A Song for the Dying

by Stuart MacBride

My own stupid fault for punching a car…

  Alice tried again. ‘Marie?’

  The orderly sighed. According to the ID badge pinned to his breast pocket, he was ‘TONY’ and ‘HAPPY TO HELP’. A big lad with round cheeks and a saltire tattoo poking out of the neck of his scrubs. ‘She’s got good days and bad days, I’m afraid. Yesterday wasn’t one of the good ones.’

  ‘Marie, can you hear me?’

  Her head came around. Tilted to one side as if it wasn’t really on properly. A blink.

  ‘Marie, we need to talk to you about what happened eight years ago. Do you think you can do that?’

  Another blink.

  Tony, the orderly, shrugged. ‘She saw that thing on the telly last night, on the news, about You-Know-Who being back and went for one of the other patients. Bang, just like that. No warning, no nothing. Poor sod’s got a broken nose and half his ear bitten off.’

  ‘It’s OK, Marie, we’re here to help.’

  ‘Took four of us to pull her off him. Had to dose her up a bit. Then this morning she got hold of scissors from God-knows-where and gave herself a short back and sides. Lucky she didn’t hack her wrists open again—’

  ‘Actually,’ Alice looked back over her shoulder, ‘you know, this might go a little easier if we had some water. Do you think you could go fetch that for us?’

  He blew out a breath between pursed lips. ‘Not really supposed to leave patients unsupervised with—’

  A bright shiny smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll be fine. My friend Mr Henderson’s a police officer, after all.’

  ‘Well… Suppose so. Jug of tap water OK?’

  Alice waited until the door swung shut behind him. ‘Marie, I know it’s upsetting to think about the man who hurt you being back, but he can’t get to you in here. You’re safe.’

  Marie blinked a couple of times, pale lips twitching. And when her voice came, it was a whisper of broken glass. ‘It’s all my fault…’

  ‘No it isn’t, it’s nobody’s fault but his.’

  ‘It was me. I shouldn’t have … made him angry.’ Her fingers ended in stubby ragged nails, the skin around them bitten back to the raw pink quick. They fluttered across her stomach. ‘He put it in me, but it didn’t grow…’

  ‘Marie, have you ever been hypnotized?’

  ‘It wouldn’t grow because they took it out.’

  Alice tried a smile. ‘I think it would help you, if we tried. Are you OK with that?’

  ‘They took it out and it died and it was all my fault for not making it grow.’

  She reached out and picked Marie’s right hand out of her lap. Placed it on top of her own, palm to palm. ‘I want you to sit back in your chair. Isn’t that comfortable?’ Alice’s voice dropped: a little deeper, a little quieter. ‘Can you feel all your muscles starting to relax?’ Deeper still, slower too. ‘Can you feel how warm and comfortable it is?’

  ‘No.’ Marie turned her head to face me, eyes like pools of blood-rimmed darkness. ‘He was there. Watching…’

  ‘I was part of the investigation. I tried to catch the man who did this to you.’

  Marie’s eyes flicked back towards Alice for a moment. ‘I don’t like him. Make him go away.’

  Noel Maxwell glanced back over his shoulder, down the empty corridor, then slipped a box of pills from the pocket of his blue scrubs and into my hand. ‘Just between us, right?’ A frown lined his wide forehead. A tuft of black hair clung to the middle, the rest of it receding out of view; sticky out ears; and a pointy chin. Thick brows above a pair of watery blue eyes. ‘You sure you’re OK?’

  I popped a couple of the Prednisolone from their blister pack and knocked the little round pills back. Then reached for my wallet, but he waved me off.

  ‘Nah: old times’ sake, and that.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I was sorry to hear about your daughter. Crappy thing to happen. Really crappy.’

  I flexed my hand a few more times. Still felt as if there was something inside, gnawing at the joints.

  He shrugged. ‘Give it a few minutes.’ Then checked the corridor again. ‘You need anything else? You know, medicinally?’

  ‘I’m fine. Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. You know, cos we’re friends, like. Right?’ A greasy little smile. Then he turned and swaggered off the way he’d come, whistling.

  There was a clunk behind me and Alice slipped out of the rec room. ‘Maybe best to give her fifteen minutes or so.’

