The Presence Read online

  “He’s the laird,” David said.

  “Yeah? And Countess Bathory sliced up virgins and bathed in their blood,” Ryan said.

  Gina was staring at him hard. Warning him? he wondered.

  “The laird has been damned decent,” David said.

  “What? Do you think he’d chop us up in his own castle?” Ryan said.

  “Oh, Ryan, stop! Please,” Gina begged.

  “I like the guy, honestly like him,” David said. “And Ryan, you’ve been riding with him, have talked horses with him. You seemed to be his biggest fan.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. He came on like a warrior lord of old that first night, but, hey, we were in his castle. And he’s damned good with horses. Sure, I like him,” Ryan said. “Respect him,” he added thoughtfully.

  “Me, too. He demands a certain respect, but he’s been damned decent to us,” Kevin agreed. “Look, he probably wasn’t even in the country when those girls disappeared.”

  Gina shivered violently. “Maybe he wasn’t, but…”

  “But what?” Kevin demanded.

  “Nothing,” Gina said. “Nothing, really.”

  “I know what you were going to say,” David said, staring at Gina. “We were in the country, probably, during the time of…well, at least two of the disappearances.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Ryan demanded.

  “It means I’m damned glad that we stick together,” David said. “That we watch out for Gina and Toni.”

  “Well, it probably helps that we’re not street walkers,” Gina said pragmatically.

  “True,” David agreed.

  “Hey, can we get back to the beauty of the day, the champagne and all that?” Kevin demanded.

  Ryan was still tense, but he joined Gina on the blanket, sat back, closed his eyes and let his wife work the knots out of the muscles in his shoulders.

  Toni could see the skull protruding from mud and rock, and bits of flesh, she thought, blackened by the soil. There was also a length of hair and pieces of cloth, all but glued or fused with the bone, or plastered to it by the mire, the very dark muck that formed on the banks of the little brook or stream.

  Get away! a voice of self-survival cried in her head. Scream, just start screaming, and run as fast as you can!

  And still, she didn’t scream. There was no need to look farther. Whoever this victim had been, she had been here some time. There was certainly no need to feel for a pulse, to attempt to drag her from the water. None at all.

  Get away! the voice repeated.

  Yes! Now!

  She thought that she would run then, able to scream and shriek at last, in the darkness of the eerie forest. But she didn’t. Instead, she stayed, trying to ingrain every detail of the moment in her mind. It might be important.

  The water was no more than two feet deep here, and the skeleton was lodged against a large rock. Until she had moved it, the huge branch had all but hidden the corpse. People could have walked right by without seeing it, for a very long time. How long had it been there? Had the rains carried it from elsewhere, or caused the earth to shift so that they were dug up after a long period of time?

  She turned then at last, slowly. Running could cause her to trip on the underbrush and hurt herself. She was deep into the wood, having followed the brook quite far in her attempt to catch up with Bruce. But she didn’t think she’d get lost. All she had to do was follow the water.

  She didn’t dare think about fear. Fear could cause panic. If there was one thing she didn’t want, it was to fall, sprain an ankle and remain in the forest as darkness fell.

  She’d been shouting before, convinced that Bruce was ahead of her; now she was silent, careful in her foot steps.

  She still felt…watched. Yet, strangely, that sense didn’t create a rise of…terror. The trees would not come to life, branches like arms, and suck her into themselves. She was simply being watched as she left.

  That woman had been hidden long before they’d come to Tillingham.

  She kept her eyes looking forward, afraid of what she might see gazing out at her from the green darkness.

  Straight ahead! Look straight ahead. Walk, don’t run. Steady, steady, follow the brook, get out!

  And at last…she did, emerging in the same area where she had entered.

  She half expected her car to be gone, but it wasn’t. And as she crawled into it, she realized just how frightened she’d been. Other bodies had been found in Tillingham Forest. Had she just stumbled upon the first of the killer’s victims, perhaps? A woman never reported as missing? Someone lost to society, and then life?

