The Exiled (9 page)

“I found the trail again in the early seventeenth century, where I discovered evidence that a Swan cult operated on the shores of Loch Leven. Children from as far afield as Inverness went missing over a span of several years, their passing marked only by the presence of dismembered wings of swans left at the sites. It is also around this time that the cover-up started, and the secret society that had been gestating for some time finally fledged into full being…”

* * *

It was at that point in the manuscript that Alan started to skim. The author detailed his evidence of both the Swan cult and the secret society—a lineage that supposedly stretched down to recent history. Alan found the resulting argument to be deeply flawed; the research was sketchy at best, and full of Von Daniken-esque leaps of logic, using one badly thought-out conclusion to shore up the next. By the end of part one, Ferguson had accumulated a whole mountain of supposed facts that would fall apart if you so much as looked at any one bit of it too closely. He’d also roped in the usual suspects—the Priory of Sion, the Templars, the St. Clairs and Rosslyn Chapel all got more than a passing mention—as did, of course, the Scottish Rite Masons. There was a lot about them, all of which seemed to work the author up into a frenzy of speculation concerning rampant use of child pornography and pedophilia in the upper reaches of the Scottish class system. It seemed that the Swan had been forgotten, but Ferguson was just getting started.

Alan nearly missed it—he was only a couple of paragraphs away from giving up when he came across a small section between parts one and two that made him stop and read it twice to be sure it actually said what he thought it said.

* * *

“My time spent in the old library near Crieff yielded one more item of note. It was buried deep under sheaves of musty legal documents, as if someone had intentionally put it where it could not be stumbled across easily. At first I took it for a hoax, for it detailed a rather ridiculous ritual, concocted by someone with a clear sense of the absurd. But the intended result was something I could not overlook so easily. I transcribed the ritual in my notebook, and set about procuring the necessaries.

“Two weeks later I was ready; I assembled the accoutrements and—feeling ridiculous the whole time—worked my way through the ritual. I was not too surprised when it came to naught. I stood there, feeling rather silly, for all of an hour before returning to bed, cursing myself for a fool.

“And as I stepped up onto the bed, it happened. I was no longer in my tidy little room. Instead I stood upon a rocky cliff top, buffeted by wind and sea spray, looking over a verdant landscape stretching up to high stone turrets above me. Something came up the cliff, something black and huge and immediately terrifying. I screamed—and blinked—and was back in my bedroom.

“I do not expect you to believe a word of this. I have only the evidence of my own eyes and the feeling of solidity I had while there. And know this—I have been back, several times, and returned to tell the tale.

“I know what the Black Swan is, and why the secret has to remain hidden.”

11

Grainger looked at the book Alan handed him, read the cover, and laughed.

“Brian Ferguson? He’s your breakthrough?”

“You know of him?” Alan said, sitting down in the chair at the bedside.

Grainger laughed again, so hard that it brought a fresh flare of pain in his shoulder that forced him into silence.

“Every cop in the city center knows Mad Brian,” Grainger said. “You’ve probably walked passed him yourself many times. He stands outside M&S in Princes Street with a sandwich board—every day it’s a different message, but basically they always say the same thing. ‘The Masons are all bad bastards out to get you and your kids.’”

He saw Alan’s face fall, his hopes fading.

“Shite—that auld geezer that shouts at people? That’s him?”

Grainger looked at the book again.

“I think it must be. Nobody else has a hard on for the Masons like the one Brian has.”

“Bugger,” Alan said. “But if he’s that daft, how can he know about the place with the cliffs and the turrets? And he knows about the swan wings…and…”

“Coincidence?” Grainger said softly.

“I don’t think I believe in that any more,” Alan replied. “And there’s too much of the same detail. He’s been there—I’m sure of it.”

“Well, I’m still stuck in here for a while,” Grainger said. “What do you want to do?”

“Firstly, I want to go back to the farm.”

“No,” Grainger said, and was immediately struck by the memory of D.S. Simpson lying under a bloody shroud. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll do that together—when I’m well enough. Promise me—on our ma’s grave.”

“I promise,” Alan replied. Grainger knew it was a reluctant one—but Ma had been invoked, and that would keep the younger brother in line—for a while at least.

“Why don’t you have a wee word with Ferguson?” he said. “You might get some sense in among the ravings. Turn on that boyish charm—buy him a few beers and see what’s what?”

“I might just do that. It’s not as if we’ve got anything else to go on.”

Grainger had been keeping up to speed on the case as best as he could on the television in his room and the newspapers he asked to be brought in each morning. He thought he might have got a visit from some of his old squad, but nobody turned up with grapes or sympathy—he was now unclean, not to be spoken of. That didn’t bother him nearly as much as the fact that the case was obviously being badly mishandled, with homeless men being targeted for arrest and questioning in the vain hope one of them was the killer.

Knowing that the kids were all dead, and the killer was far beyond their reach, gnawed away at him—constantly.

He’d been woolgathering and missed what Alan was saying.

“Sorry,” he said, and smiled. “It’s the drugs. They’re lovely.”

Alan smiled back.

“Just don’t get too used to them. They tell me you’ll be out in a couple of days.”

“Weekend at the latest—you can bank on it.”

“Then I’d better see what I can get from the mad-man before then—I’ll report back as soon as I can.”

“Bring more smokes next time,” Grainger shouted as Alan left, and got a wave in reply. Only then did he allow himself to acknowledge the pain. His arm bothered him more than he would tell his brother—or the doctors. If they knew, they’d only keep him in for longer, and Grainger couldn’t wait—Galloway thought he’d got away with it; he was wrong in that assumption.

