They found the body of Annie Eastwood in the morning while Jack was taking his nephew to school. He'd had five hours sleep and had needed a blistering hot shower to get him completely awake. He'd dreamed most of the night, and when he'd awoken with a start when the alarm had buzzed, he'd been sitting upright on the bed, arms and shoulders goosepimpled, hands curled into tight fists. The substance of the dream had broken up when his eyes opened but he'd been left with a heavy aftersense of lingering gloom.
Julia offered him breakfast and when he told her he'd no time, she ordered him to wait for two minutes while she put the bacon she'd grilled for herself onto two slices of bread, wrapped them in tin-foil and jammed them into the pocket of his long coat.
"You look ghastly," she said, concerned.
"Thanks a million," he said, unable to keep the smile from his face. "You're great for a guy's ego."
"Look, you don't have to take Davy to school. I can manage."
"No bother. It makes sure I get out of bed."
"You need looking after," she said, reaching a hand up to cup his cheek with affectionate gentleness.
"I'm doing fine, but now I've got to go," Jack said quickly, breaking the moment, pulling away. Her concern was written all over her face, and he backed away from it. He would only begin to feel maudlin.
When he stopped outside the school gate, Davy leaned over from the back seat and gave him a kiss. Jack stopped him before he got out of the car.
"Did your mum tell you about staying in school all day?"
"Yes, uncle Jack," the boy replied gravely.
"And you wait for her or me to come and get you at home time?"
Davy nodded again.
"Well you make sure you do," Jack said, keeping his voice low and serious.
"I will. I'll stay in school."
Jack ruffled his hair and let him go. He watched as the wee boy disappeared into a crowd of youngsters milling around in the playground. The school had doubled the supervision at intervals and lunch breaks. So far all the abductions - all the killings -had taken place at night, in the dark. But that did not mean the situation wouldn't change.
There was no problem in identifying Annie Eastwood, at least not from the effects she'd had on her person when she died. The difficulty in ensuring she was who her credit and library cards said she was, lay in the fact that there was nothing left of her face, and so much damage to the rest of her body that it wasn't easy to determine at first glance that the mess on the rocks at the confluence of river and estuary were in fact human.
Ian Ramage, the full-time custodian of the old monument on top of the Castle Rock had been woken in the early hours of the morning while it was still dark and damply cold, by the barking of his scots terriers. He had the tied house by the entrance gates, one of the oldest buildings in Levenford, older even than Cairn House. It was said that Mary Queen of Scots had been imprisoned there, as had William Wallace, the guerilla leader of the fourteenth century, before he was dragged down beyond the border and hung, drawn and quartered. The castle ramparts bordered the shoulders of the two-hundred foot high basalt rock, which, like Ardmhor Rock further down the firth, is the nubbin of a dead volcano, worn down by the ice and winds and rain of millions of years.
The rock towers over the east end of Levenford, black and massive, a hunched and looming presence which dominates the flat land where the river flowed into the tidal salts.
The ill-tempered yipping of the terriers roused an equally irate keeper from his bed in the upstairs room of the old stone house. The dogs were shoulder to shoulder at the window, feet on the sill, noses smearing the glass. They were barking furiously, ears pointing forward.
"Right, you two, hush up," Ian snapped. The bitches stopped immediately, heads turned round towards him before swinging back to stare out of the glass into the dark.
At this early hour of a freezing morning, it was unlikely that any youngster had sneaked in through the gates, but Ian Ramage took his job seriously, though with more than a little ill will that day. He pulled on trousers and sweater over his thick pyjamas, wrapped himself in a worn duffel coat, grabbed his flashlight and then snapped his fingers at the dogs. They bounded from the window and followed him out onto the flagstone paths, their nails scrabbling on the cold slate.
Ian Ramage went down to the gate at the arched entrance. It was ajar, though only by an inch or so. Normally the keeper locked it at night, but in the winter, he usually relaxed the rule because so few people visited the ancient monument in bad weather. The dogs snuffled around the posts, then , moving together, went back towards the house, passed by the corner, still shoulder to shoulder, and scrambled up the first flight of stairs, yapping angrily. The keeper followed on, grumbling all the while.
