The Realms Thereunder

4

Alex Simpson of the Northern Constabulary pulled out of the Muir of Ord police station and started the drive back. He was tired to the bone, but there was an electric ball of energy in his gut that pushed him on. He had changed out of his uniform, naturally, but he had pocketed his notebook. It lay on the passenger’s seat next to him almost radiating weight and importance.

He pulled into the small driveway of his small cottage and let himself in, going straight into his back study and sliding the elastic band off the cover of the black notebook. He thumbed to the last page of writing. He studied it for a few moments and then turned to the wall map. It showed all of Scotland, took up most of the wall, and had cost a fair penny. Today it would be working for him.

For the first time in several months he had managed to get some time alone on one of the office computers, where he could access the NC’s intranet. Until today, he had been unable to peruse Scotland’s crime and misdemeanor reports for anything that looked-well, suspicious. Suspicious to him, that is. And finally he had found something. Missing livestock, even killed and mangled livestock, was no novelty in the highlands, but that, coupled with a 27 percent bump in area crime, and a 300 percent rise in unnatural deaths in the last nine months-that was suspicious and worth sticking on the map.

Running his eyes over the blue pins already spread across the wall, he started to put red pins into the map around the Highlands Council area. Seven sheep reported missing and remains found on the farm of Robert Corbet near Kildonan. With no information on where the animals were found or known to be missing from, he stuck three pins around the farmstead. Two cattle killed and found near the farm of Mactire at Braemore-two pins. Nineteen more reports in the last four months-a couple dozen more red pins.

Next, violent crimes and robberies. A couple hundred of these, in black pins. It took the better part of an hour to mark them all. Next, suicides. Perhaps the most depressing. And again, far more common than one would hope in rural Scotland. In the last six months, forty. Fifteen minutes later forty more pins, these ones yellow, stuck in the map.

It was certainly painting a picture. Stepping back, he looked at the nebulous whole of incidents spread pretty much at random- except for a massive cluster of pins to the northeast, in Caithness. It was a sparsely populated area, which made the number of crimes even more remarkable. The haze of red, black, and yellow-at least half of the yellow pins-were clustered there, around a mountain called Morven, which had a bright-blue pin sticking in it. Alarm bells rang in his head.

He phoned his associate and asked him to come over. It was important. His associate was also a member of the Highland Constabulary and the only man in the world besides his father- who was now very old and of diminishing faculties-whom he could speak to about these matters.

He put the kettle on and had just made a pot of tea when his associate knocked on the door and let himself in, walking straight through to the kitchen.

“Ah, tea,” he said. “The drink of the English, of my people- right? What have you got to show me?”

Alex took him through and showed him the map on the wall and briefly explained the pins.

“Then it is clear,” his associate said gravely. “You must go and investigate. Make sure you go fully equipped. It could be anything- remember that cellar full of hobgoblins we found?”

“I must go? But you’re coming with me?”

“No, I must go south. I may already be too late. But call me if you really need my assistance. I don’t think you shall.”

And that settled it. He had four more days until his break, but he might be able to move that up. He would have to call the sergeant tonight.

And he would have to get an early start.