Katherine Kurtz – Adept 04 – Dagger Magic

 

 

 

 

AN ANCIENT ORDER REAWAKENS. A MODERN EVIL RETURNS…

From bestselling coauthors Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris comes an unforgettable adventure of the past taking root in the present. Sir Adam Sinclair – mystic, historian, and Master of the Hunt – faces his greatest challenge. And humanity’s greatest evil.

Deep within a sea cave, sacred texts of the black arts have been recovered from the corroded hulk of a World War II German submarine. Within these pages lies the power to spawn a new, demonic Third Reich – and make Aryan world conquest a terrifying reality. Now they rest in the hands of the Phurba, a vile Dagger Cult older than Christianity itself.

Only Adam Sinclair can prevent the deadly blades of the Phurba from piercing the

heart of humanity Only he can quell the darkness that lives in…

 

This Ace Book contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.

DAGGER MAGIC

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author PRINTING HISTORY Ace hardcover edition / May 1995 Ace mass-market edition / February 1996 All rights reserved. Copyright © 1995 by Kathenne Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris.

Cover art by Joe Burleson.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10.016.  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com Check out the Ace Science Fiction/Fantasy newsletter, and much more, at Club PPI!

ISBN: 0-441-00.304-4

ACE® Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10.016.  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors offer grateful acknowledgment to the following people, who have greatly enriched the background authenticity of this novel by their generous contributions of time and information:

The Reverend W.C.H. Seal, for background on Phurbas and Tibetan black magic, as well as orthodox Tibetan Buddhism, and for checking the final manuscript for accuracy; any errors that have crept in are ours, not his;

Mr. Thorn McCarthy, administrator for the Holy Island Project, Samye Ling Tibetan Centre in Scotland, for his warm welcome and reams of information at Samye Ling, and for helping arrange our visit to Holy Island;

Mr. Harry Lloyd, Northern Fisheries Board, Ballyshannon, who allowed us to inspect and photograph inflatable patrol craft and survival gear used by Fisheries officers; also, Mr. Ronan Flynn, Central Fisheries Board, and Mr.  Bryan Murphy, of OceanTech, Dun Laoghaire, for more specific information on the Avon inflatable boats used by the Irish Department of the Marine;

P.C. Stephen Stewart (Alexandria), Detective Sergeant Alasdair Barnett (Campbeltown), and P.C. David White, Strathclyde Police, for guidance on police procedure;

Mrs. Elaine Ennis, Scottish Department of Social Work, for insights on rehabilitation procedures for spinal injury patients;

Chief Engineer Gordon W. Whitehead, for invaluable technical expertise regarding submarine operation;

Mr. Simon Martin, for sharing his practical knowledge of marine salvage work;

Dr. Richard Oram, our resident authority on Scottish history, who was able to paint us a graphic picture of seventeenth-century Hawick;

Mr. Ken Fraser of the St. Andrews University Library, for being ever ready to find all manner of obscure books on demand.

prologue

“THE weather in the far north of Ireland will continue unsettled for at least the next twenty-four hours,” came the crackly voice of the radio weatherman. “… occasional outbreaks of rain and northeasterly winds gusting up to forty knots…” The rest of the marine forecast dissolved in a hiss of static that was lost in the roar of twin Yamaha outboards and the slap of water against black and orange sponsons as the big inflatable boat punched through the waves off the north coast of Donegal. Irish Fisheries Officer Mick Scanlan grimaced as he scanned ahead with a pair of powerful marine binoculars, one arm looped through the boat’s A-frame to brace himself. Amidships, sitting astride the pillion seat behind the control console, his partner, Lorcan O’Haverty, throttled back slightly to compensate for the wave chop.

The sky overhead was a dirty shade of grey, looking more like February than early May, and the two officers were dressed for weather. With their bright orange crash helmets and regulation life-vests, both men wore the distinctive orange-and-black survival suits called Polar Bears that could keep a man alive for several days in these waters, whose winter temperature often dipped to near-Arctic levels. Even in May, though the water had begun to warm, hail and sleet might accompany the squalls and storms so prevalent in this area. To be caught out unprepared could be fatal.

Not that today was too bad, as days went in early May. The wind was brisk, but the sun looked poised to break through the cloud cover for at least a little while. A hundred yards off to port, the outbound tide was peeling back on itself lethargically from the sheer base of a long line of sea-cliffs, leaving the exposed rock-faces festooned with streamers of stranded kelp.  Scanlan shifted his weight and continued to scan. Off to the seaward side, shadowed and uncertain under the receding tidewash, the dark lurk of submarine rocks posed a threat to conventional craft venturing in this close, but the rigid inflatable boats used by the Irish Department of the Marine drew only inches of water, and had proven highly effective for this kind of patrol.  Weighing hardly more than a ton, a six-meter boat like this one could be trailered where needed and launched within minutes – a godsend for men like Scan-Ian and O’Haverty, charged with protecting the coastal fishing rights of a country heavily dependent upon its maritime industries. While much of their routine work was done ashore – either shuffling reports in the local fisheries office or else conducting routine inspections on the docksides of fishing ports from Inishfree to Malin Head – field investigations were not at all uncommon.  This morning they had launched from Downies to check a report of illegal fixed nets in the area. Their backup boat had developed engine trouble and would try to catch up later, but their land-based backup would be shadowing them from the shore in a Land Rover, also linked by radio. Scanlan had spotted him as they passed Dunfanaghy, and expected to pick him up again after they rounded Horn Head.

The radio chatter ebbed and flowed against the background bluster of wind and waves, and Scanlan automatically scanned the shoreline as O’Haverty skipped their nimble craft past a succession of small inlets gouged out of the coastline by the action of the North Atlantic tides. But as O’Haverty brought the boat around the point of the headland, a sudden and unexpected stretch of calm water stretched before them along a narrow crescent of sandy beach adjacent to the rock cliffs. Taking closer notice now, Scanlan saw that the outbound swells were coated with the greasy rainbow film of spilled oil.

“Uh-oh,” O’Haverty said, glancing back at him.

“Yeah, I see it.” Scanlan swung his binoculars along the sweep of shoreline and adjusted the focus. “We’d better have a closer look.” As O’Haverty nosed the boat toward the beach, the slick became visible as a V-shaped stain fanning out across the flattened waves, apparently coming from a waterline cleft in the base of the cliffs that marked the western end of the beach.

“Looks like it’s coming from those rocks up ahead,” O’Haverty said.  “Yeah.” Scanlan lowered his binoculars for a few seconds to peer with unassisted sight, then resumed his study. “I don’t see any signs of a wreck, though. Maybe an oil barrel’s gotten washed against the rocks and broke open. Let’s go in, and I’ll check it out.”

Without comment, O’Haverty brought the boat around with a spin of the wheel and gave a brief rev to the engines to propel them in toward the shore while Scanlan shed his binoculars and helmet and moved into the bow, ruffling a hand through sandy hair. As soon as the boat’s snub nose nudged sandy bottom, Scanlan threw a leg over the side and stepped onto the sand and shingle, grabbing an anchor and coil of line. Sea water washed and tugged at the legs of his survival suit until he won free of the retreating surf and bent to set the anchor behind a cluster of rocks a few yards higher on the beach. Behind him, O’Haverty pulled up the slack and snubbed it off.

“We’d better make this quick,” O’Haverty called, shouting to make himself heard above the boom of the surf. “Tide’11 be turning soon.” Grinning, Scanlan gave his partner a thumbs-up sign and turned to begin trudging toward the promontory. The tide-lines to his left suggested that the strip of beach was only exposed to view at low tide – which explained why he did not remember having seen it before, even though he and O’Haverty had passed this headland many times on routine patrol. He was halfway to the base of the cliffs, heading for the area from which the oil seemed to have come, when a flicker of color and movement drew his gaze upward.

About halfway up the cliff-face, a small flurry of sea gulls exploded into flight from the mouth of a jagged fissure in the rocks. That alone was hardly surprising, but as the birds wheeled away screeching, a slight, shaven-headed figure in flowing orange robes suddenly appeared from behind them.  The sight was startling enough to bring Scanlan up short, to send him scuttling into the shadow of the cliff-face to his left – though if the man looked down, he was sure to notice the bright orange upper half of Scanlan’s survival suit.  Scan-Ian could not have said why it seemed important that the man not see him.  Even as he craned to get a cautious better look, hardly able to believe his eyes, a second man emerged from the fissure’s mouth, a slightly more wizened version of the first. Both were well past middle age, and obviously of Oriental extraction.

What the hell? Scanlan thought.

Their attire reminded him of the Hare Krishna votaries he had seen now and again in Dublin and London, handing out flowers and pamphlets on street corners or dancing and singing in the streets – except that these two were much older than the usual Hare Krishna, and far less scruffy-looking. Part of the difference lay in the high-collared black tunics they wore beneath the saffron-orange outer robes, almost like a priest’s cassock – a feature that Scanlan couldn’t recall ever seeing before. But that sartorial difference paled to insignificance before the incongruity of anyone so garbed being present on this bleak, windswept stretch of Donegal coast.

The two glanced back into the darkness of the cave and conferred briefly, whatever words they spoke whisked away in the wind and the boom of the surf, then moved off along a ledge that slanted away toward the landward summit of the cliff. As they disappeared behind a screen of boulders, they seemed not to have noticed that they were being observed from shore and boat.  Scanlan backed away toward the water’s edge, trying to discover where the pair might have gone, but he could see no trace of them. More mystified than ever, he shifted his puzzled gaze back to the mouth of the cave. What could they have been doing in there?

Glancing back at O’Haverty, who lifted both arms in an exaggerated shrugging motion, Scanlan waved a hand at his partner in a gesture to stand by, and started up the rocks. He unzipped the neck of his survival suit as he climbed, reaching inside for the small but powerful emergency torch he always carried.  The cave warranted a quick look.

He gained the ledge without mishap, sidling carefully along it till he reached the narrow cave mouth. After a last glance over his shoulder to assure himself that O’Haverty was still watching from the boat – and scanning the cliffs beyond with the binoculars – Scanlan ducked into the opening and switched on his torch, poking the powerful beam back into the darkness.

The cave appeared to extend some distance into the cliff-face. The dank iodine-tang of the seashore prickled at his nostrils as he started edging forward, scything the beam of the torch before him as his eyes began to adjust to the darkness. A dozen cautious steps took him to the brink of deeper darkness, where his torch probed out across the echoing vault of a much larger cavern.

The vaulted expanse was not wholly dark. Here and there pale lances of daylight pierced the shadows, filtering down through scattered chinks in the roof and the seaward wall. The cave alone was unusual enough, but not far below, the sweep of his torch and the fugitive glimmers of daylight picked out the dark, deadly outline of a great torpedo shape slumbering in the gloom, with a more angular shape thrusting upward from the center. It almost looked like – good Lord, could it be? – a beached submarine!

“Jayzus, Mary, and Joseph!” Scanlan muttered under his breath.  His words echoed in the confines of the sea cave like an untimely intrusion in the hush of some vast cathedral. He fell silent as he played his torch along the length of the thing, noting the faint gurgle of water stirring sluggishly about its armor-plated flanks. The sound suggested that the cave itself was accessible to the tides from outside, but he could see no other openings above ground save the one through which he himself had just come. Nor could he make out any underwater glow that might indicate a passage below the waterline to the sea beyond.

“Jayzus,” he breathed, more softly this time. It was difficult to make any very accurate estimate of the sub’s size, but he guessed she must be close to two hundred feet long, maybe more. She looked like all the photos his father had shown him of German U-boats he had helped to sink during the Second World War, when he served on a British frigate. The lines of her were right, from the graceful, deadly bow, with its jag-toothed net-cutter and lethal torpedo tubes, to the stubby conning tower and snorkel, to the deck guns mounted fore and aft.  And just readable, as he played his torch across the slight curve of the conning tower, was the white-painted designation 636.

U-636. He wondered how she had come to rest here. What little he could see of her did not appear to be damaged. And she must have been lying here in secret for nearly half a century.

Suddenly avid to have a closer look, Scanlan hunkered down and flicked his torch over the rocks below, seeking a way down. A narrow ridge meandered gently along the side, slick with sea wrack but perhaps rendered less treacherous by a profusion of barnacles. A series of outcroppings presented him with a ready-made set of stepping places and handholds, and should bring him within a few feet of the foredeck.

Exhilarated at the prospect of exploring the vessel, he hooked his torch to a clip on his life-vest and began his descent toward the cavern’s watery floor.  The air in the cavern was moist and heavy, the tang of brine laced with a musky hint of something else that reminded Scanlan curiously of church incense. The water lapping along the hull looked to be perhaps waist-deep. He was not quite sure whether the tide had turned yet, but he should have a few minutes in reasonable safety.

He reached the bottom of the cavern without mishap and sprang lightly to the sub’s foredeck, unclipping his torch to play it before him as he started aft. He brushed one hand along the rusted length of the sub’s big 3.5-inch deck gun just before he skirted the conning tower, again shining the torch on the painted numbers, 636. The ladder going up into the back of the conning tower was heavily rusted, but it looked sound enough – and was.

He climbed carefully, lest he cut his hands or damage his suit, and emerged on the command bridge. Forward, the wheel that dogged down the hatch drew him almost irresistibly, but when he tried to shift it, it stubbornly resisted his efforts.

“Shit,” Scanlan muttered. Though he had not really expected it to open, he still was disappointed. Panting a little from the exertion, he shone his torch around the inside of the conning tower again and noticed something he had missed in his first inspection: an irregular grey packet about the size of his two hands, lashed to the inside of the nearest bulkhead by grey webbing straps.  The straps fell to bits as he tried to loose the buckles. The packet itself was sheathed in a double layer of oilskin, mildewed and brittle with age, that cracked and all but disintegrated as he peeled it back to expose a folded bundle of scarlet material. It was musty and damp, but when Scanlan gingerly shook it out, the mass of red became a German Kriegsmarine flag – red and black and white.

He caught his breath at the sight of it – once-fine scarlet wool boldly ensigned with the distinctive black cross of old Germany behind the newer white roundel and black swastika of the Third Reich. He almost dropped it in sheer reflex, for the associations of evil that it held.

Again he found himself wondering what might have brought U-636 to her present resting place. His first thought had been that her captain must have been using this cave as a base from which to sally forth and harry Allied shipping. That seemed unlikely, though, for he could not imagine that the cave had ever offered safe access to and from the outside.

Had she fled here for sanctuary, then, pursued by her enemies? Again, how? He recalled hearing how stragglers from North Atlantic wolf packs sometimes had taken refuge in the depths of Tory Sound, not far away, though far more subs had ended up on the bottom than had escaped. He had even heard tell of a German sub from the First World War, said to lie on the floor of Donegal Bay, farther south. In those days, German submarines had used mercury for ballast – lots of it. There was talk of trying to salvage that ballast, for mercury in such quantities was extremely valuable; and such a salvage might also avert a later rupture, with its accompanying ecological implications.  Belatedly, he remembered the oil slick he had seen from outside. Surely this was its source. Had the sub limped here damaged, then? Shining his torch along her off side, he could see nothing overt, but who knew what lay below the waterline?  More probably, however, the slick he had seen could be attributed to a leak in one or more of the fuel tanks, their fabric failing at last after five decades of progressive deterioration.

But why had she been beached here in the first place, and how? More mysterious still, now that Scanlan stopped to think about it, was the matter of the two Hare Krishna types he had seen emerging from the cave. Recalling them now, he wondered what possible connection such individuals could have with a German submarine. What were they even doing in this part of the world? – in Ireland, of all places. Had they stumbled across the cavern purely by chance? Somehow Scanlan doubted it.

A gurgling sound like the lapping of waves recalled Scanlan from his speculation, and he flashed his torch over the side again. The tide had turned.  The water level in the cavern was rising – further confirmation that there must be an underwater channel leading to the outside. He had better get out of here, if he didn’t want to get trapped or maybe even drowned.  Clipping the torch to his vest again, Scanlan set about refolding the flag. He was well aware that the sub’s presence would have to be reported to the proper authorities. After this long, her salvage value was probably nil, but if she still held torpedoes, there was no telling how unstable they might have become in half a century. And there was the oil-spill question; who knew how much fuel might still reside in her tanks, set to trigger yet another ecological disaster?  In the meantime, however, there was no reason why Scanlan should not take the flag for himself as a souvenir. Stuffing it into the front of his survival suit, up under his life-vest, he zipped up again, then swung himself down out of the conning tower and set about retracing his route to the exit.  The grey light of the overcast day seemed glaringly bright after the dimness of the cavern’s interior, even though a heavy fog bank had begun to roll in with the incoming tide.

Scanlan emerged squinting from the cave and fetched up short as his half-dazzled gaze picked up a blur of bright orange out on the ledge a dozen yards to the landward side of the cave entrance.

Even as Scanlan gasped, the blur resolved itself into one of the Hare Krishnas – or maybe he was some sort of Oriental monk, come to think of it – gazing expectantly in his direction. Startled, Scanlan looked around for the second one and spotted him down on the beach below, standing ankle-deep in the water right next to the boat, a brighter orange against the deeper shade of the inflatable craft. He could not see O’Haverty.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he shouted, gesturing with his torch toward the man in the water. “Lorcan, where are you?”

O’Haverty did not answer, but the second monk glanced up at him with placid indifference. Only then did Scanlan realize that both men were holding odd-looking daggers with heavy, triple-edged blades, perhaps a foot long overall. The weapons looked dull and clumsy, hardly capable of inflicting much damage unless one were hit over the head with the pommel, but Scanlan found himself gripping his torch more tightly, wishing it were bigger, heavier. He had never heard of Hare Krishnas being other than peaceable and nonviolent, but there was something not right about these two. And where was O’Haverty?  Almost without realizing what he was doing, Scanlan began to back away from the nearer monk. As he did so, the one down on the beach thrust his dagger into his belt and jerked loose the anchor that was holding the boat in place, beginning to gather in the mooring line. His movement gave Scanlan a clearer look at the interior of the boat – and the crumpled splash of black and brighter orange lying in the stern, awash in a sea of crimson.

“Lorcan?” Scanlan whispered, the color draining from his face.  The monk in the water paid him no heed, merely continuing to coil the mooring line. The fog bank swallowed up the sun in that instant, and the temperature seemed to drop by at least twenty degrees.

Before Scanlan could summon the will to move, to do something, the monk on the ledge turned his impassive gaze back to the cave from which Scanlan had just emerged and clasped the hilt of his dagger between his palms, point downward.  Then, as the thin lips began to move silently, the agile hands began rolling the hilt of the dagger between the palms, the black eyes quickly losing focus and rolling back in the hairless head. As Scanlan edged away from the man, trying to decide which one was the greater threat, the monk on the beach tossed the anchor into the bow of the boat and moved back amidships. His expression, as he turned his face toward Scanlan, was one of mild reproof.

“Curiosity can be very costly,” he announced, in heavily accented English.  He must have done something to the boat’s controls then, for the engines suddenly roared to life, the bow swung around, and the boat began heading away from the shore.

“Hey!” Scanlan shouted, starting to skitter down the ledge in pursuit.  Even as he said it, already aware that he had no chance of catching the retreating boat, the monk up on the ledge raised the point of his dagger toward the entrance to the cave, continuing to roll the hilt between his palms – and suddenly released the weapon.

It sprang from between his hands, launching itself through the air like a tiny guided missile to strike the top of the cave opening with explosive force. With a crack like a thunderclap, the rock above the opening gave way, raining down rubble to bury the passageway under a descending weight of earth. Within a matter of seconds, the cave mouth had vanished, erased under tons of broken stone.

The concussion staggered Scanlan to his knees. Now nearly to the beach, he scrambled up and wheeled around in time to see the strange dagger come flashing back to its owner’s hand like a boomerang.

Scanlan’s eyes flew wide in blank incredulity. Even as his mind groped in vain for a logical explanation for what he had just witnessed, he realized that the second monk now was rolling his dagger the same way the first had done – except that its point was directed right at Scanlan!

