Birthdays for the Dead

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘Hi.’ She stopped playing with her hair. ‘Dr McDonald. Well, Alice really. I mean you can call me Alice if you like, or Dr McDonald, I suppose, or sometimes people call me “Doc”, but I don’t really like that very much, Alice is OK though…’

  ‘Ash.’ I held my hand out for shaking. She just looked at it.

  ‘Right, great, thanks for the offer, but I don’t really do physical contact with people I barely know. I mean there’s all sorts of bacterial and hygiene issues involved – are you the sort of person who washes his hands when he goes to the toilet, do you pick your nose, are you one of those men who scratch and sniff – not to mention the whole personal space thing.’

  Complete. And utter. Freakshow.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Sorry. I get a little flustered with unfamiliar social interactions, but I’m working on it, I mean I’m fine with Detective Chief Superintendent Dickie, aren’t I, Chief Superintendent, I don’t gabble with you at all, do I, tell him I don’t gabble.’

  Dickie smiled. ‘As of yesterday, Dr McDonald’s our new forensic psychologist.’

  ‘Ah.’ Set a freak to catch a freak… ‘What happened to the last one?’

  She wrapped her arm tighter around herself. ‘I really think we need to visit the burial site. The Birthday Boy didn’t pick this spot at random, he must have known it was going to be safe, that they wouldn’t be discovered for years, and if it was me killing girls and burying them I’d want to keep them close so I knew they were safe. Wouldn’t you? I mean it’s all about power and possession, isn’t it?’ Dr McDonald stared at the white toes of her red Converse Hi-tops.

  I glanced over her head at Dickie. ‘And she doesn’t talk like this when it’s just the two of you?’

  ‘Hardly ever.’ He raised his hand, as if he was about to pat her on the shoulder.

  She flinched. Backed up a step.

  Dickie sighed. ‘I’ll … em … leave you to it then.’ He put his hand in his pocket, out of harm’s way. ‘Ash? You hurrying back to Oldcastle, or have you got a minute?’

  Hurrying back? Still hadn’t decided if I was pointing the Rustmobile towards Newcastle and putting my foot down. ‘Long as you need.’

  ‘So,’ I slid the glass door shut, and leaned on the safety rail, ‘does she provide her own straitjacket, or does that come out of your budget?’

  The view from the balcony outside the meeting room was every bit as dismal as Sabir had promised: overlooking the dual carriageway and the Kingsway Retail Park. Huge glass and metal sheds bordering a lopsided triangle of parking spaces. Up above, the sky was solid grey, the light cold and thin through the pouring rain. At least it was relatively dry here – the balcony for the room above kept the worst of the weather off.

  Cigarette butts made soggy drifts in the corners, little orange cylinders swelling on the damp tiles. DS Gillis was down the other end, puffing away – the smoke clinging to his beard as if it was smouldering – grumbling into a mobile phone, pacing back and forth.

  DCS Dickie sparked up a cigarette, took a long, deep drag, then rested his elbows on the safety rail, one hand rubbing at the bags under his eyes. ‘How’s the arthritis?’

  I flexed my hands, the joints ached. ‘Been worse. How’s the ulcer?’

  ‘You know, when I took on this bloody investigation, I was untouchable. Top of my game, going places… Remember the Pearson murders?’ Another puff. ‘Now look at me.’

  ‘So what did happen to your last profiler?’

  Dickie made a gun of his thumb and forefingers, stuck it to his temple, and pulled the trigger. ‘All over a hotel bedroom in Bristol, three weeks ago.’ He glanced over his shoulder, towards the meeting room. ‘Dr McDonald might be a nut-job, but at least we won’t be sponging her brains off the walls anytime soon. Well … touch wood.’

  I turned, looking back through the glass doors. She was still standing in front of the blown-up birthday cards, fiddling with her hair. Staring up at Hannah Kelly’s bleeding body. I forced a smile into my voice, laid it on thick. ‘Not really your fault though, is it? The Birthday Boy was always going to be a bastard to catch.’