  Fear began to seep through her then, a very real fear. This was a killing ground. Yes, women were abducted from other places. But they were brought here.

  Did that mean the killer knew this area very well? Knew that disposing of a body here meant that chances of discovery were small, or that this type of environment would play such havoc with a body that no clues would ever be left?

  Her hands were shaking as she gripped the steering wheel, trying to decide what to do. It would be quickest to go back to the castle and call until she got some one on the line.

  But Eban was at the castle! She felt a surge of hysteria at the thought of the man. Could he have done some thing like this?

  He never seemed to leave. And if he did, she didn’t think he ever went far.

  But what if, when no one knew, he silently took a car and drove off, drove out to the big cities, where no one knew him. Where women who worked the streets for their income were accustomed to servicing men who were sometimes less than attractive?

  Suddenly remembering that her cell phone was in her purse, she turned to scramble for it, only to hear a tapping at the driver’s window.

  Startled, she turned.

  It was Eban. Face pressed far too close to the window. Macabre through the glass.

  Fear, blind and, perhaps, unreasoning, let loose within her system and she let out a scream at last. She tried to twist her keys in the ignition, but they weren’t there! Staring at the man, she fumbled on the seat for them. He backed away, looking puzzled.

  She found the keys. After three tries, she got them into the ignition.

  When she floored the gas pedal, he literally hopped away.

  Without looking back, she sped all the way into the village.

  Detective Inspector Robert Chamberlain was thirty-five, tall and wiry, with dark hair already showing signs of serious silver—brought on by his work, he had long ago told Bruce.

  They had known one another forever, having met in the service. For a while they had worked for the Lothian and Borders Police in Edinburgh together, until Bruce had left and Robert had moved on. Throughout the years, they had remained friends. A year ago, when Bruce had found the body in the woods, he had been appalled by the lack of technique displayed by Jonathan and his men upon their arrival at the scene. Granted, they had never dealt with such a situation before. But since they hadn’t, the proper steps to take would have been to alert the authorities with more expertise. De spite the fact that Bruce had long ago left the police force, Robert often discussed cases with him. On occasion, he had been able to trigger the right hint, clue or information to help Robert solve a case. And both were now deeply concerned about the disappearing girls and the murders.

  Robert sat with Bruce in a pub in Edinburgh close to the Greyfriar’s churchyard where the famous Bobby—the terrier who came to his master’s grave to sit vigil for a decade—now lay buried alongside the man to whom he had been so loyal. Robert looked particularly glum.

  “Jonathan has told me that he’s had men out,” Robert said, referring to the Tillingham constable. “They’ve combed the woods, but not discovered a body.” He ran his fingers through his graying hair. “’Tis difficult. So far, we’ve a woman missing for about a week, we think. In fact, she might well have disappeared just after you reached Edinburgh. I knew I needed you back here. And I’m grateful that you came.”


  Bruce shrugged. “I was restless. Needed to come anyway,” he told Robert. “And, as it happens, it was a good thing I did return.”

  Robert nodded. “With Annie we’re just guessing. We don’t really know when she disappeared, because none of her ‘friends’ kept tabs on her.” He pushed the file on the table between them toward Bruce. “Annie O’Hara. Northern Irish, came over from Belfast about five years ago. No known employment—legal employment, that is. She’s been arrested three times in those years. Drug abuser, but not the haggard-looking desperate kind as yet. She was picked up twice working the Royal Mile, and both times she was released—you know how that goes. Anyway, one of her friends realized that she was gone after five days or so and reported her missing, but she had no idea how or when Annie disappeared.” He shrugged. “Who knows? She might have headed on back to Ireland, but since Helen MacDougal disappeared in like fashion a year ago, and was found by you, and then Mary Granger, just six months ago, and found by that fellow, Eban, in the forest, as well, I think there’s a real possibility that Annie’ll be found, too, and sadly, found deceased.”

