Jack reached for the notebook under the pile of coins and keys on the table beside the bed. He flipped the pages until he found a clear one, still concentrating on the dream, holding it together before it broke up. He flicked the top off the pen, ignored it when it bounced on the table and rolled to the floor, and wrote quickly. When he had finished, he picked up the report from Robbie Cattanach on the drowned woman and scanned the lines until he found what he was looking for. One of her shoes had been missing when she was fished from the river.
He'd scanned the sentence just before he'd fallen asleep and had seen no significance there. Dead people in rivers were often missing shoes and boots. The current of the river sucked them away.
But in the dreamscape, the fact of the missing shoe had gained importance. He did not know what that importance was, but a piece of a complicated jigsaw had, as if by magic, fitted into another part. Now he knew where to look, though he wasn't sure exactly why.
Jack clambered out of bed, now completely awake. He shrugged into his old dressing gown and tied the cord tight around his waist. In the kitchen, he stabbed the switch on the coffee maker and sat down, his mind a tumult of half-asked questions, half-answered responses.
The girl. Lorna Breck.
"He heard the woman," she'd said."There was a woman there. She was in the shadows. I couldn't see her properly, not her face. Her leg was sticking out, and she had lost one of her shoes. Her bag was lying on the stairs. "
The words came back to him with surprising clarity. The girl had scrutinized him with her glistening grey eyes, staring intently into his own. There had been something more than odd about her.
Despite the fact that Jack had seen her collapse in hysterics on River Street, and the implausible tale she'd told about seeing the attacks on the children, she was still a conundrum. He remembered thinking of her as a loony. Yet there was something he realised only now that he'd missed.
In all the years he'd been a policeman, he'd seen hundreds, maybe thousands of cranks and crazy folk. Eventually, the trained eye was able to spot them. An odd walk, a twitch in the eye, something that set them aside from normal people.
Lorna Breck had looked worried and she'd looked sick, and the tale she'd told was preposterous.
But there was strangely reasonable quality to her.
And yet she'd said something which sparked off a train of thought in Jack's mind when he'd dozed, and come up with a picture that might be truly significant.
The warehouse. Jack recalled the sergeant on the dog team outlining the area they'd searched. The snow had made it difficult for the alsatians. They hadn't found a trail to follow. The hunt had spread wider, but the police only examined those empty buildings which had been open, or had an obvious entry. And they had been looking for a boy, nothing else.
Jack waited until the red light on the coffee-maker went out, sifting few connected facts he had, weaving the scant threads together. He poured a cup, spooned three heaps of demerara into the brew and started to sip. It tasted wonderful, strong and thick, and in addition, the pain in his throat had subsided significantly.
He turned in his chair and reached for the phone, when it rang loudly. That, he thought, was happening too often. He picked it up, brusquely gave his surname, and a woman's voice said hello in a voice that was more a question than a greeting.
"Jack Fallon," he said, unable to place the voice.
"It's me. Lorna Breck. We spoke today."
For a second Jack was completely wrong-footed. He'd just been thinking about the girl, had decided he'd have to speak to her again, when she'd called him.
"Yes. We did," he said, non-commitally.
"I had to call," she said. Her voice sounded different on the phone, but despite the distortion, he could hear the tightness of distress.
"It's going to happen again. Or it has happened, and I don't know what to do."
"Hold on. back up. Start from the beginning," Jack said almost gruffly.
"I saw it Mr Fallon. I saw it again. Tonight."
"Saw it again?" he repeated.
"It was killing somebody. A girl."
"Where?"
"I don't know. In a room. In a tunnel. Something like that. The girl was screaming. Oh.."
Her voice broke off abruptly.
"Now wait a minute," Jack said, gently as he could. "Calm down a little and just tell me."
There was a snuffling on the line. It sounded as if she was blowing her nose. When she started talking again her voice was cracked with strain.
"I wasn't asleep. It just came to me. It was in the dark. There was a lot of noise. Like drums, clanging sounds. The girl was screaming and it came down on the ropes and opened up the roof. She was terrified. I could feel it. And then it reached down and took her."
"And you saw this?"
"Yes," she said. She sniffled again, catching her breath.
"And then what?"
"I don't know. It lifted her up and she was crying all the time. It was just like the boy. It carried her up into the dark and..and.."
