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<h2>15</h2>
<p>On the Saturday night, Jack Fallon was stamping the cold from
his feet on the flat roof of Loch View. Beside him Ralph Slater was
down on hands and knees, lightly scraping the powdery snow from the
gritted surface with what looked like a shaving brush. Around the
perimeter, his team had set up three floodlights on tripod stands,
blaring white light onto the frosted roof. Off to the right, the
elevator housing and the maintenance shafts stood black against the
orange light from the main road in the distance. Above it, the red
hazard light winked a warning to low-flying aircraft.</p>
<p>"There's more here," Ralph said, angling his own heavy duty
flashlight onto the scraped surface.</p>
<p>He squinted up to Jack.</p>
<p>"We didn't even look here," he said, with a trace of
embarrassment.</p>
<p>"No reason at the time," Jack let him off his hook. He wasn't
really in the mood for talking. Since the morning, when he'd fallen
into the stream, his throat had tightened. It felt raw and made it
difficult to swallow. "Not for an accident," he added.</p>
<p>"But what made you think of it?"</p>
<p>"Just a hunch," Jack said with a tight grin. The snow had
lessened, but the wind was whipping up little particles from the
balustrade wall and sending them into his left ear.</p>
<p>"Aye, pull the other one. Any idea why there's blood here?"
Ralph asked, while he delicately lifted samples of the dark and
frozen stain to drop it into a fresh plastic sample bag.</p>
<p>"Another hunch."</p>
<p>"And you'll be able to cross match it then?"</p>
<p>"Rhesus negative. Low on factor eight."</p>
<p>"Sure it is," Ralph said with heavy sarcasm.</p>
<p>"If it isn't, I'll buy you a bottle of Talisker. Believe me, I
wish it wasn't."</p>
<p>After the call to Robbie Cattanach, Jack had left the station,
ignoring the message that the chief superintendent wanted a word
with him, and had driven straight to Loch View. The gantry was
still swinging from the high edge, frosted with snow. The rope from
which Jock Toner had dangled, frozen and bloodless, was gone.</p>
<p>He'd waited at the top while Ralph's men unloaded the equipment.
There was only an hour of daylight left. From his vantage point he
could see the lights coming on in the town below. The Langmuir
Crags were completely white, apart from the big fan-shaped cliff
which overhung the scree below. Even in the deepest winter, snow
never stuck to the face. As the lift whined, bringing the scene of
crime team up to the top, Jack had made the mistake of wandering to
the edge again, to where the metal gallows that held the gantry
stuck out over the edge like lifeboat davits. He'd looked down
through the light snow and felt the pull of the ground tug
mesmerically at him. It happened every time he looked down from a
height, very time since the last climb on Ben Nevis in his teens
when a piton had pulled out and he'd watched the black shape
plummet silently, without a scream, without a cry, and then, at the
far end of the drop, with no thud in the distance. Yet he
remembered the stomach-freezing red stain that scraped across the
ice for thirty feet and he knew what had happened. Every time he
looked down from a height like this, he got a flash of that
cramping shock. The ground down there wanted to pull everything
towards it. It dragged and tugged and hauled, not just on the body,
but on the mind. Jack shoved himself back from the rail and turned
away, waiting for his heart to slow down to a canter and for his
breath to moderate. By the time Ralph's boys arrived, he was
breathing almost normally.</p>
<p>He'd told Ralph what he was looking for. The other man looked at
him askance, then shrugged and got on with the job. Jack couldn't
blame the team for not looking last time. It had been a cursory
job. A body bundled into a shiny bag and a long ride down to ground
level.</p>
<p>It was seven, and without the lights and the hazard beacon it
would have been pitch black by the time the roof of Loch View had
been scoured. Jack put a rush on the lab order and the men packed
up. He waited behind until he was once again alone on the roof.</p>
<p>"Must have been about this time," he said to himself. He
swallowed and grimaced as his throat clenched, and thought he
really might be catching Julia's cold.</p>
<p>He walked slowly towards the edge. Little flurries of crystals
were billowing from the edge of the wall, catching the orange of
the street lights, taking on a noxious glint.</p>
<p>Jack knew what the lab would tell him. The blood would be the
same type as that of the missing baby, and that would make it a
certainty that it came from little Kelly Campbell. But who, he
wondered, had brought her up here, and even more baffling, why?</p>
<p>Down to the left, heading due south, Barley Cobble by the
riverside was a fair walk away. Off to the right, the two matching
blocks of flats reared into the night, though Loch View was set on
higher ground. This was the uppermost point on Levenford's north
side. It gave a view right over the whole town under a darkly
leaden sky.</p>
<p>Someone had either come up, or climbed down to where Jock Toner
had been on the gantry, more than an hour after his shift had
ended. Nobody knew yet why the man had spent so long up there on
his own. All the doors in the building were now being knocked to
find out. Jack considered the possibility that he might have had a
woman here and had used the gantry as a surreptitious exit. It was
a possibility, nothing more. It was also a possibility that they
would find some irate and vengeful husband who had caught Jock
using the exit. Jack would have ben delighted if it turned out that
way, but within himself, he knew it would not. Because an irate
husband would not splash Jock Toner with the blood of a baby who
had been snatched from its mother's arms unless by sheer chance,
the said husband happened to be the abductor and killer. That would
be too much to hope for.</p>
<p>He stood stock still, with the warning light blinking
monotonously to his right, and tried again to visualise the scene.
