Ralph Slater had been right. Everything was hitting the fan by the time Jack got to the station. Even as he crossed the old bridge, screeching over the curve in second gear, recklessly ignoring the black ice on the brow, he could hear the urgent wail of sirens way down on River Street. On the turn towards Artisan Road two police cars sped past, cutting in front of him, lights sending blue strobe flashes bouncing off the glass doors of the Regal Cinema.
Bobby Thomson only raised his eyebrows when Jack came hustling in, letting the door slam behind him. He watched in silence as the other man strode past the desk and took the stairs three at a time, coat flapping behind him.
Ronald Cowie's secretary half rose in her seat as he came barging through and raised a hand to forestall him, but he ignored her, twisted the handle on the office door and stormed inside.
"This damned stupidity has to stop," he snapped without pausing for breath. "It's a slaughterhouse out there and you've got me kicking my heels. I've had enough. As of this moment I'm reporting back for duty."
"And why not?" a voice said from behind him. Jack whirled and saw a tall, grey-haired man in a herringbone coat standing with his hands in his pockets. "Where've you been Jack?"
Divisional Commander Hector Nairn came walking towards the desk, his eyes shifting from one man to the other. Cowie was still seated behind his desk, his mouth hanging open.
"Is there something I should know?"
"Chief Inspector Fallon had to take some time owing," Cowie started to say.
"That's a lie. I was ordered out, and if you'd have let me handle things my way, you wouldn't have half the force out on the streets this morning."
"Ordered out?" Nairn looked from one to the other again, then swivelled his eyes back to Jack. "I think there is something I haven't been told, and I think I should hear it right now." He turned and pulled up a swivel chair and lowered himself slowly into it. He'd been head of the murder squad in the city when Jack had joined. The two of them had worked on dozens of cases together.
Jack hauled another chair from the far side of the office and sat down heavily.
"Office politics, and I'm bloody fed up with them," he said. Mentally he took his gloves off and prepared for a bareknuckle fight.
"We've got a serious situation here," he began.
"Now there's an understatement if I ever heard one." Hector snorted.
"And getting more serious by the minute. We shouldn't have lost young Gordon Pirie. If we'd let O'Day stay in the church, then he'd most likely still be alive, and those kids wouldn't be dead this morning."
Jack turned to the Divisional Commander. "I've wasted the last two days doing nothing but being kept out of the way while we announced we'd got the killer. But I knew we didn't have him, and we won't get him unless somebody sits up and takes notice."
"You went off duty," Cowie protested, his face red.
"With respect, Superintendent, I was ordered to take my leave. I have a duplicate copy of my objections to that order, and my protest over the arrest of Michael O'Day."
"Is that right, Ron?" Hector Nairn asked softly, but there was an iron undertone. "Did you order Jack off the case?"
Cowie began to bluster. His mouth opened and closed. He started to say something, but the senior officer held up his hand.
"You tell me, Jack. And when you're finished, I want to hear an explanation of everything I've been reading in the newspapers."
"It's simple," Jack said. "I was told to stay away on Thursday night. That's the night the tele-message claimed that we'd got the killer. I objected to that and to the arrest of Michael O'Day because I didn't believe he should have been in a cell."
"But he'd stolen religious artifacts and he confessed to being involved in the Herkik killing," Cowie interjected.
"Yes, he had admitted taking the chalice, and for a reason which was explained to you."
"Mumbo jumbo is what I heard," Cowie rasped, but Hector Nairn merely held up his hand again.
"That's enough Ron, I want to hear it from Jack and I don't want to waste another minute, okay?"
"But the man had not admitted to killing Marta Herkik," Jack continued. "He only said he was in Cairn House on the night it happened, and he was perfectly safe up in the church tower. He was asking for sanctuary."
"A bit archaic," Hector observed.
"Yes, maybe, but he was safe, and he was going nowhere. I'd been looking for him for some time, and if I'd got the message from an informant on time, then perhaps we could have resolved this case a week ago. But I didn't get the information from Superintendent Cowie until it was too late, and my requests for extra manpower was denied. I am not into playing politics. I'm a policeman and my job is to catch this thing."
"Oh, I agree with that, Jack," Hector said with a humourless smile. "So what's the juju I've been reading about?"
