The alarm woke him from a deep sleep while it was still dark. Jack crawled out of bed groping for his dressing gown, feeling drugged and dopey. The kitchen was cold and the glass on the window to the back garden was glittering with a latticework of frost. A faint sliver of moon on the horizon sent a glimmer of silver light onto the snow which had stacked up against the fence. The garden fork was still stuck into the ground, though only the haft was now showing. No birds sang.
Tea and toast was all he could face. Jack felt he could have done with another six hours sleep, but at least he had slept some, and amazingly, the night had not been riven by the dreams for the first time in a long time. While he took a hot shower he thought about what he'd have to do today. The patrols had picked up nothing, or he'd have got a call within the last six hours. As he soaped himself down, he was thinking about the suicides.
There was a pattern to them. They were all linked so far, tenuously, but definitely. They were connected to the murder in Cairn House that seemed to have taken place months ago, instead of mere weeks. They had all been there, which meant they were involved, to some extent, in the killing. Whether they had done it, either singly or in a group, was another matter. So far the deaths had come within days, even hours of abductions, strange deaths following the bizarre, incomprehensible taking of children, if young Carol Howard could be included as a child.
There were conundrums within riddles. Puzzles inside a maze.
The possibility of post-hypnotic suggestion crossed his mind. It had been the stuff of a thousand detective novels. The evil doctor and the mesmerised puppet ordered to do the evil bidding then instructed to negate themselves after the event.
But if that was the case, who was giving the instructions? And why?
And why had it all started with Marta Herkik? Jack decided he'd give Andy Toye another call. There must be something missing from the puzzle. Some piece that would fit with everything else and connect all the other pieces and point the finger.
He came out of the shower and scrubbed himself dry with a crisp towel. The kettle had boiled and the toast was standing to attention in the toaster. He buttered some, made a cup of tea and discovered he'd developed a surprising appetite. He made another two slices, wolfed them down, and felt able to face the day.
"You're looking a lot better," Julia told him.
"I managed to get some sleep. It works wonders."
"You're overdoing things as usual," she said with sisterly, almost motherly concern.
"That's because I've got plenty to overdo. It keeps me awake."
"You should give yourself a break," she chided.
"I will. I've promised Davy I'll take him up Langmuir Hills at the weekend. See if we can spot some mountain hares in the snow."
"He'd love that. I hate keeping him cooped up all week."
"Just so long a you do keep him inside. This thing will stop eventually, and then we'll only have the normal bunch of flashers and peeping toms to worry about."
"Do you think you'll get him?"
Jack put his arm around her shoulder and gave her an encouraging hug.
"Course I will. That's what I'm overdoing."
Down at the school, Davy went through his litany. Yes, he'd stay in school. Yes, he'd wait for his mother. No, he wouldn't talk to strange people. As he ran off past the pinch-faced mothers who were reluctant to leave the school gates, Jack felt a warm surge of love for the boy. He and Julia were the only family he had left.
Down at the station on Thursday morning, there were no urgent messages. The sky in the east was showing a glimmer of dawn, and there was a slough of dampness in the air.
Both Ralph and John were in the operations room adding to the mass of information on the computers. Jack accepted a plastic cup of coffee, sat down and the phone rang. The day got worse from that moment.
Rolling Stock was supposed to open at nine, but Jim Deakin, the manager, who lived in Lochend, had a job getting his car started in the cold. It had finally coughed into life after he'd run the battery flat and had to push it forty yards to a slope on the road where it kick-started at the third attempt. When he got to the parts store, the rest of the staff were standing in a huddle outside the locked doors, swinging their hands under their armpits in energetic self-hugs, trying to keep warm.
"Sorry guys, car problems," he said, forcing his way through the small group of teenage girls and boys, jangling his bunch of keys. He slipped the lock, pushed the outer door, scooped up a small pile of mail and walked through to where an inner door kept the cold out. Everybody followed him through.
"Hey, it's freezing in here," one of the lads who serviced the bikes piped up.
"Put the heating on, Doreen," the manager told one of the girls. He opened the door to his own office and slid out of his heavy sheepskin car coat. He unlocked the safe and took out the rolls of change for the tills. The lights on the main store came on with a stuttering fluorescent flicker. One of the girls stuck a tape in the deck and loud music started blaring out of the speakers.
Jim Deakin brought the tray of cash round and started filling the register drawer. Doreen came back from the switch room, slid into her swivel seat and started putting on enough lipstick to last a week. She pouted into a small compact mirror and Jim thought she looked as if she'd eaten raw liver.
Just at that moment there was a shout from up at the back of the store. One of the lads, now in his sky-blue overalls came pounding down between the aisles of oil cans and de-icer sprays.
"Hey, Jim. There's some bikes missing."
"So find them," the manager said, rattling coins into their doo-cots.