Images vied for prominence in the forefront of his mind, but none
would settle. He needed more evidence, more of a hint. He wanted to
know why a killer would bring a baby up to this height and then
kill a man and then disappear.</p>
<p>Disappear he certainly had. The blood trail showed drips down
the wall on the side where Jock Toner had cracked open his skull.
They continued across the roof, away from the blinking light, and
across to the other side, and then they stopped.</p>
<p>There were no marks across the balustrade to show that the man
had jumped over, certainly nothing down there to show where he
would have landed, and if he'd dropped from this height, there
would have been plenty of evidence of that, spread for ten yards on
the concrete slab. It was possible - and Jack was beginning to
<em>detest</em> that word - that he had stuffed the baby into a bag
or a sheet or inside a jacket. Ralph had found scrape marks on the
concrete walls just below the lip on the gantry side and similar
indentations on the east wall, but it was impossible to say what
had caused the three straight and parallel lines. Possibly, he'd
ventured, it was some tool the workmen used. In any case, it was
unlikely, according to Ralph, that they had anything to do with
this. When Ralph had mentioned them, something had tried to form a
pattern in Jack's mind, but it had danced away elusively.</p>
<p>"Who are you?" he asked aloud. The wind whipped his voice
away.</p>
<p>The picture tried to form itself, but though he concentrated
hard, it refused to materialise properly. He did not have enough to
go on, though there was more now than he'd had before. There was no
doubt at all in his mind that little Kelly Campbell was dead, and
that meant that Timmy Doyle was dead too. Six deaths. One suicide
associated with the killing of Marta Herkik and a tenuous
connection to Timmy Doyle. A suicide that turned out to have been a
murder, at least almost certainly, and a connection with the
one-hit killing of Shona Campbell and her baby. Two of them
involving high places. All the deaths except for Simpson's suicide
had happened at night.</p>
<p>The pattern was emerging, but it wasn't much of a pattern.
Nobody had seen anything, not a thing.</p>
<p>Jack looked down at the lights spreading out below him.</p>
<p>"Where are you?" he asked aloud, gritting his teeth in the
stinging ice crystals. His throat was burning.</p>
<p>In that moment, Jack made up his mind. There was a thread
connecting all the killings. If he found one end of the thread, he
would follow it to the other end. He was now certain that he was
dealing with a single killer, and eventually that killer would make
the mistake he needed to catch him. Inside his pockets his hands
clenched into fists as he walked towards the stairwell. He closed
the door behind him and the winking hazard light was cut off.</p>
<p>Once in the car he called down to the station and ordered a
house to house inquiry in Loch View and the two adjacent blocks. It
would take a lot of manpower, but that was the way things had to
go.</p>
<p>Ten minutes later, he was back in his office. He slung his coat
on the hook and hunkered against the radiator to take the chill out
of his back, thinking about the two phone calls he had to make. His
feet were cold and his throat ached and he wondered if he had any
paracetamol in his drawer. He was also wondering whether he'd been
wise to take Davy on the sledge down by the stream at Cargill Farm.
He was about to haul himself to his feet when there was a brief rap
on the door, it swung open instantly and Ronald Cowie stepped in.
At first he didn't see Jack hunched against the radiator, then the
other man's presence registered.</p>
<p>"What the hell are you doing down there?" he demanded.</p>
<p>"Trying to get some heat into my bones."</p>
<p>"I've been looking for you all day," Cowie snorted.</p>
<p>"Have you? I didn't get the message. I've been out."</p>
<p>"Yes. I heard. Complete waste of time."</p>
<p>"You think so?"</p>
<p>"We're in the middle of a murder investigation, man. We don't
have time or the manpower to have a whole shift out working on
accidents or suicides. I suggest you get them back onto the
priority work."</p>
<p>"That's what they're doing," Jack replied, then added:
"Sir."</p>
<p>"That's not the way I see it," the Superintendent said. "Anyway,
as of this afternoon, I'm in charge. Mr McNicol's laid up with
'flu. Some sort of virus anyway. So as of today, we do it my
way."</p>
<p>Jack made no response. Gradually he eased himself away from the
radiator and got to his feet. He stared down at Cowie who glared
back at him.</p>
<p>"Congratulations," Jack said.</p>
<p>"You won't be saying that shortly. I want all the men pulled out
of Loch View. That's obviously the wrong area. I want a complete
ground search of every building on the south of River Street. Two
killings and an abduction in one area. I think that narrows the
field, don't you think?"</p>
<p>"It would, if the field had not expanded to suit," Jack said
calmly. "We've already done a search, and a very thorough search,
of the whole area, leaving aside domestic property. We'd never get
warrants for all of them, not without good cause."</p>
<p>"But every warehouse and every hole in the wall shack down that
side of the town should be gone over with a tooth comb."</p>
<p>"And they have," Jack retorted. "You'll have read the reports.
