A Song for the Dying

by Stuart MacBride

  The DVD case lay on the makeshift coffee table, beside her laptop: ‘WRAPPED IN DARKNESS ~ ONE WOMAN’S JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK!’ The subtitle was about as melodramatic as the reconstruction.

  Obviously the director really wanted to make a feature film of the story, but didn’t have the budget, or talent, to pull it off.

  OK, so he’d got the idea more or less right, but the details? If Laura Strachan and her mate Steve had actually talked like that the day she went missing I’d eat my chair.

  I fast-forwarded through some beardy type talking in front of a whiteboard while the kettle rumbled in the kitchen. Never trust a man with a beard – sinister devious bastards the lot of them.

  Army ants marched in a line around the top of my left sock.

  Bloody thing. I pulled my trouser leg up and raked my nails back and forward along the lip of the ankle monitor, scrabbling at the plastic edge. Blessed relief.

  Alice emerged from the kitchen with the teapot and a plate of assorted biscuits. ‘You shouldn’t scratch it, I mean what if you break the skin and it gets all infected and then—’

  ‘It’s itchy.’ I pressed play again.

  Laura Strachan – the real one, not the actress playing her in the reconstruction – has her hands dug deep into her pockets, the wind whipping her curly auburn hair out behind her, ruffling the ankle-length coat as she picks her way along the battlements of the castle. She pauses, looking down the cliff, across Kings River towards Montgomery Park and Blackwall Hill beyond. Sunlight glints on the broad curve of water, turns the firework trees into explosions of amber and scarlet.

  Her voice comes in over the background music, even though her lips don’t move.

  ‘From the moment I was attacked, to the moment I woke up in Intensive Care, everything was a blur. Some fragments are clearer than others, some just … it was like peering into the bottom of a well, with something sharp glinting at the bottom. Sharp and dangerous.’

  She leans on the battlement peering down. Then the camera switches so it’s looking back up at her.

  The scene jumps to a bright white room, lined with what looks like clear plastic sheeting. It’s hard to tell – they’ve sodded about with the picture, making the highlights stretch vertically across the screen, as if everything’s in the process of being beamed up. The room throbs in and out, then lurches to one side until a large stainless-steel trolley sits in the middle of the shot, with the younger, prettier, actress version of Laura lying on it. Her hands and feet are tied to the trolley’s legs, two more bands of rope – one across her chest, under her armpits, the other across her thighs – hold her tight. Naked, except for a pair of strategically placed towels.

  ‘I remember the smell, more than anything else. It was like detergent and bleach, and something … a bit like hot plastic? And there was classical music playing.’

  Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata fades up.

  ‘And he…’ Her voice breaks. A pause. ‘He was wearing a white apron, on over… Over… It might have been surgical scrubs. I can’t… It was all so blurred.’

  A man walks into shot, dressed exactly like Laura described him. His mouth is hidden behind a surgical mask, the rest of his face blurred – reduced to an unrecognizable mess by the video effect.

  Then a close-up of a syringe, the needle huge as it moves towards the camera. Fade to black. Then we’re in what looks like a private hospital room.

  ‘The next thing I know, it’s four days later and I’m lying on a bed in intensive care. And I’m choking on the ventilator, and I’m wired up to half-a-dozen monitors, and this nurse is running around screaming that I’m awake.’

  Alice poured the tea.

  ‘All my life, ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to have babies. A family of my own to love and cherish the way my father never did for me.’

  I helped myself to a custard cream.

  ‘But the doctors said it wasn’t possible any more. The Inside Man took it away from me when he… When he ripped me open.’

  Cut to a posh-looking office, lined in wood, with a heap of framed certificates on the wall. A thin balding man sits behind a big oak desk. He’s wearing a dark-blue suit and a bright-red tie. A caption scrolls across the bottom of the screen: ‘CHARLES DALLAS-MACALPINE, SENIOR CONSULTANT SURGEON, CASTLE HILL INFIRMARY’.

  His voice is all public school pomp and barely concealed sneer. ‘Of course, when Laura came to me her insides were a mess. It’s a miracle she didn’t exsanguinate in the ambulance.’ A tight-lipped smile. ‘That means, “bleed to death”.’

  Really? Wow, hark at him with his posh-boy big words.