"No. They're gone. Three Raleighs and an Apollo."
"How can they have gone? Are you taking the mickey?
"Course not." Donny Craig had left school at the same time as young Carol Howard. They'd even sat next to each other in maths, though she'd showed more aptitude than he had. His interest was bikes. He could repair and service them, change tyres and refit drive sprockets from dawn until dusk, which was what he was paid for. He was also very good at it, because he knew his bikes. "They were there last night in their stands, and now they're away."
He went back up the passage between the shelves. Deakin followed him, and after a few seconds, Doreen finished her morning make-up, slid off her seat, and came up behind them.
"Look," the boy was pointing to the empty brackets. "That's where they were."
Doreen came up to stand beside the manager. She made a shivering sound.
"It's really cold in here. Where's that draught coming from?"
The manager turned round, about to tell her to go back to her post at the till, when the fuzzy daub of day-glo paint on the wall caught his eye.
"What the hell is that?" he barked, striding across past the spaces where the bikes had stood. Then he noticed something else further to the left, closer to the back of the shop.
"And that?" he said pointing. Doreen followed his pointing finger.
"Somebody's painted the bloody wall."
Some distance from the yellow smudge of spray paint, the breeze-block facing was smeared and smattered in dark red. It looked as if someone had thrown several cans of primer right at the wall.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Jim said, standing hands on hips.
"Look up there," Doreen said. Everybody turned, raised their eyes and saw the gaping skylight. A rope dangled down and looped itself round the cross-spars.
"Bloody hell," Jim mouthed. "We've been turned over."
He strode briskly and officiously towards the wall where the paint had been splattered, taking small, annoyed steps when his heel skidded on a splash that stained the tiled flooring. His legs went up in the air and the manager came down with a thump, one hand sweeping a dozen aerosol cans from the nearest shelf.
Doreen tittered and Donny Craig was diplomatic enough to turn away to hide his grin. Jim Deakin got to his feet. There was a damp stain on his trousers from backside to heel. He glared at Donny then rounded on Doreen.
"What the hell are you laughing at?" he blazed. "Go and call the police."
Just beside him, one of the round children's helmets, as stridently yellow as the paint on the wall, lay on its side a few feet away. In a temper, the manager took a swing at it with his foot. Instead of the light plastic dome flying off like a football into the air, his toe connected with a solid crack. The helmet rolled a few yards towards Doreen. Deakin yelled out in surprise and the sudden pain flaring in his toes. He started to do a little hopping dance, cursing vehemently. He slipped again on the slithery patch of red and went down again with a clatter. His thick, heavy rimmed glasses flew off and skittered away.
Donny Craig burst into helpless laughter. Doreen was holding her sides and bent double.
Then she let out a piercing scream which soared up to the roof and completely drowned out the noise the manager was making.
For a second the boy thought she was hysterical with laughter. He was holding his knees with both hands. He looked up at her and saw, not mirth, but utter shock stretched across the girl's face.
Still giggling, he came across to her, reached out to touch her shoulder and she jumped back from him as if she'd been scalded. All the time, her squeal went on, an uncontrollable and incoherent babble of sound. She was doing a jittery little dance as if she was standing in a nest of ants and trying to stamp them all to death. All the time she was pointing down at the floor.
Donny looked down and in that moment he felt the blood physically drain out of his head. There was a ringing in his ears and the whole store seemed to wobble around him.
A pair of light blue eyes stared up at him from inside the biker's helmet. The strap was snugged tight under the chin, keeping the mouth closed. There was not a mark on the face, but underneath it there was a stringy congealed patch of red from which a thin, ribbed tube protruded. It looked not unlike the plastic pipes which fitted on the little hand-pumps Rolling Stock sold for syphoning petrol, but instinctively Donny Craig realised it was not. Although he had never seen a human windpipe in his life, he knew exactly what it was.
He backed away, his face now paler than the gray one which stared at him with dead eyes on the floor.
"Ung," he managed to say after several seconds. Jim Deakin was standing on one foot, holding his other ankle in both hands, weaving for balance and still swearing comprehensively.
"Suppose you think it's bloody funny," he said when the swearing stopped.
"Ung," Donny repeated. His stomach was now going into spasms, trying to squeeze its contents upwards. The boy swallowed hard, took another two steps backwards and bumped into Doreen who was now sliding sideways against a fortuitously positioned pile of car mats.
"And what's up with that silly cow?" the manager demanded to know. He came limping across to them. "Look at the state of me. And I've probably broken my toes."
"Jim," the boy finally managed to say. "Look."
"What a bloody mess," the manager was saying. "Come on Doreen. Get on the phone and get the police round here. Damned vandals, they should all be hung."
"No, Jim. You have to come and see," Donny said. His voice had gone very soft, every word slow and dreamy.