There is exactly one stone step cut into the rock for every day in the year. It took Ian fifteen minutes to get to the top where the basalt rose to a rounded dome topped by a flagpole and four ancient cannon facing outwards to the points of the compass. The balustrade wall snaked over the shoulder, twenty feet down from the summit. The dogs scampered down towards the dyke and simultaneously leapt up onto the flat top, each aggressively barking down into the dark below. Breathless, Ian followed them down and leaned on the wall, his eyes following the direction of their noses. Below him, down in the distance, he could hear the gurgle and splash of the water on the stones, like far off conversation. He angled the powerful torch below the wall, but the beam was diffracted by the rising mist. There was nothing to be seen and no point in going all the way down to the rocky shoreline in the dark. He went back to his bed.
Four hours later he was explaining to a uniformed policeman what had happened.
The body was discovered by Geordie Buist. Though it was well out of season, he'd taken his spinning rod round the dark pathway at the base of the rock to haul out a few sea-trout which were starting their spawning run up-river. He'd lifted a two pounder from the water after his third cast and had scrambled up the rocks to hide it in the lea of one of the forty-foot boulders which had calved from the cliff. The silver fish, dead from a blow to the head, but still shivering and twitching, he stashed in a corner where the rock butted up against another. He turned, reached up to the stone side for balance, and his searching fingers grasped hold of a cold hand.
The sheer fright sent him staggering backwards to crack his head against the basalt with a sickening thud and he landed in a dazed heap where he lay for fully five minutes before his head cleared enough to let him get to his feet again. Very cautiously he felt his way in the dark until he came to the spot where he'd stood before. He fished his cigarette lighter out of his pocket, and with a shaky hand, flicked it alight and held it up.
The claw-like hand hooked down from above his head. The yellow light reflected back from trails of liquid running down the flat side of the stone. Two thick and shiny braids of what looked like twisted rope dangled from further up. Geordie held the lighter up higher and saw an eye staring at him from a pulpy mass above him. At first he thought it was an animal, because he could see a row of clenched teeth, more than a human ever showed, stretching back into the mass. Then he saw the thin string of pearls around the bloodied neck and he realised what he'd found.
Geordie Buist was a tough young man. He'd had his share of fist fights. He could gut and clean a rabbit or a fish or gralloch a poached deer with hardly a thought. But when the dead and broken face of the woman, her one impossibly protruding eye glaring from the red mess registered on his consciousness, Geordie got such a fright that his bladder simply opened and hot piss gushed down the inside of his thigh. He stood there, frozen, hand up-raised, for several stunned minutes, unaware of the warm flow down his jeans, until an eddy of wind snuffed out the flame of the lighter. The darkness which descended was complete. Geordie gave a gasp of alarm. The thought of being stuck in the dark with the grotesque, broken thing, was too much for him to cope with. Whimpering all the way, he bolted out of the space between the big rocks, scrambled up to the path, and ran, non stop round the track at the base of the cliff until he came to the road. It took him twenty minutes to get to the police station and a further fifteen before the desk sergeant could get him to calm down enough to piece together sufficient information from the incoherent, almost hysterical babbling to realise what the ashen-faced young man was trying to say.
The police patrol who were sent to investigate found Geordie's rod and line along with the poached sea-trout, but they were too busy that night to do more than give him a verbal warning. The following day, Sergeant Bobby Thomson enjoyed the fish grilled and smothered in a fine hollandaise sauce. One of the policemen at the scene was Gordon Pirie, the young recruit who had made tea for Jack Fallon the night before. When he'd shone his beam on what lay on the rocks, he staggered back, slipped on the rocks and retched so violently and painfully that he thought he was going to pass out, and once he'd finished, he began to cry like a baby and couldn't stop.
Annie Eastwood was formally identified by Dr Bell, her own general practitioner who recognised her appendectomy and hysterectomy scars and the small port-wine birthmark close to her hip.
