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<h2>14</h2>
<p>Over the weekend, the temperature plummeted. Saturday brought
the first flurries of snow hitting in from the north west, and by
morning, Langmuir crags were blanketed in white. Jack awoke at
nine, later than he'd intended and had a quick plate of bacon and
eggs before shrugging on his padded jacket and stepping out into a
world that had changed overnight. The snow was blinding under a
clear, hard sky, and all the sharp outlines of winter, the bare
black branches and the rocky outcrops at the edge of the muir
cliffs were fuzzed in white. Everything looked soft and peaceful.
The wind had died and had drifted the virgin snow to soften the
jagged edges. Jack walked carefully round to the back of the house
where the land at the far end of the garden fell away steeply to
the little stream that used to turn the wheel of Cargill farm mill
before Jack had been born. The water which normally tumbled down
through the narrow gorge was now almost silent, just a musical
tinkle. Icicles hung down from the lip of the falls, slender
jewelled stalactites reflecting the low light of the rising sun. A
robin whistled robustly close by and blurred red as it came to land
on the fence post almost within arm's reach. It cocked its head to
the side and fixed him with a sparkling black eye.</p>
<p>"And good morning to you," Jack said.</p>
<p>The little bird, a bright red contrast against the snow hopped
onto the strand of wire, bobbed jauntily at him and piped a
warbling challenge. If Jack had reached his hand, he could have
touched the robin. It sat and glared at him defiantly, feathers
puffed out, its beak a little dagger, spindly legs apart.</p>
<p>"Alright," Jack said, with a laugh. "I'm going." The bird sang
after him as he walked, feet padding silently in the soft snow back
to the house. He called the office to say he was going out to speak
to someone and would be in later. It was a minor lie. He went back
into the kitchen, took a handful of stale slices from the bread-bin
and went back into the garden. The robin was now perched like a
lookout on the garden fork that had been stabbed into the soil
since October, when the last of the turnips were lifted. Jack
ripped the dry bread into small pieces and scattered them onto the
flat place where the short grass waited for spring. The robin flew
down immediately and pecked. By the time Jack reached the house,
the garden was teeming with sparrows and starlings. They were
feeding hungrily, and the image took him back to the years when
he'd sat at the back door, binoculars hard up against his eyes,
identifying all the birds as they fluttered and squabbled over
whatever he'd left for them. Here at Cargill Cottage, right out on
the far side of town, there were still plenty of birds. Twenty
years on, Jack remembered them all.</p>
<p>He walked to his car, brushed the snow from the windscreen and
got in. He eased the car out through the gap in the hedge and
started downhill, keeping in high gear, careful not to skid on the
slope. A hundred yards down the farm road, he turned left onto
Berry Avenue, which hadn't been there when he was a boy. Then it
had been a jumble of old bramble thickets where mothers and kids
spent September and October collecting enough to make jam and jelly
to last the winter.</p>
<p>Julia lived at the far end, where the road came to an abrupt
halt. Beyond that, a pair of sycamore trees stood like bare
sentries to the path which led down the long slope to Langmuir
Burn, a wide stream which drained from the bog way up in the hills
and meandered down to skirt the town and empty itself into the
Clyde near the Castle Rock.</p>
<p>Davy leapt about like an excited puppy when he opened the door
to find Jack stamping the snow from his cleated boots.</p>
<p>"Can we take the sledge? Eh, uncle Jack. Can we go down the
hill?"</p>
<p>Jack ruffled his hair. Julia came out of the kitchen, still in
her dressing gown, as she had been the day before. She was tall,
and had the same jet black hair Jack had. She was five years
younger than her brother and under normal circumstances, she was a
pretty level-headed and easygoing woman. She looked better than she
had on the Friday morning, but as she leaned forward to kiss Jack
on the cheek and say hello, he could hear she was still choked with
the cold.</p>
<p>"Shouldn't you be in your bed?"</p>
<p>"Not with that wee tornado," she replied with a watery smile.
"I've got no energy at all, and he's been given an extra helping.
Whatever he's on, I could use some of it."</p>
<p>"Well, get back upstairs and I'll bring you some tea."</p>
<p>"Oh, I'll be alright."</p>
<p>"Do what you're told girl," he ordered with feigned severity.
"I'll take him out for an hour or so. I have to get to the office
later, but I need some fresh air."</p>
<p>"You want to get back to your childhood again," she said and
laughed weakly, then whipped out a tissue just in time to catch a
sudden sneeze. Jack shoo-ed her upstairs and put the kettle on.
