A Song for the Dying

by Stuart MacBride

  No more stupid review meetings, just a trip to the infirmary, then on to the mortuary.

  At least I wouldn’t have to sit here, listening to Altringham’s lies. Telling everyone how violent and dangerous I was…

  I ran my fingers up the cane till they got to the handle. Tightened my grip. Pulled my shoulders back.

  Might as well live down to his expectations and remodel his smug lying face a bit. Could do some serious damage before they dragged me off. Had nothing to lose anyway. And at least I’d get the satisfaction of—

  Babs’s hand landed on my shoulder, her voice barely loud enough to count as a whisper. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  Fair enough.

  I let my shoulders slump again.

  Dr Alice McDonald – psychiatrist number two – held up her hand. ‘Now hold on a minute: the murder charge was dismissed.’ Her curly brown hair made a loose ponytail at the back of her head, a few stray wisps breaking free to glow in the overhead lights. Pale-lilac shirt cuffs poked out of the sleeves of her pinstripe suit. ‘Mr Henderson didn’t kill his brother, the evidence against him was fabricated. It’s a matter of record. The appeal judge—’

  ‘I’m not talking about his brother’s murder. I’m talking about this.’ Altringham plucked a sheet of paper from the table in front of him and waved it. ‘In the last eighteen months, he’s assaulted and seriously injured seventeen other inmates. Every time he gets anywhere near being released, he attacks someone.’

  ‘We’ve been over this, it’s—’

  ‘Yesterday, he broke a man’s nose, and left another with a fractured cheek!’ Altringham knocked on the coffin again. ‘Does that sound like the actions of someone we should be unleashing on an unsuspecting public?’

  Yeah, I got in a couple of good punches, till they forced me into a corner. Grinning and laughing. Letting me swing at them, so it’d look better when they made their formal complaints. But what was I supposed to do, stand there and take it?

  Even after all this time…

  Alice shook her head. ‘It’s hardly Mr Henderson’s fault that he keeps being attacked. If the prison did a better job of managing inmate interactions, maybe he wouldn’t have to defend himself the whole time.’

  The Deputy Governor narrowed her eyes. ‘I resent any implication that this institution isn’t doing its duty where custodial safety is concerned.’

  Altringham blew out a breath. ‘No one’s safe where Mr Henderson’s concerned. He’s pathologically incapable of—’

  ‘That’s not the case at all, there’s a clear pattern to the attacks against Mr Henderson that—’

  ‘Yes, and that pattern is his self-destructive personality! This is nothing more profound than a simple need to punish himself due to survivor’s guilt. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s simple psychology and if you were able to see past your personal bias on this case you’d know that.’

  Alice poked Altringham in the shoulder. ‘I beg your pardon! Are you suggesting that I’m incapable of—’

  The Deputy Governor slammed her folder down on the tabletop. ‘All right, that’s enough!’ She glared at Alice, then turned and did the same to Altringham. ‘We’re here to discuss Mr Henderson’s release, or continued incarceration, like professionals. Not bicker and quarrel like small children. So, moving on.’ The Deputy Governor held out a hand. ‘Dr McDonald, you have your report?’

  Alice pulled the top sheet from the leather folio in front of her and passed it over.

  The Deputy Governor frowned at it for a bit, then turned it over and did the same with the back. Then placed it on the table. ‘And Dr Altringham?’

  He slid his along to her and she frowned at that for a while too.

  Officer Babs leaned in, her voice still an almost-whisper. ‘How’s the arthritis?’

  I flexed my right hand, the knuckles all swollen and bruised from breaking ex-DI Graham Lumley’s cheek. ‘Worth it.’

  ‘I keep telling you: lead with your elbows, or only punch the soft bits.’

  ‘Yeah, well…’

  The Deputy Governor put Altringham’s report down on top of Alice’s, then sat up straight. ‘Mr Henderson, after careful consideration—’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ I slouched further down in my plastic seat. ‘We all know where this is going, so why don’t we just cut to the bit where you send me back to my cell?’