But for these distinguishing marks, identification could have taken several days, because the fall from the castle ramparts, almost two hundred feet straight down, had broken almost every bone in the woman's body. The left side of her face had been stoved right in, crushing both cheek-bone and jaw. On the right, all of the skin and muscle had been torn back to the ear, giving the face a dog-like gape. As she'd bounced from one rock to another, her scalp had been torn off from forehead to crown and flung, like a bloody wig, ten feet from where the body sprawled upside down. Robbie Cattanach found four fractures of the spine and three compounded breaks in the left thigh alone. Her pelvis had sheared off three inches in from the hip-joint and a sharp edge of rock had opened her belly like a zip fastener and spilled everything in glistening ropes down into the void between the two huge stones.
One eye was missing and was never found. Somebody surmised that one of the rats that inhabited the nooks and crannies and fed on carrion from the shoreline must have eaten it. Two fingers and a thumb of the dead woman's left hand were later found further up on the rock, jammed in a small crevice, ripped off in the violence of her passing. One of them bore a ring set with amethyst stones.
The missing fingers were collected and used for prints. Later in the afternoon, Jack Fallon learned that Annie Eastwood had also been in Cairn House on the night that Marta Herkik had died.
Elsa Quinn, the only one of the women in the distillery who remembered seeing a stranger in the building the night before, was questioned again. The vague description of the woman's green coat was helpful. When shown a picture taken from Annie Eastwood's house, it jogged Elsa's memory just enough.
"That's who it was," she told John McColl. "I never recognised her at the time. It's Angie Eastwood's mother. Angie used to work on the same line as me. But she died. It was a car crash about a year ago. It was terrible. We all went to the funeral, and that's where I saw her mother."
"You're sure?"
"I am now. I had a terrible headache last night, so I didn't really look. I remembered thinking there was something familiar about her, but I couldn't place the face."
"And where was she standing?"
"Beside the lift on the fourth floor," Elsa said.
Jack brought John McColl and Ralph Slater into his office and closed the door.
"I want her house turned over," he said when they were both seated. "This is the first real tie-in we have to everything."
"You don't think she killed the girl?" John asked.
"Christ knows!" Jack said sharply. "No. Probably not. But she was there at the same time, and she was in the Herkik place. She's topped herself, or been thrown off the top of the castle. One way or another, she's in the middle of the whole mess. Get round there and give her place a spin, and send a squad round to Janet Robinson's place. I'm looking for anything at all. Books, diaries, letters, the lot. We have to know why she was at Cairn House and what was going on there. That's the crux of the matter."
"Anything else?"
"Yes. Have you found this O'Day yet?"
"No. He's been gone for the last few days, according to his landlady."
"Keep looking. Get a warrant and turn him over as well. I'm fed up pussyfooting about."
John went out and Jack turned to Ralph.
"This is getting out of hand. What can you tell me?"
"Nothing you don't already know. Looks like Eastwood jumped. She could have been pushed. According to the keeper there was some disturbance between four and five this morning. His dogs started barking. He had a check around, but didn't see a thing. If she'd been taken up there and thrown off, there would probably have been a lot of noise. Ramage says he didn't hear anything."
Jack brought his hands up and ran his fingers backwards through his hair.
"I just don't understand it. You get a killing or an abduction - and these kids are dead believe me - and then a suicide. Everybody so far, except Jock Toner, was at the seance in Herkik's room."
"You reckon that's what it was?"
"Sure. I've got it on good authority. The Eastwood woman is the only one we can definitely place at the scene of one snatch when it happened. We don't know who she was with, if she was with anybody, but I don't think she could have taken that girl out of the lift on her own and hauled her up the shaft. No. We're looking for a strong bastard. A crazy strong bastard."
"So we've got a tie-in Jack. But I don't see where that gets us. We still haven't found any of the bodies yet. Not any of the kids."
"We will."
There were too many things to do at once. Around noon, Jack was tempted to capitulate and call in for some extra help, despite his superior's objections. He couldn't put off reporting to Superintendent Cowie.
"I've had the press baying at my heels all morning," his superior barked as soon as Jack opened the office door. Cowie was sitting back in a high-backed swivel chair, both hands drumming on his empty blotter.
Jack held up a thick folder. "I've got everything so far. So far all the suicides can be traced to the Herkik killing. I believe they are also involved in the abductions."
