Birthdays for the Dead

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘Constable! This is a serious enquiry into a complaint of police brutality, not a bloody knitting circle.’

  I pulled out my phone and called Shifty Dave – he was on the list too. Asked him the same question.

  ‘Fucking Drummond, wasn’t it. Starched wee bawbag never does his own dirty work. Why?’

  I hung up and tried another couple of names, while DS Smith sat bug-eyed on the other side of the table – going a lovely shade of trembling pink.

  Every single one of them blamed Assistant Chief Constable Drummond.

  Smith banged his hand down on the tabletop. ‘Officer Henderson, I must insist—’

  ‘Interview terminated at fifteen thirty-two.’ I slid out from my immovable chair and stood. Grabbed my jacket. ‘Thanks, Tim.’

  ‘Officer Henderson, this interview isn’t over till I say it’s… Officer Henderson!’

  I slammed the door behind me.

  ‘…wait, no! He’s in a meeting, you can’t go in!’ Nicola made it halfway out of her seat before I barged through into ACC Drummond’s office. ‘Officer Henderson!’

  It was huge – lined with wood panelling, lots of teak furniture, an expanse of deep-red carpet, picture windows overlooking Camburn Woods. Not a single filing cabinet or whiteboard.

  Drummond stood with one hand behind his back, the other holding a large whisky, a golf-course grin frozen on his cada-verous face. ‘Is there a problem?’

  Nicola stomped to a halt beside me, all rumpled cardigan and scarlet nail polish. ‘I’m sorry, sir, he barged past…’

  A tall white-haired man in a dark-blue suit was lounging on Drummond’s leather sofa, legs crossed, an avuncular smile on his tanned face, a cut-crystal tumbler of whisky dangling from his fingertips. ‘Trouble in the ranks, Gary?’

  Colour flushed high on Drummond’s cheekbones. ‘Peter, this is Detective Constable Henderson. Henderson, this is Lord Forsyth-Leven.’

  The man unfolded himself from the sofa, put out his hand for shaking. ‘Your friendly local MSP.’ The smile faded from his face. ‘I heard about your daughter on the radio, I’m dreadfully sorry. If there’s anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to—’

  ‘You can bugger off.’

  His eyes widened. ‘Oh…’

  Nicola grabbed at my sleeve. ‘Officer Henderson, come on, we’ll get you a nice cup of—’

  ‘You!’ I jabbed a finger at Drummond. ‘All this time we’ve been trying to figure out how the Birthday Boy knows where to send the cards. Turns out the only place you can get all the families’ details is the Police National Computer.’

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Peter.’ Drummond placed his drink on a coaster, then folded his arms. ‘And?’

  ‘You’ve been getting everyone to do it for you, haven’t you? You get PCs and DCs and all the lower ranks to do PNC searches, because you know they won’t ask questions.’

  A smile tugged at the corner of Drummond’s mouth. ‘Are you actually suggesting that I’m the Birthday Boy?’

  Nicola tugged at my sleeve again. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Come on, Ash, you’re making an arse of yourself.’

  ‘Detective Constable Henderson, I’m hardly likely to run my own PNC searches, am I? Not when I have a station full of dogs to bark for me. For your information the Chief Constable and I request these details throughout the year so we can take strategic decisions about resources and deployment on the victims’ birthdays; managing the media; providing support services to the families.’ He stretched his arms out, as if he was finishing a magic trick. ‘This is how intelligence-led po­licing works. Would you rather we just guessed?’

  Oh… I cleared my throat. ‘I see.’

  ‘Now, if you don’t mind, Nicola will see you out. And Professional Standards will be expecting you in their offices first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Ash?’

  I looked up from my cold coffee and there was Dr McDonald, standing on the other side of the pub table. She smiled, gave me a little wave, then looked around her. ‘This is … nice.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  The Monk and Casket wasn’t a big place: barely enough room for five or six tables and a pair of fruit machines pinging and chattering like Technicolor magpies. Red vinyl upholstery on creaky wooden seats and rock-hard benches. The bar was nearly as sticky as the cracked linoleum floor. One door back out to the outside world, and one on the other side with a faded sign: ‘TOILETS, TELEPHONE AND FUNCTION SUITE.’

