‘You are quite right of course, General Kirk. Private families are clamouring to adopt children and it would have been impossible for us to fill our home in the normal manner. We had to go into the gutter for them.’ She was looking at Marcus who stood rigidly by the far wall.
‘Our charges are all normal, healthy children of high intelligence, Sir Marcus, but they have backgrounds which many people might find frightening—the offspring of criminals and the mentally unstable. You all know what Anna Harb is, while Sidney Molson’s parents both committed suicide by slashing their wrists, and the child witnessed it. Does that answer your question, General?’
‘Yes, madam, it does.’ Kirk stared gloomily out of the window, the woman took another sip from her cup, Cameron and the police inspector were considering the terrain of the island—the areas that had been searched, those which remained, the few possible hiding places that were left for Anna Harb—and for a moment there was silence. Marcus was thinking about Peter Haynes.
For Haynes should have realized what caused Mary Valley’s night terrors; not hereditary insanity, not any racial memories of the past, but something much simpler. An insane mother who not only dabbled in the occult but had tried to give her daughter clairvoyant powers too. What had been done to that little girl before she was removed from Harb’s care? What mental and physical suffering had been inflicted during her training? Above all, what was significant about those patterned wounds on Sidney Molson’s body? Though he was a scientist and normally rejected the supernatural as unproven, Marcus felt that they should tell him something which was without any logical basis.
‘Now, General, may we know the reason for your rather extraordinary line of questioning?’ Without any embarrassment the Chief Constable had raised a hip flask to his lips and knocked back a stiff peg of whisky.
‘We are hunting a murderess who is known to have an insane hatred of not only her own daughter, but the whole of the Van Traylen Fellowship which she believes stole the child from her. All we have to do is to find that woman and everything else is unimportant.’
‘You are probably right.’ Normally Kirk would have snapped back at the rebuke, but he was too tired and bewildered to feel any resentment. ‘All the same, I feel sure that Anna Harb cannot be the only force at work. It is inconceivable that one woman could have accomplished so much or remained undetected over such a long period.’ He kept glancing at his companions in turn as he tried to explain his theory, and every word caused him acute embarrassment because he knew it was untenable. That Anna Harb was not the only parent who felt that her child had been stolen from her and turned against her to become a soul that should not have been born. That a group of crazy men and women were engaged in a war against the Fellowship; plotting and watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike and destroy every member of the society which Helen Van Traylen had founded for the benefit of young and old alike. That the war would continue long after Anna Harb was found. That some of these people could be on the island now, hidden amongst the crowds of sightseers which had filled the ferry boats at every recent sailing.
‘Tell me something, Sir Marcus.’ Mrs Alison had obviously not been listening to Kirk but had stared at Marcus all the time he was speaking. ‘You are a doctor and you examined the little boy’s body. Were the wounds simply delivered out of wanton cruelty, or was there a pattern to them?’
‘There was a pattern, I’m afraid.’ As he answered, that broken, tortured body was clear behind Marcus’s eyes. Wanton stabs and slashes, three deep wounds, any one of which would have caused death, but there had also been holes through each foot and palm, a gash in the side and a criss-cross of scratches on the forehead which might have been caused by thorns. ‘You think that Sidney’s murder may have been a ritual killing, Mrs Alison?’
‘I think nothing, Sir Marcus.’ She took off her glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. Without them her eyes were very bright and intelligent, though full of suffering.
‘All I know is that I am suddenly very frightened because I have always considered the possibility of a force of pure evil and I am now sure that it exists.’
‘Madam, General Kirk, Sir Marcus, please let us try to keep a sense of perspective.’ Good, pious materialism thundered from the inspector’s lips. ‘There is no ten-headed devil walking those hills, but a criminal lunatic who will be under lock and key at any moment.
‘And that could very well tell us that she already is.’ An intercom whirred on the desk and he hurried over to answer it.
‘Inspector Grant here.’ He pressed a switch and a shrill, anxious, but also demanding voice came through the loudspeaker.