"And what?" he asked again.
"And she'd dead."
The words came out with heavy finality.
"You don't know where?"
"No."
"Or when?"
"No."
Jack sighed. He'd been right a few minutes ago. There was something more than odd about the girl. He didn't know whether to be suspicious, or dismissive. He had other things on his mind, but he was already on the horns of his dilemma. The girl had told him something earlier which he'd discounted and then a possible answer to part of it had come when he'd fallen asleep. He had to check that out before he did anything else.
"Listen," he finally said. "There's not much I can do about it at this time of night. But I'll speak to you first thing in the morning. Are you going to work?"
She said she'd been told to stay at home.
"Fine. I'll take your number," Jack said. She gave it, and he said he'd call in the morning. There was a silence on the other end which went on for several seconds, when finally she said.
"Please. I can't take much more of this."
The telephone couldn't disguise the plaintive, almost despairing appeal in her voice.
"Leave it to me," Jack said blandly.
He slung the receiver and let it hang on the phone for a minute or two while he considered what she'd said. Another killing, but she didn't know where or when. That was a big help. It was no help at all. First he had to investigate the warehouse.
The phone rang again and he snatched it from the cradle, expecting to hear her voice again.
"Mr Fallon?" A man's voice this time.
"Sergeant Thomson here."
"Hello Bobby," Jack responded. "What's up?"
"We need you down here. There's been another one."
The words landed like thuds on Jack's consciousness. He didn't even have to ask, though for a vertiginous moment he experienced a strange rush of unnerving trepidation, as if he'd stepped out of reality for a moment and was floundering in a place where everything was out of true and out of step.
"Where?" he finally asked.
"The distillery," Bobby responded matter of factly. "We got a call half an hour ago, A girl's just gone missing."
The weird deja-vu sensation washed through him again.
"What happened?"
"Christ knows," Bobby said. "Sorry sir."
"Don't worry Bobby, just tell me."
"She was in a lift. It got stuck between floors. When the engineer went in, she was gone. But there's blood all over the place. There's a few of the women taken to hospital."
"Were they hurt?"
"No. They fainted."
"Right," Jack said. "I'll be down in ten minutes." He was about to hang up again when he told Bobby to hold on.
"Listen. While I'm here. Get Ralph Slater and John McColl in and then get a couple of men round to the old railhead warehouse on Artizan Street. The one next to the engine works. I want the whole place searched."
"What are we looking for, sir?"
"Anything at all. Possible evidence of the Kennedy boy. I need it done now."
He hung up this time and sat staring at the wall, feeling numb and disorientated. The second call, right on the back of the first had thrown him off balance, leaving him with a weird sense of helplessness and scary confusion.
After a moment, he got up from the table and ran his cup under the tap, then bent and scooped cold water on to his face. The icy shock helped slow down his jumbled thoughts. It took him a few minutes to get dressed. He hadn't had time for a shower and as he ran his hand across his chin, he knew he was in dire need of a shave, but there was no time for it. He hauled his coat on, flicked his hair back from his forehead with an abrupt sweep of his hand, and went out into the cold night.
Ralph Slater was just arriving at the main gate of the distillery when Jack pulled up. A crowd of women stood at the door, huddled against the cold, with their heavy winter coats slung on top of their overalls. An ambulance light was winking in the covered area where the lorries normally loaded their goods. A patrol car was parked beside it, and just beyond, the bulk of a fire engine loomed against the brick wall. Already the mist coming off the river was thick and opaque, giving the buildings a dreamscape fuzzy quality.
"What's the word Jack?" somebody called from the corner. Blair Bryden started walking towards the car.
"Haven't a clue yet," Jack told him. "Give me a chance."
"Her name's Carol Howard and she's sixteen. She went into a lift and never came out again."
"Well, you know more than me."
"My aunt works with her," Blair said. "She gave me a call."
"Well, I'll have a word with her later. Give me some time to see what's happening and I'll have a chat when I come down." Blair nodded. He was a conscientious editor.
Inside, Jack and Ralph took the stairs two at a time until they got to the fourth floor. The place was crowded with firemen. The elevator doors had been wedged open. Ropes trailed out through the space, disappearing up through the hole in the roof. Smears of blood had been trampled over the floor, leaving red treadmarks inside and out of the cabin.
