Death in the Black Wood

by Oliver Davies

  Our van had parked up in the layby between seven and seven fifteen on Monday morning and left again before seven forty five. With little traffic about in the immediate area, we were satisfied that we were looking at the same vehicle that had driven past the Arnolds’ house between six forty five and seven before turning east onto the B9006. If it was, the driver would certainly have spotted Chris heading for Culloden Moor. If they’d been at all familiar with his regular running routes, that would have been enough to tell them that he’d chosen the woods for his exercise that morning. From the images Shay had pieced together, we believed the van had continued on to Croy before circling back to the layby.

  Enquiries in Croy had been no more fruitful than those in Leanach. Nobody had paid the van any attention, although several thought they may have seen it pass by that morning, and none of the locals had security cameras that could provide us with an image of it. We had nothing but the size and colour of the van and the time of the abduction. Our culprit must have turned off Chris’s phone immediately and removed the SIM card from it. He could have tossed it anywhere at any point after that. Heading straight for the town centre after the abduction had been a well calculated move too.

  One useful result of obtaining those satellite images was that it had drastically cut down Philips’ list. Anyone without access to a matching vehicle could be safely eliminated from the suspect pool. I didn’t derive any comfort from that. Shay’s conviction that the list of local residents on antipsychotic prescriptions would prove to be a dead end had infected me too thoroughly to be shaken off.

  “Still, maybe now it’s worth checking single occupancy dwellings against van owners.” He’d told me on Monday afternoon, when he called me after sending the images over. “That shouldn’t give us an excessively long list.”

  “How long will that take you?”

  “Less than a couple of days, hopefully. Once I have the addresses, I can just feed them into the DVLA then sort the results for matches. I should warn you that it might not help though. Just because we think they’re living alone doesn’t mean any existing records won’t still list additional residents. Plus, this could be someone who’s living here temporarily, house sitting for absent relatives wintering abroad, for example, or who bought the van before moving here. In that case, their registration won’t even be in this area.” I knew he felt obliged to spell out every possibility, but I really didn’t like hearing that.

  Good as his word, his lists came through just after lunch on Wednesday afternoon. Fifty three names and fifty three addresses for white vans and another hundred and sixty four for vans of other colours because ‘it’s not hard to respray if you know what you’re doing.’

  McKinnon dropped in to my office to speak with me face to face after I’d sent the new list on to him, along with Shay’s cautionary note about its potential usefulness and limitations.

  “Our family liaison officer at the Arnolds reports that there still haven’t been any ransom demands or contact attempts from the kidnapper,” he told me as he dropped into a chair.

  I met his piercing stare with equal anxiety. It was getting a little late for that to have been likely but we’d been nursing a thread of hope that this might still turn out to be a financially motivated crime.

  “If it’s our killer and if they mean to strike again on the night of the full moon, we’ve only got six days left to find them in James.”

  He nodded glumly as I swung my chair in a tight little arc.

  “Aye, we’re all well aware of that Conall. Here,” he pushed a sheet across my desk at me, “I’ve split the lists up. Those sixty are for your team to crack on with. None of them match up with Philips’ lot, so I’ve pulled his team off that for now and given him another dozen uniforms to help him get through the rest of them.”

  “Alright. And what, precisely, are we to do when we visit these people? Are you hoping to obtain search warrants to cover them all?” He shook his head.

  “We can’t go that far, not yet. We don’t have enough evidence to argue probable cause and the Magistrates’ Court wouldn’t issue them. What we can do is speak to the occupants face to face, see if they’re physically capable of being responsible for the abductions, observe whether they display any odd behaviour or speech patterns and request permission to look around. We’ll evaluate the situation and see where we stand once they’ve all been checked.”

  It wasn’t ideal, but the existing restrictions on our search powers were there for a very good reason. It went without saying that if we hadn’t found Chris Arnold before Tuesday, we’d pull in every man and woman we could spare to keep an eye on all the unsearched locations still on the list.

  “What’s your cousin focusing his attention on next?” James asked.

  “He did consider checking for vehicle movements leaving and returning to the properties he listed but he decided against it. If our culprit is being cautious, they may have anticipated that and stayed elsewhere overnight, as well as taking their time returning home. If he found nothing, he’d have used all of our time up on a wild goose chase. Plus, he thinks that the chances of our culprit being on those lists is perhaps fifty per cent, at best.”

  “Aye, I read his notes, but Christ, Conall, we’ve got several thousand vans like that in Inverness. There has to be some way of cutting those numbers down.”

  “Given time, yes. But we’d need a couple of dozen analysts of my cousin’s calibre to run that many background checks in under a month.” I didn’t need to add that we had no chance of finding such people, or of co-opting them if we did. “Nothing useful from the material Davie and the boys collected up at the abduction scene yet?”

  Another head shake. “Not so much as a hair that wasn’t Chris Arnold’s. And our man used his shoe cover trick again too. He’s being cautious and clever, however crazy he might be.”

