The baby was crying in its pram. He'd been asleep most of the afternoon, waking only twice when the teething pains had stabbed hard in his gums, but he'd quickly fallen asleep again, wrapped up tight against the chill. Little Timmy Doyle had been running a temperature and his mother had decided some fresh air would do him the world of good.
Cissie Doyle was in the kitchen preparing dinner for her husband who'd be home from the foundry in an hour. She heard the high-pitched cry as she stood peeling potatoes at the sink. The window faced west, and she got a glimpse of the sunset, a low streaked sky of red and gold just beyond the Cardross Hills at Arden. The rain clouds had cleared away earlier in the afternoon and now the darkening sky was clear as far as the eye could see. Cissie cocked her ear, listening again. The little cry had hiccupped to silence. She thought Timmy must have gone back to sleep again.
The Doyle household was ten storeys up, fourth from the top in a block of flats which had replaced some of the huddled tenements on the west side of the river, across from the yard. This part of town was still known as Wee Donegal, from the number of immigrant Irish who had made it an enclave in this part of the world before the turn of the century. The space between the old bridge and the rail crossing hadn't been enough to contain them all. The council had thrown up two cheaply built blocks to replace half the old slum and to make sure the Irish stayed on their part of the river. They didn't know, or cared less, that a century on, the only difference between the old brownstone tenements with its single-ends and narrow stairways was simply a question of age. There were people, but there was no life in Latta Court. All Cissie Doyle had, apart from an inside toilet and a single bedroom, was perhaps the most spectacular view in the town. She could see as far as the belt of crags up at Langmuir to the north east, and right down the Clyde towards the Gantocks in the west. At that height, nobody needed a weather forecast. You could see the squalls coming up the river firth two hours before they hit. To the north, the Dumbuie Hills, close to Linnvale on the banks of Loch Corran could be seen on a clear day, and much of the Loch itself ten miles away, impressive and peaceful, the kind of thing they wrote songs about, the kind of scene people came the world over to see. On some days, the view was little comfort, especially when the lift broke down. Sean worked an extra two nights, Saturday and Sunday to put enough by for a deposit on something closer to ground level. Something with a garden where wee Timmy would have the space to run and play in a couple of years time.
She bent to peeling potatoes, lost in thoughts about a place with a garden, snowdrops in the spring, marigolds in summer.
The balcony where the baby slept was a hundred feet from the concrete at the base of Latta Court, and another forty from the flat roof where a single red light winked to warn low flying aircraft of a high hazard. Up there, old Kevin O'Malley kept a pigeon loft which was the nub of a fierce wrangle with the housing authority. It was angled in against the lift-shaft housing and the ventilators, on top of which the communal television aerial reached skywards, Latta Court's lifeline to the outside world.
Timmy just six months and one week old came awake again some time later, the sky now darkening above to a deep cobalt where the three stars of Orion's belt were just winking into existence. What woke him was a heavy knock on the side of the pram.
The baby made a small noise, almost a sound of surprise.
Something banged against the pram again, making it rock on its springs. There was a low scraping sound and something moved, just against the railings. Way down in the engine-yard below, a cutting tool, amplified by the hollow metal structure of the boat-company works, sent a shriek of tortured metal up into the air.
The baby gave a start and his mouth turned down, the beginning of a wail getting ready to wind itself up and let loose.
Then a shadow flickered on the wall on the opposite side from the balcony rail. The shape was almost jet black against the light concrete. The motion caught the baby's attention enough to divert the wail. Little Timmy turned his head, as much as the tight wrapping of blankets would allow. The movement stopped, disappeared. There was another scraping sound, this time from the other side. The little head swivelled. A dark shadow danced on the wall. The baby could only see the flickering shape. The movement bobbed and swayed, shortening and lengthening, weaving almost hypnotically. Little Timmy's eyes followed the movement. The shadow flicked to the side and was gone so suddenly that the tot's head swung back in puzzlement.
Then something dark loomed over the pram, blotting out all the light. He heard a whispering rasp, words that in his baby-mind made no sense, but made him shiver.
The baby felt something prod at him, and he mewled in alarm. The shadow moved back, letting the faint light in again, then it came swooping down. Little Timmy's eyes opened wide in sudden fright. One of his tiny hands came free of the coverlet, wide open and shaking in the way that babies hands do when they're crying sore. Timmy did not start to cry just then.