  ‘Luckily, she’d had the good fortune to be on my operating table. Otherwise—’

  Three short thumps broke in on Dr Patronizing’s monologue.

  Front door.

  Alice flinched. ‘Are you expecting someone, because I don’t—’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘—shudder to think. You see, her uterus was—’

  I closed the lounge door behind me. Limped across the hall’s stained floorboards, walking stick clunking with every other step. Peered out through the peephole.

  A bald head filled the lens with a swathe of pink and grey.

  I undid the four security locks and opened the door. ‘Shifty.’

  He’d obviously not shaved his head for a bit: a fringe of gunmetal stubble stuck out above his ears. More stubble shaded his collection of chins. Folds of skin drooped beneath watery bloodshot eyes. A bruise rode high on his left cheek. The smell of aftershave oozed out of him, mingling with the rotten oniony whiff of the day’s sweat.

  A couple of orange carrier-bags sat on the floor by his feet.

  Shifty blinked at me a couple of times, then a massive grin split across his face and he lunged, wrapped his arms around me, pinning my arms to my sides, and squeezed. Laughed. ‘About bloody time!’ He leaned back, lifting my feet off the floor. ‘How’ve you been? I’m gasping here. Any chance of a drink?’

  Couldn’t help but smile. ‘Get off me, you big Jessie.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so repressed.’ One more squeeze, then he let go. ‘Thought we’d never get you out of there. You look like crap, by the way.’

  ‘Did you get it?’

  He reached into his crumpled jacket and came out with an envelope. Handed it over.

  OK. Unexpected.

  I tried again, nice and slow. ‘Did – you – get – the – gun?’

  8

  Shifty dragged a hand down his face, pulling it out of shape. ‘Alec wouldn’t sell it to me, said it’d be bad karma.’

  I opened the envelope. It was stuffed with creased tenners and twenties. Had to be at least three, maybe four hundred quid. Not bad at all. Shifty’s shoulder wobbled when I patted it. ‘That’s a lot of walking around money. You’re—’

  ‘Don’t be a divot. It’s for the gun. Alec won’t sell it to me, but he’ll sell it to you. He’s got bloody weird since he came down with Buddhism.’ One podgy hand went back in Shifty’s jacket and came out with a yellow Post-it note. He stuck it to my chest. A mobile phone number in scratchy red biro. ‘But it’s going to have to be tomorrow. Now are we having that drink or not?’

  ‘Tomorrow? I wanted—’

  ‘I know. It’s not that easy finding someone who’ll sell a gun to a cop, OK? Alec’s a pain, but he’s discreet.’ Shifty pulled his shoulders up to his ears. Let them fall again. ‘We’ll do her tomorrow. I promise.’

  Well, after two years was one more night really going to make that much difference? So she got another twenty-four hours, so what? She’d still end up dead.

  Fair enough.

  I nodded back towards the flat. ‘Tea?’

  ‘You’re kidding, right? Tea? When you’ve just got out of the nick?’ A wink. Then he dipped into one of the carrier-bags at his feet and came out with two bottles. ‘Champagne!’

  He followed me into the flat, standing i
n the hallway while I snibbed all the locks again then showed him into the living room.

  Alice was out of her chair, standing like a fencepost, all pulled in and straight. She smiled. ‘David, how nice to see you again. Is Andrew well?’

  ‘I know we said tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait.’ He loomed over her, leaned in, and gave her a peck on the cheek. Then plonked one of the champagne bottles down beside the laptop and started picking the foil cap off the other. ‘You don’t have any decent glasses, do you?’

  ‘Ah, yes, right, I’ll see what I can dig up, sure there’s something lurking in the cupboards…’ She pointed at the kitchen, then disappeared through the door.

  Shifty worked the wire cage off the cork, pacing as he did it. Never standing still. The floorboards creaking and groaning away beneath his feet.

  Silence.

  He stared at the laptop screen, where Laura Strachan was frozen halfway down a flight of stone steps, the pause icon overlapping her feet. ‘I … went round to see Michelle.’

  ‘Did you now?’ Two years, and not a single visit from her. Not so much as a letter.

  ‘She came to the door and she was all…’ He wiggled one hand beside his head. ‘You know? Hair all over the place, really pale and thin, bags under her eyes. Been drinking.’

