A Song for the Dying

by Stuart MacBride

  Jacobson led the way between rows of vehicles to a big black Range Rover with tinted windows. He opened the back door and gave a little bow. ‘Your carriage awaits.’

  The radio was playing, a BBC-style received-pronunciation voice drifting out into the cold night air. ‘… siege enters its fourth day at Iglesia de la Azohia in La Azohia, Spain. Cartagena Police confirm that one hostage has been killed…’

  I climbed inside and dumped the black-plastic bag containing pretty much everything I owned in the footwell. Paused for a quick scratch at the ankle monitor weighing down my left leg.

  ‘… by three armed men as worshipers held a candlelit vigil…’

  A uniformed PC sat behind the wheel. His eyes flicked up to the rear-view mirror, checking me out as Jacobson scrambled into the passenger seat.

  ‘… bringing the death toll to six—’

  Jacobson clicked the radio off. ‘Ash, this is Constable Cooper. He’s one of your lot. Hamish, say hello to Mr Henderson.’

  The PC turned in his seat. Thin with a long hooked nose, hair cut so short it was more like designer stubble. He nodded. ‘Sir.’

  Been a while since anyone had called me that. Even a sour-faced git like Cooper.

  Jacobson pulled on his seatbelt. ‘Right, Ash, I’ll tell you what I told Hamish when they seconded him to us. I don’t care how much history you’ve got with your Oldcastle Police buddies, you report to me, no one else. I get so much as a whiff of you blabbing to any of them, and you’re going right back where I found you. This is not a jolly, this is not an opportunity for sabotage or personal glory, this is a team effort and by Christ you will take it seriously.’ A smile. ‘Welcome to Operation Tigerbalm.’ He reached across the gap between the two front seats and thumped Cooper on the shoulder. ‘Drive. And if I’m not there for eight, you’re screwed.’

  The constable eased the Range Rover out of the prison car park and out onto the street. I swivelled around in my seat to watch the place disappear through the tinted rear windscreen. Out. Free. No more review meetings. No more random beatings.

  No more bars.

  So much for Len’s catch twenty-two.

  My hands around her throat, squeezing…

  I caught the grin: stopped it before it could spread. Settled back into my seat. ‘So, what, they’re reinstating me?’

  Jacobson gave a half-laugh half-snort. ‘With your record? No chance – there isn’t a police division in Scotland that’d touch you with a stick. You’re out because you’re useful to me. Do well, help me catch the Inside Man, and I’ll make your release permanent. But any screwing up, any dicking about, any sign that you’re not giving one hundred and ten percent, and I will drop you like a radioactive jobbie.’

  Lovely.

  He popped open the glove compartment and pulled out a manila folder. Passed it back between the seats as Cooper took us around the roundabout onto a quiet country road with streetlights at the end of it, glittering in the darkness.

  ‘Conditions of release?’

  ‘Case file on Claire Young. Read it. I want you up to speed by the time we hit Oldcastle.’

  Might as well. If playing along kept me out of prison for long enough to get my hands on Mrs Kerrigan…

  I opened the folder. Inside was a list of statements and some crime-scene photos. ‘Where’s the post-mortem report? Identification Bureau stuff – physical evidence, fingerprints, DNA, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Ah. That’s a bit…’ He made a little circling gesture with his hand. ‘Complicated. For reasons of potential investigative bias, we’re not taking access to those.’

  ‘We’re not? Why? Are we thick?’

  ‘Just read the file.’ He faced forwards again, shoogled his shoulders from side to side against the seat, then reclined it a couple of notches. ‘And do it quietly. I’ve got a press conference when we get back: one of your idiot mates in Oldcastle blabbed to the Daily Record. I need my beauty sleep.’

  The A90 rumbled beneath the Range Rover’s tyres, while Jacobson rumbled in the passenger seat, mouth hanging open, a little dribble of drool shining in the dashboard lights. PC Cooper kept his eyes front, hands at ten to two on the steering wheel. Mirror, signal, manoeuvre.

  Behind us, the bright lights of Dundee faded away into the distance.

