The Exiled (18 page)

It took forty minutes in the end—most of it negotiated through particularly heavy rush hour traffic heading into Glasgow. Sandy pulled off in the East End, taking residential roads through streets Alan didn’t know and bringing them to a halt in a small car park opposite a row of three-story sandstone townhouses.

“Home sweet home,” Sandy said. “Come on—there’s nobody about—at least nobody that would shop you to the police—let’s get you inside.”

They made an incongruous couple—him all in leather, her in the combat fatigues—as they went across the road into a stairwell and up to the second-floor landing. They almost made it without being seen, but just as Sandy turned her key in the lock the door of the apartment opposite opened and an elderly lady peered out. She looked Alan up and down.

“A party, was it? Fancy dress or bondage?” she asked.

“A bit of both, Sarah,” Sandy replied. “I’ll be keeping this one for a bit—don’t tell Tony, he’ll want extra rent.”

The elderly woman looked Alan up and down again.

“You can drop him off with me when you’ve finished with him,” she said, and did something disgusting with her false teeth. “I like a bit of rough.”

It was all Alan could do to keep a straight face as Sandy bundled him inside.

* * *

Sandy’s apartment was larger than his own back in Edinburgh, and was filled to bursting point with old furniture, tall bookshelves and antiques from across the spectrum of Scottish history. On another day he could cheerfully have whittled away hours in browsing. But the entrance into the confined space—and the lack of menthol smoke to cover the smell—meant that he was now all too aware of the reek festering inside his leathers.

“I need a change of clothes,” he said.

“And a shower,” she replied. “First on the left. You can use the towels behind the door. I’ll get some coffee on.”

He did as he was told. The leathers were a lot more difficult to get off than to put on, and the shower room too small for much maneuvering, but he got there in the end and luxuriated in the simple pleasure of a hot wash. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the water—and was immediately hit with the memory of Galloway running headlong into John, his brother’s face wracked with pain as he took the hit.

After that he couldn’t take any pleasure in the shower. He washed briskly, and dressed from what he’d brought in his bag. His overnight wash kit was still there too, so he was able to brush his teeth and have a perfunctory shave. He stuffed the leathers into his bag and took it back out into the lobby, leaving it there beneath a rack of coats.

“Coffee’s ready,” Sandy shouted.

He followed the sound through to a well-appointed kitchen. She sat at a breakfast bar in front of a laptop, and slid a mug of coffee across to him as he walked in.

“I’m on Wi-Fi here if you want to go online,” she said. “Network is
Cobbe
, password is
blackbird
. I’ll be out in ten and then we can talk.”

Alan retrieved his laptop bag and got set up, putting in his headphones to drown out the sound and resultant mental images of Sandy taking a shower. He made a cursory check of the news but didn’t learn anything new, then turned his mind to how they might track down Simon’s people—the exiles as he’d come to think of them.

Trouble was, he couldn’t think where to begin—John’s predicament was still too big in his mind, crowding out everything else, and he couldn’t bring any focus to the task. It took Sandy to show him where to start.

She returned from her shower dressed in jeans and a sweater and looked ten years younger than before. She made some more coffee and placed another mug in front of Alan as—not for the first time—he swore in frustration at his lack of progress.

“That good, eh?” Sandy said as she sat at her own machine.

“I’m getting nowhere. We know these exiles are here—or at least, Simon says they are. But can we trust him? There’s something off about this whole thing—I can’t put my finger on it yet, but trust me, I’m a reporter, and my instincts are telling me there’s more to this than Simon is letting on.”

Sandy lit another of the menthol cigarettes and sipped coffee while bringing up a page on her screen. “I wasn’t going to show you this until I dug a bit further to make sure it’s authentic,” she said, turning her laptop so they could both see it. “But I think I’ve got a lead.”

She was in a browser session, and the heading on the site read “The Masonic Conspiracy—the ringleaders.”

“It’s buried deep in Ferguson’s site,” she said, taking the mouse and scrolling down. “It came to me in the car—what if the auld nutter was nearly right? The text is more of the usual shite he was always spouting—but I found an interesting picture.”

The screen scrolled up until there was a picture full in the frame.

Two men stood outside a stone lodge. The heading read “The elusive Baird brothers before a meeting at their house in Tummel Bridge.”

They weren’t smiling at the camera, indeed it did not seem they even knew the camera was there, for the picture had obviously been taken with a zoom lens at its longest setting. But even despite the slight graininess and lack of focus the resemblance was obvious.

They could have been Simon’s brothers.

23

Once again Grainger woke out of darkness into pain and confusion, but this time there was no ambulance, no morphine to ease the transition. He lay on something hard and cold. It took him a second to realize he was bound to the stone altar in the main body of the ruined building. He looked up to blue sky through the broken rafters that were all that remained of the roof. It hurt to turn his head, as if his neck and shoulders were bruised and battered, but by straining to his right he could look straight down the aisle and out through the main door to the flat ground on the cliff top beyond.

Galloway—or whatever you called the thing he was becoming—stood there, arms raised, holding something up to the open beak of the Cobbe as it loomed over him. Grainger struggled to focus but blood and sweat stung in his eyes, and he couldn’t brush them away—he was bound far too tightly.

It was only when he turned to his left that he found the main source of the pain—his left arm was gone, torn out from the shoulder. The swollen, puffy flesh around the wound was stitched in thick black thread—the same crude needlework he’d seen on the dead girls. He thrashed and tugged but there was no give in the bonds as he turned back to shout at Galloway.

“Bastard!”

His vision cleared long enough for him to make out what the man was doing—he offered a sacrifice to the Cobbe—a long left arm, red and still dripping.

