Edward Tomlin stunned his family to silence when he told them he was going to die.
It happened on the Friday night, one day after Shona Campbell's baby had been torn from her arms by something which had leapt down at her from the shadows, and only six hours after the girl herself died from the terrible injuries. She never regained consciousness which was a blow to Jack Fallon who had posted a policewoman to sit by her bed in the hope she might, despite the devastating wound on her head, have been able to give them some answers.
Tomlin was sitting at the head of the table in the kitchen in the semi-detached house in Eastmains, out on the far edge of town. When he sluggishly pushed his plate away from him, the sausage and egg was untouched.
"Are you not hungry?" Margaret Tomlin asked him. Between them, their two girls were feeding with obvious relish.
"I'm going to die," he said. The words came out without a trace of emotion. Margaret picked up the tone immediately though the girls missed it entirely.
"We're all going to die," Christine piped up. She was fourteen and always in the top three in her class. She spread butter on a slice of bread as she spoke. "It's a fact of life."
"Oh, don't talk like that," Trisha protested. "I hate that."
Margaret cut across them. "What did you say?"
"I'm going to die." He looked at her across the table, his face completely and utterly blank. Margaret Tomlin, who was a pleasant, plump woman with her faded fair hair pulled back in a pony-tail, felt a slow coldness in her stomach. For the past week Eddie had been very withdrawn. He'd stayed out late, and as soon as he was home, he'd gone straight up to the loft where he kept with the train set he'd owned since before they were married. The night before, it had been well past midnight late and he hadn't said a word, though in the morning she'd found his trousers were scuffed a scraped and covered in mud from the knee to the ankle. When she'd asked him what had happened, he'd given her a blank look and had said nothing.
In all the years she'd known him, since both of them were at the school the girls now attended, Edward Tomlin had been a dependable man. Even boring, some might have said, and Margaret herself might have said it if she'd been pressed. Certainly, they led dull enough lives. The girls were quite well behaved and bookish. She worked as a clerkess in Castlebank. He patrolled the empty Castlebank shipyard. She knew nothing at all of the clothes he'd stolen from washing lines at night, the panties and stockings which he kept locked in the box behind the toolroom door, and which he wore in the hollow silence of the hull-shed.
He never forgot their anniversary and they always went out on that day for an Italian meal in Glasgow. He belonged to no club and rarely went out drinking.
In the past week or so, he'd been out without saying where he was going and when he clambered in to bed beside her, she could smell drink on his breath. A couple of times she'd asked him if anything was wrong and he'd mumbled that there was nothing on his mind.
She thought about the possibility that he might have another woman and hated herself when she'd sniffed at the collar of his jacket for traces of perfume. On the Wednesday, when he'd gone out at night - Just out, nowhere special, he'd said vaguely - she'd gone up to the loft and checked through the desk he had there. There was nothing, no letters, no odd little gifts. She'd gone through his pockets while he was up with his trains and had come up with nothing. There were no receipts, no notes, no telephone numbers. Nothing except for the tarot cards. Two of them. The six of cups and the king of pentacles, old fashioned cards with victorian-style artwork back and front, and the name of each scrolled on the bottom. Both of the cards were bent, as if they'd been stuffed in the pocket in haste. She knew next to nothing of tarot, didn't have a clue where he could have picked them up. She had put them back in his pocket and said nothing.
Now, on the Friday night. Edward turned round and told his family he was going to die.
"I've done something," he said.
"Done what?" Margaret asked. She could hear the chill in her own voice, almost echoing the dead coldness in his. Both girls looked from father to mother, like spectators at tennis.
"Something. I don't know. It's too dark to see."
"What are you talking about it?" Margaret asked. She could feel a little tremor start in her left hand. She put down the fork and it rattled against the plate.
"I took something. I had to."
"What's wrong daddy?" Trisha piped up plaintively.
"I took weedkiller. Paraquat. I drank it."
Margaret opened her mouth, closed it again, fighting the giddiness as the blood drained from her face.
"You did what?"
"Paraquat," he repeated. "I had to. It said so."
"Who said so?"
So far his voice had been dead flat. No inflection, no cadence. The words came out and landed like cuts of meat on a butcher's board. Eddie Tomlin's eyebrows arched upwards, and a look of bewilderment came across his face.
"I...I don't know. Him. It. It said to."
"Edward Tomlin. Stop it this minute."
The puzzled expression faded, and the man's face went blank again.
"Too late. Can't stop it now."
"I don't believe you," She shot back, clutching at the straw.