‘Is Mrs Alison there? I want Mrs Alison? We all want her . . . Tell her to come home now . . . at once,’ said the voice which Marcus recognized as Mary Valley’s.
Chapter Thirteen
More troops had landed during the night and a convoy was driving into Lochern as they left the town. Police and soldiers on motor bicycles kept roaring past them and once they had to give way to a party of farmers mounted on shaggy Highland ponies. They also knew that lookouts were stationed on every major peak. Bala was a small island and yard by yard it was being combed to find a single woman. So far the Dormobile was the only proof of her existence.
‘Why can’t he drive faster?’ The police car was crawling along the narrow road held back by Cameron’s aged Morris and Mrs Alison turned to Kirk and Marcus on the seat behind her. ‘I know they must be safe, that the grounds are cordoned off, but after hearing that child on the telephone . . .’
‘Don’t worry, dear lady.’ Kirk gave a reassuring smile. Mary Valley had not sounded frightened or anxious on the telephone, but demanding. ‘Come back . . . We need you . . . Now.’ She might have been a domineering employer speaking to a servant.
‘Some terrible things have happened, but I am convinced the danger is over, Mrs Alison. The orphanage is cordoned off, as you say, and the woman is bound to be found at any moment. Aren’t I right, Constable?’
‘Maybe, General.’ The driver lifted a gloved hand and pointed out to sea. A drifter was lying hove to on the swell, and they could see a group of men on her bridge scanning the coastline through binoculars and telescopes. ‘They’re doing all they can, but this is a wild country. I mind that two winters back a party of boy scouts were lost on the Blyven Range over yonder.’ His hand pointed inland at a line of jagged crags to the left and Marcus fancied he could see a group of figures toiling up the nearest ridge. ‘For a full week we searched for the bairns, and when we found them, in a cave where they’d been sheltering, the poor wee souls had been dead for three days, frozen solid. Aye, a wild, sad island is Bala. They say that it is lonely and likes to hide things and keep them to itself.’ The road had turned seaward towards a wide, sandy cove and he pointed again. ‘That is Spaniards’ Bay and an Armada ship is down there somewhere. She is supposed to have foundered while sheltering from a gale. The Santa Pilar her name was, and the story went that she carried gold and silver coin to pay the whole army in Flanders. Maybe that was just wishful thinking, but she is certainly said to have sunk there and the old laird, the Chief Constable’s father, wellnigh beggared the family sending divers down to look for her. The strange thing is that, though the ocean bed is clear rock with no sludge at all, they didn’t come up with so much as a single piece of timber.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this, Mrs Alison, but even after what she’s done I can’t help feeling sorry for that poor demented creature if she’s hiding out on our hills. The tourists come and admire them from motor cars, climbers and hikers rave over them, but most of the island folk hate every crag and glen of the old devils.’
‘I think I can understand what you mean.’ Marcus always felt vaguely ill-at-ease and excited amongst hills and there was something both sad and menacing about these. To the south, the blue Cuillins of Skye dominated the horizon, and behind him the mainland peaks stretched away towards the north. They looked quite differen
t to the bleak mountains of Bala. The land which the gods had forgotten, the early Norse explorers had called the island; a place which likes to hide things and keep them to itself. Like the driver, Marcus also felt sympathy for Anna Harb. A murderess, a maniac bent on some horrible war of revenge and destruction, but also pathetic; still a human being with the forces of both man and nature pitted against her. He could not accept Kirk’s theories that Anna Harb had accomplices and he had given up trying to form a theory for himself. In his own mind he was quite sure she was completely alone.
‘You’d know it better, if you stayed on Bala for a year, sir.’ The driver drew up in a passing place to allow a lorry filled with marine commandos to thunder by. ‘Each year at the opening of the games, the laird makes the same speech about it being the home which we will always come back to, but I think he’s trying to convince himself. Why, there were twenty thousand souls on the island before the first war and less than five thousand at the last census.’ He let in the clutch, nodding towards a ruined farm house by the roadside. A stunted tree grew through its broken roof and creepers covered the walls, giving it the appearance of a yew hedge which had been trained and moulded for centuries in an English park.