Davy danced around him until Jack confirmed they would go sledging,
then raced off to get his snowsuit and boots. Ten minutes later,
Julia was in bed with tea and a magazine. Jack and the small boy
went out, dragging the old iron sledge behind them. It bumped over
the roots between the old sycamores and beech trees of the bar-wood
which separated cargill farm land from the small line of houses on
Berry Avenue, then, when they were through the barrier, it glided
smoothly on the virgin snow of the field.</p>
<p>The air was clear and nippy and the sun, now higher, sent
slanting rays onto the hillside which bounced them back in millions
of coruscating sparkles.</p>
<p>They reached the lip of the hill and Jack angled the sledge to
aim it along the natural curve of a dip which swung as it descended
to the flat pasture beside the stream. He had an old, battered,
Russian soldier's hat with a stiff brim and flaps which covered his
ears. He pulled it tight down onto his head, partially to shade his
eyes from the glare and also to prevent a repeat of last winter's
accident.Wee Davy snuggled between his legs, both hands gripping
Jack's knees and then they were off.</p>
<p>The sledge moved slowly at first. They could hear the runners
whisper on the dry snow as Jack pushed with both hands to get them
moving and then they were down over the lip and accelerating. Davy
squealed with excitement as they hurtled down the gulley, following
the natural track. On either side, the snow was a blur and the
runners sent up a fine spray of crystals as they shot along. Jack
could feel the boy's fingers dig into the skin of his legs as the
slope dropped away from them for the final swoop down into the
flat.</p>
<p>"Yee-hah!" Davy yelled, and Jack bawled along with him. They
were hammering along, just hitting the level field. Here the cows
had grazed the grass flat and only a few brown dockens and thistles
punctuated the pasture. By luck, they passed them all without
obstruction and were heading straight for the pool in the stream
when Jack leaned his weight to the right and the sledge started to
curve in its headlong flight. They veered parallel to the edge,
slowing down now, when the left runner hit a mole-hill frozen hard
as rock. The sledge bounced. Jack made a grab for Davy, missed, and
the boy flipped up and over and landed in a drift with hardly a
sound. The sledge bounced on, riderless as Jack was thrown to the
left, landed on his hip with such a jar his breath was socked right
out, tumbled over the edge and slid down on his backside onto the
ice on the pool, spinning as he skittered like a curling stone. He
ground to a halt halfway out from the bank, head spinning.</p>
<p>He clambered to his knees, backside aching from slamming it
against something hard on his slide down the steep bank.</p>
<p>"Great, uncle Jack," Davy pealed. "That was magic."</p>
<p>The boy appeared round the side of a gorse bush, snow clinging
like thick icing to his one-piece winter suit. His face was red
with excitement and he was grinning from ear to ear. "Can we do it
again?" He was certainly none the worse for his fall.</p>
<p>"Come on, Uncle Jack. can we go up to the top again?"</p>
<p>"Yeah," Jack said. "Just let me get my breath back."</p>
<p>"How did you get out there? Did you slide all that way."</p>
<p>"Sure I did."</p>
<p>"Is the ice safe?"</p>
<p>"I think..." Jack started to say, just as an ominous metallic
creak shocked the still air.</p>
<p>Jack felt the ice tremble under his feet.</p>
<p>"Uncle Jack. I think..." Davy shouted.</p>
<p>There was one monumental <em>crack</em>, and Jack dropped like a
stone. The ice had opened up and swallowed him. One second Jack was
standing on the flat ice and the next he was foundering in the
freezing stream, gasping for breath, snatching for something to
grab hold of. Fortunately, by the time he realised what had
happened, he was only standing in three feet of water. The ice had
broken in the shallow end of the pool. It took him several minutes
of splashing and spluttering to get to the bank, as every step of
the way, the fractured ice kept giving way and he couldn't get his
feet on anything solid.</p>
<p>All the time, he was cursing under his breath, and with every
farcical step he could hear wee Davy break out into another burst
of hysterics. When he finally made it to the bank and clambered up
to the flat, his nephew was lying belly up in the snow, holding the
said belly and laughing so hard he almost choked.</p>
<p>Jack walked towards him, feet squelching and jeans flapping wet
and cold against his legs.</p>
<p>"Oh, so you think that was funny, do you?"</p>
<p>Davy continued laughing uncontrollably. Every time he tried to
speak, he pointed at Jack, then pointed at the water where the
broken segments of ice were now bobbing and clattering against each
other, scraping and tinkling like plates of glass. When he did that
he'd immediately double over so far his face was almost in the