The sight made Scanlan’s blood run cold. Backing off a few steps in horror, he turned to bolt for the imagined safety of a tumbled ridge of boulders, skirting close to the edge of the cliff-face. A lightning scramble up over the rocks took him some distance above the level of the beach. But before he could take shelter behind any of the outcroppings, the monk on the beach released his dagger.  Running for his life, Scanlan had no further warning before the blade thudded home between his shoulder blades, piercing to the hilt. The pain transfixed him as he screamed and staggered, his torch flying from his hand as he toppled forward into the sea. His head cracked against a rock enroute and he knew no more. Where he landed, the water for an instant was dyed crimson, but then the surf took command, dispelling the red as it rolled his body to and fro.  For a moment the monk on the beach gazed impassively at the tumbled form, at the occasional glimpse of the dagger’s hilt protruding from the bright orange of his victim’s survival suit – which would not permit its wearer to survive this assault, no matter its sophistication. When the monk raised his hand in a gesture of summons, the dagger pulled itself free with a slight shudder and snapped back to the summoner’s hand like the flick of an adder’s tongue. Briefly the dagger pointed again at Scanlan, and his body caught an eddy of current and began to drift eastward, against the direction of the incoming tide.  The monk nodded and turned his back on his work, scanning for his companion. Up on the cliff-face, the other monk was picking his way back down to the beach, having finished inspecting his handiwork. Of the former cave opening, only a tumble of rubble now remained, indistinguishable from all the other tangle of rockfall on this face of the promontory. Offshore, the blank wall of incoming fog had already swallowed up the sight and almost the sound of the retreating boat, and the smaller speck of the floating body’s life-vest and survival suit had very nearly disappeared.

The monk from the cliff rejoined the one on the beach. Facing eastward, the two stood shoulder to shoulder and prepared themselves, daggers grasped in their right hands with the blades pointed downward toward the sand at their feet.  Together they began to mouth the words of a whispered chant, faster and faster, until abruptly the eyes of first one and then the other rolled upward in trance.  Faces rapt, lips still moving, they then set out along the shrinking beach in a series of lengthening bounds.

They gathered speed as they went, their pace accelerating to carry them forward in smooth, fluid leaps, each one longer than the one before. As they travelled, the two made rhythmic, forward-reaching motions with their right hands, driving their dagger-points toward the ground as if propelling themselves off the surface with the aid of unseen walking sticks. They struck out across the water when they came to the end of the sand, just skimming the flat surface for half a dozen strides, their movements blurring into invisibility just when they would have disappeared into the fog beyond.

chapter one

“OH, why do photographers have to take so long?” said Lady Janet Fraser, as she peered up the avenue leading toward Sir Adam Sinclair’s gracious country house.  “Adam, I’m dying to see the look on Julia’s face when she sees the painting.” Behind them, ranged on the front steps and broad front lawn of Strathmourne Manor, nearly a hundred well-dressed wedding guests were chatting amiably and sipping champagne from crystal flutes on this sunny Saturday in May. Many of the men wore kilts and day-wear jackets; the ladies were resplendent in spring frocks and fanciful hats.

Earlier, they had gathered at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Dunfermline to witness the marriage of Peregrine Lovat, one of Scotland’s most talented young portrait painters, to the lovely Miss Julia Barrett; now they prepared to celebrate those nuptials with a formal reception and luncheon, here in the gardens of Strathmourne, Scottish seat of one of Peregrine’s more prominent patrons. Over on the south lawn, a vast yellow- and white-striped marquee had been erected to accommodate the guests. Half a dozen waiters in Stewart tartan trews and white mess jackets circulated among them with silver drinks trays, offering liquid refreshment before the bridal party arrived from the church.  Even as Janet spoke, there was a sudden flash of reflected sunlight among the tall beech trees that lined the avenue leading to the house. More flashes followed in quick succession, winking in and out among the beech leaves on the long approach.

“They’re coming!” Janet declared, as her surgeon-husband, Sir Matthew Fraser, brought her a glass of champagne.

Adam smiled and glanced in signal at his stableman, John Anderson, kilted and filling in as domestic staff for the day. Anderson, in turn, beckoned to another kilted man, the teenaged son of one of Adam’s tenant farmers, who nervously brought out a pair of ancient-looking broadswords. The two took up posts to either side of the entryway, swords at rest before them, as the first of three sleek Daimler limousines came into view, deep claret coachwork gleaming in the midday sun.

At a pace both stately and efficient, the first car eased to a stop at the foot of the steps and disgorged the bride’s aunt and uncle and both mothers. Adam welcomed them graciously, deftly directing them to one side as the first car was replaced by the second, which carried the best man, Julia’s matron of honor, and the two little flower girls. Other family members followed in the third car, and the tardy photographer bailed out of a hastily parked Volkswagen van and began setting up. As the newcomers availed themselves of champagne and joined the rest of the wedding guests beginning to congregate closer to the entrance to the house, the bridal car appeared at the far end of the drive and made its slow approach.

Rather than another hired Daimler, it was Adam’s own classic Mark VI Bentley that carried the newlyweds, lent for the occasion along with Adam’s valet-butler, Humphrey, in his well-accustomed alternate role as chauffeur.  Though Humphrey rarely displayed much emotion, as befitted his station as manservant in a distinguished household, Adam thought he detected more than a hint of a smile on Humphrey’s normally impassive face as he brought the big blue car to a smooth halt in front of the steps and came around to open the door.  “Oh, don’t they make a handsome couple?” Janet murmured as the kilted Peregrine handed his bride out of the car, to a smattering of applause from the assembled guests. “And Julia’s gown is absolutely stunning!”

The gown in question was an Edwardian confection of creamy silk taffeta, with wide skirts billowing from around Julia’s tiny waist. Antique lace framed the wide neckline and frilled the puffed sleeves at the elbow, and dozens of tiny buttons marched down the back of the close-fitting bodice to a bustle-effect above a modest train. In keeping with the romantic mood set by the gown, Julia had pulled back her red-gold curls in a cascade caught at the crown, with a wreath of creamy-yellow silk roses securing her veil. Peregrine’s cobalt-blue velvet doublet was frothed at the throat with an heirloom lace jabot, above a kilt of brown and blue and green – the hunting sett of his customary Fraser of Lovat tartan.

“Oh, I do love weddings!” Janet declared as the pair kissed for the photographer’s benefit. “One of these days, Adam, I hope to see you getting out of that car with a lovely bride on your arm.”

Adam shot her a forbearing smile and returned his gaze to the bridal couple, now posing for a more conventional photograph with Humphrey, beside the car. He hoped Janet was not going to bring up the subject of Ximena. On this day, of all days, he did not need reminding of his own domestic frustrations. A physician himself, he had met Dr. Ximena Lockhart in a hospital emergency room, after sustaining minor injuries in a car crash some eighteen months ago. Despite this inauspicious beginning, which had proven to connect with one of the highly unofficial investigations he pursued from time to time with the local police – and which had even brought Ximena herself into danger – his relationship with the lissom, dark-haired American had flourished in the next six months, leading both of them to begin entertaining serious thoughts of marriage.  But news of her father’s terminal illness had summoned Ximena back to California the previous summer to nurse him in his final months – which now had stretched on to nearly a year. Adam could not begrudge them the time together, but he still cherished hopes that, when all was resolved, she might be moved to return to Scotland. Meanwhile, he must not let his own nostalgia for her company darken his enjoyment of Peregrine Lovat’s wedding day.

The said Peregrine was looking very pleased with himself as he led his bride up the steps of Strathmourne, hazel eyes shining behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, the fair hair slightly breeze-ruffled. Behind them, Humphrey took the Bentley silently off to its garage in the stableyard, and ahead of them, beyond Adam, Anderson and his young partner came to attention and brought their swords smartly to salute.

“Welcome to Strathmourne, Mrs. Lovat,” Adam said, gallant words to match his dark good looks and courtly manners as he bent smiling over her hand in a graceful swirl of red Sinclair tartan.

After clasping Peregrine’s hand in more hearty congratulation, he invited the pair of them to follow him into the house. The swordsmen remained at salute until he had passed through the arched doorway, then smartly extended the blades in a sword arch for the happy couple, to the obvious approval of the wedding guests.

“Well done,” came a murmured commendation from a distinguished-looking older man with a military moustache.

Anderson knew the speaker well; and when he and his partner had closed the arch behind the couple and returned to “shoulder arms” and “dismiss,” he came back to attention and gave him a precise military salute. It was General Sir Gordon Scott-Brown who had given Anderson the recommendation that led to employment with Adam for the past ten years. Until invalided out from injuries sustained in a terrorist bombing, John Anderson had been a trooper in the Household Cavalry.  “Good to see you again, Mr. Anderson,” the general said, coming to shake the man’s hand. “I’m glad to see you haven’t forgotten everything they taught you.” “No, sir,” Anderson said with a smile. “And young Andrews has proven as a good a student as I ever had. May I present him to you? I’ve been trying to talk him into a career in the military.”

Inside, Peregrine was drawn aside to answer a question from the caterer, and Julia glanced back over her shoulder appreciatively as Adam led her farther into the flower-banked vestibule.

“Oh, Adam, the swords were a wonderful touch,” she said. “Peregrine told me you’d arranged a sword arch, but I expected the usual Scottish basket-hilts.  Those look very old. Are they ancestral Sinclair treasures?” “After a fashion,” Adam conceded, smiling. “The blades were once used in the service of the Knights Templar – and as you know, both Strathmourne and Templemor were once Templar holdings.”

He left unsaid that her new husband had been among those who helped acquire the swords, whilst in pursuit of thieves attempting to locate and plunder a secret Templar strongroom. It was but one of the instances in which Peregrine had aided Adam in his work, on many levels. The public and social face presented by Sir Adam Sinclair, Baronet, declared him a patron of the arts, an antiquarian of some repute, and an aficionado of classic motor cars. Professionally, Dr. Adam Sinclair was well regarded as a psychiatrist and sometime consultant to the Lothian and Borders Police. Only a handful of people, many of them present today, knew anything of his dedication to more arcane pursuits, as white-occultist, Adept, and Master of an esoteric fraternity known as the Hunting Lodge, charged with enforcing the higher laws of the Inner Planes.  “Well, then,” said Julia, who was not aware of these other facets of her husband’s patron and mentor, “we have the Templars to thank for the swords, I suppose. And thank you, Adam, for making all this possible. Peregrine says you always think of everything, and I’m beginning to see what he means. This whole day…” She gestured around the flower-banked vestibule with a happy sigh. “I still can hardly believe we’re having our wedding reception here. You’ve made it especially magical for us.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Adam assured her. “Consider it part of my wedding present to the pair of you. I only wish the restoration up at Templemor could have been farther along. It would have been a marvellous tribute to your new husband’s artistic talents, to have held the reception in the great hall. I very much doubt we’d be even as far along as we are, if it weren’t for his artistic vision.”

“But Templemor wouldn’t have been nearly large enough,” Janet Eraser said, come to whisk Julia away to freshen up before joining the receiving line. “The great hall here isn’t even big enough. Julia, this is an absolute fairy tale. Just wait until you see the marquee! Come upstairs, and you can look down on the lawn from one of the south bedrooms.”

As the two women disappeared up the stair, chattering animatedly, Adam reflected that it was probably as well neither had any idea just how far Peregrine Lovat’s range of artistic talents exceeded the norm. It was those particular talents that had commended him to Adam’s attention in the first place – and soon had earned him a place as one of Adam’s most versatile and useful Huntsmen, a preferred teammate on many an unusual investigation. Adam’s Second, Detective Chief Inspector Noel McLeod, had come to value Peregrine’s unique talents in a forensic capacity as well, so that on occasion, Peregrine, too, served as a consultant in police investigations that ranged beyond the conventional.  Adam spotted the grey-haired inspector and his wife just outside the door, McLeod uncharacteristically kilted and looking none too happy about it. As he lifted a hand in greeting, Jane McLeod saw him and also raised a hand to wave.  Jane was a rare gem. Adam hoped that Peregrine would be as fortunate in his choice of a mate as McLeod had been – and that he would be as fortunate. Though Peregrine would have been as forthright with Julia as he could be, about the demands sometimes placed upon him – and much could be explained away by the need for confidentiality, when off about police business – the more specific work of the Hunting Lodge was not something that could be readily accepted and understood by those who were not themselves initiates. Nor was it fair to expect active participation from those who had no calling in what, essentially, was a vocation. Given a spouse not so called, mere loving support and unquestioning acceptance were great blessings; and even those were not always granted to those who served the Light. It took a special kind of spouse to accept such an arrangement on trust.

McLeod’s Jane was one such spouse – supportive but not herself directly involved – and Adam guessed that Julia would also rise to the challenge. He hardly dared to hope that perhaps, in time, Ximena might be able to do so as well – if the two of them ever got together again for more than a forty-eight-hour flying visit. As for an equal partnership in the Work, like that shared by Christopher and Victoria Houston – he dared not even dream that he might be that fortunate.  A sudden outburst of squeals and childish laughter broke in on his reverie.  Glancing back, he saw that Peregrine was playing at being a snapping crocodile for the delighted benefit of Ashley and Alexandra Houston, aged seven and four, Julia’s two little flower girls.

“Just offhand,” said a crisp contralto voice at Adam’s shoulder, “I’d say that Peregrine possesses all the right qualifications for future parenthood, wouldn’t you?”

“I would, indeed,” Adam agreed, smiling. The speaker was the children’s mother, Victoria Houston, whose clergyman-husband had officiated at the wedding in conjunction with the elderly parish priest resident at St. Margaret’s. Only their fellow Huntsmen would have been aware that Father Christopher had added one or two special touches of his own to ensure that Peregrine and Julia’s marriage received not only the blessings of the Church, but also the benisons of the Inner Planes.

“I would also say that the girls have earned their sport with Uncle Peregrine,” Adam added. “They were perfect little ladies for the ceremony, utter models of decorum.”

“Goodness, don’t say that!” Victoria said in mock alarm. “The next thing you know, they’ll be trying to climb the wedding cake!” “Those little cherubs?” Adam said with a droll grin.  “Well, the early indoctrination might hold,” Victoria allowed. “Years of sitting still in church and watching Daddy parade around in fancy dress helps. Actually, they can’t wait until they’re old enough to be in the choir, so they can wear those flashy red cassocks and little white ruffs!”

Adam laughed aloud at that. Hearing him, Christopher excused himself from a conversation with Julia’s mother and uncle and came over to join them, snagging a fresh glass of champagne on the way, dapper and elegant in his clerical suit and collar. He spared an amused look for his daughters, then asked in a conspiratorial undertone, ‘ ‘Has Julia seen the painting yet?” Adam shook his head. “Not yet. I’ve had Humphrey put it on an easel right beside the head table. She’ll get her first glimpse of it when Peregrine leads her to her place.”

“So it’s still a surprise. Good.” Christopher grinned like a schoolboy. “I hope that photographer will be around to catch the expression on her face!” As soon as Julia rejoined them, the members of the wedding party reconvened in the vestibule and entry hall to receive their guests before retiring to the marquee for lunch. Following several of Julia’s school chums, one of the first to come through the line was a fragile, elderly woman in a wheelchair, lifted up the steps, chair and all, by Anderson and Andrews. She was swathed in a graceful sari of sapphire silk shot with silver, with a paisley shawl draped over her lap. A handsome sapphire set in a golden scarab graced her right hand, and Indian bangles circled both wrists. A somewhat younger companion accompanied her, guiding the chair. Peregrine’s face lit up at the sight of the pair.  “Lady Julian!” he exclaimed, going to her. “And Mrs. Fyvie! I’m so glad you could come!”

“You know I wouldn’t have missed this day for the world,” Lady Julian said, smiling as she gave Peregrine both her hands and accepted the salute of his kiss on her cheek. “Julia, my dear, you look positively radiant, as all brides should. Are you pleased with the rings?”

Slipping one arm through Peregrine’s, Julia leaned down to display her left hand, for Lady Julian, an accomplished jeweller, had made both their rings.  Peregrine had opted for a plain gold band lightly etched with a Celtic interlace design; Julia’s narrower band nestled close to the heart-shaped ruby she wore as an engagement ring. The latter had belonged to Peregrine’s grandmother.  “They’re absolutely wonderful,” Julia said, eyes shining, “and all the more special for having been made by you. I look forward to wearing mine for a lifetime.”

“You have my prayers that that lifetime may be a long and happy one, my dear,” Lady Julian said.

“I promise you, I shall do everything in my power to make it so,” Peregrine replied, with an adoring glance at his bride.

The cheerful buzz of conversation swelled as guests continued to present themselves, passing through the drawing room then and onto the terrace, with the marquee beyond. Some of Peregrine’s guests were former schoolmates, but many were his former clients and patrons.

Perhaps most prominent among the latter were the Earl and Countess of Kintoul.  The earl was closer to Adam’s age than to Peregrine’s, but Peregrine had been close friends with the earl’s younger brother, the Honourable Alasdair, tragically killed in a motoring accident shortly after both young men left university. After Alasdair’s death, his mother had adopted Peregrine as a surrogate son, and had become his first really important client and patron as his career began to take off. She sadly had not lived to see the flowering of his friendship with Adam, following her introduction, but she had remembered him in her will with a modest bursary and the bequest of a beloved and valuable vintage motorcar. The dark green Alvis drop-head coupe parked near the marquee, poised for the honeymoon getaway, had been known affectionately as “Algy” by the Kintoul family.

“The best of all good wishes to you and your enchanting bride,” the earl said to Peregrine, shaking his hand as Lady Kintoul gave Julia a fond hug. “Julia, has he let you drive Algy yet?”

Julia rolled celestial blue eyes and pulled a mock pout. “Not so far, I’m afraid – though, in fairness, I must admit that my esteemed husband has been having the engine gone over so that Algy will be ready for our wedding trip. I shan’t tell you where we’re going, but he has promised me a turn at the wheel once we get away in the countryside – and I intend to see that promise gets kept!” “I shall look forward to your assessment of the old bus,” the earl replied, laughing as his wife poked him in the ribs and said, “Shame on you, David Kintoul! Algy is not an ‘old bus’! Julia, you’re going to love it. Just don’t let Peregrine bully you into thinking that driving vintage cars is an esoteric sport, reserved only for men!”

Of a slightly different tenor was the brief exchange with General Sir Gordon Scott-Brown, John Anderson’s benefactor, soon to retire as Governor of Edinburgh Castle. He was escorting his wife and younger daughter, both of whom had sat for Peregrine to paint their portraits in the past year. A prominent Freemason, the general had been of material assistance to Adam and his associates some months past, when a lodge of black magicians had set about killing off Freemasons.  Since then, Peregrine had received several important commissions on the strength of the general’s recommendation. Now Sir Gordon shook Peregrine’s hand vigorously and tipped him a jaunty wink.

“Come and see me when you get back from your honeymoon, Mr. Lovat,” he told the young artist. “My Lodge is celebrating its centenary this year, and we’re hoping to have a group portrait painted for the occasion. I’ve let it be known that you’re the man for the job.”

When it was time for the wedding luncheon to commence, the Earl of Kintoul’s personal piper struck up “Mairi’s Wedding” and led the newly weds out to the marquee. The photographer had been alerted, and was standing near a large gilt-framed oil painting set on an easel near the head table. Peregrine said nothing as he led his bride across the parquet floor, but Julia noticed the painting almost immediately. She caught her breath as they came abreast of it, half in delight and half in awe.

“Peregrine, did you do this?” she exclaimed, as the piper finished his tune.  Peregrine acknowledged responsibility with a sheepish grin. “Let it never be said that romance is dead,” he told his bride. “I hope you like it.” “Like it? I adore it!” Julia exclaimed – and threw both her arms impulsively around his neck, to the delight of the watching guests and a smattering of applause.

It was a unique wedding gift, that only Peregrine himself could have created for his bride. In composition and technique, the painting was a faithful reflection of a nineteenth-century work by the Scottish artist Alexander Johnstone. The original portrayed a romanticized Bonnie Prince Charlie nrreecffig Ffora MacDonald for the first time, with the kilted Prince seated beside a rustic table in a rough stone cottage. Before him, outlined against the light from an open doorway, stood the legendary heroine who had helped him elude his English pursuers “over the sea to Skye.”

