Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (18 page)

My hearing puts most humans' to shame. Placing my ear against the wood of the door, I listen for the sound of a television or voices — even breathing. Nothing. I walk over to the second flat and do the same. Nothing there either. I knock at the second door, and there's no answer. There are welcome mats at each door, and I pull them up, hoping against reason that Macy left a spare key. There's naught but dust and dried mud.

I can either keep pounding on doors, or I can break in. I already know what my decisions going to be, and it doesn't take much imagination to picture the headline in the Daily Mail.

Masked "Hero" Breaks and Enters Edinburgh Flats.

Oh, well. Any publicity is good, right?

I go back to Door Number One and punch the latch in.

The purple umbrella tells me it's Macy's flat, and I thank my lucky stars that my little gamble paid off. I send Macy a quick email from my mobile just in case she is not kidnapped or dead or missing. 

Macy — Broke your latch. Was worried when you didn't contact me for our meeting and wanted to make sure you were okay. Will secure door from inside. If you need to get back in, send me a message and I'll come help you. PS: Will pay for new latch.

There. No one can fault my willingness to clean up my messes.

I turn on the light and look around. 

Any hope I had that Macy is safe and unharmed gets chased away like the shadows. Dismay puddles in me like water in a gutter.

The kitchen table is littered with papers, and several dirty dishes are broken on the floor, strings of spaghetti still stuck to them. Nothing else seems broken, so I'm not sure if this is the picture of a struggle or just Macy leaving in a big hurry. It's a small flat, not quite a bedsit but close. The single bedroom is cluttered and has clothes strewn about. It could be her normal state of living, but I don't think it is. I turn back for the living area, which has no television or sofa, just a work table that's as much of a mess as the rest of the place.

I look around, wondering how long she's been gone. I just saw her yesterday, and she seemed fine, if a bit rattled. The desk is probably the most obvious place to start looking for information. She's got a large metal cabinet on the left side of the desk. I pull out the drawers one by one. Contrary to the disarray of the rest of the flat, the drawers are organised meticulously. The first holds tools and basic hardware equipment. Pliers, spanner, hammer, soldering iron. A smattering of screws and nuts and bolts. 

In the second drawer, I find what looks like surveillance tools. Tiny and discreet. There are a few small boxes with microphones, a couple tiny cameras that would be virtually invisible if mounted to a person or an object in a room. It gives me a bit of a shiver to see how small these things are, and how easy it would be to miss them if you didn't know someone was watching you or what to look for. I slide the drawer shut, wondering if Macy used any of this equipment to know when I would be coming her way. She could have easily bugged or stuck cameras around any of the shrike stencils she painted about the city to lead me to her. 

The third drawer is all wires of different colours, plastic zip ties, and various fasteners. Nothing of interest to me. The fourth and final drawer, however, has many interesting things. 

Two handguns are mounted on the sides of the drawer. They're the most obvious occupants. Handguns aren't easy to get in Scotland, and considering Macy's status, I'm fairly certain they're not legal. The drawer also holds two racks of vials. I pick up one vial and read the bottom. Midazolam. It's a tranquilliser. I know that from when Da had to have someone subdue one of our rams when I was a bairn. The vials don't look quite like those you'd see in a doctor's office, and when I look at the front of the drawer, I realise why.

There's another gun mounted there, and where the barrel is on the handguns, there's what looks like a hypodermic needle.

I put the rack of vials back where I found it, wondering why Macy needs tranquillisers. I dismiss the idea that she needs them for me, because even an entire vial of midazolam wouldn't drop me. When Edmund Frost kidnapped me, he used elephant tranqs. 

Perks of my metabolism at work.

There's a small black case in front of the tranquillisers. I pick it up, turning it over in my hands to find the zipper that runs around the edge. Inside are four small syringes, but not the cheap plastic type. Sleek, metal, deadly. They're each capped. I pull off a cap to examine the needle itself, which is almost as thin as the beading needles my mum used to use. Upon closer inspection, I see that the needle is jointed, as if it's meant to break off a centimetre before the tip. I lift up the tray that holds them and find a small insert. 

There's a diagram of the case, as sleek and minimalist as a set of Ikea instructions, but not quite as confusing. Each syringe has a serial number, and there's a QED code on the bottom right corner. I scan it with my mobile.

It prompts me to download an app, the icon for which is a compass.

My skin tingles as I hit the button to download.

After a moment, the app pops up. It's just as sleek and minimalist as the insert in the case. There's one place to enter information. I enter the first serial number, hit the tiny compass button, and wait.

A map of Edinburgh springs onto my screen and zooms automatically to Claremont street. My breath catches. I know exactly what I have in my hand.

Three times now I've come close to Granger, and three times she's gotten away. With this I can follow her.

I exit out of the app and make sure to close it out manually. The case of syringes is small and thin, about the size of two cigarette cases placed side by side. I slip it into a pocket on my side, thanking Magda for this new costume with all its zippers and hiding places. I'm tempted to take the tranquillisers as well, but I leave them. 

I'll apologise to Macy for nicking her tracker syringes later. 

Her desk is a shock of mess after the obsessively arranged items in the cabinet. There's a box right on top, its lid askew.

I open it. It appears to be letters, handwritten. That alone is strange for the twenty-first century, and I take the top one out. It's dated August of 2010.