snow. Jack's feet were beginning to freeze.</p>
<p>He strode across to the boy, leaving big footprints in the
snow.</p>
<p>"Laugh at your uncle, would you?" he demanded. He grabbed the
small boy by one ankle and one wrist and swung him round, pivoting
on his heels as he did.</p>
<p>"One...two...three..." he yelled when, for the third time, the
lad was whirling towards the stream, still screaming with
laughter.</p>
<p>And just at that moment, Jack's foot slipped. He went down on
his backside again. Davy, who was at the apex of the swing, crashed
down on top of him and the pair of them went slipping and sliding
down toward the stream again. Jack managed to grab the boy before
he disappeared under the ice, but Jack went in again, feet first,
backside next. When he ground to a halt, he was sitting in six
inches of water and Davy was high and dry and still laughing hard
enough to break a rib.</p>
<p>They spent another exhausting hour - exhausting for Jack whose
job it was to haul the sledge to the top of the hill after every
run - until the cold water in his boots froze his feet to such en
extent they began to hurt. Finally he had to insist, against Davy's
protestations, on going home again. Ten minutes later, he was
sitting with his feet in a basin of warm water, feeling his skin
itch and burn as the circulation came back into them. Neither Julia
nor her son could keep a straight face. In all, it was the best
hour Jack had spent since the night of the bonfire
celebrations.</p>
<p>An hour later he was down in the station. John McColl met him
halfway up the stairs.</p>
<p>"Been trying to get you for ages. Superintendent's looking for
you," he greeted in a low voice. "Looks as happy as a pig with
piles."</p>
<p>"So what else is new?"</p>
<p>"The boys think he wants you off."</p>
<p>"He's always wanted me off. Want to work for him?"</p>
<p>"No fear. You're the devil we know. And he couldn't find his
arse in the dark with both hands."</p>
<p>Jack had, yet again, to caution John on respect for his
superiors, which he knew was a futile excercise, but he couldn't
keep the smile from his face. McColl wouldn't change, didn't care.
What he said, however, was as as much of a vote of confidence as
Jack could expect.</p>
<p>"Got a few things you'll be interested in," John went on.
Ralph's in with the rest of them."</p>
<p>Jack steered the sergeant into his own office and sat down on
the chair by the window. Big flakes of snow were feathering down
against the glass to pile up on the sill.</p>
<p>"Could have used this on Barley Cobble the other night. At least
we might have had a footprint."</p>
<p>John nodded as he handed over a sheaf of papers.</p>
<p>"What've we got?" Jack asked, flicking through them quickly,
taking in just the headings.</p>
<p>"Initial forensic on the Campbell girl. Nothing great. A few
nail scrapings that won't get us much further. Oh, and there's
something from Dr Cattanach on the Toner case. You'll see that
further down."</p>
<p>"Yeah, I'll come to it later. What've we got that I can't get in
the reports?"</p>
<p>"Good question. Ralph debriefed the night-shift on door-to-door.
Absolutely nothing. I think we've got a psycho."</p>
<p>"It's always been a psycho, no matter what," Jack asserted.
"There's a connection between the two kids, but the difference is
that the second one occasioned violence. That mean's we've most
likely got a shooting star..."</p>
<p>"A what?"</p>
<p>"Somebody on burnout. Most psychopaths are very careful. They're
not like your common or garden maniac. They're lucid and thoughtful
and they tend to experiment with new things as they wreak their way
along. You don't get sudden changes in method and style, more a
gradual evolution. Then you get the shooting stars who get a taste
for it and flare up out of control. I reckon that's what we have
here. It's just a feeling."</p>
<p>"Is that good or bad?"</p>
<p>"Good <em>and</em> bad," Jack said after a while. "<em>Good</em>
because they don't plan too much. They become opportunistic and
they make mistakes and we catch them a little quicker. <em>Bad</em>
because they can do an awful lot of damage before they burn out.
Remember the case back in the sixties?"</p>
<p>"Before my time," John claimed.</p>
<p>"And mine. But I read up on the paperwork. Place was in an
uproar then. Five kids killed. I was at school at the time, just a
nipper. But I never forget the feeling in town. Everybody was
scared. That was a slow mover. He didn't burn out, at least not so
far as anybody knew. He just disappeared. Everybody said he'd
killed himself out of remorse. But I've had a look at the old
pictures. <em>That</em> was a psychopath."</p>
<p>"And?"</p>
<p>"With a psycho, there's no such thing as remorse."</p>
<p>"You don't think it's the same one?"</p>
<p>"No. I don't. The kids called him <em>Twitchy Eyes</em>. I
remember it clearly. One of the beat men went round all the classes
telling the kids to watch out for a man with a twitch in his eye.
