The Exiled

by William Meikle

  “Brian Ferguson? He’s your breakthrough?”

  “You know of him?” Alan said, sitting down in the chair at the bedside.

  Grainger laughed again, so hard that it brought a fresh flare of pain in his shoulder that forced him into silence.

  “Every cop in the city center knows Mad Brian,” Grainger said. “You’ve probably walked passed him yourself many times. He stands outside M&S in Princes Street with a sandwich board—every day it’s a different message, but basically they always say the same thing. ‘The Masons are all bad bastards out to get you and your kids.’”

  He saw Alan’s face fall, his hopes fading.

  “Shite—that auld geezer that shouts at people? That’s him?”

  Grainger looked at the book again.

  “I think it must be. Nobody else has a hard on for the Masons like the one Brian has.”

  “Bugger,” Alan said. “But if he’s that daft, how can he know about the place with the cliffs and the turrets? And he knows about the swan wings…and…”

  “Coincidence?” Grainger said softly.

  “I don’t think I believe in that any more,” Alan replied. “And there’s too much of the same detail. He’s been there—I’m sure of it.”

  “Well, I’m still stuck in here for a while,” Grainger said. “What do you want to do?”

  “Firstly, I want to go back to the farm.”

  “No,” Grainger said, and was immediately struck by the memory of D.S. Simpson lying under a bloody shroud. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll do that together—when I’m well enough. Promise me—on our ma’s grave.”

  “I promise,” Alan replied. Grainger knew it was a reluctant one—but Ma had been invoked, and that would keep the younger brother in line—for a while at least.

  “Why don’t you have a wee word with Ferguson?” he said. “You might get some sense in among the ravings. Turn on that boyish charm—buy him a few beers and see what’s what?”

  “I might just do that. It’s not as if we’ve got anything else to go on.”

  Grainger had been keeping up to speed on the case as best as he could on the television in his room and the newspapers he asked to be brought in each morning. He thought he might have got a visit from some of his old squad, but nobody turned up with grapes or sympathy—he was now unclean, not to be spoken of. That didn’t bother him nearly as much as the fact that the case was obviously being badly mishandled, with homeless men being targeted for arrest and questioning in the vain hope one of them was the killer.

  Knowing that the kids were all dead, and the killer was far beyond their reach, gnawed away at him—constantly.

  He’d been woolgathering and missed what Alan was saying.

  “Sorry,” he said, and smiled. “It’s the drugs. They’re lovely.”

  Alan smiled back.

  “Just don’t get too used to them. They tell me you’ll be out in a couple of days.”

  “Weekend at the latest—you can bank on it.”

  “Then I’d better see what I can get from the mad-man before then—I’ll report back as soon as I can.”

  “Bring more smokes next time,” Grainger shouted as Alan left, and got a wave in reply. Only then did he allow himself to acknowledge the pain. His arm bothered him more than he would tell his brother—or the doctors. If they knew, they’d only keep him in for longer, and Grainger couldn’t wait—Galloway thought he’d got away with it; he was wrong in that assumption.

  He picked up his smokes—he’d got them back when he was well enough to get out of bed, and only after promising not to smoke inside the premises. That meant joining the other addicts in a small yard at the back of Accident and Emergency—a spot full of rubbish skips and discarded butts—not much of an advert for the glamor of smoking.

  But Grainger needed a hit—it helped him think, had been doing so since he first became a cop. The ritual of lighting up and puffing away was like a mental unblocker, allowing his mind to drift, to start to form connections he might not have seen consciously.

  Ever since he’d woken up after the operation he’d replayed the night in the farmhouse in his mind, looking for a way he might have done it differently. He might have saved Simpson, he might have got there in time to save the kids, he might have taken down the big man and brought him back to justice. No matter how many ways he approached it, he kept coming back to the same thing. The kids were dead, Simpson was dead, the big man had gone and—always the same image to end his remembering—the black bird in the stained glass window winked at him.

  Once back in his bed he tried to concentrate on a television program, something to take his mind off things, but the news was still full of the case—his case—and everything else was just screeching reality shows or soap opera. He switched it off and picked up the book Alan had left for him. He opened it immediately to avoid looking at the cover—the black bird was too big in his mind and he didn’t need another image of it in there.

  Alan had already given him the rundown of the opening chapters, so he skipped to the middle and started reading at random.

  “It is an agrarian culture. They have no electricity or natural gas, no machinery of any kind beyond the simplest of water mills. What few houses exist are made from mud and straw—the only stonework is to be found in the ancient buildings that dot the landscape, but the means of construction of tall turrets and high arches have long since been forgotten.”

  Grainger closed the book and sat back, eyes closed. Just the mention of stonework and high arches brought it all back again. He switched on the television. Even tone-deaf teenagers trying to sing was preferable to what was going on in his head.

  * * *

  He made it past breakfast the next morning before he was tempted to look at the book again. There was a middle section containing photographs so he started with that, but it was just a pictorial representation of Ferguson’s obsession. Some showed police officers and politicians at Masonic meetings—Grainger recognized some of them, and knew others personally. Other pictures were of well-known figures from the past—Isaac Newton, Doctor Dee, Mary Queen of Scots and Sir Walter Scott among others, all rolled up together to be implicated in Ferguson’s grand bullshit theory. Grainger almost threw the book away in disgust, but he had nothing better to do so kept going, skipping towards the back of the slim volume, looking for any conclusions that might come out of the madness.