"What is it now?" Deakin demanded. He hobbled across, Donny pointed, and the manager shoved his glasses on to his face with an irritated jerk. He peered down.
"What on earth?" he said incredulously. "Is this some sort of a...?" he turned to Donny, looked at him strangely, bent down again as if to confirm what his eyes had shown him and came back up again.
Without looking back, he pointed at the helmet and the face inside it, wagging his finger in a strange little emphasis.
"Its..."
Donny nodded blankly.
His boss turned and walked slowly down the aisle, shaking his head as if by denying it he could make the thing go away. When he got to the and of the aisle he turned and looked again. The helmet was still there. Donny was standing stock still, hands at his sides. Doreen slowly slid the last few inches as the car mats gave way under her weight and they flopped to the floor with the girl on top of them.
Sadie McLean, a middle aged woman with blue-grey hair in tight permed curls came walking briskly out of the staff room. "What's all the noise about," she called out. "I've just made the tea."
Jim Deakin came walking slowly towards her.
"Want a cup Jim?" Sadie asked brightly. He shook his head and continued to shake it as he walked past her. She watched him turn, shake his head again.
"You sure?"
"No." he came slowly towards her. "Sadie, there's been a wee accident. Could you call the police?"
"Accident? What? Where?" The woman turned around and saw Doreen lying on the pile of mats.
"What's happened to her?"
"Nothing. Just call the police, would you. Tell them there's been a break-in and an accident. Tell them it's very urgent."
The squad car took fifteen minutes to arrive. Young Gordon Pirie, Levenford's newest recruit, should have gone off duty at eight, but he was grateful of the fact that there seemed to be an unlimited amount of overtime available in the last week or so, even if it meant being out at all hours of the night and attending gruesome scenes where the bodies were in pieces, not like he'd ever seen in all the real police movies. He was still a bit embarrassed about the night before, but in the cold light of day, he knew he could face anything. Policemen, he'd convinced himself got hardened to that sort of thing. He drove into the spacious, almost completely empty car park, pulled up beside Rolling Stock and adjusted his helmet as he manfully shoved on the door.
The manager was leaning against the cash register, whey faced. Close by, a woman was fussing around a young girl who was sitting on the floor, her shoulders heaving in violent, but strangely silent sobs.
"Good morning sir," Gordon said with brisk efficiency. "What appears to be the problem."
"There's been a break in and a burglary," Jim Deakin said lethargically.
"I see sir. And when did you discover it?" Gordon pulled out his notebook and began writing.
"This morning."
"Oh tell him about the thing," Sadie snapped.
"Oh yes," Deakin said, nodding. "I'll have to show you."
Gordon put his notebook in his pocket and followed the small, portly manager up the space between the shelves. His eager policeman's eye noticed the daub of paint on the wall and the long vertical splashes above it.
"Wonder how they got up there," he mused.
"Here it is," Jim Deakin said, pointing down.
For a second, Gordon Pirie thought it was a plastic model, a mannequin's head, used to display the helmets. He lowered himself slowly to hunker down, stopped when he had almost got there, then jumped back up to his feet with a gasp of alarm. His foot slipped and his toe nudged the helmet which rocked slowly back and forth, the dead eyes scanning the ceiling in an eternal stare.
Across from them, there was a door with a small stylised figure of a man stuck to the surface.
Gordon made it there in six big strides. He strong-armed it open, crashed through to the washroom and donated his breakfast to the sink.
Beside him a young man in dungarees was just rising from a leaning position, as if he'd been washing his hair. He heard Gordon's heaving splatter and sickly moan, and promptly dived his own head back into the sink and retched explosively.
Five minutes after that, Jack Fallon got the call. In ten minutes Rolling Stock was busier than it had ever been at that time of a winter's morning.
Ralph Slater was directing Ronnie Jeffrey's camera. There were two detectives up on ladders, taking samples of the splashes on the wall. A third was up on the cross-spars close to the roof.
"Looks like they came in here, sir?" he called down. "That's a tow rope. Two of them tied together."
A wheaten-faced Gordon Pirie was taking statements from the staff. Somebody had put an empty cardboard box over the head in the helmet.
"What a mess," Jack said."Maybe we should have done some padlock rattling last night."
"I don't think we could have stopped this. The doors were locked. Nobody would have seen a thing."
"And our men were looking in all the wrong places," Jack said, feeling disgusted with himself.
From above, a voice called down.
"Sir, I think you should come up here and have a look."
Jack went to the ladder they'd borrowed from the do-it-yourself store. It was a three-section affair, stretching up to the beams. He started up reluctantly and when he got half-way there, he felt the nauseous vertigo loop inside him. The ground was a long way down. For a few seconds he paused to settle his breathing, holding on white-knuckled to the uprights, then continued his ascent. It was difficult for him to scramble through the tangle of struts. From this height, the floor seemed impossibly far away and he tried not to look down.
