The Night Hunter (24 page)

S
unday is a day of rest, which is very easy when there is no real work to do. Ardno looks empty and insulted, robbed of its grace by police searches and memories. Areas of the house are still taped off but the phone calls have ceased. To use police parlance, the situation is not being advanced. Charlie is away with his dad. Alex Parnell has paid Billy and me handsomely.

Mary is in the private hospital, still saying nothing. I chinned Costello about what happens now. Paperwork, was all she said. She promised me she hasn’t forgotten about Sophie, my sister has not been sidelined. The investigation is regrouping and refocusing.

‘Is that bullshit?’ I ask.

‘Yes.’

At least she was being honest.

‘All is as it was before.’

But that is not true. The team are having a rest, they are taking a breather. Costello and Anderson are being called in to explain themselves to someone high in authority. Costello said having afternoon tea with the Spanish Inquisition would be preferable.

I go for a run, I need to clear my head of all the confusion and rid myself of the feeling that I have not done right by Mary.

My days here are numbered. Parnell hasn’t told me to pack my bags yet but it can’t be far away. I can’t go back to Mum’s house. She blames me for Rod moving out; I took the computer, I questioned the photographs. My mum has always shot the messenger. Grant has locked himself in his room. He wants Sophie back and has now decided that lying in his bed all day crying will achieve this. Rod has been a gentleman; he phoned me earlier today to say that he thinks Grant will refuse to go to the psychiatrist. Can I do anything? The boy is suffering.

I hung up. I am fed up being my family’s keeper.

So I will go back to the flat in Glasgow, which is tainted with memories of Sophie in the bath, bleeding. They have not started running the tests at the lab yet. She
is
being sidelined, and that is making me angry.

I head up Cruach nam Mult, running swiftly and steadily through the bracken and the fern, taking a path that does not exist. It’s still raining, it has been all day. It’s slippy and marshy underfoot. The wee burns that scar the hillside are full of water; I have to run through those I usually jump easily.

That single sad footprint of Lorna. The rain has got me thinking.

It’s got me thinking about that dog again. It must be huge. Not like Eric’s wee collie Rosie. Her food bowls? No, not that. I am trying to think about something before the food bowls. When Charlie rang us on Mary’s phone. Rain, rain and more rain filling Eric’s basement. Grandpa Cop had said something about him needing to get it pumped out. But Eric lives right on top of a hill. Water drains away. Up here it is running down the slope in sheets. I reset my mind. After the water clock, after the call, putting my jacket on … I feel my arteries start to tingle, it’s coming through. I quicken my stride. Concentrating. Eric knocked a file to the floor, papers spread out on the dirty carpet. I picked them up. Drawings, estimates, columns of figures, a plan for an indoor swimming pool, a training pool. Lorna had a training pool. My mind flicks back to Eric looking out the window of his Land Rover and telling me that people do disappear up here. His farm had been searched, he had told me that, he had been making coffee for the cops.

I turn round and head back down the hill. I need to ask Billy if he really wants to earn his money.

‘It’s a Sunday. He’s never here on a Sunday, is he?’ I slide out of the car, leaving Billy behind. At times like this I feel invincible. I can face anything that Eric Mason can throw at me. Sophie could be here somewhere.

I scan the horizon and the old croft. I feel another spit of rain on my face. The great wheels of the garden clock are moving slowly. I take that movement as a good omen: we are setting something in motion here. A deep grinding sound like a drawbridge being hoisted slowly over a moat rumbles through the ground, coming from somewhere under my feet.

Billy rolls down the window of his Vectra and listens. ‘You feeling the earth move?’

I look down at my trainers, thinking. The generator, Eric had said.

‘That was a joke, hen,’ says Billy, lighting up.

I ignore him. Something makes me look down the hill to the old part of the wood that belongs to the croft. There is a collection of ramshackle old buildings, and wire fences full of gaps. I wonder how far the police took their search. I hear Billy peep the horn. He puts his finger in the curled fingers of his other hand and jerks them apart.
Get the finger out.