Peregrine had re-created every detail of the original with consummate skill and deliberation. In his version, however, the features of the principals had been altered to mirror a cast of familiar faces. The Flora MacDonald of Johnstone’s original painting now wore Julia’s fair visage and a fanciful conjecture of her wedding gown, which Peregrine had never seen before today. The latter was a close likeness, suggesting that Peregrine might have had a conference with his bride’s dressmaker.

Peregrine himself had assumed the identity of the Bonnie Prince, kilted in his customary Fraser of Lovat tartan, hazel eyes brimful of adoration as he gazed up at his fair rescuer. In a puckish display of humor, the glint of his wire-rimmed spectacles was clearly visible. The handsome laird who was presenting Flora by the hand displayed the darkly handsome features of Adam and wore his Sinclair tartan. Other figures in the painting were clearly recognizable as Matthew and Janet Fraser and Julia’s Uncle Alfred, all of whom had been present when the newlyweds first met. Casting her gaze over the detailing, Julia gave a little crow of laughter and clapped her hands in delight.

“Oh, Peregrine, it’s wonderful. I hate to think how much time you must have spent toiling over this when you might have been doing other things. Whatever gave you the idea?”

Smiling, Peregrine captured one of his wife’s hands and raised it to his lips with a smile.

“I thought the spirit of our first meeting should be preserved, and the Johnstone painting seemed somehow an appropriate model,” he declared. “You have made me a prince among men, dearest Julia, and just as Bonnie Prince Charlie placed his life in Flora’s hands, so do I place my happiness in yours.” “Hear, hear!” someone shouted approvingly as applause broke out again; and Janet Fraser murmured, “Who said that chivalry was dead?” The luncheon menu began with a salmon mousse in shells of fresh melon and worked through a tomato bisque, breast of duck in a marinade of orange and ginger, and an accompaniment of new potatoes and garden vegetables, along with appropriate wines. Once the remnants of the main course had been cleared away, Humphrey wheeled in the wedding cake on a silver serving trolley: a glistening triple-tiered confection in white sugar icing. Decorating the top tier, in place of the traditional figures of a bride and groom, was a miniature scene from a fairy tale: a knight on a white horse doing battle with a dragon while his lady looked on from the turreted window of her castle.

“How lovely!” whispered Janet Fraser to her husband. “To be married in the spirit of chivalry…” Once the cake had been cut, using a Victorian cavalry sword carried by the groom’s great-grandfather in the Zulu Wars, there followed the traditional round of speeches while the cake was distributed and coffee was served. After the addresses had been concluded, Adam rose from his seat at the top table and gave his crystal champagne flute a chiming tap with a silver coffee spoon. As the buzz of conversation settled, he lifted his glass.

“My lords and ladies, honored guests, friends and family of the happy couple,” he proclaimed. “Before we adjourn to the garden, please join with me in pledging Julia and Peregrine our best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous future.”

The toast signalled the formal end to the meal. Thereafter, the guests filtered out to the gardens while Lord Kintoul’s piper played again and the marquee was cleared for the dancing that would follow. Adam, his formal hosting duties now done, circulated freely among the guests, enjoying the sunshine of the terrace and the chance to chat with friends.

Eventually his perambulations brought him round to the rose arbor, where he found Noel McLeod sitting alone on a stone bench in the shade, polishing his gold-rimmed aviator spectacles on a handkerchief. Something in the inspector’s manner suggested that he might have been waiting for Adam.  “Hello, Noel,” Adam said, wondering what the reason might be. “Don’t tell me you’ve tired of the festivities already, when there’s still some country dancing to be done.”

Scowling beneath a wiry grey moustache, McLeod settled his spectacles back on his face and ran a hand through thick grey hair.

“Not tired, just hot,” he said with a grimace. “I had to wear my winter-weight kilt.” He picked up a pleat in distaste. “Jane discovered only yesterday that the moths had been at my summer one, and you know how women are, when they get something in their heads: She wouldn’t even entertain the thought of me wearing a suit.”

Adam smiled. “If you wore your kilts more often, the moths wouldn’t have as much chance to get at them.”

“Och, I know that.” McLeod raised a hand in dismissal. “I could have hired one, I suppose, but things have been so hectic at the office lately that I haven’t had much time to spare for anything apart from police business. As a matter of fact, the next time you’ve got a free moment, there’s something I’d like to talk over with you – just to see what you think.”

McLeod’s tone was casual, but the very fact that he had broached the subject of business at a purely social gathering made it clear that the matter to which he was referring had been weighing on his mind.

“I suppose I could make a bit of time just now,” Adam said, “so long as it isn’t anything too complicated.”

“Well, the telling isn’t complicated,” McLeod said as Adam sat beside him. “You remember Donald Cochrane?”

“Of course.” Cochrane was McLeod’s chief assistant.  “Well, about a week ago, Donald handed me the file on a case that had come over from Traffic Division. It seems that in the course of the past four months, for some unknown reason, a particular stretch of the Lanark Road west of Currie has suddenly become the scene of a whole string of serious traffic accidents, with several fatalities.

“I say ‘for some unknown reason,’ “ he went on, “because that bit of road has never been a problem before. I’ve driven it many times myself, and I can tell you that it’s just a straight stretch of plain tarmac – no curves, no roundabouts, not many access roads – no potential hazards of any kind. As far as these recent accidents are concerned, there are no reports of any particularly adverse weather conditions on the days in question, likewise no unusual traffic congestion.

“Nor have we been able to make any human correlations. Investigators from Traffic Division checked over the medical records of the various victims and couldn’t find any medical anomalies affecting any of the drivers. And yet, for all these noes, there have been no fewer than nine people killed or injured along this roadway since the beginning of the year. It’s getting so bad that the media have begun referring to this bit of road as Carnage Corridor.” During McLeod’s recital, Adam had become aware of something stirring at the back of his mind. It was a sensation he had experienced many times before, and invariably signalled that there was more to a given situation than might meet the eye. Without having any special idea what he might be plumbing for, he asked, “What can you tell me about the accidents themselves?” McLeod pulled a scowl, setting both hands on the stone bench to either side of him and studying his black brogues and kilt hose.

“The first crash occurred on New Year’s Day,” he said. ‘ ‘Three local lads were on their way home after an all-night Hogmanay party when the driver ran his car off the road. The vehicle overturned into a ditch, killing the driver outright.  One of the passengers died a few days later; the other survived, but is still in a coma. They haven’t much hope that he’ll ever wake up. Everyone involved in the investigation assumed that it would turn out to be a clear-cut case of drunk driving, but the post-mortem showed that the man at the wheel had a blood alcohol level well below the legal limit.”

“Asleep at the wheel, then?” Adam ventured.

“Maybe. But the hostess of the party says that all three lads had caught a few hours of sleep in the wee small hours, and they’d had a solid breakfast before setting out for home, with lots of strong coffee.”

“Go on.”

“Since then, there have been four more accidents, occurring roughly at three- to four-week intervals,” McLeod continued, ‘ ‘each of them attended by at least one fatality. They form enough of a pattern to suggest that there must be some common factor – but so far, nobody’s been able to figure out what it could be.  Given the fact that all logical avenues of investigation have failed to turn up an answer, I’ve begun to wonder if maybe the explanation we’re after is one that defies conventional logic.”

“The situation certainly would seem to border on the uncanny,” Adam agreed.

“Have you any theories?”

McLeod pulled a wry face. “Nary a one. That’s why I thought it might be worthwhile to let you have a go at it. If you’ve any chinks in your schedule this coming week, I’d appreciate it if you could come down to the station and look over the reports for yourself, just to see if you get any feel for what might be at the bottom of it all.”

Adam nodded, considering. “Monday’s actually not too bad,” he told McLeod. “I’ve got my usual rounds at the hospital, together with some late-morning appointments, but I should be free by noon. Why don’t I meet you at your office after lunch?”

“That would do nicely,” McLeod said. “Maybe you’ll be able to spot something I’ve missed. It’s just too uncanny to be mere chance.” “What’s uncanny?” said an interested voice from behind Adam’s back.

Both Adam and McLeod looked around to find Peregrine Lovat standing on the path.  “Nothing that need concern anyone who’s about to take off on his honeymoon,” McLeod said sharply. “Believe me, you’ve got far better things to do than meddle in the affairs of Traffic Division.”

“Traffic Division?” Peregrine looked briefly nonplussed at the possibility of anything unusual occurring under the jurisdiction of that generally humdrum aspect of law enforcement. “But if you’ve really got a case you think we should look at – “ “We don’t know yet,” Adam said firmly. “We won’t know until I’ve had a chance to look over the paperwork, if then. And even if something does turn up that might prove worth our investigating,” he continued, raising an eyebrow, “don’t you think you might trust Noel and me to handle it in your absence?” Peregrine had the grace to look sheepish. “All right, I can take the hint,” he told his mentors. “But if anything interesting happens here while Julia and I are off in the Western Isles, I’ll want to hear the whole story when I get back.”

“Don’t worry, you will,” McLeod promised. “Now, away you go and dance with that pretty wife of yours. I hear the Ceili band tuning up. A man’s wedding day doesn’t last forever, so don’t waste another minute of it standing around talking to us.”

chapter Two

“Salutations to the Buddha!

In the language of gods and in that of the demigods, In the language of the demons and in that of men, In all the languages which exist, I proclaim the Doctrine!”

THE words of the ancient Buddhist invocation resonated across the courtyard of the monastery like a flourish of temple bells. As the echoes died away, there arose a sonorous, long-drawn exchange of horn-calls signalling the commencement of evening devotions. In the windows belonging to the apartments of the monastery’s abbot, a string of moving lights appeared as the abbot himself, together with his attendants, processed toward the tsokhang, the community’s vaulted meditation hall. Elsewhere throughout the monastery, a subdued patter of sandalled feet likewise converged on the hall, arrested outside the door as the ordinary monks paused to shed their footwear before padding inside to take their places for prayers and meditation.

The traditions governing these observances dated back to ancient Tibet. This monastic community, however, was located not amid the towering crags of the Himalayas, but deep in the heart of the Swiss Alps. Most inhabitants of the neighboring villages assumed that this settlement was merely an extension of the respected and much better-known Buddhist colony located at Rikon, near Zurich.  In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. Though many honest seekers from both East and West daily found their way here, none of these ever suspected that this innocent-seeming retreat from the world was home to a select group of individuals who, for nearly half a century, had concealed the shadowy nature of their true powers and ambitions behind carefully maintained masks of sanctity.

Nowhere was the illusion more complete than in the meditation hall of the temple. Lofty as a cathedral vault, the interior was illuminated mostly by an array of elaborately jewelled and enamelled butter lamps. On every side, the walls and pillars were decorated with frescoes and scrolls of painting, some of them showing the manifold images of various Buddhas, others devoted to the depiction of a wide range of saints, demigods, and demons. At one end of the hall, enshrined behind another row of butter lamps, glittered the gilded images of lamas and former abbots. Beneath these statues reposed a collection of gold and silver stupas, reliquaries containing their mummified remains.  A stir at one end of the hall, together with a sudden brightening of the lights, heralded the arrival of the abbot’s procession. Those monks who were still standing hurriedly fled to their stations and settled themselves cross-legged on the floor. A moment later, the abbot himself appeared, flanked by two of his senior attendants. Four lesser acolytes hovered behind them with thuribles of incense, ready to perfume the hall with the fragrances of balsam and musk.  The abbot and his aides were arrayed in caftan-like chubas of black brocade, the loose folds belted and bloused, with shoulder fastenings of gold. Over this, each member of the trio wore a short coat of heavy orange silk, surmounted by a toga-like mantle of the same material. The features of the two attendants were unmistakably Oriental, but the abbot himself was a Westerner. His ice-blue eyes and pale, regular features proclaimed Nordic blood, though his head was shaven clean, like those of his companions.

As the congregation of his humbler followers respectfully abased themselves before him, he led the way across the floor to a raised dais on the east side of the room. An expectant silence fell as he folded himself cross-legged onto the low, gilded throne which awaited him there. Before his two senior attendants took their places to either side of him, they paused at the edge of the dais to kindle two more lamps. As the twin lights flared, a deep-toned chant broke out from all sides.

The liturgy was conducted in the language of Tibet. The abbot himself led the chanting in a voice devoid of any trace of a Western accent. To the chorus of voices was added the occasional music of a small consort of Tibetan instruments – reed-like gyalings and trumpet-like ragdongs, played to the rhythm of a pair of kettledrums. Over all wafted the fragrance of incense mingled with the fumes from the lamps.

At the conclusion of the service, the abbot paused briefly to salute the statues of his predecessors before departing from the hall. A serving brother was waiting just outside the door and bowed low, joined hands pressed to his forehead.

“Pardon if I intrude, Rinpoche, but Kurkar-la and Nagpo-la have returned. I am instructed to ask if you will speak with them now or at some later time.” “I will see them now,” the abbot said coolly. “Bring them to me here.” With another bow, the serving brother departed. When he returned a moment later, he was followed by two very senior-ranking monks, one of exceedingly venerable years. The abbot’s blue eyes narrowed slightly as he searched their faces, but after a moment, his chiselled features eased.

“Come,” he said, also instructing the serving brother to bring refreshment to his chambers.

The apartment to which he led them was opulently appointed. Butter lamps of gold and silver filigree flooded the room with wan, flickering light. The febrile glow of the flames picked out the jewel-like weave of a number of Oriental carpets warming the polished wooden floor on which they lay. Incense smoke from several gem-studded braziers filled the air with a heavy perfume redolent of opium and sandalwood.

Each of the four corners of the room was dominated by the presence of a heavy, triple-edged dagger standing as tall and bulky as a man, set upright by its point in a stand fashioned in the shape of an equilateral triangle. Thus positioned, the daggers had the look almost of sentries on guard. The pommel ends of the wooden daggers bore intricate traceries of carving, in patterns reminiscent of grinning masks. The wavering light of the butter lamps lent the carvings a disquieting illusion of movement, as if the weapons themselves harbored some malevolent life of their own. Though clearly made of wood, not metal, in all other respects they bore a kindred resemblance to the smaller metal daggers the two newly arrived monks were carrying thrust through the backs of their belts.

Entering the room behind the abbot, the two monks paused to offer each of the standing daggers a formal salute. Hands pressed flat together, they bowed low from the waist, lightly touching the tips of their fingers to forehead, throat, and heart in a gesture of reverence.

On the side of the room opposite the door stood a low dais, luxuriously carpeted and strewn with flat cushions of rich brocade. To this the abbot mounted, seating himself cross-legged on one of the pillows and beckoning his two subordinates to places before him. As they settled, a servant dispensed Tibetan tea laced with butter and salt into bowls of fine porcelain ornamented with gold leaf. Only after he had withdrawn did the abbot speak, lifting his bowl in salute.

“You have returned in good time,” he said, in his fluent, unaccented Tibetan.

“Tell me how you fared in your mission.”

“The news we bring is mixed, Rinpoche,” said the younger monk. “Finding the cave presented no difficulty. The signs were all there to be read with the eyes of knowledge. We entered and found the submarine resting where the records said she would be. Regrettably, however, our visit did not go unnoticed.” The abbot’s brow furrowed. “Explain.”

The elder monk inclined his head. “A man came ashore from a boat. A second remained with the craft. They must have glimpsed us from the water and become curious enough to investigate. An unfortunate trait. Both have been eliminated, and will cause no further interference.”

‘ ‘And what of the submarine itself?” the abbot asked.  “The vessel appears to be intact,” the first monk allowed, “but we were unable to gain entry.”

“The hatches are rusted fast,” the second monk explained.  “We were reluctant to apply such force as was available to us, lest we risk damage to what lies within.”

The abbot paused to consider this piece of reasoning, then nodded his agreement.  “Your decision was wisely made. This is a task requiring ordinary tools, and men who know how to use them properly. Furthermore, they must be Westerners who will not arouse suspicion by their presence in the area where the submarine is hidden. I want no further instances of local people getting curious.” The two monks traded glances. The younger one pulled a slight frown, the first trace of emotion he had shown since his arrival.

“Where are we to find such men, Rinpochel If we hire such from the immediate vicinity, there is no way to ensure their silence.”

“There are other difficulties, as well,” put in his counterpart. “Now that we have seen where the submarine is hidden, it is clear there will be problems with transport. There are no roads readily accessible from the area in question.  Moreover, we are given to understand that the political situation in this area is one that will demand careful handling.”

He directed an inquiring look toward his superior. The abbot did not immediately respond, but after a moment’s thought, he squared his broad shoulders.  “At dawn, I will instruct Lutzen to consult the oracle,” he declared. “In the meantime, you have done well, and have earned your rest. You may retire until morning, when I trust I shall have further instructions for you.”

chapter three

ON the Monday following Peregrine’s wedding, Adam breakfasted early before driving off to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, where he ranked as a senior psychiatric consultant. Checking at his office before his first appointment of the day, he found a message on his desk from one of the secretaries, informing him of a telephone call from Noel McLeod half an hour before.  The Inspector says not an emergency, the secretary had written, but would be grateful if you could ring him back at your earliest convenience.  Adam frowned slightly, wondering what was afoot, but a glance at his pocket watch confirmed that he had only a few minutes before he was due to see his first patient. The relevant case file was lying on his desktop. Since he wanted to review his notes from the last session, he decided to take McLeod at his word and leave off returning the call until after this morning’s session.  He skimmed the top few pages from the file, then headed for the treatment room, while memory supplied the background details of the case. The patient, a young man named Colin Balfour, was suffering from an acute form of obsessive behavior.  Morbidly repelled by dirt, he would spend hours washing his hands, sometimes scrubbing until his skin was rubbed raw. In the crisis that had led to his hospitalization, he had taken Jye to his hands; fortunateJy, a neighbor had heard his screams and gotten help. The hands would heal with little scarring, but the psychic scarring that had prompted the attempted mutilation would require more delicate treatment.

It was not a question of finding the underlying cause. That had become clear very early on in their work together. As a child of about seven or eight, Balfour had been sexually abused by an older cousin, who had terrorized him into keeping silent with threats of reprisals. Now, some fifteen years later, Balfour was desperately trying to wash away the psychic residue of shame, confusion, and misplaced guilt.

“Just thinking about it makes me feel unclean,” he had told Adam, the day he finally had opened up about this shadow from his past. “I feel grimy right down to the marrow of my bones. 1 keep asking myself how I could ever have let myself be used that way, if some part of me didn’t want it to happen. I mean, I let it go on and never told anyone. So I was as guilty as my cousin, wasn’t I?” The questions Balfour had posed for himself were ones Adam had encountered elsewhere in similar cases. For this young man, as for many other victims of abuse, the traumatizing effects of the experience itself had been exacerbated by anger and a soul-sickening conviction that somehow he must have been at least partly to blame for what had happened to him. Adam had helped him work through much of the rage in their earlier sessions; today, he hoped to begin working on the misplaced guilt.

That entailed getting at Balfour’s memory of the traumatic episodes, which would have been distorted by time and his growing obsession. Fortunately, hypnosis offered one effective means by which the patient himself could bring the important details of the past into focus, whilst deriving needful comfort and support from the companion-presence of his therapist. Adam had explored the possibility of hypnotic regression at their last therapy session, and Balfour had agreed, though without much enthusiasm.

As soon as Adam entered the therapy room, however, he could see that his patient would be needing some renewed encouragement. Balfour was slumped despondently in his chair, bandaged hands resting listlessly in the lap of his tan hospital-issue dressing gown. Adam greeted him cordially, without alluding to the other man’s moody behavior. Moving round to the chair on the opposite side of the desk, he made a relaxed show of sitting down and consulting his notes.  “Well, it seems we’ve got plenty of work to do today,” he observed genially.

“Are you still willing to try that experiment we spoke of last time?” Balfour seemed to hunch down even further between his shoulder blades, like a turtle retreating into its shell.

“I suppose so,” he mumbled. “I guess it couldn’t hurt.” His expression was morose, his manner withdrawn.

“Oh, it certainly won’t hurt,” Adam said with a fleeting smile. ‘ ‘On the contrary, I have high hopes that it might very well be of some help. Have you any questions you want to ask me before we begin?” Balfour gave a shrug, not meeting Adam’s eyes. “I guess not,” he said in a flat voice. “If you want to play Svengali, it’s up to you.” “We’ll proceed as planned, then,” Adam said calmly, coming around to sit on the front edge of his desk. “Why don’t you put your feet up and make yourself comfortable? But if you’re expecting me to don a long black cloak and make mystic passes in the air before your eyes, I’m afraid you’re going to be in for a disappointment. Clinical hypnotherapists are a notoriously unimaginative bunch when it comes to stage properties.”