One of the policemen came over as soon as Jack arrived.
"Nobody knows what happened yet," he said. "Apparently she went down to the canteen, two floors below to get her handbag. This was about an hour ago, just after the tea-break. One of the storemen," the constable flipped a page on his notebook, "Peter Cullen. He said he heard a noise coming from the lift. The girl was calling for help. She seemed to be stuck in the jammed lift. A few minutes later, there was a great deal of noise inside the lift and the girl started screaming. There was nothing else until the engineer got the thing open. The girl was not inside."
He closed his notebook.
"I'm afraid they haven't located her yet."
Sorley Fitzpatrick, the chief fire officer came bulling across, stepping over the lines of ropes.
"We've been right up to the top of the shaft. There's an air-vent on the housing which the boys say has been forced open. No sign of anything, Jack. If that girl was in the lift, then she's gone."
"Have you checked down below?"
"Nothing there. Up above the cage there's a lot of blood. Smells like a slaughterhouse in there. I wouldn't recommend a visit."
"Neither me, I suppose, but I'll have to take a look."
He went across to the lift with Sorley and followed the man up the ladder set at an angle, reaching up into the space above. Somebody had rigged up a series of lights which clung to the rails on rat-trap crocodile clips. The lift rattled under their feet as Sorley pointed upwards. The shaft soared into the distance, getting narrower in distant perspective. Two firemen were lowering themselves down on the ropes. Ralph Slater eased his way through the gap to stand beside them, aiming his own flashlight here and there on the shaft walls.
"Christ, what a mess," he finally said, then, without another word, he started scooping samples into the plastic wallets he took from his bag.
"There's more traces of blood, or what seems to be blood, further up on the guide-rail. Nothing on the roof, as far as I can tell, but I expect you'll want a look yourself."
"Yes," Jack agreed gloomily, knowing he would have to inspect the whole area. The idea of going up the shaft appalled him. He clambered down and into the building again. By this time, John McColl had arrived, looking a bit bleary eyed, but clean shaven. With him were two young detective constables. Jack asked the manager for a room and was shown to a tidy office. Inside, he started laying out instructions for the rest of the team.
An hour later, he found himself on top of the building, bracing himself against the cold west wind, as he had done on the top of Lomond View after the strange death of Jock Toner. The parallel was not lost on him. As he stood in the centre of the flat expanse of roughcast he experienced another flashback.
"He's dead." the girl had said. "It came down from above in the dark and just lifted him up. I could hear it breathing. It's like an animal."
Like an animal. Whoever had taken the girl from the lift, leaving her blood to drip in a clotted pool had to be an animal. A maniac. A psychopath.
"I don't know what it is. You can't see it properly. It moves so fast, and it climbs. "
It climbs. It climbs.
There was no doubt about that. He climbed alright. Nearly to the top of Latta Court. And to the roof of Loch View, two of the highest buildings in the town. Now Jack was standing on the flat roof of the distillery, a towering block which overlooked the whole of the centre of Levenford. He turned to face south and could see right across the river, beyond the old cemetery on its promontory at the confluence of river and estuary. Across the firth, nearly eight miles away as the crow flies, the tiny lights of the south bank towns glittered in the fog like distant stars.
High places. Jack recalled his own words. The pattern had struck him before. There had been nothing but frozen blood on the ground on Barley Cobble where the battered body of Shona Campbell had been found, yet on a hunch Jack had ordered a search of the roof and they'd found traces of thread. Of a sudden he was certain they would match the fibres taken that day from the baby's cot.
High places. Why?
He did not have the answer to that question, but now he was just as certain he was getting there, slowly and surely, and for some reason, a weird shiver ran through him. He did not know what he would find when he got to the end of the line, to the end of the questions. For a strange, almost panicky second, Jack Fallon did not want to get there.
He turned back from the south, sweeping his eyes across the town's night horizon. From where he stood, his view to the ground was restricted by the safety wall that lined the edge of the building, more than three feet high. Almost directly to the north, the ornate roof of the town hall, corbie-step gables and dragon's back ridging, nosed up behind the stand of elms on Memorial Avenue. Off to the right, the cranes and gantries of Latta Marineyard stood gaunt and prehistoric, ribbed and articulated. Someone had left a light on in the cabin of the giant lifting derrick. It glowed like a monster's eye. Beyond them, the black, towering sheds of the old shipyard with its own gaunt cranes, a conglomeration of metal, great slipway doors and winching gear, lying dormant until the need for boats came back again.
