-looking woman who worked most nights down in Mac's Bar, a rough and ready establishment at the end of River Street, and was tough enough to throw any of the stragglers out through the swing doors and into the night. She had, however, a heart of gold. Lorna had treated her as an honorary aunt since she'd come down on the West Highland line to take up her new job in the library.
"If I ever saw a man with something like that, I'd divorce Campbell tomorrow and never let the fellow out of my sight." she said. "For the love of God, it's twice the size of anything I ever saw."
"And you've seen plenty, I suppose?" Agnes McCann, Cathy's sister in law asked archly. As she did, Lorna gave a little start. She'd been looking at the woman and all of a sudden, she felt a small wave of dizziness shiver through her. For a second, the voices faded away, leaving her alone in a cocoon of isolation. In that moment, everything went still, except for Agnes. As Lorna watched, the dark-haired woman's eyes opened wide and her mouth opened wider, so wide Lorna could see the fillings in her back teeth. The colour drained away from her face and her hands came up and grabbed onto her own hair. In the eerie, momentary silence, Lorna could sense that the woman was screaming. She jerked back, and the bubble burst. The voices came babbling in again. Lorna blinked and the expression on Agnes' face was back to normal, a lazy smile drawn on her face.
"I had my share before Campbell made an honest woman of me," Cathy shot back. "Though if I'd known then what I know now, I'd still be having my share."
"I thought size didn't matter," Gemma said.
"Och, it's only men who say that. I never heard a woman swear on that in all my life."
Lorna felt herself squirm. The odd feeling had come and gone in the flick of an eye. Maybe it had been the wine, she told herself. Somebody laughed raucously and next to her somebody else grabbed the buzzing thing and flicked the off switch. Lorna gave a sigh of relief. She was not an innocent, though she was hardly experienced in these things. She had lost her virginity to James Blair only six months ago, and it had been a very nice experience, but nothing to shake the world. They'd managed it several times since then, when his mother was out of the house, and it had still been pleasant. Then when he'd talked about getting married, something she was certainly willing to consider, old Maggie Blair had put her foot firmly down. Despite the fact that James was twenty eight years old, she was still the boss as far as his life was concerned, and while she didn't mind him having some hanky panky with a farm-girl from the sticks, and a catholic to boot, there was no chance of her becoming a mother in law to one of them. Maggie Blair was a firm believer in the protestant supremacy. She went down to Castlebank Church every Sunday and listened to William Simpson's sermons and then thanked God for not making her a papist.
The engagement was over in weeks before it had even begun. Lorna had sensed the coldness when she had gone round to James' house on a Friday night when they had planned to go to the cinema. Old Maggie had been abrupt, eying the girl from her position of authority, the big easy chair next to the fire. She'd been knitting her boy a thick winter pullover and her needles had clicked in staccato anger. On the way home from the film, she'd asked what was wrong and he'd blurted out his mother's views.
Lorna asked him straight out what he planned to do about it. He'd hesitated and looked blank, as if puzzled at the possibility that there was anything he could do.
"Like what?" he'd asked.
"Like leaving home? Or even just deciding what you want in your life."
He'd turned to her, eyes still blank. She'd recognised it for what it was and immediately regretted losing her virginity to somebody who probably still got his mother to scrub his back. She'd turned on her heel, grey eyes flashing iron in the light of the street lamp, and she'd never seen him again.
Now, as she listened to the women talk about men, their men and just men in general, she recalled her own first time with a small feeling of regret. Certainly, James Blair had nothing to compare with the mechanical thing that had come out of the demonstrator's case. That had looked as if it had come from a horse. If she'd been presented with anything like that monster six months ago, she'd have screamed and run.
The demonstrator was packing up now, with all the orders clipped to a board. Lorna had bought a very pretty teddy, which was as bold as she could go in front of other folk, and even then, it had only been the cajoling of the older women that had made her do it. After the party rep had gone, somebody opened another bottle of wine. Old Mrs McCluskie had brought a half bottle of whisky out from her big black handbag and poured herself and Cathy a large measure each. She was telling her neighbour a particularly vivid joke about a man's anatomy, which Lorna heard with only half her attention until she realised it was not a joke. Mrs McCluskie was telling a story about herself. Lorna blushed again and wondered how women were able to talk so clinically about sex. She'd always believed that it was men who did that.