"Devils and monsters," Cowie interjected. "It's absolute rubbish."
"I won't tell you again, Ron," Hector said icily. Cowie's mouth closed like a trap.
"That's speculation in the press, but there is a basis to it. Marta Herkik was killed in the middle of some kind of seance. That's why I brought in Professor Toye. He's an expert on paranormal studies, and I know him. He has given us valuable advice."
"Yes, but what about this spey-wife?"
"Every source helps. She's been helping me. Basically, as far as I can tell, she's got some kind of extra sensory perception. She's seen some of these killings as they happen. Sometimes before they happen."
"And she'd not involved?"
"No, she is not. I've been there when it's happened. She's clean."
"And you believe all this?"
"I have to believe it. I was with her this morning when she told me about the boy in the bakery and the milk-boys. We're not looking for missing persons, I can tell you that. We're looking for corpses. And if we don't get our fingers out there will be a lot more, I can tell you."
"It's a bit of a mouthful to take in all at once," Hector said gently.
"I agree. I was too long in arriving at it myself, but everything has fitted so far. I want to continue to use Lorna Breck, no matter how it looks, or whatever it costs us in public relations. Our image doesn't matter a damn. It's the kids in this town who matter."
Jack stopped talking for a moment to gather his thoughts and while he did, Hector Nairn asked him to tell him the full story right from the start. Jack wasted no time. He took him through it, from the killing of Marta Herkik, to his conversation with Andrew Toye about what might have actually happened on the night of her death. He told him about Lorna's premonitions and his initial incredulity, then the finding of where Neil Kennedy had been snatched, and her visions of baby Kelly Campbell's mother being smashed to the ground on Barley Cobble.
"What did it for me was when we found the bodies in that chimney."
He turned to Cowie. "Check Robbie Cattanach's report. There was one extra body. I told you this before. That was the baby from the fire on Murroch Road. That's the one Lorna Breck saw when it was actually happening. Sorley Fitzpatrick - he's the firemaster - said he thought the baby might have been completely destroyed by the heat, but Lorna Breck told me she saw something take the baby from the cot. I know it's far fetched and it doesn't sound like straight forward police work, but I can't deny her as a source, and at the moment she's all we have. She's the best we're going to get."
"So who are we looking for?"
"We're looking for Michael O'Day, initially," Jack said, not wanting to tell anybody exactly what he was looking for.
"So he'd been the killer all along?"
"No. Something, or some-one has been using these people. And it all started on the night of the seance."
"So what is it?"
"I don't know. But I'll find out and I'll find it."
Hector sat back in his seat.
"It really is a bit much to take on board, Jack." he said.
"I've had longer than you. But I'll get nowhere if I'm twiddling my thumbs. Michael O'Day saw something at that seance that scared the hell out of him, and he believed it. He locked himself up in the belltower to get away from it."
"And you think this Lorna Breck is genuine?"
"I know it. I don't know how she does it, or why, but I've seen it happen. If I don't use her, then we can all walk away and let children die. It's as simple as that."
"So what are we looking for here?"
"Damned if I know. Seriously, I just don't know."
"It sounds as if you don't think it's human. Not the kind of thing I want to tell the chief constable."
"Frankly, that's the least of my problems. Tell him we're hunting a deranged escaped prisoner, which is the truth anyway because somebody took O'Day out of the church. It could be an influence which has forced these people to do what they've done. Michael O'Day was convinced he'd be safe in the church tower, and I think he was right. He told me he did not want to kill anybody, but that he'd be compelled to if he was taken out of sanctuary. I believed him then, and I believe him now. It doesn't matter what you call it, and it doesn't matter what it is. It's a killer, and it has to be stopped. Let's say it's some psychosis brought on by the seance. I just want to stop it killing anybody else."
"Well, you've got my backing on that. As of now, you're in charge of the case," Hector said. "Use whatever resources you need, and ask for anything else you want."
He turned to Ronald Cowie who hadn't said a word for some time.
"I want you to understand that Chief Inspector Fallon has my fullest confidence. There will be no interference in this case whatsoever. From you I want a full report of why a senior investigating officer was taken off duty in the middle of such a serious case, and it had better be good, though, frankly, I doubt it."