Then, just north of them, hardly visible, pointed the steeple of Castlebank Church, where William Simpson had preached to a congregation while hiding a dark and disgusting secret.
Swinging his gaze back, Jack followed the sightline. The tall poplars, mere shadows in the mist, along Slaughterhouse Road. The tower of the crumbling provost's hall, built two hundred years before by the ship-owning power barons who had ruled the town with god-fearing strictness backed by the oppression of vast wealth. To the far left, the dreary concrete blocks of Latta Court and its two neighbours huddled together, the winking red hazard light on the highest roof like an ember in a bed of coals. To the north west, the black twin stacks of the old forge chimneys, rearing like gun barrels aiming at the sky, barely visible in the gloom. Out in the dark, the bells of St Rowan's Church plaintively tolled the hour.
High places.
Places above the sightlines, only truly seen from another high place.
"It climbs," she had said. He could hear her voice, tight with distress.
"It climbs alright," he said aloud. The wind whipped his words away beyond the safety barrier.
But how did she know? Jack had dismissed the visions, or dreams, or whatever she cared to call them. He didn't believe in mumbo-jumbo. That was for cranks and crazies and loonies, and thank christ the majority of them were harmless. Despite what Andy Toye had said, that kind of thing was strictly out of the picture as far as police business was concerned. Facts, facts and more facts, they were what counted.
Yet what she had said nagged and tugged at him.
What did she know? That was more to the point. As he stood in the cold, he cast his mind back. She'd told him he'd seen someone - though she called it something - come down from above and smash Shona Campbell to the ground. Now they'd found the fibres snagged on the guttering.
She'd told him the boy was dead. There had been nothing in the papers about that, just that he was missing.
And tonight she had phoned him, in a blind panic, or so it sounded, to tell him that a girl had been killed.
She'd been right about that. There was no doubt in Jack's mind; no doubt in the minds of the firemen or the women who had stood outside the lift while the booming noises had echoed down the shaft and the screams had reverberated from above. The girl was dead.
So how did she know? And what did she know?
Jack turned and walked slowly back to the stairway which led back into the building. For some reason his feet had wanted to carry him to the edge of the roof, and he'd had to fight against the urge to look down. It was an odd compulsion and he'd felt it before, but he knew if he stood on the edge, he'd feel the tug of gravity, the insistent drag of the ground and its implicit invitation. The elevator housing, a squat, square construction, one of four which grew from the roof, was just beside the stairway. At its nearest side, the thick aluminium grid lay buckled and twisted. Jack hunkered down to have another look at it. Ralph Slater's boys had already taken pictures from all angles and it had been dusted for prints. Nonetheless, Jack lifted it carefully using his finger and thumb on a corner. It wasn't heavy. The thick mesh had been ripped and torn. He placed it against the hole where it had stood, and something peculiar caught his attention. The grille had been pushed inward, not forced out. He could see where it had bellied from the frame as if a considerable weight had been forced against it. The gridwork had snapped in several places. He took it out of the frame and held it up close to his face, peering at the broken ends of thick wire latticework. The edges were rough. They hadn't been cut. Furthermore, they were out of true, bent in towards each other as if they had been gripped by a powerful hand. He held his own hand up, but despite his own size, his fingers could not reach the span that would have been required to grasp the twisted pieces of metal.
He laid the grille down where it had been lying, and thoughtfully got to his feet. Somebody called his name from down below and he walked slowly to the stairs and back into the main party of the distillery.
"Absolutely nothing," John McColl said. "They're all saying the same thing. Plenty of noise and screams, then nothing. Scared the hell out of them."
"Scares the hell out of me," Jack admitted.
"Oh, by the way," John interjected. "There's been half a dozen calls for you. Everybody and their granny wants you to call back."
"At this time of night?"
"Bobby Thomson wants you urgently."
As soon as he heard that, Jack felt the familiar jolt as adrenalin kicked into his blood.
"What's he want?"
"You to call back. Yesterday."