"Nonsense," Cowie snorted. "You think this is some sort of kidnap ring? In Levenford?"
"Stranger things have happened. Everything is pointing that way."
"Why?"
"Because they're all involved in some kind of devil worship."
Cowie's eyebrows almost disappeared over the top of his thinning scalp.
"And you want me to announce that to the press?"
"Not necessarily, but they're going to want something."
"I have to tell you, Chief Inspector, this is not looking good and I'm losing patience."
Jack said nothing.
"So what do you intend to do about it? I don't see any real progress. You're making us look like fools"
"Actually I'm hoping to pick up someone who may be involved."
"Oh?"
"Yes. His name is Michael O'Day. You'll have heard of him."
Cowie shook his head.
"That's a surprise. An informant of mine said he gave you the information four days ago. O'Day was seen leaving Cairn House at the estimated time of Marta Herkik's death."
The superintendent gave another small shake of his head. His face was beginning to colour.
"Yes. He's been missing from his home for two days. Shame. Maybe we could have wrapped this up before wee Carol Howard was killed."
"What are you trying to suggest?"
"I'm not trying to suggest anything. I'm just pointing out that I'm not making anybody look a fool," Jack said, unable to keep the weary contempt from his tone. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a murder investigation to run."
He stood up and left, closing the door behind him before the superintendent burst a blood vessel.
Just as he got to his office, the phone gave a single ring. Jack lifted the receiver, listened for a moment, then answered briefly.
He went down the two flights of stairs to the front office. As soon as he got there, the waiting pressmen pounced. He held up his hands and told them to back off for a second while he spoke to the desk sergeant. Andy Toye was sitting in the waiting room. Jack told one of the uniformed men to take him upstairs. Just as he did so, Lorna Breck came walking in through the front door, between a woman and a man in uniform.
"Damn," Jack said under his breath. He leaned across to the desk sergeant and told him to get the girl into the interview room as quickly and as quietly as possible. He turned back to the gaggle of reporters, using his hands to usher them away from the desk. The police officers walked right past them, and nobody seemed to notice the girl. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack got a brief impression of Lorna Breck's pale face turned towards him and then she was gone.
"Come on Chief," the thin man from the Express entreated. "We've had nothing since this morning." Somebody flashed a camera and Jack pointed a finger at the photographer.
"If that thing goes off once more in here, you're all out. No kidding."
The cameraman shrugged apologetically.
"Okay, follow me," he said, resignedly. He led them through a corridor and into one of the larger rooms near the cells which was used for briefings. There were a few plastic chairs set in uneven rows. The group of pressmen jostled for a seat. Jack stood with his back against the wall and took out a notebook.
"Statement first. Questions next," he announced brusquely, then checked his notes before beginning.
"We are investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl. It happened late last night in Castlebank Distillery. Witnesses say she became trapped in an elevator. By the time rescue services arrived, she could not be found. We are treating the case as abduction, possibly murder."
"That's the fourth in two weeks," somebody bawled from the back.
"I'm afraid it is. Our investigations are continuing."
"Is there a link."
Jack paused. "That's a possibility we are looking into. I can't say anything further than that."
"And you've got another suicide today?" the same voice asked.
"Possible suicide. The body of a middle aged woman was discovered on the rocks on the west side of the castle in the early hours of the morning. She had injuries consistent with a fall. A post mortem is taking place at the moment. A report will be made to the fiscal and there's a possibility of a fatal accident inquiry later. We should have more details sometime today."
"So what's happening here?"
"What's happening is that we are very concerned at recent events." Jack did not enjoy using bland public relations speech, but he knew that one wrong word would catch the headlines. What was happening in Levenford was hitting the front pages of the national press too often. "If I can use this opportunity to re-issue our earlier warnings to parents to ensure that their children are not left unaccompanied after dark. I would also recommend that for the time being, no woman should be out on her own."
Blair Bryden from the Gazette was sitting quietly close to the wall, writing in his notebook. Beside him another reporter piped up.
"None of the abductees have been found. All of them so far have been children, if you include the girl. Looks like there's some sort of pattern, wouldn't you agree?"