  The crime-scene photos were all pin-sharp, caught in the flashlight glare: Claire Young lying on her back on a crumpled sheet, the sides folded in around her legs and chest. One arm was curled above her head as if she was just sleeping – but her eyes were open, staring blankly into the camera. Some swelling around the left side of her mouth. A bruise the size of a saucer spread out across her right cheek.

  The left side of the sheet was crumpled back, exposing the pale nightdress beneath. Two lines of stains marred the fabric, like a lowercase letter ‘t’. A crucifix without the Jesus. Black, fringed with scarlet and yellow. The nightdress bumped beneath the stain, swollen and distorted by what was stitched inside. A close-up of her palm had what looked like bite marks in the middle of it, an arc of dark purple that curved from the middle finger to the base of the thumb. No blood.

  I went back to the statement again.

  A woman parks her car at the edge of Hunter’s Thicket, lets her Labrador out of the boot, and goes for a walk. She’s an insomniac, so it’s not that unusual for her to be out walking Franklin at three in the morning. That’s why she got the dog. Didn’t want some weirdo attacking her. Only Franklin runs off barking into the bushes and won’t come back. She wades in after him and finds him tugging at Claire Young’s outstretched palm.

  She panics for a bit, then calls 999.

  Claire Young’s mother isn’t much more help. Claire was a wonderful girl, everyone loved her, she was their world, lit up every room… Pretty much the same thing every bereaved parent said when their child turned up dead. No one ever complained about what a pain in the arse they were, or how they never did a bloody thing they were told. How they were sleeping with some bastard called Noah even though they weren’t even thirteen yet. How you never really knew them at all…

  I blinked. Let out a long shuddering breath.

  Put the statements down.

  Then slid the whole lot back into the folder.

  It looked like him. The cruciform scar, the doll stuffed inside, the body dump…

  ‘Cooper, how come there’s nothing in here about the abduction site?’

  In the rear-view mirror, the constable’s eyes widened. ‘Shhhhh!’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a big Jessie. Why’s there nothing in here about where he grabbed her from?’

  Cooper’s voice hissed through, as if he was deflating. ‘I’m not waking the super up. Now sit still and shut up before you get us both into trouble.’

  Oh for God’s sake. ‘Grow a pair.’

  ‘You think I don’t know who you are? Just because you chucked your career down the toilet, doesn’t mean—’

  ‘Fine.’ I picked up my walking stick, pressed the rubber tip against Jacobson’s shoulder and jabbed it a couple of times. ‘Wakey, wakey.’

  ‘Gnnnfff…?’

  Another poke or two. ‘Why’s there nothing about the abduction site?’

  Cooper found his voice again, only a whole octave higher than normal. ‘I tried to stop him, sir, I did, I told him not to disturb you.’

  ‘Nnngh…’ Jacobson rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Time is it?’

  I poked him with the rubber end again and repeated the question.

  He peered back between the seats at me, face all puffy and pink. ‘They haven’t found it yet, that’s why, now can I—’

  ‘One more question: who’s following us?’

  His mouth hung open for a moment. Then he narrowed his bloodshot eyes and tilted his head to the side. ‘Following us?’

  ‘Three cars back. BMW – black, four-by-four. Been with us since Perth.’

  He looked at Cooper. ‘Really?’

/>   ‘I… Er…’

  ‘Take the next right. That one: Happas.’

  Mirror. Signal. Manoeuvre. Cooper pulled the Range Rover into the turning lane and we rolled to a halt. Waited for a gap in the Dundee-bound traffic. Then pulled smoothly across the dual carriageway and onto the country road. Trees hulked on either side of the potholed tarmac, jagged silhouettes in the darkness.

  Jacobson peered back towards the rear windscreen. Then smiled. ‘That’s prison for you. Paranoia is…’ The smile faded. He faced front again. ‘Keep going.’

  Through a patch of forest, the pines sharp and silent, then out into bare fields, cast grey and black in the light of a clouded moon. Stars twinkled in the gaps. Farm windows glowed like cats eyes off to either side.

  Cooper cleared his throat. ‘They’re still there.’

  I passed the folder back to Jacobson. ‘Of course they’re still there. Where else are they going to go? We’ve not had a turn-off yet.’

  A thin band of trees loomed like a wall in front of the car, then past into more fields. We drove through farmland bordered by another line of pines, then Cooper took a left. The headlights behind us did the same. Then a hard right.