Cathy put on a tape and began pouring drink again. Somebody asked her what she had ordered from the rep and Cathy had given an exaggerated wink.
"Can't tell you, but it should put the old sparkle back into Sammy's eyes again."
"If you can get him awake, that is," Agnes put in.
"Oh, don't worry. I'll keep him awake all right," Cathy said, laughing. "My horoscope tells me it's my lucky week. I'm hoping it'll be my lucky night."
"Well Lorna can tell you that, can't you honey?" Gemma announced.
Lorna looked up. Her glass was still half full and Gemma took it away for a refill before she could protest.
"How about telling our fortunes?"
"Oh, I haven't brought my cards with me," Lorna said. Everybody in the room was looking at her, and it made her feel even more uncomfortable.
"What's this?" Agnes asked.
"Oh, Lorna reads the tarot. She's spot on."
"It's just a bit of fun," Lorna protested.
"And tea-leaves too," Gemma continued with hardly a pause.
"Is that right dear? " Mrs McCluskie beamed at her. "Could you do mine? I went to that woman down at Lochend last week and it cost a fortune, and she didn't tell me anything I didn't know already."
Lorna looked at her. The fat woman was beaming over the tops of her spectacles. Lorna remembered the phrase she'd used only a few moments before and it came back in the clarity of total recall. "There was me with my legs up round his neck and him going at it like a sewing machine and then I sneezed and the wee bugger went flying off the end of the bed. "
Lorna felt a laugh building up inside her as she looked at Mrs McCluskie and tried to imagine her in that position. She bit down on the laugh but couldn't disguise the smile. To hide it she said: "Yes, of course I will."
Half an hour later she was swirling the dregs round in the bottom of a teacup. She upended it quickly, letting the tea drain away then brought it back again. The leaves formed a complex pattern on the inside of the china. Mrs McCluskie drew herself closer, using her beefy forearms to jostle her large breasts into a comfortable position.
"What does it say then?"
Lorna took several deep slow breaths, getting herself into the right frame. She closed her eyes and let the darkness slide over her. Her breathing slowed a little further and then she could sense the little bit of the feeling that came when she concentrated. It always came with a tiny whine, like a bat squeak, just below the threshold of true hearing. It was a little pressure noise inside her head. The noise got only a little louder then faded out abruptly, leaving her in a little cone of dead silence. Behind her closed eyelids, the dark swirled around her and then it began to clear. She opened her eyes to look into the patterns, reaching for the vague impressions that sometimes came when she tried really hard. The brown constellation of dark tea-leaves swirled and then something happened that Lorna had never experienced before. A picture came flitting unbidden into her mind and
she saw
A woman with a walking stick, the kind which has a strap to keep it firmly attached to the forearm. The woman turned, unstrapped the stick and threw it into the air, turned again and came walking towards her, a big smile on her face.
flick
Two babies, a boy and a girl, side by side in a cot. Names came from nowhere. She knew who they were.
flick
A bundle of notes, too many to count, stacked on a table.
flick
A tall, tanned man with a white smile and thick greying hair coming through a door and into an old woman's arms. She knew his name.
The picture stopped without warning. The tea-leaf galaxy swum back into focus and Lorna blinked rapidly, bewildered, slightly shaken by the sudden sure knowledge, unable to comprehend just what had happened or how. Lorna took a deep breath. All of the woman sat looking at her, waiting expectantly.
"Well, what's it say, my dear?" Mrs McCluskie was leaning right over the table.
"You're going into hospital soon," she began. Somebody at the far end of the room drew in a breath. "But they will give you a new hip. You'll come out walking like a girl again."
"Och, nonsense dear. It's just a wee bit of arthritis. Nothing to worry about. To many exercises when I was younger," she said, nudging Cathy.
"Well, it's going to be fine. And you're going to come into some money. Quite a lot. And your daughter Pauline's just had a wee boy and a girl. No..." she paused and shook her head, eyes shut, remembering. "No. She's going to have her babies soon. Boy and a girl. That's for sure. Both of them healthy too. One of them named after you."
