"Curiouser and mysteriouser," David said. "I'll get a team out to the Jane Doe's place to lift the floorboards if I have to. She definitely had a baby there at some time, and maybe more than one. Almost definitely more than one. Christ alone knows what she was up to."
Helen sat curled up in an old armchair close to the imitation coals of the fire which sent a flickering glow dancing on the walls. She was wearing an outsize sweater which swamped her and cradled a brandy in a fine cut glass. She had a small pink dressing on her forehead. The nurse in casualty had looked at the small, deep cut, swabbed it with stinging alcohol and sent her home again. She wasn't even bruised.
"It was the same smell, or very similar. I really thought I'd been poisoned. It was like having a trip, and a real bad one too. "
"I suppose you're talking from experience?"
"Give me credit, David," Helen shot back until she saw the look on his face. She tendered a smile that faded quickly as she thought back. "It was like walking into a nightmare. Everything in the room changed shape and the colours went through the spectrum, except they were all sick colours. It felt as if I was on a roller coaster, but a mental one, as though all my senses had been wired up the wrong way. I was scared and angry and depressed all at the one time and completely confused the whole of the time. It's hard to explain exactly what was happening. I remember thinking I was having some sort of breakdown, a psychotic episode or something."
"I get that kind of feeling just watching Rangers in extra time," David said. She hit him with another look and he gave her an apologetic shrug that told her he was trying to keep it light. "Maybe there's something new on the market. Ecstasy? Jellies? Something like that? A new brand of PCP?"
She leaned back and sipped her drink. "Whatever it is, it's not pleasant, I can guarantee that. I can't imagine anybody paying money to feel like that"
David had to agree with her. He remembered the odd, unnerving twist of emotions that had rocked him when he'd stepped inside the dingy room in the dead woman's house. The sudden violence had been the most disturbing part of it all, the instant, vicious anger that had swept through him; that and the sudden hot surge of raw need.
"I got something like that in Quigley's place," he said, slowly, battening down the image in his mind that tried to transpose itself on the real Helen Lamont. "I mean McDougall's house. I thought it was gas at first, or some fumes, like lead paint or ammonia, but it was none of those. Remember I got you to the window?"
She nodded, recalling the sense of loss and the other, weird need inside her. She recalled the grab of his hand on her neck and the shunt of sudden want.
"It was then I thought of nerve gas. I saw a programme on Porton Down. Sarin gas, the kind they used on the Tokyo underground, that was what they were testing, that and a few others. They can give people real hallucinations. As soon as I breathed it in, I wanted to hit somebody. If I hadn't got to the window, it could have been you."
Helen gave him another smile. "I saw what you did to Kenny Lang. You dropped him like a sack, so I'm very glad you decided against it. You should have told me this before."
"Well, it passed pretty quickly, and of course it couldn't have been anything lethal I suppose, " David said. "I'm allergic to a couple of antibiotics. They give me anxiety attacks. I just assumed there was some sort of cleaning fluid that had evaporated and left some traces that affected me the same way."
"Was there anything inside the other place?" Helen asked. David shook his head.
"Nothing out of the ordinary. The bed was still unmade and might have been slept in. A couple of blankets and sheets were on the floor by the wall. It reminded me of the bedding in the other house. I've taken some of that for sampling, plus the caul."
He'd already told her about the macabre find in the shoe box. Helen herself had heard of the phenomenon, so he didn't have to explain in great detail. It was just a mystery that sparked more questions. "I'm more interested in who hit you. Cruden's sure to give you a bad time for going in on your own."
"I told you, it's just a missing girl who's got no history at all. The address is a workmate's house , and she's clean too. They're normal folk, from quiet, law abiding families. Both girls have good jobs, good careers. There was no reason to expect anything, none at all. I was surprised to find the door open, and there was always a possibility that the girl could have been lying there hurt. It was a judgement thing. Anyway, that's in the past. I'm not sure what happened. Remember, I was seeing things, and I didn't want to let the uniforms know that. I don't want that kind of thing on my record." She turned to David again and gave him a half smile that conveyed a number of different messages. "I can tell you, though. There could have been something, but I couldn't swear to it, or I might just have fallen. My head was spinning and there could have been spiders coming out of the walls next. I thought I saw something, but what I saw was some kind of monster, like some creepy thing out of a Hammer movie. It had two heads and one had a face like a gargoyle, but then again, there were spikes growing out of the door and blood running down the walls. There was definitely a chemical in the air, but it cleared when I opened the door."