He got up slowly and went to the back door. She heard the outside door, beyond the pantry, open with a clatter. He went outside and came back with a plastic bottle. She'd seen it before. He'd used it in summer to clear the weeds from the stone chippings on the narrow driveway.
"This is it. I drank it."
For a moment he sounded like a little boy boasting.
"And I'm going to die."
Trisha burst into tears. "Stop it daddy. I hate you speaking like that," she bawled.
He turned to her and looked at her as if he'd never seen her before.
"Can't stop it. Not now. The clock is running," Tomlin said, and then he smiled a ghastly smile which only moved his mouth, while the rest of his face remained expressionless.
"Time to go," he added. He got slowly to his feet and turned away from the table.
The three of them watched him as he took four steps and then started to slump when he reached the sink. His knees buckled and Margaret heard the thud as his ribs caught the rounded edge. He gave a little gasp and then she heard him retch violently. Liquid splashed into the basin and Trisha was promptly vomited her eggs onto her plate.
"Eddie?" Margaret asked in a voice that was more of a gasp. "Eddie? Tell me it's a joke?"
He retched again. She could see his sides heave with the violence of it. This time nothing came jetting out of his mouth. He gagged twice then coughed, before bringing his head up. He turned and as he did, he began to sink slowly to the floor.
"No joke," he said breathlessly. "All over. All over now." He hiccupped. His face had gone greenish white. "Time to go now."
He slid down against the cupboard door and sprawled on the vinyl. He tried to raise himself up on one elbow but failed. He turned to his stricken wife, his eyes now wide and staring. A trickle of saliva dribbled down his chin.
"Got to go now. Only good thing for me."
Christine was crying in a high-pitched continuous howl. Trisha was still trying to get her breath back. There was a hot smell of bile in the air.
Margaret Tomlin got herself up from her knees, her face as white as her husband's and almost knocked herself out on the door in her rush to get to the phone. Within fifteen minutes an ambulance arrived to take Edward Tomlin to Lochend general where Shona Campbell's body lay in one of the long, cold drawers.
A team of doctors began the hopeless fight to save his life. It took him six days to die as inch by inch, the poison invaded his organs and one by one they began to close themselves down.
By the time Jack Fallon got home that Friday, it was nearly midnight and the cottage was cold. He slung his coat on the hook by the front door and poured himself a drink first, before putting the coffee on to heat. He was tired, cold and hungry, but didn't think he could eat.
It had not been a good day.
Shona Campbell had died, as the doctors had predicted, from blood-loss, exposure and the massive trauma. She had not regained consciousness.
Jack had spoken to Robbie Cattenach on the phone.
"A heavy instrument. Not quite blunt. Like a log with nails in it," Robbie had told him. "Tremendous damage to the left side of her head. It's a wonder she survived as long as she did."
Jack urged him to go on. He knew he'd get the full report, but it wouldn't be until Monday.
"She put up a fight, that's for sure."
"It was definitely a man then?"
"Probably. I'd put money on it. Someone very strong. I gave some of the scrapings to your forensic people. She'd had a go alright, but that didn't do her any good at all."
Ralph Slater and his team had gone over the scene for three hours and came up with very little.
"Whoever hit her was a fair size," Ralph conjectured. "It's definitely a downward blow. Caved in the side of her face. Not a pretty sight. There was a lot under the nails of her left hand. That's being analysed just now."
"Footprints?" Jack asked.
"Cold night, boss. Freezing. Any prints are two days old."
"What are the neighbours saying?"
Ralph handed over a manilla folder.
"It's all in there and not worth a damn. One old fellow heard someone yelling late on, but that's just normal for the area at that time of night. In fact, I get the impression it was quieter than normal."
Jack had interviewed Craig Campbell, who had sobered up but made just as little sense in the cold light of day. He was no help.
Blair Bryden had managed to get the snatch on the front page of the Gazette and had a wing column devoted to Jock Toner's demise. It was quick work. He must, Jack knew, have written it all within an hour of leaving by the back door of the station to get it out on time. It was a fair enough piece, and Blair had the advantage of being a Levenford man born and bred. He knew just about everybody.
The story spilled on to the centre spread where the local editor had compiled wrap-up on the action over the past fortnight. Anybody could read the question between the lines. Two possible suicides, two child snatches. A woman killed. A father and his three children dead in a fire. While the Gazette did not say, in so many words that there was a connection between all these events, its tone did suggest that misfortune had stamped into town and set up home.
Jack Fallon had to agree. It was a few weeks until the end of the year, and already a bad winter had settled on Levenford.