Something dark came looming from behind the hood and the pram was hit such a blow that it tipped over to lean against the wall. Inside, Timmy was rocked violently from side to side. He hitched in a breath and let out a squeal.
In the kitchen, Cissie Doyle used the back of her hand to wipe her brow and move a stray slick of brown hair which had fallen over her eyes. All four rings of her electric cooker were going at once. The potatoes were in the big pot at the front, while beside it, another pot, almost as large, was steaming away. Every few seconds, the lid would rise up, let out a puff of steam and the homely tang of minced beef, before plopping down again on the rim.
She'd been humming the chorus to a tune about a boxer playing on the radio in the corner, competing with the bubbling and popping from the stove, when Timmy had started to cry. She'd heard him give a little squeal just about the time the noise had blared up from the foundry, although the tinny metallic screech was the kind of sound she hardly noticed after three years in Latta Court. He'd whimpered a bit and gone quiet, then he'd let out a full-bodied scream.
"Good timing, Tim," she gritted in annoyance. The dinner was almost ready.
Timmy screeched again.
"All right. I'm coming," Cissie said. She turned to the far side of the kitchen and flicked open the wall-cupboard and hooked out the ice-cream tub where the family kept the medicines. Timmy's teething gel was at the top, a flattened tube with hardly enough left in it to make a smear on his gums. Below that, three baby dispirin rattled in their bubble packs. She popped one into Timmy's bottle and poured some water from the kettle to help it dissolve more quickly, then added some cold water before forcing the teat over the neck.
Timmy's squeals got louder and more urgent from the far side of the other room.
"Oh, hang on a minute. I'm coming," Cissie called out. Poor wee soul was what she thought. She lifted the bottle to her mouth and sucked. The mixture was just warm enough, not too hot, mildly bitter. Just then the mince-put lid lifted quickly and a stream of bubbles frothed over the side to hiss on the hot ring.
"Oh no," Cissie snorted. She put the bottle down and lifted the pot from the heat. The lid settled down immediately. Beyond the kitchen door, Timmy screeched again, loud and shivery, and the sound of it made Cissie freeze.
There was something in the sound that she had never heard before. It wasn't a cry of pain, not just teething pain. It was high and clear and wavering and it jarred on everything that made Cissie Doyle a mother. She was just in the act of lifting the lid on the pot, preparing to see the minced beef burned to the bottom, when the screech of her baby had scraped on the inside of her skull and snatched at the nerves in her spine. Then it stopped so abruptly that the echo of it rang in her ears. She dropped the pot with a clatter back onto the ring, spun round and yanked the kitchen door open.
Already, a big bubble of dread was inflating itself inside her. She crossed the living room in five jittery-fast strides and almost fell through the half-open door that led out onto the balcony.
It was then that the bubble burst inside her, flooding her with cold shock.
Timmy's pram was angled over on two wheels, leaning against the rail surround. It's position prevented her from seeing inside. She snatched it back upright and bent over.
Her baby was gone.
Cissie stood there, holding onto the edge of the pram, unaware that her fingers were gripped so tight they had punctured the plastic inside fabric on two places. Her mind was shrieking at her in jumbled yammering voices.
He's under the covers. He's rolled out. He's fallen underneath.
She scrabbled with the covers, heaving them right out. They were still warm with baby-heat. The pram was empty. Without thinking, she dropped to the concrete floor and hunted between the wheels, hoping against hope, hoping against the dread, that he'd slipped out and rolled underneath.
And a little cold part of her brain was telling her: He was strapped in. He couldn't have got out. That same part of her mind was feeding the cold logic that a six month old baby could not have toppled his own pram.
He'd been buckled in. She knew that for sure. She never let him lie in the pram unless the harness was secured. Cissie hauled herself to her feet and pulled the carriage away from the rail. As she did so, the leather strap from the far side flipped out from the bottom and dangled beside her. The snap-hook was still caught around the eye on the side. But six inches from the catch, the leather was twisted and frayed. And the rest of the harness was gone.
Cissie's legs began to buckle under her as a ghastly thought struck her.
He's fallen over oh my god he's dropped.
She managed to get both hands on the top bar of the surround and leaned over.
The world swooped away from her. The sheer sides of the tower block angled together in dizzying parallax, making it look as if she was peering from the edge of an inverted cone. Down there, a couple of cars sat in the off-street park. Another was coming round the corner, headlamps swinging in an arc across the front of the neighbouring block like spotlights, coming to rest on the paved area a hundred feet below. Cissie's vision swam as vertigo drained the blood from her face. Hot bile rolled up from her belly as her frantic eyes scanned the ground in the light of the headlamps.