"So what made the mark on your head?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. I wish I knew. If it had been a burglar, I could have taken him down, or at least made him fight his way past me. Under any normal circumstances I could have done that, but believe me, the situation wasn't normal by any means. I'd like to find out what it was I breathed in, because it's powerful stuff."
Helen said she'd prefer to accept she'd slipped and fallen on the frosted tiles, at least on the official record, than to have let an intruder escape, assuming there had been one, after going in without back-up. David didn't think it was such a good idea, but he went along with it. By the time he'd checked over the small house where Celia Barker lived, the smell was faded and stale, discernible and unpleasant, but dissipating rapidly.
"And how was your day?" she asked, draining her glass, drawing him back to the present. She reached for the bottle, caught his look which silently asked if it was wise to take another drink on top of the painkillers, but she poured anyway and took a sip.
"As weird as yours. Christ knows what I'll be able to tell the boss. Thelma Quigley turns out to be Heather McDougall, her best friend who's been living under an assumed name for at least five years, possibly more, maybe even as many as thirty. I'll have to do some real backtracking to find out. Quigley was murdered back in the sixties and Heather disappeared a couple of months later, on July 27. I spoke to her old mother who's still pretty sparky, though her dad's lost it a little. Things got a little complex from then on. I can't make head nor tail of it."
"Tell me then."
He leaned back and reached for the small folder into which he'd slotted some of the documents. He took out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to her.
"See for yourself," he said.
_______
July 28, 1967.
BABY DIES IN BRIDGE PLUNGE.
A baby is believed to have drowned in a river plunge after its pram was hit by a lorry. The tragedy happened at Duncryne Bridge in the village of Blane just north of the city when a woman believed to be the baby's grandmother was crossing a road. The child's pram was thrown against the parapet of the bridge which crosses the Balcryne Stream. Police believe the infant was hurled out and down to the deep pool below.
The woman is critically ill in Blane Hospital where surgeons last night operated on horrific head-wounds suffered in the accident. A hospital spokesman said the woman, who has yet to be identified, was still in intensive care suffering from multiple fractures and internal injuries.
The tragedy happened yesterday afternoon on the north side of the Duncryne Bridge opposite the public walkway well known in the area as a lover's lane. The crushed pram was found only yards from the spot where in March this year, the mutilated body of amateur actress Thelma Quigley was discovered. Police are still hunting for the killer who buried his victim in a shallow grave after stabbing her to death in a frenzied attack.
Teams of police, using tracker dogs which are already familiar with the steep-sided valley were out in force combing the area around the banks and a team of divers were being flown in from the Navy Base on Finloch to search the deep pools in the river known locally as the Witches Pots. So far no trace of the infant has been found.
Last night lorry driver Brian Devanney, who is employed by J.C. Carnwath Hauliers was charged with reckless driving. He is expected to appear in court this morning. It is the third fatal incident this year involving the transport firm and already pressure is mounting for a full department of transport inquiry.
Devanney was initially taken to hospital for shock and head injuries suffered when his cab veered off the road, narrowly avoiding a plunge into the chasm, and demolished a row of ash saplings planted by Councillor Agnes White early this year.
Hospital sources say that the driver claimed the woman had run in front of his vehicle. This allegation was not completely discounted by Mr and Mrs George Crombie who arrived soon after the tragedy and helped Mr Devanney from his cab
"He was in a dreadful state," Mrs Crombie said. "He said he'd just killed a woman who had ran out in front of his lorry."
The story went on, brown ink on grey paper, still smelling of chemicals from the microfiche printer. It was just one of a handful of sheets of old newspaper David had got printed out from the library's storage system when he came back from his visit to the old couple. The report carried a picture of the bridge which had not changed in thirty years, David knew from his walk up the track, spurred by curiosity. The spot where Thelma Quigley, the real one, has been butchered, where the baby had been catapulted over the parapet and drowned in the river, was quite spectacular, even in winter. In summer it must be beautiful.
"I took a walk up there, just for a look see. Heather McDougall said she was going up to the bridge and that's where she was headed, apparently, on the day she went missing. Her idea, as far as I can see, was to top herself. I'm convinced she planned to jump from the bridge and join her dead friend in the hereafter. Something stopped her, and that's the real puzzle."
He took the piece of paper from her fingers and folded it once more. "She never went home again. Her parents expected her back that day and she didn't turn up, and thirty years on, she turns up dead on the floor of Waterside Mall. That's really weird. Her notes really point to a suicide attempt, and It was the same day as this other baby was sent flying." David put the print-out into the folder.