There's a file two inches thick."</p>
<p>Cowie blinked. His thin grey moustache twitched. "Then do it
again. It has to be painstaking."</p>
<p>"Oh, it will be. But I'd advise against it. If we pull the men
out of Loch View, then we could miss something vital."</p>
<p>"On an accident?"</p>
<p>"It was no accident. We found the baby's blood."</p>
<p>"You <em>what</em>?" Cowie's face registered consternation. "Why
didn't you tell me?"</p>
<p>"Because I'm just back in. We found traces of blood up on the
roof. The same type as was found on Toner. I believe it will match
Kelly Campbell's blood."</p>
<p>"Has it been analysed yet?"</p>
<p>"No. But there's a rush on it. The lab have promised it by
morning."</p>
<p>Cowie glared at Jack again. His moustache quivered again and his
eyes seemed to bulge in his face. Jack could tell he was not happy.
He seemed about to speak when he abruptly spun on his heel and
strode to the door, snatched it open and walked out, turning back
only when he was right outside the room.</p>
<p>"This time I don't want to wait. I want to hear everything
immediately. You hear me? <em>Everything</em>."</p>
<p>Jack nodded. The door thudded shut and he smiled to himself,
though he did not really feel like smiling. Under Angus McNicol, he
would be allowed to work on this his own way. With Cowie in charge,
he didn't know what spokes would be put in the wheel.</p>
<p>Mickey Haggerty, his friend from schooldays, was out when Jack
called. His sister said he'd been up north for a week, staying with
someone in Oban. From the tone of her voice, it sounded as though
she thought it might be a woman, and that wouldn't have surprised
Jack in the slightest. It was only on the way down from Loch View
that he'd remembered the other part of the conversation with Mickey
in Mac's Bar. He had cursed himself under his breath. Mickey had
seen William Simpson the night Marta Herkik was murdered. He'd seen
someone else near or at Cairn House, some Irish fellow whose name
he'd forgotten. He'd promised to get back to Jack who had made a
mental note to give him a call, but then other things had happened
and he'd simply forgotten. Netta Heggarty said her brother would be
back in a day or so. She didn't know where he was staying. Jack
thanked her and then put a call into the Oban Station. He knew a
sergeant there who he'd worked with in the city. By luck, Ian
Nicholson was on duty. He took Mickey's description, a shock of
fair hair and a lived-in face not unlike a young Kirk Douglas, and
he promised to have a couple of men check the bars. That was the
best he could do, and that was good enough for Jack. If Mickey was
in Oban - and he could have spun his sister any old yarn - then
he'd be in a bar and easy to find.</p>
<p>"Do I lock him up or what?" Ian Nicholson had asked.</p>
<p>"No. He's a friend of mine. Drunk or sober, get him to phone me
back."</p>
<p>He had better luck with the third call. Andrew Toye answered at
the third ring.</p>
<hr />
<p>Night fell on Levenford at four o'clock. It was bitterly cold.
The lights along the quayside were fuzzed to orange haloes by the
creeping mist from the river. The water, feeding into the Firth was
tidal for a mile upstream the town and the river was low. There was
no moon. The <em>haar</em> condensed in the cold air and the mist
floated over the quayside walls and crept along the alleys, fogging
the hard edges of the old buildings. For half an hour, the old
bridge thronged with children hurrying home from Kirkhill School on
the west side. They hurried because of the cold and the dark and
because of the sense of unease that had crept into Levenford since
the killing of Shona Campbell and the taking of her baby. Until
then, the townsfolk had not really been aware that something was
happening. When little Timmy Doyle was snatched from his pram high
up in Latta Court, there was shock. But it was one incident. Marta
Herkik's killing was another shock, but the papers were full of
such things. Old women got mugged, and old women got raped and
killed. It happened. It was terrible, but it happened.</p>
<p>Now, a second baby had been stolen and it's mother killed, and
while the killer <em>seemed</em> to be after babies, the community
policemen had toured the schools warning children of all ages to be
careful. Mothers reinforced the warning. Most children hurried
home. There were few stragglers and the bridge cleared of its
passing throng. An hour later, the bridge was busy again, this time
with cars and a leavening of pedestrians hurrying home from work as
the shops and offices closed. Up river, the engine works was still
clanging and clanking and across the water, the high windows of the
foundry glowed read and from time to time the spitting harsh cough
of hot metal would tear at the still air, though by the time it
crossed the river, the cat-screech was muffled by the mist. The
foundry's massive brick chimneys towered over the old building,
their bases flickering pink in the flashes from the furnaces. In
the old days, both would have belched smoke and sparks long into
the night, but the new electric furnace had made one chimney
obsolete. They towered into the darkness, a Victorian monument to
the bad old days of hard labour and low pay and full
employment.</p>
<p>Between Swan Street and Denny Road, in the old heart of
Levenford, maybe two hundred yards from the river, there is a
warren of old tenement buildings faced with dirty brown sandstone.
