booksnew/source/darkvalley-source/021.txt

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<h2>21</h2>
<p><em>Interlude....</em></p>
<p>"We thought he'd gone away." Angus McNicol's voice, gruff with the years conveyed the regret that had hung about him since then.</p>
<p>"We all did, even the Commander and Dr Bryce who was a psychologist from the university. He was a new-fankled kind of expert, trying to get inside the man's head. My boss, Hector Kelso who was head of CID, he never put too much faith in Bryce and to tell you the truth, neither did I.</p>
<p>"You see, nothing had happened since the middle of June, a few weeks before the school broke up for the holidays and Bryce said that gave us two choices. He had either moved on, in which case we would have had more murders somewhere else, or he would have burned out and killed himself.</p>
<p>"Nobody really considered the truth. The killer just took a break between June and the end of July or he had killed somebody else who hadn't been reported missing. We never found a body, so probably he just took time off. Hell, everybody needs a holiday, don't they? Where he had been, nobody knows and I reckon John Fallon must have been the closest to guessing the truth when he said the man was probably ex-army, and used to living rough."</p>
<p>The former detective, now silver haired and only slightly stooped, looked up and his eyes were filled with remembering.</p>
<p>"Then Johnson McKay the postman got a bit concerned when the mail hadn't been collected from the box at the bottom of McColl's farm road and he took a stroll up there just to check. If it hadn't been for him being curious, then it could have taken another few weeks, maybe a month before anybody would have found out.</p>
<p>"I'll never forget his face and I'll never forget what we found there and down at the side of the trees alongside Blackwood Stream, not as long as I live. It was a slaughterhouse, a <em>shambles.</em></p>
<p>"I followed Hector Kelso around the whole day, and that man was damned good. Taught me everything I know. The only detective I ever saw who was any better was John Fallon's boy Jack, and it's a damn shame he's left the force after that trouble a year or so back, but that's another story. Anyway, Hector went round the place and gave me a running commentary, like a professor teaching a student. That was exactly how it was." Angus looked at the little machine on the table. The cassette spindle turned slowly. "I wrote everything down because we never had tape recorders then, and they'd have been a godsend to us, believe me. The boss was a hell of a lot better than the psychologist because he could follow a sequence right to its end and that's how he was able to tell me what had happened. He was a genius."</p>
<p>Angus closed his eyes, frowning with concentration.</p>
<p>"It was the blood on the curtain. Threw him for a bit, and for a while he thought the wife might have done it, despite the fact that she was a tiny wee thing. But then he figured it out quickly enough.</p>
<p>" 'Gus,' he says to me. 'Go stand out there on the other side of that patch on the ground.' I knew it was blood, we all did, and it had dried there to a crust on the cobbles. I stood there and the boss bent down, getting himself to about the same hight as Jean McColl. He leaned forward and took a hold of the curtain, pulling it to the side, then brought his other hand up and laid it on the sill.</p>
<p>"From then on, he just walked his way through it, as if it was some kind of a slow dance. He had that kind of mind. He could choreograph it all in his head.</p>
<p>"The chicken was still in the sink, crawling with flies and maggots and Hector realised she had been cleaning the bird when it happened. She must have had a ringside view from that window. She'd seen it happening, seen her man die right there in the middle of the yard."</p>
<p>The policeman had almost totakl recall of how the CID boss had worked it out, from Jean McColl seeing her husband cut down with the axe. He knew the killer had used the chicken head to mark the bothy doorposts and he could tell by the slant of the crossses how tall the killer was. "Hector talked it right through and he walked it right through, never stopping for a moment. He told us where McColl had fallen like a sack and how his wife had fought and how the collie had attacked the stranger. It was all written there in the clues, in the sequence, if you had the experience to look. Hector Kelso had the experience, and the way he told it, never showing any emotion until later, made it unravel like a nightmare.</p>
<p>"I can still remember Hector going through the motions, over six foot tall and built like a wrestler, trying to keep low, the same height as the wee woman. He runs into the farmhouse, through to the kitchen and then to the hall and he showed how the killer had broken the hasp the get at the shotguns</p>
<p>"I can tell you straight, we were all pretty damn concerned when we realised he had the guns. He'd shot a couple of holes in the ceiling, maybe just to make sure the gun worked and then gone looking for Mrs McColl. He'd about two weeks of a start on us, give or take a day or so.</p>