"Over here sir," the detective said. He was standing on a beam with his head sticking out of the top of the roof. Jack reached him cautiously, held onto the lip and craned out. The roof sloped away gently. A few yards from the opening, where the window was lying back on its hinges, four bikes lay in a sprawl, wheels shiny and handlebars gleaming in the dawn light.
A big square hole on the ground. There's something lying there. Like a bike. Yes. It is a bike. It went down through there. I can hear it, like an animal.
Lorna's voice, sizzling with panic, came back to him with utter clarity.
A big square hole in the ground. It was a big square hole in a roof. No wonder she couldn't recognise it. Somehow, in that weird second sight she had, that sixth sense, she had seen this.
And she had seen more.
A cellar. Somewhere big and dark. There's shelves. It has one of them. Two of them. Oh, there's blood all over, and the smell is choking.
In the light of the early day, it was big but not dark. But there were shelves, going from floor to dizzying roof height. Jack closed his eyes and tried to picture this from the outside, and at night. It would look like a cellar. And oh, there was blood all over. Not paint, not car primer for old rusty jalopies, but thick congealing blood which had dribbled in runnels down the walls. The smell now was bad enough. It must have been throat-gagging.
The bikes in their forlorn heap angled their wheels up to the sky, thick tyres for bouncing along forest tracks and for whizzing along with the wind in your hair on sunny Sunday afternoons. Boys things.
Oh, Mr Fallon, they're only boys.
While he stared out at the sky, Jack envisaged the nightmare scene. Four boys Lorna had said. Whoever he was, whatever it was, had come in, probably through the open skylight, the way the boys had done.
Who were they? He'd find out soon enough, no doubt.
He, it, the killer had caught one of them, the one with the helmet on? Then the next. The others had seen it. They'd panicked. In his mind's eye, he could see their frantic scramble up the sides of the shelves, no ladders, just angled metal bars to hold on onto. One pushing the other, crying, screaming, bawling for their mothers in the dark of the big gloomy store, while someone, some thing came at their backs, still wet and slimy from the blood of the others. Their feet would have slipped on the edges of the shelves, their fingers scrabbled for purchase, fear freezing their blood, freezing their muscles to turbid slowness. They'd have crawled and clambered, whimpering, struggling to breathe over the pounding of their hearts. Out through the window, one turning to help the other, with their pursuer hot at their backs. He could imagine the feeling of the boy inside, desperately hauling himself upwards, the other one dragging at his jacket, imagining the killer coming for him, close behind, maybe clattering across the rails.
Had it been like that?
He could hear her words loud, desperate, in the telephone, as if she were calling him now.
It has him. The other one is trying to pull him out. But it has him. I can see his face. His eyes are looking at me. He knows.
The running commentary of a nightmare.
Oh god. It's pulling him down. He can't hold on. He's crying. The pain in his leg. It's tearing him apart.
She'd seen it, that was for sure. There could be no other explanation. Four boys she'd said, down in a cellar, through a hole in the ground which was a skylight in the roof. The bikes were lying there as she'd told him. Who would think of mountain bikes on a roof? Nobody. Not even Chief Inspector Jack Fallon. He'd sent the men out last night to probe into high places, knowing within himself that there would have been another disappearance. But they hadn't checked this high place. As elevations went, it was so low as to be negligible, probably not even visible from the spot he'd stood on up on the roof of Castlebank Distillery. But it had been high enough.
"Something here," the policeman said. Jack pulled his head in from the fresh air. He could smell the blood again. Down below, the ground seemed to sway and he had to hold on tightly as he turned.
"Blood here," the man muttered, "And here and here." He gestured with a finger.
"And what's this?" He held on with his left which he reached out over a space with what Jack considered casual foolhardiness and drew up a dark piece of cloth which had been draped over a spar.
"Saturated," the detective said.
"What have you got?"
"Denim. Looks like a pair of jeans. Or the leg of one. It's been ripped off."
He turned round, letting go his grip as he did, as if he was only two feet from the ground instead of nearer forty. Jack's stomach tried to do a quick somersault then steadied itself.
"Blood all over the place," the constable said.
The two of them headed back across the girders. One of Ralph's men met them at the edge of the spars where the ladder leaned and there was a moment of lurching vertigo as Jack squeezed past the man who had his forensics equipment case slung over his shoulder. Jack made it slowly to the ground. Ralph was just rising from his haunches beside the head in the plastic helmet.
"What do you think?"
"Damned if I know," Ralph said honestly.
"This took a lot of strength. It's not a clean cut, not like an axe or a machete, but it's near enough. Something hit this laddie one hell of a blow. Probably a single swipe. It came from the left."