  “Or she,” I corrected him. “I know the chances of that are low but we can’t ignore the possibility.” Chris Arnold was taller and heavier than Dominic Chuol had been, but a small percentage of women would be capable of lifting him without injuring themselves.

  “Aye, there’s that too. So what is your cousin doing?”

  “He says he has other work he can get on with until we can feed him more information and that none of the searches he could run in time would be any help as things currently stand. I’m sorry, James, but he knows what he’s talking about. If there was anything Shay could usefully do, he’d be doing it.” McKinnon nodded gloomily and gave me an acknowledging grunt.

  “I don’t doubt it. The lad’s bloody good, but we can’t expect miracles.” He pushed himself up again and stood looking down at me. “Chief Anderson had some very nice things to say about your report on our car thieves by the way. That was quite a gamble you took there, Conall, putting in that many hours on a hunch.”

  I shrugged. “He’ll have checked the NAS logs, no doubt. I did a lot of it on my own time, evenings and weekends.”

  “He did check. ‘Commendable tenacity,’ I believe was the phrase he used.”

  After my first set of searches had failed to produce any results, I’d repeated the whole process to cover the next four hours, from nine until one on each of my dates of interest and been luckier the second time around than I’d been on my first attempt. I’d found two likely licence plates turning up with significant frequency. The NAS had then given me a list of every time either vehicle had been registered passing an ANPR camera in the last ninety days, creating a very interesting pattern on the map. Not only had they driven between Inverness and Glasgow on the right days to be carrying stolen vehicles away, they’d also been busily shuttling back and forth between Glasgow and Stirling and Glasgow and Perth back in November. I’d sent my detailed report to Chief Superintendent Anderson as soon as I’d completed it on Friday evening.

  “He’s got a team of analysts working on looking further back and he also sent your report on down to your old Chief in Glasgow,” James told me. “I doubt it will take t
hem long to track our gang back to their base now they’ve got an alert out on those plates.”

  “That’s gratifying to hear,” I told him unenthusiastically. “If we had ANPR cameras in more locations, it would certainly help with cases like our current priority. Just imagine if we’d caught that van’s number plate before we lost track of it.”

  “Aye, we’d all love to see the network extended but getting the approval, and the funding, for it is another matter entirely.” He gave me a reproving little shake of the head. “I know this case is eating you up laddie, but you need to learn to enjoy your wins too or you’ll burn yourself out before you reach fifty, let alone sixty.” I met his stare evenly.

  “I’m sorry, James, but catching a gang of car thieves just doesn’t feel significant at the moment. Does Angela Arnold know about our fears?”

  “Lord, no! It’s bad enough her husband’s missing without adding to her anxiety. She knows we suspect he may have been abducted, that’s all. You’re forgetting, Conall, we have no definitive proof that he even was. For all we know he could have got into that van voluntarily. He wouldn’t be the first man to abandon his family or to run off with a new partner.”

  “That’s an odd thing to find myself wishing to be true, but your people must have gone through the Arnolds’ social media accounts by now, as well as checking with co-workers and friends of the family. I’m sure they’ve given you the same picture that Shay’s given me. There’s not the slightest hint of anything like that going on.”

  “No. The Arnolds appear to be a happy, devoted couple, by all accounts. All marriages have their ups and downs but a partnership that can survive the armed forces for so long has to be a strong one, with him away from home so often. Besides, you’d think he’d at least have packed a bag if he intended to run off.” He gave me a final nod. “You have your list. I’d best get back to Burnett Road. Keep me updated, Conall.”

  “Of course. Thanks for dropping by, Sir.” He’d opened the door by then and I still wouldn’t use his first name in front of junior officers, even if I’d finally yielded on doing so when we were alone.

  After he’d left, I found myself wondering what Shay might really be doing. I knew my cousin. There wasn’t a chance in hell he’d gone back to whatever his current assignment might be, at least not without setting some more searches in motion first. He mustn’t be holding out much hope of any of them paying off or he’d have told me about them. Shay didn’t like to raise false hopes or mention slim chances.

  Still, I couldn’t help hoping that he might still pull off a miracle and help us find Chris Arnold before it was too late.

  Twelve

  The Ally

  This one was strong. It chose not to act as pathetically as the last one had. Even though it was just sitting there quietly he could tell it was calculating, plotting. The aura this time was red, throbbing, menacing.

  “They do like to use killers when they can. A willingness to take human lives makes it so much easier for our enemies to get in and destroy them. You needn’t worry about it getting loose though. You’re safe.”

  He knew he was. It wouldn’t be able to get out of those restraints. He’d been startled to find it with a hand loose on Tuesday morning but that had been easy enough to deal with. A good jolt from the taser through the bars before entering the cell and it had been helpless to prevent him from securing it in a way that wouldn’t allow that to happen again. He didn’t know what it had hoped to gain by breaking its thumb like that. Even if it had managed to free both hands, the ankles were another matter entirely, and it didn’t have any tools to work with.

  It had stopped trying to talk to him, again, although he didn’t expect that to last. Now it was just listening intently.