<p>"Dr Bryce, he said he was very close to the edge and it was likely he'd turned the gun around and blown his head off, but while we lived in hope, there was no evidence of that whatsoever. Kelso dismised it as so much hog wash.</p>
<p>"He asked the psychologist about the chicken's blood smeared on the door. Bryce said the scent of blood had probably enraged him, or maybe it had dredged up some childhood trauma, but he hadn't seen the other places where the man had done his killing. I reckon John Fallon got it right.</p>
<p>" 'Read the bible,' John suggested to me when we were standing there in the sun with all the flies buzzing around that crust of blood in the yard. He was never a smartarse was John, but despite his build, he was pretty clever. ' He wants the angel of death to pass over.'</p>
<p>"I reckon that was fair comment, from the pages of the bible he left lying around and all the other signs he left, most of them covered in shit. The press, they got the story about the Twitchy Eyes, and that's how the name stuck, but in the squad, over that summer when we were hunting for him, waiting for him to make his next move, we started calling him The Angel.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>July:</em></p>
<p>She wrote fast, almost tearing the page in her hurry, crabbing the letters together in a slant across the page. Her clear and rounded handwriting changed to a spidery scrawl, almost illegible. The wavering strokes showed how badly her hand was shaking.</p>
<p><em>He's killed Ian. God save me. Cut him down in the yard. Lesley Joyce. He hit him and took him into the byre. Got the guns. He's mad. Killed my man with axe. Cut down. Lesley Joyce.</em></p>
<p>The words began to repeat on the page, just as they were repeating inside her head, ricocheting around almost out of control.</p>
<p>Out beyond the workroom, beyond the bedroom and down the stairs, she could hear the heavy tread of the man's boots. The shotgun had blasted like a thunderclap and she had felt the whole house shake with the concussion. Her heart had almost stopped dead in her chest. She tried to write more, to put down in words what she had seen, but the fingers of her hand seized up in a tight clenched fist and the words wouldn't come. All she could see was the picture of Ian going down in the yard, making that awful deadly sound.</p>
<p>Nausea rolled and surged inside her and a trickle drooled from her open mouth as she tried to gulp it back, tried to clear that image from her head so she could think.</p>
<p>Downstairs she could hear the man muttering, at least that's what it sounded like in the distance, through the closed doors, but she knew he had to be talking aloud. It sounded like chanting.</p>
<p>Ian's bewildered face swam in front of hers refusing to vanish. His hat had rolled away on the stones and he had tried to crawl away, his eyes wide and blank, like a bewildered animal in pain. He had tried to crawl away, dripping blood onto the cobbles. He'd crawled away from where she was, even then attempting to draw him away, despite the pain and the shock and the sudden awful fear.</p>
<p>And even then he'd tried to warn her. She jerked, found she could still write:</p>
<p><em>Couldn't get the gun. Ian said to get the gun and shoot but it was locked. He has the guns and he's shooting.</em></p>
<p>Somehow her mind unhitched itself from the crazy ricochet of images and she managed to scribble more. She had slammed the book open, not pausing to flip the pages to the correct day and date. She'd found a blank page and started writing fast, knowing there was little time. No time at all.</p>
<p>The little window on the thick wall was slightly ajar. In the high summer, it let in the perfumed scent of sweet peas from the garden and the lazy humming of the busy bees, and in the mornings she got a slant of golden sunlight across the old dresser she used as a desk and a work station. She put the book down and laid the pen on the surface. It rattled from her shaking fingers. Outside she could hear the whine of the terriers and the lowing of the cows in the far side of the byre. They could smell the blood and the instinctive fear of the predator had spread among them. The terriers had sniffed at the pool of blood and they were confused and panicky, their tempers now stilled. Downstairs the man's hobnailed boots <em>crumped</em> on the slate floor.</p>
<p><em>Aaah</em>.</p>
<p>Ian's groan came drifting on the pollen scented air. A bee flew in the window, turning lazily by the latch.</p>
<p>Jean snatched up the pen again.</p>
<p><em>Still alive. He's alive now. Please save him God.</em></p>
<p>Footsteps came thudding up the narrow stair.</p>
<p><em>Coming now. Gun.</em></p>
<p>The bedroom door kicked open. She could hear the latch spring and the wood splinter and the slam of the heavy panel against the wall. It sounded loud as gunfire. Almost.</p>
<p>She dropped the book on the bed. The workroom, on the east gable of the house, was a low, square space with slanted walls that followed the pitch of the roof. Just above the dresser, a small trapdoor, barely two foot square, led to a crawlspace under the joists.</p>