  “In the forest,” Bruce murmured bitterly.

  Robert shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe the killer will find a new place to dispose of the bodies.”

  “Why would he bother? Jonathan Tavish isn’t too concerned. He doesn’t consider it his problem at all—because the women have disappeared from Glasgow, Stirling and now Edinburgh.”

  “Well, he has a point in that the killer has to be operating out of the big cities.”

  “We don’t actually have a ‘red light’ district in the village,” Bruce said. He was irritated with Jonathan, though. His old friend seemed to be more suspicious of his activities than worried about the fact that a real psychopath was on the loose, and probably growing more dangerous with each passing day. He’d run into him in the village, just before leaving. Apparently Jonathan had been looking for him, wanting to know if he’d lost his wallet recently, if there was any possibility that he might be a victim of “identity theft.” Actually, he had to admit that Jonathan might have a point there. How else could he explain how his castle had wound up listed as being for rent. According to Jonathan, there was no Web site for the castle, and, thus far, the legitimate ones he had checked had never had a listing for the place.

  Even seeking out the case of fraud, though, Bruce would have far more faith in Robert’s knowledge—and, naturally, the fraud department of a major force—than he would in Jonathan. He understood Jonathan’s resentment, but it didn’t change the fact that Tillingham was small, and major crime was not a frequent event there.

  “No. Of course, this is far more serious than Tavish is willing to admit,” Robert said. “I don’t blame him for not using all his local funds to mount an inch-by-inch combing of Tillingham Forest, not when we’ve got a disappearance with no guarantee that any foul play happened to this woman.”

  Bruce sat back, shaking his head. “The killer will return with his victim’s remains to Tillingham. If we’d found just the one girl, then it might have been merely a convenient place for him to dispose of the body. But a second corpse discovered? He’s using Tillingham as his personal refuse property, and he’s going to keep at it. I even think there may be a ‘why’ behind it.”

  Robert shook his head. “Now, Bruce, y’are taking this far too personally. Tillingham is lush and deep. We’ve not got a thing on the killer yet because of the advanced stage of decomposition of the bodies by the time they were found. We don’t have hair, fibers, semen, anything. There’s nothing personal about the fact that the bloke is hiding his heinous crimes there. It simply puts him in the classification of an organized killer, a fellow who thinks it out and knows how best to keep himself from being discovered.”

  “I suppose I do take discarded bodies in what is very nearly my backyard personally,” Bruce agreed. “It means one of two very bad things. Either we have an organized psychotic on a methodical killing jaunt dumping bodies once he’s had his jollies, or someone in that area knows that it’s the perfect dumping site and is traveling farther from home for his victims.”

  “You should have stayed with the force, Bruce,” Robert told him, shaking his head. “You were good. We’d have never gotten the Highland Hills killers without you, you know. It was uncanny, the way you could read the fellow’s mind.”

  “Behavioral science,” Bruce said, waving a hand in the air. He didn’t like remembering the massive hunt they’d had a little more than ten years ago, seeking out a man who was kidnapping teenaged girls, raping them and leaving their mutilated bodies strewn across Edinburgh and its outskirts. Four girls had died in all; it had been a heartbreaking assignment. “We were able to get something from friends back then. I’d have never realized that there were two people involved if one of the witnesses hadn’t mentioned that the last time she’d seen her friend alive, she’d been giving directions to a lady on the passenger’s side of the car. Even then, I doubted myself at first.”

  He hadn’t; he was lying. It had been frightening, how much of a connection he’d had with the killers. There was a point, on a day when they had stood on a hillside just outside of the city, when he had suddenly known that the killer couldn’t be acting alone, known that there had to be a woman involved, as well. How else could the killer have managed to lure girls who knew to be on the lookout for any strange man. From then on, little clues fell into place. Tire tracks had indicated a return to the city. The area around one of the schools had provided one pub, and he had taken to spending his time there, watching. A handsome young couple who held hands across the table and whispered constantly like foolish, snickering lovers had garnered his attention. He was never sure if he heard their conversation, imagined it or recreated what it might have been in his own mind. But suddenly he’d been certain, so he’d followed them.

