The Exiled (5 page)

* * *

The night wore on, Grainger’s spirits dropping with every passing hour. As expected, the D.I. In Fife couldn’t throw any light on the case of the missing birds—he promised to do everything he could and put more manpower onto it, but Grainger wasn’t holding his breath. They were up against an opponent who was confident enough to snatch two young girls in a busy city in broad daylight without leaving a single clue behind. Such a person wouldn’t have had many problems making off with six swans under the cover of darkness from a deserted bird sanctuary.

There were no sightings of either of the missing girls. The McGuire case had hit the news channels in the early hours—no name had been issued to the press yet, but they know it was another wee lassie, and that was enough for speculation to go into overdrive.

As soon as the morning papers started to come in he went straight to Alan’s report to see if there was anything they hadn’t gleaned for themselves in the bar.

There wasn’t—and no mention of swans either, but there was a huge picture of young Ellie from Albert Road. They’d found one of her crying and the headline, in huge black point, made Grainger’s blood run cold.

“I’m lost, Mammy.”

6

The sun came up as Alan crossed the Forth Road Bridge into Fife. It was a fine morning looking to settle into a sunny day and by the time he reached Loch Leven a wispy mist hung in hazy sunshine over the large expanse of water.

The RSPB reserve was halfway along the south shore—Alan had driven past it many times without really paying it too much attention, but as he pulled into the car park he saw it was a larger scale operation than he’d imagined. A watchman stood at the entrance waiting for him.

Coming out to this spot had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. He’d watched the feeds all night, but no one had anything new on the story, and the small item about the swans preyed on his mind so much he had to scratch the itch somehow. He’d gone home, got the car out of the garage for the first time in weeks, and drove, phoning ahead while sitting in a queue to get out of Edinburgh to make sure there would be someone to talk to. As it turned out, they had put in a night watchman—after the horse had bolted, but better than no watch at all. In the course of the phone call Alan also learned that the man had been asked to stay on site beyond the end of his shift—he was expecting the Fife C.I.D. at nine. Alan didn’t want to meet any policeman if he could help it, but he hoped to be in, out and heading back to town long before their arrival.

“I dinna ken what you’re expecting to see,” the watchman said as Alan got out of the car and shook the man’s hand. “There’s nowt but an empty pen.”

Alan held up his camera.

“Just a wee photie to go with the story, that’s all I need,” Alan said. “Maybe get you in it too, with the loch in the background? If the story pans out, you might even get on the front page.”

That was all he needed to say—he’d learned long ago that playing on people’s vanity was the quickest way to get a foot in most doors, and it had worked again here. The watchman let them both in through the sanctuary gate and Alan followed him up a slope to a small maze of birdcages and pens. Several of the cages had birds in them—a haughty osprey, a sleepy owl and some raucous geese all marked their passing. But the man was right—when they arrived at the pen where the swans had been kept, there was nothing to see—no sign of any struggle or break-in at all.

“There was no damage?”

“Not a bit. The lock was still in place, still locked shut—or so they told me. It was as if the birds had been spirited away.”

The man made a quick movement with his hand—Alan spotted it, although it had been done furtively, almost on reflex—a sign against the evil eye. Alan only knew it because his old granddad used to do it when talking about one particular Tory MP, but it had once been common, in older, less enlightened, days.

“What do you think happened?” Alan asked.

The man wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“There’s always been stories about these parts,” he said, almost a whisper. “You can’t swing a cat round here without hitting a haunted castle or a fairy wood or a bogle’s cave. There are some things that can be explained—some things you shouldn’t look at too closely. That’s all I’m saying.”

The man turned his back—it seemed that particular conversation was over. Alan left the front of the pen and walked its circumference. There were no fresh footprints or scuffmarks on the ground, just a thin deer trail that led off from the south end up to the hill at the back. He pointed at it and called back to the watchman.

“They could have taken the birds out this way?”

“They could—if they were daft. It’s a sair trek up yon hill, and a longish way to the nearest place to park a truck. And you’d need a truck, what with six angry swans to contend with. Them birds are a handful at the best of times.”

“They could have drugged them?”

“I suppose so. But even then, six swans would make a hefty weight to lug up these hills and through the bogs in the hollows. My guess is they had a truck where you came in—in the car park—nobody would even notice at night, there’s next to no traffic round about here after ten.”

Alan walked a few yards up the deer trail, in the chance that there might be something that had been overlooked, some clue that might give him a fresh break in the story.

That’s when it happened. Later he’d try to rationalize and explain, but for now he was lost in a moment that seemed to go on forever. The watchman was talking, but Alan only heard a drone, like the buzz of a bee at a window. The deer track seemed to widen and spread. The landscape before him opened out to a verdant vista looking over blue cliffs that fell in sheer slabs of rock into a turquoise sea foaming with white horses. High to Alan’s right a tall cluster of stone buildings perched on a rocky outcrop, while in front of him the path wound in a serpentine track along the cliff top through tall lush grass. He felt wind in his face, tasted salt spray and smelled summer flowers.

Something dark rose up from a cliff face in the distance and took flight on black wings, impossibly large.

A child cried.

“I’m lost, Mammy.”

Alan stepped forward—and looked down to see only the thin deer path wending its way up the hill.

“Are you okay?” the watchman asked, and it took Alan several seconds to realize he had been asked a question.

What the hell was that?

He tasted salt spray at his lips. Somewhere in the distance a swan barked. A cloud covered the sun, a dark cape falling on the loch.