Jack took the steps three at a time. Nobody was using any of the lifts in the building. Sorley Fitzpatrick and the engineers were checking the other three, just in case. The distillery manager had sent the whole night-shift home. Jack got to his car. Somebody had left a message tucked under the wiper. He snatched it out as he opened the door and eased himself in. It bore five digits. Jack recognised Blair Bryden's number and gave a wry grin. He made a mental note to call the Gazette office in the morning, then reached for the receiver and called in. Somebody put him through the desk sergeant and Bobby Thomson came on, his voice fighting through the static.
"The dog men are in, sir. I thought you ought to know."
"And?"
"They found traces. A shoe. No two shoes. A handbag. And there's possible traces of dried blood."
"Shit," Jack said vehemently.
"Sir?" Bobby's voice crackled. He'd heard that alright.
"Sorry Bob. Expletive deleted." Jack's mind was racing. There were too many options on what to do next. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a minute, ignoring the hiss of static in his ear.
"I'll get Ralph along soon as I can. In the meantime, seal the area. Not a thing to be touched. No announcement."
"Oh and Mr Cowie's looking for you," Bobby came back.
"What's new?" Jack said to himself. Bobby chuckled and Jack realised he'd spoken aloud.
"Tell him I'll be along in twenty minutes." Bobby acknowledged and Jack thumbed the off button. He debated sending the women patrollers up to Clydeshore Avenue to pick up Lorna Breck and bring her to the office, but then he dismissed the notion. He knew where she was. If he brought her in to the station, the superintendent would only ask awkward questions for which Jack, at the moment had no answers. He got out of the car and back into the distillery. The crowds had dispersed in the cold, damp air. The ambulance light still twinkled blue starlight. There was an odd air of stillness about the place.
Jack got Ralph and hauled him down from the upper floors.
"We need another scene of crime operation," he explained without any preamble.
"What, again?"
"Not a fresh scene. At least I don't think so."
He gave Ralph directions, told him he'd meet him at the old warehouse in under an hour, then went back to the car and pulled out of the covered driveway and went back to the station.
At the desk, Bobby Thomson handed him a sheaf of messages which he snatched in passing and read as he strode along to his own office, pausing only to waylay young Gordon Pirie, the fresh-faced recruit and ask him to make a cup of tea. The boy looked over at Bobby Thomson who just nodded wisely.
There were two messages from headquarters, one from Criminal Records Office, the other from the forensic lab. He called CRO first, asked for an inspector he knew from the old days, and waited while the extension rang. Finally somebody picked it up. Jack gave his name and the inspector said hello.
"What've you got Fergus?"
"Bingo on two counts. John McColl said this was a priority job. You've come up on both sets of prints. Tomlin was at scene of crime in the Herkik operation. We've twenty clear fingers and several palms, all with nine-point matching. It was him alright."
"And?"
"The drownee. She was there too. We've got confirmation on all points. Nothing on the register on either of them, though, no previous. Unknown to the police on any list. If you can get me an ID on the woman, it will help."
"I don't think that'll be long," Jack said confidently. "You'll get it as soon as I know it."
"Okay. Best of luck," the inspector said. "By the way. What the hell's going on in your patch?"
"Damned if I know," Jack wearily. A sudden wave of tiredness swept through him. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a full night's sleep. He ran his hand over his chin again and felt the rasp of an extra day's growth. "But I'm working on it."
"Your old pals are rooting for you."
"And I'm rooting about down here," Jack said. He thanked his fellow officer and went back to the messages.
At the lab, the sergeant who had left the message was off duty, but Jack was put straight through to the textiles and fabrics section. The young woman who answered was unfamiliar, but helpful. The threads of material snagged on the gutter on the roof at Barley Cobble, she confirmed, had been successfully matched up with fibres taken from the sheets of baby Kelly Campbell's cot, and corresponded to others taken from the shoulder of her mother's coat. They were pure wool, dyed pink. The young chemist went into some detail about the composition of the dye and the cross-section thickness of the fibres, and Jack let her run on for a while, though he didn't need the technical information right at that moment.
It did confirm again however, the conclusion Jack had reached earlier.
The killer was a climber. He liked high places.
Now he had a few other things to do. He had to find out why, and he needed to know how Lorna Breck knew. Did she know him? Was she involved?