  I sank back into my camp chair. Folded my arms. ‘So?’

  ‘She’s got the house up for sale. Big sign in the front garden. Moving down south to be with her sister.’

  Yeah. Well … she was a grown woman. Not as if we were married any more, was it? Could do what she liked. Didn’t have to tell me. ‘There a point to this?’

  ‘Just thought you’d … I don’t know.’ He stared down at the bottle in his hands. ‘Andrew threw me out. Apparently it’s not him, it’s me. Says I’m suffocating him.’ Those fat fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle, squeezing until their joints were pale as bone. ‘I’ll bloody suffocate him…’

  Alice appeared in the kitchen doorway, carrying three generic wine glasses. ‘Who’s getting suffocated?’

  ‘Shifty’s boyfriend’s chucked him out.’

  His bottom lip popped out an inch, then he shook his head.

  ‘Oh, David, I’m so sorry.’ She patted one of the camping chairs. ‘Here, you have a sit down and tell me all about it.’

  Oh God, here we go.

  ‘Maybe later.’ He twisted the cork in one meaty paw, pulled and – it poomed out from the bottle bringing a coil of pale gas with it. He filled two of the glasses, then dipped back into his plastic bag and handed me a can of Irn-Bru.

  Fair enough. I clicked off the tab and filled my glass with fluorescent-orange fizzy juice.

  Shifty raised his. ‘A toast – to Ash, to friends, and to freedom.’

  To revenge…

  We clinked glasses.

  He knocked back a mouthful. Sucked in air through his teeth. Gave a little shudder. Then sank into the chair. Slumped. ‘Sodding Andrew. Two years. Two sodding years. I came out for him.’

  ‘No… No, this’ll … this’ll be ffff … be fine.’ Shifty blinked one eye at a time, then wobbled down into a squat, falling forward so he was on his hands and knees. Arse up. Wearing nothing but a pair of black Calvin Klein pants. He wobbled a bit more, then half lowered himself, half collapsed onto his side. It was just a sheet laid out on top of the new rug, but it was going to have to do. At least he had a pillow. Throw in a couple of bath sheets for blankets, and…

  Well, it wasn’t great, but after all the booze the pair of them had put away, he wasn’t likely to notice.

  The sound of retching echoed out of the bathroom, amplified by the toilet bowl.

  Shifty twitched a couple of times, then let out a long, low groan. Followed by a pause. A snuffle.

  I draped another towel over him then picked up the two empty champagne bottles and what was left of the supermarket whisky. Took them through to the kitchen and ditched them next to the kettle. Grabbed the washing-up bowl from the sink.

  By the time I got back to the living room he was flat on his back, snoring hard enough to make the air vibrate. His towel-blankets were all rucked up on one side, exposing a hairy expanse of pale belly. The rumbling drone stopped for a couple of beats… Then he grunted something that sounded like a name, and went back to snoring again.

  ‘Silly sod.’ I tugged the towels into place. ‘Try not to choke on your own vomit in the middle of the night, OK?’ I turned out the light. Closed the door. Left him to it.

  The toilet flushed. Then gargling. Spitting. And finally Alice lurched out into the hall.

  She’d done her tartan pyjamas up wrong, the left side one button out of synch with the right. Hair sticking out in a tangled mess. ‘Urgh…’

  ‘Come on: bed.’

  She clasped a hand to one side of her face. ‘Don’t feel so good…’

  ‘Well, whose fault is that?’

  Her bedroom door opened on a small room with a single bed, a flat-packed wardrobe, and a small bedside table. A Monet poster dominated the room, all greens and blues and purples.

  She clambered into bed, hauled the duvet up around her chin. ‘Urrgh…’

  ‘Did you drink a pint of water?’ I put the washing-up bowl on the floor by her head. With any luck there wouldn’t be sick all over the floor in the morning.

  ‘Ash…’ She smacked her mouth a couple of times, like she was tasting something bitter. ‘Tell me a story.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘I want a story.’

  ‘You’re a grown woman, I am not reading—’

  ‘Pleeeeeease?’

  Seriously?

  She blinked up at me, grey bags under her bloodshot eyes.