<p>She could hear the man's breathing. He had kicked the bedroom door open and he was standing there. She could visualise his dark and blinking mad eyes.</p>
<p>Jean McColl clambered silently onto the dresser, pushed the hatch upwards, and despite her age and her freezing terror, she managed to haul herself up into the dusty space. She lowered the door closed again as silently as she could and began to crawl over the beams, careful not to slip and fall through the plaster of the ceiling until she got out of the narrow roof space above the work-room and into the loft proper. She crabbed her way though the narrow gap in the stone, onto the bare planks. Ahead of her something squeaked in the dark and she couldn't tell whether it was a rat or a mouse. Underneath her the workroom door blasted open and crashed against the wall, just as the bedroom door had done.</p>
<p>Footsteps, even louder now, thudded on the boards where the rug didn't cover. The tinkling of glass. A vase? The window? She couldn't wait. In her mind she kept seeing Ian trying to crawl away, mortally hurt, with the shadow of death reflected in his wide, stunned eyes. She heard again the dreadful animal groan.</p>
<p>Below her, the man called out, and whether there were any words or whether it was simply a bellowing cry of rage or anger or madness, she couldn't tell. She crawled further into the roof-space until there was enough room to let her gingerly get to her feet.</p>
<p>Thunder roared.</p>
<p>In the confines of the loft, that's what it seemed like. It was as if the world had exploded under her feet in one enormous blast.</p>
<p>Splinters of lath-wood and pellets of dry plaster erupted upwards from the floor just behind her. She tripped, rolled on the boards and the thunder crashed again, even closer. Instantly a hole maybe six inches wide appeared in the floor just beyond the limit of the planking. Dust and splinters blew out in a fountain and rapped against the slanted sarking-planks under the slates. Jean reeled back and hit her head on a jagged nail showing through the wood. It caught her behind the ear and an instant trickle of blood flowed. She spun round and saw the column of light, like a blazing pillar, reaching from the hole in the floor to the slant of the roof.</p>
<p>He could hear her moving. He could hear her moving and he was trying to follow the sound and blast her to death with the shotgun.</p>
<p>His footsteps clumped almost directly underneath her and sudden terror unfroze her legs. She whirled, using the light coming through the gaping blast-hole and ran for the corner, pushed through the second hatch to the space over the main part of the farmhouse and clambered over the trunks and boxes that had been stored there since before she was married. Beyond the clutter a dusty skylight showed a dull rectangle of light. Behind her the shotgun roared again, a vast and deafening sound in the close confines of the loft, but for the moment there was no danger of the blast coming through the old boxes of crockery and pre-war clothing. Dust billowed chokingly, making her fast breath rasp in her throat. At the far end of the attic there was a narrow wooden stairway that would lead down to the store-room where Ian stacked the potatoes and turnips and the clamps of carrots. She thought about reaching the stairs and following them down, but that would put her out into the closed yard where he could shoot her from almost any position.</p>
<p>She had to get away, get help. Against a man with a gun, against the crazy blinking man who had smashed Ian to the ground, there would be little chance, hardly a chance at all, but she had to try. If she could make it to the far wall without being seen she could use the hedge as cover and get down the track, escape to the Lochside Road only three miles down, heading west. If she could get to the road then she could make it and call the police and an ambulance.</p>
<p>Through the blast-hole, she heard the man's voice, rough and ragged and dreadfully angry. The shotgun's metallic clash came up to her over the growling rumble, a deadly and cold sound in itself. He was re-loading.</p>
<p>It snapped closed again and she knew there were two more shells in the chambers</p>
<p>Jean got past the collection of boxes and reached the skylight. The glass was festooned with cobwebs that had gathered so much dust they made the window almost opaque. She twisted the catch, got it free in a couple of seconds, and swung the heavy frame upwards. It squeaked alarmingly and then stopped when it was almost upright. Thankful that it hadn't crashed down onto the slates, she crawled out onto the slope of the slates. The shotgun boomed again, dreadfully loud, but not so deafening now that she was out. A puff of dust rolled out of the skylight like flour in the kitchen when she baked her bread. It smelled of lime and burning.</p>