Balfour gave him an odd, faintly skittish look, but did as he was told.

“Just don’t touch me; I don’t like to be touched,” he murmured.  “I know that, and I know why,” Adam said. “So I’ll just ask you to lay your head back and have a look at that spot on the ceiling, just above your head. Do you see it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’d like you to fix your gaze on that spot and just let yourself listen to the sound of my voice. The first part of this exercise has to do with distracting your conscious mind, so that your unconscious can come to the fore – because your unconscious is very clever and very observant, and if we can establish communication with your unconscious, it can give us valuable information that will help your understanding of what’s been bothering you.” Balfour’s gaze had flicked only reluctantly to the spot, but as the low voice droned on, he began visibly to relax.

“That’s right,” Adam murmured. “Let your conscious attention stay focused on that spot, while your body relaxes and another part of your mind just begins drifting with the sound of my voice. If your eyes get tired after a while, you can close them. There’s really nothing to see with your eyes anyway, because we’re far more interested in seeing what your unconscious memory might show you, as you relax more and more, drifting, floating… very comfortable and relaxed….” Speaking softly and calmly as a father to a frightened child, Adam soon was able to lull the younger man into a state of relaxation bordering on sleep, and from there to guide him toward those deeper levels of awareness which could open up the long-locked doors to the past.

Balfour proved a ready subject, and the next half hour yielded far more fruitful results than Adam had dared to hope. When he brought his patient back to full consciousness, it was immediately apparent that Balfour had achieved some fresh insights into his situation, both past and present. After brief discussion, Adam left him with instructions to reflect on what he had learned until their next session, later in the week. But when he went back to his office to telephone McLeod, it was not McLeod who answered, but his assistant, Sergeant Donald Cochrane.

“Sorry, Sir Adam, but the inspector’s gone off to the Royal Infirmary,” Cochrane said. “I was to tell you that he’d appreciate it very much if you could arrange to meet him there, the sooner the better. Are you ringing from home?” “No, from Jordanburn,” Adam said, giving the psychiatric facility the name by which it was known locally. “Did the inspector happen to mention what this is all about?”

“Aye.” Cochrane’s voice sounded a little pinched. “He did tell you, didn’t he, about that stretch of road they’re starting to call Carnage Corridor?” “Yes.”

“Well, it’s claimed another victim, maybe two. A man was killed there earlier this morning, and another’s undergoing emergency surgery. The inspector’s standing by, in case he regains consciousness, but it doesn’t look good.” “I see.”

“Here’s the part you’re going to love,” Cochrane went on. “The man who’s in surgery was still conscious when the police arrived. He claimed he’d veered off the road to avoid hitting a man and a pregnant woman – kept asking, ‘Did I hit them? Did I hit them?”

“The problem is, none of the witnesses the police interviewed can recall seeing any pedestrians on the scene. Given the fact that the crash occurred in broad daylight, you’d’ve thought somebody would have seen the couple in question, but so far nobody’s come forward with any descriptions. If I were a superstitious man, I’d be starting to wonder if maybe the driver of the crashed car might have seen a ghost.”

As Master of the Hunting Lodge, Adam had known far stranger things to happen, but he forebore from saying so aloud. Though Donald Cochrane had received some peripheral esoteric instruction through his training as a Freemason, and McLeod had pegged him as a potential future recruit for the Hunting Lodge, his direct experience with the supernatural thus far had been solely in a support capacity.  Adam himself was rapidly becoming convinced that there was more involved in the present case than malignant coincidence, but if things were about to shift into a more overt brush with the unknown, best to keep Cochrane at arm’s length until they knew more.

“Well, it’s reassuring to know that you aren’t a superstitious man, Donald,” he allowed. “I shouldn’t think we’ll find a ghost involved, but the situation does seem to go beyond mere coincidence. Do you happen to know the name of the surviving victim?”

“Aye, the inspector left it right here on his desk pad,” Cochrane said. “The name’s Malcolm Stuart Grant, with an address in Lanark. That’s all I’ve got, though.”

“That’s enough for now,” Adam replied, jotting the name on a notepad. “I just need to know who to ask for when I get to the Royal Infirmary.” “You’ll go, then.”

“Aye. Whatever the cause of these accidents, the effects would seem to be getting out of hand. I’ll see what I can do to reshuffle my appointments for the rest of the morning. In the meantime, if Inspector McLeod should happen to check in, tell him I’ve received his message and will rendezvous with him at the hospital as soon as possible.”

Uncertain how long he might find himself detained once he and McLeod met up, Adam rescheduled his two remaining patients for appointments the next day and postponed his usual morning rounds for later on in the afternoon, after which he signed out and headed for the car park.

He decided to risk the traffic on Morningside Road, and was relieved to find the route relatively uncluttered. Carrying on north and east along Bruntsfield Place, he bore right at the Toll Crossing onto Lauriston Place, whence a string of signs pointed the way toward the casualty department of Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary. He parked the Range Rover in a physicians’ car park and headed toward the entrance.

It was not a hospital he normally frequented in his psychiatric practice, but its casualty department was reputed to be one of the two best in Scotland;

Glasgow had the other. It was here that injured police officers and firefighters were most apt to be brought; he had watched with McLeod through several lonely nights when men’s lives hung in the balance. He had been here once as a casualty himself – and Dr. Ximena Lockhart had been the on-call surgeon who had patched him up.

Shaking off the memory, he eased aside to let an ambulance crew wheel an empty gurney out of the building, then slipped inside and headed for the registrar’s desk. He was reaching for his credentials when a breezy voice hailed him from farther along the corridor.

“Dr. Sinclair?”

Turning, he saw the familiar white-uniformed figure of Reggie Sykes, the orderly Ximena had been training in emergency-room procedures. Sykes’s coffee-colored face split in a broad grin as he approached.

“I thought that was you, sir!” he exclaimed, the musical lilt in his voice proclaiming his Jamaican origins. “It’s been a long time. Say, what you hear from that pretty lady of yours? How’s her daddy gettin’ on?” The subject was one Adam would have preferred to avoid, but he knew Sykes had doted on the attractive American “Dr. X.”

“I gather he’s holding his own,” he replied, not without some private reservations. “The last time we spoke on the phone, she described his condition as ‘stable.”

He hoped that Sykes would interpret the term optimistically, but the orderly pulled a grimace.

“Only stable, huh? With what he’s got, that’s not so good.” Adam shrugged. Ximena had told him that her father was comfortable enough, if rarely lucid, because of the painkillers they gave him, but it was only a matter of time. In fact, Ximena and her father between them had already accepted that his chances for recovery were virtually nonexistent. Her mother and brothers, however, were still determined to cling to hope, however faint and misplaced. It was as much for their sake as for anyone else’s that Ximena was committed to remaining at her father’s bedside.

“I could certainly wish the prognosis were better,” Adam agreed. “Unfortunately, the situation is out of both our hands.”

Sykes gave a sympathetic shake of his head. “Well, the next time you talk to her, you tell her from me that she ought to come back here soon, okay? Things haven’t been the same since she left.”

“I can attest to that,” Adam said with a faint smile. “And I’ll certainly pass the word along.”

“Thank you, Doc,” Sykes said, with another of his fleeting grins. “There aren’t many like Dr. X. around. Come to think of it,” he added, cocking an eye at Adam, “you haven’t said what brings you here this morning. You sure didn’t come all the way cross town just to see if we’ve had the walls repainted since your last visit.”

“True enough. Actually, I’m looking for a patient by the name of Malcolm Grant.

He would have been brought in several hours ago – car crash.” “Another statistic for Carnage Corridor,” Skyes said with a grimace. “We get most of ‘em. He’s up in surgery. Don’t know if it’s going to help him much, though – not the state he was in when he arrived. I helped get him over to X-ray, and I don’t know when I last saw anybody that bad who could still breathe at all. They brought his buddy in dead.”

“Yes, I’d heard there was at least one fatality.”

Sykes gave a darkling shake of his head. “I tell you, Dr. Sinclair, it’s spooky business. You may not believe it, but this must be the fifth or sixth big crash we’ve had along that stretch of road since New Year’s, all with fatalities. If I had any reason to drive to Lanark just now, man, I’d damn sure go round about by way of Livingston, just to be on the safe side.”

He paused for an exaggerated shiver, then directed a curious look in Adam’s direction. “But, what’s your interest in this case, sir, if you don’t mind my asking? Last I heard, psychiatrists don’t normally do casualty work.” “You just said it yourself,” Adam replied. “That bit of road has claimed far more than its share of casualties, and all in a very short time. The police are doing their best to see if they can come up with a pattern, even to the extent of calling in a psychiatrist – me – to see if anything in the victims’ psychiatric profiles might point to an underlying cause. To that end, I’m supposed to be meeting one of their special investigators, a Detective Chief Inspector McLeod. Do you know him?”

Sykes pursed his lips. “Is this Inspector McLeod a big fellow with grizzled hair and glasses and a military-looking moustache?”

“That sounds like him.”

“Then you’ll probably find him up in the lounge next to the operating theatres.

If he isn’t there, I don’t expect he’s gone far.”

“If he has, I can always have him paged,” Adam said. “Thank you, Mr. Sykes, you’ve been a great help. The next time I talk to Dr. Lockhart, I’ll be sure to let her know you were asking about her.”

He lost no time getting up to the surgical wing. Here he learned that Malcolm Grant was out of surgery and had been transferred to Recovery, just down the hall. He found McLeod propping up the wall to the left of the nurses’ station, moodily sipping tea from a hospital-issue mug. Through the round porthole windows in the double doors opposite, Adam could catch just a glimpse of bustling medical activity as he approached.

“Is he still with us?” Adam asked, as the inspector pulled himself erect and shelved the mug on the desk with an air of mingled relief and misgivings.  “Aye, but I don’t know how long that will continue to be the case. Thanks for coming. Sorry about dragging you out earlier than we’d planned, but I hadn’t reckoned on this. And it may be wasted effort. But if he does regain consciousness, I didn’t want to miss it – and you might pick up something I’d overlook.”

“You don’t sound optimistic.”

“I don’t think there’s much cause to be optimistic. Have a look. He’s pretty smashed up.”

As he spoke, McLeod moved to one of the portholes, and Adam joined him at the other. Four of the six bays in Recovery were occupied, the respective patients linked up to an assortment of monitors and life support units. A man and a woman togged out in green surgical scrubs were standing at the foot of the bed nearest the door, where lay a supine figure cocooned in bandages and surrounded by the metal frames of traction apparatus. The woman was scribbling orders on the patient’s chart as the man looked on.

“That’s our man,” McLeod murmured, pointing the way with a jerk of his chin.  “He’s only just come out of surgery. I was waiting until they’d finished getting him settled before pressing for a prognosis, but any questions on that account are probably better coming from you, anyway.”

As two uniformed nurses busied themselves around the patient, the female surgeon concluded her notes with a brisk flourish and presented them to her male colleague, pausing long enough to answer a brief inquiry from one of the nurses before making for the exit. Adam and McLeod stepped back from the doors as she came through, and she nodded to McLeod and pulled off her surgical cap to ruffle a hand through short, curly dark hair.

“Will I get to talk to him?” McLeod asked.

She glanced back at the doors swinging closed behind her and shrugged. “I wouldn’t say the chances are very good – certainly not right away. We’re waiting to see what will result from his head injury; we may have to go in again.  Meanwhile, he’s got a definite concussion, some cracked ribs, two broken legs, he’s probably lost the sight in one eye, and he was bleeding internally. We had to remove his spleen – “ “Tell Dr. Sinclair, if you please,” McLeod interrupted. “He’s a special police consultant.”

“Dr. Stirling,” a voice called from the recovery room, as a nurse poked her head through the door. “Could you take a look at Mrs. Bell? She’s looking a little shocky; she might be hemorrhaging.”

“On my way,” the surgeon said, giving Adam an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Doctor.  If you want, you can go ahead and have a look at Mr. Grant’s chart, but I don’t expect it will make much difference, one way or the other.” Murmuring his thanks, Adam snagged a spare hospital gown, plus one for McLeod, and pulled it on over his suit before following the surgeon into Recovery. The other surgeon and one of the nurses had already gone to tend the ailing Mrs.  Bell, and the remaining nurse continued to adjust an IV drip as Adam picked up Grant’s chart. He now could see that Grant was also on a respirator, not just oxygen; and the vital signs being monitored on the bank of machines to one side described a patient very ill, indeed.

“Bad, huh?” McLeod murmured, close by Adam’s elbow.  Gravely Adam nodded, eyes scanning the chart. “I can only say that he must have a tremendous will to live. He might make it, though.” Behind them, Dr. Stirling and her colleague were preparing to wheel Mrs. Bell back into surgery, and most of the medical staff were congregated at that end of Recovery, including the nurse who had been monitoring Grant.  “Well, I very much doubt he’s going to be able to talk to us, so maybe I’d better see if I can go to him,” Adam said softly, replacing the chart at the foot of the bed. “This will be quick and dirty, if it works at all, but we’ll see what we can pick up.”

Moving closer to the head of the bed, Adam prepared himself with a single deep breath to ground and center himself, at the same time framing a silent prayer of petition to the spiritual guardians who ruled the Inner Planes. He must be very careful, for one of the nurses had just come back. Despite that distraction, however, he could feel the first faint glimmerings of rapport with the soul resident in the shattered body before him – and knew that the link of soul to body was tenuous, else he would not have been able to perceive it so clearly.  But before he could stabilize the forming bridge between them, the beep of the pulse-rate monitor increased in tempo and Malcolm Grant shuddered and roused, his one unban-daged eye snapping wide in a sudden, agitated return to consciousness. Simultaneously, he started gasping, fighting the ventilator that had been helping him breathe. Alarms began going off on all his monitors as his heartbeat faltered.

“Code Blue!” the nurse shouted. “I need a crash cart!” Even as she moved in to begin administering CPR, and other medical personnel began converging on the patient, including Dr. Stirling, Adam bent to the stricken man’s ear, both hands gently steadying the thrashing head.  “You aren’t choking, Mr. Grant,” he murmured. “There’s a machine helping you breathe. Let it do the work. Just try to relax.”

But Grant deteriorated quickly, despite the efforts of the crash team, and slipped back into unconsciousness even as a nurse wheeled a defibrillator into place and Dr. Stirling positioned the paddles on his chest.  “Clear, everyone!” she ordered, and everyone else fell back.  But though she shocked the patient several times, the monitors one by one went flat. Watching helpless and silent from behind the circle of technicians fighting to save Grant’s life, Adam sensed the fraying of the silver cord that was Grant’s spiritual lifeline. Powerless to knit it back together, he felt a kindred psychic wrench at the moment when the cord parted. In that same instant, the fleeting image came to him of two stricken faces, a man and a woman, staring back at him in frozen horror through the windscreen of an onrushing car.  The image exploded on impact, even as an invisible breath of psychic breeze wafted past Adam – Malcolm Grant’s immortal soul winging free of his broken body. The release was untimely, leaving behind tasks undone and promises unfulfilled. All Adam could do was wish the retiring spirit Godspeed in his own heart of hearts, trusting to the wisdom of the Light to redress the balance in the fullness of time.

Lost momentarily in these reflections, he only belatedly became aware that the nursing staff had abandoned their efforts to resuscitate their patient. Even as he lifted his bowed head, one of the nurses leaned in and gently drew the sheet over the face of the deceased.

“Dr. Sinclair, was it?” said a woman’s voice behind him. As he turned, Dr.

Stirling offered him Grant’s chart and a pen.

“Could we have your particulars, in case there’s an inquiry?” she said. “I actually expected to lose him on the table, but the hospital needs to have all the details, just in case any question comes up later.” He would have preferred to retreat at once to some quiet place where he could consider what he had experienced and bounce his impressions off McLeod. Even more, he wished that Peregrine had been here to sketch the faces, either direct or from Adam’s description. Holding onto the images as best he could, he jotted down his sparse observations, commending the crash team for their efforts, then signed with his particulars of consultancy and licensing and handed the chart back to a nurse. He was shaking his head as he headed out of the recovery room, where McLeod had withdrawn at the first sign of medical crisis.  “Well?” McLeod said. “Were you able to pick up anything at all?”

“Something, but I’m not sure what it means,” Adam said, stripping off his gown.  “Here’s not the best place to discuss it, though. Why don’t we head on down to the hospital chapel? That’s as private a place as we’re likely to find on the premises.”

They found the chapel empty, and settled into a pew in the rear. Closing his eyes, Adam conjured the mysterious faces and described for McLeod’s benefit what he himself had shared of Malcolm Grant’s experience.  “I believe Grant was telling the absolute truth when he told the officers at the scene that he’d seen two pedestrians step out in front of his car,” he told his Second. “Whether or not there was anything actually there, however, is another story entirely.”

“A ghost story, maybe?” McLeod said.

What his Second meant was not lost on Adam. It was a fact, affirmed by their experience as Huntsmen, that people and incidents, especially violent ones, could generate emotional and imagistic resonances that could be inadvertently apprehended by anyone sensitive enough to pick them up.  “I wonder if, perhaps, it is,” Adam said thoughtfully, glancing back at McLeod.  “Tell me: Were there pedestrians involved in any of the other accidents covered by this investigation?”

McLeod shook his head. “No, they were all car crashes.” “Hmmm.” Adam gave the patrician bridge of his nose a thoughtful rub. “I wonder, then, if Malcolm Grant saw a ghostly manifestation of something that predates the onset of these accidents.”

McLeod turned to look at him more directly. “What are you saying? That we’re not casting our nets widely enough?”

“Something like that,” Adam said, with a thin flicker of a smile. “From what you’ve been telling me, I gather that Donald and his Traffic colleagues have been spending long hours sifting through the accident reports themselves in search of a common denominator. If they haven’t found one, that could be because it isn’t there. I wonder what they might turn up if they were to work backwards from the first of the year, looking for any other unusual occurrences along that stretch of road – perhaps something involving pedestrians.” “That’s a very interesting notion,” McLeod said. “I’ll pass it on to Donald, and authorize the archival work. You really think you’re onto something?” “I don’t know,” Adam said. “But if Donald turns up anything promising, be sure to let me know.”

“Aye, so I will,” McLeod said. “I’d like to see us crack this case before Carnage Corridor claims another set of victims.”

chapter four

“SAINT Columba’s footsteps,” Julia Lovat murmured, looking up from the pages of her much-thumbed guidebook. “Do you suppose those marks we saw on the top of that rock by Kilcolmkill Church really are the imprints of his feet?” Peregrine had his portable campstool firmly planted in the sand a short distance away, his travelling easel propped up on its tripod in front of him. He was overlaying thin washes of watercolor to a developing study of his wife where she sat perched above him on a large flat-topped boulder, with the intense blue-green waters of the North Channel for a background. Julia’s question came just as he was trading the fine sable brush in his hand for one finer still.  Lifting his hazel gaze from the paintbox, he gave her a grin.  ‘ ‘Given the way the currents run in these waters, I suppose this stretch of shoreline is as likely a place as any for an Irish-born saint to have made his landfall. As for the footprints themselves – I don’t know about you, but-1 am a firm believer in miracles.”

The fond look that accompanied this declaration left Julia in no doubt as to the romantic nature of his meaning. She accepted the tribute with a chuckle and said wryly, “I hope that’s not meant to be an assessment of my driving ability.” “Not in the least!” her new husband averred. “You and Algy are getting along famously.”

The dark-green Alvis so named was parked at the side of the narrow road overlooking the beach where the couple had just finished picnicking on oatcakes, smoked salmon, and “truckles,” a creamy variety of local cheese. It was the third day of their honeymoon, the second since their arrival in Kintyre, a wild and scenic peninsula on Scotland’s west coast. Among the places they had explored since leaving their guesthouse in Campbeltown earlier that morning was the spot where the seventh-century Irish missionary, St. Co-lumba, was purported to have preached his first sermon on Scottish soil. A set of footprints visible on the flattened summit of a rock near the local village of Southend was said to be a permanent memento of that historic visit.