Grainger screamed and pulled at his bonds. A fresh pain flared at the new wound, cold light burning like fire through his brain, scorching all further thought as oblivion called.

He dove into it gratefully.

24

Alan was surprised to be startled awake out of a deep sleep. They were in the SUV, on a single-track road along a steep-sided valley with mist rolling down from the heights through purple heather and gray, lichen-covered rocks.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere in North Perthshire—about ten miles from the lodge. Welcome back—you’ve been out for a while.”

The last thing Alan remembered was leaving the outskirts of Glasgow. They made a trip to a hunting and camping supplies store that took a bit longer than they anticipated, but in the end they’d got what Sandy wanted. He’d helped her pack the goods in the back of the SUV and they’d set off through more Glasgow suburbs. She smoked, he drank coffee, and they talked about Ferguson, and the exiles, then… then nothing. He must have just nodded off, almost midsentence as the last few days finally caught up with him. His head felt as cloudy as the hilltops.

“You’ve been out over two hours,” Sandy said and smiled. “There’s still some coffee in the Thermos and some biscuits in the bag. I’ll join you.”

She pulled over in a small lay-by perched on an outcrop above a foaming waterfall. There was no other traffic and the rolling mist gave the whole scene an otherworldly air that only served to remind Alan of his brother, stuck elsewhere.

“What’s the plan then?” he said as he poured coffee. “Just walk up to the door and tell them who we are?”

“Or we could have a quiet look around the place first? Get the lay of the land before charging in?”

Alan shook his head.

“There’s no time to be subtle about this. John needs me—every minute I waste is a minute he doesn’t have. Besides, I’m a reporter—it’s my job to ask direct questions. Straight at it and don’t spare the horses.”

Sandy lit another of the sickly menthol cigarettes and followed the smoke down with coffee before replying.

“You shouldn’t get your hopes too high. Remember, we’re chasing something we found on Ferguson’s site—you talked to him, you know that less than half the stuff he came out with had any basis in reality.”

Alan finished off his coffee before replying.

“You saw them—they’re Simon’s folk all right; no doubt about it. Who else looks like that outside of a sci-fi convention? The only question is whether they’re going to be on our side—or that of the Cobbe?”

“Okay then, if that’s what you want to do. Let’s go ask them,” Sandy replied. She tipped the remains of her coffee out the driver’s side window and they drove off into thickening mist.

* * *

They reached the estate entrance some fifteen minutes later, drawing up in front of an imposing pair of twin stone columns with a built-in cast-iron gateway that looked more like a portcullis. A ten-foot-tall wall stretched away along the road on either side of it. The gate seemed to be firmly closed, and there was no sign of activity on the other side.

Despite the apparent age of the gateway, a small tannoy system hung in a nook on one of the columns, just at the right height for a driver to speak into it if they wanted entry.

Sandy leaned out, pushed a button and spoke.

“We’re here to see the Baird brothers on urgent business.”

At first Simon thought there was nobody home. The tannoy sat silent, and the mist swirling around the SUV was the only movement. Sandy spoke into the tannoy again.

“It concerns Simon, and the Cobbe.”

With a loud creak and groan the gate swung wide open.

“I guess that’s an invitation?” Sandy said. “Shall we accept?”

“Lay on, MacDuff,” Alan replied.

They drove through the gate—Alan saw it close behind them when he looked back in the wing mirror. The driveway led into a long avenue of stunted oaks and chestnuts, all showing signs of great age; all bent and bowed, lending the avenue the air of a long green tunnel stretching into a dark distance. The road surface was dirt and gravel, and there were no tracks ahead of them to show that anyone had driven it anytime recently.

After almost a mile the avenue opened out into a paved driveway through an overgrown garden of roses and rhododendrons. It led them up an incline to the dwelling itself—an imposing, almost cubic, tower of rough stone perched on a cliff edge overlooking a mist-covered loch beyond. It had been built with little regard for its aesthetics—the windows—only four of them visible—were small and thin, symmetrically positioned around a tall oak door above a short set of stone steps. There were no decorative features whatsoever and the whole thing looked as gray and uninviting as the mist itself.

As Sandy brought the SUV to a stop in front of the entrance more mist rolled over the building, obscuring the highest parts of the battlements. She switched off the engine and they sat in silence for several seconds.

“Nice to see that traditional Scottish hospitality is still practiced somewhere,” Sandy said dryly. “What now?”

“We do what we came to do.” Alan got out the vehicle. “Let’s see if I can get a foot in the door.”

He went up the stone steps and looked for a doorbell. There was only a heavy iron knocker in the shape of a serpent eating its own tail. Heavy dents and scarring showed that it had been in place on the door for a very long time. Alan added to the dents by rapping it, as hard as he could manage, three times against the wood.

The door swung open noiselessly, revealing a long, empty hall beyond. Alan had a flashback to his first visit to the farmhouse, and having to grope around in darkness before getting ambushed.

I’m not about to make that mistake again.

He stood on the doorstep, listening. Sandy came up to his side. She had put a loose jacket on, and Alan wondered if the pistol was in a holster on her hip. He was also considering going back to the SUV to get himself a weapon when a voice spoke from inside.

“Come away in,” a soft Highland accent said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

With Sandy at his shoulder, Alan walked into the hallway—a tall channel of oak paneling festooned with hunting trophies, weaponry and faded oil paintings of rugged landscapes, deer and eagles. Tattered rugs that at one time might have been Persian and expensive partially covered scratched and tarnished floorboards. The whole place had the air of a country hotel slowly going to seed.