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."