There was nothing. No scrap lying squashed to the concrete. No smear on the slabs. The lights went out, dimming the parking area. A door opened, slammed closed, faint in the distance. Somebody got out of the car and came walking towards the door, right past where anything falling from Cissie Doyle's balcony must have landed.
The woman tried to cry out, tried to scream, but it was as if she was in a nightmare. Her mouth opened and closed as she willed herself to call out to the passer by, to tell him her baby was down there, but her throat closed over. All she could manage was a clicking sound behind her palate. The door below opened and a brief light poured out then was shut off again.
Cissie shoved herself back from the railing, mouth still working and now emitting a strangled rasping sound which was more like an animal in distress than human speech. She turned to go back through the door, knees almost unable to take the weight. A slight scraping sound came from somewhere above her. Still moving, almost dreamlike towards the balcony doors, Cissie's face tilted upwards instinctively. A shadow high overhead flickered against the wall and was gone. Cissie almost fell into the livingroom, stumbled over a small footstool which Sean had bought for her after little Timmy had been born. She fell heavily, landing headlong on the thin carpet and crawled and hauled herself to her feet. She made it down the narrow hallway, the animal rasping now a panicked stuttering sob, threw herself out of the door and right across the landing where she battered desperately with the heels of her hands on the opposite door.
Nelly Maguire heard the thumping and the sound of a woman crying and hesitated a few moments before approaching her own door. She peered through the spy-hole and saw Cissie Doyle's face distorted in the tiny lens, bloated and fishlike, her mouth opening and closing to complete the image. The door was shivering on its hinges. Nelly had three mortice locks and a burglar chain. It seemed to take forever to get them all opened. Finally she pulled the door back and Cissie Doyle fell in.
"Whatever's the matter?" Nelly started to say, before she was knocked backwards by the other woman's rush.
Cissie was now screaming hysterically. It took five minutes before Nelly could make out what her neighbour was talking about. By this time, Cissie Doyle was shaking so violently that even then she was almost incoherent. Her face was dead pale and her eyes were staring so hard the old woman next door thought they might pop out of their sockets and dangle on Cissie's cheeks.
Over and over again, the raving young woman kept repeating the same words over and over again: My Baby. My baby's gone.
Jack Fallon got the call just after eight o'clock, half an hour after he'd arrived home. He'd put two slices of bread in the toaster and slung the contents of a tin of spaghetti into a saucepan. It wasn't much of a meal after nearly fourteen long hours going over statements, interviewing witnesses, and getting a blow by blow account from Robbie Cattanach who had carried out the post mortem. He could have devoured a steak. He hadn't cooked one in months. Rae had had a way of doing a steak. She'd cut a pocket in the side of a slab of sirloin, making a beef purse and she'd stuff it with blue cheese. Under the grill the juice would seep out and drip onto the mushrooms and tomatoes below the mesh. The thought of it made Jack's mouth water. The memory of the taste came back with such intensity he could feel the little creeping ache under his tongue. And hard on the heels came the other memory. Rae turning from the oven with the meat still sizzling, bearing the meal like an offering to a chief. Little Julie doing her Bisto-kid act, snuffling the aroma as she sat on the tall stool with her elbows on the breakfast bar. The scene came swooping back and hit him like a slap from an angry woman, almost rocking him to the side.
He recoiled from it, shunted it away. The toaster jangled in the corner and the two slices popped up, just overdone. Jack shook his head, again denying the memory. He hauled a plate down from the wall cupboard and placed the two pieces side by side, then poured the red mess from the saucepan over them. Some of the sauce dripped on to the table. It sparked another image in Jack's mind. There had been a trail like that on the slate hearth of Marta Herkik's fireplace, though that had been dark, almost black. There had been other trails like that, too many to think about, scrawled signatures of death.
He sat down and willed himself to eat, dodging memories on all sides. The tinned spaghetti went down easily enough, but it was hardly a man's dinner. He promised himself he'd get to the shops soon, get some real food instead of this stuff out of tins, to be snatched whenever time allowed, eaten in solitude. It was either that or simply move in with his sister and nephew who were the only family he had left.