"Probably the boy," Cathy said. "That Pauline of yours isn't the full shilling." Everybody laughed.
"And your son Benny. He's coming home."
"What. My Benny? From Australia."
"Yes. He's coming home soon. He's got a tan and grey hair, Lorna went on. "And he's got some good news for you."
"My Benny coming home?" Mrs McCluskie asked again. She was snagged on that one point. "After all this time?"
She put her hands up to her face, nudging her glasses upwards. She drew them down again, and her eyes were sparkling. She glistened at Lorna.
"You wouldn't kid me on now, would you?"
Lorna raised her eyes, still puzzled. "No. I don't think so."
Gemma was looking at Lorna, eyebrows arched up in silent question. The girl fooled around with tarot cards and tea leaves and palm reading, always in a light-hearted way. Her predictions were always vague, never definite.
Old Mrs McCluskie was wiping her eyes. Beside Lorna another of the women was clamouring to have her fortune told. Lorna took the cup, turned it over, closed her eyes and took her breaths, trying to get herself down to that level again, where she could see.
The flickering scenes came in a rush, each a little vignette. The woman, a neighbour of Cathy, spread out on a carpet, morning sun streaming through the window. A shadow moving in through the door. the woman's face twisted in fright....the same woman stepping out of a big car, an expensive pair of high heels clicking on the pavement. A man, the same one who had been beside her on the floor out on the other side.... the two of them in a pool beside a white house, two fair haired girls splashing in the shadows.
Lorna started talking of good fortune, love and romance, wealth and sunshine. This time she kept it unspecified. She wasn't completely sure of what she was seeing when the patterns of leaves swirled out of focus. She found it just a little scary. Patricia Farmer, whose husband worked in the iron foundry and drank most of his wages on Friday and Saturday nights, tried to keep the smile off her face and failed. Everybody had seen the bruises behind the sun-glasses. They all cheered raucously.
It was just at that moment when Lorna gave a little shiver. She had been reaching for Agnes McCann's cup when a strange inside-out sensation twisted through her. It had happened only twice in her life, when she was in her early teens, just before she'd started bleeding. She hadn't even taken her deep breaths to concentrate. This time it simply swept right through her and over her like a cold wave. She felt her whole self stretched this way and that. All sound disappeared. She was gone into the darkness.
Opposite her, Cathy said: "What's wrong."
Lorna had started to slide to the side. Her eyes were sill wide open, almost alert. She fell against Gemma, seated next to her on the couch. A little gurgling sound escaped her throat.
"Hey, you nearly spilled my drink," Gemma protested, feigning annoyance. Lorna did not respond.
"What's the matter with her?" Mrs McCluskie asked, just as Lorna slid off the couch and slumped to the floor.
"Oh my God, the girl's fainted." the grey haired woman said, pushing her seat back from the table.
Gemma got down beside her and raised her head from the carpet.
"Lorna? Come on! What's wrong?"
The girl's eyes were still wide, but now they were staring blindly, like steel bearings, reflecting the light on the ceiling. She made a little coughing sound and then her whole body went rigid, hands clenched tight shut, ankles together, and she was shivering, as if an electric current was sizzling through her.
A few seconds later the shivering stopped and Lorna's muscles went slack. Cath and Gemma managed, between them, to get her up onto the couch again. Cath had a hand to the girl's forehead. It was clammy and cold. She was about to say something when Lorna's eyes closed and then snapped open again.
"Timmy?" she said very softly.
"Has anybody seen my Timmy?"
"What's she saying?" old Mrs McCluskie asked.
"I left my baby lying here," Lorna sang in a dreamy voice. "And went to gather blaeberries." She stopped, then began again almost immediately, speaking in a dreamy voice. "Fairies took him. Fairies took him away." She turned, eyes bright and sparkling, yet oddly blind. "Not fairies. Something stole him and he'll never come back again."
She close her eyes again and all of the woman around her watched in silence, Finally one of them asked again. "What on earth's wrong with her?"
"I don't know." Gemma said. "Maybe she's had too much wine. Can somebody get a cold cloth?"