From Southend the pair had driven west along a road that was little more than a paved one-lane farm track, making for the point at the southwestern tip of the peninsula known as the Mull of Kintyre. From where they were sitting now, they had a view of the Kintyre lighthouse, built in 1788 and one of the first of its kind to be erected by the Trustees for Northern Lighthouses. Julia’s expression turned meditative as she surveyed the lighthouse’s turret-like outline, rising off its rocky base like some seagirt tower out of a Scottish folk tale.  “I always thought I’d like to live in a lighthouse,” she observed dreamily. “To live balanced between the land and the sea and the sky, and to listen by night to the songs the silkies sing…” Silkies were the mer-people of Scottish legend, gifted with the ability to shed their seagoing skins of seal-fur in order to go about ashore in the likeness of men. Softly Julia began to sing the ballad of the Great Silkie, which told how this lord of the sea had fathered a child on a woman of the land, returning from the waves thereafter to claim his son. Clear as a crystalline bell, her soprano voice floated up over the surrounding rocks, carrying with it the words of the Silkie himself:

“I am a man, upon the land, An I am a silkie in the sea; And when I’m far and far frae land, My dwelling is in Sule Skerry….”

Had they been at home, Julia would have accompanied herself on the harp, but even without the delicate counterpoint of harp strings, her rendition of the melody had the power to arrest Peregrine in the midst of his work. As he listened, he was reminded how it had been her singing which first had captivated him, even before he ever set eyes on her.

The occasion had been a sad one: the funeral service for Julia’s godmother, the same Lady Laura Kintoul who had made Peregrine a present of the Alvis in her will. A mere apprentice then in the use of the Deep Sight which was now second nature to him, Peregrine had come to the church with Adam, half-dreading to find himself confronted by spectres of the dead. Instead, he had found not only peace but a new direction, for which Adam had been the catalyst and of which Julia was the living embodiment.

The silvery lilt of her voice lingered in his ears even after she had finished her song. He roused himself from contemplating a host of pleasant memories to discover that she had gone back to her guidebook. Bestirring himself to return to his work, he asked, “Where are you proposing that we should go tomorrow?” “If it’s all the same to you,” she said, “ I rather fancy taking the ferry across to Arran to see Lochranza Castle and King’s Cave. That’s where Robert the Bruce reputedly met the famous spider.”

Peregrine smiled. Every schoolchild in Scotland was familiar with the legend of how Bruce, discouraged- and demoralized after a string of military reversals, had drawn fresh resolve from the sight of a small grey spider painstakingly rebuilding a shattered web.

“That sounds fine to me,” he said. “Brodick Castle might be well worth a visit as well. After that, weather permitting, we might even try to hire -a boat and have a look at Holy Island.”

Julia’s sea-blue eyes turned quizzical as she lowered her guidebook. “Didn’t I read somewhere that Tibetan Buddhists recently bought that island? It strikes me as odd, you know, that Buddhists would want to buy a Christian holy site.” Peregrine shrugged, not looking up from his work. “I understand the local folk felt that way, too, at first. But from what I hear, the order that bought it have been well- established and respected in the Borders for nigh on twenty years now, and they made it clear from the start that their purpose was to preserve the historic spiritual character of the island, to make it a place that would welcome seekers of all faiths.”

“Well, that’s refreshing, in these days when people are killing one another over religion.”

“Aye, but the Buddhists have always been known for their tolerance. As you might expect, they’re also very focused on the ecological aspects of the place. I understand that most of the island will be maintained as a nature preserve for the protection of the island’s wildlife. I thought I might do some sketching.  They’ve got all kinds of rare birds, about a dozen Ersikay ponies – which are the original Celtic horse – and even a small flock of Soay sheep.” “Soay sheep?” Julia looked at him in some disbelief. “Do they really?”

“That’s what I hear. They’re a very ancient breed, aren’t they?” ‘ ‘Aye, Bronze Age. They look rather like small goats, and you don’t shear them – you pluck them. I don’t know what kind of yarn the wool makes – though you can spin almost anything. I’ve got a cousin who’s very keen on spinning and weaving.”

“Well, maybe we can bring back some wool for her,” Peregrine said. “See what the guidebook says about the island.”

As she consulted the book, Peregrine carried on with his painting, considering Julia’s comment about Buddhist interest in a Christian holy site. Though a formerly lukewarm childhood faith had been kindled to a sustaining flame through his association with Adam and the Hunting Lodge, and he was content for it to be so, Peregrine felt drawn to the island with a keenness that he was somewhat at a loss to explain.

Wondering what the lure might be, he allowed his gaze to wander out to sea. A gauzy haze was forming on the western horizon, blurring the distinction between sea and sky. Even as it occurred to him that he had better finish his painting before the light changed, his eye was drawn to a curious patch of shadow bobbing up and down among the swells of the incoming tide.  Peregrine’s first thought was that it was probably just a large patch of kelp.  Unlike kelp, however, this object seemed to keep to a solid shape, and was showing disconcertingly unnatural flashes of bright orange as it rolled closer in the surf. Whatever it was, it was attracting the attention of the gulls and other birds feeding along the shoreline.

With a pang of sudden foreboding, the young artist laid aside his brush and got to his feet to go take a closer look. His movement was abrupt enough to divert Julia’s attention from her book.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. Her expression was more curious than alarmed.

“Probably nothing,” Peregrine said, with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

“Just stay where you are. I’ll be right back.”

He made his way down toward the water’s edge just as an incoming swell swept the object into the shallows, tumbling black and bright orange amid the expected sea-wrack. One reluctant glance was enough to confirm Peregrine’s worst misgivings. The object was the body of a man, encased in the black-and-orange neoprene of what looked like a wet suit.

Reluctantly he bent closer. The corpse was more than a little battered from its passage through the rocks. It half-floated face-down in the surf with arms and legs loosely out-sprawled like the limbs of a sodden rag doll. The bloated hands were starting to show evidence of decomposition. Peregrine decided it was probably just as well that he couldn’t see the face.

Calling on his forensic training with McLeod, he made himself draw breath and distance himself a little as he continued to note first impressions. Alive, the man probably had been fit and sturdy. The short hair that capped his skull was a uniform shade of sandy-red, and thick, indicating that he had been relatively young. A serious laceration laid open the back of his skull, but the sea had washed away any blood. From the wet suit, Peregrine wondered if he might have been a diver, or possibly a wind-surfer met with mishap.  Even as the possibilities crossed his mind, a muffled exclamation from behind him made him start around. Julia had come down off her perch to join him, and was staring at the corpse with an expression of mingled pity and horror. His own squeamishness momentarily forgotten, Peregrine went to take her in his arms, at the same time trying to block her view with his own body.  “Julia, I’m sorry,” he said lamely. “I didn’t mean for you to see this. Let me take you back to the car.”

He made a gentle attempt to steer her away, but somewhat to his surprise, she resisted his efforts. Her gaze partly averted, she murmured, “Poor soul! I wonder if he’s the man who went missing off the Irish coast at the weekend.” Her observation put Peregrine in mind of a news bulletin he had picked up in the car on his way to the church on their wedding day. Dimly he recalled something having been said about a vessel from the Irish Department of the Marine being found adrift off Malin Head, with a dead man aboard.  He glanced uneasily down at Julia. She was looking rather white about the lips, but he saw with some relief that her face was otherwise composed. After a moment’s pause, she drew herself up and asked, “Shouldn’t we be thinking about telephoning an ambulance or something?”

“Not an ambulance,” Peregrine said with a shake of his head. “We’ll want the police back in Campbeltown. They should have the facilities to deal with this.  How would you feel about driving Algy all on your own?”

Julia registered a blink. “More confident than I would have felt a week ago.

Why?”

“I want you to go find a phone box and report what we’ve found,” Peregrine said.  “Southend is the nearest place where you’d be likely to locate one. Failing that, however, you may find yourself obliged to drive back to Campbeltown. I realize the road’s none too good. Do you think you’re up to it?” “I suppose I’d better be, hadn’t I?” Julia said with a small grimace. “What will you be doing in the meantime?”

“Keeping an eye on the body,” Peregrine said. “I don’t want to handle it, if I can help it, because if this turns out to be more than a simple case of death by misadventure, the procurator fiscal won’t thank me for doing anything that might compromise the evidence. At the same time, the tide is going to be turning soon, and we don’t want our unfortunate friend to be carried back out to sea again before the police can retrieve him.”

“Certainly not if we’re going to call them out on a round trip drive of thirty miles,” Julia agreed with feeling. She glanced over at the body on the shore and hurriedly looked away again with a shiver. “Thanks for giving me the easy job.” “Don’t mention it,” Peregrine said wryly. Gathering his bride into his arms, he added, “I really am sorry about this. I hope it hasn’t ruined your honeymoon.” Julia nestled into his embrace and smiled. “Darling, it’s our honeymoon – and do you really think anything could do that?”

This declaration earned her a lingering kiss. Resisting an impulse to repeat it, Peregrine fished in his trouser pocket for the car keys.  “Here you are,” he told her as he handed them over. “Take as much time as you have to, for your own safety. I’m certainly not planning to go anywhere else between now and when you get back – and neither is he.” He followed her with his eyes as she made her way up through the rocks toward the road, where the Alvis stood waiting. Before climbing into the driver’s seat, she vouchsafed him a wave and a kiss blown from her hand. He heard the smooth growl of a well-tuned engine as she turned the key in the ignition. A moment later, the Alvis swung around in a compact U-turn and headed back up the road in the direction of Campbeltown.

Left alone, Peregrine spent the next few minutes pacing uneasily up and down at the water’s edge. He found himself wondering if he would ever achieve the degree of fortitude he had seen Adam and McLeod display when confronted with a corpse.  As he reflected back over the experience he had gained in their company as a forensic artist, it occurred to him that it might not be a bad idea on this occasion to take some photographs for the record. Satisfied that the body on the shore was in no immediate danger of floating away, he went to retrieve his camera from amongst the rest of his artist’s paraphernalia.  He removed the lens cap from his Pentax as he returned to the water’s edge, casually framing up a cover-shot as he walked. But when he paused to take it, adjusting the zoom lens, he had trouble getting it to focus.  “That’s odd.”

He shook his head, blinked, and tried again. His efforts brought no improvement to the imaging. A quick inspection of his glasses showed nothing to account for the fuzziness. Clucking his tongue impatiently, he unscrewed the lens and held it to the light from both directions – perfectly clean – then replaced it and looked again. The results were still no better. Though his vision by itself seemed clear enough, the picture seen through the lens remained curiously blurred.

Perplexed, Peregrine went ahead and shot several different angles of the body, focused as best he could, then sat back on his heels and scowled as he contemplated this peculiar development. The absence of anything like a logical explanation aroused hitherto dormant suspicions, and made him begin to wonder what would happen if he were to try his luck with a sketch.  He decided to test his perceptions before going to the bother of fetching his sketchbook. For Peregrine, the act of drawing was the means by which he could both activate and direct his own distinctive powers of psychic perception.  Laying the camera on a nest of sea grass behind him, he settled gingerly on a rock beside the body and composed himself, momentarily closing his eyes. Calling now upon the training given him by Adam, he drew several deep, measured breaths.  The centrifugal whirl of his thoughts and emotions fell away, leaving him centered in an island of calm. Grounded in that calm, he opened his eyes again, simultaneously willing himself to See.

For a moment, he could envision nothing but the piebald shape of the corpse itself. As he continued to watch, however, another, hazier image began to form, hovering over the body like a ghost. Insubstantial as mist, it assumed a vaguely human shape. But as soon as Peregrine attempted to bring that shape into sharper focus, it abruptly dissolved.

With a hard-won patience born of self-discipline, he set himself to try again.  Before he could reestablish any degree of perception, however, a sudden surge in the tide lifted the dead man’s body from its grounding on the beach. The wave’s backwash started to pull the corpse with it, tumbling it back in the direction of the open sea.

Peregrine roused himself with a jerk and made a hasty lunge to recapture it. A splash of cold brine left him wet to the knees, but he managed to get a hand around one orange-clad wrist. While he was struggling to maintain his grip, his eyes lighted for the first time on an irregular three-cornered tear in the back of the man’s wet suit.

A wound?

His curiosity piqued, Peregrine towed the body back to its resting place at the waterline, then bent down for a closer look. He could see no immediate evidence of any wound beneath the tear, but he refrained from poking and prodding. Even if his work with McLeod had not taught him a healthy respect for proper forensic procedure, he was strongly disinclined to have anything more to do with the dead man’s remains than he absolutely had to”. He took the minimal measures necessary to get the body beached, retrieved the camera and put it away, then sat back on a nearby rock to guard the body and await reinforcements.  A full hour passed before the distinctive purr of a familiar engine brought him to his feet. When the Alvis swung into view, Peregrine was relieved to see that it was accompanied by a white Range Rover bearing the fluorescent yellow side stripe and door insignia of the Strathclyde Police.

Julia stopped the Alvis where she had parked before and sprang out as the police car slowed to a halt a yard or two behind the Alvis’ rear bumper. Two uniformed policemen alighted and came to join her on the shoulder, falling in behind her as she led the way down to the beach. As soon as she reached the sand, Julia broke away from her escort and ran forward to greet her husband.  “Sorry it took me so long,” she said. “I couldn’t find a public telephone anywhere between here and Campbeltown, and once I got there I had a bit of trouble finding the police station. This is Sergeant MacDonald, and that’s P.C.  Williamson.” Turning back to the two police officers, she added, “This is my husband.”

“Gentlemen.” Peregrine acknowledged the introduction with a nod. “Thank you for coming out.”

“Not at all, Mr. Lovat,” the sergeant replied, directing his subordinate toward the castaway corpse. “Sorry you and Mrs. Lovat have had your stay here in Kintyre so rudely interrupted. I’m thankful to say we don’t get many calls like this. We’ll try to run through the formalities as quickly as possible, so that you and your wife can get back to your holiday.”

Delving into the breast pocket of his police tunic, he took out a notebook and pen.

“Mrs. Lovat has already given us a statement,” he told Peregrine. “While we’re waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me your version.”

Peregrine was familiar with the procedure, having witnessed McLeod in action on the scene of more than one investigation. Knowing full well what to expect, he responded to the ensuing series of questions with a conciseness consistent with police methods. At the end of their dialogue, the sergeant gave him a quizzical look over the top of his notebook.

“Have you given evidence before in a police inquiry, Mr. Lovat?” “Yes, I have,” Peregrine admitted. “I occasionally do freelance work as a forensic artist for Detective Chief Inspector Noel McLeod of the Lothian and Borders Police.”

Sergeant MacDonald’s blue eyes registered a spark of lively interest. “That wouldn’t be the same DCI McLeod who headed up the investigation into those so-called jack-o’-lantern killings last October?”

“The very same, I’m afraid.”

MacDonald pulled a wry grin. ‘ ‘Gets all the strange ones, does your Inspector McLeod. Well, I guess somebody has to tackle them. Were you involved with the case?”

“Only in a very minor way,” Peregrine said evasively. He did not add that, in seeking to apprehend the killer, McLeod had drawn – unofficially – on the collective resources of the Hunting Lodge.

MacDonald favored Peregrine with a speculative look, but any further comment on McLeod’s apparent notoriety in police circles was forestalled by the return of P.C. Williamson.

“Sergeant, I think this might be that Irish Fisheries officer who went missing over the weekend,” he said. “Scanlan, I think the name was. They use this kind of survival gear. He’s got a wound in the back to match his partner’s.” MacDonald pursed his lips in a brief, soundless whistle, then gave a deprecatory shake of his head. “Well, that rules out a fight between the two of them,” he said. “They can’t both have stabbed one another in the back. And he had to wash up on our beat.”

The subdued rumble of another vehicle approaching heralded the arrival of the ambulance. Conscious of a growing sea chill in the air, Peregrine wrapped an arm around Julia’s shoulders and gathered her close to him as two ambulance attendants made their way down from the road to meet them. Under the supervision of the two police officers, they zipped the remains into a black body bag and shifted the bag onto a portable stretcher for conveyance up to their car, Sergeant MacDonald lingered long enough to exchange parting words with the Lovats.

“Once again, let me express my regrets that you should have had your visit interrupted by a thing like this,” he told them. “I hope the rest of your trip goes smoothly.”

“So do I,” Julia said solemnly. “This certainly wasn’t on our agenda!” “We were planning to leave Kintyre in the morning,” Peregrine said, with a glance down at his wife’s upturned face, “but I suppose we could stay on for another day or two, if you think you might need us as witnesses.” “I don’t think that will be at all necessary,” MacDonald assured them. “You’ve done your bit, and admirably. I don’t anticipate our having to trouble you again. Best wishes to you both. Enjoy the rest of your holiday.” “We fully intend to,” Peregrine said, giving Julia a hug.  The two men traded handshakes before MacDonald took his leave. Once the police and the ambulance men had departed, the Lovats began gathering up their things.  It was only when Peregrine had to shift his camera bag that he remembered the photos he had taken of the dead man.

He said nothing to Julia, but he made a mental note to see about having the film processed as soon as possible, and also have the camera checked out. With the camera misbehaving, he doubted the photos would be of much help to the police, but at least he wanted to be sure that further photos of the wedding trip were not ruined – and it would be fun to see the photos they had taken thus far.  Putting the camera out of mind, he packed up his paintbox, then paused to contemplate the unfinished painting still mounted on his easel. He was debating whether or not to crumple it up and consign it to the nearest rubbish bin when he felt Julia’s arms encircle his waist from behind.

“I hope you’re not thinking of getting rid of that,” she said.

Peregrine turned to her in some surprise, circling her shoulders with his arms.

“Are you saying you’d like me to keep it?”

“More than that, I’d like you to finish it, if you can,” Julia said. Seeing that her husband was still looking dubious, she went on. “It’s true I had a bit of a shock today, darling, but the experience was also something of a revelation. I got to see a side of you that I’d hitherto only heard about secondhand – the side of you that only comes out when you’re working on a case with Adam and Noel McLeod. Since you’re obviously going to continue in that association, it’s important to both of us that I should come to understand that aspect of your life. This was the first step toward my achieving that understanding, and I want to remember it.”

Peregrine gazed down at his wife’s earnest face with something approaching wonder. “Julia, are you sure? The kind of enforcement work I get involved in from time to time can often get pretty harrowing.”

Even as he spoke, it cost him a pang to think of some of the uglier sights he had seen. But Julia’s blue eyes never wavered from his.  “You don’t have to tell me all the gory details,” she conceded. “But you don’t have to shield me completely, either. Our lives are now inextricably intertwined. If each of us doesn’t grow with the other, both of us will wind up stunted. Trust me to know my own mind in this, darling, and promise me you’ll keep that painting.”

Peregrine had never heard Julia speak so seriously before. “I promise,” he told her. And sealed it with a fervent kiss.

chapter five

FOLLOWING their conversation in the hospital chapel, Adam and McLeod went their separate ways. Although both men were now committed to solving the riddle of Carnage Corridor, McLeod had other cases awaiting his attention back at police headquarters, and Adam still had a belated series of rounds to perform at Jordanburn.

Back at the hospital, however, he found it more difficult than usual to concentrate on the reports being rendered him by the nursing staff. Though one half of his mind remained dutifully attuned to the welfare of his patients and concerns of staff, the other half kept wandering back to the unanswered questions concerning how Malcolm Grant, and all those before him, had met their deaths.

He finally finished his rounds just after four o’clock. Faced with the better part of another hour to update his case notes, he resigned himself to the prospect of having to start home during the Edinburgh rush hour and wrote out a set of fresh orders for the nursing staff before starting back toward his office to finish up. Passing through the hospital foyer, a headline caught his eye at the small news kiosk adjoining the reception area:

CARNAGE CORRIDOR CLAIMS TWO MORE VICTIMS

Catching up short, Adam stepped over to the kiosk and picked up the top copy of the Edinburgh Evening News, skimming over the lead story. A cursory reading revealed nothing of substance that he did not already know from his briefing with McLeod and his stint at the Royal Infirmary. There was, however, a black-and-white photograph taken at the scene of the accident. Without knowing quite what he was looking for, Adam bent to examine it more closely.  Prominent in the foreground was the twisted wreckage of the late model Austin Rover that Grant had been driving at the time of the accident. The attendant caption labelled the car a “commuter’s deathtrap.” Several spectators hovered slightly out of focus in the background, but as Adam continued to study the photo, his attention kept returning to one of them: a woman’s pale figure in the upper left corner of the frame.