Cowie did his goldfish act again. Hector heaved himself from his chair and walked to the door, Jack followed him out. Beyond the ante-room, the divisional commander stopped him.
"I can't say I honestly believe a word of what you've just told me," he said. "I think we're looking for a nutter, or a group of them. But in the meantime, I'm going to rely on your judgement, no matter what. Just don't make me look like an idiot."
"I'll do my best," Jack promised him, though in his own mind he wasn't sure what that best would be. He didn't even know where he was going to start.
He was only in his office five minutes when Robbie Cattanach knocked on the door and popped his head round.
"I heard you'd been sent home," he said. "Then I got a whisper you were back."
"Word travels fast," Jack said.
"Listen, I know you're busy, even busier than I've been, if you can believe that," Robbie began. "But I have all the reports on the bodies in the chimney and the other ones from the town hall. The baby is definitely Kerry McCann. There's a great deal of desiccation of the tissues, caused by the cold and the dry atmosphere at the height of the chimney, but the blood tests are fairly conclusive. There is not a shadow of doubt about Kelly Campbell, again because of the blood tests, and the others have been positively identified as Neil Kennedy and Carol Howard. We suspect the fifth to be Timothy Doyle, but identification has been hampered. There are no distinguishing marks and sufficient putrefaction as to make it very difficult. His own mother hasn't recognised him, and to tell you the God's honest, there isn't that much left."
"I know," Jack said. "I brought him down."
"As far as the other three are concerned, you can call off the search for Charles Black and Edward Redford. Votek Visotsky we know about. The missing part matched."
Jack pulled a disgusted face.
"I know," Robbie apologised. "It sounds callous, but what else can I say?" Jack shrugged.
"Cause of death?"
"Blood loss and shock in all cases, more or less, though we can't be too sure about the three infants. However, it does point that way. Partial strangulation on Charles Black, and severe trauma in Redford's case. His leg was pulled off at the hip. That would kill anybody. Visotsky died from a single blow to the side of the head."
Robbie stopped and looked over at Jack.
"I'm more interested in the secondary wounds. Mutilation describes it better. In every case, they occurred after death, and in some cases long after the event."
"How do you figure that?"
"Without being too technical, generally we can tell by the condition of the skin close to the wounds. The integuement dries out quickly in the open air, making it more liable to rip. There's no elasticity and it pulls away on either side of a cut. But that's neither here nor there."
Robbie reached into his black case and brought out a set of ten by eight prints. He shuffled them onto Jack's desk.
"I've burned the midnight oil on these, and I can tell you, my freezer room's filling up too damned quickly. We don't have room for any more cadavers and I'd be pleased if you could catch this loony and give me a break."
He leaned over the prints, without waiting for a response and jabbed his finger at several of them in quick succession.
"Every one of these injuries is post mortem. You can tell by the tearing of the underlying muscle and ligaments that this is exactly what it was, a tear. To get this kind of damage, we're talking about considerable force. Something very powerful. You get this trauma in mechanical accidents, where people have been dragged into machinery, but that's not what happened here."
"So what did happen?"
"I'm coming to that. Just bear with me. Just remember what I said when I looked at Shona Campbell's body. I've a set of pictures in a book which show the aftermath of a bear mauling. The damage is similar to this, wrenching of muscle and ligaments, twisting of joints in the socket. It's what you'd expect when you have a powerful animal dismembering a carcass."
"We've ruled out animals."
"I know you have," Robbie said. He leaned over the spread of prints again and used his finger to stab here and there.
"Look at this. These are certainly bites, and it's got a radius you wouldn't believe. I've worked it out that it's got a gape about seven inches across. This was not, repeat not, caused by a human. Something has been eating these children after they were dead."
"You know anything with a bite like that?"
"Ever watch Jaws?"
"Get out of here," Jack said. "We're looking for no shark."
"I know that. I just don't know what you're looking for. This doesn't fit anything I've ever come across. I've been through all the books, because the fiscal's ordered full inquiries into each of these cases, and I just don't know what to tell him."
"Neither me," Jack said. He didn't know what to tell Robbie Cattanach either.
"Welcome back to the cuckoo's nest," was how John McColl greeted Jack when he made it to the operations room. Ralph Slater turned round from the grid-map and gave him a tired grin.