"We are investigating the possibility," Jack said. A pattern was building up inside Jack's mind, It was becoming clearer - and yet also more confused - by the minute.
"You mean a serial killer?"
Jack paused and took a breath. He could see the headlines already.
"You know we don't like to speculate. I'm sure you will draw your own conclusions, but yes, that is one line of inquiry."
He swept his eyes across the group of reporters. The photographer at the back flashed his camera blindingly. Jack blinked.
"Right, that's it," he snapped.
"Sorry chief. It was an accident," The cameraman piped up.
"Apology accepted. Press statement over," Jack said bluntly. Somebody protested, but Jack turned towards the door. Most of the gang followed him out, still firing off questions, but he ignored them. He turned right, went through the swing doors and headed along the corridor when a voice came from behind him.
"Thanks for the call Jack."
He turned. Blair Bryden, a slim figure in a long raincoat, had followed him through. Every policeman in the station knew the local editor. He was the only one who would have got beyond the door.
"Oh, damn," Jack breathed. He stopped and leaned against the wall."
"Sorry Blair. I forgot, pure and simple. I didn't get finished 'til very late, or very early. I can't even remember what time it was. My eyes were falling out."
Blair shrugged.
"No problem. I managed to get plenty last night. Local knowledge helps. But there are one or two things that stick in my mind, thanks to my local knowledge."
Jack raised his eyebrows.
"Like why you've hauled a spey-wife in on the act?"
"Eh?" Jack asked blankly.
"Lorna Breck. Two of your uniforms brought her in. You had her hustled away before anybody could see her. You must have forgotten I did a story on her only three weeks ago. The fire on Murroch Road, remember?"
"Oh. Right."
"And Professor Toye was sitting out there this morning."
"You know him?"
"Sure I know him. He was involved in the Linnvale affair. I'm just surprised that none of the others did."
"Well, that gives me a problem, Blair. I can't tell you at the moment."
"But I can make a couple of guesses on my own."
"Go ahead."
"Andrew Toye is head of paranormal studies. That's the tie in to old Marta Herkik. She was some sort of psychic, which everybody knows. It's the professor's line of work."
"Go on."
"Lorna Breck. Five or six people heard her make some sort of prediction on the night of the fire. And it turned out she was bang on the money. So my guess is that she's been called in because you haven't a clue."
"It's not quite that," Jack said. "I'd prefer if you kept this to yourself, at least for the moment."
"You know you'll have to do better than that," Blair said. "They're both fair game, because I saw them, and as you said, we can draw our own conclusions. Furthermore, I don't think anything I could write about either of them would jeopardise the investigation."
"But it could be wrong," Jack stated.
Blair laughed.
"There's always that possibility. Now you, on the other hand, could put me right."
Jack let out a long sigh. Blair was still smiling agreeably, and Jack couldn't help but return it.
"Alright. You want a deal."
"That I do, chief."
"Fine. I'll give you a couple of things right now, which you can feed to the nationals. You keep the professor and Lorna Breck out of print until Friday, and then you get first refusal on anything I can tell you."
Blair cocked his head to the side, weighing the options. There were no options. He could write a speculative piece and wire it up to the daily papers and have nothing but hear-say on Friday when the Gazette hit the streets.
"Done," he said quickly.
Jack hauled his notebook out again.
"Names," he said briskly. "I'll have them confirmed later today, so don't send them out until then. Ann Eastwood. You'll have something on her already. Her daughter was killed in that accident up on the Corran Shore Road about a year back."
Blair nodded, filing it away. He'd written that story as well.
Jack gave her address. He threw in Edward Tomlin. There was nothing to lose.
"So what's the connection?"
"Consider the fact that Tomlin poisoned himself last Friday. Now look at the dates of recent suicides and then check out what else has been happening on or around those dates."
Blair closed his eyes for a few moments, then the smile came back to his face.
"You mean they're tied in to this?"
"That's a possibility we are considering at the moment," Jack said, using the same tone he'd had at the press call. Blair laughed out loud.
"And you think there might be a connection then to Marta Herkik."