He stifled an exclamation, already fishing out pocket change to pay for the paper, for the face, though blurred, was one Adam was not likely to forget in a hurry. He had seen it at the moment of Malcolm Grant’s death – the last thing Grant himself had seen before the car crash that eventually cost him his life.  He could feel his pulse quicken in dawning excitement as he took his trophy back to his office.

Once seated behind his desk, he spread the newspaper on the desktop in front of him, switched on the desk lamp, and delved into the upper right-hand drawer for a small magnifying glass. Leaning forward slightly, he brought the lens to bear on the suspect corner of the photograph, focusing his attention on the pale-faced figure. The resolution was coarse and grainy, but left him with little doubt that it was, indeed, the same woman. Under magnification, her image seemed slightly detached from the rest of the background, almost as if someone had superimposed a solo photo on top of the crash scene.  Whoever she was, she appeared to be in her mid- to late-twenties. The eyes that stared out of the picture were hollow and piercing, their expression disturbingly intense, as if their owner were searching for someone or something.  What, Adam wondered, had impelled her to step out in front of Grant’s car? And where had she disappeared to afterwards?

Laying aside his magnifying glass, he reached for the telephone and punched in the number of McLeod’s direct line at police headquarters. The inspector’s voice answered after three rings.

“No, I’ve not seen the Evening News,” he replied, in response to Adam’s initial inquiry. “Why? What’s afoot?”

“Well you may ask,” Adam said. “If you could manage to lay hands on a copy, there’s a photo on the front page that I think you ought to see.” Swiftly he gave McLeod the gist of his discovery. “I’d be willing to wager a small fortune that this woman in the picture is the same one Malcolm Grant went out of his way to avoid,” he informed his Second. “Do you think you might pull the accident report and check to see if anybody fitting the description I’ve just given you is mentioned among the witnesses?” “Can’t do that right now,” McLeod said. “It won’t be in the system yet. I’ll put Donald on it first thing in the morning, though. Of course, this mysterious lady of yours won’t be in our records at all, unless she came forward to offer testimony. And she might well have avoided doing that, if she had reason to believe she was to blame for the accident.” “Perhaps. But I have a feeling the situation is far more complicated than that,” Adam said. “I wonder if the photographer might remember seeing her. We need to know who she is, Noel.” “I won’t argue that,” McLeod agreed. “Shall I see if I can track down the photographer? They’ll know how to reach him over at the Evening News.” “By all means,” Adam said. “I’ll be here in the office for at least another hour. Let me know what you find out.” He cradled the receiver and sat silently for a moment, hand still on the receiver, then set himself to finishing his case notes while he waited for McLeod’s call-back. Only ten minutes went by before the phone rang again.

“Our photographer’s name is Tom Lennox,” McLeod announced without preamble.  “He’s got a flat in Langton Road. That’s not a mile from where you are now, on the other side of Blackford Hill. I’d have gotten back to you even sooner, but while I was on the line, it occurred to me that our man might still be in the building, so I asked the receptionist to have him paged. There was a bit of a delay, but eventually he checked in. The long and the short of our conversation is that he’s quite prepared to cooperate with us so far as he’s able.” “What have you told him?”

“The truth, if not all of it,” McLeod said. “That there are one or two people in the background of his photo that the police have reason to believe may be potential witnesses, but haven’t yet been able to identify. I told him we’d like to stop by later this evening to discuss the matter in person, and he suggested round about seven o’clock.”

“That would suit me,” Adam said. “You want to meet me here at about six forty-five?”

“Sounds fine to me. I’ll go grab a bite to eat and see you then.” Once the inspector had rung off, Adam rang Strathmourne to inform Humphrey that he would not be dining at home, then made a brief pilgrimage out to the hospital cafe for a sandwich and some coffee, which he consumed while he returned to his case notes. He had just finished up when McLeod arrived to keep their appointed rendezvous.

Langton Road lay on the western perimeter of a housing estate made up of blocks of flats. Lennox’s address was midway along the street in a three-story walk-up virtually indistinguishable from all the others in its row. Adam and McLeod left the latter’s black BMW parked at the curb outside and let themselves into the building through a ground-floor foyer that smelled of disinfectant. From there, two flights of concrete steps took them up to the topmost floor, where they found themselves in an enclosed landing between two doors.  Lennox’s flat was the one on the left. McLeod led the way to the door and knocked smartly. Somewhere else in the building a small dog began to yap belligerently. Trading wry glances with Adam, McLeod knocked again.  After an extended pause, a couple of thumps resounded from inside, followed by the hurried tattoo of approaching feet. They heard the click of a lock being unsnibbed, and the door opened to reveal a lanky, sandy-haired young man in jeans and a T-shirt with “Dundee College of Art” scrolled in black letters across the chest. At the sight of the two men on his doorstep, his goodnatured face split in a grin.

“Sorry if there was a bit of a delay. I was up in the loft, where my darkroom is, developing some prints. You’re Inspector McLeod?” “That’s right.” McLeod presented his warrant card for the other man’s inspection. “My associate is Dr. Sinclair, a special police consultant.” At Lennox’s wave, McLeod tucked the ID back into the breast pocket of his coat.  “Well, you’re both very welcome,” Lennox said, with a cordial inclination of his sandy head. Backing away from the threshold, he beckoned the way into an untidy hallway lined on one side with a crowded array of bookcases. “Please come in.  The sitting room’s the second door on your left.”

Together they made their way along the passageway into a large, square room, comfortably if somewhat haphazardly furnished. Waving his visitors toward two mismatched overstuffed chairs by the fireplace, Lennox flopped down on the davenport by the window and propped his elbows on his knees. Lacing his fingers together under his chin, he favored his two visitors with a look of inquiry.  “Now, then,” he said briskly, “tell me which of the faces in that photo of mine are the ones you’re interested in.”

Taking his cue from McLeod, Adam produced the photo he had torn from his copy of the Edinburgh Evening News and laid it on the coffee table in their midst.  “Actually, there’s only one,” he told Lennox. “It’s this woman here.” Turning the photo around so that Lennox could see it, he pointed out the figure that had claimed his attention earlier in the afternoon.  “As you’re probably well aware,” Adam continued, “today’s accident out on the Lanark Road was the sixth incident of its kind since the beginning of this year.  Given the circumstances, the police are interested in interviewing anyone who was present at the time the crash occurred. So far, this woman remains unaccounted for. Since you managed to catch her on camera, we were wondering if perhaps you might have some idea who she is.”

Lennox was staring at the photo. When he looked up a moment later, he had an odd expression on his face.

“It’s funny you should ask about her,” he told his visitors. “She’s the one I call my phantom lady.”

McLeod remained carefully noncommittal. Without taking his eyes from Lennox’s face, Adam asked, “Why is that?”

Lennox pulled a grimace. “Are you sure you really want to know? As stories go, it’s pretty weird.”

“You’d be surprised how often a so-called weird story can provide just the clue the police have been looking for,” McLeod said. “Tell us what you know, and we’ll make the best we can of it.”

Lennox looked slightly dubious. “All right. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He rocked back in his seat, his face screwed up in a reminiscent scowl.  “Beginning last December, I drew duty as part of a two-man team assigned to carry out a weekly survey of local traffic incidents. The survey was intended to supplement an editorial feature on defensive driving over the holidays, but it didn’t stop there. When the first of these Lanark Road fatalities occurred, on New Year’s Day, my mate Bill and I got sent out to cover the story. When we got back to the photo lab with my film, this woman you’re interested in turned up amongst the spectators.

“At the time I didn’t think anything of it,” he went on. “She was just another face in the crowd. But then, about a month later, the second accident occurred.  That same afternoon I’d been out with a couple of pals to see a football match over in East Kilbride. We were heading home along the Lanark Road when we saw the emergency vehicles converging on the scene. Since news is news, we stopped to investigate, and I took the usual battery of photos. You can probably imagine how surprised I was when I got this second lot of photos developed and spotted the same woman hovering in the background of nearly every shot.” He paused and bit his lip. “Maybe you’re going to think I’m crazy, but ever since then, each time Carnage Corridor claims another victim, I’ve made a point of getting out there to take photos for the record. I always keep my eye out for the phantom lady, but I’ve never yet glimpsed her in the flesh. I don’t know her name, still less what she could possibly be doing there. All I know is that when I get back home and develop the film, she’s always present somewhere in the pictures.”

He broke off with a hollow laugh. McLeod was quick to catch Adam’s eye.

McLeod said, “Could we maybe see these photos of yours, Mr. Lennox?” The photographer eyed him askance, then relaxed when he saw that neither of his visitors looked the least bit dubious or amused. Shrugging, he said, “Sure, why not? This thing’s been eating at me for months. Maybe you people will be able to come up with a rational explanation.”

He got to his feet and left the room. When he returned a few moments later, he had with him an accordion folder bulging with prints and notes.  “Here you are,” he said, presenting the folder to McLeod. “If you have a look, you’ll see for yourself I’m not making any of this up. I’ll go make us some coffee.”

He left them alone to go over the contents of the folder while he went through to the kitchen. The photos were clumped into chronological groupings, each grouping labelled and dated. Adam and McLeod shared the groupings out between them. Lennox’s phantom lady was a ubiquitous presence throughout, a pale figure haunting the borders of nearly every scene.

In addition to the expansive collection of standard-sized prints, there were also a number of enlargements. The quality of the imaging was much sharper in Lennox’s own prints that it had been in the newspaper version, affording Adam with a more detailed impression of a high-browed oval face framed in a shoulder-length mop of thick, dark curls. It was a face that would have been pretty, had it not been white and drawn with some inner tension, even pain. But Adam was quick to discern something else more worthy of comment than that.  “Noel,” he murmured, “have you noticed that in all of these pictures, this woman appears to be wearing the same sweater?”

The sweater in question was a light-colored cardigan, open down the front.  “Aye,” McLeod muttered back. “It’s pretty much what you might expect, this time of year.”

“Yet she never seems to change it, regardless of either the season or the weather,” Adam observed. “Take this photo from the batch labelled February fifth. Everyone else in the picture is heavily bundled up against the cold. But here’s our phantom standing in the midst of them in only a sweater. No hat, no scarf, no gloves…” He broke off as Lennox returned from the kitchen with a trio of mugs balanced on a tray. Overstepping one or two photos that had escaped onto the floor, the lanky photographer plumped his tray down on the coffee table before quirking an eyebrow at his visitors in mute inquiry.

“I can well understand why this case has fascinated you so,” Adam said. “Your phantom lady constitutes almost as big a mystery as these recurrent accidents.” “In other words,” said Lennox, with a rueful twist of his lips, “you don’t have any answers about her either.”

“Not yet,” Adam admitted. “However,” he added with complete candor, “you’ve furnished us with something new to think about. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, this angle on the case may lead us to the solution we’ve been looking for.” “An obvious next step,” said McLeod, “is for us to try and put a name to this phantom lady of yours. Do you think we might borrow some of these prints?” “Take any ones you want,” Lennox said. “I’ve got all the negatives.” He added with a grimace, “You know, if either of you had asked me six months ago if I believed in ghosts, I’d’ve told you no. Lately, though, I’m not so sure.” Adam and McLeod stayed long enough to drink a cup of coffee. Shortly thereafter, they took their leave, armed with a collection of prints culled at random from Lennox’s personal archives.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Adam remarked, as he and McLeod made their way out to the car. “Two hours ago I was prepared to shelve the notion that we might be dealing with some kind of apparition. Now I’m not so sure.” McLeod clucked his tongue in mild frustration. “Ghost or no ghost, this woman has to have a history,” he said. “Somewhere, there’s got to be a record of her existence. All we have to do is look in the right place.”

chapter Six

ADAM pondered the problem all the way home. Back at Strathmourne, he took time out for a shower and a change of clothes before retiring to the privacy of his library to scribble down some of his ideas. He had been at his desk for scarcely a quarter hour, however, when the in-house telephone emitted a buzz.  Adam lifted the receiver. “Yes, Humphrey, what is it?” “Pardon the disturbance, sir, but you’ve a call from Mr. Lovat. Shall I put him through?”

“By all means.”

He had a brief instant in which to wonder why Peregrine should be phoning, before the young artist’s voice came on the line.

“Hullo, Adam. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.” “Not at all,” Adam assured his young protege, “though I fancy you must be interrupting something. I seem to recall that you acquired a new bride only a few days ago. Is everything all right?”

“Oh, it’s swell, where that’s concerned,” Peregrine said, though there was an edge of strain to his voice. “I’d have called earlier, but I wanted to wait until Julia was out of earshot. She’s off having a bath just now, so I thought this would be as good a time as any to have a word with you.” “A word about what?”

“Well, we ran into a spot of unpleasantness earlier this afternoon,” came the reluctant response. “We were having a picnic down on the beach at Mull of Kintyre, when a dead body washed ashore.”

“A body?”

Briefly, Peregrine went on to relate the events as they had occurred earlier that afternoon. After completing his narrative, he came back to the subject of the ghostly image he had seen hovering over the body.  “It was only there for an instant – too short a time for me to catch more than a fleeting impression. But the fact that it was there at all made me curious at the time. When Julia and I got back to the guesthouse, I decided to try a sketch or two, to see if I could recapture the image and bring it into focus. I couldn’t – but I can’t seem to shake the conviction that the image I’m missing is not only real, but important.”

“What do you think it means?” Adam asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it logically, but I have this gut feeling that there’s much more to this man’s death than meets the eye. If I’m right about that, perhaps I ought to offer my services, such as they are, to the local police. On the other hand, all of this could just be my imagination working overtime. I didn’t want to discuss it with Julia – it’s been beastly enough for her as it is, to find a dead body on our honeymoon – but I thought it was probably worth phoning you up to ask for your advice.” Adam considered the situation before speaking.

“Your impressions notwithstanding,” he said, “there doesn’t appear to be anything about this case that an ordinary police investigation wouldn’t be able to handle – not on the surface, at least. If you’re concerned, though, I can have Noel check into it further. Kintyre is outside his official jurisdiction, of course, as you’ve noted, but his reputation is such that I doubt your local police there will object to sharing information with him. You’ve already said that invoking his name elicited recognition. If the victim’s death does turn out to have esoteric implications, Noel will be in a position to evaluate the police findings and decide whether or not we ought to consider getting involved.” “That sounds fair enough to me,” Peregrine said. “I’m not really eager to interrupt my honeymoon, but if I’m needed – “ “I understand,” Adam said, smiling to himself. “I certainly can’t fault you on your sense of duty. Where are you staying, on the off chance I should need to get back to you this evening?”

“Right. It’s called Glenbarr Abbey – a sort of castle, actually, but they take paying guests. Let me give you the telephone number.” He reeled off a set of digits.

“I’ve got it, thanks,” said Adam. “In the meantime, why don’t you see if you can arrange to take Julia a bottle of champagne in her bath? From what you’ve told me, she’s richly earned it.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Peregrine said fervently. “Good night, Adam.

And thank you.”

In the ensuing quiet after Peregrine rang off, Adam weighed up the possible import of everything the young artist had said. Despite his own professed reassurances over the telephone, he had an uncomfortable feeling that neither he nor Peregrine had heard the last of this case. He toyed briefly with the idea of telephoning McLeod to discuss the matter then and there, but a glance at the clock on the mantel made him think better of it; the matter would keep safely until morning.

Thus satisfied, he returned his attention to the enigma of Lennox’s phantom lady. Setting his notes aside, he opened his briefcase and took out the sheaf of photos he had borrowed from the photographer’s personal files, setting one of the clearest enlargements on the desktop before him.  ‘ ‘Who are you?” he murmured aloud, as he contemplated the pale face. “What is it that draws you back time and time again to these scenes of destruction?” After a moment, he found himself recalling Donald Cochrane’s comment of earlier in the day, and wondered whether perhaps the young detective had hit closer to home than he realized.

If I were a superstitious man, Donald had said, I’d be starting to wonder if maybe the driver of the crashed car might have seen a ghost….  It was possible, of course – and if they were dealing with an emanation of some spent life, the reason was likely to prove elusive, at least so far as conventional methods of investigation were concerned. Fortunately, however, Adam and his colleagues had access to unconventional sources of information, not normally available to more orthodox investigators.

Gazing at the haggard face of the woman in the photograph, he decided that it would be worth an excursion onto the astral to try to discover the underlying cause of her suffering. Such profound tension should not and could not be allowed to continue, if a means could be found to alleviate it.  This conviction crystallized rapidly into a resolve. Contacting Humphrey on the house telephone, he issued instructions that he was not to be disturbed for any reason until otherwise notified. Then he cleared the top of his desk of everything but the photograph of his nameless subject, which he propped up on a carved wooden bookrest directly in front of him. Having done as much, he fetched a candlestick from the mantelpiece and positioned it carefully to the right of the picture, lighting the candle from a book of matches resident in the center desk drawer. Dimming the room lights then, and before he sat back down in his chair, he reached into his trouser pocket and drew out a handsome gold ring set with a large oval sapphire.

Considered purely as an example of masculine jewelry, it was as fine a piece of work as could be found in any craftsman’s studio. As far as Adam was concerned, however, the ring was beyond price – not only a symbol of his authority as a member of the Hunting Lodge but also one of the most important working tools of his vocation as Master of the Hunt. Slipping the ring onto the third finger of his right hand, he folded his hands on the desktop before him, the ring-hand uppermost. Then, following the dictates of a discipline he had practiced since his youth, he took a measured succession of slow, deep breaths to compose and center himself for the work he had set himself to do.  Poised on the threshold of an interior calm, he tilted his hand so that the ring caught the flickering light of the candle. Bending his gaze on the pure, cerulean depths of the stone, he closed his mind to the distractions of the waking world and turned inward in trance to confront the subtler realities of the Inner Planes.

At the heart of the Inner Planes lay the Akashic Records, the imperishable chronicle of all lives for all times. Like the mystical rose of Dante’s Paradiso, the Records were eternal and ever-unfolding, the living mirror of all creation. Somewhere among that infinite array of archive chambers would be preserved the records belonging to the woman in the photograph. Using her physical likeness as a focus, Adam hoped to gain access to the psychic identity that went with it.

His body shed its weight. No longer fettered to his chair, he allowed himself to float free. An opalescent shimmer filled his mind’s eye. Into the midst of that luminous field of inner vision he projected the mental image of the woman he was seeking, simultaneously uttering the Word of power that would enable him to pass through the portals to the Akashic vaults.

There was a sudden blinding flash, as of an actinic flare. The image before him was abruptly polarized, reverting in the wink of an eye to its photographic negative. Fluid tinctures of light washed over it like ripples of water in a pail. Bathed in that light, the woman’s image began to re-emerge with the progressive clarity of a developing photographic print.  The scene that took shape around her was no longer that of a still photo.  Invested now with life and movement, she was strolling along a grassy embankment at the side of an open stretch of road. Beside her, holding her hand tucked fondly through the crook of his arm, was a pleasant-faced young man. The sky overhead was dark, but the three-quarter moon hovering above their heads shed sufficient light for Adam to make out that the couple were laughing and talking as they walked along. Though he could not hear what they were saying, it was plain from the looks exchanged between them that they were very much in love.  A flaring set of headlamps appeared in the distance. The dual points of light converged along the road with a swiftness that proclaimed a dangerous turn of speed. The young couple checked in their tracks as the onrushing glare erupted into sudden blinding radiance. The man made a desperate, valiant attempt to shove the woman out of the way as the speeding car rocketed off the tarmac and hurtled straight for them.

The scene exploded, reverberating with her scream. Caught by the backlash, Adam instinctively flung up a hand to shield his eyes from a blustering whirlwind of flying shards. The ensuing darkness seethed with colored splinters. Even as Adam struggled to regain his bearings, the darkness collapsed upon itself and burst into flames.