They form a rectangle, dingy houses with narrow close mouths.
Inside the rectangle, behind the facades, the back courts are a
maze of old dustbin shelters and cluttered outhouses. Iron
railings, peel-rusted and spiked, separated each individual
tenement's territory. In the summer, the boys would climb the brick
walls and race across the top of the shelters and leap from one
flat roof to the other, bounding over the blank spaces, hurdling
the lethal spikes. Ever since the blocks were built before the turn
of the century, mothers had warned their children, on pain of dire
punishment, not to climb the roofs and never to jump over the
railings, and every generation of boys since then had risked life
and limb and impalement, completely ignoring their mother's
threats.</p>
<p>The cold night air brought the river mist swirling through the
closes. It oozed into the back courts and crept between the
wrought-iron uprights.</p>
<p>Neil Kennedy was kicking a ball against one of the crumbly
walls. He was eight years old, with a faceful of freckles and curly
Celtic-red hair hidden under a knitted wooden hat. Upstairs, two
floors up, his mother was cooking dinner. Neil felt his belly
rumble and guessed the family meal might be ready in an hour. He
didn't know if he could wait that long. The cold air carried the
smell of the river, a wet and wintry smell of decaying reeds and
bullrushes floating down from the upstream marshes. The distillery
on the other side of town had done a malting that day, as everyone
could tell by the cloying damp-towel odour that permeated
everything. This was mixed with the smells of sausages sizzling,
chips frying, and, as ever, the unappetising whiff of cabbage
boiled beyond edibility.</p>
<p>Up above, the light from uncurtained windows sent solid shafts
of luminescence into the fog, occasionally flickering colour from
the television sets behind the panes. Neil had wanted to watch
cartoons, but at this time on a Monday night, his mother's
favourite soap series was showing. She'd have the kitchen door open
and the sound turned up and she'd occasionally lean back from the
cooker to watch the latest, if thoroughly predictable act.</p>
<p>Neil kicked his ball against the wall, watching it bounce and
then trapping it with casual deftness under his foot to repeat the
action again and again. Over in the corner, a door slammed open and
a corridor of light funnelled into the dim. Children's voices
bounced from shelter to wall. Neil kept kicking the ball,
communicating his presence by the dull thuds it made on the
rebound.</p>
<p>"Hey Neilly," a high voice called out. "That you?"</p>
<p>"Aye."</p>
<p>Three shapes flitted closer, resolving only yards away into
three small boys, heavily muffled against the cold, squeezing
themselves through a gap in the railings.</p>
<p>"Cold innit?"</p>
<p>"Freezing," Neil agreed.</p>
<p>"Had your tea yet?"</p>
<p>"No. I got sent out. The old man's not in yet."</p>
<p>"Us too." Gerry Murphy said. His twin, Patrick nodded agreement.
With them Phil Toner, six years old, whose uncle Jock had been
found hanging from the rope at Loch View, shivered. He lived across
the landing from the Murphy boys.</p>
<p>"Want a kick-about?" Neil asked.</p>
<p>"Naw. Too dark."</p>
<p>"And the ground's too icy. You could break your neck," Phil
said. Everybody had heard what happened to his uncle, but from the
perspective of small boys, it was a distant happening, not a thing
to dwell on, nothing to spoil the immediate.</p>
<p>"Alright. What'll we do?"</p>
<p>"We could jump the dykes," Phil suggested and everybody laughed.
At the age of six, he couldn't have leapt the gaps on a summer
afternoon.</p>
<p>"Aye, very good Phil. What's your next joke?"</p>
<p>"No really," he protested and Pat gave him a shove.</p>
<p>"You'd never get to the top of the wall, never mind jump."</p>
<p>"Kick the can?" Neil suggested.</p>
<p>"No," Gerry said. "The old man's on night-shift. If we wake him
up he'll lose the rag."</p>
<p>It took five minutes of negotiations on the short list of
options of things to do on a winter's night, without much result.
Somebody suggested going round to the old railyard two streets away
where the spur line to the engine works had long since been
disused. There was a ramp there, a concrete slope which led from
the shunting point to street level. Earlier in the week it had been
covered with frost. By now, Gerry suggested, it should be a sheet
of ice.</p>
<p>"I'd better not," Neil said. "I'll get called up in half an
hour."</p>
<p>"Oh come on," Pat said, giving him a nudge. You've got stacks of
time."</p>
<p>Neil let himself be persuaded with no further difficulty. The
four of them went through the common close and into the street.
Each end of Swan Street was fuzzed out by the mist. It was as if
the world they lived in had shrunk to fifteen yards on either side.