  Through a tiny village, to the junction. Left at the primary school. And we were heading back towards the A90. Soon as we were through the limit end, Cooper put his foot down, the Range Rover’s engine bellowed, smearing the fields past the windows.

  The car behind us did the same. Keeping pace as the needle crept up to eighty.

  I clipped in my seatbelt. No offence to Cooper, but he looked about twelve years old. ‘Either whoever’s tailing us is really crap at it, or they don’t care if we see them or not.’

  ‘Hmm…’ Jacobson shoogled his shoulders in the seat again. Settling in. ‘In that case, it’s either those dicks from the Specialist Crime Division, or your halfwit Oldcastle mates. Keeping an eye on the competition.’

  I checked back over my shoulder as we roared through the underpass, then left. The tyres screeched, the back end kicking out for a moment, then we surged up the slip road and onto the dual carriageway north again.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six…

  The other vehicle’s headlights appeared behind us again, falling into place three cars back.

  Specialist Crime Whatsits, Oldcastle CID, or something much, much worse.

  Cooper pulled the Range Rover up to the kerb, opposite a boarded-up pub on the eastern fringes of Cowskillin – where it merged into Castle Hill.

  No sign of the black BMW.

  ‘Right,’ Jacobson turned in his seat and pointed a hairy finger at me, ‘you go in there and you wait till I get back from this sodding press briefing. Remember, you’re on an investigative team now, not sharing a shower with some hairy-arsed rapist from Dunkeld. Try not to hit anyone.’

  I clunked open the rear door and eased out onto the pavement. Bloody right foot ached, like the tip of a red-hot knife was being slowly driven through the bone. That’s what I got for sitting in the one position in a warm car for nearly two hours. The walking stick had to take a bit more weight than normal. ‘What makes you think I won’t just do a runner?’

  He buzzed down his window and winked at me. ‘Honesty, integrity, and the fact that there’s a GPS locator built into your ankle tag.’ He popped open the glove compartment again and came out with a little plastic box fitted with an antenna. Pressed a button on the matt black surface. It bleeped. ‘There you go: all paired up. Now, if you try to tamper with the thing, or it registers a gap of more than one hundred yards between it and the one your sponsor’s wearing, all hell breaks loose.’

  ‘Sponsor?’

  He chucked the remote into the glove compartment. ‘Go inside and all will be revealed.’

  I closed the car door, limped away a couple of paces. Cooper indicated, pulled out from the kerb and drove off into the night. Leaving me all alone with my bin-bag. And my ankle monitor.

  One hundred yards.

  So what was to stop me going inside, battering my ‘sponsor’ unconscious, hotwiring a car, chucking him in the boot, and heading off to pay Mrs Kerrigan the kind of late-night visit that would’ve given Jeffrey Dahmer nightmares? They could send me back to prison for as long as they liked after that. Who’d care?

  Not like I’d have anything left out here…

  I creaked down and picked up the bin-bag, hoisted it over my shoulder.

  The Postman’s Head nestled between a closed-down carpet place and a vacant bookshop with ‘FOR SALE OR LET’ signs in the window. Behind it, the granite blade of Castle Hill reared up into the dark-orange sky – winding Victorian streets lit by period lanterns, the remains of the castle at the top bathed in harsh white spotlights. From down here the ruins looked like a bottom jaw, ripped from its skull.

  An old-fashioned wooden sign hung outside the pub – a severed head wearing a Postman-Pat-style hat. Sheets of plywood covered all of the windows. The paintwork was peeling off the door.

  It sat opposite an abandoned building site, the chipboard barrier smeared with graffiti and warning notices. A sign with a faded artist’s impression of a block of flats: ‘LEAFYBROOK SHELTERED ACCOMMODATION OPENING 2008!’ The padlock and chain dripped rust smears down the painted wooden gates. Probably hadn’t been opened for years.

  A spot of water landed on the back of my hand. Then another one. Not big drops, just tiny flecks. A prelude to drizzle. Can’t remember the last time I actually felt the rain on my face… I stared up into the sky. Clouds heavy and dark, reflecting the streetlights’ sodium glow, a faint mist of rain growing heavier with every passing second.