  “Yes, I know you can hear me,” The Companion told it. “You’ll have realised by now, what we are and what that means. This planet is interdicted and what you are trying to achieve here is an abomination.”

  “You’re hallucinating and delusional, you do realise that, don’t you? Having conversations with yourself, ranting about aliens.” It stared up at me, faking concern. The man who used to live in that body had had a nice, friendly face. “Son, you need medical help. A doctor could make it all stop, believe me. Just get yourself to the hospital.” It raised an arm slightly making the chain clink. “What have you got to lose? I’m not going anywhere, am I?”

  Bastard! I felt a first lick of warning fire flick lightly through my head and flinched, expecting worse to come.

  “You shut the fuck up,” I warned it. “I know what you’re trying to do.” I snatched up the taser and pointed it threateningly. “Forbidden means forbidden!”

  “Okay, okay, calm down, son. I’m just trying to help you out here.” Its voice sounded raspy. The body it was wearing must be getting pretty thirsty by now, despite the odd mouthfuls of water it had managed to sneak in when I hosed it down. It ought to be weaker too. Five days without food should have affected it more than it had. “It’s hard to understand, though. I mean, let’s face it, if either of us was being controlled by a hostile alien intelligence, it would have to be you, right? And it’s making you kidnap people? Kill them?”

  “Ignore it. It’s not a person.”

  “Only why, if these aliens are battling each other, would they pick guys like us to fight through? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the hostile ones to target people with real power and for the friendly ones to give us the technology to spot them with? Why don’t you ask your friend to teach you how to build a machine that can show us what you see?”

  Oh! That would be amazing! The Companions wouldn’t need people like me then. Anyone could do the work. Everyone could! I heard a sorrowful sighing sound.

  “It knows we can’t. If we start breaking laws like that, we’d be as culpable of interference as they are. You humans have to work it out for yourselves. That’s why the enemy are here. To prevent you from getting that far.” The Companion sounded coldly angry in its own quiet way. “As for the powerful, don’t you think a lot of them have been taken? How else would you explain the endless wars and suffering on this planet? I think you should gag it. It’s only trying to confuse you, make you doubt your purpose.”

  Damned right it was!

  I squeezed the trigger and was rewarded with a wash of approval as the two electrodes flew out and struck my captive in the chest. I gave it the full five second burst as it collapsed sideways and lay prone, muscles contracting uncontrollably. That should keep it unable to react for a few minutes. I unlocked the cell door.

  “Give it another burst, just in case. Better safe than sorry.” My Companion was right, and I did so gladly. It wasn’t hard to force a bundled cloth into its mouth before quickly taping over it. There. The sneaky bastard wouldn’t be able to trouble me any more now.

  Distraction summarily dealt with, I locked the door again and went to sit down at the table. The new set of markings I was to use was proving difficult to memorise, and they’d need to be smaller and neater this time. I was practising my work on those with a piece of belly pork and a craft knife.

  “What do they mean?” I asked curiously.

  “It’s a message, and it doesn’t concern you. You wouldn’t understand it, anyway. Just keep trying. You’re doing very well.”

  I didn’t like it, but I did as I was told. I was pretty sure that I’d lost time again yesterday and I wasn’t too happy about that either. The Companion rarely seized control of my body for itself but we both knew that however reluctantly it occasionally did so, it wouldn’t let its finer feelings stop it from performing its duty. It wasn’t at all the same as what the enemy did, stealing memories and destroying the host entirely. Necessity could be a cruel master and I knew that our kindly allies felt they had been tainted by their struggle on our behalf over the years. The Companion probably hated inhabiting my flesh far more than I disliked it doing so. Holding a grudge would be ungrateful, to say the least. I’d volunteered, hadn’t I? I was pretty sure I had,
even if the details had become rather fuzzy.

  “Of course you did! And it was one of the happiest moments of my existence when you agreed to help us. You are such a treasure to us all! Now, please stop thinking about things that upset you before I have to intervene again.” We certainly didn’t want that!

  “Alright, talk me through what I need to do on Tuesday night again. I don’t want to risk making a mistake.”

  Our captive seemed to have decided to stay on the floor. Even after I knew it had recovered from the shocks I’d given it, there was no sign of it trying to sit up again. Now and then, as my instructions were repeated, I could have sworn it made some little choking noises, like an upset human would do… or an alien that had only just realised that it was going to die.

  Well, the real Chris Arnold had been dead for some time and that thing had been living his life, playing with his children, perhaps even fucking his wife, which was revolting to even think about. Our adversaries would do whatever they had to in order to convince everyone that they were who they were pretending to be. They cared only for their own kind and you couldn’t compare their emotions to human emotions. At least I’d saved the man’s family from any more of that sort of vile manipulation. Let them grieve their loss, as they rightly should, even if they never discovered how long the man had already been dead for.

  For myself, as I made another series of careful cuts in the pigskin and listened, again, to my instructions, I couldn’t help but feel my impatience growing. Yes, the work was both vital and necessary but if I was being honest with myself I knew that I cared more about the reward I would be given, once I’d completed my work satisfactorily, than anything else.