  A small glass pane sat in the middle of the door. On the other side of it, Marie Jordan was curled into herself, feet up on her chair, knees against her chest, sobbing.

  Alice placed her fingertips against the glass. ‘It’s been a lot for her to process, but I think we’ve made real progress, and I know that rhymes, but it isn’t meant to, she’s never actually walked through what happened to her before and—’

  A voice rang down the corridor. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

  A tall thin man in three-piece tweed marched towards us, strip-lights glinting off his bald head and big black-framed glasses. ‘You!’ He jabbed a finger at Alice. ‘Who said you could interfere with my patients? How dare you!’

  Tony the orderly scurried along behind him. ‘Honestly, Professor Bartlett, they never said they were going to do stuff to her! I was only trying to help, and—’

  ‘I’ll deal with you later!’ Bartlett stomped to a halt in front of Alice, towering over her. ‘I don’t know who you think you are, but I can assure you—’

  She stuck her hand out. He didn’t take it. Alice’s smile didn’t slip an inch. ‘You must be Professor Bartlett, I’ve heard so much about you, it’s a pleasure, lovely secure ward you’ve got here, I mean of course the décor’s a bit depressing, but there’s only so much you can do with these old Victorian asylums, isn’t there?’

  ‘Miss Jordan is extremely vulnerable and I will not have people wandering in off the street and interfering with—’

  ‘Marie needs time to process what happened. Doping her to the eyeballs and sticking her in a padded room isn’t making her better.’

  ‘That’s simply not—’

  ‘It’s been eight years; I think it’s time to try something new, don’t you?’ Alice produced a business card and slipped it into the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘I can see her Wednesday afternoons and Friday mornings. Make sure she’s clear of medication for at least four hours beforehand. Oh, and Aberdeen are running a trial treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with MDMA, it looks promising, you should try getting Marie into the study.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And if you really want to help her, stop making her wear that hideous cardigan.’

  ‘Cardigan?’ I reached down into the footwell and had a scratch at the ankle monitor as we swung around the Ptarmigan roundabout into Cowskillin.

  ‘It was horrible, how could that possibly be good for anyone’s mental health?’

  The downpour had faded to a misty drizzle that turned the approaching cars’ headlights into orbs of gold. ‘Left up here at the junction.’

  The City Stadium loomed on the other side of the road, all exposed metalwork and angular glass, wrapped in dark-blue metal and painted concrete. Castle Hill rose up behind it, the sides covered in dark buildings with slate-grey roofs, the castle lost in the rain.

  Alice glanced over from the driver’s seat. ‘Do you want to talk about it? You know, before we see her?’

  This part of Cowskillin was all post-war council houses, semi-detached boxes built for a brighter tomorrow, turned drab and saggy by the intervening years. Crumbling harling and drooping gutters.

  ‘Ash?’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about. He cut her open, something happened, and he abandoned her. Didn’t call it in, just left her there to die.’

  ‘I meant, talk about her relationship with you.’

  ‘She woke up from the anaesthetic in a patch of waste gro
und: no idea how she got there, covered in blood, middle of the night, pouring with rain. And somehow she manages to stagger as far as the main road. Drunk driver stopped and gave her a lift to hospital.’

  ‘She must be very brave.’

  A large corrugated-iron building slid past on the driver’s side, the six-foot lettering fixed to it spelling out ‘THE WESTING’, with the silhouette of a sprinting greyhound tacked on the end. Mrs Kerrigan’s lair…

  I turned away. ‘Yeah, well, that was a long time ago.’

  ‘I know you still blame yourself, but—’

  ‘She helped me and he saw her. If she hadn’t done that…’

  ‘If she hadn’t done that, he’d just have picked someone else. Maybe someone not so brave. Someone who wouldn’t have survived.’

  That didn’t exactly make me any less to blame.

  I pointed at the junction ahead. ‘Right here, then again at the end of the street.’

  Two-up-two-downs lined the road: salt-and-pepper harling bristling with satellite dishes; neat gardens out front, bordered by knee-high brick walls. A row of three shops stood side by side halfway down – a butcher’s, a grocer’s, and a vet’s – their windows boarded up and plastered with fliers and posters for a circus that passed through town six weeks ago. The signs above the sheets of chipboard were barely legible, weather-bleached, peeling, and grimy.