Agnes McCann shifted in her seat, about to fetch the cloth when Lorna's hand shot out and grabbed her just above the elbow. Agnes yelped. "Ow. That hurts"."
Lorna's eyes flicked open again, eerily wide, glaring straight at Agnes.
"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home," she began, chanting, like a little girl in a schoolyard, skipping to the rhyme.
"Your house is on fire and your children are gone."
She blinked very slowly and a big tear formed in the corner of one eye, bubbled over and rolled down her cheek.
"They're burning. They're dying. Oh my sweet Jesus Christ let them out, let them go!" Lorna's words came out in a rising torrent. They ended in a screech.
Beside her, Gemma jerked back. Her hand had been on Lorna's left arm, while the girl's right had been straight out in front of her, still grasping Agnes McCann's elbow.
All of a sudden, it had felt as if Lorna's skin was on fire. The heat had sizzled into Gemma's fingers, as if she'd laid them on top of a hot stove.
"The baby in its cot. The two wee boys in their beds. They don't know. It's coming for them, coming in the dark. And the smoke, it's thick and dark and they can't breathe. Oh God, it's hot. It's down the chimney. He's lying in the flames and he's dead, and it's coming for them and they're going to burn. Oh, please. Oh mother of Christ! They can't wake up."
"Come on Lorna," Cathy snapped. She shook the girl by the shoulder. Under the dress she too could feel the heat.
"The girl's gone half daft," Mrs McCluskie said, but her face was slack and sick looking.
"No, it's an act," Patricia Farmer said. "Just to make us believe she can read our tea-leaves."
Just then, Gemma said: "Something's burning."
She sat upright and sniffed, then looked down. The fine fair hairs on Lorna's arm were beginning to curl. Her skin was a blotchy red. A blister was beginning to appear down the length of her forearm.
"Oh quick. Get a cloth," she bawled. Cathy dashed to the sink and ran a tap over a hand towel and threw it across. Gemma slapped the dripping cloth onto Lorna, covering her face and her arms. There was a hissing sound, like water steaming on a hot pan, and then steam, real steam billowed up from the towel.
Lorna jerked back as if she'd been slapped.
"What's happening?" she asked in a small voice. She looked groggy, as if still half asleep. "What's going on."
She looked round at the faces, all of them staring at her.
"Thought you were throwing a fit girl."
"And you're so hot," Gemma said. She reached out a hand to take Lorna's in her own. The heat was gone, but the blister still raised its long mark on her arm. "You were burning up."
"Burning?" Lorna asked. Her eyebrows came down in a frown of concentration. "There's something I must remember. Something..."
She seemed to come completely awake. Her eyes swept across the women in front of her, came to rest on Agnes McCann.
Lorna opened her mouth, tried to speak, but her voice was snagged in her throat. She made a little hitching movement and the words finally blurted out. "You have to go home, Agnes. Right this minute. It might not be too late."
"What do you mean?" the other woman started to ask.
"No time, oh please, there's no time. Your babies. There's something wrong. There's going to be a fire."
Agnes backed away, knocking the chair behind her.
"What's she on about? Is she trying to scare me or something?"
She looked at the rest of the women and they all looked back dumbly.
"My Pat's watching them tonight. They're all right."
"Oh please Agnes. Phone him now. Get him to wake up. There's something in the...."
Just then, outside in the street window, a siren screamed, loud enough to rattle the windows and so sudden they all jumped. The sound wailed menacingly. They all heard the blare of the horn as the fire tender rushed past, wheels throwing up chippings as it turned down Overtoun Lane and up the hill towards Murroch Street. The sound dopplered down as the fire tender raced away, the wail like a demon in the night.
Lorna started to scream and Agnes McCann fainted.
The top of the old red sandstone building was completely gutted. The firemen fought the blaze for three hours, as flames licked a hundred feet into the night sky, turning the low clouds orange with the reflected glare. The family staying below the McCann house had managed to escape. Gordon Kennedy lowered his two sons down on a knotted sheet to where old Bob Cuthill had managed to get a ladder against the wall. Bob, who was seventy two, risked his life to clamber up, despite the danger from red-hot falling slates that were whipping from the roof and whirring down like axe-heads. He grabbed the kids and hustled them away from the burning building. Gordie Kennedy got himself out of the window and along a three inch ledge to the roan-pipe which was turning pink with the heat. The pain was unbelievable as the skin and tendons seared, but Gordie held on for ten feet until the downpipe pulled away from the wall and he fell a further thirty to the flagstones below where he broke his left leg in two places and drove the ball of his femur through the socket of his pelvis. It took thirty titanium screws to put him back together again and he walked with a limp after that. He never got the full use of his right hand ever again, but his sons grew up to be men.