That's going back more than thirty years. He'd be an old man by
now, and I don't think an old man could have taken Shona Campbell's
face off with a swipe, do you?"</p>
<p>"So what do you think?"</p>
<p>"We keep going round the doors. We have to find somebody who saw
something. Anything at all. Unless we get one hint, then it's going
to happen again, and then the shit's going to hit the fan."</p>
<p>"I've got a feeling it has already," John said. Jack nodded
reluctant agreement.</p>
<p>The day shift were waiting in the muster room. Jack went over
what they had. He hadn't had the time to go through the reports in
the folder, but on first glance there wasn't anything
earth-shattering that the team had to be told of.</p>
<p>In fifteen minutes, they were back out again, stamping the snow
from their feet as they knocked on doors asking the same questions
again and again.</p>
<p>Jack went back to the folder.</p>
<p>The forensic evidence provided more questions that answers. He
brought out Robbie Cattanach's preliminary report from the autopsy.
Robbie's few sentences were clear. The girl had suffered massive
trauma to the left side of her face. Most of the flesh had been
stripped from the crown of her head to her cheek and her occipital
orb and cheekbone had been crushed inwards. Several small shards of
bone had lodged in the brain and there was massive damage to brain
tissue. Had she survived, Robbie said, she would have certainly
have been paralysed down the right side of her body and she would
have been profoundly mentally disabled. What puzzled the doctor was
the nature of the blow.</p>
<p><em>"Three deep indentations,"</em> his report continued
"<em>Descend from the temple to the chin. The parallel striations
appear not just in skin and muscle tissue, but continue as grooves
on the bone itself. The only similar groovings of this nature, as
far as I recall, have come from injuries caused by large
bears."</em></p>
<p>As the bottom, in a personal note, Robbie asked: "<em>Have you
checked the zoo in case they've lost one?</em> "</p>
<p>Jack pulled his lips back from his teeth and sucked in air. He
remembered only the previous week - though it seemed much further
in the past than that - Ralph Slater asking him a similar question
when they were going through the house in Latta Court. That time,
because of the height of the verandah, Ralph had suggested they
should be looking for a gorilla.</p>
<p>A gorilla and a bear. Both trained to steal babies. And one
trained to kill a young mother with a cataclysmic swipe. Jack would
have preferred it to have been either. An animal could be caught
and captured quickly. It couldn't plan and it couldn't cover its
tracks.</p>
<p>But Jack knew that was too much to hope for. He was looking for
a human. A sick human, maybe. But a dangerous one who would try it
again. What concerned him, much more than anything else, was the
certainty that the killer would strike again, and soon. He was not
concerned about the bayings of the press. A double abduction made
national news any day of the week. He couldn't care less about the
backbitings of the likes of Ronald Cowie who saw every event as an
opportunity for advancement or apportioning of blame. He only saw
his job from the point of view of one who had to catch the killer
before he took another life. He had to catch him and put him away.
Somewhere in Levenford there were, he was sure enough to bet his
life on it, two small bodies lying hidden. In this town there were
too many nooks and crannies, too many sheds and huts and outhouses,
a warren of derelict buildings out by Slaughterhouse Road where the
land gave way on to the marshes, and old crumbling factories from
the bad old days huddled round the west edge of Rough Drain, the
local name for the extent of tangled wasteland at the east end of
town.</p>
<p>There were places aplenty to hide two tiny bodies. There were
places a killer could huddle and wait. All Jack Fallon and his
overworked men could do was wait for a sliver of evidence that
could act as a lodestone to point them in the right direction.</p>
<p>His own view had changed since the theft of little Timmy Doyle.
Then, it could have been anyone, although there was nothing to show
exactly <em>how</em> it had been done. The surmise was that someone
had climbed up or down from balcony to balcony on the sheer face of
Latta Court to snatch a baby from its pram. Yet there were no
prints, no hairs or scraps of clothing to give any pointers. Worse,
Jack Fallon could figure out no motive. This was beyond the range
of anything he had dealt with in the past, and in the past he had
dealt with many a baffling and confusing crime.</p>
<p>In his own mind, he had ruled out a woman. At first, there had
been a tenuous connection - after a fashion - between both the baby
snatch and Marta Herkik's brutal killing. But then Shona Campbell's
baby had been wrested from her arms on a cold night and she had
been hit so hard she'd died of it. This one could not be laid at
Sipmson's door, because he had taken his own gruesome way the day
<em>before</em> the abduction.</p>
<p>Jack was opening the folder from Ralph Slater as he eyed the
sequence graph on the wall. It displayed names and dates in his
plain capitals, with arrows joining one set of words to another.