He finished quickly, scraping the hot sauce from the plate with the spare crusts, then slung the plate in the sink, along with the coffee cup from the morning, which now seemed a lifetime away. He shook his head again, this time more ruefully. He should get himself together, as they said in the American films. He needed a dishwasher too. He shrugged his shoulders, and bent to the sink, running barely-warm water over plate and cup, knife and fork, dried them all and slung them back in the cupboard. The kitchen was small, and fairly neat, just enough for a single man. To Jack it was vast and empty, like a lot of his life. All that kept his mind focussed was his work, and the occasional day out with Davy, which took his mind off his work.
Davy was five. He'd just started school in the autumn, and since Julia's husband had left, he'd been cast into the role of permanent uncle. Jack took Davy to school in the mornings, and the two of them strolled up the Langmuir Hills together on good days. If anything had kept Jack sane, pulled him back from the brink of the abyss, from the neck of the bottle, it had been the irrepressible five year old boy.
Only last week, after the storm had tired itself out, he'd had the boy on his shoulders, down on the common ground close to the water meadow where teams of volunteers had collected driftwood and old logs to build an immense bonfire to celebrate the eight hundredth anniversary of the granting of the burgh charter. It had been a cold, crisp night, with the bite of hard frost in the air. The flames had roared forty feet high and the firework display had been impressive. They'd had sausages on sticks, baked potatoes from the ash-pits, and Jack had swallowed a fair mouthful of a good malt whisky from a flask miraculously produced by John McColl. Julia had taken the opportunity of having the house to herself, and on that night, tired and smelling of wood smoke, Jack had taken Davy back to his own place and let him snuggle up beside him. It was the first time he'd woken beside anyone else in a long time. The feeling of his nephew's small warmth beside him brought back sudden memories that he'd had to fight back. Now, in retrospect, he realised that it had been good for him. The wounds were still raw, still seeping, but the healing process might begin.
He went back through to the living-room and moved the bundle of newspapers from his seat, flicked on the television. A current affairs programme was rapid-firing news of unrest in a dozen different parts of the world, a ten-second-at-a-time catalogue. Jack used the remote to kill it all and reached behind him for his old guitar, a black and battered Fender. He ran his fingers up the strings, feeling the frets burr with the sound of a distant train, and automatically tightened the top string which was always working slack. He slipped in the jack plug and reached a hand to jab the switch on the black amp. He heard the buzz of the base tone and turned the fuzz up just a little then strummed a chord. He'd played the old guitar since before he'd started shaving. Even now he could dredge up the old dream of playing like Hendrix, even playing like the Quo. There were times when the old guitar was the only thing that held him together, an anchor to the dreamy days of childhood. He hit a major and swooped it up the frets, fingers automatically tickling the strings in a rock-boogie, running into an absent twelve bars before dropping it down to fingerpick an old familiar tune about a boxer while his thoughts drifted on by themselves.
The telephone jangled shrill against the rolling notes, jerking Jack's mind back to the present. He turned the amp off and heard the bass-note fade to nothing.
"Need you back in again Jack." The gruff voice broke in as soon as he'd announced the number. "We've got an abduction by the looks. Or a murder."
"That's all we need." Jack said. "Where is it?" he sighed and pulled the notebook from the other end of the table, using his teeth to take the cap from the ball-point lying beside it.
"Alright son, I know you've had a couple of days of it, but we need a look at this one right away. You'll want to take first shot."
Chief Superintendent Angus McNicol had said the same thing when the call had come in on the killing on Marta Herkik. Jack reluctantly took the compliment. He could have used eight hours straight tonight. His boss gave him an address, spoke for a minute more, then hung up. Jack let the telephone drop to the cradle and sat for a moment. Just as well, he told himself, he'd left the vodka bottle unopened. Another half hour and he might not have been able to drive. Might not have been able to walk.
Five minutes later he was heading down the steep hill from Cargill Farm. The old farm building had long since gone, but the cottage was still there, the place he'd been born in and raised in, and the place to which he'd eventually returned to lick his wounds when the whole world caved in. As much home as anywhere in the world.
On the way down the road, the car jouncing and jostling on the hard-rut, he thought about what Angus had said and about the events of the day.
The Herkik investigation was well under way. In a town the size of Levenford, you could expect a murder inquiry to be zipped up tight within twenty four hours. There were domestics, drunken arguments and the odd stabbing. Most of them well witnessed and easily documented. Marta Herkik's killing was different.
Nobody knew a thing. Nobody had been seen leaving the building, nobody seen entering. All they had was a room that looked as if a tornado had blasted through it and a dead woman, half burned, beaten so badly she was unrecogniseable.