  She pulled out a chair and sat. ‘DCI Weber said you’d be here.’

  I held up my hand. ‘Hoy, Hairy: same again and a large white wine.’

  Hairy Joe looked up from his Daily Mirror and grunted. About a dozen earrings clinked on either side of his broad, furry face as he cranked up the coffee machine.

  There were a couple of regulars in: Weird Justin with his long black hair and scabby baseball hat; the Donahue sisters, both of them far too old to be making a living selling blowjobs in darkened doorways; and in the corner, the manky skeletal figure of Twitch and his mate, Fat Billy Partridge.

  No one that would want to talk shop with a police officer. Even one like me.

  Dr McDonald made scritchy Velcro noises with her Converse Hi-tops on the tacky floor. ‘Is it true you told a Member of the Scottish Parliament to bugger off, and accused ACC Drummond of being the Birthday Boy?’

  I stared into the milky scum floating on top of my coffee. ‘Welcome to my world…’

  She reached across the table and took my hand. ‘You did what any good father would do. Katie’s lucky: you won’t give up till you find her.’

  Yeah, because I did such a great job with Rebecca.

  ‘Dickie won’t bring Steven Wallace in for questioning.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Hoy, lovebirds.’ Hairy Joe loomed over the table, mug in one hand, big glass of wine in the other. ‘You OK with Pinot Grigio, sweetheart? Only I’m all out of Sauvignon Blanc till Monday. Had a run on it during the footie. You two want to see the menu?’

  ‘Er … no, that’s perfect thanks.’ She took a sip. ‘Mmm…’

  He shrugged and lumbered off.

  I wrapped my other hand around the fresh, hot coffee. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’

  ‘You could go and see Michelle, I mean she’s going to be all on her own and worried and scared…?’

  Sit in quiet painful silence, trying not to fight.

  ‘I don’t—’

  My phone blared its harsh old-fashioned ring. ‘Henry’ flashed on the screen.

  I hit the button. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘None of your business.’ A sniff. ‘Come on then: all your messages say phone you back, so I’m phoning you back.’

  ‘He’s got Katie. The Birthday Boy’s got her.’

  Silence.

  ‘Henry?’

  ‘What time is it? Four… I’ll be there as soon as I can. The airport’s closed with the snow, but I think the ferry’s still running.’ Clunking noises came from the earpiece. ‘Have you told anyone?’

  ‘Michelle called the police.’

  ‘Thank God for that: it’ll make things a lot easier. Get Dr McDonald to fax everything she’s got on Katie through to Lerwick police station, mark it for my attention. I’ll throw some stuff in a case.’

  ‘Henry—’

  ‘What does Dr McDonald say about Rebecca?’

  I turned away from the table. ‘She doesn’t know.’

  ‘Ash, it doesn’t matter any more – you need to tell her. If the Birthday Boy’s got Katie, maybe Megan Taylor wasn’t number thirteen. Maybe number thirteen is Katie. It’s important.’

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘Ash, they know about Katie – it’s over. Tell her.’

  Chapter 38

  The sharp smell of vinegar filled the car, the blower’s gentle roar keeping the windows from steaming up with chip-shop f
ug as the rain hammered down.

  ‘…candlelit vigil organized for six-thirty this evening at St Jasper’s…’

  Dr McDonald frowned. ‘“St Jasper’s” is a weird name for a church, I mean there isn’t a Saint Jasper, I checked on the Catholic websites, what sort of city names churches after made-up saints?’

  The Castle car park was empty, just us and the pay-and-display machine. There wasn’t much left of the battlements, or the keep, or the main building, but the ruins were lit up with coloured spotlights. As if that would make them look any better.

  ‘…we spoke to Megan Taylor’s father earlier today.’

  From up here, on the tip of the sharp granite blade, Oldcastle was spread out like a blanket of stars. Streetlights flickered in the downpour, reflections sparkling back from the twisted black snake of Kings River.

  ‘…want to ask whoever took our daughter to please give her back.’ Bruce Taylor sounded as if he was reading it off a bit of paper, the words stilted and unnatural. ‘Megan’s a wonderful girl who brings hope and joy to everyone that knows her…’

  Dr McDonald broke off another piece of battered fish, blew on it, then popped it in her mouth. Crunching. ‘Great batter.’ Eating by the glow of the dashboard lights.