They moved along Swan, past Arden Lane before crossing Artisan Road
to the old railyard entrance. The tall double gate was closed and
padlocked. To the side, the gaunt facade of the crumbling warehouse
and offices of the yard loomed upwards. Ferns, crumpled and brittle
since the first frosts, clung to the damp patches behind cracked
roan pipes and icicles formed fringes on the window ledges below
the gaping blind eyes of the smashed frames. Here closer to the
river, the fog was thicker. It caught in the throat and curled and
coiled around the weave of the rusty chain-link fence where it had
been pulled back in a tangled dog-ear by previous forays of small
boys. They scrambled through the gap and walked four abreast along
the disused tracks, avoiding the slippery sleepers, to the far side
of the warehouse block. Set on the side of the crumbly brick
building was a lone electric bulb protected by a wire mesh. It
glowed feebly.</p>
<p>The sloping ramp was completely iced over. In the weak light it
glinted like black glass. Gerry Murphy tested it with a foot and
almost fell on his backside, saving himself only with a flurry of
windmilling arms.</p>
<p>"Like the cresta run," he pronounced. They all stood at the top
of the slope looking down at the straight swoop.</p>
<p>"Who's first?" Gerry asked.</p>
<p>"I want to try it," Phil Toner piped up.</p>
<p>Pat and Neil laughed.</p>
<p>"Go ahead then," Gerry challenged. Little Phil shoved his way to
the edge where the flat surface leading to the old weighbridge
turned downwards towards the high green gate at the entrance. He
stood at the top of the slope, arms spread like a wrestler, one
foot in front of the other. He swivelled his hips and launched
himself, leaning backwards to prevent a headlong tumble. Behind
him, the three boys watched as his arms waved out on either side.
His scarf, turned inside out to form a hat, trailed behind him.
Little Phil let out a wavering whoop and went scudding down the
incline.</p>
<p>"Look at him <em>go!</em>" Neil yelled.</p>
<p>The small boy whizzed into the mist below. One moment a dark,
teetering shape, then quickly greying to a blur before it was
swallowed completely by the <em>haar</em>. They heard his shrill
cry diminish with the distance until it stopped abruptly. A muffled
thud came floating out of the mist followed immediately by a shrill
cry.</p>
<p>"Hey Phil?" Neil shouted. There was no reply.</p>
<p>"Phil. Are you alright?" Gerry bawled. His voice, ghostly and
faint replied in a double echo as it bounced from the walls.</p>
<p>There was a silence for several moments, then from down below,
Phil's voice floated up.</p>
<p>"I hurt my knee." They heard him make the kind of noise boys
make when they are hurt but not injured and want to ward off tears.
A minute later, the small boy came crunching towards them on the
edge of the slope where piles of hard-core quarry stones gave
enough grip to walk without falling.</p>
<p>"Banged it on the door. Didn't even stop 'til the bottom."</p>
<p>"What's it like."</p>
<p>"Really scary. Dead fast and you can't see where you're
going."</p>
<p>"I want to try," Pat said. He braced himself and went off down
the slope. Gerry followed, identical in size and clothing. Neil
watched them disappear, hooting all the way, before he steeled
himself, took a breath and launched himself down the slant and into
the fog. Ahead of him the twins were yelling at the tops of their
voices. There were two thumps, almost instantaneous howls of
exhilarated alarm them peals of laughter before Neil cannoned into
the brothers and knocked both of them back against the door. Pat
squealed while Gerry's breath was knocked out of him and he leaned
against the high gate gasping for air. Just then, little Phil came
careening out of the dark, sliding on his backside and crashed into
them, knocking their feet from under. They all collapsed in a
giggling heap.</p>
<p>After the first slide into the unknown, the next was less scary
and the third even easier. Pat found an old rusted coal-shovel
without a handle and went skittering off, seated on the blade,
using the pitted shaft as a grip. They could hear the metal rasp
against the ice as he whizzed out of sight, then an almighty
clatter as the shovel caroomed against the door. They all tried it,
picking up more speed as the ice was smoothed out by their passage.