  Alice took the right at the end. The gardens were a little less tidy here, the windows and doors in need of a fresh coat of paint.

  ‘And down to the left.’

  She pulled onto First Church Road.

  More post-war boxes. Patches of harling had crumbled around their windows. Weeds poked out above the garden walls. Black-plastic bags piled up the side of wheely-bins. A Renault Fuego was up on bricks at the kerb, the bodywork more rust than steel. A terrier snuffled around the brake discs.

  Three-quarters of the way down it looked as if four or five houses had been demolished and replaced with a four-storey block of flats. Orange brickwork stained with grime and scrawled with gang tags: ‘KINGZ POSSE MASSIVM FTW!’, ‘BANZI BOYZ ROOL’, and ‘MICKYD SUX COX!’

  Past that, at the end of the road – where the tarmac was blocked off with concrete bollards – rose the blood-red spire of the First National Celtic Church. Barbed with gargoyles and spines, curved black slates like the scales on a dragon’s tail.

  Half a dozen kids did lazy figure-of-eights around the bollards on BMX bikes, all baggy jeans and hoodie tops, cigarettes leaving curling contrails where they stuck out between their teeth. Half twelve on a Monday – little sods should’ve been in school.

  I checked the text message on my phone again.

  Ruth Laughlin: 16B, 35 First Church Rd, Cowskillin

  Thank you Shifty. Speaking of which…

  ‘That’s it, three doors from the end.’ I put my phone away. ‘Erm … you know Shifty’s boyfriend’s thrown him out? Would it be OK if he crashed with us for a couple of nights?’

  Alice bit her top lip for a breath, then blinked a couple of times. Pulled her smile back on. ‘Of course. We like David, don’t we, I mean he was always there trying to help get you out, why would I have a problem with that, it’s no problem at all.’

  ‘Are you sure, because—’

  ‘No, he’s your friend and he needs your help, and is this it?’

  I nodded and she pulled up opposite the block of flats. Then sat, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, frowning.

  ‘Look, if you don’t want him there, it’s OK, I can—’

  ‘It’s fine. I said it was fine, didn’t I? It’s fine.’ She undid her seatbelt and climbed out into the drizzle. ‘Coming?’

  One of the kids peeled away from his mates and cycled towards the car.

  I grabbed my cane.

  Drizzle leached the warmth from my face and hands, greying my jacket as I worked my way around the Suzuki and out onto the road.

  Alice didn’t wait, just marched over to the flats and up the stairs to the front door. Peered at the buttons by the intercom.

  The kid on the bike went by, grinning on one side with picket-fence teeth, the other side clamped around a cigarette. His blond fringe stuck out from beneath a red hoodie with ‘BANZI BOYZ’ printed on it in black marker pen. A face full of freckles. Couldn’t have been much more than seven or eight. He circled around me. ‘Hoy, granddad?’

  I kept on going.

  ‘Hoy, limpy, talking to you. Got any fags?’ He drifted round slow enough to wobble. ‘Come on you auld fart, got any cash?’

  ‘Get lost, you wee shite.’

  The kid widened the circle, sooking on his cigarette, making the tip glow bright orange. ‘You got a pension, right? Don’t want to be a greedy bastard, do you?’

  ‘Not telling you again.’

  He popped the BMX up on to the pavement, stood upright on the pedals and drifted closer, standing almost as tall as me. ‘Welfare state’s for everyone, right? So come on then, hand it over.’ He grinned at his little friends, still weaving their way slowly back and forth between the bollards. ‘Or you more a Werther’s Original paedo? Eh?’

  Alice was bent over, face close to the intercom. Listening or speaking – it didn’t really matter which, as long as she wasn’t looking this way…

  The BMX went around me again. ‘Peeeeee-do, peeee-do.’

  I grabbed the little git by the throat and shoved him off his bike. Bent down, grabbed a handful of fringe and thunked his head off the pavement. Not hard enough to do any permanent damage, just enough to set his ears ringing. ‘Listen up, you little shite, I’m going to give you five seconds to bugger off back to your cesspit before I kick your arse.’ Loomed in close. ‘We clear?’