Agnes McCann arrived on the scene five minutes after the red tender had screeched past Gemma Conroy's house. When Gemma drove her and Cathy Galt round the corner, and they saw the flames blasting up to the sky, now half shrouded in a tower of dirty smoke, Agnes started to scream.
They helped her through the crowd gathered at the end of the street, tripping over hoses and splashing through the mucky leak-water and got to the second tender just as the whole of the roof caved in. A gout of incredible heat and a meteor-storm of sparks blasted out from the windows of the McCann house. One of the window frames went tumbling away, whirling through the air, to land, burning furiously, on top of a parked car fifty feet away. Agnes screeched again, so high it disappeared beyond hearing and her legs gave way. Cathy Galt couldn't hold her and the woman flopped into an expanding puddle.
Ten minutes later, the floorboards gave way and the whole of the inside of the tenement seemed to collapse into itself. The tall chimney-stack, with its eight identical pots teetered like a drunk, then fell with an amazing roar into where the McCann children had been asleep in their beds. The pots smashed with the noise of exploding grenades.
After that, it was only a matter of time as the fire ate everything that could burn. The firemen, leaning out from the snorkel gantries, poured thousands of gallons in a constant deluge over the inferno and finally, just after midnight, you could see they were beginning to win the fight. There were no prizes. There was nothing left but ashes and rubble.
All morning fire inspector Sorley Fitzpatrick and his team spent their time sifting through the rubble, dressed in their thick protective gear. The stone and brickwork was still sizzling hot to the touch, and in fact it would be another two days before the heat drained out of the masonry. They discovered the remains of the McCann family, but those remains were mere fragments. Pat McCann's lower jaw was almost intact and he was later identified by dental records, which was, all things considered, a piece of luck. He'd lost all of his top teeth years before and the plastic plate had melted to nothing. They found the complete skull of the elder boy, Jimmy, who was eight, where it had fallen and been protected from complete carbonisation by a pile of slates. A partial hip-bone identified wee Brendan, just turned six. Of the baby, nine month old Kerry, the pride of her father's eye, nothing was found in the smouldering rubble of what had been 46 Murroch Road. Sorley Fitzpatrick deduced that because of her size, and the fact that she'd had no teeth to speak of, her entire body had been consumed.
It was another week before the fire claimed the entire McCann family. Six days after the fire, Agnes McCann managed, despite the close attentions of a large tribe of sisters, aunts and cousins, to swallow the entire contents of a bottle of paracetamol pills in the middle of the night. By the time morning came around, her sister-in-law found her lying half-out of the bed in her spare room. She was in a deep coma. By the time she arrived at Lochend General, she was dead.
Sorley Fitzpatrick's report came to twelve pages and at the end of it, nobody was any the wiser. Such was the destruction of the building, that the cause of the fire could not be determined with any degree of accuracy. There was just nothing left intact enough to be able to prove what sparked off the blaze. Some assumptions could be made, however. From the initial reports, and from the progress of the fire as it was being fought, it was likely the ignition spot was somewhere in the family's living room and the fire had quickly spread from there to the other rooms. Perhaps a piece of coal had sparked a burning ember from the fire, perhaps the old wiring behind the skirting boards had burned out and set the dust and bone-dry timbers alight behind the lath-and-plaster walls. The speed of the spread was a puzzle, as was the fact that all of the occupants were overcome so quickly. In the end, the report left as many questions as it answered. A fatal inquiry a month later determined the cause of death of Pat McCann and his three children was accidental. In Agnes' case it was judged that she had committed suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed. But all of that was many weeks on, and there were many things happening in Levenford as the winter nights grew longer and the cold began to grip the town where some people were just beginning to realise that things were not as they should be.