Bob Skinner lay in the dark. It was 2.30 a.m., and he was afraid.
He lay alert, listening to his wife's soft breathing, because he was afraid to fall asleep, afraid of another dream visit to those muddy acres, afraid of the horror but also of the reality of his vision of the night before.
He knew with a great certainty that the nightmare was not over, only interrupted. He could remember none of the detail, only the horror, but he was certain that if he yielded to his sandy, heavy eyes, he would be back in its midst, not screaming awake this time, but moving on towards something in the darkness, something that he knew was there, something frightful, something awful. He was afraid too that even his wakeful state would not be a defence for ever, and that soon the final recollection would break through the wall in his consciousness which he had built against it, and kept cemented firm.
He slipped out of bed, moved noiselessly over to his wardrobe and found running shorts, a sweat-shirt and trainers. Rather than stumble about in the bedroom and risk waking Sarah, he stepped out to the landing and clothed himself, then tiptoed downstairs and let himself out into the street. He locked the door behind him, zipped his keys into a pocket in his shirt, and trotted towards the road, running across the lawn and leaping over the corner of the gravel to maintain his silent escape.
Had he looked back, he would have seen Sarah at the bedroom window watching him anxiously as he loped into the night, down Fairyhouse Avenue.
He ran with long easy strides, not pushing himself as he climbed the hill and took the turn which led on to Queensferry Street. He crossed the wide road almost at once, picking up his pace as he ran past Stewarts Melville College then turned right, heading down the hill towards Dean Village.
As he ran in the light, cold drizzle which was falling on the centre of Edinburgh, the waking nightmare faded. He settled into a steady, metronomic pace, and he began to think through his investigation. He replayed all the decisions he had taken, and all the orders he had given.
He thought back to Donaldson's report and to his description of Maurice Noble's depression, and to his fears over his wife. Could Noble have been a perverted suicide? He asked himself. The very question made him feel frustrated.
One of the things which he disliked most about his senior command role was the extent to which it took him away from day-to-day contact with criminal investigation. Throughout his career as a detective, one of his great strengths had been his ability to get to know the people he was confronting, by studying their actions, by speaking to those who knew them and finally, in many cases, by staring into their eyes across the table in an interview room.
The essential delegation which his rise through the ranks had forced upon him had robbed him of much… too much, he thought.. of that closeness with the crime-fighting process. It was not that he distrusted his staff or doubted their ability to form their own judgements. On the contrary, Skinner believed that his handpicked team was the finest in the country.
His problem was that as the commanding General and Field-Marshal-in-waiting, for all the power and glory, he derived less satisfaction from the job than he had as a member of the frontline team.
Of course, since moving into the command suite he had enjoyed one or two personal successes. But they had been accidents of fate, rather than part of the due process. Now he had chosen to place himself publicly at the head of the most demanding enquiry his Force had ever faced, and he was troubled.
The carnage on the Lammermuirs had thrust torments into his dreams, and he knew that they were taking a physical toll. Yet, apart from that, since the early hours of the investigation when he had stood frustrated in the Command Vehicle, trying to think of all the things he should be doing yet having difficulty in stringing them into a logical sequence, he had had the strangest feeling that somehow he was floating above events, unable to reach down and influence them.
On other investigations he had felt sometimes that all was not as it seemed, and that somewhere in the pattern of events there was an obvious link which he was missing. In the past, he had worried away tenaciously at the scenario; he had adjusted the living jigsaw until the last piece was in place.
But this was different. This time he had set an investigation under way without any clear idea of the direction in which it was heading. And this time, there were the nightmares.
For the first time in his life, professional and personal, he knew that he was not in control.
Bob Skinner ran on through the sodium-lit darkness. It was 3.10 a.m., and he was afraid.
They took him completely by surprise, as they jumped from the doorway to confront him.
They were big fellows, three of them, heavily built, and he knew at once that they were not about to ask him for a light. He broke his stride and tried to dodge around them, but they spread out to block his path.
His mind had been so preoccupied with his troubles that he had lost track of where he was heading. He looked around him and saw that he was in Dalry Road, a main thoroughfare, but one where no traffic ran other than the occasional police car at that time in the morning.
He was breathing heavily. The three men circled around him, forcing him to take a defensive position with his back to a shop window. Skinner was afraid no longer. These were flesh and blood things. He felt an old familiar sensation creep over him, a coldness inside, an anticipation of danger. Something else invaded him too, or rather someone, another personality, one who was looking forward to what was about to happen, who knew what power he possessed, and who would take pleasure in using it.
He scanned the trio, trying to make out faces, but they were all dressed in what could have been a gang uniform — tracksuits with heavy hooded tops. 'You guys really don't want to do this,' he said. For a start, I'm a Police Officer. For another thing, there aren't enough of you. Away home to your mothers before your tea gets cold.' There was a wicked gleam in his eye.
If all three had charged at once, even he would have stood no chance, but as two came forward, one of the men, the thug on his left, hesitated.
Skinner sent the first attacker spinning backwards in less than a second disabled by a short, brutal right-handed chop across the Adam's apple. Almost simultaneously, the man in the middle, the biggest of the three, was folded in half by a lightning-fast kick to the groin. Before he could hit the ground, Skinner grabbed him and using his momentum, swung him round and slammed him headfirst through the plate-glass window behind him.
As the shop alarm began to ring out, the third man, who had plucked up enough courage to move in to attack, froze in mid-stride. The policeman seized him by the shirt, pulled towards him and head-butted him as hard as he could on the bridge of the nose.
Skinner was still holding the man, smiling savagely as blood erupted from his smashed nose, when he felt the thump on his back. He threw down his attacker and turned in surprise, to face a tall, slightly built girl, as she lunged at him for a second time with a long-bladed knife. He had no time to wonder from where she had come. Instinctively he side-stepped, and grabbed her wrist, twisting it sharply upwards, and hearing a crack. She screamed and dropped the weapon. Still holding her, Skinner bent to pick it up with his left hand.
All of a sudden he felt the pain. It began just below his right shoulder blade and swept through him. He gasped in a breath and it erupted into agony. His eyes swam, and he slumped to his knees, loosening his grip on the girl. As he fell forward, face down on the wet pavement, he heard her footsteps as she race off down Dalry Road.
Above him, the shop's alarm bell continued to ring out shrilly, but to Bob Skinner, the sound grew fainter and more distant. He clung on to it for as long as he could, but eventually it faded altogether as a darkness swept over him, one in which there were no dreams.