  ‘By the time we know he’s got them, it’s a year too late. The trail’s cold. No witnesses, or they can’t remember, or they make shit up because they watch too much telly and think it’s what we want to hear.’ Dickie flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette, then stared at the glowing tip. ‘I’m up for retirement in four months. Eight years working the same bloody case and not one single sodding clue… Until now.’ His eyes narrowed, wreathed in smoke. ‘Two bodies, probably more on the way. We’ll get DNA, fibres, and we’ll catch the bastard. And I’ll take my gold watch and march off home to Lossiemouth with my head held high, while the Birthday Boy rots in a shite-smeared cell for the rest of his unnatural little life.’

  ‘You coming to help with the door-to-doors?’

  A pause. ‘Any chance you could take Dr McDonald back to Oldcastle with you? Show her the body recovery site, let her get a feel for the place?’

  Yeah, because babysitting a mentally unstable psychologist was right up there on my list of life goals. ‘You’re not coming?’

  Dickie pulled a face, curling the corners of his mouth down. ‘Do you know why I’m still here, Ash? Why they didn’t boot me off the case and get someone else in?’

  ‘No other bugger wants the job?’

  A nod. ‘Career suicide. Speaking of which … I need another favour.’ He stood up straight, one hand rubbing at the small of his back. ‘Our last psychologist, Bremner, didn’t just top himself, he took his notes with him. Burned the lot in the hotel bin: disabled the smoke detector, set fire to everything, then bang.’

  I tucked my hands in my pockets. It was getting colder. ‘Always thought he was a bit of a prick.’

  ‘Managed to screw something up on the servers too. Every psychological document we had – poof, up in smoke. Sabir tried recovering the data, but Bremner cocked up so long ago all the backups were shagged too.’ Dickie took one last draw on his cigarette, then sent its glowing corpse sailing out into the rain. ‘Not wanting to speak ill of the dead, or anything, but still…’

  ‘What’s the favour?’

  ‘Well, you’re still friends with Henry, aren’t you?’

  ‘Henry who?’ Frown. ‘What, Forrester? The occasional Christmas card maybe, but I’ve not seen him for years.’

  ‘Thing is, Dr McDonald has to start again from scratch; be a big help if she could discuss the case with him. Maybe see if he’s got any of his original files?’

  ‘So give him a call. Get him to courier everything over.’

  Down the other end of the balcony, Gillis snapped his phone shut, then ground his cigarette out against the wall and let it fall to the tiles at his feet.

  Dickie stared out across the retail park. ‘She says she needs to see him. Face to face.’

  Gillis lumbered over. ‘You tell him yet?’

  ‘“Tell him” what?’

  A smile cracked the space between the cigarette-stained moustache and bristling beard. ‘Shetland. You’re taking the Doc up to see your old mate, Forrester.’

  I pulled my shoulders back, chin up. ‘Take her yourself. You’re the one looks like a bloody Viking.’

  ‘The old git doesn’t want anything to do with the case. We need his help. You’re his friend. Go up there and talk him round.’

  Dickie sighed. ‘Come on, Ash, you know what Henry’s like: once he digs his heels in…’

  I scowled at them. ‘Shetland?’

  Gillis squinted back. ‘You don’t want to help us catch the bastard? Really? What kind of cop are you?’

  ‘It’s only a couple of days, Ash: three or four tops. I’ll square it with your boss.’

  Dr McDonald wasn’t the only mental one. ‘I’m not going to Shetland! We just turned up two bodies and—’

  ‘It’s going to be nothing but hanging around waiting for lab reports in Oldcastle
now anyway. That and processing three hundred door-to-doors.’ Dickie nodded towards the meeting room, where Dr McDonald was gazing up at the birthday cards. ‘When we catch the Birthday Boy we’ll need her up to speed for the interviews. I want a full confession, in stone, not something he can wriggle out of in court six months later thanks to some slimy defence lawyer.’

  ‘I’m not your bloody childminder! Get someone else to—’

  ‘Ash, please.’

  I stared out into the rain… Four days about as far away from Oldcastle as it was possible to get and still be in the UK. Four days where Mrs Kerrigan’s thugs couldn’t find me. And maybe, once Henry had seen how much of a disaster Dickie’s new criminal psychologist was, he’d drag his wrinkly arse out of retirement and help me catch the bastard who’d murdered Rebecca. Four days to convince the old sod that four years in Shetland was penance enough for what happened to Philip Skinner. It was time to get back to work.

  I nodded. ‘OK. Flying from Aberdeen or Edinburgh?’