  Sigh. ‘Fine.’ I settled onto the edge of the bed, taking the weight off my right foot. ‘Once upon a time, there was a serial killer called the Inside Man, and he liked to stitch dolls into nurses’ stomachs. But what he didn’t know was that a brave policeman was after him.’

  She smiled. ‘Was the policeman’s name, Ash? It was, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Who’s telling this story, you or me?’

  Eight Years Ago

  I hit the door hard, battering it open. Dodged a crowd of old fogies in their dressing gowns and slippers, surrounded by their own personal fog-bank of cigarette smoke.

  Where the hell did he…

  There – on the other side of the low wall that separated Castle Hill Infirmary from the car park. A pregnant woman screaming abuse, banging on the window of an ancient-looking Ford Fiesta as it roared away from the kerb.

  More swearing erupted behind me as PC O’Neil staggered through the OAP smokers, his face flushed, sweat glistening on his cheeks. ‘Did you get him?’

  ‘Do I bloody look like I got him? Get the car. NOW!’

  ‘Oh God…’ He lumbered over the low wall – making for our rusty Vauxhall, parked on the double yellows.

  The pregnant woman stood in the middle of the road, sticking two fingers up at the back of the Fiesta as it fishtailed out through the hospital gates and onto Nelson Street. ‘I HOPE YOU CATCH AIDS AND DIE, YOU THIEVING BASTARD!’

  I staggered to a halt beside her. ‘Did you get a good look at his face?’

  ‘He stole my bloody car! Did you see that?’

  ‘Would you recognize him if you saw him again?’

  ‘My dog’s in the boot!’ She cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘COME BACK HERE, YOU WANKER!’

  The pool car screeched out from the kerb, coming to a stop in a squeal of brakes on the wrong side of the road, opposite us. O’Neil buzzed the window down. ‘He’s getting away.’

  I pointed the woman at the hospital. ‘You don’t go anywhere till someone’s taken your statement, understand?’ Then I ran around to the passenger side and clambered in. Slammed the door. Slapped O’Neil on the shoulder. ‘Put your foot down!’

  He did, and the Vauxhall surged forward in a squeal of tyre sm
oke.

  Left onto Nelson Street, just missing a Mini, the driver leaning on his horn, eyes wide, mouth stretched in horror.

  O’Neil got the slide under control, both hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, teeth biting down on his bottom lip as the car raced up the hill. Newsagents, carpet shops, and hairdressers streaked past the windows.

  I scrambled into my seatbelt, then flicked the switch for the blues and twos.

  The pool car’s siren wailed above the engine’s bellow, forging a path through the lunchtime traffic.

  We screeched up the hill while I pulled out my Airwave handset and called it in. ‘Charlie Hotel Seven to Control, we are in pursuit of the Inside Man. Eastbound on Nelson Street. Get someone out there blocking the road. He’s in a brown Ford Fiesta.’

  A pause, then a hard Dundee accent came on the line. ‘You been drinking?’

  ‘Get backup out there now!’

  The Vauxhall cleared the brow of the hill, flew for at least ten feet, then slammed back down onto the tarmac. O’Neil had his shoulders curled forwards, arms locked straight ahead, as if pushing the steering wheel would actually make the car go faster.

  ‘There he is!’ I jabbed a finger at the windscreen.

  The Fiesta disappeared into the underpass.

  We were there less than thirty seconds later, the dual carriageway rumbling above us as O’Neil kept his foot to the floor. The siren echoed back from the concrete. Out into the daylight again. ‘Almost there…’

  Couldn’t have been more than four seconds between us now.

  The Fiesta jumped the lights where Nelson Road cuts across Canard Street, narrowly missing a woman on a bicycle, and right into the path of a bendy bus. It ploughed straight into the Fiesta, grabbing the front passenger-side and wrenching it three feet into the air, spinning the whole thing around and into a streetlight.

  ‘Shite!’ O’Neil stamped on the brakes. Hauled the wheel left, sending the back end squealing out across the cobbles. And everything slipped into slow motion. All the colours and shapes bright and sharp in the thin December light. A woman with a pushchair, mouth hanging open; a man up a ladder outside Waterstones, painting over graffiti; a little girl coming out of Greggs, frozen mid-pasty. A Transit van, the driver leaning on his horn as we slammed into him.