Robbie Cattanach, the pathologist had brought his report in almost a full day after Marta Herkik's body had been discovered. He'd come sauntering into Jack's office, wearing a distressed leather jerkin and scuffed jeans, looking exactly like the kind of youngster the beat men were locking up in numbers on Friday and Saturday nights. His casual appearance was a sharp contrast to the quick mind Jack knew ticked away behind the lazy brown eyes.
"Good news or bad news first?" he'd asked.
"She died of natural causes and we can wrap this up and walk away."
"Nice try. No luck."
Robbie was one of the few people Jack had much time for. He travelled, hail rain or shine on a big black Harley that Jack openly admired, and the two of them shared a regular pint, whenever Jack was in the mood for company, in the Waverley on the far side of the old bridge.
"It's a murder all right."
"There's a surprise. So what killed her."
"You name it. It's a bit like that old case in Creggan you mentioned. I looked up the report. She's been hit by everything."
He ran his eyes down the list.
"Skull fractured in two places. Lesions on scalp and forehead caused by impact of crystalline structure, common quartz as a matter of fact. Seems to have been smashed first and then driven into her. There was a lot of force behind it. I'm not sure exactly how it was done."
Robbie scanned the page again. "Severe burns to left arm and left of face with carbonisation of muscle and bone. Two fractures of left femur, one on right, and a severe twist fracture of the pelvis. Jaw broken, right mandible driven into the base of the skull at the joint. Severe bruising to neck and upper torso. Black and blue all over, some of them skin ruptures."
"So she's been beaten up. That's exactly what it looks like."
"Oh yes. Beaten, hammered, burned. The lot," Robbie said. "But there's more. The inside story is just as revealing."
Jack raised an eyebrow and the young doctor went on. "Usual internal damage. Soft tissue stuff. Lesions on liver and spleen. Ruptured kidney. The right one was almost pushed through the muscle wall. That's the kind of thing you'd expect in a bad road smash, but here's the interesting thing."
He turned the page and hesitated, scratching just above his eyebrow. "I'll cut all the clinical stuff for the moment."
"Let's be thankful for small mercies."
"Well. The internal tends to be the qualification of the external. What we found was severe rupturing of throat, pharynx and trachea. Her windpipe was torn to shreds."
"Caused by the strangulation?"
"No. You'd expect it to be crushed, sometimes it will flatten, but it's ribbed, like a vacuum hose, and it doesn't spring back. Hers was torn apart. Like from the inside. It looked as if something was rammed down her throat and pulled out again, very fast. But the lungs were just the same, and the esophagus and the stomach wall."
"What the hell would do that?"
"That's the bad news. It looks as if she was turned inside out. I've spoken to Walker up at the Western. He wants a copy of all of this. Nearly wet himself when I described it."
"But what killed her?"
"Any one of these things. The blows to the head. The internal damage. Shock. All of it, except the burning. She was dead before that happened."
"More thanks for small mercies I suppose."
"Oh and there's one more thing. Her heart. We found that in the remains of the stomach."
Jack thought back to the post mortem examinations he'd witnessed.
"Shouldn't be there, should it?"
"Up behind the ribs is where it should be. It sits in a sling of muscle and ligament, like a very strong harness. This old lady's heart had been wrenched out of its housing. Every artery and vein, and I mean the big ones, had been torn out."
"Now what could do that?"
"Only one thing I've ever seen."
Jack raised his black eyebrows again. He was trying to picture it and failing.
"You ever see the old Ridley Scott film about an alien?" Robbie asked.
"The one with that good looking girl in it? Sigourney Weaver?"
"The very same. There's a scene in it where something bursts out of one of the crew. Comes out of the belly. Scared the living hell out of me when I first saw it."
"Aw, come on Robbie. You telling me this was an alien?"
"Don't be daft. That'll get me a holiday with the crazies in Dalmoak. No. What I'm saying, going only by the damage inside the old biddy, is it looks as if something was dragged out of her. I mean right from inside and out through her throat."
Robbie gave him a grin.
"And thank the living God that it's not my job to find out who did that, or how or why. I just report what I find."
"Thanks for that. Thanks a million," Jack told him.
"Fancy a pint?" Robbie asked, still grinning.
"You must have the constitution of a horse. How the hell can you spend your day up to your arms in folks insides and still drink beer?"
Robbie shrugged. "Talent I suppose."