  Gillis’s smile grew wider. ‘Funny you should ask that…’

  Chapter 4

  ‘Can you slow down, please?’ Dr McDonald tightened her grip on the grab handle above the passenger door, knuckles white. Eyes screwed tightly shut.

  I changed down, burying the accelerator pedal into the Renault’s carpet. Yes, it was childish, but she’d started it. Outside the car windows, a residential road blurred past, skeletal trees raking the grey sky. Drizzle misted the glass. ‘Thought you were supposed to be a psychologist.’

  ‘I am, and it’s not my fault air travel terrifies me, I know it might seem illogical, statistically you’re more likely to be killed by an electric toaster than die in a plane crash in the UK – that’s why I never make toast – but I can’t…’ She gave a little squeal as I swung the car around onto Strathmore Avenue. ‘Please! Can you slow—’

  ‘You’ve no idea how fast we’re going: you’ve got your eyes closed.’

  ‘I can feel it!’

  My phone rang. ‘Hold on…’ I pulled the thing from my pocket and thumbed the green button. ‘What?’

  A man’s voice: ‘We’ve got another one—’

  Dr McDonald snatched the phone out of my hand. ‘No, no, no!’ She held it to her ear, listening for a moment. ‘No, I will not put him on: he’s driving, are you trying to cause an accident, I don’t want to die, why do you want me to die, are you some sort of psychopath that you want random passengers to die in car crashes, is that your idea of fun?’

  I stuck my hand out. ‘Give me the phone back.’

  She switched the thing to her other ear, out of reach. ‘No, I told you: he’s driving.’

  ‘Give me the bloody phone!’

  She slapped my hand away. ‘Uh-huh… Hold on.’ She looked across from the passenger seat. ‘It’s someone called Matt, he says to tell you you’re a “rotten bastard”.’ Back to the phone again. ‘Yes, I told him… Uh-huh… Uh-huh… I don’t know.’

  ‘Matt who?’

  ‘When are we going to be back in Oldcastle?’

  ‘Who the hell is Matt?’

  ‘He says, while you’ve been “poofing about” in Dundee, the ground-penetrating radar’s turned up what looks like a third set of remains…’ She tilted her head to one side, frowning as she listened. ‘No, I’m not telling Constable Henderson that… Because it’s unnecessarily rude, that’s why.’

  Well, at least that explained who Matt was: the head of Oldcastle’s Scenes Examination Branch always did have a mouth like a sewer.

  Another body.

  Don’t let it be Rebecca. Let her lie quiet and safe in the ground until I get my hands on the bastard who tortured her to death. Please.

  I threw the car into a right. ‘Ask him if they’ve ID’d the second body yet.’

  ‘Constable Henderson wants to know if you’ve ID’d… Uh-huh… No… I’ll tell him.’ She looked at me. ‘He says you owe him twenty pounds, and—’

  ‘For God’s sake: did they get a bloody ID or not?’

  Left onto another street of prison-block tenements.

  ‘He says they’re still excavating the remains.’ She held a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Apparently the Procurator Fiscal insisted on putting some forensic archaeologist in charge of the dig, and he’s turning everything into a big production.’

  I took the next left, then left again into a cul-de-sac with three-storey blocks of flats on one side and grey bungalows on the other. Just after ten on a wintery Monday morning and most of the homes were in darkness. Here and there the occasional window glowed in the drizzly gloom.

  Sodding hell. ‘We’ve got company.’

  A grey Transit van, with the SKY News Logo emblazoned down the side, sat at the kerb, its roof bristling with antennae and a satellite dish. It was the only outside broadcast unit in sight, the other vehicles were the usual crappy assortment of Fiats, Vauxhalls, and Fords beloved of tabloid and broadsheet reporters.

  I parked in front of the L-shaped block at the end of the road – the one with a uniformed PC standing outside in the rain, crossed arms resting on her swollen belly. A light above the main door made her fluorescent-yellow jacket glisten.

  I hauled on the handbrake, then killed the engine. Stuck out my hand. ‘Phone.’

  Dr McDonald dropped the mobile into my palm, as if she didn’t want to risk her fingers actually touching me.

  ‘Matt: tell Archaeology Boy to get his finger out. This is a murder investigation, not a fucking slumber party.’

  ‘But—’

  I hung up and slipped the phone back in my pocket. ‘How can you be afraid of flying?’