"This is under investigation," Jack responded blandly.
"That's why you've got Andy Toye. What the hell's going on here? Blood sacrifice?"
Blair was surprisingly quick on the uptake.
"No comment. And I don't want to read a word of speculation about that, or the deal's off."
"Don't worry," Blair promised. He scribbled something in his notebook, then looked up at Jack. "Jesus," he breathed.
Blair Bryden must have spent the whole day bobbing and weaving around Levenford that day. Every paper from broadsheet to tabloid splashed his story on the front pages on the following morning.
The operations room was empty when Jack brought Andy Toye along. The professor, a slight figure in glasses looked around the walls which were plastered with blow-up street maps of the town and cross-hatched diagrams with names handwritten in bold capitals beside photographs of the deceased.
"This is where it all happens?" Andrew asked.
"All, or nothing. We do a lot of talking in here. The rest of the time is spent knocking doors, or knocking our heads against brick walls."
"I'm not sure I can really help you," Andy admitted. He'd managed to find a cup of coffee from somewhere and had brought it along from the side room where he'd waited. He sipped it noisily.
"Neither me," Jack agreed, "But we'll never know until we try. John McColl will take you round to the Herkik place. It'll still be in a bit of a mess, but there might me something you'll notice that we've overlooked. I'm going on the assumption that there was a group of people there that night and they've got themselves involved in something. I don't know what it is, but if we can find out, then it'll be a great help."
He looked down at Andy, who was finishing the last of his coffee. "At least, that's what I hope."
The professor walked across to a wall chart and scanned the names and dates.
"The first child went missing almost a week after this alleged seance. Then the minister commits suicide. After that, the other baby is taken and his mother killed, followed by the attempted suicide of Mr Tomlin."
"Actual suicide now. He's dead."
"Then the boy goes missing, followed immediately by the woman in the river. Almost immediately, you have the girl taken from the distillery and another suicide within hours."
"All of them connected to the Herkik incident, according to forensics."
"For the life of me I can't see what's been going on. There's no occult sect I know of who've been involved in serial killings. Not in this country anyway."
"All I want is for you to have a look around. We've found tarot cards in the possession of all the suicides so far. They match the ones in Cairn House. That can't be a coincidence."
"No, but the abductions could be. Close involvement with the occult has been known to cause psychotic or schizophrenic symptoms in clearly documented cases. It's possible there was some sort of mass hysteria that is not linked to any of the abductions."
"But Janet Robinson's bag was found at the place we believe Neil Kennedy went missing, and Ann Eastwood was seen, as near as we can tell, in Castlebank Distillery only minutes before Carol Howard was taken. That's no coincidence."
Andy nodded in agreement.
"Well, I don't mind having a look, as long as you don't expect too much. He pulled out a small leather-bound pad and began to copy some of the information from the chart. Just then, John McColl came into the operations room.
"We can stroll round now, if you like," he said. Andy snapped the book closed. He gave Jack a little smile and went off with the sergeant.
Jack had called Ralph Slater in for the interview with Lorna Breck. She was sitting in the bare room, pale and slight, hands gripped on her black bag. A woman constable who was with her rose when the two men went in and closed the door behind her when she left.
The girl's eyes widened in recognition when Jack sat in front of her.
"I don't know why I've been brought here," she blurted out.
"We'll try to make it as quick as possible," Jack said. He had told Ralph nothing in detail about the girl. "We just want to ask a few questions. Some of the things you told me yesterday are a bit puzzling."
"Am I under arrest?"
"No. Not at all," Jack replied, as lightly as he could. To himself he thought that she very well might be later on, depending on how the interview went.
He slotted a cartridge into the recorder, gave his, Ralph's and Lorna's name, stated the time, and left it running.
"What's that for?" she asked.
"Just to make sure we don't miss anything," Ralph said, following Jack's lead.
"Right. Just relax," Jack told her. "I'll ask one or two questions, and you answer them as fully as possible."
"What do you know about Marta Herkik?"
"Who?"
"You don't know her?"
"I hardly know anybody," the girl said, eyes wide, slightly puzzled. "I've only lived here since August."
"And you've never met her?"
