The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (12 page)

“Dear God, I know this man,” he murmured, choosing his words for Kirkpatrick’s benefit, as well as to prepare McLeod. “So do you, Noel.”

He reinforced the warning with a look. McLeod’s blue gaze sharpened in surprised acknowledgment. He leaned forward, peering down at the half-averted face cradled between Adam’s supporting hands, then sat back on his haunches with a heavy jolt.

“Jesus,” he croaked. “It’s Randall!”

Kirkpatrick’s mouth opened as if to speak, but then he took a look at McLeod’s face and abruptly subsided. Gently Adam lowered Randall’s head to the ground and gingerly reached inside the breast of his coat for a handkerchief to wipe the traces of blood from his fingertips. After a moment’s stunned silence, McLeod picked himself jerkily up off the ground and eased himself back onto the edge of the flat stone, pulling off his glasses with one hand and knuckling his forehead in grey-faced bewilderment.

“Sorry,” he muttered gruffly. “Just give me a minute to catch my breath.”

Adam clasped him briefly by the shoulder, then rose and beckoned to Kirkpatrick to join him a few feet away.

“I suppose one of us had better give you a formal identification,” he said bleakly, leaving McLeod to his grief for a few minutes. “The victim’s name is Randall Stewart. He is—was—an antiquarian bookseller in Edinburgh.”

“Edinburgh?” said Kirkpatrick. “Christ, what’s he doing up here?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said flatly, “though I can’t imagine it was his choice.” His voice sounded leaden in his own ears. “Randall was a widower. There’s one daughter. Her name’s Miranda. They lived together in a house in Mayfield . . .”

Shaking his head, Kirkpatrick somberly noted down the information Adam dictated concerning Randall Stewart’s full name, address, occupation, and family. He stared down at his notebook for a moment, blowing on stiff fingers to warm them, then gave a small exclamation of discovery and glanced back at the body.

“Randall Stewart—I’ve just been thinking the name sounded familiar. He was a Masonic historian, wasn’t he?”

“That’s correct,” Adam replied. “He’d been doing a series of articles on the Craft lately, for several different newspapers. You might have seen a rather controversial letter of his recently, in the
Times.
He’d made it a crusade to defend Freemasonry as an institution—”

His voice broke off abruptly.

“You’re not thinking that he might have been murdered on account of his Masonic writings?” Kirkpatrick said.

“Frankly, I don’t know what to think at this stage,” Adam replied. “In his personal life, Randall Stewart was quiet and scholarly—not the sort of man who generally makes enemies. But he was also a man of principle. It isn’t inconceivable that he might have drawn hostile attention to himself through his writing.”

“Aye,” Kirkpatrick agreed, “but it does seem drastic.” He cocked his head at Adam. “I don’t suppose you’re one of his Lodge brothers, are you, Dr. Sinclair?—or Inspector McLeod’s?”

Adam managed a dour smile, for he did share a Lodge with both McLeod and Randall, though not a Masonic one.

“No, I’m not a member of the Craft, Sergeant, though I certainly honor and respect it. My father and grandfather both were Master Masons.”

“Ah, well then, you’re at least aware that controversies have always surrounded our Brotherhood. Unfortunately, we’ve had a few notable scandals in recent years—accusations of corruption and the like. But that’s the dirty work of a few isolated individuals. It has nothing to do with the real intentions of the whole organization.”

“Which is precisely the point that Randall was trying to make with his articles and his letters to the papers,” Adam said. He sighed. “All organizations, including the organized churches, are human institutions, even if inspired by God. And so long as humans form and run them, some few will be tempted to misuse the privileges of selective membership.”

A stir of movement from the opposite side of the clearing signalled the return of Constable Jamison from his reconnaissance tour of the area.

“I couldnae find anything of use, Sergeant,” he called down from the edge of the trees. “There
is
a road down yonder, but it’s worse’n a pig’s mud-wallow, an’ the snow’s meltin’ everything down tae mush. Cars were down there, all right, but there’s naught of a clear tire tread or footprint.”

Kirkpatrick rolled his eyes in gloomy resignation.

“All right, then,” he called back to his young subordinate. “Go on back tae the car an’ get yourself thawed out—an’ send up Mr. Heriot to relieve me. We’ll stand by in shifts, until the SCI lads get here.”