"You should have stayed away," he said. "It's a madhouse in here and out there."
Jack didn't bother with the explanations both of them were expecting. Instead he crossed to the map and told Ralph to give him a briefing. Ralph began with the call from the bakery and went on non-stop for fifteen minutes, pointing out the by-now very familiar parts of town.
"We've a report in on the girl. Lisa Corbett. She just disappeared from the stair landing. Somebody found her handbag on the stair between the third and fourth floors, but there's no other sign."
"How about the old man?"
"Nothing so far. Nobody's called it in. What I'd like to know is where you're getting this from?"
"Later. As of now, I need you to organise a special team, all local boys, to do a search of every place that's higher than forty feet."
"That's a lot of places."
"I know that, but we have to do it. Forget out-buildings and garden huts. This thing doesn't operate on the ground. Remember where we found the bodies? And Jock Toner? It came in the skylight at Rolling Stock. It's a climber and it leaves them up high. That's where we'll find the bodies, and that's where we'll find it."
"So you think it's bodies again?"
"Certain of it. It hasn't left one alive so far. Also, it operates in the dark, so it has to hide somewhere during the day."
"You keep calling him it." John McColl said. "I thought we were looking for O'Day."
"We are." Jack replied. "He'll be holed up somewhere. If we can find him and lock him up before dark, then we've got a chance. After dark, then it's anybody's guess. Whatever's controlling him can do what it likes then."
"You mean like hypnosis?"
"Something like that," Jack said, though he didn't explain what he really thought. Ralph and Jack looked at each other, but said nothing. Ralph picked up the phone and made a call, and ten minutes later, Jack was briefing the patrols. The search went on through the day.
At three o'clock, while it was still light, but already turning to dusk, Keith Fraser, who ran a television repair and installation business from a small workshop behind Wattie Dickson's newsagent's place was on top of Denny Court, the second grey monolith of high-rise council housing by the river next to Latta Court where Timmy Doyle had been snatched from his pram. Keith had been an electrical engineer in Castlebank Shipyard until the Korean shipbuilding had all but obliterated the Clyde from the forefront of marinecraft and made it just a memory with only gaunt black cranes on the skyline as a reminder of the boom days. Now he was in a growth industry, and spent much of his time on roofs and up ladders installing satellite diches which were beginning to proliferate like mushrooms on walls and houses throughout the town.
Despite the wail of sirens in the frosty morning, and despite the shocking spate of murders which had cast a pall of unease and trepidation among the townsfolk, the residents of Denny Court on that day were more concerned about the fault in their television reception. They flooded the council with complaints and Keith Fraser, who was working in Lochend that day, eventually had to head back into town and check out the problem before the good people of Denny Court started a riot over the loss of their daytime quiz shows and soap re-runs.
The elevator, smothered in graffiti and stinking of sweat and bad cooking took him to the ninth floor and refused to go further. He had to trudge up the final five flights with his toolbag until he got to the roof where he used his pass-key to get out onto the flat.
He spotted the problem with the communal aerial immediately, but it took several moments for the gruesome truth to dawn on him.
The aluminium prongs of the antenna were bent out of line by two small bundles which dangled down from the spidery rig. At first Keith thought that one of the housewives from the teeming block of flats had come up and hung her washing on the aerial, but as soon as he crossed the asphalt roof, he realised what he was seeing and took several slow steps backwards, shaking his head all the while, eyes fixed to the two sightless and staring eyes which twinkled red in the glow from the hazard-light dome.
Keith made it all the way to the ground, shunning the elevator the whole distance, and had reached his van parked fifty yards away before he remembered that he had a portable phone in the pocket of his jacket. As it was, it took him seven attempts before his shaking fingers managed to press the numbers for the police emergency service and even when he got through to the operator, he could not speak for fully three minutes.
In the station, Ralph Slater got the call and made it across the bridge to Denny Court in seven minutes, followed by two patrol cars with sirens squealing.