  He blinked up at me, mouth hanging open.

  I reintroduced his head to the pavement. ‘I said, are we clear?’

  ‘Gerroffus!’ He scrambled to his feet, grabbed his bike and legged it. Hopped onboard and jumped the BMX off the pavement. Freewheeled off with one hand on the back of his head and the other making wanking gestures.

  Big and brave with a bit of distance on him.

  He re-joined his mates at the end of the road and they stood there, giving me the finger, waving them back and forth, before laughing and cycling off.

  Their mums and dads must’ve been so proud.

  Alice’s voice cut through the drizzle. ‘Ash?’

  ‘Right.’ I turned my back on the church and limped up the steps to meet my past.

  16

  Ruth Laughlin’s living room didn’t look as if it saw much in the way of living. A three-bar electric fire pinged and glowed against one wall, making the air scratchy and dry. Hot enough to prick sweat across the back of my neck. A small portable TV sat on a battered nest of tables, the plug pulled from the wall, the screen thick with dust; a brown corduroy couch draped with tartan blankets; a couple of faded family photos in clipframes; a standard lamp with tassels on the shade. As if someone had transported an old lady’s house into a block of soulless flats.

  She sat in the only armchair, knees together, arms limp in her lap. Her left wrist was cocooned in a bandage, stained grey with dirt. Creases lined Ruth’s broad forehead, her hair hanging down over her shoulders in a mousey-brown frizz. Deep-set purple folds lurked beneath her small eyes. Sunken cheeks. She didn’t look anything like the woman who’d taken care of me till the ambulance came.

  Only thirty-three and she looked sixty – as if someone had reached deep inside her and hauled something out, leaving her empty and broken.

  Alice shifted on the couch, rearranging her arms and legs until she mirrored Ruth. Smiled. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Ruth didn’t move, her voice small and crackly. ‘They spit at me sometimes. When I go to the shops.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘The kids. They’re feral. They spit at people and they break into houses. Steal things. Smash everything up.’ Her eyes drifted down to the ban
dage on her wrist. ‘I had to stop volunteering at the vet’s.’

  ‘Did something happen?’

  ‘It… I thought it’d be nice to go back to it, you know, when I got out? But it’s…’ Her face pinched. ‘We had to put down six dogs in one day. I cried for a week.’ She reached up and wiped her eyes on the dirty bandage. ‘I’m stupid.’

  ‘You’re not stupid, Ruth.’ Alice let that hang in the air for a bit, then: ‘Did you see the fireworks last week? I went down to Montgomery Park and watched the council display on the other side of the river. It was beautiful, all reds and blues and greens, the cascade of gold down the cliff from the castle.’

  Heavy metal sounded in the flat below, distorted by too much volume on cheap speakers, making the floor thrum.

  Ruth kept her gaze fixed on the window. ‘They should’ve let me die.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She blinked up at me.

  ‘You don’t remember me? Ash Henderson? I was chasing the Inside Man, in the train station? There’d been an accident?’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked out of the window again. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘I’m sorry he got away. If he… If I’d been stronger, I could’ve got him.’

  A long sigh rattled its way out of her. ‘You were bleeding.’

  That didn’t mean it wasn’t my fault.

  Alice leaned forward, placed a hand on her knee. ‘You were very brave, Ruth, you helped him.’

  ‘I was a nurse. We…’ A frown. ‘There was lots of us there, on the bikes, raising money for the people in that storm. We did it for Laura.’

  Silence.

  ‘We’d like to ask a few questions about what happened to you, Ruth, is that OK? Do you think you can do that?’

  She pulled up her jumper, then the grey vest underneath, exposing her bare stomach. A puckered line of scar tissue disappeared into the waistband of her jeans. Another ran left to right under the edge of her bra. ‘Ever since I was little, I wanted to be a mother. Two boys and a girl. And we’d go on holiday, and I’d help them with their homework, and we’d be the happiest family in the world… All I ever wanted.’ The jumper fell back into place. ‘It’s all ruined now. They should’ve let me die.’