"That's an awful story."
"True. When I heard it, it rang a bell in my mind. It was one of the biggest cases at the time. Devanney the driver was sent to jail for manslaughter."
"The woman died?"
"No. It wasn't her. It was the baby, and oddly enough, they never did find the body. That's what made it stick out in my mind. Devanney was initially done for dangerous driving and they boosted the charge up to manslaughter. He took the corner too fast and was on the wrong side of the road at the time, so the court was told anyway, though he denied it. His defence couldn't have been trying too hard, for the case would never stand up nowadays. Anyway, he was charged with the culpable homicide of the baby, even though they never found it."
"I'm not with you."
"You must have heard of the Bridge Baby case?"
Helen shook her head. "Before my time."
"And mine, but I do read, you know." He indicated the sheaf of papers jutting from the folder he still held in his hand. "It's all here in the print-out. What happened was that this woman, Greta Simon her name was, had a baby with her. It was knocked out of the pram and over the parapet into the water. There was a spate at the time, a heavy rainfall or something, and the baby was washed away. Nobody knew even who the kid was, because Greta Simon couldn't tell them. She was brain damaged and hardly able to speak, but her neighbours knew she'd been looking after a baby. Just like Heather McDougall in fact. They thought it was her grand-daughter. She was too ill to appear in court, but there were enough witnesses to say she'd been walking in the path to the bridge with the baby in the pram."
"And they convicted a man for that?"
"He did nine months. The baby never did turn up and according to the experts, it was probably washed down into the River Forth and out to sea. It could have been anywhere. The search took the whole length of the stream and they dragged every pool and culvert. The dogs found nothing either, though some people said maybe a fox or a badger, or even a domestic dog might have found it and eaten it."
Helen shuddered. "That doesn't bear thinking about."
"No. But it's a coincidence. Really odd. I wish I'd never started on this."
"Why?"
"Because I'm getting nowhere and it's got to me. I've a million other things to be getting on with and Scott Cruden's expecting me to get this one tied up as soon as possible. It was supposed to be a simple job of back-tracking on a dead woman with something odd in her blood. The more I look into it the further away any answer seems to be.
"But you won't be able to let it go?"
He shook his head. "My old mum always said my curiosity would get me into trouble. She's probably right. But you have to admit, there is something weird in all of this. We get a Jane Doe in the mall..."
"You're beginning to sound like an American dick," Helen said. She looked up at him and narrowed her eyes mischievously. "Or maybe just a dick."
"Very funny. We find Thelma Quigley who turns out to be Heather McDougall who did a runner thirty years ago on the same day that a baby is killed. She turns up in another town half way across the country with a baby that's now gone missing and we know it can't be hers, but the medical reports say she was lactating and possibly able to feed a baby."
"You never told me that. I thought she was about sixty. Was she on some kind of hormone treatment?"
"That's why I was put on this in the first place. To find out if she'd been away and picked up a weird tropical disease. Anyway, in her flat, we find baby toys, clothes, and then there's a caul. I've taken some pieces for analysis and the rest of it crumpled to dust. It should tell us something."
David paused, trying to recollect where he had digressed. "Yes. So McDougall went missing, just like your girl, what's her name?"
"Ginny Marsden."
"Her. She McDougall just never turned up. They thought she'd been murdered, but she hadn't. All this time she's been living very quietly as Thelma Quigley, her friend who was murdered and buried in a shallow grave up near the bridge. Lovely spot, by the way. Really spectacular. You'll have to come and see it. I saw a little bird there, a dipper, poor little thing, trying to find a hole in the ice."
Helen sat back. "You've side-tracked yourself again. I thought it was me who had the bump on the head."
David came back on line. "So then you turn up at the Marsden girl's place, or at least her friend's place, and it's got the same smell, the same kind of chemical as we found down at Latta Street. That's too many coincidences for me."
"Maybe it really is some kind of cleaning fluid," Helen suggested. "I get reactions to some of them. Maybe that's it."
"It's an easier explanation than nerve gas," David allowed, though his expression said he was far from convinced. "Maybe I'm allergic to it as well, and possibly we should call in the health department just in case there's been a spillage. Aside from that, there's something in this whole story that doesn't add up. It's going to niggle at me all night."