  ‘Told you.’ Two fish suppers from the Blisterin’ Barnacles Chip Shop, one with a couple of pickled onions, the other with mushy peas – microwaved, and served in a Styrofoam cup with a tinfoil lid.

  ‘I’m asking you as a father, please…’

  She dipped a chip into the lurid-green mush. ‘I spoke to Dickie, he’s got the whole church wired with cameras, if the Birthday Boy turns up at St Jasper’s we’ll get him on film, then Sabir’s going to run facial-pattern analysis on all the CCTV footage from the shopping centre when Megan went missing, if he shows up we’ll get him.’

  ‘Hmm.’ My fish tasted of cobwebs and cardboard.

  ‘…as police continue to hunt for Katie Nicol, daughter of Detective Constable Ash Henderson of Oldcastle CID…’

  Even the Irn-Bru was tasteless.

  ‘We’ll find her, Ash, we’re closer than we’ve ever been.’

  ‘Katie Nicol is the Birthday Boy’s thirteenth victim, and only the second one to receive a card the day after she was kidnapped…’

  ‘Fucking moron.’ I switched off the radio. ‘It’s not a kidnap unless there’s a ransom demand. She was abducted…’ I stared at my chips, then closed the blue-and-white cardboard container and shoved it back in the plastic bag it’d come from.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to the vigil?’

  A gust of wind raked the Renault’s bonnet with rain, the droplets sparking off the dirty paintwork, caught in the headlights of a hatchback as it pulled into the car park. Stopped as far away from us as possible.

  ‘Ash, I—’

  ‘Katie used to like it when I told her bedtime stories.’

  ‘OK…’

  ‘Once upon a time there was a paedophile called Philip Skinner. Philip had two kids, and a wife that loved him very much, because she didn’t know what he was up to. At that time, a dark plague fell upon the kingdom and three little boys were found in black-plastic bin-bags all over the city. They’d been raped and stabbed, then cut into fifteen pieces. Then he wrapped each individual bit in clingfilm, like he was trying to keep them fresh.’

  The other car’s lights went out – its driver and passenger turned into silhouettes by the glow reflected back from the castle. They moved closer until their heads were touching.

  ‘The police called in a brave knight called Dr Henry Forrester, and the knight examined the chopped-up little boys and drew up a profile of the monster responsible. The police hunted high and low for someone who fit: they found Philip Skinner. Turned out Skinner had done time in a Belgian prison for aggravated assault and child porn in the Nineties. So they dragged him in for questioning.’

  The napkin disintegrated as I wiped the chip grease from my hands. ‘But Philip Skinner had a good lawyer who got him out on a technicality. The brave knight was convinced Skinner was guilty and one of the policemen, a big bruiser called Detective Superintendent Len Murray, believed him.’

  The other car started rocking on its springs.

  ‘So they recruited a young DI called Henderson, and they watched Skinner whenever they could, taking turns to keep the dirty wee bugger under surveillance. Only they couldn’t watch him all the time, and then another little boy turned up, cut into bits and wrapped in clingfilm. So they decided Philip Skinner had to be stopped…’

  I took a scoof of Irn-Bru, rolling the fizzy orange chemicals around my mouth. ‘Turns out it wasn’t Skinner who’d raped and killed and dismembered the little boys, it was a young man called Denis Chakrabarti. Worked as a butcher’s assistant at the big Gardner’s supermarket in Blackwall Hill. The profile was wrong. He killed two more boys before we finally caught him.’

  Dr McDonald tore off another bit of fish. ‘What happened to Philip Skinner?’

  ‘You were right about me: I am a man of violence. I’m good at it.’ I flexed my hands into fists. The knuckles grated – swollen and aching. ‘Even with the arthritis. I’ve beaten the truth out of people, intimidated, lied, stolen, taken money to look the other way, cheated on my wife…’ More Irn-Bru. ‘When Rebecca…. When she went away we did what parents do – we tramped the streets, we put up posters everywhere from Thurso to Portsmouth, posted a reward, hired private investigators, did radio appeals. Cost a fortune, more than we had, I got into debt… A lot of debt.’