Fierce as burning phosphorus, the fire roared up like a curtain. The ensuing wave of heat bore Adam backwards. An archway loomed above him, half-wreathed in curling smoke. Breathless and half-blinded, he tumbled through the gap and fetched up short against a stone wall.

The wall was cool and smooth beneath his outflung hands. More than a little shaken, he drew himself up and looked around. The marble corridor in which he found himself stretched away from him in both directions until it lost itself in a maze of turnings and distances. Those selfsame intimations of infinity told him he was now inside the halls of the Akashic Records.  The air near at hand was full of hissing and crackling, like the venomous mouthings of a giant salamander. Pivoting toward the sound, Adam found himself confronting an open doorway on the opposite side of the corridor. Tongues of fire were lashing furiously about the inner edges of the door frame. Looking beyond the archway, he saw that the whole of the chamber beyond was in flames.  A melodious voice spoke to Adam’s back.

What signs of the chase do you follow, Master of the Hunt! it asked.  Hearing that voice, Adam experienced a thrill of recognition. Turning, he was not surprised to see a prismatic column of dancing light materialize out of thin air before him. The presence embodied in that light belonged to one Adam knew as the Master, an entity sufficiently evolved and perfected so as to no longer need the physical vehicle of human incarnation. Adam bowed low in respect and reverence before venturing to speak.

I am following the trail of a troubled spirit, in the hope that if I find it, I may give it peace.

Peace for such a one is never given; it is only found, the Master said. The soul you are seeking still has far to go to find that peace.  Adam acknowledged this declaration with an inclination of his head.  I had no way of knowing before now whether or not the soul I am seeking was presently incarnate. Since you give me to understand that she is still in the flesh, is it permitted to ask her name?

The glow of the Master’s presence grew sharper. The question is permitted. But the answer must not be sought with me.

Where, then, must I seek it?

In both worlds. The Master’s voice was calm. If the knowledge you require has thus far eluded you on the earthly plane, that does not mean it cannot be found there. Here among the Inner Planes, it resides there – in the chamber of fire.  Adam redirected his gaze toward the burning room. Peering through the furnace reek, he could dimly make out the shape of a raised lectern at the center of the room. Mounted on the lectern was an open book. Flames billowed round it in a rising hurricane, yet the book itself was unconsumed.  Will you choose to dare the fire, Master of the Hunt? the Master asked.  Heat from the open doorway beat harshly at Adam’s face. The blistering touch of it stirred up a host of fearful memories from his own past lifetimes. Repressing an inward shudder, he asked, What makes it burn like that?  Anger, came the Master’s response. Anger and bitterness. Together they have been allowed to become an all-consuming passion. If this passion remains unslaked, ultimately the soul will devour itself in its anguish. Nor will it be the only sufferer. Already, this fire reaches out and has destroyed other lives.  Can it be quenched?

Only if the soul itself can be persuaded to will it so, said the Master. Have you the strength, Master of the Hunt, to endure the peril of such an encounter?  It would not be the first time that I have tasted fire, Adam said grimly. That much was true: Once incarnated in the guise of a Knight Templar, he had suffered burning martyrdom during the attempted dissolution of his Order.  If there is no other way to resolve this matter, he continued steadfastly, I will do whatever must be done. But knowledge must come first.  Then seek it elsewhere, before you seek it here, the Master advised, for the time is coming when you will have need of all your strength.  This announcement was as ominous as it was unexpected.  The Patrons of Shadow begin to move anew, the Master continued, the melody in his voice roughened now by a note of grim misgiving. An old evil rises once more, an evil that threatens to encroach upon the balance of the powers of Light at work in the mortal world. The adherents of this evil have made their first foray into those created lands that lie under your protection. If they should succeed in establishing a firm foothold, then the Huntsmen and their charges will rapidly become the hunted.

This was disturbing news indeed.

What signs must I look for? Adam asked.

A Teacher will come when you have need of one, said the Master. There is that which sleeps in you which, if it can be awakened, will know how to read the Teaching offered.

The light that betokened the Master’s presence was fading. Sensing his superior’s imminent withdrawal, Adam asked urgently, How can what sleeps be awakened?

The answer came faint and faraway, like an echo out of receding distances.  It must be called forth by one skilled in the reading of souls. The die is already cast….

The words faded away as did the Master’s presence, amid a dissipating shimmer like the last gleam of a vanishing rainbow. Simultaneously, the corridor in which Adam was standing began to dissolve around him. Pinpoints of light shone through the thinning fabric of the walls, like jewels seen through a veil of fine gauze. Brighter they shone, and brighter still, until the walls disappeared altogether, leaving Adam suspended in space amid a firmament of stars.  The starry firmament turned on its axis. The sudden shift in the stellar configurations took Adam’s breath away. For a dizzy moment he hung in limbo, surrounded by comet-blurs of wheeling lights. Then all at once he plummeted.  A supple skein of silver materialized in front of him, coiling round him as he fell. Recognizing the line of his own lifetime, Adam reached out and seized it with both hands.

His headlong plunge slowed to a floating descent. Below him now he could see the foreshortened outline of his physical body, sitting relaxed in its chair. He followed the cord down in an ever-tightening spiral until, with a slight, disorienting jolt, his travelling soul was once again reunited with its corporeal complement.

He took another moment to settle back into his body before opening his eyes. The candle beside the photograph had burned down almost to the sconce, indicative that nearly two hours had passed since he first entered into trance. Now that he was back to full awareness, he became sensible of a chill in his bones and a hollow feeling in his midsection. It was further proof, if he needed it, of how far afield he had ventured on the astral this night.

Drawing a steadying breath, Adam reached for the house phone and buzzed for Humphrey. The promptness of the latter’s response suggested that his faithful valet had been anticipating his summons. After requesting his usual fortifying snack of hot ham sandwiches and cocoa, Adam rang off with a heartfelt word of thanks, indulged in a languorous stretch, and sat back in his chair to contemplate the import of his exchange with the Master.  He centered his thoughts first on the matter of Tom Lennox’s phantom lady. Since the Master had strongly intimated that the key to this woman’s identity was to be found on this side of the astral, Adam resolved to redouble his efforts to learn who she might be. He was prepared to take seriously the Master’s pronouncement that this woman was presently posing a danger not only to herself but also to others who might come into contact with her. Certainly those who had died in Carnage Corridor could attest to that danger. His resolution was unshaken by the prospect of having to share in her suffering, though the nature of that particular ordeal had been made only too plain to him during his astral journey to her place in the Akashic Records.

Of more disquieting concern was the Master’s cryptic warning that the equilibrium of the Light was once again in danger of being destabilized by forces of darkness. Lacking any clues to work from, he could do nothing for the moment but watch and wait.

A knock at the library door roused him from his reverie, heralding Humphrey’s arrival with a laden tray.

“Here you are, sir,” the butler said. “Will you take your refreshments at the desk, or by the fireside?”

“By the fireside, thank you,” Adam said. “And then I hope you’ll take yourself off to your bed.”

“Very good, sir.” Humphrey raised a dubious eyebrow. “Are you sure you won’t be needing me any further?”

“Quite sure,” Adam said firmly. “I would, however, be grateful if you could have breakfast ready for six o’clock. Tomorrow promises to be a very busy day.”

chapter seven

DAWN broke pale over the Swiss Alps. Initially the light touched only the outer walls of the remote Buddhist monastery perched on the heights. Inside the compound, the early morning quiet was broken intermittently by the subdued clatter from the kitchen wing. The still air carried the mealy fragrance of cooked tsampa porridge mingled with the scent of wild thyme.  A diaphanous mist filled the gaps between the buildings, leaving a fine glaze of moisture on everything it touched. Deep in the heart of the compound, in the sheltered formal garden adjoining the abbot’s private apartments, the mist had limned each individual leaf and twig with silver. Soft on the foggy air came the muted sound of a door opening and then closing as the man known to his flock as Dorje Rinpoche turned his back on his quarters and moved silently along the pebbled pathway, approaching a small domed structure at the center of the garden.

The edifice was a temple in miniature, its exterior densely ornamented with grotesque carvings of demons, demigods, and other denizens of the spirit world.  As Dorje drew near, a small, stooped figure in orange robes detached itself from the shadows and hobbled forward to meet him, bowing over a box of black lacquerwork cradled to its chest. No word was spoken, but the abbot returned the old monk’s bow and beckoned him forward, leading the way up into the shallow porch that fronted the entrance to the shrine, where both men shed their sandals.

A groined doorway admitted the pair to a square meditation chamber. The flickering yellow glare of four butter lamps quartered the room, picking out the tarnished sheen of metallic embroidery amongst the ancient-looking tapestries that overhung the walls. The floor was of black marble, its center covered by a darkly patterned carpet of silk brocade. A number of flat brocaded cushions had been scattered around the carpet to provide seating.  More glints of silver and gold showed up from the chamber’s vaulted ceiling.  Here, a mosaic had been executed in tiny, many-colored tiles, depicting a wrathful, multilimbed deity wreathed in sulphurous clouds of fire and smoke. Two crimson eyes like molten rubies glared down into the room out of a skull-like face. Any initiate of Tibetan mysticism would have recognized the figure as that of Shinjed, the dread Lord of Death.

In the northwest corner of the chamber stood a small dais covered with a pall of crimson brocade. Centered on the dais, its point supported in a triangular stand, stood a large triple-edged dagger as tall as a man, with a hilt made of carved faces. The dagger was flanked by a pair of bronze incense burners in the shape of two coiled serpents, whose smoke left the air inside the chamber heavy with the musky, aromatic tang of burnt spices.

Approaching the dais, Dorje and his companion abased themselves before the dagger, then withdrew to the center of the room. As they drew up cushions and sat down opposite one another, leaving an open space on the carpet between them, Dorje fixed his chilly, china-blue eyes on the age-withered face of his companion.

“I am troubled, Lutzen,” he said, addressing the other man in fluent Tibetan.  “Almost fifty years have passed since you and your brother brought me here from Germany. Tell me, how much do you recall of the days leading up to our flight?” The old monk’s expression showed faint surprise. “How should I not remember, Rinpoche] It was a time of great uncertainty. The war was going badly for our patron. Daily the talk grew of impending defeat. Eventually it was decided that you should be brought away to safety. And so it was done.” “Indeed.” Dorje’s tone conveyed no warmth. “How would you evaluate that decision by your predecessor?”

“He did as his wisdom dictated,” Lutzen said. “Thanks to his foresight, you were safely out of Berlin when it was taken by the Allies.” “Do you think this was well done?”

The old monk shrugged. “You are here, Rinpoche. And now that the Treasure Texts have at last been located, there will be no further impediment to your fulfilling your destiny as Keeper of the Keys to Agarthi.” “That destiny might well have been fulfilled half a century sooner,” Dorje said coldly. “As you rightly observe, I am the Keeper of the Keys. Had I been allowed to remain in Germany, I might have unlocked Agarthi’s gates and summoned the hosts of chaos to defend the Fatherland. As it was, I was absent at the very time when I was most needed.”

“You were only a child,” Lutzen reminded him. “The signs of your true identity were undeniable, but you had not yet regained your full stature as the Man with Green Gloves.”

Dorje gestured impatiently for silence.

“Bermiag Rinpoche should not have been so quick to underestimate me. Had he allowed the Treasure Texts to go with me, it is conceivable that I might have been able to do something, even from exile, to salvage the fortunes of the Reich.”

“Bermiag Rinpoche did not agree.” Lutzen’s tone was without any audible shift in emotion. “When you were sent to safety, all of us believed the war could still be won – that though our beloved Green Gloves was not yet fully restored to us in function, some other worthy might be found to unlock at least a part of the Treasure Texts’ secrets.

“Sadly, that did not prove to be the case. When it became clear that nothing could save our German patron, Bermiag did his best to place the Texts beyond the reach of our enemies by sending them out of Germany by submarine.” “And in so doing, he placed them beyond my reach as well!” Dorje retorted. “The messenger who brought the news of the sub’s launch should likewise have been entrusted with the vessel’s intended destination.”

The old monk shrugged again. “There was always a danger that the messenger might have been captured. Bermiag Rinpoche had more than once encountered interference from Adepts at work in the Allied camp. Those most senior amongst them would have had sufficient power to force a full accounting of the facts from almost any prisoner under interrogation.”

“Perhaps that is true,” the abbot conceded. “As it stands, Bermiag’s caution has cost us valuable time. The search might have gone on indefinitely if Sidkeong had not undertaken to locate the submarine by dowsing. And the effort cost him his life.”

“I have not forgotten, Rinpoche,” Lutzen said. “The lives of the Irishmen were justly forfeit by way of recompense.”

“Recompense is not yet complete, and finding the submarine only continues the quest,” Dorje stated, his lean features like a carving in marble. “The cargo still must be retrieved – and for that, we shall need outside assistance. You know what is required, Lutzen. Have you made adequate preparation to perform the necessary exercise with the kyilkhor” The elderly monk gave an inclination of his hairless head. “I am quite prepared, Rinpoche. I am confident that the oracle will yield us the guidance we are seeking.”

“Excellent.” Dorje’s tone was one of dispassionate approval. “In that case, let us proceed.”

“As you command, Rinpoche.”

So saying, the aged monk turned his attention to the lacquerwork box in his lap, swiftly shifting a succession of trick panels embedded in the box’s lid and sides. The box opened to reveal two compartments within, the first containing a sheaf of rice papers, a bamboo brush pen, a small ink flask of pale green jade, and a piece of rock crystal in the shape of a pyramid. The second, larger compartment held several closely packed stacks of square lacquered tiles.  Taking out the brush and the ink flask, the monk proffered them to his superior, along with a square piece of rice paper the size of his palm. Accepting these three articles, the abbot lapsed briefly into silence, his expression intense and abstracted, as if he were attempting to identify some curious object glimpsed at a distance. After a long moment, he roused himself to unstopper the ink bottle and dip the pen, after which he swiftly wrote out an inscription in Tibetan. Seen by the amber light of the butter lamps, the writing fluid showed up not black but a dull shade of dark red. The abbot paused briefly to contemplate his work before handing it over to his subordinate.  “As the diviner, it is for you to read what has been written,” he told the old monk.

Lutzen took the page and held it up to the light. Signalling his comprehension with a curt nod, he carefully placed the paper on the carpet in front of him, then removed the crystal pyramid from the lacquerwork box and set it on top of the paper with a finely judged precision that indicated the importance of its placement. This done, he returned to the box and began lifting out the layers of lacquerwork tiles.

There were sixty-four in all, each tile having one side blank and the other inscribed with a symbolic pictograph. Lutzen turned all the tiles blank side up on the carpet before giving them a randomizing shuffle. Satisfied with his preparations, he folded his palms together and touched his joined fingertips to his forehead, throat, and breast. Then, raising his eyes to the vault above his head, he spoke.

“Hail, Shinjed, Lord of the Dead and Devourer of the Living. We who are initiates sworn to your service do pray that you will look with favor on our present enterprise. We ask that, being secured of your guidance, we may recover the treasures our forebears hid, receiving like them earthly power in exchange for feasts of slaughter.”

Lowering his gaze, he turned to Dorje. “The pattern lies within your grasp, Rinpoche” he said, indicating the strewn array of tiles. “May Shinjed guide your hand.”

Dorje reached out and plucked a tile from the midst of the pile. Turning it face-up, he placed it on the floor next to the crystal pyramid. While the old monk looked on, he chose a second tile, overturning it with a flick of his wrist and setting it directly opposite the first, on the other side of the crystal. A further six tiles were added in turn, arranged in opposing pairs so as to leave an octagonal space at the center of the configuration – the pattern known to practitioners of this form of divination as The Lotus Wheel. When all eight tiles were in place, Lutzen leaned in to scan the array of symbols displayed there. After prolonged consideration, he drew a deep breath and began to expound, tracing lines of association as he did so.

“The Stranger and the Fortress,” he intoned. “Taken together, they point to a man outside our immediate fellowship, yet sometimes under our protection. The Gambler – here – indicates one who is both ambitious and desirous of material wealth. The companion symbol, however, is the Broken Ox Cart, signifying a recent reversal in fortunes.”

Dorje’s blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “An interesting combination. The man we require evidently has prior associations with this order. It would appear that he is someone who has tasted disappointment in the not-so-distant past. So much the better if his fortunes need mending. If he is hungry, he will rise the more readily to any bait we offer him. Continue.”

Lutzen bent his gaze on the pattern again. “As for the formative elements of the future, we have first the Serpent and then the Hunter. These symbols denote agencies in opposition. The Serpent is guileful and defends itself with venom.  The Hunter, for his part, is a reader of signs and a tireless pursuer. These two elements can never be reconciled. I read the interference of a longtime adversary who must be killed if he cannot be eluded.” This revelation drew a frown from Dorje. “An inauspicious complication. What of the remaining signs?”

Lutzen returned his attention to the Lotus Wheel. “Success is denoted by the Fruitful Vine. But it is paired with the sign of the Fool, indicating random influences at work. Whether those influences will manifest themselves as a person, an object, or an event is beyond my ability to determine. All that can be said at this time is that a successful outcome to this venture is probable, but not certain.”

“Then we must proceed with great caution,” Dorje said. “Until this enterprise is safely concluded, nothing must be left to chance. In the meantime,” he continued, “there is still this morning’s work to be completed. Let us see what final sign the oracle will show us.”

Dorje bowed his head over the pattern of tiles on the floor and focused his eyes on the crystal pyramid at its center. His breathing slowed, and with it his heart rate, as he lapsed into trance with the ease of long practice. The meditation room, with its gilded hangings and jewelled mosaic ceiling, faded into obscurity. The pyramid correspondingly seemed to expand to fill his vision, blotting out everything else until he could see nothing but the cone-shaped crystal.

As he continued to gaze fixedly at the pyramid, a point of light appeared at its apex. Dorje narrowed his concentration so that it centered on that light. As he did so, he was drawn out of himself toward the point of illumination. At the instant of contact, the light blossomed round him, leaving him floating in the midst of what seemed to be a large, well-appointed library.  Sunlight was flooding into the room through a lofty set of windows, their roundel arches set with Moorish tiles. The light pooled brightly around a large, ornately finished desk in the center of the floor. Seated at the desk was a tall, slender man in a dark suit of impeccable cut. His interest quickening, Dorje moved closer in spirit to take note of the face.  The man at the desk looked to be slightly younger than Dorje himself, with silky fair hair going thin at the top and brushed back at the sides. The pale features were almost ruthlessly refined, the light grey eyes fixed in utter absorption on an age-worn manuscript written in Arabic. One well-manicured finger traced the lines of writing with possessive care.

Another time, Dorje might have taken an interest in the manuscript. At this moment, however, he was far more concerned with the identity of the reader – for the face was one Dorje knew well.

Grimly satisfied, he relaxed his grip on the image before him and allowed himself to be drawn back to his corporeal body. After a blurring of his inner senses came a slight, dizzying jolt. Dorje allowed the momentary sensation of vertigo to subside before opening his eyes. Lutzen was watching him closely.  “I have been shown the face of the man who is to carry out our mission,” Dorje informed the elderly monk, allowing himself a thin smile. “It is none other than our own Gyatso, who calls himself Francis Raeburn.” Lutzen’s seamed face registered bemusement and some doubt. “Raeburn?” “More properly, Francis Tudor-Jones,” Dorje said in some irritation. “Surely you remember him.”

“Tudor-Jones…” Lutzen gave the name a curious twist in pronunciation as he nodded. “Ah, yes, I remember both the father and the son, Rinpoche. The father was instrumental in keeping a valuable book of spells from falling into the hands of our British enemies – though his motives for doing so remain open to question. You forbade the son to continue his studies with us.” “He was altogether too ambitious,” Dorje murmured, “though a worthy successor to his father. As Lynx-Master, he was making serious inroads in Scotland.  Unfortunately, he ran afoul of a White Lodge there.”

“At some cost to us,” the old man agreed.

“Then you will agree that he owes us this service,” Dorje replied. “He resides now in Spain. I shall send Kurkar and Nagpo to bring him here without delay.” “He will not welcome this charge.”