There was as yet no clear pattern. Jack knew a pattern would help,
but if one <em>did</em> develop, it would mean another killing,
another theft of a child. That worried him more than anything.</p>
<p>Ralph Slater's report was badly typed, but clear enough. The dog
handlers had come up with nothing. There was no scent trail to
follow. From the position of the body - and the photographs in
stark black and white under the glare of the flashgun left nothing
to the imagination - it was clear that the woman had been felled by
one tremendous blow to the head. She had dropped like a sack and
she had stayed where she'd fallen. The pool of blood showed that
beyond doubt. There had been some material under her nails, but it
was not skin and it was not hair, as might have been expected from
a mother fighting for her baby. Ralph had rushed this through the
forensic lab at headquarters and came back with a riddle.</p>
<p>The preliminary report described the scrapings as
<em>keratin</em>. Jack knew enough not to have to look the word up.
He knew it was the substance which made up fingernails and horses
hooves and the scales of lizard skin. The stark and brief report
came to no conclusions as to the source. Ralph's men had taken
samples of a wet patch which had frozen on the shoulder of Shona
Campbell's leather Jacket. This too had only raised a conundrum. It
was neither human nor mammal saliva. Whoever had analysed the
substance - and there was only a scrawled signature at the bottom
which Jack couldn't make out - said there had been some
similarities between the sample and amphibian saliva, though the
resemblance was remote. Also, he added, there were no antibodies
nor bacteria, at least none identifiable or that he could culture,
which was unlike any other known secretions. Another puzzle within
the puzzle. There was nothing else to be gleaned from the report.
Jack stuck it back into the folder and laid it down on the
desk.</p>
<p>Craig Campbell's story stood up and walked. He'd been hanging
over the bar in the Castlegate until close to midnight and could
remember virtually nothing about it, but there were enough people
who had some brain cells that were not numbed with drink who
remembered him. Big Tam Finch confirmed that he'd escorted Campbell
to the door.</p>
<p>"Legs like rubber, the daft bastard," was what Tam Finch
actually said. "Seen it before with him. Getting set to boak all
over the floor. Better he does it outside than have the cleaners
scrape it up in the morning. He couldn't have put a nut in a
monkey's mouth, but that's just the usual for Bunnet Campbell. His
missus was down here regular every paynight to take his wages off
him before he gave it all to me. Race against time every week. The
man drinks at the gallop. Different story getting him out the door,
I can tell you."</p>
<p>Tam Finch could tell plenty. He ran the roughest, toughest bar
on the riverside and kept a big, gnarled harry Lauder walking stick
hanging up by the gantry to keep order. What he said put Craig
Campbell in the clear, though in Jack's mind, there was never any
serious question that he'd murdered his wife. Jack had spoken to
him only hours after the girl had been found and the man was too
befuddled to realise what was happening. He didn't sober up
properly until after she'd died and when he was given the bad news
he took another dive right into a bottle to blot it out again.</p>
<p>The neighbours, as in the Timmy Doyle case, were next to no
help. Apart from the one isolated scream in the shadows of Barley
Cobble, nobody had seen a thing. In both cases, there had been a
quick strike and a fast and silent getaway. There were few
clues.</p>
<p>By mid-day, the snow was blizzarding from the north again and
Jack was up to his armpits in paperwork, collating the reports. It
wasn't until then that he reached the note on Jock Toner. Robbie
Cattanach had put it in a separate envelope.</p>
<p>As he scanned the few short lines, his eyebrows drew together,
creating a furrow between them.</p>
<p>"<em>Did a check on the blood on Toner's jacket. It is NOT his.
Your forensic people will be able to tell, maybe. The sample was
Rhesus negative. Hope it helps.</em> "</p>
<p><em>Rhesus negative.</em> Jack sat still and thought about that.