"I'd love to," Jack said. "But I'm up to the eyes. Even deeper, thanks to you. Oh, and before I search through all this, any idea of when it happened?"
"Friday to Saturday, maybe even the early hours of Sunday morning. Can't give you any closer than that.
Jack nodded. "That figures. She was seen on Saturday morning. Then there were noises in the flat later that night. On Sunday, nothing at all. That helps narrow it. We're talking about Saturday night."
Robbie had left the report with Jack who had spent half an hour reading through the catalogue of one old woman's destruction. When he'd first joined the police, too many years ago for him to want to count, the Creggan case had been fresh in folks minds. There, an elderly, and wealthy woman, had been raped and then murdered. The killer had taken off all of his clothes, which was why there was not a speck of blood on him when he'd been arrested, ten hours later. Most of the woman's blood had been spattered on the walls and ceilings. She'd been hit with almost every movable object in the room.The killer had made a special plea of impeachment, accusing two other youths of the killing. At the end of the trial, the jury couldn't make up their minds. All three had walked free.
Jack hadn't been a policeman then, but he'd been young enough and keen enough to have read all the murder reports when he finally made it out of college. There was a similarity between the two cases, twenty years apart. Jack slung Robbie Cattanach's report on his desk and cupped his chin in his hand. Of one thing he was determined. Whoever did this would not walk away from it.
Doctor Cuthbert had given Cissie Doyle a couple of pills. She was still coherent, but barely lucid. She had the look of a woman walking dreamily through a nightmare. Every now and then, she'd give a little start as if coming awake, and then the sleepy eyes would widen, allowing a little of the madness to come through.
Jack Fallon took it gently. Sean Doyle held his arm tight around his wife's shoulders, as if one of them would fall down if he let go. He just looked numb. The expression in his eyes told everybody he did not believe this was happening. It had not yet sunk in to him that he was not going to wake up from this, that he was not imagining it, that little Timmy would not start to cry in his cot in the next room.
"So then what happened?" Jack asked.
The young woman continued where she'd left off, her voice a flat drone.
"I thought he'd fallen out. I looked under the pram. It was pushed over on its side, just sitting on the two wheels against the railings. I don't know how that could have happened. I mean, there was nobody there."
Down below, right underneath the Doyle's window, half the night shift were searching the vacant ground. One of the police vans still had its blue light flashing. An open window on the neighbouring block was angled enough to catch the light and beam it across to the house where the Sean and Cissie Doyle sat facing Jack. It looked like a winking blue eye in the winter darkness.
"I looked down to see if he'd fallen, but there was nothing at all. He'd just..." her voice slowed down as if an internal turntable had switched to long play. The last word came out long and slows. Her hands started to shake then, not just the tremor that had been running through them ever since Jack had been let into the house by the constable on the door. Now they were like the wings of a frightened sparrow, fluttering wildly. The woman's eyes widened again as she relived the memory of the discovery on the balcony. Jack reached across and took both hands in his. The trembling did not stop. He could feel it shiver his own hands. She didn't even notice him clench both tightly, turn them over and give her nails and palms a very quick examination. There was a small red mark just above the knuckle. She'd said she'd bumped the pot and some had spilled out. If she was telling the truth, he told himself, that would probably be a drop scald.
There was no reason for him to think that she might not be telling the truth, none at all, except for the fact that he had been in too many houses down the years, seen too many people who claimed they'd done nothing. Already Ralph Slater and his two-man team were working on the balcony and in the kitchen. They'd have checked the pots, just to make sure that smell was minced beef and not boiled baby. It sounded cruel, but it wouldn't have been the first time, not by a long chalk. This woman, Jack told himself, was telling the truth. He could feel it in the tremor of her hands, see it in the blank look in her eyes. This was not a case of baby battering, post natal depression, teething trouble snap. Not unless Cissie Doyle was schizophrenic, and they'd soon find out if she was.
He patiently asked her the questions over and over again, checking every answer against the previous one until he knew exactly what steps she had taken, exactly how she had acted. Her baby had been strapped in its pram, and now it was gone. Now the real puzzle began.
He left them both in the company of the young woman in uniform who looked pretty and efficient in police blues, but hardly old enough to have left school. She'd made tea, hot and sweet, the way they recommended it, and was helping Cissie Doyle get her fingers around the handle when Jack went through the doors to the balcony.
Ralph Slater was leaning over the railing, dangerously far out. Below him the blue light still winked.