Was her story just an act to put him off the trail, or even a callous act of mishief-making? He decided she could wait, though not for much longer. The baby-faced recruit came in with a pot of tea and placed the tray on the table. Jack gave him an appreciative wink and the youngster blushed. As soon as he left, Jack dunked two of the biscuits until they were soft and swallowed them whole. He had just stuffed a third into his mouth when there was a knock on the door. Before he could speak the door opened and his immediate superior strode in. Jack swallowed too hastily and burned his throat.
"Didn't you get my message?" Superintendent Cowie asked.
"Yes. I was a bit tied up. I just had a couple of calls to make."
"What's going on?"
"Another youngster. Seems to have been snatched."
"Yes I know all that, although I should have heard it from you."
"No time. I went straight there."
"Alright. But there's more. I didn't authorise extra men for another search. There's been three dog handlers brought back on duty. That's on top of the SOC's men. Can you enlighten me?"
"Well, acting on information received, I thought it best to enlarge the search area."
"What information. From whom?"
"It's a bit vague at the moment sir. I'd rather leave it until we have something more concrete. In fact it's more of a hunch really."
"A hunch? We can't afford overtime on the strength of some vague intuition."
"No. It was a bit more than that. But you did say you wanted immediate action, and that's what I'm trying for. I don't think headquarters will object to a couple of extra men on a night. It happens all the time in Glasgow."
"That may be. But this is not Glasgow. We don't have the budget or the manpower."
"We could put in a request some more. I'm sure the divisional commander would look on it favourably."
Jack knew what the reaction to that would be. Cowie would rather cut off his leg than put in such a request to head office. It would be an admission that he couldn't run his own patch. Jack himself knew there would be no shame on it. He'd been working on murders too long to care about who thought what. From his own point of view, he knew there was nothing to be gained from calling in the cavalry, at least not at the moment, despite the media pressure which featured the bizarre kidnappings on almost every teatime bulletin, and were certain to have a picnic and barbecue in the morning when news of the latest abduction hit the streets. There was nothing to be gained, and a possibility that an influx of officers who did not know the area might only muddy the waters. Jack needed just a little more time before he yelled for help, but he was pragmatist enough to know that when the time came, he would bawl his head off.
"Absolutely not," Cowie said. "The whole force is overworked and undermanned. We won't get any thanks for it."
Nor the glory, Jack thought.
"So what do we know about the girl?"
"Nothing much. Bare details. I've sent a WPC round with John McColl to speak to the family."
"Preposterous!" Cowie spat. His face was taking on that familiar red tinge. He looked like a man who wanted to be running things but didn't quite know how, which, in Jack's view, he was.
"You mean we think we shouldn't speak to her?"
"Not that. Of course we should. I want detailed statements from every one involved. And I want duplicates of all reports."
"Naturally," Jack said, lying with a straight face.
"No. It's preposterous that girl should be snatched like that in a building full of people. Whoever is doing this is thumbing his nose right at us. The press will have a field day."
"Probably. But at least you can tell them there are one or two developments."
"I hope there are," Cowie retorted. "I sincerely hope there are." He turned away from Jack and walked briskly to the door.
"Full reports, understand?" he barked, without turning round.
Despite himself, Jack grinned. He poured another cup of tea and drank it quickly. He wasn't sure when he'd manage to get another, for he felt a long night coming on.
It was almost two in the morning and he was now feeling utterly fatigued when he went down to the operations room and put out a call for Ralph Slater. When he came on the phone, he sounded just as weary.
"Just coming in," Ralph said. "No body, but plenty of circumstantial. Oh, I think I can ID the swimmer for you."
"Bring it all in," Jack said. "I'll be here."
Ralph took less than ten minutes to get round to the station. He looked blue and cold and his shoes and trousers were streaked with dust. Two of his team were carrying black plastic bags. The scene of crimes boss told them to lay the material on the table and he gratefully nodded when Jack offered him a cup of tea from the huge pot the new recruit had brought up from the canteen. The small gathering stood around, trying to get some heat into their bodies.
When the other two had left, Jack and Ralph went over what they'd found.
It was a pitiful collection. Two shoes. One a woman's, the other a child's training shoe.
Jack got a fleeting flashback to the dream.The prints had been clear. One bare foot and the clear marks of gumboots. It hadn't been accurate, but that hardly mattered any more.