  ‘It’s not natural. And I’m not afraid of flying.’ She undid her seatbelt and followed me out into the drizzle. ‘I’m afraid of crashing. Which is completely logical, when you think about it, it’s a survival mechanism, perfectly rational, everyone should be afraid of crashing, what’s strange is not being afraid, you: you’re the one who’s strange.’

  I stared at her. ‘Yeah, I’m the one who’s strange.’

  We had to show our IDs to the rain-soaked lump standing guard outside the small block of flats. A dark fringe poked out from underneath her bowler, plastered to her forehead by the drizzle, her chubby face stretched into a permafrost frown.

  I nodded back towards the clump of journalists. None of them had bothered to get out of their nice warm cars. One had rolled down their window to stick a telephoto lens out, but other than that it was a hotbed of apathy. ‘Giving you any trouble?’

  The constable bared her top teeth. ‘Like you wouldnae believe. You going up?’

  No, we were going to stand out here in the drizzle, bonding. I looked up at the redbrick building. ‘The McMillans in?’

  ‘Yeah. But watch yourself, they’ve got a journo up there.’ She stood to one side. ‘And we’re no’ exactly flavour of the day.’

  ‘When are we ever?’ I held the door open and ushered Dr McDonald inside.

  She just stared at me. ‘Erm…’

  ‘This was your idea, remember? I wanted to go back to Oldcastle, but no, you said—’

  ‘Can’t you go first?’

  ‘Fine.’ The stairwell smelled of musky perfume and frying onions. A collection of pot plants was expiring on the first landing, the carpet beginning to go bald at the edge of each tread. The sound of a television turned up too loud.

  My shoes scrunched on the steps, as if someone had put sand down to stop the carpet getting too slippery. The second landing was a lot like the first – more dying pot plants, a couple of plain doors painted reddish-brown, a stack of unopened Yellow Pages sitting on the windowsill still in their clear plastic wrappers.

  Dr McDonald’s voice echoed through the stairwell from somewhere below. ‘Is it safe to come up?’

  ‘Safe?’ I looked around at the mouldy pot plants. ‘No, the whole place is full of rabid Ninjas.’ Pause. ‘Of course it’s bloody safe!’ I grabbed the bal
ustrade and hauled myself up to the top floor.

  A pair of doors led off to separate flats: a welcome mat sat outside one of them, a grubby brown rectangle on the gritty carpet. The word ‘McMillan’ was hand-painted in wobbly childish lettering on a wooden plaque above the bell.

  I leaned against the wall and waited.

  Three minutes later, Dr McDonald poked her head around the corner, looking up at me. ‘You don’t have to be so sarcastic, you know, it’s not like I’m trying to annoy you, I just have certain … concerns with unfamiliar enclosed spaces.’

  It was a miracle she was allowed out unsupervised.

  I knocked on the door.

  It was opened by a police officer wearing the white shirt-and-tie outfit that every beat cop had abandoned years ago in favour of Darth-Vader-black. His long nose was speckled with spider-veins, his dark eyes spaced wide on a narrow forehead. A set of silver sergeant’s bars shone on his black epaulettes as he had a good look at Dr McDonald, then turned and sniffed at me. ‘You Henderson? Let’s see some ID.’

  Officious little prick. I flashed my warrant card again. ‘You Family Liaison?’

  A nod. ‘Cool: thanks. Sorry, but the amount of bloody journos trying to wangle their way up here – kidding on they live in the flats, or they’re relatives, friends of the family…’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Parents are in the lounge with some tabloid gimp.’

  ‘How’d he get in?’

  ‘She: they invited her up. And her chequebook. Going to let her publish the birthday card.’

  ‘Oh for… That’s evidence in an ongoing investigation! Why haven’t you thrown her out? Do I really need to—’

  ‘We can’t stop the victim’s family inviting people up to their house: it’s their house.’ The FLO stuck his chest out. ‘And by the way, Detective Constable, I don’t care if you are one of Dickie’s “Party Crashers”,’ he patted himself on one shoulder, making the black epaulette with its silver bars wobble, ‘see these? These say “Sergeant”, so watch the lip. You bloody special-task-force dicks are all the same. Well, you know what: if you’re so damn special, why haven’t you caught the Birthday Boy yet? Party Crashers? You bastards couldn’t crash a wobbly shopping trolley.’