"Anything?" Jack asked.
"Nothing so far. We'll be quick as we can with prints, but I'll bet this place is clean." Ralph heaved himself back up. "I'm buggered if I know what happened."
"You and me both. But the baby's gone. I don't think he jumped."
"No, he didn't. The harness is ripped apart. Not cut. Somebody snapped it, and that took some doing. I reckon that's what caused the pram to tumble."
Jack turned, leaned backwards over the wrought iron balustrade, and looked upwards. The floors above stretched up into the black sky.
"You think somebody climbed?"
"Bet any money they did. Failing that they'd have had to come through the house, which is possible."
"But not to steal a kid. Maybe to rob. She had the safety chain on the door. You can see where she's pulled it too hard."
"I agree on that. So somebody's come up or down. If we get prints to match from either balcony, we can say which it is. But I just can't imagine why. I mean, it's a hell of a drop. You'd have to be a rock climber to do it. They're all beards and folk songs. I can't imagine them stealing somebody's baby. Last three we had, two were young girls and the other a woman with a cot death. Never heard of a fella going in for it."
"Always a first time," Jack said. "If somebody's crazy enough to climb this high, who the hell knows what he could do."
He bent over the railing, as Ralph had done, but not quite so far as the scene-of-crimes man. As soon as he leaned over from the waist, the cars far below started going in and out of focus. Jack felt the clench in his belly as vertigo flared. He was scared of heights. He pulled himself back in again and waited for his heart to slow down. Ralph Slater was saying something.
"...and there's something similar down there"
"Hm?" Jack asked.
"I wouldn't lean out too far if I were you," Ralph told him, grinning wickedly. "Not if you've no head for heights. You're white as a sheet, man.
"Anyway, I was saying, there's a set of scratch marks down there at the sill. Right on the concrete. You probably didn't notice for fear of falling."
"No. I didn't, thanks," Jack replied drily. Ralph was a good man, but Jack did not like heights. He didn't find them funny in the least.
"And up there," the other man indicated the sill of the upstairs balcony. "There's more scrape marks. They're pretty fresh, as far as I can tell, and they've taken off the lichen scum. Concrete's dry underneath. I think we might have a climber sure enough."
"Unless the baby did fall out."
"That baby never snapped the harness, Jack. Neither did the mother. You and me would have a hard enough time. No. Who-ever did this was a strong bastard. He's probably got a head for heights. Tell you something. If I was you, I'd check up Calderpark Zoo and see if they're missing a gorilla."
Jack looked at him and began to smile.
"You've been reading to many Runyan books."
"Maybe so, but I wouldn't like to meet whoever got up here without ropes and stole a baby."
It was after two in the morning when Jack got back to the cottage, feeling like a wrung-out dishrag. He poured himself a large vodka, added a dash of fresh orange and carried it through to the living room. He took one swallow, put the glass on the coffee table by the arm of the chair, leaned back, and was instantly asleep.
The dream came sometime in the cold, dead hours of the morning. It came creeping the way dreams do, the monster in child's clothing, in a simple scene from childhood. Young Jack Fallon down at the Garshake Stream, a wooden boat with a paper sail negotiating the rapids at the pot holes, bobbing on the turbulence, a while flash on the green water then down over the lip into the froth of the deep pot. Young Jack following quickly, leaping from boulder to boulder, chasing to keep up, skittering on the edge of the falls, feet spread on the fork stones where the water poured in a solid rush. Down there the flash of sodden white sail and then the darkness of the deep water.
The change happened with that easy, lazy slow motion of dreams. The young Jack teetered on the edge, arms windmilling, eyes fixed on the deep water, the black whorls and eddies, feeling it pull and tug at him. Then he was falling. A shock of cold, a shock of dark around his head and in the dream he knew it was changing. He was going over the edge.