<p>She managed to get a grip on the iron lip and swung herself up, moving gingerly lest she slip on the moss-covered shingles, reached the ridge of the roof and got to the downslope. From here she was hidden from the yard. The roof fell away to the pasture side, a long slide of black slate warmed by the sun. She negotiated it, trying to keep her feet flat on the surface to give her as much friction grip as possible, reached the far end where the farmhouse proper merged with the old barn. Here there was an old door at the corner, set high in the wall where Ian used to mount a block and tackle for hauling sacks of feed and bales of straw up to the high store. She got there and pushed at the door but it was locked.</p>
<p>Inside the house, the man was talking to himself. From where she perched it was just a low rumble. Ian had fallen silent and in a way that was better than the awful groaning. She wondered if he was dead and a part of her prayed, despite the devastation of that loss, that he was not suffering any more. Footsteps sounded below her and she turned away from the door, climbed back over the ridge to the end of the barn and let herself slide down to the level of the gutter. She managed to grab a hold of it and lower herself down to the window ledge and let herself in through the old shutters. Here, in the old swaybacked store-room, old tack lay in heaps, mouldering bridles from the days they'd kept Clydesdale horses for pulling the plough, giant horseshoes dusted with rust, a set of twisted and cracked traces hanging from nails. Rats scuttled and scurried in the shadows, alarmed at her passing, while down in the yard, the terriers had set up a strange, frightened howling. The tack balcony led to the space above the byre. She had to push aside a pile of old sacks, sending a family of mice squealing and running for cover and then she was through to the ledge overlooking the tiled butchering shed that was tacked on to the byre.</p>
<p>A shape moved close to the far door. Her heart lurched, thinking the man had discovered her and then it kicked hard in her chest and seemed to stop beating altogether.</p>
<p>It was Ian. He was hanging down from the hooks, head close to the ground. A spreading scarlet puddle caught the light beneath him. A sluggardly ripple showed that fresh blood was still dripping.</p>
<p>There was no sign of life. Jean leaned on the metal railing, breath locked in her throat. One of Ian's shoes was down there in the trough along with his blood and she could see where the butcher's hook had spiked through his heel. He'd been hung up like a carcass, spiked by the Achilles tendon, the way farmers hung pigs to let them bleed.</p>
<p>She started for the steps, knowing they would take her down to the yard when outside, right then, the shotgun thundered again. She flinched, expecting the blast to knock her off her feet, but immediately a screaming sound, like a stone saw cutting into granite, cut through the air. The dogs started up a frenzied yapping and the gun fired again and they went silent. A moment later, a shadow appeared at the butchery door and the man came backing through, dragging a heavy weight just as he'd pulled her bleeding husband over the step at the door. The cause of the sound was clear enough. He'd shot one of the yearling pigs. It was still alive, still screeching but there was a gaping hole in its side. He pulled it past Ian, put the gun down, hoisted the pink, shivering animal up to a hook and let it twist there. He picked up the gun and reached behind him for the knife he'd stuck down his belt. She watched as he leaned forward and slit the pig's throat. It kicked into a spasm, sending blood spurting all over the floor and all over her husband. She groaned aloud, an involuntary blurt of shock and fear.</p>
<p>The man whirled round. His eyes had stopped blinking. He looked up and those eyes were like pits, black and mad. She pulled away, went back the way she had come, heart bucking inside her. His feet clattered on the stone stairs. She got back through the window, tried to climb on the gutter, slipped back and her blouse snagged a rusted bracket which caught right through the material. Her feet scrabbled for purchase, slid off the stone wall and she slipped forward before being brought up sharp by the hook of metal. She was left hanging there.</p>
<p>The man reached out massive hand and gripped her arm. Without ceremony and with no hesitation at all, he pulled her back in over the window sill, ripping her blouse from collar to waist and leaving a white rag flapping on the bracket. He dragged her across the tack-room and down the steps to the byre. She tried to pull away but he clamped his hand on her neck, fingers and thumb almost toughting, and walked her past her dangling husband. Her feet splashed in Ian's blood. She tried to look to see if he was still breathing, but the hand held her tight, made her face straight in front. She felt as light as a feather as he propelled her across the yard, past the bodies of the three dogs and the dark patch where her husband had fallen, through the front door and into the farmhouse.</p>
<p>She awoke when it was dark and when she tried to walk she could not move. Dull and heavy pain throbbed inside her and stayed with her until the sun came up in the early morning. The light flickered in the sky, just visible through the open shutter and the bantam cocks were the first to greet the dawn. It seemed to take forever for the early light to creep round the corner of the byre and brighten the wall of the little slaughtering pen where Ian was dead.</p>