"No," she said. "I don't know who she is."
"Don't you read the local papers?" Ralph interrupted.
"Sometimes, but it's not my town yet. I don't know who's who, and Levenford's a lot bigger than what I'm used to."
"Do any of these names mean anything to you? Jack ran down his mental list, reeling off the names of the four suicides. The girl reacted to Simpson's name. She'd heard it or read it, then she recalled the story about the minister's bizarre hanging.
"But you never met him. Never spoke to him?"
"No."
He gave her the names of the three children and the teenager who had gone missing. She recognised the first three, having read of them and heard their names on television. The fourth drew a blank.
"Now you told me that you see things."
"That's right. I don't know why, and it's making me ill. I saw those babies and the wee boy, but I didn't know who they were until I heard their names on the news."
Can you tell me when this first happened?"
"It was the night of the fire, I think,"she said in a small voice "though I'd been getting bad dreams before that." Clearly even thinking about it caused her some distress. Her big grey eyes opened wide, and both men could see she was putting herself back, remembering what had happened. She ran through the whole story for them.
"And this was the first time?" Ralph asked. The girl nodded, but then she stopped.
"Yes. No." Her brow creased into a frown. "It was the first time when I was awake. But before that, I told you, I'd been having terrible nightmares."
Jack didn't really want to know about nightmares. He'd had plenty of his own. They were not the kind of things people wanted to share, but he decided to go along with it in the hope that she might let something slip.
"Before the fire, I kept waking up. I didn't think about it until now." She closed her eyes and the could see her trying to concentrate.
"They started before the fire. I couldn't understand them. I just felt there was something after me all the time. I couldn't really see it, but it was always there."
She opened her eyes.
"And there was another one. Weeks ago. I don't know what it was. But there was a room of people, all sitting round a table. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but then the room went dark and there was a lot of screaming, people running, chairs being knocked over. I don't know what was happening, but it felt as if something awful was there in the room. The old woman was lifted into the air and then she was smashed down onto the floor. There was a terrible smell. I've smelt it again."
Jack recalled the throat-catching stench on the inside of the lift shaft.
"Smell?"
"Yes, like something rotten," she said, mouth turned down in distaste. "Like sickness. Just awful, I think."
Jack eased her away from the dreams. They were getting them nowhere, and Ralph was fidgeting, wondering what this was all about.
"Now you told me you'd seen something when I first met you on River Street."
"Yes. I don't know what happened. I looked into the shop window and everything went hazy. I saw the thing coming out of the dark. You can't see it properly. It moves too fast and the light doesn't show it. It came down and hit the woman and stole her baby."
"And that was definitely on the day in River Street?" Jack asked carefully.
"Yes. It was dreadful."
"That causes me a problem," Jack said. "Because that happened on the Tuesday afternoon."
Lorna looked at him, puzzled.
"And the abduction of Kelly Campbell didn't take place until the following day."
"I know that," Lorna said, suddenly quite definite, almost defiant.
"That's what I've been trying to tell you, but you won't listen."
She looked straight at Jack. "I don't know if I see the things before they happen or afterwards."
"And last night, when you phoned?"
"It was happening then. I could feel it. The thing came down from the dark. It was banging on the roof and then it was inside and she couldn't see it, but she could sense it, and then the smell came and it scared her. Then it reached down and took her by the hair and pulled her up. It had her by the shoulder and there was blood coming down. The pain was terrible. She couldn't bear it." The girl's voice got higher and louder as she went on at speed.
"How do you know she couldn't bear it?"
"Because when I see it, I'm in two places at once. I can see it happening, but I can see it from inside too. When it was happening to the girl. It was happening to me."
She shrugged her shoulder quickly, letting the edge of her coat slide off. Underneath she was wearing a woollen sweater with a neat turtle neck. She pulled it down to the left, exposing a pale shoulder.
"Jesus," Ralph mouthed.
There was no mistaking the bruises on the back and front. It looked as if the girl had been grabbed violently and squeezed brutally.
"Who did that to you?" Ralph asked.