  12

  Alan found Ferguson where John said he would be—standing outside the store on Princes Street, haranguing passersby in a loud, cultured voice that was at odds with his scruffy, downtrodden appearance.

  The old man wore a tattered tweed overcoat, badly frayed and patched with a variety of materials, covering an even older tweed suit. His beard—salt-and-pepper gray—hung down in a wispy curtain across his chest and only accentuated the complete baldness on the head above. His nose and cheeks were scribbled with the telltale burst vessels of a heavy drinker, and when he smiled, he showed a mouth containing only a handful of pale brown teeth. He stood beside a sandwich board he had leaned against the wall. A message written in chalk was scrawled across it.

  “Don’t let the Masons steal your children!”

  His voice once again belied his appearance—the clipped, cultured tones speaking of an educated man, now slipped down a peg or three.

  “Lend me five pounds and I will tell you a secret,” Ferguson said as Alan approached him.

  “Let me buy you a drink and I’ll tell you one,” Alan replied. “I’ve read your book.”

  Five minutes later they were in the Kenilworth in Rose Street.

  The barman raised an eyebrow when he saw Ferguson.

  “Any shouting and you’re both barred,” he said. Ferguson nodded sheepishly, unable to take his eyes from the glass as the beer was poured. When Alan handed it to him, he emptied half the glass at once, as if afraid it might be taken away as quickly as it had come.

  Alan led the old man to a table in the corner.

  �
��They don’t mind me here,” Ferguson said, too loud in the quiet bar. “They get a better class of clientele than those other bars near the station.”

  Alan took the book from his jacket pocket. Ferguson lit up in a huge smile.

  “Shall I sign it for you? Please? No one has ever asked me before.”

  The old man’s sudden joy was so infectious that Alan found himself laughing as he handed over the book and a pen. Ferguson signed the inside front page with a flourish and handed the pen back. He held on to the book and looked Alan in the eye.

  “You’ve read all of it?”

  “The first half so far,” Alan replied. “It’s fascinating and—”

  He got no further.

  “Bloody Masons,” Ferguson said, his voice rising with each word. “They’ve been stealing children and getting away with it for centuries. And will anybody listen? Will they fuck? If I had my way…”

  The barman coughed theatrically and nodded towards the door. Ferguson went silent quickly, lifted his beer and finished it fast in case the threat was carried out. He waited until the barman turned his back, then patted the book, as if it were a cherished pet.

  “It’s all in here, my boy. All of it. And they know I know. If I disappear suddenly, you’ll tell the police who did it, won’t you?” As quickly as he had smiled seconds earlier, the old man cried, heavy tears that left clear grooves through the dirt on his cheeks. “Lend me five pounds and I will tell you a secret,” he whispered.

  Alan got two more beers in, feeling almost ashamed at the eagerness Ferguson showed when he got back to the table.

  “There’s more, my lad,” the old man said. “I could not put everything I know in the book—that would have been dangerous—much too risky. The stories I could tell you…”

  “Actually, I’m more interested in the black swan itself,” Alan said.

  Ferguson’s mouth flapped open and shut and he went from tearful to terrified in an instant.

  “Do not say that name,” he said in a whisper. “Not even in jest.”

  Alan leaned forward and tapped the book cover.

  “I’ve seen it,” he said quietly. “In its natural habitat, I believe, along the cliffs below the high turrets.”

  Ferguson lifted his beer with both hands, but still it shook so violently that he spilled dribbles of it down his beard as he gulped it down.

  “We cannot talk here,” the old man finally replied in a conspiratorial whisper. “It would get back to them in minutes and we would both be fucked. Come on—it will cost you a bottle of single malt, but I think you will find it is worth it.”

  * * *

  They got to Ferguson’s flat in Dundas Street by going the long way round. Firstly Ferguson made his way to an off-license and Alan came out thirty pounds lighter. The Scotch went into the voluminous pockets of the old man’s coat and Alan, carrying the folded sandwich board, followed behind as they traversed backward and forward through the alleyways and closes running between Rose Street, George Street and Queen Street. By the time they reached the bottom end of the hill where the old man lived they’d walked more than twice as far as they needed to and the sandwich board felt three times as heavy as it had when they set off.

  “Can’t be too careful,” Ferguson said as he pushed open a door and motioned Alan through to a dimly lit flat beyond. “They’ve got eyes and ears everywhere.”

  The old man’s flat proved to be as unkempt as his appearance. Books and magazines lay piled around, interspersed with overflowing ashtrays, fast-food cartons, open beer cans and empty whisky bottles.

  “Excuse the mess, it’s the maid’s day off,” Ferguson said, and cackled. He cleared two chairs by simply throwing the papers off onto the floor, took two whisky glasses down from his mantelpiece, and motioned for Alan to sit as he opened the Scotch.

  “This might take some time, so it will be best to get cozy,” he said.