He picked up his smokes—he’d got them back when he was well enough to get out of bed, and only after promising not to smoke inside the premises. That meant joining the other addicts in a small yard at the back of Accident and Emergency—a spot full of rubbish skips and discarded butts—not much of an advert for the glamor of smoking.

But Grainger needed a hit—it helped him think, had been doing so since he first became a cop. The ritual of lighting up and puffing away was like a mental unblocker, allowing his mind to drift, to start to form connections he might not have seen consciously.

Ever since he’d woken up after the operation he’d replayed the night in the farmhouse in his mind, looking for a way he might have done it differently. He might have saved Simpson, he might have got there in time to save the kids, he might have taken down the big man and brought him back to justice. No matter how many ways he approached it, he kept coming back to the same thing. The kids were dead, Simpson was dead, the big man had gone and—always the same image to end his remembering—the black bird in the stained glass window winked at him.

Once back in his bed he tried to concentrate on a television program, something to take his mind off things, but the news was still full of the case—his case—and everything else was just screeching reality shows or soap opera. He switched it off and picked up the book Alan had left for him. He opened it immediately to avoid looking at the cover—the black bird was too big in his mind and he didn’t need another image of it in there.

Alan had already given him the rundown of the opening chapters, so he skipped to the middle and started reading at random.

“It is an agrarian culture. They have no electricity or natural gas, no machinery of any kind beyond the simplest of water mills. What few houses exist are made from mud and straw—the only stonework is to be found in the ancient buildings that dot the landscape, but the means of construction of tall turrets and high arches have long since been forgotten.”

Grainger closed the book and sat back, eyes closed. Just the mention of stonework and high arches brought it all back again. He switched on the television. Even tone-deaf teenagers trying to sing was preferable to what was going on in his head.

* * *

He made it past breakfast the next morning before he was tempted to look at the book again. There was a middle section containing photographs so he started with that, but it was just a pictorial representation of Ferguson’s obsession. Some showed police officers and politicians at Masonic meetings—Grainger recognized some of them, and knew others personally. Other pictures were of well-known figures from the past—Isaac Newton, Doctor Dee, Mary Queen of Scots and Sir Walter Scott among others, all rolled up together to be implicated in Ferguson’s grand bullshit theory. Grainger almost threw the book away in disgust, but he had nothing better to do so kept going, skipping towards the back of the slim volume, looking for any conclusions that might come out of the madness.

12

Alan found Ferguson where John said he would be—standing outside the store on Princes Street, haranguing passersby in a loud, cultured voice that was at odds with his scruffy, downtrodden appearance.

The old man wore a tattered tweed overcoat, badly frayed and patched with a variety of materials, covering an even older tweed suit. His beard—salt-and-pepper gray—hung down in a wispy curtain across his chest and only accentuated the complete baldness on the head above. His nose and cheeks were scribbled with the telltale burst vessels of a heavy drinker, and when he smiled, he showed a mouth containing only a handful of pale brown teeth. He stood beside a sandwich board he had leaned against the wall. A message written in chalk was scrawled across it.

“Don’t let the Masons steal your children!”

His voice once again belied his appearance—the clipped, cultured tones speaking of an educated man, now slipped down a peg or three.

“Lend me five pounds and I will tell you a secret,” Ferguson said as Alan approached him.

“Let me buy you a drink and I’ll tell you one,” Alan replied. “I’ve read your book.”

Five minutes later they were in the Kenilworth in Rose Street.

The barman raised an eyebrow when he saw Ferguson.

“Any shouting and you’re both barred,” he said. Ferguson nodded sheepishly, unable to take his eyes from the glass as the beer was poured. When Alan handed it to him, he emptied half the glass at once, as if afraid it might be taken away as quickly as it had come.

Alan led the old man to a table in the corner.

“They don’t mind me here,” Ferguson said, too loud in the quiet bar. “They get a better class of clientele than those other bars near the station.”

Alan took the book from his jacket pocket. Ferguson lit up in a huge smile.

“Shall I sign it for you? Please? No one has ever asked me before.”

The old man’s sudden joy was so infectious that Alan found himself laughing as he handed over the book and a pen. Ferguson signed the inside front page with a flourish and handed the pen back. He held on to the book and looked Alan in the eye.

“You’ve read all of it?”

“The first half so far,” Alan replied. “It’s fascinating and—”

He got no further.

“Bloody Masons,” Ferguson said, his voice rising with each word. “They’ve been stealing children and getting away with it for centuries. And will anybody listen? Will they fuck? If I had my way…”

The barman coughed theatrically and nodded towards the door. Ferguson went silent quickly, lifted his beer and finished it fast in case the threat was carried out. He waited until the barman turned his back, then patted the book, as if it were a cherished pet.

“It’s all in here, my boy. All of it. And they know I know. If I disappear suddenly, you’ll tell the police who did it, won’t you?” As quickly as he had smiled seconds earlier, the old man cried, heavy tears that left clear grooves through the dirt on his cheeks. “Lend me five pounds and I will tell you a secret,” he whispered.

Alan got two more beers in, feeling almost ashamed at the eagerness Ferguson showed when he got back to the table.

“There’s more, my lad,” the old man said. “I could not put everything I know in the book—that would have been dangerous—much too risky. The stories I could tell you…”

“Actually, I’m more interested in the black swan itself,” Alan said.

Ferguson’s mouth flapped open and shut and he went from tearful to terrified in an instant.

“Do not say that name,” he said in a whisper. “Not even in jest.”