I look out across the moor; the wind is getting up. There is a smell in the air, something feral and dangerous. I follow the worn strip of grass up to the front door and knock. No answer. I put my hands in my jacket pockets and smile inanely as I look around. Anybody looking would think I’m doing exactly what I appear to be doing – waiting for someone to answer the door. But nobody comes and there’s no sound of anybody moving around inside. I knock again and wait a little longer. The rain is starting to come down hard now and the wind is catching at my breath. I tug at the handle on the weather-beaten front door, but it’s locked. There are cobwebs over the panes of glass that cover the top half. I cannot see through them. I go back down the path and signal to Billy that I am going to have a look round the back. I walk round the perimeter of the outhouse ruins and the old sheep steadings crumbled to rubble a long time ago, then look across at the buildings in the cover of the trees; they are even more decrepit. I check the remains of a window, smashed, brutally sharp jagged edges. This is a hundred yards away from the main house, deep in the cover of long grass and bracken.

Looking back, the rear of the main croft has had a lot of work done to it. A row of conifers has been planted to provide some shelter from the wind. A new wicker fence breaks up the land at the back; someone is trying to domesticate this.

A scent drifts towards me. A smell of animal life, like a fox lair. I walk back into the open land, point at Billy and then to the ruins. He responds with a nod and points at his watch. I trot back over, my trainers making a comforting thud as they hit the pillow of damp conifer needles on the floor of the wood. It is immediately warmer in here, protected from the wind. I stand still for a minute, not sure if I’m hearing something or not. The hairs on the back of my neck start to prickle. The trees are close, oppressive. Or is it more than that? I hear another noise, a gentle rustling, like the sound of a light chain being dragged. The noise is more definite this time, but there’s nothing to see apart from piles of wood, and an old hut with half a roof and only three walls. I feel that there is someone standing behind me, hidden in the trees. I turn round. Nobody there, just the shadows of the trees and the wind whistling in the high branches. My heart stops. I stay stock-still. I know I am being watched. And whoever is watching me is invisible.

I look along the ground. It is uneven, as if it has been hit by minor earthquakes here and there, clods of earth sticking up like the crust of an over-cooked cake. Roots of trees trying to hold on before they were cut down. The walls of the old hut that are still standing block the view. The feral smell is stronger now, fox urine and rotten meat. I flex my fingers, stretch out my legs a little. I need to be ready. I walk up to the wooden sections of the old hut; the mosaic of pine needles show some recent disturbance. I grip the upright of the wooden partition, pull it forward slightly, and look behind it. There is a break in the surface here, creating a mini-cliff about two feet high. The smell fills the air. I can make out an old metal grille on the gap, to keep something out or to keep something in? I lean forward as far as I can, staring into the dark. I see a couple of amber eyes stare back out at me.

They are not human.

I don’t even know if I say it out loud.

Hello, Night Hunter
.

The sensible thing to do now is turn round and walk away. I should go back to Billy. I should phone Costello. But I know Sophie is here.

To fetch one if one goes astray.

I make my way back across open ground to the cover of the conifers and I raise a thumb at Billy, telling him I have found something. I am on a mission and I do not want a fat old git and his respiratory issues getting in my way.

I have found what the women were running from. Two dogs, ten stone each. Powerful. Cuddly and furry. Deadly.

To strengthen whilst one stands.

As I jog I think of them running after me, grabbing my calf, pulling me down … then what? Does Eric stand and watch, ready to call them off? Does he ‘rescue’ the frightened women, take them to the Land Rover, offering them a run home …

My neighbour, teddy-bear Eric.

I find a window at the back of the croft. Something that looks like old rolls of carpet is piled up against glass patterned with mould and cobwebs. No one has disturbed this for years, but at the top a narrow hopper is rusted, and open. I put a finger behind it and it lifts with a loud rasp, so easily it must have been broken from its hinge.