  The wind got up too, whipping down the street, rattling the corrugated metal fence running down one side of the road, fluttering the ‘CONDEMNED ~ WARNING KEEP OUT!’ notices stuck to it. Creaking the postman’s severed head sign back and forth.

  Sod this.

  I hobbled across the road, grunting with every step, and tried the pub’s door. It opened onto a small airlock. Light came through a pair of frosted glass panels in the inner doors. I pushed through.

  God knew when I was last in the Postman’s Head. Probably when we had to kick our way in to arrest Stanley-Knife Spencer. Took fifteen of us, six of whom spent the rest of the night in Accident and Emergency, getting their faces stitched back together.

  Place was a hovel then and it was even worse now. Two walls were stripped to the bare brick, batons of wood bristling with rusty nail-heads – some of them still clutching little chunks of plasterboard. The scarred bar stretched the length of the room, dotted with stacks of paper, the pump handles sticking up at random angles. A small pile of tools – screwdrivers, spanners, a hammer – lay next to a delicate china mug with the Rangers logo on it.

  Someone had heaped up most of the old wooden chairs and tables in the corner by a dead fruit machine, leaving a handful of them behind – arranged in a semicircle around a pair of easels. One held a whiteboard, the other a flipchart, both of which were covered in bullet-points and arrows.

  Head-and-shoulder shots of all seven original victims were pinned up by the toilets. Above six of them was a grainy photocopy of a handwritten letter. No white on the sheets, just grey and gritty black. They’d been copied so often that the handwriting was fuzzy, the letters bleeding into each other. A shiny flatscreen TV was mounted above the cigarette machine, little drifts of plaster dust on the floor below.

  No sign of anyone.

  I dumped my bin-bag on the nearest table. ‘SHOP!’

  A voice rolled up from somewhere behind the bar, thick and plummy. ‘Ah, perfect timing. Be a dear and pass me the adjustable spanner, would you?’

  A dear?

  I stepped up to the bar and picked the spanner from the pile of tools. Hefted it in my right hand, smacking it against the palm of my left. Good as anything for giving someone a concussion. Have to get to him first though.

  I put my good foot on the metal rail and levered my
self up. Peered over the edge of the bar into the space behind.

  A long man lay on his back on the floor, crisp white shirt rolled up to his elbows, pink tie tucked into the gap between two buttons. Dust smudged the black pinstripe trousers, took some of the shine off the leather brogues. He raised a hairy gunmetal eyebrow at me – it went with the short-back-and-sides and military moustache. ‘You must be the ex-Detective Inspector we’ve heard so much about.’ He sat up and brushed his hands together, then held one of them out. ‘I believe you’re the chap who let the Inside Man get away?’

  Cheeky bastard. I didn’t shake it, stuck my chin out instead, pulled my shoulders back. ‘I’ve not crippled anyone for days, you volunteering?’

  ‘Interesting…’ A smile. ‘They never said you were touchy. Tell me, were you always like this, or did losing your daughter to the Birthday Boy do it? Did you get worse every time another card plopped through the letterbox? Seeing him torture her to death, one photo at a time? Is that it?’

  I tightened my grip on the spanner. Forced the words out through a clenched jaw, tendons tight in my neck. ‘You my sponsor?’

  Please say yes. It was going to be a pleasure caving his head in.

  6

  ‘Your sponsor?’ He laughed, letting it fade into a chuckle. ‘Oh, dear me, no. Tell me, ex-Detective Inspector, do you know anything about beer pumps?’

  ‘So who is?’

  ‘You see, I’ve never really had much to do with them before – more of a gin-and-tonic man myself – but I like to think I can turn my hand to anything. So, did you let him go on purpose, or was it just a bit of incompetence?’

  Right, that was it.

  And then a voice behind me: ‘Ash?’

  Alice. She’d ditched the suit for a grey-and-black stripy top and black skinny jeans, a pair of bright red Converse trainers sticking out of the ends. A leather satchel, worn courier style, at her hip. Her curly brown hair, freed from its ponytail, bounced as she charged across the room and jumped at me. Wrapped her arms around my neck. Buried her face against my cheek. And squeezed. ‘Oh, God, I’ve missed you!’ Tears damp against my skin.