Robbie had already told him that he believed Jock Toner had not
fallen from the gantry, because of the force with which his head
had met the upper edge of Isobel McIntyre's window. The pathologist
had suggested that he had jumped or been thrown. Jack thought some
more. There was a <em>different</em> type of blood on the man's
clothing, and that meant there had to have been someone else there,
unless of course, the man had had a fight with somebody on the
ground first, and then hoisted himself up on the cradle. That did
not ring true. Jack checked the notes on the interview with the
clerk of works. Toner had grumbled about having to stow the gear at
the end of his shift, but apart from that, he had seemed perfectly
normal. That had been just after five at night. The body wasn't
discovered until morning, and the preliminary investigation put his
death at two hours after he'd last been seen, although that was
merely a guess. It was hard to tell if the stiffness in his frozen
body had anything to do with rigor mortis. A woman living in the
second top storey told Ralph Slater that she'd heard the gantry
winder go past her window just after seven, and that tended to back
up the findings.</p>
<p>"So, what kept him up there for two hours?" Jack asked the empty
room.</p>
<p>He stared at the snow flurries as they wheeled past his
window.</p>
<p>Either he was with someone, and they'd had a fight, Jack
thought, but he shook his head. Jock Toner was used to heights but
he'd have to be crazy to fight someone on a swinging pulley-gantry
a hundred feet up the side of a building. Jack had been on the roof
less than an hour after the body had been found, slowly turning on
the rope in the freezing air. He'd looked over the side and he'd
felt his stomach give that old familiar lurch of vertigo. It was a
long way down. Mentally, he ruled out a fight, though stranger
things had happened. There was something else in Robbie's note.
Jack looked it over again, frowning all the while.</p>
<p><em>Rhesus Negative</em>. The blood type. As had happened many
times before, something <em>clicked</em> inside Jack's head and he
made a small connection.</p>
<p>He rummaged through the pile of manilla folders, scattering them
across his desk until he fond the one he was looking for. He opened
it and riffled through the few pages and discovered the sheets
stapled together. John McColl had pulled the baby's medical files
from the health centre. There was little to read. Forceps delivery.
Seven pounds, slight jaundice. Blood type Rhesus negative. Slight
factor eight deficiency. Two months after the birth, a bout of
scarlet fever and a bad cough which turned out not to be whooping
cough. It was all there, what little there was of a baby's life
catalogued in weights and illnesses.</p>
<p>Jack hooked the phone and called a number from memory.</p>
<p>A telephonist paged Dr Cattanach and he took a minute to come on
the phone.</p>
<p>"I'm up to my neck at the moment," he told Jack.</p>
<p>"Just a second," Jack insisted. "A quick question. I got your
note on the blood traces."</p>
<p>"Yes. definitely not his."</p>
<p>"I got that. Can you give me any pointers?"</p>
<p>"Narrows the field, Jack. Rhesus negative is not common."</p>
<p>"How uncommon?"</p>
<p>"Very low percentage, if I remember my haematology."</p>
<p>"That's a start. I just have to scan nearly thirty thousand to
come up with likely suspects. Anything else?"</p>
<p>"Well, whoever it is. He's a bleeder?"</p>
<p>"Come again?"</p>
<p>"A haemophiliac. Didn't I mention that? There was enough blood
to put it through the works. It's not surprising there was a fair
amount of it. There's a lack of blood clotting agent which means
any cut continues to bleed. In severe cases, it just doesn't
stop."</p>
<p>"That should narrow it gain. Hang on, Robbie."</p>
<p>Jack put the phone down and crossed the room to open the door.
John McColl came out when he heard his name bawled down the
corridor.</p>
<p>"I need lists of local haemophiliacs," Jack told him.</p>
<p>"Right away?"</p>
<p>"Day before yesterday."</p>
<p>John rolled his eyes and went back into the operations room.</p>
<p>Jack lifted the phone. He was still frowning. Something else
tugged at the back of his mind.</p>
<p>"Listen Jack, I've really got to go..." Robbie began.</p>
<p>"One more thing. What's factor eight?"</p>
<p>"That's what I was telling you. It's the clotting agent in human
blood. Without it a paper cut will make you bleed to death.;"</p>
<p>"Shit." Jack barked.</p>
<p>"What?" Robbie's voice came tinnily from the earpiece.</p>
<p>"Nothing. Last thing. How many people with that type of blood
and none of the clotter?"</p>
<p>"Damn few. One in umpteen thousand, I suppose."</p>
<p>"Just what I thought. I'll talk to you later Robbie. And
thanks."</p>
<p>Jack slammed the receiver down and sat for the space of several
seconds, staring at the roiling snow as the turbulence cartwheeled
them past the window. A picture developed in his mind. He held it
there while he shoved his chair back and bounded for the door
again, calling for John McColl as soon as he snatched it open.</p>
<p>The sergeant came out of the other room, eyebrows raised.</p>
<p>"Just getting on to it chief," he said.</p>
<p>"Hold that result," Jack said quickly. "Get Ralph and tell him
to meet me up at Loch View.</p>
<p>John looked at him blankly.</p>
<p>"And I mean now." Jack said.</p>
<hr />
<p>The door opened and swung back with such force that it slammed
against the wall. Janet Robinson saw her mother's bulk come ramming
past the jamb, her cane in one hand, held up like a sword. In her
other hand, a crumpled piece of paper crushed in a fierce, white
knuckled grip.</p>
<p>"You slut," the old woman hissed, and Janet realised that her
mother was not <em>old.</em> She was a big-boned woman, heavy
breasted and wide hipped, and she carried all the weight of
authority that had dominated Janet's life since she could remember.
