Death in the Black Wood

by Oliver Davies

  I found what I was looking for in the fourth will that I checked, the one for Brady’s maternal grandmother. She’d owned several properties when she died, and she’d left one of them, a farmhouse outside Balloch, to her grandson. There hadn’t been any direct debit payments to The Highland Council in his old bank account or I’d have seen them straight away, but he could have been pulling cash and making Council Tax payments on the place at a Post Office. Had he transferred the house into the name of whatever identity he was using now, or a different one? And if so, when? How long ago?

  Well, questions like that could wait.

  I pulled the property up on a satellite feed. It looked like exactly the sort of place we’d been expecting him to be using. Most of the original farmland had been sold off by the grandmother years before, but there were a couple of acres left. A private access track ran to the house from the nearest road, a few hundred yards away. There were plenty of mature trees providing screening and no near neighbours. Brady could have been working on the place for a long time before moving last year, or he could have made any alterations and improvements he wanted since then. It didn’t make any sense to spend time poking into any of those possibilities right now. The most urgent task was to figure out if he was actually living there.

  A few hours ago, this discovery would probably have been enough to get me straight on the phone to Conall, but the situation had changed drastically since then. If Brady O’Hara was in that house and had Jimmy Stewart in there with him, then any sign of police activity nearby would probably be enough of a trigger to make him kill the boy. I needed to think this through before I did anything that could not be undone.

  I sent all my mini drones back to their docking stations and lifted their carrier drone from where it had been hiding in a garden shed on Drumossie Avenue that had lost its window glass, just over the car park wall from the station. Then I packed up my things and went to arrange the lift that Conall had suggested so I could follow it home. Half an hour on fast charge back at the house and my stealthy little spies should be back to full power and ready to go again. Meanwhile, I needed to carefully consider my options and figure out the best way to handle the situation.

  Our house was a good fifteen miles from Balloch. It took half an hour for my big drone to fly over there. I found her shelter in a crumbling shed about half a mile from the target property and sent a scout out to have a look around. Two downstairs windows were lit behind their curtains.

  Someone was home.

  The big garage attached to the house was locked up, doors tightly shut. I flew around it, looking for any little openings or cracks that would give me a view inside. One of the grated air vents, high on the walls, soon turned out to be my only option so I positioned my drone to hover as close to one as I dared fly it. I’d chosen the wall on the far side from the house and there was no light coming from inside the garage. The little LED light on the drone wasn’t able to show me anything from there, even when I rotated the camera up and down. If there was a blue van in that garage, I wasn’t going to get a look at it this way.

  There was a car parked outside in the yard though and reading the number plate on that wasn’t a problem. I set my drone down in a tree, facing the front door and looked the plate up in the DVLA. It was a match for the car it was on, which was owned by a local car leasing company. That gave me a way to find out what identity Brady was currently using, if it was him in that house, but that wasn’t something I urgently needed to know just now either. I was still mulling over the two main options I’d pared my list down to.

  Option one: Tell Conall everything. He might agree to let me go in there alone, but the chances of that were extremely low. At the very least, he’d want to come with me, even if he didn’t feel compelled to inform McKinnon, which he probably would. There was no chance I’d let my cousin risk himself like that. Besides, what I had in mind wouldn’t work if I wasn’t alone.

  Option two: Go in alone, but leave everything set up to make sure my cousin received all the information I now possessed at a predetermined time.

  Jimmy’s chances of surviving were significantly higher if I went with option two. My little drone hadn’t caused any reaction from inside the house, but I had seen a couple of security cameras as I circled the place at a distance. There could be pressure sensors and motion detectors and who knew what else too. Our man was paranoid. I’d be very surprised if there weren’t. That meant that I wouldn’t be able to catch him off guard, any more than an entire tactical team would. So, unless he left that house again, I’d be risking getting caught myself. Was I prepared to do that? And, if so, how long should I allow myself in there before the information went to Conall?

  Logically, option one was my best choice. I should write Jimmy Stewart off as dead right now. At least there was a chance that he’d die quickly if a tactical team burst into that house. I’d seen what had been done to Detective Sergeant Jackie Gibson. If he’d had more time, her killer would probably have kept her alive for a lot longer. Plus, if I was right about the Dissociative Identity Disorder, the next time the Alter took control, it wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of a target like Jimmy Stewart to play with. Kids were easily scared, and he fed off fear and pain.

  How secure was the place where he’d been holding his captives? There were safe rooms that could take hours for a team to cut or break their way into. If that was the case, young Jimmy was certainly going to go through hell before he died. Could I live with myself if I didn’t at least give option two a chance?

  I had no illusions about what my chances of succeeding were. I knew my own capabilities, but I had no way of knowing what kind of restraints might be imposed on me. What could I do to increase the odds of those being workable rather than an insurmountable obstacle?

  I was still thinking about that when Conall came in a little after ten.

  “Hungry?” I asked as he sat down at the other end of the couch and leaned back wearily.