‘Do you mind what happened when they started the ferry service, Mrs Alison?’ The driver was bored by crawling behind Cameron and he obviously liked the sound of his own voice. ‘In the old days, John Gordon’s motor boat was the only link we had with the outside world, but then the railway built the jetty at Lochern and advertised the car ferries. They thought they would encourage the tourist trade and bring the people back to the island. But exactly the opposite happened and they’ve been losing money ever since. When the first steamer tied up, there were half a dozen families waiting to go back on her. They’d finally been given the chance to get their furniture over to the mainland. I’ll be off myself, as soon as my old mother has passed away, gentlemen. Three of the family are in Canada already and they say that there’s grand openings for a man over there.’
‘They must find her soon.’ Kirk was watching a naval helicopter circling low down over the moor. ‘The army and the navy and the marines. Every modern aid against a single woman. She can’t hide out for much longer.’
‘My guess is that they’ll never find her, General.’ Kirk had spoken to Marcus but it was the driver who answered. ‘It’s my belief that the poor, crazed creature is dead already and the earth has taken her. She buried the little boy in the peat on Sperry Wastes, and between the wastes and Ben Lind there are bogs which could swallow a battleship. No, Anna Harb won’t trouble you any more, Mrs Alison. She’d be deep under the ground and you can stop worrying.
‘Ah, get on, your lordship, please get on.’ Cameron’s car had stopped at a check point controlled by soldiers and was now lurching up a slope that led away from the sea. ‘The laird’s done a hundred and fifty thousand miles in that old Morris and he boasts that he only gets it serviced every twelvemonth. She’s going to let him down badly one of these days.
‘That’s Inver House over there, gentlemen.’ As the car finally topped the slope they could see a rectangle of buildings surrounded by a stone wall. There was a green field beyond them contrasting vividly with the bracken and heather, and beyond the grass basalt cliffs fell straight down into the sea.
‘Well, everything appears to be under control, Mrs Alison.’ One of the policemen on duty before the gate held open the car doors and Cameron came grinning towards them. ‘Everybody all present and accounted for, but Serjeant Mackay here tells me that Lord Fawnlee still refuses to let him station men inside the grounds. Most unwise that; asking for trouble in my opinion.’
‘Michael Fawnlee knows what he is doing, Chief Constable.’ With Cameron’s assurance that all was well, some of the strain had left her face. ‘We don’t want the children to know what is happening, as I told you. We are most grateful for your protection, but the presence of strangers in the grounds would be bound to show them that something is wrong. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go and see why Mary telephoned.’ Mrs Alison turned and hurried off through the gates.
‘Poor, demented fools.’ Cameron snorted. ‘They don’t seem to realize that without full co-operation we can’t give them any proper protection at all. Why don’t you and Sir Marcus go in and try to put some sense into ’em, General? They might listen to strangers. Probably think I’m just an officious old fool.
‘And what the hell are those young hooligans doing here, Serjeant Mackay?’ A hundred yards away a group of thirty or more teenagers were sprawled out on the heather watching the gate with morbid fascination. ‘I gave orders that this area was to be cleared and it’s still crawling with Glasgow keelies. Nobody appears to pay the slightest attention to me, man. Do I have to see to everything personally?
‘You boys, clear off immediately. Get back to the road and out of here, do you hear me? I am the Chief Constable of the island and I have forbidden civilians to come past that check point.’ The laird brandished his walking stick and marched purposefully over the moor as if preparing for the charge at Culloden.