Dear Gina,

I miss you already. Being with you makes me wish things could always be like that, so simple and free. For a short time, when I am in your arms, the world shrinks to fit us. It is a new universe, populated only with the two of us, with our breath, our laughter, and our love.

If I was overly distraught when we parted, I apologise. I very much enjoyed meeting your family, and I know you're eager to meet mine as well. I know you didn't quite understand why that can't happen, and the next time we meet I'll try my best to explain.

Until then, know that I love you. I loved your family. I can't wait to see you again. 

All my love,

Andy

The letter is sealed after the signature, an ornate stamp in wax that says AAGIII. Something about that tickles my memory. The writer's hand is even and smooth, his penmanship something any modern person would envy. The letter is written in flowing cursive that feels like velvet to read.

I pick up the next one.

Dear Gina,

It's hard to write this. How am I supposed to surpass those last moments at the train station? You overwhelm me. That day will be forever in my mind, a frozen picture of what could be when this is all over. 

I know I said it already, but I appreciate you trying to understand what I told you about my family. Why I don't want to introduce you to them. It's not that I care less for you; it's that I am ashamed of them. Certain things would be embarrassing, but forgivable. Other things…well. Better to leave those unsaid.

I'm back at uni in St. Andrews, which is brilliant. I don't golf as much as I'd like, but I'd so much rather spend my time on the beach. You know the West Sands? Some nights the sea smooths out the sand and turns it silver, and when the sun sets it's hard to tell where water ends and land begins. I sometimes think I could straddle that boundary and cross into another world, like the ancients believed. The beach is a welcome respite, as are these letters to you. I know you think I'm old fashioned, but sometimes that's nice. I know I love getting letters from you. They smell of you, of your perfume and your home, and for just a second, I feel like we touch.

I hope you're enjoying Orkney. By the time this gets to you, you'll be back, and I can't wait to hear all about it.

Love,

Andy

It's got the same stamp, AAGIII.

Andy.

Oh.

I know.

I stare at the stack of letters, rifling through them. The first ten or so are just like the ones I've read, rather gushy love letters, hinting at family drama here and there. I can feel my breath and blood come faster. They're all in chronological order. I skip to the last chapter of this tale and yank out the letter. It's heavily creased, as if it's been read a thousand times.

It's short. Very short. Where the first letters were written smoothly, with grace and beauty in each line, this one is jagged and splotched. The ink is smudged on the paper from the writer's hand pressing down too hard; in some words, the point of the pen poked almost through. 

Gina, oh Gina. I'm so sorry. So sorry. Forgive me for bringing you into this. It's far more pain than you deserve. 

I don't deserve your love, but you will have mine until my dying day.

It's not signed.

It's dated 8 September, 2014.

Every muscle in my body feels as though it's been injected with the midazolam in the bottom drawer of Macy — of Gina's — cabinet.

AAGIII.

Andrew Aloysius Granger the Third.

Rosamund Granger's dead son.

I take one step back and sit down hard on the floor. Andrew. His death is one that will haunt me for the rest of my life. His uncle blew his brains out on the green marble floor of Hammerton, Inc. He protected me, helped me. He seemed to be enslaved by his family's obsession even then, and these letters are a tragic confirmation of my suspicion.

That final letter. It must have been written after the abduction of Glyn Burns, the former leader of the Scottish National Party. He was held for two weeks and brutally tortured, finally left chained naked to an azure velvet swath like a macabre parody of the Scottish flag. 

Rosamund Granger had made Andrew do it.

I sit there on the floor for a long moment, hating Rosamund Granger for everything she's doing now and everything she did then. But most of all hating her for the pitiless way she walked past Andrew's body. I think "pity" was the word she used, as if his death were akin to that of a fondly remembered goldfish and not a human being.

My body seems to have grown ten times heavier when I try to stand again. I go back to the letters, making sure I've kept them in order. There are a few envelopes tucked on the side of the boxes, and when I pick them up, I can see why they were kept. Little notes litter the outsides of them. Tiny observations on the day, little funny sketches of faces. I turn one over, and even though I figured it out on my own, seeing Andrew's name on the return address gives me a shock. 

The letters are addressed to Gina Galbraith. 

Regina Galbraith. 

She's on Granger's list. Tasha mentioned her when I was at her house. 

Macy is Regina Galbraith.

If I weren't an atheist, I would be praying to any god who would listen for Gina to still be alive.

As it is, I gather up the letters, close the box over them, and set them aside.

I'm going to make sure Rosamund Granger pays for what she's done if I have to burn down the city to find her.

eighteen

The box of letters makes me rethink everything I see in Gina Galbraith's flat. 

The dishes on the floor now look like they just fell, the clothes littering her bed seem like simple clutter. I look in the lavatory. There's still a toothbrush in a cup and a few makeup items scattered around the vanity. It looks now like she left in a hurry rather than being abducted. Also, the only forced entry into this place was mine. 

She said she'd have something for me. Something she thought was big and wanted to make sure she had right before bringing it my way. This box could hold more secrets. That they're handwritten could be a boon if there's real information in Andrew's love letters; he would understand maybe better than anyone that digital information never goes away, while I could throw this box of letters in a fire and it'd vanish from existence. It's an intensely personal keepsake, and one I don't picture a woman who first gave me an alias simply leaving around carelessly, not when the writer of the letters is related to Scotland's single most wanted killer.