  He just shook his head. “I don’t want anything tonight. I ate some pizza at the station earlier. We ordered in when everyone decided to keep working.”

  “How’s McKinnon holding up?”

  “About as well as anyone in his position could. He knows we’ll find Brady O’Hara soon. He also knows that if his grandson isn’t dead already, he’ll be killed the minute we go near the man. June and Gary don’t know anything yet, apart from the fact that an unknown abductor has taken their boy.”

  “That seems best.” Telling them what we knew wouldn’t have served any purpose. “You going to bed?” He looked exhausted.

  “Yeah. That seems like the best thing I can do just now. You’re staying up?”

  “I have things I need to keep an eye on at the moment. I’ll grab some sleep later. It probably means I won’t come in with you in the morning though.”

  “You might as well go back to working from home, anyway. Our man has clearly been busy elsewhere. Even if he saw you, it looks like he’s not interested. It was worth a shot though. It’s a bloody pity he didn’t bite too, or Jimmy Stewart might be safely home in bed now and Brady O’Hara locked away where he couldn’t do any further harm.” He pushed himself back to his feet. “You’re making progress?”

  “I am. Money trails aren’t hard to follow, just time consuming. What happens when we have an address, Con?”

  “Most likely? A discreet watch on the place. We wait for him to leave and swoop in.”

  “How long will you wait? Knowing what he might be doing in there?”

  He just shrugged.

  “That won’t be my call, or McKinnon’s. Anderson will probably give it two or three days, but I can’t see us waiting any longer than that. ‘Night, Shay.”

  After he’d gone upstairs, I thought about that for a while. Two or three days? A lot could happen in that much time, especially if Jimmy held Brady’s undivided attention. The chances that he’d leave the house again any time soon were negligible too.

  I spent the nex
t three hours making my preparations. If I didn’t log on again by noon tomorrow, Conall would get my first message. The rest would go to him on Friday, and he’d have a team prepped and ready to go in by then. All he’d need was for that address to pop up on his screen before he could act.

  I had my route worked out long before then. Cutting across country, I could reach Balloch in two-and-a-half hours at a steady, unhurried pace. I couldn’t take Uncle Danny’s car, or Conall would just track it down. He wasn’t going to like this, but he’d understand why I had to try it.

  I napped in the shed where I’d left the drones for a few hours after I reached it. It was warm enough in the sleeping bag I’d brought. I made sure the drones were powered down and left my phone there too, turned off with the card removed. Nothing I’d left in there was giving off any signals.

  Yesterday afternoon’s snow had turned to a cold rain during the earlier hours of the night, but the ground was white with early frost as I crunched my way across the fields towards the house. The sky was a clear wash of low pinks and high, pale blue but it was supposed to cloud over again later. Was Brady up in there yet? Well, it was a nice morning, even if it was a bit nippy. I’d wander around at a little distance for a while and see if I got a reaction. It wouldn’t take him long to realise that I was alone.

  After that, everything depended on how he reacted to my little performance. Whichever way this went, at least I’d know I’d done what I could.

  Twenty-Six

  The Ally

  What was it doing out there? It just seemed to be pacing around the house in circles, spiralling slightly closer on each pass. I’d never seen anything like that creature before. When that startling face had come into view, staring curiously into the camera with that weird, searching gaze on Saturday morning, it had been one hell of a shock. It was almost as if it could see me, which was a ridiculous notion. Were those eyes really that colour, or was it wearing contact lenses?

  I still didn’t know exactly what my Companion had done on Friday night but it had certainly kicked up a hornet’s nest of police activity around the house where it had left that camera. I’d seen them wheel a body out, so I knew it had killed someone but not who or how. Had that old man been in there and not at home after all? I certainly didn’t recognise the place.

  “It doesn’t have one of those auras but it doesn’t look human either,” I’d said.

  “Disconnect! Now! They’ll try to track the signal.” The Companion had sounded unusually heated just then. And it hadn’t told me what it thought the creature was either. I was getting really fed up of not having my questions answered.

  Now it was here, outside my house. It had bits of straw in its hair and stuck to its clothes too, as if it had slept in a barn or something. What did it want? Had it escaped from that detective who’d been guarding it? More importantly, how had it found me? I lowered my binoculars again to rest my arms.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Do? We’re going to watch and wait for a little longer. We need to be sure it really is on its own. Let it come closer and then check it for signals. If it is what it appears to be, there shouldn’t be any. What would a creature like that want with human technology?”

  “You know what it is then? Is it an alien? An enemy?”

  “I’m not sure what it is yet, but I have my suspicions. Whether it’s an enemy remains to be seen. And I’d like to know how it got here too. Very much so.”

  After another half hour had passed, it was close enough to the house for me to open the door and check it with my RF detector. No flashing lights or beeping noises. The thing wasn’t carrying anything that was transmitting.

  It stopped to turn and stare, wide eyed, as the door opened and even moved a few feet closer, head cocked to one side, trying to peer inside. I could have sworn it was sniffing the air as it lifted its head, moving it in a circle as its nostrils flared slightly. I closed the door again and put the detector back on its shelf.