He waved the younger man on with a sweep of his hand, then turned back to Adam, flexing his shoulders as if to shrug off the damp chill of their surroundings. McLeod was on his feet again, and looking somewhat recovered.

“You gentlemen might as well head back too,” Kirkpatrick said. “It’ll be several hours before reinforcements can get here. Take McArdle and your Mr. Lovat with you. We’ve got coffee in the Land Rover. Have Mr. Jamison give you some. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

The comment was directed mainly at McLeod. The inspector roused himself with an effort, looking every one of his fifty-two years.

“That reminds me of something else that needs doing,” he said grimly. “Where
is
Mr. Lovat?”

“Right here!” called a light voice.

They turned to see Peregrine still standing beside one of the encircling oak trees, but with sketch pad and pencil already in his hands. McArdle was watching curiously from several feet away. The young artist still looked more than a little white about the mouth, but his expression was one of dogged resolution—and exasperation that the gamekeeper was hovering so close.

“I figured you’d want my services eventually,” he said, with a fair show of bravado, “so I thought I’d get a start before my hands, got too numb to draw. I’ll need another fifteen or twenty minutes, but you needn’t wait on my account.”

“You’re sure?” Adam asked.

Peregrine shrugged and returned to his sketching, though Adam noticed that he still shied away from looking too directly at Randall Stewart’s body.

“Yes, go on. The sergeant will be here for a while, and then PC Heriot. I’ll be along when I’ve finished.”

Chapter Nine

MCARDLE FORGED ON
ahead alone, glad enough to be quit of the spectacle in the ring of oaks now that he was vindicated, and no doubt eager to regain the relative warmth of a car. Adam and a still shattered McLeod followed more slowly, Adam casting a last, thoughtful glance back at Peregrine before they topped the rise of the hilltop and started down, losing the artist from further view.

That Peregrine had already begun his sketching, obviously intending to open himself voluntarily to the visions that had nearly floored him when he first came upon the scene, was the one heartening event in a morning blighted by tragedy. Badly as Adam wanted the information Peregrine might be able to supply, he had not been prepared to ask that of him. Peregrine’s earlier impressions had been devastating, far more powerful and overwhelming than anything he had yet experienced since coming under Adam’s tutelage; and past experience had shown that the young artist would not willingly refuse anything that he thought Adam might require.

But apparently Peregrine had already decided to bear the strain of any further psychic recall, and felt confident enough to brave it alone. It spoke much of his personal courage, as well as his growing commitment to the cause Adam and his colleagues served. From that, at least, Adam took comfort.

In the meantime, with McArdle ranging farther and farther ahead, circumstances at last permitted a few words in private with McLeod. Weighing up all the questions that were clamoring in his own mind, Adam gave the inspector a sidelong glance. McLeod caught his look and scowled, his brow as black as a thundercloud.

“Even in my darkest dreams, I never would have imagined this,” he muttered, “that one of our own Hunting Lodge should have been butchered like a sheep, and none of us any the wiser until it was all over!”

He set his teeth almost savagely in his lower lip and shook his head. “It’s true I was uneasy all yesterday evening—but I never once suspected the cause. Not even when Kirkpatrick phoned.”

“That’s no fault of yours,” Adam said. “Christopher and Victoria were with me up at the house, and none of us had any intimations of trouble.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” McLeod said. “Randall was one of us—a trained occultist. He had the resources to put out an astral distress call. Why didn’t he?”

“I suspect he was heavily drugged,” Adam said. “That would have prevented it. His murderers probably would have kept him unconscious as long as it was practical to do so. From the gamekeeper’s testimony and the physical evidence, it’s clear that Randall’s death was intended as a ritual sacrifice. That being the case, the killers wouldn’t have taken any chances that something might go awry.”

“The bloody
bastards!”
McLeod spat out the word as if it tasted of bile. When he turned to Adam, his blue eyes were smouldering.

“Who the hell were they, Adam? Even if Randall was too drugged to cry for help, a killing like that should have generated some shock waves of its own. Why didn’t we sense
that?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said bleakly. “It’s possible that the killers themselves were unskilled personnel, simply acting out a prescribed sequence of motions without actually raising any power. It’s equally possible that they knew
precisely
what they were doing, and were competent enough to shield their work while it was in progress. We can’t know at this point. There simply isn’t enough evidence to go on.”