"It's not a who. It's something I don't know. But if it doesn't stop, I think it's going to kill me." When she said that, Lorna looked once again straight into Jack's eyes. There was no mistaking that what she was saying, as far as she was concerned, was the real truth.
It took the two policemen another hour to get the rest of the story. On each of the nights in question, Lorna had not been alone. She had a small diary in her bag which she brought out and referred to. Twice she'd been out with a friend from the library. Jack asked her where she'd been the night before and she told them she'd been baby-sitting for her cousin Gemma. He didn't bother taking notes. It was all on tape. He's check out her alibis as a matter of course but something told him they'd stand up.
Ralph arranged a car to take the girl home and when she'd gone, both men went back to the operations room.
"We should have brought her in here," Ralph said. "If she's telling the truth, she should be running this show. We could do with a psychic on this one."
Andy Toye was still in the flat in Cairn House when Jack got there. He'd pulled up a chair and was hunched over the round table which was still scarred and still scabbed with dried blood. In front of him was a large book with dull leather bindings. Beside it was the little notebook he'd used at the station.
He looked up when Jack came in and pointed to a seat, without saying a word. Jack sat beside him.
"This is the Goetia. Crowley's publication," he said. "Fascinating stuff."
"I'll take your word for it. That was lying on the floor beside the kerb. Some of the pages were torn out.."
"Yes. I saw them." Andy shoved his glasses up on top of his head and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
"I don't think they were trying to raise ghosts," he said. "The Goetia is quite well known. I've spent the last hour trying to find a match for the names on the wall." He looked up and pointed with his pen. The blood had dried to a brown ochre, the letters smeared on the old plaster.
"I was told they could have two meanings."
"Yes," Andy said. "Heteros from the Greek. It means an other, or the other. And Etheros suggests ethereal, or intangible. Or it could mean something else. I only noticed it a moment ago when I was looking at my notes. It could simply be the initials of the people who've been involved."
He went down the list, reading them off. "Herkik. Simpson. Tomlin. Robinson. Eastwood. If that's the case, there are two missing."
"We're looking for somebody called O'Day. He was seen in the vicinity on the night."
Andy grinned. "Then all you need is someone whose name begins with an E."
"You reckon?"
The professor shrugged. "I don't know. It's only an idea, and it could be completely wrong. On the other hand, anything could be possible. I really don't know what was happening here. From the tarot cards and the ouija board, it could simply have been a fortune-telling session, but it may be that they went beyond that. The Goetia gives detailed instructions on how to raise spirits. It could have been some half-baked idea like that, and it could have gone wrong."
"Like how?"
"Like mass hysteria. Psychosis. Something like that."
"And the spirit angle?"
"Crowley believed it. Plenty of others have believed it too. But there's no real up-to-date documentation."
"And what do you think?"
"In this world, anything's possible."
Jack shook his head. " I'd rather it was ghosts than some human."
"Easier to catch a human," Andy ventured. He snapped the book shut, and rose from the table.
"Where next?"
"There's a girl I'd like you to meet."
Lorna Breck showed the bruises. She was sitting in the small front room of her house on Clydeshore Avenue. The road had been slick with ice on the way and Andy had held, white-knuckled, to the dashboard as the car slithered and waltzed down the hill.
"It happened before," she said in her soft voice. "When I saw the boy. They faded next day, but I remembered the pain."
"And this happens when you're asleep?" Andy was examining the dull marks on the girl's skin.
"Sometimes. But also during the day. I can't tell whether it's before or after."
"Has this ever happened before?:"
She shook her head. "Never. I used to read tea-leaves, but just for fun. Sometimes I would get a feeling about somebody. Just a tingly sensation. But then, on the night of the fire, I could see it happen. It was terrible."
She pulled her sweater back over her bare shoulder. To Jack, she looked even younger than she had when he'd met her at the chemist's shop. It had come as a surprise when she'd told him she was twenty seven years old.
"I've seen pictures of stigmata before," Andy said. "It's believed to happen in cases of trauma, mind over matter, if you like. The power of the mind is sufficiently strong to create the haematoma marks on the skin."
"But I don't want any of this," the girl said, eyes wide and suddenly glistening. "I just want it to stop."