Ralph carefully turned the helmet round. The glazed, drying eyes panned Jack with their infinity stare. The face was strangely peaceful, in repose. On the left side, just above the ear, the plastic was caved in. There were three deep indentations. Ralph pointed them out with the tip of his pencil. At the base of each little valley, the plastic was scored right through to the skull beneath.
"I've seen these before," he said.
"On Shona Campbell." Jack said. Ralph nodded.
"Robbie Cattanach said it looked as if she'd been hit by a bear."
"I'd like to see the bear that could have done this," Ralph said drily.
"So how did it happen?" Jack asked. Out near the door, the two women were hugging each other and sobbing loudly.
"Beats me. Probably came in the same way as the young fellow, then hit him with something heavy and hooked. End of story."
"There was more than one," Jack said. "Maybe as many as four." He explained about the mountain bikes up on the roof. Ralph's assistant came forward with the soaked leg of denim now in a clear plastic bag.
"We've got a name for him," the young man said. "He'd a card inside his pocket." He handed it to Ralph who flipped the little plastic folder open, then gave a dry chuckle which held no humour. He passed it to Jack.
It was a little red wallet. Inside was a tin picture of St Christopher stamped in relief and beside it a small card.
"In case of accident, please call Mrs Ena Redford, 52 Strowans Crescent, Levenford." The card was signed: Edward J. Redford.
Tucked into the plastic was a photobooth picture of a round-faced boy with freckles, grinning at the world.
"At least we can ID this one," the CID man said.
"Not this one. This isn't the same lad." Jack showed Ralph the photo. He held it beside the staring face.
"Not the same boy," he agreed.
He got up and shook his head.
"So who's this?" he asked nobody in particular. "And what in the name of Christ is going on?"
Jack left the scene of crimes team and the rest of the officers in the hardware store and headed back for the car. He'd intended to go straight to Clydeshore Avenue, get Lorna Breck and bring her down here, no matter who saw them, but when he opened the car door, the radio was squawking. He thumbed the button and Bobby Thomson's gruff voice crackled out loudly. Jack got to the station in ten minutes.
The front office looked busy. Bobby Thomson was talking to a man and a woman and an elderly gentleman with a white moustache. Another woman sat alone and pale-faced while another couple sat together, holding hands, expressionless.
"This is Mr and Mrs Visotsky," Bobby introduced. "They've come to report their son missing."
Jack's heart sank.
"Yes, it's our Votek," the man said. He was tall and dressed in a smart blazer and slacks. His wife was slender, with mousy brown hair. She kept biting her bottom lip, and kept a firm grip on the crook of her husband's arm. The man said: "I'm Karl Visotsky, and this is wife Jean and my father, also Votek. Our son didn't come home last night."
Bobby leaned over the desk. "The others are with them too," he said. "same problem."
He lifted the flap and came round and brought the women and the other two people towards the desk.
"This is Mr Fallon," he said, offering no explanation. There were few, if any in Levenford who did not know by now who was leading the hunt.
Mr Visotsky's light blue eyes scanned Jack's face, and right at that moment, Jack intuitively knew who the dead boy was. His father had the same pale stare.
"Come with me," he said, leading them all into the interview room, keeping his face impassive.
They filed in, staying close, but keeping a distance from each other, as if they each of the parents was afraid to be contaminated by what the others might have.
"I thought he was with Eddie," the fair haired woman with pallid skin said before Jack was able to say something.
"And Eddie told me he was meeting your Charles," the other woman with the silent husband replied, her voice shaking with tension.
Jack held his hand up.
"We'd best hear it one at a time. Now, if you just give me your names, I'm sure I can help." Jack said that automatically, though he wasn't at all sure he'd be any help to these people. He was even more sure that at the end of the day he'd be no assistance at all. The man with the Polish name and the east-European eyes kept staring at him and a visual recollection transposed the dead eyes onto the worried father's face.
"I'm Ruby Black. This is my husband Angus," the pale woman said. "It's our Charles. He didn't come home this morning. We didn't worry last night, because he often stays out with his friends, but when I called Ena here," she pointed at a plump woman with short hair that had been grey but was now a faded red, "she said he wasn't there."
"And Votek was supposed to be with the both of them," the smartly dressed father said. "They're just boys. They have nothing else to do but listen to records, and that sort of thing."
Between them, they got the story out. They'd all of them called each other, and a woman called Galt in East Mains, but her husband, who had answered the door, unshaven and still in his rumpled boxer shorts, said he didn't know where his boy was, nor his wife, and at that time in the morning, he couldn't give a damn where they were. Jack took a note of the name and address. He picked up the internal phone and called through to the front office, asked Bobby Thomson to get a squad car out. He gave them the information and hung up. He turned back to the group again and the phone rang.