‘A sad place with a very sad history, Mark.’ Kirk had been reading a local guide book and he looked interestedly around the quadrangle as they followed Mrs Alison through the gate. Inver House had been a Norman castle once, and before that a Viking fort. Wotan had been worshipped there and Christian missionaries hurled head first from the cliffs. Then Celt and Viking had intermarried, producing families which were often a strange mixture of dark-and fair-haired children, and the centuries had passed through a series of petty wars and forays. At the foot of the main building it was still possible to see the foundations of the medieval keep and Kirk had read that two of the island’s hereditary chieftains had been beheaded in its main hall. But not only Scotsmen had suffered at Inver House. Another Armada ship, a Portuguese galleas, sheltered in the bay and her crew had been welcomed ashore and then stripped naked by the local inhabitants and turned out to starve on the hills. Charles Edward Stuart was said to have slept the night there during his flight from Skye, and a supposedly tear-stained pillow was lodged in an Edinburgh museum as proof. After the depopulation of the Highlands, the building had remained an empty shell till a Victorian speculator built the present structure: a huge pile of Highland baronial architecture, with mock towers and battlements resembling Glamis, heraldic beasts mounted around the walls and two cannon stationed before the main entrance. The speculator had intended to use it as an hotel, but he had died bankrupt with his work unfinished and the structure had slowly decayed; a shelter for sheep and a home for ravens. A few more decades would have revealed a complete ruin, but seven years ago the Van Traylen Fellowship had come on the scene.
‘They’ve spent a devil of a lot of money on it, Charles.’ Marcus noted the freshly painted stonework, the green lawn, the swimming pool, and line of children’s slides and swings. It really did look as if the old house might have a purpose at last, but he supposed that that was over. Ten of the Van Traylen guardians were dead and the Fellowship was bound to break up. Then the children would be scattered into other homes and institutions and Inver House left to moulder again.
‘Auntie . . . Auntie Alison. You’re back at last. We’ve been waiting so long for you.’ Shrill cries broke into their thoughts and they saw a group of children come running into the quadrangle. Behind the children came Lord Fawnlee and a tall, grey-haired woman they had not met before. The thing which astonished Kirk and Marcus was that all of them were smiling and laughing.
‘Come with us, Auntie.’ Mary Valley and another little girl clutched Grace Alison’s arms. ‘We’ve been making the guy for the party tonight and we want to show it to you.’
‘And I want to see it, my dears, but the party won’t be tonight, I’m afraid. I know it is November the fifth, but we’ll have to put it off for just a few days.’ Mrs Alison looked helplessly at Fawnlee for support, but he shook his head and smiled.
‘No, Grace, we are not going to
put it off. We are going to have our party on the proper date and it will be the best one we have ever had.’ His eyes glistened with anticipation. ‘Isn’t that so, boys and girls?’
‘Yes, yes, Uncle Michael.’ The children clustered around them, tugging at their clothes and jumping up and down. ‘The boys are bringing driftwood up from the beach for the bonfire and you must come and help us finish the clothes for the guy, Auntie.’
‘Go with them, Grace.’ There was sudden authority in the old man’s voice. ‘While you were out, Laura here and Eric Yeats and I have been talking things over. We have decided that, though we may still be in danger, though evil forces are at work against us, everything must go on as usual. Helen, our founder, wants that, Grace, and we have always obeyed her, haven’t we?’ He watched Mrs Alison follow the children into the building and then turned and held out his hand.
‘General Kirk . . . Sir Marcus Levin. I am delighted to welcome you to Inver House. May I present my friend and colleague Dr Laura Rose, our resident medical officer.’
‘A great pleasure, gentlemen.’ As the woman stepped forward, they saw that she bore a similar stunned expression to that of Grace Alison, but there was no fear or despair in it. She was like someone who had spent years, wearing out her brain to discover some obscure truth and had finally found it. ‘May I say how much I enjoyed your paper on the Enterin 156 Virus, Sir Marcus?’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’ Her grip was warm and firm, but Marcus felt a stab of cold as he looked into her eyes. Sidney Molson had been tortured to death, six human beings had died on the launch, somewhere among the hills a crazed woman might be hiding and waiting to strike again. But these children and old men and women laughed and smiled as if nothing had happened.
‘Do you think that we are callous, Sir Marcus?’ Fawnlee had noted his expression. ‘Do you think we should weep and go into mourning and lock ourselves away in fear.’ He smiled across towards the playground. No children were in sight, but they could hear laughter and the refrain of some nursery rhyme.
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