"Definitely the boy's. We got a full description. It matches," Ralph said over the rim of his cup. The other one's from the woman in the river. I can guarantee it. I could get the effects from downstairs, or even show you a print, but take my word for it."
"Naturally," Jack agreed. "You're scene of crimes."
"Now the handbag is more interesting," Ralph went on, now speaking through a mouthful of biscuit. "We found that on the stairs. Some blood drops on it. Much more on the upper levels and a fair puddle on the rafter boards, and I'll give ten to one it's the Kennedy kid."
"No bets."
The contents of the bag were in a separate wallet. There was a small purse with a few notes and change, a pen. Two combs and a lipstick.
Jack poked through it with a pencil.
"What's this?" he asked, looking over at Ralph. The two cards were face up, printed in fading pastel colours. The six of wands and the queen of wands, both of them old-fashioned, printed on linen board.
"I thought you'd find that interesting. They're the same kind as we found on Simpson. I think there's a tie-in."
"Oh there is. She was at Cairn House. Records have confirmed the prints."
"But there's more."
Jack raised an eyebrow. Ralph indicated the small pile of effects.
Jack nudged the cards out of the way, then he saw what Ralph had meant. It was a lapel clip, with a name on it beside a photograph of a woman with short greying hair.
"It can't be," he said through his teeth.
"But it is. She was covered in shit when they took her out of the river. Her own mother wouldn't have recognised her, but I'll take any bets that's who it is."
"Janet?"
Ralph nodded. "And Christ alone knows how she figures in all of this. She would never say boo to a goose."
Jack scratched his head, perplexed. Janet Robinson had been one of the girls in the typing office. She was as quiet as a mouse, a young-old woman who kept herself to herself, but she was an excellent worker. She'd churned out dozens of reports for Jack in the past couple of months.
"That's all we need," he said to Ralph, dropping the plastic card back into the pile.
He went back to the seat and eased himself down. "Right. John McColl's out talking to Tomlin's wife after he speaks to the girl's mother," he said. "We might get something there, though I doubt it. I need somebody out to Cross Road to pick up a man."
"Tonight?"
"Yes, Tonight. I'll send two of the uniforms along. And there's a girl I have to speak to."
"You and me both."
"No this one's got something to tell me. Ever heard of Lorna Breck?"
Ralph shook his head. "Rings no bell."
"She tells me she's been seeing the killings. Called me tonight just before Bobby Thomson phoned. She said it had happened again, to a girl this time."
"Think she's involved?"
"I don't know. There's something weird about her. Under normal circumstances I'd say she was telling the truth, but I've been wrong before. I'll have another talk with her in the morning, but keep that to yourself. I'll have enough trouble explaining what was going on at Cairn House."
"Having a seance, wasn't it?"
"Trying to raise devils," Jack said.
Ralph gave him a nakedly skeptical look.
"You don't believe any of that crap, do you?"
"No, but they probably did. I think we're dealing with a bunch of weirdos. Some sort of sect, maybe devil worshippers or something. You've read the Orkney case, and the Yorkshire stuff. I think we might have a group of nutters who're taking it one step further than dancing naked round a fire and screwing goats."
"You think they're killing folk?"
"I think," Jack said, looking Ralph straight in the eye. "I think they're sacrificing babies."
Ralph Slater was in the act of swallowing a mouthful of tea. He choked as it went down and sprayed himself as he spluttered to get his breath. His eyes were watering and he snatched a tissue from his pocket and dabbed at them. Finally he turned back to Jack.
"Are you kidding?"
"No. I wish I was."
"Cowie is going to love you. Are you going to tell him?"
"Not yet. Lets see what we can drag in. I can't keep him off my back for much longer."
Later that night John McColl came back from Edward Tomlin's house with something Margaret Tomlin had found in her husband's jacket. It was a tarot card crumpled and lined, but there was no mistaking the pattern on the back. It was identical to the others that had turned up. On the face, it bore the picture of a heart impaled by three swords.
Edward Tomlin died in the early hours of the morning, when Jack was heading for home, almost stupefied with fatigue. His body was taken down to the mortuary where Robbie Cattanach would open him up the following morning. Some months later, both Robbie and Dr Collins would collaborate on a paper for the Lancet on the remarkable physiological effects of paraquat poisoning.