"That name you've asked for," the desk sergeant said. "I thought it rang a bell. There was a lad hurt on Castlebank Street. Old Wattie Dickson picked him up. They took him up to Lochend, injured, but not thought to be too serious."
"Get on to them pronto. I'll want somebody to speak to him. let me know the minute you've got anything."
He turned back to the group. Mrs Redford was sitting off to the side wringing her hands nervously.
According to the parents, their sons had been pals since they'd been at infant school. They had all left school together, none of them greatly qualified and because of the lack of jobs, none of them was in work, although Votek Visotsky went along at weekends to clean the cars in the dealership his father managed. They stayed at each other's houses most nights, played football at weekends, and did nothing much of anything else. Just boys.
None of the parents knew where their sons had been the previous night.
"They just go out," Ruby Black said. "They never say where they're going. You know what boys are like."
Jack did. He'd been one. Even though he'd been fond of his old man, seventeen and eighteen had been the years of minimal information, one word replies, great secrecy even when there was nothing to keep secret. He'd stolen his share of apples and he'd scaled the battlements down on the Castle Rock and braved the undertow to swim across the river down at keelyard Lane. He'd done a lot more besides.
"Haven't you heard the warnings? Read them in the papers?" he asked brusquely, a little unkindly. He regretted it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. There was one dead boy, two almost certainly, and if Lorna Breck was right, a third. There was a wall splattered with blood and a pool of the stuff on the floor, and a head in a silly day-glo yellow bike-bandit helmet rolling around on a tiled floor. Each and any of these parents might have lost a son that night. From the cheap plastic wallet in the sodden trouser-leg, Ena Redford had lost hers. What were warnings worth?
In case of accident please call the police and the scene of crimes team, and then Robbie Cattanach down at the slab.
"But that's just for wee kiddies," Angus Black spoke for the first time. "Charles is a big boy." Beside him his wife began to sniffle.
The phone rang again. Bobby Thomson told him the boy had been taken up to Keltyburn Hospital suffering from some kind of acid-burn. The hospital was famed the world over for plastic surgery.
Jack asked Bobby to get John McColl in as soon as he could, and turned back to the parents.
"We have had word of an incident," he said, keeping his voice light. "A boy slightly injured, possibly in a road accident. He's suffered some burns."
They all sat up straight. Slightly injured. That was better than injured, and a whole lot better than the other words they used on the bulletins, like serious and badly and critical. Jack could see the hope in each of their eyes.
"Is it Charlie?" Ruby Black asked haltingly.
"No. I don't have details yet, but it seems to be Gerald Galt."
The women visibly wilted.
"But this morning, we were called to another incident, a possible break in. It is possible that two of the boys, at least two of them, were involved."
"What? Are they under arrest?" This from the man with the polish eyes.
"I'm afraid not, Mr Visotsky. I'm afraid one boy has been badly injured. He has not been identified yet."
"Well, when will we know?"
"As soon as we do. Rest assured, we will be doing everything we can to locate the others."
They all sat, none of them looking at each other, taking in what Jack had said.
Badly injured. He has not been identified.
Did that mean he was dead? The stark question was evident in all of their faces.
My boy? My Eddie? My Charlie? My Votek?
Jack hauled his eyes away from theirs, shoved his seat back and stood. "If you could all wait here for a moment, I'll have somebody bring you a cup of tea. I'll be back as soon as I can. In the meantime," he beckoned over to Karl Visotsky, "could you come with me for a moment sir?"
The man leaned sideways and patted his wife on the hand. The old man with them reached across to touch his son in a poignant moment of contact. Then Karl Visotsky followed Jack from the room.
"What is it Superintendent?"
Jack let the mis-rank go.
"I'd like you to help me here. I've a difficult thing for you to do, and I can't be sure until you tell me. When I said in there that the boy had been badly injured, I wanted to spare the women's feelings, however briefly. In point of fact, one of the boys is dead."
The man took a step backwards as if an invisible hand had pushed him on the chest.
"Is it Votek?"
"That's where I need your help. At the moment, no positive identification is possible."
"Why? Has he been burned too?"
"Well, sir," Jack put his hand on the man's shoulder and gripped firmly, the way a man does when he's telling another man to get strong and take it on the chin. "No he's not been burned. But there is another problem. Not all of the body has been found."
"Oh my god," the man said, jamming the words together in a rush. "What's happened?"
"We don't know yet. I've got a whole team of people working on that just now."
"Can I see him?"
"Yes," Jack said, hating this even more. "But you will have to prepare yourself Mr Visotsky."
The man nodded dumbly. Jack took him by the elbow, led him through the swing doors and down beyond the cells to the police mortuary. It was a small room with two Victorian tiled slabs and a harsh smell of disinfectant. There were three little arched windows close to the ceiling which let in little light. Somebody had pulled the old fashioned cord mechanism which screwed the windows open on ratcheted iron curves, but the ventilation did nothing to clear the smell.
