Free The Exiled by William Meikle Page B

in here for a while,” Grainger said. “What do you want to do?”
    “Firstly, I want to go back to the farm.”
    “No,” Grainger said, and was immediately struck by the memory of D.S. Simpson lying under a bloody shroud. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll do that together—when I’m well enough. Promise me—on our ma’s grave.”
    “I promise,” Alan replied. Grainger knew it was a reluctant one—but Ma had been invoked, and that would keep the younger brother in line—for a while at least.
    “Why don’t you have a wee word with Ferguson?” he said. “You might get some sense in among the ravings. Turn on that boyish charm—buy him a few beers and see what’s what?”
    “I might just do that. It’s not as if we’ve got anything else to go on.”
    Grainger had been keeping up to speed on the case as best as he could on the television in his room and the newspapers he asked to be brought in each morning. He thought he might have got a visit from some of his old squad, but nobody turned up with grapes or sympathy—he was now unclean, not to be spoken of. That didn’t bother him nearly as much as the fact that the case was obviously being badly mishandled, with homeless men being targeted for arrest and questioning in the vain hope one of them was the killer.
    Knowing that the kids were all dead, and the killer was far beyond their reach, gnawed away at him—constantly.
    He’d been woolgathering and missed what Alan was saying.
    “Sorry,” he said, and smiled. “It’s the drugs. They’re lovely.”
    Alan smiled back.
    “Just don’t get too used to them. They tell me you’ll be out in a couple of days.”
    “Weekend at the latest—you can bank on it.”
    “Then I’d better see what I can get from the mad-man before then—I’ll report back as soon as I can.”
    “Bring more smokes next time,” Grainger shouted as Alan left, and got a wave in reply. Only then did he allow himself to acknowledge the pain. His arm bothered him more than he would tell his brother—or the doctors. If they knew, they’d only keep him in for longer, and Grainger couldn’t wait—Galloway thought he’d got away with it; he was wrong in that assumption.
    He picked up his smokes—he’d got them back when he was well enough to get out of bed, and only after promising not to smoke inside the premises. That meant joining the other addicts in a small yard at the back of Accident and Emergency—a spot full of rubbish skips and discarded butts—not much of an advert for the glamor of smoking.
    But Grainger needed a hit—it helped him think, had been doing so since he first became a cop. The ritual of lighting up and puffing away was like a mental unblocker, allowing his mind to drift, to start to form connections he might not have seen consciously.
    Ever since he’d woken up after the operation he’d replayed the night in the farmhouse in his mind, looking for a way he might have done it differently. He might have saved Simpson, he might have got there in time to save the kids, he might have taken down the big man and brought him back to justice. No matter how many ways he approached it, he kept coming back to the same thing. The kids were dead, Simpson was dead, the big man had gone and—always the same image to end his remembering—the black bird in the stained glass window winked at him.
    Once back in his bed he tried to concentrate on a television program, something to take his mind off things, but the news was still full of the case—his case—and everything else was just screeching reality shows or soap opera. He switched it off and picked up the book Alan had left for him. He opened it immediately to avoid looking at the cover—the black bird was too big in his mind and he didn’t need another image of it in there.
    Alan had already given him the rundown of the opening chapters, so he skipped to the middle and started reading at random.
    “It is an agrarian culture. They have no electricity or