The twist came with that sinking wrench inside him. He was wet and cold. He was in a strange place. It was dark and musty, the air dry and metallic, rust-dusted. He could hear his own feet clanging along a metal walkway as he ran. Something was behind him. He could hear its feet, not so much a pounding, but a scraping scuttle sound, much faster than a running man. Whatever it was, Jack did not want to see it. He could hear a gurgling rasp of breath, so close behind him he could almost feel the heat of it on the back of his neck. In the dream he imagined a hand, or something not quite a hand reach out to snatch at his collar, to grab him by the neck. His feet clanged on the walkway. On either side, corroded railings whizzed past, blurred with speed, and then he came to the end of the platform. It stopped abruptly, with no warning. Jack skidded to a halt, one hand swinging to the side to grab the railing. His fingers touched hard metal, tried to grip and then he was over the edge for the second time. Behind him something made a noise that sounded like a laugh and Jack was falling straight down. Lights flashed on his left side, sunlight or moonlight blinking through the holes in the sides of the shaft, and he was plummeting out of control. Below him, old and rusted machinery, spiked and spined, crouched at ground level, waiting to impale him at the end of the drop. He hit with sickening force. Instant darkness surrounded him. He was under water again, cold, gasping for breath, swimming up through the numbness towards daylight. He opened his eyes, and he was no longer impaled on the spikes, he was walking down a narrow street. Ahead, sounds of traffic, a horn blaring. He was walking out of the shadows towards the light, about to turn a corner when the premonition hit him low, grabbing at his belly.
He moved forward, knowing what would happen when he turned into the street. The car was hammering along on the wrong side, dodging the streams of traffic. Behind it, the blare of a siren. The lead car was red. There was a crumpled dent along one side. The passenger window was smashed. Behind the windscreen, two pale faces, unrecognisable blurs. A mouth wide open. In the dream the sound of the siren faded away and the car continued on, weaving right and left, a tyre on the pavement then slapping down onto the road, the whole scene slowing down in the dilated time-scape of the dream. On the pavement, people standing, mouths slack in surprise, in fright, as the red car rumbled towards them, its engine now a low roar. On the far side of the street, Rae coming out of the bookshop. He could see the bright yellow bag dangling from one hand. At her side, Julie, hanging on to her free hand, skipping around her mother, bright face angled up in question. Rae's head was turning, the smile disappearing from her face. Her eyes widened and she instinctively swung Julie off to the side.
The red car came swinging round, narrowly missing a delivery van. The tyres squealed, but in the stretched time of the dream, it was a low moan. The offside wheels came up as the driver fought for control, slammed back down onto the road again. It leapt forward and smacked an old lady to the side. Rae was turning, Julie only a yard from her. The front of the car smashed Rae at knee level. She swung upwards, tumbling, broken. The yellow bag went fluttering off to the right. She hit the wall with a slapping sound and dropped to the pavement. The red car, its screen starred and dented where Rae's head had hit, came on, veering left, now slowing. It came in at the corner of the picture window. From where he stood, foot-rooted, paralysed in dream agony, Jack watched the edge of the window cave in. Little Julie staggering backwards, one hand raised for balance. Falling against the window as it crashed inwards. She flipped back, feet in the air. The jagged plates of glass jiggled themselves down like scales. There was a grinding sound, so low Jack could hear it in the bones of his spine. He was running now, running through a crowd of white-faced statues. The sound of slow glass shards rasping against each other, a sound of reaping scythes. Somebody screamed from the inside of the shop. The glass came down and down and down. Jack was running towards something red that flopped among the books.
His own hoarse cry woke him up.
He was sitting on the armchair, both arms outstretched as they had been in the dream, reaching for his daughter. In his mind's eye, he could still see her face, a little splatter of blood trailed across her forehead, her eyes puzzled.
He hauled himself out of the chair and made it through the kitchen door. He turned the tap on and put his head underneath the cold jet of water, willing the memory away, using the shock of cold as a shield. The image began to fade.
Jack came back through, face dripping. He reached for the drink he'd left. It was warm and a little stale, but he drank it down in one gulp, feeling the burn of the spirits down his throat, it made him shiver, but that helped shuck away the picture that kept dancing into his head. He eyed the bottle, sitting on the dresser in the corner of the room, seriously thinking about it, then shook his head slowly. He was hurting again, but the drink wouldn't help him tonight. Instead he reached behind the seat for his briefcase, snapped it open, and pulled out the copy of the preliminary report on Marta Herkik.
Outside, the wind rose, sending a cold draught under the front door. Winter had arrived. Jack Fallon would get no sleep. Instead he decided to concentrate on another death, to keep his mind in the present.
Three hours later, when the dawn was still a grey hint on the east sky, Jack shrugged himself into his coat and let himself out of the house. It was bitterly cold as he walked down the Cargill Road, past the turn that would have taken him to Julia's house and down along the curve of the hill towards to the centre of the town. It was a miserable morning, but he hardly noticed it. Half an hour later, he was climbing the back stairs to Marta Herkik's house.