  ‘After careful consideration, Mr Henderson, and having reviewed all the evidence and expert analysis, it is my belief that your continuing use of violence necessitates your retention in this facility until a full investigation can be carried out into the events of yesterday.’

  So, same as usual then.

  Stuck in here until Mrs Kerrigan finally got bored and had me killed.

  Now

  (Six Months Later)

  Sunday

  4

  ‘… more from the scene as we get it. Edinburgh now, and the family of missing six-year-old Stacey Gourdon have issued an appeal, asking her abductors to return her remains…’ The TV in the rec room was mounted in its own tiny cage, high up on the wall, as if the prison thought it was as likely to do a runner as all the other inmates.

  Ex-Detective Superintendent Len Murray picked up a plastic chair and stuck it down next to mine. Settled into it, a smile distorting his Robin-Hood-style grey goatee. The strip-lights glinted off his bald head and little round glasses. A big man with a big rumbling voice. ‘You’re going to have to kill her. You know that, don’t you?’

  In her private cell, the woman on the television gave a grim nod. ‘Stacey Gourdon’s bloodstained dress and trainers were found by officers searching woodland in Corstorphine…’

  I stared at him. ‘Don’t you have something better to do?’

  ‘Ash, the bog-hopping bitch is going to keep you in here till you top yourself, or she sends someone in to do it for her. Time to be proactive.’

  ‘I mean, you’ve got what, four more years to serve? You should take up a hobby. Woodwork. Or learning Spanish.’

  The picture changed to a run-down two-up two-down in a manky council estate, a scrum of reporters jostling for position as the front doors opened and a hollow woman stared out with dead eyes and trembling fingers. A fat bloke just visible over her shoulder: bloodshot and sniffing, biting his bottom lip.

  The woman cleared her throat. Looked down at her shaking hands. ‘We…’ Another go. ‘We just want her back. We want to bury her. We want the chance to say goodbye…’

  Len leaned back in his seat and slapped a hand down on my shoulder. Squeezed. ‘I know a couple of lads who’ll do the job for two grand.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘They’ll go up against Andy Inglis for a measly two thousand pounds? Are they mad?’

  ‘They’re not local. And they need to get out of the country anyway. Besides: who’d know?’

  ‘… please, she’s our little girl … Stacey was everything to her dad and me…’

  ‘I’d know.’

  Palm it off to some pair of idiots? No chance. When Mrs Kerrigan died, it would be with my hands around her throat. Squeezing…

  Assuming I ever got out of here.

  I turned back to the screen, where Stacey’s mother was collapsing, every sob caught in the strobe of camera flashes.

  Back to the studio. ‘… with any information can call the number at the bottom of the screen.’ The newsreader shuffled her papers. ‘Oldcastle Police have confirmed that the woman’s body, discovered on waste ground behind the city’s Blackwall Hill area in the early hours of yesterday morning, belonged to Claire Young, a paediatric nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary…’

  Len shook his head. ‘The trouble with you is you think revenge has to be up-close to be personal. You never did learn to delegate properly.’

  ‘I’m not delegating that bitch’s—’

  ‘What does it matter who does it, as long as she’s dead?’ He shook his head. Sighed. ‘You can’t kill he
r yourself if you’re still stuck in here. And you can’t get out of here till she’s dead. Catch twenty-two. And for two grand, you can make it all go away.’ Len cocked an imaginary pump-action shotgun and shot the newsreader in the face. ‘Think about it.’

  ‘Yeah, because I’ve got two thousand pounds burning a hole in my pocket.’

  ‘… appeal to the media’s conscience to respect her family’s wish for privacy…’

  Good luck with that.

  ‘Could always borrow it?’

  ‘That’s how I got into this mess in the first place.’

  The door to the rec room thumped open and a hard voice cut across the TV. ‘Henderson!’

  I turned, and there was Officer Babs. She jerked a thumb. ‘You got a visitor.’

  A man in a brown leather jacket sauntered into the room, hands in his pockets. He was at least a head shorter than Babs, hairy, with thick sideburns.

  He wandered over till he was standing between me and the television.