I feel in my pocket and check my mobile. I have charge, and a weak signal. I have Billy outside and adrenaline in my veins. I climb up on to the stone window ledge and gauge the best way to get in. I put my head through, then my shoulders, and brace my hands on the cross frame. Holding tight and punching with my legs, I kick against the ledge and let the weight of my upper half cantilever me over. I slide head first down the other side, open arms above my head steering my face away from the mouldy damp carpets, and let my legs follow until I am sitting on a filthy worktop watching the silverfish scurry. Then my feet are on the flagstone floor, behind some old two by four planks of wood. The place is freezing and deathly quiet.

I pull up the sleeves of my fleece. I think I am alone but you can never be too careful. There is a noise that might be the wind, so faint I can hardly hear it. But it is more than noise, I can feel it through my feet.

I leave the kitchen and walk into the old hall. At the front is the sitting room, the room with the water clock in it. I cross under the scaffolding that holds the ceiling up to the bottom of the stairs. The noise is getting louder. I backtrack a little and open a door next to the front door, opposite the room with the water clocks. This is a more modern kitchen, modern as in 1970s and not 1870s. There is a series of mugs, upside down as if they have just been washed. And in the corner is a boiler, working. I can see the blue light of the gas burner. I look round, feel the old radiator. It is stone cold. The boiler looks brand new. I wonder where the heat is going. Is he keeping someone alive in here? That was something that the Prof guy had said about Lorna: she had been kept out of the sun. Underground? I have found the dogs. Have I now found the place where he keeps the women, alive? Sophie? Well, Lizzie went to save Laura.

Then Lizzie weigh’d no more

Better and worse;

But put a silver penny in her purse,

Kiss’d Laura, cross’d the heath with clumps of furze

At twilight, halted by the brook:

And for the first time in her life

Began to listen and look.

Well, it worked out for them; they grew old, they lived to tell their daughters the tale.

I check the hall at the bottom of the stairs. The pipes go down there. Back to the kitchen? No, it’s way too cold in there. Underfloor heating in a flagstone floor that’s over a hundred years old? I don’t think so.

I feel bile rise in my throat. A basement.

I feel movement under my feet again.

No sunlight
.
Underground
. I go back out to the hall and look under the scaffolding to the rear of the house. There is a small door, and beyond it a small staircase heading downward. I try to keep my breathing steady as I go down, my hand trailing on the stone wall, but it only leads to a small room, like a basement cupboard. It is stacked with shelves on either side. This doesn’t feel right; it is not logical to shelve walls on left and right while the wall opposite the door is free, with just a few pieces of MDF leaning against it. I am twitching; I know that there is something here for me. When I lean my cheek against the gritty plaster of the wall, I sense something different; not warm exactly. Just less cold. What about the MDF? It’s more recent than the mouldy stuff upstairs. Eric has been doing work down here. I feel the wall carefully. There’s a definite gap at the top and down the sides, but if it’s a door there are no hinges. No marks of it scraping on the floor as it opens. I try to push it – nothing. I stand back and think. Eric is clever – he is an architect, an engineer. He likes puzzles, things of beauty and symmetry. There’s not a lot of room, so does it slide? I place my palms against it, getting a slight purchase on the rough plaster. I try to push it to the right, it does not budge. And then to the left. Nothing. Knees bent, I try to lift it.

It gives, there is a deep rumble from the other side. The door settles back down. The rumble ceases. I had nearly set something in motion. I think of the little gate on his water clock, a single flat piece of glass that can rise and fall counterweighted by the water at the other side. Is this the practical version? A water door?

I sit on the floor and stick my fingers into the space at the bottom. It should be full of dust and bugs but it is clean. Clean means it’s been used, frequently and recently. I curl my fingertips under the concrete slab. Again a slight lift and then it settles back. I think of the water clock with the little portcullis and the counterweight tub of water. It needed the weight of the water to pull up the portcullis. It has been raining steadily all day. It had been raining hard before Lorna fell out of the sky. My heart almost stops when I realize that Gilly and Sophie had waited until the rain went off before they went out. Now I know a connection.

I put my fingers under the door again, it feels slightly lighter. But I still can’t lift it. Nor can I walk away. Sophie could be in there. I am not going to leave her there. Or anyone else.