Gerry found some cardboard boxes which they stacked against the
door as a shock absorber to prevent real injury and they spent the
next half-hour glissading down and trudging back up the hill,
laughing all the while.</p>
<p>It was nearly seven when Neil realised he'd done it again. Since
they'd found the ice-slide, his hunger had disappeared, but when he
was under the single lit bulb by the side of the warehouse, he
glanced at the plastic watch he'd got for his birthday and
immediately the pangs returned, along with the sinking feeling he
always got when he knew he was in trouble.</p>
<p>Pat and Gerry were preparing to skid down the hill together,
with one twin on the shovel and the other sitting on his lap when
Neil told them he had to go back.</p>
<p>"I'll catch it if I don't get a move on," he explained when they
protested. He knew he'd catch it anyway. His mother had a habit of
fetching him a skite on the ear and asking questions later. What
was worse, she'd know he hadn't stayed in the back court kicking
his ball as she'd told him to do, and that would earn him another
skelp. His mother was small and thin, but when it came to open
handed slaps, she could strike like a snake and, according to Neil,
she didn't know her own strength. Reluctantly he watched the twins
skitter off downslope, whirling out of control as they picked up
speed. He clapped little Phil on the shoulder and went back along
the disused track towards the gap in the fence. Away from the light
and away from his friends, it was darker and felt colder. He barked
his shin on an old piece of railway track that angled out of the
dead stalks of willowherb which clumped on either side of the old
line, rimed with frost. Neil's feet crunched on the hardpack. His
stomach rumbled again and suddenly he was really hungry. Ahead, one
of the street lights gradually became visible as he approached the
break in the fence. He crawled through, making sure his winter
jacket didn't get snagged on the wires and came out on the other
side at the junction of Artisan Road and Station Street. He walked
back the way they'd come, heading past the old warehouse. As he got
to the front of the gate, he could hear the delighted yells of his
friends on the other side as they crashed into the piles of boxes
and for a moment he wished he could have stayed and had more fun
with them. He passed the gate and along the decaying warehouse
front when he came to the door in the wall. As he walked past, he
heard a low voice and he turned, startled. The door was open.</p>
<p>Neil stood stock still. The door was open. That itself was
enough to spark off an eight-year-old boy's dilemma. He knew he
should be getting home, but the door had never been open before and
any warehouse is a magnet to small boys.</p>
<p>The voice came again.</p>
<p>"You. Boy."</p>
<p>A woman's voice. Quite soft.</p>
<p>"Hullo?" Neil asked into the darkness.</p>
<p>"Can you help me?"</p>
<p>"Who is it?" he called out.</p>
<p>"Can you help me, please?" the woman's voice came from the
darkness inside the building.</p>
<p>"What's wrong?" he heard himself ask.</p>
<p>"I need help. If you help me I'll give you something."</p>
<p>Neil took a hesitant step forward and his foot crossed the
doorstep. As soon as he took that step, a powerful feeling of
foreboding quivered through him. It came so unexpectedly that the
boy felt himself shudder and the hairs on the back of his neck
tingled as they crawled against the wool of his hat.</p>
<p>He took the step back. Out from under the lintel, the feeling
shrank away.</p>
<p>"Don't be afraid," the unseen woman called out to him.</p>
<p>"I can't see you."</p>
<p>"I need help. I've fallen and hurt myself."</p>
<p>Neil leaned a hand against the brickwork at the side of the
door. From inside he could smell mouldy wood and dampness and
something else he couldn't identify. It reminded him of the pit out
on Slaughterhouse Road where the flies would buzz around the
discarded jawbones in summertime, but it was a wetter, colder
smell.</p>
<p>"I'll get somebody," he called out timorously.</p>
<p>"No, please. Just come and help me up. I'll give you money for
sweets. I've got lots of money."</p>
<p>Neil hesitated, still on the horns of his dilemma, but then,
with simple childlike honesty, he realised that he could save
himself a clip on the ear, get some money for sweets <em>and</em>
earn some praise for helping somebody. His mother had always warned
him about talking to strangers, especially strangers on dark wintry
nights, but he had always taken that to mean <em>men.</em> Women
did not carry the same threat, the same potential for hurt and
badness, even if mothers could deal out swift and stinging justice.
Women were <em>safe.</em> It took three seconds for this
calculation to reach its conclusion in his eight-year-old mind. He
took a step forward, pausing between the door-jambs.</p>
<p>The feeling of <em>threat</em> quivered through him when he took
the next step into the gloom of the warehouse. Somewhere off to the
right something dripped steadily, rapping damply on the wooden
floor. Glass crunched under his feet as he went along by the wall,
close to the open-treaded metal stairway that zig-zagged above him.
It was dark, but some light from the street managed to invade
through the high windows. He could just make out a series of
doorways leading off the one wall, while to the right, where the
dripping sound came from, there was a wide space, punctuated by
narrow pillars that stretched up to the dark ceiling.</p>
<p>"Where are you?" Neil called out.</p>
<p>"Here," the voice, now weak and muffled, came from overhead.
Neil stopped at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up to the turn
at the top of the first flight. The treads were littered with
scraps of paper and bottled and squashed and rusting beer cans.</p>
<p>"Up the stairs, and please hurry," the woman called.</p>
<p>Neil went upwards, holding onto the corroded bannister with
every step until he reached the top. Cold air and tendrils of
frosted mist crept in the smashed window. He could see nothing. He
turned at the landing. Above him, some distance away, he could hear
the woman sob softly. It did not occur to him to wonder what a
woman was doing in a derelict warehouse at night. He moved on and
up, and with every step of the way, he felt the tight fingers of
alarm squeeze at him.</p>
<p>"Hurry, please hurry," the broken voice called down urgently.