  One afternoon he tried to imagine the route they’d take if they had, indeed, been stalking the girls together. Getting his car, cruising the area of the school, he put himself into the man’s mind, made himself think and feel as the killer had done. There had been the thrill of the chase and, aye, some brutal treatment to his wife.

  Eventually he was certain he knew just how and when the couple had moved. How the wife, claiming to be lost, would lure the girls, ask directions, come back once the girl was on her way home, alone, and coax her into the car. There she was drugged. Traces of morphine had been found in the body, so he didn’t consider that any great divining work on his own. Then she was taken to their flat, a ground-floor apartment in a working man’s area where the husband wouldn’t be noted taking in a roll of bedding or carpet. Inside, the woman had held the girl at the man’s command. And after he abused the terrified child, he’d have sex with his wife, as well, the girl still alive but unconscious. Then the poor wee lass would be taken into the bath room and killed in the tub, so that the blood could be washed away.

  He gave the scenario to his superiors, who thought that he was daft. And even if he wasn’t, they couldn’t arrest a couple because he’d seen them in a pub and followed them to their flat.

  But after a storm, he’d gotten a friend to take a cast of the tire marks left by the couple’s car near the pub. They matched those found at the site where the girl had been found. It was not enough for a conviction, or even a trial, but enough to get them what they really needed through the court system—a DNA sample. The case had taken months, eating into his soul—and into his last precious moments with Meg.

  Her illness had been the reason he had given for resigning. His proximity to the mind of the killer had been the reason he had never gone back.

  “Aye, who would have figured that such a man would have a wife just as eager to perform that kind of cruelty on another.” Robert shook his head with disgust. “They had a case like that in Canada, not long ago. The wife got ridiculous leniency. Her defense attorneys claimed she was a victim herself. Looks like no one is accountable for his or her actions anymore. Even in the Highland H
ills case, the husband was locked up for good but his wife may be out in as little as ten years! But the point is, you made the difference in that case.”

  Bruce felt a moment’s severe discomfort. “Back then, the authorities were on it with a passion. Robert, you know as well as I do that if these were prominent lasses, the press would be having a stink and Jonathan wouldn’t be halfheartedly sending a few men out to look around in the forest.”

  “That’s sad, and always the case,” Robert agreed, drumming his fingers on the table. “Aye, for a small country, we’ve had our share of loonies.” He lifted his hand, indicating the town. “Edinburgh. It’s where Burke and Hare practiced their ghastly trade, killing when they found out just how profitable it could be. Five years ago a fellow on the outskirts of town was killing one immigrant a month, in honor of social justice, so he claimed! He didn’t like the fact that we weren’t so ‘pure’ anymore. Tillingham, though…there’s not been much violence there in centuries, as you are well aware. And what tragedies took place there always had to do with war, or feuding clans. This is definitely not clan retribution. Although…Jonathan does seem to have his share of troubles when it comes to that forest. At least a dozen teens, intent on some hanky-panky, have come out of it screaming their fool heads off, convinced there’s someone, something, there. The superstitions grow. The local forces don’t like going in there, so they only halfheartedly look for anything. Look, I’ll see that the central office gets a crew out to search the forest. Will that give you any reassurance?”

  “Aye, it will,” Bruce told him.

  “Now, as to the other…your American invasion?” Robert asked.

  “They have rental forms and permits that look as legal as an international peace accord,” Bruce told him, grinning. “I’m wondering if they’re still not halfway convinced that I’ve been deprived of my land through some nonpayment of taxes and can’t accept the fact that it’s no longer mine.”