He flicked through the papers, letting the other chemical smell of the microfiche printer drift up. "Look at this," he said, leaning towards her. The picture was grainy and smeared, but unmistakable. An old fashioned black pram lay crushed against the stone wall just at the side of the bridge. A patterned baby blanket lay on the road.
"Nobody knew who the baby belonged to. Nobody knew it's name."
"I thought you said it was that woman. Greta."
"She had the baby all right. But it wasn't hers. She was too old. There was plenty of evidence that she was caring for one, but nobody knows whose it was. There isn't even a name, although the neighbours said she called it Tim. Tiny Tim. There were no records of adoption, and no relatives came forward at the time. Greta Simon herself was a bit of a mystery. Nobody was sure of where she came from, although most folk thought she was English. That was it. She was crossing the bridge and a truck smacked her into a plantation of shrubs and knocked her baby over the wall and into the river below. End of story."
"But you don't think so?"
"No. There's something weird here. I can see a connection, or at least a similarity here. It's too much like the Heather McDougall case."
"But separated by thirty years."
"Separated yes, but connected. She went up to the bridge on the same day. That's in her diary, and her old mother confirms it. Thirty years on she turns up dead and allegedly, possibly, a baby has gone missing."
"Sounds like history repeating itself. What do you think? This Heather McDougall, do you think she was a baby snatcher? Some kind of crazy?
This time David shrugged. "Could be. I don't know. I did a check this morning on recent snatch cases. There's damn few of them, and as far as I can see, there's never been a case where a baby's been stolen and gone unreported. Not unless..." he paused.
"What?"
"Not unless she's been bumping the mothers off first. Maybe poisoning them? Perhaps that's what the smell was. Some sort of poison that she gassed them with."
"You don't really believe that," Helen said.
"No. I don't believe it at all. The McDougall woman was sick and she was old. She couldn't have overpowered a mouse. She was probably looking after someone's kid. We just haven't turned that person up. As I said, if I have to, I'll dig up the floor. It could be a Fred West case all over again, but I doubt it. I just think there's something weird in all of it I look through all these clippings and I think for a second I'm getting to the bottom of it, and then it's gone."
He stood up and put his glass down. "And now I'm gone. I'd better shoot."
She made a disappointed face. "Just when I was beginning to enjoy this." She eased herself off the chair and snaked her arm around his. "Thanks for coming to get me today. And thanks for keeping it between us too. I won't forget it."
He gave her a wink that told her it was no big deal. She leaned her weight against him again and he could feel the warmth through his shirt. It was a friendly gesture, the kind a partner would make, but in that instant he sensed something more. He almost wrapped an arm round her to draw her close and stopped himself just in time.
"I'll give you a hand with your runner," he said quickly. "Because I want you to stick with me on this Jane Doe. Come and pick me up in the morning."
"You don't have to do a runner too," she said. She smiled up at him, let the smile fade. Her dark eyes looked straight into his and her skin felt hot on his. Helen saw his hesitation, mistook it for incomprehension. She shrugged quickly to disguise what could have been an awkward moment.
"Not so soon anyway."
_______
It was cold and dark. Outside the mist oozed and crept, almost alive, seeking the dark corners to fill with thick and clammy damp.
Ginny Marsden shivered, half asleep, slumped against the potato sack matting in the corner of the garden shed. How she had got here, she could barely remember. The flight was a series of jumbled images, shapes and shadows flicking past in peripheral vision. She recollected the shape that had loomed in the kitchen and she had struck out and then she'd been running, protecting the baby. The threat had gone. It had reeled back and fallen and Ginny had got the impression, no more than that, that it had been a woman.
She had been dreadfully afraid that the shape would hurt the baby. The fear had swelled in a hot gush that had blanked out every other thought save the need to protect the tiny thing in her arms. She had gone blundering out into the cold, breath pluming out in the frigid air, running as if devils were panting at her heels. She hadn't stopped when she reached the end of the lane at the back of the houses. She'd taken the right turn up the next road and then carried on for almost half a mile, unsure of where she was gong, but guided somehow by instinct. She reached the pathway that led up the side of the allotments where rickety shacks and huts and old greenhouses that had seen better days huddled together in the little patches of cultivated ground.
She knew this place. Her grandfather still worked here in the summer, tending his chrysanthemums and dahlias and weeding his little plots of prize onions and leeks. She had played here as a child, tasting the mint and the thyme that grew beside the greenhouse. She had played with the big fat toad that lived under a terracotta pot and ate the slugs that ate the cabbages. It seemed like a million miles away in time.