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, watched the rain make ribbons on the windscreen. ‘Things weren’t going so well any more. I spent too much time with this journalist called Jennifer: to begin with it was about keeping Rebecca’s name in the papers, stop people forgetting, but… Someone told Michelle, and she caught us, kicked me out, got herself a live-in boyfriend who turned the house into a minefield. And that’s when they asked me to help keep an eye on Philip Skinner.’

  I swigged back the last mouthful of Irn-Bru then crumpled the tin in my hand, knuckles like hot gravel. ‘Still think Katie’s lucky to have me as a dad?’

  The blower grumbled, the rain thrummed on the roof.

  Dr McDonald fiddled with her chips. ‘Aunty Jan isn’t really my aunt, before she was a vet she was a social worker, she looked after me when I got fostered out to this family in Dumfries. I told you my mum wasn’t the same after she got back from the hospital… She waited three weeks, then she climbed into a hot bath and slit her wrists, right the way up to the elbows.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I was six. I’d been outside playing with my best friend, Maureen, and I came in because I needed the toilet…’ A crease appeared between her eyebrows, two more slashing down from the corners of her mouth. ‘The water was so red; and my rubber duck was bright, bright yellow; and her skin was enamel white, like the bathtub; and I sat on the lid of the toilet and held her hand till she was gone…’

  Outside the car, the wind howled.

  I reached across the car and held Dr McDonald’s hand. Greasy with chip fat, and a little sticky from the Irn-Bru.

  She sniffed, eyes glittering in the dashboard lights.

  My phone rang again, tearing the silence into jagged shards. ‘Sodding hell…’ I pulled it out: Rhona.

  ‘You OK, Guv? Smith the Prick’s storming about like someone put Tabasco on his buttplug. Word is: you called him a sheep shagger.’

  ‘Not a good time, Rhona, so—’

  ‘Had to wait till shift-change to do your PNC searches. Your journalist, Talbert, got bottled in a bar fight two years ago, bled out before the ambulance arrived. Harriet Woods’s private investigator licence was suspended five years ago, she moved to Dubai and got a job with a private security firm. No idea where she is now. Danny Crawford went missing from Aberdeen eighteen months ago. Ahmed Moghadam is in a secure psychiatric ward in Dundee. And Emilia Schneider’s doi
ng eight years in Peterhead for the illegal imprisonment and torture of two Jehovah’s Witnesses.’

  ‘What happened to Danny Crawford?’

  ‘No idea…’ The sound of two-fingered typing. ‘Erm… OK: reported missing by his mother; he’d been off his medication for a fortnight; threatened his parole officer with a kitchen knife; and that’s it. No sightings since he got on the train for Inverness a year and a half ago.’

  So Steven Wallace was still the best bet.

  ‘Guv?’

  Blink. ‘Thanks, Rhona.’

  ‘Are you going to be wanting that bed tonight? You know, after the service: I’ve still got all your washing…?’

  A bed for tonight.

  ‘Hang on a second.’ I pressed the mute button. Turned to Dr McDonald. ‘Your aunt: she’s coming back today, isn’t she? You won’t be on your own?’

  A nod.

  I took the phone off mute. ‘Sounds good, Rhona.’ I smiled at my reflection in the driver’s window. ‘See you at the church?’

  ‘Cool.’

  I hung up. Let the smile slide off my face.

  Dr McDonald ate her fish and chips in silence as the rain battered down. She finished, sooked her fingers, wiped them on a napkin, then stuffed the empty box back in the bag with mine. ‘That was great, thanks, I mean the fish must be really fresh, good peas too, and is it OK if I borrow your phone for a minute, I need to check what time Aunty Jan’s getting back from Glasgow and mine’s got no battery left?’

  I handed it over. ‘Give me the rubbish.’

  She passed me the plastic bag.

  I lurched out into the rain. There was a bin next to the pay-and-display machine. I ditched the remnants inside, turned up my collar, and sploshed across the car park to Shand Street – with its quaint collection of Victorian teashops, tourist tat, and high-street brands. Two doors down, past Boots and Poundgasm, was a wee off-licence.

  I nipped in for a litre of gin, some tonic, two bottles of red wine, and two of white as well. Paid with cash, then headed back to the car, the booze clinking in purple plastic bags.

  The other car had stopped rocking. Cigarette smoke curled out of the driver’s window.