Along the walls, two filing-cabinets of long drawers stood side by side. An antique freezer pump hissed and sighed.
"Is he?" the dazed father said, pointing at the rack, just as Robbie Cattanach came through the far door in a flap of white. He looked at Jack, who nodded, then introduced the man.
"As yet we don't know who this is. No matter what, it will be a shock," Robbie said, keeping his voice low. " I have to tell you, Mr Visotsky, we only have a part of a body here. You may recognise it and you may not."
The man nodded quickly. His hands had started to shake. Robbie opened a drawer which rumbled on its travel, with a sound of the night-mail train clattering over the joins. Karl Visotsky moved forward with glacial slowness as if the air in front of him had become glutinous and thick. He put his hands on the edge of the drawer. Just as slowly, his head turned, though his eyes were still fixed on Robbie's face. Finally, with a dreadful roll, they swung down. His son stared up at him with those pale blue-green eyes.
He stood staring in utter silence for several minutes, a father carved in stone. Finally Jack reached forward and touched him on the elbow and the man jumped as if he'd been bitten by a snake.
He swung round and Jack saw the knowledge in his eyes. He himself had gone through that door to infinite understanding.
"Votek," The man whispered, his head dropping in confirmation. "This is my Votek."
He turned away from the drawer, moving with senile deliberation. Robbie closed it quickly and as silently as he could and watched as the man reached the wooden chair beside one of the slabs.
"They took his body," the boy's father said. "They took my son's body away."
He turned suddenly and glared at the two men.
"Who would do that to a boy? Eh? Tell me who would do that to a big soft boy like my son?"
Jack had no answer to that. He was starting not to think in terms of who, but of what.
And what would do a thing like that to a big soft boy like Votek Visotsky, or to little Kerry Campbell, or to Carol Howard, screaming for mercy and her life in a black lift shaft, he had no idea at all.
He led the man away. Mr Visotsky moved like an automaton, as if he was battery powered and the cells had just run flat. In the space of the three yards from the freezer drawer and the door, the son of the old Polish man who had seen, and lived through, terrible things in the extermination camps of Auchswitz-Birkenau, aged visibly. Give him a moustache and white hair and he would have looked just like the man upstairs.
Ralph Slater was bustling in through the front door as Jack reached the ground floor level. He had another set of plastic bags with his samples and scrapings. He came across with his eyebrows raised. Jack just nodded. He motioned to Ralph to wait there while he went back to the interview room. Over at the desk, the duty sergeant was taking notes while he answered the telephone. Jack heard him say something about a church. He walked through the doors behind the dead boy's father. Karl Visotsky shuffled forward as if his feet were encased in cement and his wife read it all in his eyes. She came towards him and they met like slow motion ballerinas in a tragedy. The other two women in the room looked at them, turned to each other, and Jack could see the dread begin to write itself on their faces. He crossed to Ena Redford and eased her from the seat. She pulled back as if he was a hangman, come to lead her away, but he gently drew her to her feet.
Ralph had put all the bags in the operations room, ready for the run to the lab. He came forward with a small bag in his hands.
"Mrs Redford," Jack asked as gently as he could.
"You've found him." she said blankly. "Is he?"
"No. I'm afraid we haven't found him, but I want you to take a look at this." Ralph handed over the bag and Jack pulled out the little wallet. He opened it and handed it to the woman. She took it in trembling fingers, stared at it for a long time, breath hitching hard.
"For his confirmation," she said. "That's when he got that. He always had it in his pocket. It should have said somebody should call a priest, but he put my name there."
"And is that Edward?" Jack said, taking the thing from her hand and easing out the little photograph. Eddie grinned dumbly out from the flat surface.
"Yes. That's Eddie," he said, voice cracking. "Where did you...?"
"That was found this morning, at the scene of a break-in. We don't know what has happened yet, but I'm trying to find out."
"A break in? When? Where? My Eddie wouldn't break in anywhere. He's not like that."
Jack put his hand on her shoulder. There was nothing else to say at a time like this. As far as he was concerned, the boy was dead, but until he found a body, she would continue to hope.
"No. We're doing our best to find out what happened. I'll get a car to take you home."
Mrs Visotsky was wailing when her husband and father-in-law led her out. Ruby Black and Ena Redford were silent, grey, and holding on to each other as if they might fall. Angus Black walked behind them, his face set and grim.
John McColl was in the operations room. He followed Jack out to the car and got in the passenger seat.
"Where to now?"
"Keltyburn," Jack said. "We might have a witness."
He took the back road, avoiding the city traffic, hurling the car round the ends, straddling the centre line. John McColl looked at him uneasily.
"Are we in a rush?"
"We missed Tomlin."