  ‘Here’s the sport now, with Bobby Thompson…’

  Hairy Boy smiled. ‘Well, well, well, so you’re the ex-DC Henderson I’ve heard so much about?’ His accent was obviously Scottish, but indistinct, as if he didn’t really come from anywhere. ‘So … tell me about Graham Lumley and Jamie Smith.’

  ‘No comment.’

  Officer Babs appeared at his shoulder, dwarfing him. ‘Detective Superintendent Jacobson is having a squint into what happened outside the laundry a fortnight ago. So don’t be a dick: cooperate.’

  Yeah, right. ‘A full Detective Superintendent? Investigating a fight in a prison corridor? Are you not a bit overqualified?’

  Jacobson tilted his head to one side, staring at me. Eyeing me up and down like he was about to ask me to dance. ‘Official report says you attacked the pair of them. Shouting and swearing and crying, like a… Hold on, let me get this right.’ He pulled out a small black police-issue notebook. Flipped it open. ‘“Like a big-Jessie escaped mental patient.” That Graham Lumley’s got a way with words, doesn’t he?’

  Len crossed his arms across his big barrel chest. ‘Lumley and Smith are lying wankers.’

  Jacobson turned a bright, shining smile in Len’s direction. ‘Lennox Murray, isn’t it? Ex head of Oldcastle CID. Eighteen years for the abduction, torture, and murder of one Philip Skinner. Thanks for playing along, but I’d like hear what Mr Henderson has to say. OK? Great.’

  I copied Len, arms folded, legs crossed. ‘They’re lying wankers.’

  Jacobson dragged a chair over, then sank into it. Scuffed it forwards a couple of feet till his knees were nearly touching mine. A chemical waft of Old Spice drifted out from him. ‘Ash… I can call you Ash, can’t I? Ash, the head psychologist here tells me you’ve got a self-destructive personality. That you sabotage yourself by picking a fight every time you come up for review.’

  Give him nothing back but silence.

  Jacobson shrugged. ‘Of course Dr Altringham strikes me as a bit of a tit, but there you go.’ He raised a finger, then pointed it over his shoulder in the general direction of the television. ‘Did you see the story about the nurse they found dead behind Blackwall Hill?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Dead nurse. Dumped in the middle of nowhere. Ring any bells?’

  I frowned at him. ‘You have any idea how many nurses go missing in Oldcastle every year? Poor sods should get danger pay.’

  ‘Smith and Lumley really did a number on you, didn’t they? Yeah, there’s the bruised cheek and the squint nose, but I’m guessing all the real bruising’s confined to the thighs and torso, right? Where it won’t show?’ Another shrug. ‘Unless you strip off, of course.’

  ‘I’m flattered, but you’re not my type.’

  ‘Claire Young: twenty-four, brunette, five seven and a half, about eleven stone three. Pretty, in a big-boned kind of way.’ He held his hands out, either side of his lap. ‘You know, childbearing hips?’

  I looked over at Babs. ‘Ever fancy a career as a healthcare professional? Bet no one would dare jump you.’

  She smiled back at me. ‘Might have to – cutbacks. They’re talking about voluntary redundancies.’

  Jacobson stood. ‘I think I’d like to see Mr Henderson’s cell now.’

  It wasn’t exactly a huge room – the set of bunk beds just fit and no more. You could reach out and touch the institution-grey walls on either side with a bit of a stretch. Small desk at the far end, a chair, a sink, and a sectioned off bit for the toilet. Officially large enough for two fully grown men to share for four years to life.

  Or one fully grown man who really didn’t like having a cellmate. Funny how they all turned out to be so accident prone. Falling down and breaking things. Arms, legs, noses, testicles…

  Officer Babs filled the doorway, arms folded, legs apart, face like a slab of granite as Jacobson stepped into the middle of the cell, hands out as if he was about to bless it.

  ‘Home sweet home.’ Then he turned and squeezed up close to the desk, leaning forward, peering at the single photograph Blu-Tacked to the wall above it: Rebecca and Katie on Aberdeen beach, grinning for the camera, the North Sea glowering in the background behind them. School jumpers on over orange swimsuits. Buckets and spades. Katie four, Rebecca nine.

  Eleven years and two lifetimes ago.