“But why
Randall?”
McLeod persisted.

“That’s what I’ve been asking myself ever since we found him,” Adam said grimly. “So far, I haven’t found a satisfactory answer. But this much I’m sure of: Randall was
not
chosen at random. On the contrary, he was carefully selected by someone who went to a lot of trouble to lure him away from the protection of his family and friends.”

“Lure him away?” McLeod stopped and stared. “Are you saying you have a theory about all this?”

“A theory, yes,” Adam said, “though it’s only now occurred to me. I was with Randall on Saturday—I’d taken Peregrine round so that Randall could meet him. Just before we left, Randall mentioned that he was planning to go across to Stirling on the Sunday to do an estate appraisal on a collection of rare books. Now it makes me wonder if the whole thing could have been the setup for a kidnapping.”

“Well, at least that’s
some
kind of lead,” McLeod said bitterly. “We certainly haven’t got a bloody lot else to go on. I’ll put a couple of my men on it as soon as I get back to Edinburgh. God knows poor Randall wasn’t much for keeping written records, though,” he added with a dour shake of his head. “But maybe Miranda will remember the name and the address of the supposed collector—assuming that the shock of this whole sorry affair doesn’t prove too much for her.”

“Which reminds me that someone ought to go to her, before she hears the news from strangers,” Adam said. “Christopher or Victoria would be ideal, if I can reach them. I don’t suppose you brought along that rather handy cellular phone?”

“Aye. But the Houstons might not be able to get there in time, if they have to drive down from Kinross,” McLeod said. “Let me send Jane. I’ve got to call her anyway. Once she hears what’s happened, she’ll know what to do.”

Constable Heriot passed them just before they arrived back at the cars heading back up to the crime scene, and they found Jamison huddled in the driver’s seat of the Land Rover, talking earnestly to someone over the radio and making notes. McArdle was sitting in the back seat nursing a Styrofoam cup of coffee, looking tired and morose.

“You go ahead and make your call,” Adam murmured, waving McLeod on toward their own vehicle. “I’ll see if I can get us some coffee. We drank all yours on the way up.”

McLeod gave a grunt and continued on to the car, simply collapsing onto the passenger seat for nearly a full minute before bestirring himself enough to pull the portable phone from his zipper bag behind the seat. Jane answered almost immediately, but he kept his conversation brief and purposefully vague; times like this made him all too aware that a portable phone did not constitute a secure line.

Jane wept when he told her there had been an accident, and that Randall Stewart was dead, but promised to go immediately to be with Miranda. McLeod, in turn, promised to give her more details when he got home, though he warned her that he might be quite late. If Jane remembered his side of the original conversation with Kirkpatrick, she might put two and two together and guess something of what had happened, but he knew he could trust her not to alarm Miranda needlessly. Best that someone else tell her how her father had died—though he wished desperately that no one had to tell her at all.

Afterwards, suddenly weary almost beyond telling, he revved up, the engine so he could run the heater for a few minutes—the Range Rover’s leather seats were like ice—then leaned back over the front seat to return the phone and his pistol to the zipper bag. Gradually, by holding his hands directly over two heater vents, he began to regain a little feeling in his fingers—though not in his soul.

After a little while, Adam returned with two steaming Styrofoam cups and the news that the first reinforcements could be expected within the hour. As they sipped at what McLeod declared was the worst coffee he had ever tasted, Kirkpatrick returned, raising a hand to the two of them as he trudged past to his own vehicle, but Peregrine was not with him. When a full half hour had passed since leaving the scene of the murder, with still no sign of Peregrine, both Adam and McLeod began to worry.

“He’s been out there a long time,” McLeod said, irritation masking his concern as he glanced at his watch. “You don’t suppose our young Mr. Lovat has taken on more than he can handle, do you?”

Adam grimaced. “If he isn’t back in another five minutes, I’ll go and check. I
thought
he was up to it—but maybe not.”

Just then, Peregrine himself emerged from the trees at the foot of the path, looking pale and drained, but also triumphant. He was stumbling from fatigue, his sketchbox dragging at his arm as if it were weighted down with bricks, but he waved them back when McLeod’s car door opened, slogging doggedly across the remaining snow to wrench open the back door of the Range Rover and practically tumble inside. After slamming the door closed, he hugged the sketchbox to his chest and seemed to collapse back against the seat, closing his eyes briefly.