Like huge wings.

Alan’s heart thudded in his chest and at his ears, and his hands trembled as he walked, almost ran, for the safety of his car, leaving an astonished watchman gaping at his back.

* * *

He almost crashed three times on the way back towards the city—the third time coming so close to calamity that he pulled off the main road after crossing the Forth Bridge and parked in the truck stop on the south side. His hands shook, whether from the adrenaline from the near misses, or from the memory of the impossible landscape, he could not tell. He only knew one thing for sure. He needed coffee; he needed a lot of coffee.

The rough-and-ready atmosphere in the truck stop eatery quickly grounded him back in reality, and two large mugs of coffee soon had the near misses on the road fading to a memory. His hands still shook, but not as bad as before. Real life filled in around him as his reporter instincts kicked in and he listened to snatches and fragments of conversations, sifting for golden nuggets to use later.

The television high in the corner had its volume turned up, and the truckers had to almost shout to be heard above it. But that didn’t stop them making their feelings plain.

“If I caught that bastard first, he’d never see the inside of a cell.”

“They should hack his balls off with a rusty pair of shears and leave him to fester.”

It was only then that Alan realized that the story—his story—had been playing on the television all through his coffee intake. He turned his attention to the television, but soon spotted that there had been nothing new to break since he left the office earlier that morning—two girls taken, still missing, and police seemingly baffled. There was no mention of swans or of anything at all untoward going on at the bird sanctuary.

That memory was proving resistant to any fading. He only had to close his eyes to recall it, clear as day in full color.

What the hell was I looking at?

He remembered a story, years back, about a supposed fairy ring in Peebles that, under investigation, had proved to be made by underground fungi that might, or might not, have been sending hallucinogens into the air in their spores. But Alan’s head was clear, he was thinking straight.

And drugs don’t explain away the missing girls, or the missing swans.

He finished his coffee and put his questions away to the back of his mind—they’d be back later, he knew that, but for now he had a story waiting for him back in the city, and if he didn’t get on it, somebody else would.

As he got in the car and started up the engine he heard the voice again, clear as if she were sitting in the passenger seat.

“I’m lost, Mammy.”

He drove back into the city with the radio turned up full.

7

Grainger was almost happy when a report came in at lunchtime of another missing girl—at least it gave him something to do beyond shouting at junior officers and avoiding the press.

Although there would always be juniors to shout at, he wasn’t going to be able to avoid the media for much longer. The new call had come from Edinburgh Castle. At this time of year it would be packed with tourists from all over the world. A missing child in the castle premises wasn’t in itself a rare occurrence—mostly they turned up after having got lost wandering among the warren of rooms and different levels that made up the old fortress. He knew from experience that this was probably another one of those cases—but he couldn’t afford not to be seen to be investigating—the media was after him already, and any scent of blood in the water would turn it into a feeding frenzy.

He couldn’t get the number six out of his head. Fife C.I.D. had revisited the bird sanctuary that morning, but had nothing else to report except for the fact that “a man from the papers” had been sniffing around earlier—the story was going to hit the headlines soon enough.

Which was why he was now in the squad car—in the passenger seat having let Simpson take the driving duties again—inching their way through heavy traffic up the Mound towards the castle esplanade.

“There’s no report of any blood or feathers, boss,” Simpson said. “I don’t think this is our man.”

“Let’s hope not,” he replied, and fought off the urge to roll down his window and curse at the clearly lost driver of the car in front of them.

It took them another ten minutes to get to the top end of the Royal Mile and that only brought them to the tail of a snaking queue of coaches waiting to get onto the castle esplanade. By that time Grainger was ready to hit something—or someone.

“That’s enough,” Grainger said. “Park it anywhere you can. We’ll walk up. I need the air anyway.”

Simpson obliged. They left the squad car and went up the last stretch on foot, giving Grainger plenty of time for a smoke—and a good look at the chaos around the castle entrance. Two officers had stopped anyone getting in or out. Coaches, drivers, tour guides and tourists were all shouting from both sides of a makeshift barricade.

Amid all the noise a thin, well-dressed woman stood to one side, weeping silently into a handkerchief.

Grainger went straight to her.

“When did you last see your daughter?” he said.

The woman stiffened at the sight of him, as if recognizing authority.

“Up near the gun battery,” she said. “We were waiting for the one o’ clock salute and when I turned round she was gone and…”

That was all she could manage. The tears started again—too many for Grainger to cope with.

“Get her away from here and find somebody to look after her,” he said to Simpson. “And get some more bodies out and about. Find that wee lass, before this turns into another media scrum.”

He left Simpson to it and walked up into the castle proper. He had to show his badge to the guards at the main gate, and he asked then if they’d seen a girl in distress. He got nowhere fast.

“I see far too many kids on this duty, sir,” the young guard said. “Dancing about, prodding us, trying to look up the kilt, and making faces to get us to smile. I stopped paying attention to any of them months ago.”

On his way up the steep walk to the main body of the castle he saw three uniformed officers questioning the crowd, letting them move down to the esplanade after talking to them. There was more of a semblance of order up here—at least someone had done a job properly.

The scene around the guns was the same as it ever was—tourists snapping photos of bored soldiers who, like the guards down below, were forced to stand to attention and suffer as idiots shouted at them. The reek of cheap perfume and suntan lotion was enough to make Grainger consider lighting up another smoke, but a squeal from the parapets quickly put paid to that.