Her eyes were slits between the clenched brows and screwed cheeks,
but they glittered with that righteous anger.</p>
<p>"You dirty little slutter. You <em>whore</em> that you are." her
mother came striding towards where Janet had been sprawled on the
bed, but was now cringing against the head. The cane jerked with
every word.</p>
<p>"Mother, I..." Janet squawked.</p>
<p>"Don't you <em>dare</em> call me <em>mother</em>," the old woman
said. Her short-cut frizzy hair seemed to stand up a grizzled halo.
"I found what you've been hiding, and I've read it."</p>
<p>She advanced two more steps, oddly bull-like for a woman.</p>
<p>"I've read it and it is <em>filth</em>."</p>
<p>She raised the sheet of paper up and waved it with triumph and
disgust.</p>
<p>"It's my letter," Janet managed to say. "You opened my
letter."</p>
<p>"And good thing I did girl. Just in time to save your immortal
soul." She held the letter out from her and her knuckles whitened
further as she crushed it to a tattered ball, then, with a little
flick of her hand, as if she were ridding her hand of slime, she
shucked it to the floor.</p>
<p>"I know what you've been doing. It's all there in black and
white. You've been seeing a <em>boy.</em> And worse, you've been
<em>doing things</em>."</p>
<p>"No mother, I didn't do anything."</p>
<p>"Don't lie to me girl. Don't you <em>dare</em> lie to me. I read
what he said. You've been doing things behind my back. You've been
doing things with a boy, you dirty little whore slut."</p>
<p>Janet pushed herself back against the headboard. It creaked with
her slight weight.</p>
<p>The big woman advanced, silhouetted by the light in the hallway,
towering over the bed.</p>
<p>"I'll teach you to let a boy touch you."</p>
<p>"But he didn't," Janet protested in a voice that was almost a
whimper.</p>
<p>"Did so. Did so. I read it. He wrote it. He <em>touched</em>
you."</p>
<p>"He only held my hand, mother. We were just walking. We were
only talking."</p>
<p>"And where were you walking? Out by the marshes where nobody
could see. Out without telling me, eh? Where he could put his hand
up your skirt."</p>
<p>Janet tried to reply, faltered, then cringed shrank back from
the onslaught, but there was nowhere left to retreat. She was
jammed up against the old wooden board, one hand drawn up to her
mouth, the other held out in mute appeal, in dumb protection.</p>
<p>Her mother's shadow blocked out the light. The cane went up in
the air, making a moaning sound through the air, followed
immediately by a whistle as it came down again.</p>
<p>Pain sizzled on Janet's thigh and she jumped as if a jolt of
high voltage had shot through her. Her squeal of pain bounced back
from the ceiling. She twisted away and the thin whipping stick
caught her on the upraised hand, driving down between her knuckles
into the soft web of skin. It made a noise like a nutcracker and an
unbelievable hurt lurched from her hand to her elbow.</p>
<p>"No mother," she shrieked. "Oh <em>please!</em>"</p>
<p>The dark outline of her mother's arm rose quickly and came down
in a blurred strike. The banshee whoop as it cut the still air
ended in the crack of the bamboo on her back. Janet leaped in an
involuntary spasm as silver pain cascaded from her shoulder to her
hip. Her legs kicked out and she could hear herself screaming,
though the sound seemed to be coming from far away, from someone
else. Her mother's bulk leaned over her and her arm went up and
came down again and again and all the time she was bawling at her
daughter that she would never see the boy again, she would never
ever see <em>any</em> boy again. With every blow the pain expanded
exponentially until she felt her vision turn grey and clouded and
the dark came and swallowed her mother first and then she herself
fell into it and...</p>
<p>Janet Robinson woke with a cry strangled in her throat. She was
shivering with cold and with fright, and face was beaded in sweat.