  “Keep the taser ready when you go back out. Don’t get too close. It might move more quickly than you expect. Be careful.”

  I looked out of the window to see what it was doing. It had wandered off again, on another circuit. This time, a row of flashing lights on my security system lit up, one after another as it set the motion detectors off. I was really glad I’d turned the volume off on those alarms before it got close enough to trigger them. I opened up the door again, waiting for it to come back into view but I kept an eye on the control panel. It might try to get in through the back. It didn’t. The lights kept coming on, in order, and soon, it was back again. It moved a little closer and folded itself to the ground to sit, staring interestedly at the door again.

  I stepped out of the doorway. “Can I help you?” I asked in a clear, carrying voice. It frowned, lifting its chin to stare at me blankly. “What do you want? What are you doing here? This is private property, mister.” Was it simple? Didn’t it understand English?

  “Just get it inside and downstairs. We can’t stay out here all morning.”

  The taser would never get through that jacket. I’d have to hit it in the leg. It didn’t seem to realise what I was holding and just watched curiously as I lifted the taser and moved a little nearer before firing a pair of darts into its thigh. No sound but a grunt as it went over backwards, muscles contracting uncontrollably. I jogged in closer. Oddly, it didn’t look to be in pain either, just surprised. Okay, that was really weird. It was staring at its hand, trying to make it obey it and sort of laughing at the fact that it wouldn’t, as if that was really funny.

  “Again, quickly.”

  That did seem wise. I gave it another five second burst before crouching down to locate a vein to stick the needle in. I got that out of my pocket and pulled the cover off with my teeth before injecting the sedative. There, give it a couple of minutes, and it would be safe enough to carry it in. Meanwhile, I could go and get the top and bottom cellar doors unlocked and opened. Once I’d laid it on the mattress in the empty cell, I went back up to lock all the doors again.

  Now, I had all the time in the world to deal with whatever this was.

  I took the jacket off it first and checked all the pockets. There was a folded piece of paper in one and a large, heavy metal ring in the other. It looked to be made of twisted strands of silver and was open ended, not quite forming a full circle. Two knobbly ends faced each other across a gap about two inches wide.

  “It’s called a torc. It’s supposed to be worn around the neck.”

  “How would you get it on?” Oh, wait, there was a hinge at the back and a little catch to release it. I opened and shut it a few times. “What’s it for?”

  “Decoration. To show status. At least the ones primitive humans wore were.”

  The paper, when I unfolded it, was covered in strange little markings. It looked like they’d been drawn with the end of a burned twig, and sure enough, when I carefully touched one, my fingertip came away blackened. Those markings looked very like the ones I’d had to memorise to cut into the hostiles I’d killed.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “I can read the script, but the language is strange to me. I cannot say.”

  Its trouser pockets were empty, and I left those on it, although I did look to make sure that it was male. It was, or rather he was, I suppose. After all, he wasn’t wearing a stolen body. The lack of one of those alien auras told me that. Everything down there looked normal enough apart from the total absence of hair. The trousers were loose and black, some kind of natural fibre?

  I peeled his top off over his head. He’d been wearing an open necked linen shirt but there were no labels on it, which was unusual. Removing the shirt exposed an armband on his upper left arm, a big chunky thing. That looked silver too, and it was elaborately engraved. I lifted his arm, trying to see how to get it off, but there didn’t appear to be any kind of clasp or hinge, and it was too tight to slide down over the muscles. If I wanted to remove it I’d hav
e to saw through the metal or cut his arm off.

  Well, that could wait. If we decided to kill him, we could do that afterwards. No hair on the torso either, not even the armpits. He had hair on his scalp and eyebrows and thick, long eyelashes, but apart from that, his skin was as smooth and clean of hair as a young child’s. He had a few impressive scars on that torso though. Old knife wounds, at a guess.

  After taking his trainers and socks off too, I just stared at him. I’d never have used the word beautiful to describe a man, or manlike creature, before then, but he really was. It was a shame he wasn’t a female. If he had been, I’d have fucked her right there and then. I wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation.

  “Check those eyes. I want to know if they’re real.”

  Yes, so did I. I peeled back one of the eyelids. His eyes had rolled up a little, but I could still see a good part of the iris and I couldn’t see the edges of a contact lens, even when I pulled the lower lid down as far as it would go. Feeling with my finger confirmed it. Those extraordinary golden eyes were real.

  Bother, that annoying kid in the other cell was snivelling again. It had been a good idea to take him, but I could do without the noise. Mr Big Shot Area Commander wouldn’t mess with me now, not if he wanted me to be nice to his grandson.

  Should I chain this thing up properly? He hadn’t seemed particularly dangerous or given me any sign that he would cause me trouble, but those wiry muscles told a different story. Just one manacle on a wrist would do, for now. That would keep him out of reach of the cell door and allow him to get to the drain in the corner to piss if he needed to. If he started giving me any bother, I could chain him up properly then.