"By about four days," John said. "You'll never make that up no matter how fast you drive." He checked his seat belt, just to be sure. They pulled in through the ornate wrought iron gates of the hospital in twenty minutes.
Jed Galt was awake. His mother, a tall woman with big breasts and blonde hair piled up in a tangle was leaning over the bed holding her boy's free hand. The other was held away from his body on a pulley. It was covered in slimy gel and had the colour and sheen of frog skin.
"He's had an anaesthetic," the ward sister told Jack. "He might not be much help at the moment."
The two men sat down on the other side of the bed. Jack made the introductions and the woman let go her grip on her son's hand to shake theirs.
"We don't know what happened," she said. " I got a call from the hospital last night. I had to get a taxi."
"Has he said anything?"
"No, he's been sleeping most of the time. He was talking in his sleep, but it was just gibberish. The nurse said he might be delirious." She reached forward and felt her son's forehead. He was a good-looking youngster, with jet black hair not unlike like Jack's. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be asleep. On his cheek, there were two angry spots, shiny with gel.
At his mother's touch the boy stirred, and then drowsily opened his eyes. They rolled dopily for a moment, then seemed to come to focus.
"What's happening?" he asked tiredly. "What's this place?"
"It's alright Gerald, " Cathy Galt said. "You've had an accident, but they're looking after you."
The boy's dark eyes swivelled around and saw Jack sitting opposite his mother.
"Do you feel well enough to tell us what happened?"
He gave a little nod, then winced when it sent a vibration down his arm.
"I had a terrible dream," he said, voice barely above a whisper. His eyes darted left and right. "Where's Chalky and Eddie? And Votek. Are they here?"
"No. They're not. You were found on Castlebank Street last night. It looked as if you'd been in an accident."
"Accident?" The boy turned to Jack. "No. I was...we were..."
Then his eyes flicked wide open and he came completely awake. He jerked back against the pillow and his mouth opened as if he was going to scream, but he just started gasping for air, like someone who had run just a marathon. His mother patted his hand and told him it was alright.
"No," the boy moaned. He gave a little shudder and didn't seem to notice the vibration this time. His eyes were now staring up at the ceiling and his face had gone rigid. His left hand went into a spasm and gripped his mother's fingers so hard Jack could hear the knuckles pop.
"It was...it was chasing us," he finally blurted through clenched teeth. "It hit Chalky. Hit him right off the ground."
John McColl leaned forward to ask something, but Jack stayed him with a motion of his hand.
"It came down the wall. I thought it was a shadow. It went all dark and it came down the wall. It got Chalky, but Votek didn't see it. He was asking Chalky what he was playing at and the thing came down. It was like the night moving. So fast, Jesus. It reached out and hit Votek and his hat came off but it wasn't his hat, and Votek was standing there and the blood went all over the place."
The words were getting faster and faster and the boy pushed himself back against the pillow, as if backing away from what he was remembering.
"It was coming after us. We climbed up the shelves. Me and Eddie. He couldn't move and I had to shove him and it was coming. I could hear it behind me, and oh god it was catching up on us. We got up to the roof and I got through first and Eddie was climbing up after me. He could have made it. I had him by the arm and pulled him and then it came behind him and pulled him back. Oh man I could hear it. He was looking at me and I could hear it break him and I couldn't hold him any longer."
The woman on the other side of the bed looked at the two policemen in a state of confusion. Jack said nothing. The boy had revved up to full speed. There was no stopping him.
"He went down inside and it got him and then it came out after me. It was black and it moved so fast. It reached out and I got the drill. I couldn't stop. It got Chalky and Eddie and Votek and it was coming for me and I stuck it in the eye. I got that fucker right in the fuckin' eye. I thought it was a dream, but it wasn't. It was real, and it was going to kill me, so I drilled the bastard, and all this stuff came out of its eye and on my hand. I didn't even feel it until I came down. The drill was all bust. It was screaming at me. I could hear it inside my head, roaring and screaming."
"Who was it?" Cathy Galt blurted. "Who did this to you?"
The boy seemed to jerk back to the present.
"What?"
"What was it? Who did it?"
"I don't know Ma. It was too dark. It was black. It looked like a shadow on the wall, but you could hear it and it smelled like something had died. But I got it. I drilled it right in its eye."
"You didn't get a good look?" John McColl asked.
The boy shook his head.
"It was black, and then it opened its eyes. Man, they were big. Yellow. That was all. When it looked at me, I could hear it, inside my head. It wanted to eat me."
"So this man killed the others?"
"No. It wasn't a man. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't a man. It was a fuckin' monster."
The boy twisted his head and started to cry. Big tears came rolling down his cheeks and dribbled down his face. He turned his face in to the pillow, away from the two men.
"I'm sorry Ma. We were just having a bit of fun."