The blinds were pulled and the curtains drawn over them, darkening
the room to a gloomy grey. She groped her way to the side of the
bed and fumbled for the clock, pictures still whirling up to the
fore front of her mind, images of her mother's towering bulk
leaning over her in righteous wrath, in holy hatred, punishing
again for something the old woman had imagined she'd done. It was
not the first time she been wakened by her own screams and her own
fear. It had happened every night since she had fled,
panic-stricken from Marta Herkik's room in Cairn house.</p>
<p>She shivered again, still able to feel the heat-strokes and the
burning lines from where her mother had sliced at her with her
cane, still quaking in the aftermath of the abject terror under the
onslaught of her mother's anger. She held the clock in her hands,
shaking her head to try to will the visions away.</p>
<p>It was one o'clock in the afternoon. She'd slept all the
morning. Groggily, almost timidly, she eased herself out from the
damp sheets. Her hands were trembling as if she had a fever, but
she knew it was just the kick-back from the dream.</p>
<p>Her mother's image still shadowed the back of her mind. A big,
domineering and hateful woman who had done everything in her power
to cage her daughter and mould and meld her to her own use. She had
succeeded. In her teens, the few boys who had expressed an interest
never came back after the first secret meeting. Her mother had
<em>always</em> found out and her rage had been apocalyptic. Since
Janet had been old enough to remember, there had been only the two
of them. The old woman never <em>ever</em> spoke of Janet's father.
There had been the two of them, mother and daughter, the one
determined to crush whatever individuality and whatever spirit the
girl possessed, the other desperate to flee, frightened to make a
move. And so it had gone on, into her lacklustre twenties, into
grey thirties, while the old woman's bulk shrivelled in inverse
proportion to the poison of her tongue, and finally she had died of
a cancer that ate away at her belly and withered her down to a
whispering rickle of bones and yellow skin, too weak to whimper,
and Janet had been racked with guilt that she was <em>glad</em> her
mother was finally suffering the pain she'd suffered as a child, as
a girl, and as a woman. When finally the old woman had rattled her
last, Janet, now forty five and conditioned to be completely
dependent on the woman who had moulded her life in cruel hands,
felt vast relief and terrible fear. Approaching an early
middle-age, she ached for the chance to do things she wanted
(although she wasn't really sure what they actually were). She had
long since given up hope of forming a relationship with a man, and
in actual fact, such was the enormous pavlovian force of
conditioning that she was almost overcome by nerves if she happened
to speak to <em>any</em> man. But there were other things. She
could buy the clothes she chose, instead of the shapeless and grey
and hideously out-of-fashion <em>old woman's</em> garments her
mother would buy and insist she wore. She could go to the cinema,
might even buy a television. And most of all, there were women in
the offices where she worked who she thought she could become
friends with. Real people whom she could maybe, one day, invite
back to her own house, without the old vulture scaring them away
with her razor tongue and her poison words.</p>
<p>That had been the hope, but the weight of her mother's memory
had been so heavy that it still ground Janet Robinson down. It was
as if the old woman lurked in every corner of her mind, scolding
her whenever she had a rogue thought or any faint idea of self
improvement. She heard her mother's rasping voice, unrelentingly
critical of her every move.</p>
<p>Then someone had told her about Marta Herkik and she had gone
along with two of the women from the office to have their tarot
cards read and the idea had come to her that she wanted to know
that the old woman was really dead, really <em>gone</em>. She'd
gone back, not just once, but four times, for consultations with
the tiny Hungarian woman, and then she'd gone to the seance because
by this time she believed that the little foreign woman could
really confer with the departed. Janet Robinson hadn't wanted to
confer. She just wanted to snap the bonds and to break free.</p>
<p>She'd gone to Marta herkik's house, with the five other people
and she had sensed <em>their</em> needs.</p>
<p>And then the terrible thing had happened in the apartment three
floors up in Cairn House and they had run, hearts thumping in
fright, while the nightmare noises in the room had followed them
down the narrow spiral staircase.</p>
<p>Since then, Janet Robinson had heard her mother's voice every
night in her dreams. There were days when she would again feel the
glacial <em>cold</em> steal through her, emptying the warmth from
her bones, and she would <em>feel</em> the presence of the old
woman.</p>
<p>The awful, terrifying realisation was that she could sense her
mother's presence, and it was as if the old woman was
<em>inside</em> her, taking control of her own body, taking control
again of her mind.</p>
<p>When Janet woke into the dark of the room on the Saturday
afternoon, she waited until the fright and the shock of the dream
had passed on, and paused until the trembling had ceased. Yet all
the waiting in the world could not rid her of the growing sense
that she was losing herself in her mother, that the old woman was
taking her over from within.</p>
<p>She groaned softly and turned to the clock, still clenched in
her left hand. The luminous dial blurred as she looked into the
face and the dim light of the room faded to black.</p>
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