  His head dipped an inch. ‘I was sorry to hear about your daughters.’

  Yeah, everyone always is.

  ‘Can’t have been easy – having to grieve for her while you’re stuck in here. Fitted up for your brother’s shooting. Getting the crap pounded out of you on a regular basis…’

  ‘There a point to this?’

  He reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a copy of the Castle News and Post. Dumped it on the bottom bunk. ‘From last week.’

  A photo filled most of the front page: a close-up of a chunky woman’s face, framed with ginger curls, a thick band of freckles across her nose and cheeks like Scottish war paint. A couple of photographers were reflected in her sunglasses, their flashes going. She had one hand up, as if she was trying to shield her face from the cameras, but hadn’t quite made it in time.

  The headline stretched above the picture in big block capitals: ‘“CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!” BABY JOY ON THE WAY FOR INSIDE MAN VICTIM’.

  Dear God, now there was a blast from the past.

  I hooked my cane onto the bunk bed’s frame and sat on the mattress. Picked up the paper.

  EXCLUSIVE

  The Inside Man’s fifth victim, Laura Strachan (37), has some wonderful news. Eight years after she became the first woman ever to survive being attacked by the twisted sicko who killed four women and mutilated three more, plucky Laura is expecting her first baby.

  Doctors thought there was no chance she’d be able to conceive after the injuries she received when the Inside Man cut her open and stitched a toy doll inside her stomach. A source at Castle Hill Infirmary said, ‘It is a miracle. There is no way she should have been able to carry a child to term. I am so pleased for her.’

  Even better, it looks like the bundle of joy will be an early Christmas present for Laura and her husband Christopher Irvine (32).

  Turn to Page 4 for full story

  I turned to page four. ‘Thought she was all broken inside.’

  ‘You were on the original investigation.’

  I skimmed the rest of the article. It was light on fact, padded out with lots of quotes from Laura Strachan’s friends and a competition to guess what the baby’s name would be. Nothing from Laura or the father-to-be. ‘They didn’t bother talking to the family?’

  Jacobson settled back against the desk. ‘Her husband lamped the photographer, then threatened to shove the camera up the reporter’s backside.’

  I folded the paper and placed it beside me. ‘Good for him.’

  ‘It took two years of corrective surgery and a monster lump of fertility treatment, but she’s seven
and a bit months gone. Should be due last week of December. Some fine upstanding member of the press got hold of her medical records.’

  ‘Other than being a heart-warming story of triumph over adversity, I don’t see what this has to do with me.’

  ‘You let him go: the Inside Man.’

  My back stiffened, hands curled into fists, knuckles aching. Spat the words out between gritted teeth. ‘Say that again.’

  Officer Babs shook her head, voice low and warning. ‘Easy now…’

  ‘You were the last one to see him. You chased him, and you lost him.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly have any choice.’

  The corners of Jacobson’s mouth twitched up. ‘It still eats you, doesn’t it?’

  Laura Strachan grimaced at me from the front page of the paper.

  I looked away. ‘No more than anyone else we couldn’t catch.’

  ‘He killed four women. Then Laura Strachan survives. Then Marie Jordan. And if you’d caught him when you had the chance… Well, you’re lucky he only mutilated one more woman before disappearing.’

  Yeah, Lucky was my middle name.

  Jacobson dug his hands into his armpits, rocked on his heels. ‘Ever wonder what the bastard’s been up to? Eight years and no one’s heard a peep. Where’s he been?’

  ‘Abroad, prison, or dead.’ I uncurled my fists, held them loose in my lap. The joints burned. ‘Look, are we finished? Only I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘Oh, you have no idea.’ Jacobson turned to Officer Babs. ‘I’ll take him. Get him tagged and his stuff packed up. We’ve got a car waiting outside.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve not made it official yet, but the paediatric nurse found dead yesterday had a My First Baby doll stitched into her innards. He’s back.’

  My fists curled again.

  5

  A cold wind grabbed a handful of empty crisp packets and sent them dancing across the darkened car park, pickled onion and prawn cocktail performing an eightsome reel six inches above the tarmac, before disappearing into the night.