Young Colin Jamieson and his cousin Laurie Liddell had both been spiked under the jawline on the aluminium spines, which made their towsled heads twist grotesquely. From the amount of blood under the body, it was clear that Laurie had still been alive at the time. His bloody prints on the spike above his head showed his desperate yet futile efforts to free himself. Ralph could visualise the squirming youngster trying to raise his body while the pain tore into his neck. His agony must have been extreme. From what he could see, the youngster would have been trying to scream for help as his struggles weakened, but no help came because nobody would have heard. The spike of metal had been driven right through the boy's larynx. His cousin, a small, slight shape dangling close by, had probably died before he was hung up like a carcass in a butcher's shop. His eyes still glittered, kept moist in the cold air, and his hands hanging limply at his sides were blue with the lividity of blood draining down into them. The spike had taken him on the left side of the jaw, causing only a small puncture hole, but he had been driven down upon it with such force that it had rammed right through his temple on the other side.
Keith Fraser produced a hacksaw and cut through the metal and the boys were loaded into bags which were too big for their small frames, while Ronnie Jeffrey took pictures of everything for posterity.
Just before darkfall, on the coldest night of the year so far, the body of Lisa Corbett was spotted by a teenage boy. The only surprise was that no-one had seen it earlier. Sorley Fitzpatrick sent his biggest ladders from the fire station, but they couldn't get high enough up the steeple of the old parish Church at the crossroads of River and Kirk Streets, and eventually they had to call in the Sea King helicopter from the submarine base further down the estuary to come and lower the frail limp thing down from the golden weathercock where it had been swaying in the gathering breeze. The massive cast-iron weather vane had easily taken her weight. The girl had been pierced through the shoulder by the six-foot long stylised arrow and had swung with the northening wind until her foot had snagged on the compass-point. There she had hung all day, leaking drops of blood to the far pavement in the strange secrecy of height and familiarity before a schoolboy had casually looked up and wondered what the flapping shape was. He'd pointed upwards and his friends, on their way home from school early, had gathered around. Passers by had stopped to rubberneck and finally a policeman had chanced along. Even he hadn't recognised the shape, but he knew of the find on top of Denny Court, and called it in just in case. John McColl had to go back to the station for a pair of binoculars and when he twiddled the focus ring, the dead girl's pale face, jaws so wide the back teeth were visible, had sprung into awful clarity.
The body of Graham Friel was found a week later pinned to the guard-rail of the gas tank on the east end of town. It might have gone undiscovered for a while longer, but because of the freezing winter, people were using more gas than normal to heat their homes and when the huge cylinder sank as the fuel was drawn off, the bloody body of the bakery worker was found lolling on the curved roof. An arm and most of the shoulder were missing and were never recovered again.
Old George Wilkie, the caretaker at the planner's office had simply disappeared. It was not until May, when the buds on the trees had exploded into green that his rotting carcass slipped off the overflow pipe on the roof of the old masonic hall and tumbled into the valley gutter and blocked the flow of early summer rains. The water backed up behind the body and seeped over the lead flashing and into the old hall where the brothers met in secret conclave, ruining a display of memorabilia from the boom-town bygone age. Keith Fraser's cousin George, a mason who also ran a roofing firm got the ladders up to check the blockage and found the corpse of the old man, though, by this time, it was only his coat which held him together over the drainage gutter. The flies had had the spring months to get to work and when George grabbed a hold of what he thought was a bundle of rags, a pile of squirming white and bloated maggots came spilling out of a sleeve, along with a skeletal arm which had been picked almost clean. The stench was awesome.
On the day the bodies of the milk boys and Lisa Corbett were found, Blair Bryden worked overtime to get the story on the wires and his story blared from every networked news channel. The name he'd coined for the killer had stuck.
Blair himself managed to get in front of a camera in a live broadcast from the crossroads at River and Kirk Street, pointing up to the night sky where floodlights illuminated the needle-spite on the old church steeple.
"This," he said, "is where the Shrike brought his latest victim."
He gave a brief and eloquent summary of the ghastly events which had rocked the town in the space of three short weeks, and managed to slip in a barbed comment about Jack being taken off the case by Superintendent Ron Cowie whose picture was shown, carefully chosen by Blair, one suspected, to catch a shot of him with his eyes closed and mouth open. He added that O'Day had escaped from the cell after Jack got his marching orders. Blair speculated as to where the Shrike would strike next and painted a picture of a town shivering with fear, which was closer to the truth than the viewing public beyond the burgh boundary realised.
Next morning, his story made the front page of every newspaper, but by then it was all over bar the shouting.