Neil forced himself to move more quickly. He reached the second
landing, where the light was even dimmer and continued to the
next.</p>
<p>Then suddenly, in the gloom ahead of him, he heard a rasping
cough.</p>
<p>"Hello?" he asked into the dark.</p>
<p>There was no reply. Only a watery, choking sound. He inched
forward, still holding on to the bannister, heart now racing. A
dark shape was huddled against the railings at the turn of the
stairs. A faint light managed to push through the layers of grime
on the window which was still intact by dint of being just out of
range of small boys stones. Neil approached cautiously, his breath
now speeded up and coming out in quick plumes. He reached the
huddled form and stood there, tense with apprehension, wondering
what to do.</p>
<p>The thing moved, twisting towards him and suddenly Neil's heart
was in his throat, punching away as if it was trying to escape. A
pale face lolled forward and the boy got a look at the woman. Even
in the faint light, he could see her eyes rolling. Her tongue
protruded, wet and slack from between flaccid lips and a rope of
saliva gleamed wetly.</p>
<p>She was sprawled across the steps, one leg angled out, her skirt
rucked up. A pale moon showed where her tights had ripped at the
thigh. There was a sour flat smell that again reminded the boy of
the pit on Slaughterhouse Road, but here it was thicker, cloying
and cold.</p>
<p>"What's the matter?" Neil asked tremulously, legs bent, prepared
to run.</p>
<p>"Mother," the woman moaned. Through the thick saliva, it sounded
like <em>mudda.</em></p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>"Oh..." another long moan, almost like a sigh, then the woman's
head flopped. The smell grew stronger.</p>
<p>"Go. Now," she said, though the words were hardly recognisable.
Her face twisted towards the boy and her eyes seemed to come into
focus. Her mouth opened again and just then, on the landing above,
there was a small grating noise. The woman coughed, gagging, and
her flaccid body convulsed. Just overhead something whimpered. At
first Neil though it was a cat, maybe a kitten, but the sound came
again.</p>
<p>It was a baby.</p>
<p>The whimpering cry came clear from just above in the darkness.
Neil knew all about babies. One of the reasons he'd been out
kicking the ball against the wall was because his little sister,
only three months old, and almost as much of a surprise to his
parents as she had been to Neil, always needed fed when his mother
was making the dinner. She made the same wheedling cry when she was
hungry.</p>
<p>"Up there," the woman's strangled words came from beside him.
She reached out a pallid hand towards him. Neil thought she was
directing him upwards. The sense of apprehension diminished when
the baby mewled again. He passed the sprawled woman, not noticing
her shaking her head like a maudlin drunk. He came to the fourth
turn, tripping over cans and boxes, heading upwards to where the
darkness was almost complete.</p>
<p>There was a snuffling cry dead ahead. He scrambled up the final
six steps, almost losing his balance, eyes wide to try to see.
Something whispered in his ear and he stopped dead.</p>
<p>"<em>Get you,</em> " it said. "<em>Catch you.</em> "</p>
<p>The words scraped and tickled, just loud enough to be heard.
Sudden fear ballooned in the boy. The shadows seemed to close in on
him, while the whispering voice, in his ears, in his head,
chittered fast. Panicked, Neil turned, preparing to run back down
the stairway when the dark above came reaching down at him.</p>
<p>In that minute fraction of a second, that's exactly what it
looked like to Neil Kennedy. He did not even have a chance to think
about it. The dark simply rippled towards him, blacker than the
gloom at the head of the stairs. He saw it rush towards him and
then it slammed him against the wall, knocking his breath out and
smashing his nose with the ferocity of the strike.</p>
<p>Neil grunted in surprise and pain and fright. As he bounced,
whirling from the wall, something whipped out towards him so fast
it was just a blur. He felt a sharp, jagged pain under his collar-
bone and a corresponding stab at the top of his shoulderblade and
then he was jerked off his feet with such violence that his head
snapped back with a flare of pain which felt as through the muscles
in his neck had been pulled apart.</p>
<p>The boy screeched as terror exploded inside him.</p>
<p>Beside him, the wall blurred as he was hauled upwards at
shocking speed, pinioned by an enormous grip on his shoulder. He
screamed again, a high and wavering sound that spanked back and
forth from the walls of the stairwell as whatever had grabbed him
and had him clenched in a ferocious grip raced upwards. The boy's
heel hit off the bannister and his shoe flew into space, tumbling
down the dark well, but he didn't even notice. The dark shape held
him in a grip of such crushing intensity that he could feel the
bones crack. Hot blood gushed across his cheek. He heard his own
scream soar higher and higher and beyond it he could hear the
rumbling grunt of the black thing that had him in its grip. He was
jerked up in a stuttering series of lurches towards the roof where
old beams criss-crossed one another. The thing paused momentarily.
It snuffled and growled like a hungry animal, like a <em>huge</em>
and ravenous beast, mindless and ferocious. By the time they had
reached the rafters, Neil Kennedy was almost unconscious from pain
and loss of blood and sheer terror. He twisted spasmodically and
felt the white fire rip through his neck. The black thing squeezed
harder. There was a slight pop as something burst inside the
monstrous grip. The boy felt himself flung round, legs whipping
like a floppy doll, and his knee hit the edge of a beam. A loud
crack clapped the air and a jolt of agony flamed in the boy's leg.