<p>She knew now that he was gone. There had been no sound, except for the grunts made by the insane man when he had finally left her alone and had gone out to the byre, swinging the big blade of the knife. He muttered to himself constantly and it seemed as if he was talking to someone standing beside him. She couldn't make out the words, but the tone of it sounded like conversation. The man would ask a question, cock his head as if awaiting a reply, and then he'd nod, or he'd shake his head in answer. He had gone out to the byre, swinging the knife and she'd heard him grunt with effort. There had been a dull crack, like the sound of a stone dropping on another, and then the man had gone walking away, muttering to himself.</p>
<p>Now she was huddled on the floor, something angled and hard pressed against her ribs but unable to do anything about that. A dark tide of despair welled up in her heart. Way off in the distance, the blast of the quarry rumbled like an approaching storm. It reminded her of the sound of the shotgun.</p>
<p>She closed her eyes, squeezing away a tear that was mingled with blood from a burst vessel at the edge of her eye.</p>
<p>And she prayed that he would come with the gun and stop the pain.</p>
<p><hr />_</p>
<p>In the night he had taken the head and put it on the top of the manure heap, waiting for the sun to come up. Every now and again he would hear the voice whisper to him, faint for the moment, and he would try to catch the words.</p>
<p>The smell of blood was still hot and thick and he remembered how the woman had stared at him, paralysed with fear, her whole body trembling uncontrollably. The owl hooted back in the barn and he waited under the moon, not cold and not hungry. The sun began to rise and when there was enough light in the sky he could see the flies crawling over the pale round face.</p>
<p><em>Dung fly...</em></p>
<p>Like Conboy. The eyes crawled with flies. Like the boy in the back room of the old house. Like the girl under the bridge. Like the boy who had come in through the door of the old wagon he'd taken over as his bivouac.</p>
<p>The flies buzzed and danced and as the day lightened and the morning mist trailed away, there were more of them, flying in from the trees, round the coppice at the far end of the pasture. Already the pool of blood in the yard was a crawling mass of them, coming to feed and coming to breed. He cocked his head to the side, listening to the small voice, one of the many that tugged for his attention whispering softly by the light of day. At night they'd maybe talk louder. After a while, he slowly got to his feet and went back into the house, leaving the farmer's crawling eyes staring at the sunrise.</p>
<p>The woman did not move. Her eyes followed him, devoid of all expression. He considered lifting her back up onto the table, but after another while, eyes blinking hard, he turned and went back outside. He picked up the gun and crossed the yard, climbed the fence and into the pasture.</p>
<p>Three of the cows were moaning, and two of the others were down on the grass twitching. Their udders were swollen like the bellies of dead children. He considered putting them out of their misery but then he blinked some more and went striding sunwards along by the wall and down towards the trees. A half a mile down he could still hear the crowing cock. The land sloped towards the stream, a densely wooded valley here, downsteam from the high moorland pasture, thick with oak and beech trees. He'd been here before, in the lush valley that reminded him of that other gorge, long before....</p>
<p>Up at the farm, the old man had glared at him, just as Conboy had done, through the crawl of flies that festered in his mouth and under his brows. The tongue protruded between grey lips, blackened and torn where the blow with the flat of the axe had sent the teeth snapping together, biting right through the flesh. There were thousands of them now, all laying their eggs, breeding fast on the glut. The head stared at him and he waited for it to speak but it stayed silent for the moment. He could wait. He sat there, in the sun, contemplating the thing on the dung heap, listening to the drone of flies, and then he went back to the house, to the kitchen. Here the smell was thick and heavy and the buzzing was loud in the confines. The woman was crumpled on the floor, her arms twisted awry, and her thighs stained black in streaks and dribbles. There were biscuits in the barrel and a joint of smoked ham up in the cold store. He cut a slice, not at all put off by the cloy, familiar scent of rotting flesh. He ate slowly, sitting on the table, then drank some tepid water from the tap.</p>
<p>He finished eating and laid the chewed ham bone down on the table then went back out to sit by the side of the dung heap to wait for a while. He could sit as still as stone.</p>
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