“Of course he will not,” Dorje replied. “But I trust he will not be so foolish as to resist the edicts of Shinjed. Nor can he deny that a debt is owed us in recompense for past benefits – and past failures. He will do as we require of him, or suffer the consequences.”

chapter eight

ADAM’S Tuesday began early, as planned. By ten o’clock, he had made his rounds and seen his first patient, rescheduled from the previous day. He was ensconced in his office, reviewing his notes for a noon lecture, when the phone rang.  “I’ve got some news for you,” McLeod said, an edge of satisfaction to his voice.  “We’ve got a make on Lennox’s phantom lady. Your suggestion that we start working backwards paid off. It turns out that the accident back in January wasn’t the first Carnage Corridor fatality. There was a pedestrian incident about this time last year – man killed, woman critically injured. Donald pulled file photos, and the woman appears to match up with the phantom lady in Lennox’s pictures.”

“Indeed?” Adam sat forward, reaching for a pen and scratch pad. “Please go on.” “Our files give the woman’s name as Claire Alison Crawford, aged twenty-seven,” McLeod said. “On the night of May sixteenth of last year, she and her husband John were walking home from a ceilidh when a drunk driver ran them down. John Crawford was killed instantly, but Mrs. Crawford survived. Their address will interest you. It’s about three blocks away from the stretch of road now known as Carnage Corridor.” He paused to let this piece of information sink in.  “I see,” Adam said as McLeod’s pause lengthened. “I gather there’s more to come.

What happened to the driver?”

“They never caught him,” McLeod replied. “The car turned out to have been stolen; it was found abandoned in a ditch about five miles north of Carnwath.  The joy rider himself must have been on a right bender. The floor of the passenger side was littered with empty cider bottles.” “But there was nothing to identify the driver,” Adam said.  “Nope. There were plenty of fingerprints left all over the car, but none of them checked out against criminal records. If the bastard ever commits another offense, we’ll have him nailed for hit-and-run manslaughter, but unless and until that happens, he’s off the hook.”

“All right, back to Mrs. Crawford,” Adam said, jotting down notes. “You say this incident took place about a year ago?”

“Aye.”

“Where’s Mrs. Crawford been since?”

“After she left hospital,” McLeod said grimly, “she spent the better part of six months down at Stoke-Mandville.”

The significance of the name was not lost on Adam. The Stoke-Mandville Centre had been established expressly for the treatment and rehabilitation of patients suffering from varying degrees of paralysis.

“I see. How badly affected was she left by the accident?” “She still has the use of her arms and upper body,” McLeod said, “but she’ll be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.”

Adam allowed himself a heavy sigh as he contemplated the havoc that could be wrought on innocent lives as a result of one man’s criminal self-indulgence.  “You say Mrs. Crawford spent six months in rehab. Do you know where she went after she got out?”

“Aye, we do. She went home,” McLeod said. “She moved back into her house a few days after Christmas – not a week before the first of our current series of Carnage Corridor accidents.”

After a moment’s pause, McLeod asked heavily, “What are you suggesting? Could this woman somehow be responsible for causing these people to run off the road?”

Adam nodded slowly, even though he knew McLeod could not see it.  “I think it’s possible,” he said carefully, “though if she is, I very much doubt that she’s consciously aware of what she’s doing. At the same time, however, it’s quite possible for unconscious rage to break loose as psychic phenomena, when the potential is there and it’s fuelled by a conscious sense of grief and injustice. I can’t say for certain that this is what’s at work here, but it certainly warrants further investigation. How would you feel about our paying a house call on Mrs. Crawford?”

“I’d consider it a very worthwhile expenditure of the taxpayers’ money,” McLeod said. “When were you thinking of going?”

“The sooner, the better,” Adam replied. “After lunch, perhaps? I’ve got a lecture just before.”

“I don’t foresee any difficulty there,” McLeod replied. “Do we make this an official police visit?”

“Not in the sense that you should phone ahead,” Adam said. “In this instance, I think it would be better if we were to take the casual approach and simply drop in. First impressions are likely to be important in a case like this. If Mrs.  Crawford does have latent psychic ability, I don’t want to give her time to mask her feelings.”

“Good point,” McLeod muttered. “All right, why don’t I meet you there at the hospital around two?”

“That ought to do nicely,” Adam said.

He was about to ring off when abruptly he remembered his telephone conversation with Peregrine the night before.

“By the way,” he continued, “while I’ve got you on the line, I probably ought to mention that I had a call last night from Peregrine. Yesterday he and Julia found a dead body washed up on the beach at Mull of Kintyre.” “You don’t say! What a wretched wedding present.”

“I agree. Julia seems to have taken it in stride, though.” Adam went on to relate, in as few words as possible, what the young artist had told him concerning the corpse itself and his misgivings that there might be more to the incident than mere misadventure.

“He thinks he might have Seen something, without being able to make out clearly what it was,” Adam concluded. “I told him I’d ask you to follow up on the case.” “I’ll be glad to,” McLeod agreed. “Mull of Kintyre, you say? That means the body will probably go to Dumbarton. I’ll ring my friend Jack Somerville and see what he can find out. Jack and I go way back. If I tell him I’m interested in this case, he knows me well enough to not mind sharing information.” “Nobody could ask more than that,” Adam said. “I’ll leave the matter in your capable hands, then. See you at two.”

With these words he rang off. A glance at his watch told him he still had twenty minutes before his lecture – time enough, hopefully, for what he had in mind to do. After checking his desktop directory, he punched in the number for the Stoke-Mandville Rehabilitation Centre.

“Good morning,” he said to the cheery receptionist who answered. “I’d like to speak with Dr. Miles Heatherton, extension 593.”

“Thank you. One moment, please,” she responded.

There was a brief pause while the call was transferred. After two buzzes came the click of someone lifting a receiver.

“This is Dr. Heatherton,” said a brisk baritone voice. “What can I do for you?” Passing over the question for the moment, Adam said, “Hello, Miles. This is Adam Sinclair.”

“Adam? Good Lord, this is a pleasant surprise! It seems like donkey’s years since we last spoke. How have you been?”

“Very well, thanks,” Adam responded cordially. “What about you and your expanding clan? Last I heard, you and Lorraine were well on your way to parenting your very own rugby team.”

“Only half a rugby team!” Heatherton protested with a rueful chuckle. “I’m beginning to think the only way we’re ever going to get ourselves a daughter is to adopt one. But what about you? Are you still keeping company with that exceedingly fetching American lady you introduced me to at the Birmingham conference?”

“I’m afraid she’s back in the States at the moment,” Adam said, “but I’m hoping to lure her back here, once her commitments there are at an end. Look, Miles,” he continued before Heatherton could question him further, “I’ve got a lecture in a few minutes, but I need some information. I wonder if you can tell me anything about a woman who was admitted to the institute about a year ago – a Mrs. Claire Crawford. She was – “ “Claire Crawford?” Heatherton interrupted. “I know exactly who you mean. She was one of my patients. If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your interest in her case?”

Adam had anticipated the question, and said easily, “Oh, just academic curiosity. I’m hoping to put together an article on the long-term emotional consequences of disability. I heard about Mrs. Crawford through a police contact of mine, and thought she might be a good subject for research.” “Well, there’s no doubt about that,” Heatherton said, in a tone that conveyed more than a hint of reservation. “How much do you know already?” “Only the barest essentials,” Adam replied. “That she was admitted to the institute on a referral from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. That she stayed six months before being released. What I need to hear from you is an account of her progress, together with your evaluation of her psychiatric state when she left.” Heatherton’s immediate response was a dissatisfied grunt. “I wish I could say she was one of my success stories, but that would be telling a lie. I don’t know whether the problem was me, or whether the complications of the case were simply too severe. All I know is that successful psychiatric counselling is a matter of give and take. If your patient doesn’t choose to cooperate with you, for whatever reason, there’s not a whole lot more you can do.” Adam pricked up his ears. “We’ve all encountered patients like that at some time or other. I’d still be very much obliged if you could give me chapter and verse where Mrs. Crawford is concerned.”

“Chapter and verse? All right.” Heatherton paused for breath before launching into his narrative. ‘ ‘If ever I saw an individual in need of professional counselling, this woman was the one. For her, the problem of learning how to deal with being paraplegic was severely compounded by bereavement. If you’ve read the police reports, you’ll have a fair idea of the kind of emotional trauma we’re dealing with here. There is something ultimately unjust about having your husband wiped out of existence by some drunken lout you didn’t even know.” “Indeed,” Adam concurred soberly. “Murder with a motive might almost have made more sense. Even a bad reason for something happening is better than no discernible reason at all.”

“True enough,” Heatherton agreed. “Anyway, all these people we deal with here at the institute are challenging cases. Most of them are angry; some are suicidal.  It isn’t enough to teach somebody how to cope with a crippling disability; in some cases you’ve got to convince the individual that it’s worth trying to find a reason to keep on living. Some people find it; some don’t. I can’t honestly say I’m surprised that Mrs. Crawford turned out to be one of the latter. She didn’t even have the consolation of seeing her baby survive.” “She lost a baby?” Adam was genuinely shocked at this revelation.  “Didn’t the police reports mention that? Claire Crawford was seven months pregnant at the time of the accident. The trauma sent her into premature labor.  The baby was born alive, but died a couple of days later of respiratory complications. As far as she was concerned, that was the ultimate cheat of her entire existence.”

Adam found himself recalling his vision of the previous night with fresh and discerning clarity. The flames he had seen raging within the Akashic chamber of record constituted, he saw now, a far-reaching destructive force. How he was going to deal with it was going to depend on what further information he could glean from his colleague.

“What was Mrs. Crawford’s state of mind when you first met her, Miles?” Heatherton’s own unhappiness over his patient’s welfare was plainly audible in his voice.

“She was completely withdrawn when she arrived. It was a month before anyone could get her to speak. And when at last she did break silence, it was like a volcano erupting. It wasn’t anything in the words she said, but being in the same room with her was like being out in a hurricane. You felt as if you were being psychically battered about from all sides.

“Eventually the storm seemed to blow itself out of its own accord,” he continued, “but I’m not sure whether it actually subsided or simply changed form and went underground. Either way, Mrs. Crawford eventually checked herself out of the centre. At last report, she’d gone back to her home in Scotland.” “Then you didn’t actually discharge her?”

“By no means.” Heatherton was vehement. “If I could have found a way to keep her here, I would have done so. Not that I could boast that we were doing her any good,” he added gloomily, ‘ ‘but at least here, she was assured of a stable environment with somebody keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn’t try to take her own life.”

“Do you think that a likely possibility?” Adam asked.  Heatherton sighed gustily. “I only wish I knew. Most of the resentment and hostility she displayed here was outwardly directed, but now and then, during our sessions, she would let fall a remark that gave me cause to suspect she was angry with herself as well. There’s no doubt in my mind that she has enough poison in her soul to kill twenty people. If that poison ever boils over, what outlet it will find is anybody’s guess.”

The other’s statement only served to reinforce Adam’s worst misgivings.  Carefully masking his own feelings, he said, “I gather you haven’t heard anything further about her progress since she left?” “Not much, I’m afraid,” Heatherton said. “About three months ago, I had a routine report kicked back to me by the Social Works Department, but I can’t say I found it terribly illuminating. Let’s face it, very few district nurses are qualified to deal with psychiatric disorders of the kind we’re talking about here.”

“No, that’s quite true.”

Heatherton coughed a little nervously, then said, “Adam, I realize that your interest in this case is purely academic. I will, of course, be quite happy to furnish you with transcripts of my case notes, subject to all the usual restrictions regarding confidentiality. At the same time, it would ease my mind considerably if I could persuade you to go and talk to this poor woman – maybe see if you could breach the wall of anger she’s built around herself since the accident. Who knows, you may be able to succeed where I failed.”

chapter nine

AFTER his lecture, Adam caught a sandwich in the hospital cafe with several of his students, then returned to his office to find McLeod there before him. The inspector closed a manila folder and presented it to Adam as he rose.  “No luck reaching Somerville yet, about Peregrine’s dead body, but here’s the full file on Claire Crawford,” he told Adam. “You already know the basic facts, of course, but I thought you might want to look over the details on the way out to her house – just to see what, if anything, your intuitions have to say.” “I’ll do that,” Adam said, slipping off his starched white lab coat and exchanging it for his suit coat. “I’ve also spoken with her therapist at Stoke-Mandville. I find it interesting that he was my only contact at Stoke, and she’d been his patient. The connection tends to reinforce what I learned last night, on a little astral foray.”

He told McLeod about it on the way down to the car, keeping his terminology carefully neutral whenever someone was in earshot.  ‘ ‘If the opportunity presents itself, I want to try regressing her to the night of the accident. Every instinct tells me increasingly that we’re dealing with a psychic talent gone wild.”

Cochrane was waiting for them outside, at the wheel of an unmarked police car.  Leaving McLeod to take the passenger seat up front, Adam slipped into the back with his briefcase and took out the manila folder. He had the Lennox photos as well. By the time they pulled out of the car park, heading west toward the Lanark Road, he was already absorbed in skimming over the additional background.  Prior to the accident, Claire Crawford had been a junior teacher at a local nursery. John Crawford had taught mathematics at Merchiston Castle School, a much-respected institute of secondary education in central Edinburgh. Their shared hobbies had included canoeing, hill-walking, and a variety of other outdoor activities. Realizing just how much Claire Crawford had lost in the space of so short a time, Adam found it all too easy to understand how she could have plunged to such depths of grief and rage.

But however justified such emotions might be, nothing good could be gained from letting them rule the remainder of her life. On the contrary, there was every reason to believe that such passions had already done considerable harm. If so, Adam’s very first priority must be to ensure that no more innocent people died.  “The house number we’re looking for is thirty-five,” McLeod said, jarring Adam from his troubled contemplation as they turned off the Lanark Road. “Pull over right there, Donald. That’s got to be the place.”

Cochrane complied without comment, setting the brake and switching off the ignition.

“You want me to keep trying Somerville’s number, Inspector?” he asked as McLeod and Adam got out of the car.

“Aye, give him another half hour, if we aren’t back by then. His sergeant said he’d be back between three and four.”

Claire Crawford’s house was a detached modern bungalow fronted by a small terraced garden. From the street it looked spruce and trim, the white hading of its outer walls neatly contrasting with the slate-blue paint of the woodwork.  Upon closer inspection, however, it seemed almost too well kept. All the bedding plants were rigorously confined to their borders, and the miniature boxwood hedge had been ruthlessly squared off. The spaces between the plants had been filled in with small colored stones for easy keeping. The effect was well-groomed to the point of severity.

Considering the pattern he was starting to detect, Adam followed McLeod up the garden steps, briefcase in hand, skirting a concrete ramp to the right that gave wheelchair access to the front door. The small brass plaque above the letterbox was inscribed with a single name: c. a. crawford. Trading glances with Adam, McLeod reached out and thumbed the doorbell.

A distant buzz elicited a light scuffle of movement from inside, followed by the rattle of a lock being unsnibbed. The young woman who opened the door, however, was demon-strably not Claire. Standing no more than middling tall, this woman was stockily built, with shoulder-length light-brown hair, dark eyes, and a pale, clear complexion.

“Oh,” she said, faint disappointment in her tone. “I was hoping you were the plumber.”

McLeod already had his warrant card out, and presented it with an apologetic shrug.

“Afraid not,” he said. “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Noel McLeod, Lothian and Borders Police, and this is my associate, Dr. Sinclair. We’d like a word with Mrs. Crawford, if it’s not too inconvenient. Is she at home just now?” The woman gave an affirmative jerk of her head. “Yes, she is. She’s out in the back garden. Was she expecting you?”

“No,” Adam said, summoning a reassuring smile. “I’m afraid this is a somewhat impromptu visit. The only excuse I can offer you is that the inspector and I sometimes have difficulty coordinating our respective work schedules, and decided we’d better seize the present opportunity, even if it meant stopping by unannounced. Are you a relative of Mrs. Crawford’s?” Disarmed by the gentleness of his manner, the young woman returned his smile.  “I’m her sister-in-law. My name’s Ishbel – Ishbel Reid. Claire’s late husband was my brother. My own husband is away a lot – he works on the oil rigs – so I’m staying with Claire just now, to help out while she finishes up a secretarial course.”

She looked as if she might have added something more, but then seemed to think better of it. After a glance over her shoulder, she stood aside and said, “Won’t you come in?”

“Thank you,” Adam said. As he and McLeod entered, Ishbel closed the door behind them.

“Can you tell me what this is all about?” she asked, turning to conduct them through the house. “I thought the police closed the books on Claire’s accident a while back, when it proved impossible to track down the person responsible.” “The books are far from closed,” McLeod replied. “In fact, that’s the main reason Dr. Sinclair and I are here – to got back over anything and everything your sister-in-law can remember from the night of her accident. It’s possible we may be able to turn up a clue the previous investigators have overlooked.” Ishbel looked dubious. “I wish you every success, of course, but I probably ought to warn you that you may not find Claire very receptive. I’m afraid she’s developed a rather hostile attitude toward the police – and who can blame her?  It’s been almost a year, Inspector, and so far as I know, you’re no closer to catching the man who ran down Claire and my brother.” “I certainly understand your frustration, Mrs. Reid,” Adam said. “And hers. Once we’ve spoken to her, perhaps we’ll be able to persuade her that she has nothing to lose and everything to gain by helping us prove her wrong.” “Well, you’re certainly welcome to try, so far as I’m concerned,” Ishbel said.

“Come this way, and I’ll take you to her.”

With Ishbel leading the way, they moved off down the hall. A door at the opposite end of the passage let them through into a sunny, open-plan sitting and dining room. At first glance, the place seemed a model of good housekeeping, fitted out with a tasteful array of new drapes, furnishings, and wall-coverings.  At the same time, Adam was left with the distinct impression that there was something missing.

He took a second look around the room, then realized that the missing ingredient was what Peregrine might have termed the human element. There were no keepsakes or decorative objects left casually around on the tables. Though there were several prints hanging on the walls, these were all geometric abstracts without any reference to human form. Most significant of all, to Adam’s way of thinking, there were no family photographs.

“I see your sister-in-law has recently had this room re-decorated,” he observed out loud.

“Yes.” Ishbel’s acknowledgement had a note of constraint in it. “It was done in conjunction with having alterations made so that someone in a wheelchair could live here. I still haven’t quite got used to the new decor. If you’d seen this room a year ago, you’d hardly believe, to see it now, that it could be the same place.”

“In what way?” Adam asked.

Ishbel pulled a slight grimace as she turned back to face them.  “In almost every way you could think of, actually. You know, of course, that Claire used to be a nursery teacher? Well, what your records and reports probably didn’t tell you is how much she loved her job. She was wonderfully dedicated, and so clever with her hands. She used to spend all her free time making things to use in her lessons – hand puppets, models, mobiles, posters – just about anything you could think of that children would enjoy. And this room is where most of the work got done.”

She sighed wistfully. “What with all the clutter of paints and glue pots and half-finished projects lying about, the place usually looked as if it had been hit by a cyclone. On top of that, Claire kept a virtual menagerie of small pets for the children – cats, budgies, guinea pigs, gerbils, goldfish – you name it.  Back then, the house was always messy. But it was a lively, happy mess, and I rather liked it.”

“What did she do with all the animals?” McLeod asked.  Ishbel turned her gaze his way. “She gave them away to various play groups and schools round about. All except the cats. Funny, they’re the only things she’s kept, when nothing else about the house has been allowed to remain the same. The way this room looks now is very neat and pretty, I suppose, but I can’t say I feel at home in it.”

“Sometimes it takes a while for a newly furnished room to look lived in,” Adam remarked, the casual lightness of his tone masking the intensity of his interest in Ishbel’s revelations. “I have no doubt that once your sister-in-law has had time to get a few more of her own things out of storage, the place will start to seem more familiar. It’s been my experience that even so small an addition as a photo or two can sometimes make all the difference.” Ishbel’s soft lips tightened. “I wouldn’t even dare to suggest such a thing to Claire. After the accident, she asked me to gather up all the photographs in the house and put them in a suitcase. I thought she wanted to take them away with her to Stoke-Mandville, but it turned out that wasn’t it at all. When I presented her with the case, she just stared at it for a long moment. Then she ordered me to take it out and have it burnt.”

“Indeed?” Only Adam’s rigorously acquired self-discipline prevented him from reacting outwardly. Keeping his voice studiously devoid of expression, he asked, “And did you?”