“I think the first drawings will satisfy any forensic curiosity, Inspector,” he said huskily. “Then there are a couple more . . . “

His voice trailed away, and he seemed about to nod off from exhaustion. After an alarmed glance at McLeod, Adam whipped off one glove and delved inside his sheepskin coat for the small silver flask he usually carried with him on outdoor excursions. He unstoppered it with a deft twist and proffered it to Peregrine with a gesture that brooked no refusal.

“Here. Take a good, stiff swig,” he ordered.

Meekly Peregrine accepted the flask and raised it to his lips in shaking hands. The first swallow made him gasp, but it also brought a measure of color back to his white face.

“Now take another,” Adam said. “That’s right. Feeling any better?”

Peregrine nodded rather breathlessly and handed the flask back to Adam.

“I’ll be all right,” he said in a little stronger voice. “I’ve stowed all the sketches away in my box. The ones that are for your eyes only are on the bottom. I wasn’t sure whether I’d have to run a gamut of curious policemen. And I thought you’d never get McArdle out of there.”

Adam returned the flask to his pocket and reached to take the sketchbox from Peregrine. As the artist sat forward to watch, elbows propped on the backs of both front seats, Adam opened the sketchbox on the console between him and McLeod and lifted out the drawings one by one.

The first few sketches were the proper forensic studies Peregrine had promised, reproducing the murder scene from several angles with the clinical exactitude of photographs. Adam’s long mouth tightened as he glanced over them in passing, but when he came to the last two sketches, his dark eyes widened in shock and dismay.

The first of these showed Randall on his knees, pinioned from behind in the midst of several white-robed men whose faces were hidden within deep, cowled hoods. One of them knelt before Randall with head bowed, his back to the sketch’s vantage point, holding something out to him that was shielded behind the man’s body—probably the bowl or whatever McArdle had seen. More of the white-robed men formed a circle around them, just inside where the ring of ash had delineated the working area, but all the faces except Randall’s were heavily obscured as if by a thick black fog, in malevolent contrast to the crisp detail of the rest of the picture.

Such shielding by itself was enough to confirm that Randall’s slayers had been accomplished black adepts. But what drew Adam’s gaze like a magnet, even more than the look of dawning horror on Randall’s face, was the suggestion that each of the robed men wore a medallion around his neck and a ring on his hand—both items trademarks of the Lodge of the Lynx.

Peregrine’s remaining drawing confirmed Adam’s suspicions, and also brought home the full horror of the killing as even the previous one had not. Peregrine was getting
too
good at this. The look of mortal anguish that he had captured on Randall’s face was something Adam hoped never to see or even imagine again.

It was a closer study of Randall and his actual slayer, just before the death-blow, the ringed hand of the latter clenched purposefully about the handle of what proved, on closer scrutiny, to be a surgeon’s scalpel, poised beside Randall’s right ear. The man’s left hand—and others’ hands—wrenched the victim’s head back brutally to expose the throat. The angle was wrong to see what was on the medallion around the killer’s neck, but the ring on his third finger showed the intaglio image of a lynx head.

Beside him, McLeod made a noise at the back of his throat like the warning growl of a bull mastiff.

“So,” he managed to mutter. “The Lodge of the Lynx rears its ugly head again. “I suppose this is their idea of revenge for what happened at Urquhart Castle.”

“I wonder,” Adam said slowly. With difficulty, he forced his gaze away from the look on Randall’s face, back to the hand holding the scalpel.

“What’s to wonder at?” McLeod’s roughened voice held a note of incredulity. “It’s their calling card, plain and simple.”

“Yes, but revenge can hardly have been the motive,” Adam replied, wrenching himself back to a more detached perspective—as if that were possible, after this. “Randall wasn’t involved—even indirectly—in any of the events that eventually took the three of us into that confrontation by Loch Ness. Without that association, there’s simply no reason why the Lodge of the Lynx should have connected him with us.”

“But, our names were in most of the newspaper accounts—mine, at least,” McLeod said. “If the Lodge of the Lynx started looking into our backgrounds, someone might well have found out that Randall was a close acquaintance of ours—”