The gate was locked, barricaded against vandals and crowned with a piece of barbed wire. She ignored it, ignored the pain as she clambered over the wooden slats, ripping her palm twice in the attempt while still holding the baby close to her. It urged her on, its fear driving her along. It needed warmth and shelter. She got to the other side, letting herself down heavily, then scampered up the aisle between the frosted leeks and Brussels sprouts to the hut at the far end. The padlock was closed but she knew where the key would be. The pot shard sheltered another toad, this one stiff in its winter hibernation, looking more like a rock than an animal. Beside it, the silver key glinted. She opened the hasp. The door creaked as she let herself inside and she closed it firmly before allowing herself to stop. In the dark, guided by the powerful motive, emotive force, she crept to the corner where the potato sacks were piled in a heap. She arranged them around herself, pulling them over and tucking them, until she and the baby were almost completely covered. The baby nuzzled in at her, forcing its head in against her warmth, searching for a nipple. It found it, plugged in, and she felt the intense merging sensation as it drank of her.
Sometime in the night, she awoke, briefly, shuddering at a dreaming image, her breast's sore and throbbing and her blouse smelling of sour milk. Her back ached and her palms throbbed where the barbs had punctured the skin. Her eyes were heavy and gritty under the lids, as if dust had got under there to rasp at the tender skin. An enormous lethargy enveloped her, and try as she could, it was impossible for her to move.
She was alone here in the cold and the dark. For a moment she tried to recollect what had happened but her mind was sluggish and turbid. For an instant the image of the hibernating toad came back to her and that was an accurate reflection of how she felt. Her muscles were drained of power, as if she'd been sucked hollow, and the cold had stolen into her bones, making her weak and strengthless. The sacks smelt musty, of loam and old potatoes, and overlaid with that other smell that was becoming familiar now, the bitter sweetness that it secreted.
It.
Ginny Marsden gave a little start in the dark.
IT. The baby. It had snuggled into her and nuzzled and fed and she had given of herself, feeling the urgent pressure in her swollen breast lessen in a pleasurable seepage.
It wasn't there. She turned, just a little, feeling her numbed muscles respond so slowly it was like being cocooned in treacle. A deep exhaustion sagged in her. The baby was gone. Her mind began to come alive again, suddenly thrown out of the torpor by that knowledge of release.
The baby was gone. The thing that held her had left her. Her heart gave a little double beat. She moved, heard the joints creak painfully. The darkness inside grandfather's garden shed was almost complete, save for a pale rectangle high on the wall where a piece of perspex had been screwed to the wall as a windowpane. It was still night then, for the moonlight came glimmering through the scratched plastic, barely strong enough to outline the shapes of the garden tools hanging from the nails on the beam nearby.
It was gone. She could escape. The images of her dreams came back then, the scaly sensation of something inhuman crawling all over her, its cold, puckered skin making her own surface cringe and buckle into gooseflesh. She felt again its probe down between her legs, slender and cold, hugely repulsive, appalling in its invasion, draining the goodness from her blood, from her marrow.
Just at that moment, she heard the slithering motion close to the door. A movement happened, a rustle in the dark, a scuffle that ended in a tiny, almost inaudible squeak. Something small died in that instant. Her heightened senses picked up its sudden snuffing out, just as they perceived the other presence.
It had not gone at all. It was still there, in the dark. It had crawled away from her and caught something. It was there by the door, a scuttling shadow
Oh my god oh my god, I have to get...
that would come back and snare her again.
Ginny attempted to gauge distance in the dark. She flexed her arm, trying to warm it quickly, knowing any delay would give it a chance. Of a sudden a desperate need to be free almost paralysed her, coming as it did on the waves of fear and dismay and horror.
There by the door, something crunched gently, the sound of a bird's eggshell crushed, the noise of an insect squashed. A faint warm smell of blood came on the cold air, mingling with the other smells and the similar metal scent that she knew would later come from the oozing drag deep inside her. The shadowy thing made a scuttling noise again, two, maybe three yards away, hardly more than that. Beside her the garden fork dangled beside the old spade that grandfather used to make the even rows for potatoes. The four tines were close to her head height. An instant solution came to her and with hardly a pause she got to one knee, reaching a hand to unsnag the fork.
Her muscles groaned in sluggish, dry protest. The bones in her knees and the joints at her thighs ground together like rough stones. The thing in the shadows by the door moved quickly. She sensed it turning. Desperately she reached and got a hand round the shaft of the fork.