  Alan took a glass of Scotch—Ferguson had poured two fingers for Alan, four for himself. He took out the book, opened it at the end of Part One and read.

  “‘I know what the Black Swan is, and why the secret has to remain hidden.’” That’s what you said. Is that true?”

  “Aye,” Ferguson replied, downing half the Scotch in his glass. “Every word. But first you need to know something about the Masons. It started back in the days after Bannockburn. The Templars wanted to be paid for helping the Bruce and…”

  Alan sat dutifully through a rant that lasted almost fifteen minutes before his patience snapped.

  “Look, Mr. Ferguson, I don’t care about the bloody Masons. I need to know about the Swan, and what it’s got to do with these missing lassies.”

  Ferguson finished his Scotch and poured himself another—he didn’t offer Alan any.

  “There is only one thing you need to know,” the old man finally said “And when you do, it will all become clear. The Cobbe does not take children—they’re given to it.”

  * * *

  Alan couldn’t believe it—wouldn’t believe it.

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  “People from here that want to get to the other side and stay there for a while—people that want access to power. Masons.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither did I, at first. But the Swan is the gatekeeper—the Dweller on the Threshold if you like. Anyone who wants to be able to move between this world and the other at will has to pay for the privilege. The current going rate is children from this side.”

  The old man said it in such a matter-of-fact manner that he might have been talking about the price of a loaf of bread.

  “Why?” Alan asked. “Why kids?”

  Ferguson turned coarse and belligerent as the drink took hold of him, as if a switch had been flicked inside his head. The semblance of culture disappeared in an instant, and the deranged inner drunk surfaced into view.

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  I need to get answers fast before he gets too pissed.

  “Okay—another question. What exactly is this other side?”

  Ferguson swigged Scotch straight from the bottle. The whisky level dropped fast, and so did the old man’s manners.

  “Fairie, the astral plane, Shangri-La—fucking Brigadoon for all I care. Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “I told you—I’ve been there, on the other side.”

  “I will bet you didn’t pay the gatekeeper though, did you? So what do you want now?”

  Ferguson polished off the Scotch in one more gulp and dropped the empty bottle at the side of his chair.

  “I want to know how to get there,” Alan said.

  “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman,” Ferguson sang. It seemed their little question-and-answer session was over.

  Alan made one more try.

  “You said there was a ritual—to get to the other place?”

  “It only works for seconds,” Ferguson said, carefully trying to enunciate his words. “Then the Cobbe sends you straight back here if you don’t have the payment. But you know that—you have done the ritual for yourself.”

  The old man slurred most of the last few words, and was near to unconsciousness.

  Alan shook his head.

  “It happened by accident…”

  “Accident my arse. The only other way through is to get invited. And the only people that can do that are the fucking Society. I can see through you now, you know? You’re a fucking Mason, aren’t you?” Ferguson tried to stand, failed, and fell back in the chair. He could still shout though. “I will not have a fucking Mason in my house. Get out. Get out.”

  Alan knew when he was beaten. He got up and headed for the door. Ferguson threw the empty whisky bottle at him. It smashed against the wall near his head. The old man bent to get another missile, fell off the chair and rolled among the discarded magazines, still shouting at the top of his voice. The shouts followed Alan out into the street.

  “Fucking funny handshak
ing fucking Masonic fucker. Don’t come back.”

  13

  Grainger tried not to laugh too hard as Alan told the story of his visit to Dundas Street. The younger man related it completely deadpan, which only made it all the funnier. The laughter brought more pain to his shoulder so he tried to dial it back a bit, but when Alan got to the dénouement and Ferguson’s parting words, he couldn’t help himself. He roared, even through the pain.

  Alan turned and looked at him.

  “At least somebody’s feeling better.”

  They were in Alan’s car, heading up the scenic road through Glen Devon, making for Crieff, then the old library at Innerpeffray. Grainger had only been released from hospital that morning but he knew there was no way he could just go home and sit on a sofa all day. And given that Ferguson was unlikely to divulge the ritual, it seemed like it might be a plan to search it out for themselves. It was a good day for a drive and as it was a weekday the traffic was light—they had the road to themselves. In their younger days they might have had the windows rolled down, a beer in hand and heavy metal blaring on the stereo. This trip was a bit more sedate. Grainger’s only concession to rebellious youth was to light up a smoke, but even then Alan made him hold it out the window rather than in his mouth so it burned down after only two or three draws.

  They went past the Glendevon Hotel and he bit back an urge to ask Alan to stop, head for the bar and just get lost for a while.

  Maybe later.

  “All this Masonic stuff?” Alan asked “Do you think there’s anything in it?”

  “Not as much as Ferguson claims,” Grainger replied. “I doubt there’s a secret society of magicians controlling access to another realm of reality—most of the cops I know who are members would have trouble controlling a piss-up in a brewery. Yes, there’s favors done for brother members, and things are maybe swept under the carpet that shouldn’t be. But sacrificing kids? I can’t see it. There’s something else going on here—Ferguson has seen a part of it and made some wild—too wild—guesses that fit in with his own prejudices. Let’s see if we can get closer to the truth.”