The whipping motion snapped his teeth together, slicing through the
edge of his tongue. The black thing drew him upwards in one jerking
movement and held him up. The boy's vision was fading fast. He saw
two orange-yellow eyes open. A discoloured membrane flicked across
them. The thing growled like a monstrous cat and brought its victim
right up to its eyes. A mouth opened.</p>
<p>Neil Kennedy's heart stopped beating and he died, with those
sulphur eyes drilling into his soul. The drips and splashes of his
blood on the walls of the staircase began to congeal and solidify
in the dark shadowed place just under the roof of the old
warehouse.</p>
<p>Only fifty yards away, behind the big double gate of the
shunting yard, the three small boys played on, sliding down the
ramp and crashing into the now shapeless pile of cardboard boxes.
Their laughter and squeals of hilarity pierced the fog. Up in the
roof-space, where dust-coated cobwebs festooned the narrow corners,
a black shape with a smaller lighter shape dangling in its grasp
turned its head towards the sound, snuffling at the air. It moved
in that direction in a liquid, insectile creep, then stopped and
turned back. The sound had sparked off a barren hunger that could
not be sated. Its eyes widened, glowing febrile and feral in the
gloom. Wet drool dripped from the corner of a shadowed mouth. It
began to move, away from the sounds, to the far end of the roof
where a hoisting window gaped on the gable wall. Across the river,
the foundry shrieked its night noises and a warm glow flickered on
the base of the massive cylinder of chimney that jutted to the sky.
The black thing growled again, so low the dusty windows rattled in
their frames and turned away from the light. After a moment, it
moved on and out into the thickening fog.</p>
<p>The Murphy twins and their small friend lived to play another
day. After almost an hour of excitement they trundled along the
disused track, laughing amongst themselves, each aware that Neilly
Kennedy had missed some great fun. They agreed to meet the next day
after school with anything they could use to slide down the
ramp.</p>
<p>When Gerry and Pat Murphy got home, Neil Kennedy senior, a big
angular man with the same Irish red hair as his son, was sitting on
the arm of the chair in the livingroom.</p>
<p>"Where have you boys been?" Meg Murphy demanded to know. The
twins looked at each other, one trying to read the other's
expression, wondering what to say.</p>
<p>"Och, never mind," their mother went on. "Have you seen
Neilly?"</p>
<p>The big man looked from one boy to the other.</p>
<p>"Yes Mr Kennedy," Pat said. "He was playing with us across at
the slide."</p>
<p>"But he came home for his tea an hour ago," Gerry
interjected.</p>
<p>"Well, he's not home yet," Neil Kennedy said slowly. Already the
look of a parent whose child is late on a winter's night was
beginning to shade his face.</p>
<p>Half an hour after that, Gerry and Neil were standing side by
side, answering all the questions the policeman asked them. They
admitted being across in the old railyard. They were certain that
Neil had gone home. Constable Bill McGurk took notes and then went
outside to speak into his radio and within fifteen minutes, two
police cars were parked at the junction of Artisan Road and Station
Street. Neil Kennedy, too worried to have muffled himself up
against the freezing fog went with the policemen when the search
started. They hunted all over the railyard, down the alleys that
led to the river before it took its bend at the bridge, and in
every back court between Station Street and the quayside. They did
not find little Neilly Kennedy that night.</p>
<p>Jack Fallon was woken out of a terrible dream at six in the
morning and told the news.</p>
<p>For an instant, while his heart slowed down to a canter, he was
glad to get the reprieve from the nightmare of flying glass and
dripping blood, until he heard that another child was missing, and
this time not a baby.</p>
<p>He was in his office on a freezing, dark and misty morning half
an hour after the call.</p>
<p>Later that day, they found the body of a woman, frozen in rigor
mortis and with the cold, caught on the anchor chain of one of the
little tattered boats moored in the river. She was wearing one
shoe, a brown lacing brogue, when they finally hauled her out of
the icy water just below the weir downstream from the old bridge.
When they got her to the quayside, her body, bent by the flow of
water, could not be laid flat. When the diver placed her on her
back, she rocked like an ungainly grey toy. They laid her on her
side on the stretcher and she was taken to Lochend Hospital where
Robbie Cattanach carried out yet another post mortem. Apart from
the lack of identification, and the circumstance of her being found
floating in the river, there were no suspicious circumstances. The
presence of dirty river water in her lungs showed beyond doubt that
she had died from drowning.</p>
<p>The only odd thing, Robbie noted, was that both lungs were
filled with water, which, in an ordinary drowning, is very rare, as
the lungs normally react violently to cold water.</p>
<p>It looked as if she had walked into the river, taken a deep
breath and held it in. The fatal accident inquiry might decide on
it later, but Robbie Cattanach decided there and then that this was
a case of suicide. As to the motive, he couldn't say.</p>
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