A Song for the Dying

by Stuart MacBride

  She did, then followed me out through the flap at the back of the tent, leaving Shifty behind. Two suited SEB techs knelt on the alley floor, one dabbing away with a cotton bud, the other pressing a wide strip of clear stickytape against the ground.

  A third figure stood in the background, leaning back against the brick wall, arms folded.

  Alice did a quick three-sixty. ‘He forced her in here, I mean it’s not on the way to or from anywhere is it, and it’s not like a young nurse is going to nip into a filthy alleyway for a pee, and who’s Sarah Creegan?’

  ‘Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Bob Richards, he was a very naughty little boy and his mummy and daddy didn’t like him very much. So they beat him with a thick leather belt; broke his fingers and ribs; put their cigarettes out on his naked back; and once, for fun, they poured boiling water over his genitals. Sarah Creegan was little Bob’s social worker.’

  ‘So she reported the parents?’

  ‘Nope. She put him out of his misery with a pillow over the face. Then she got his mummy and daddy drunk and gave them both an overdose of heroin. She cut it with slug pellets and caustic soda, just to be sure.’

  The tech with the stickytape transferred the strip he’d been pressing against the ground onto an acetate sheet. Labelled it. Then got out more tape.

  ‘When the second set of shitty parents turned up with a dead kid and veins full of poisoned drugs, we knew we had a problem. The third time it happened we noticed the calling card. Sarah Creegan was leaving tiny teddy bears at the scene – really small, maybe an inch-and-a-bit tall with a safety-pin on the back. Didn’t spot it at first, because Cancer Research were handing them out if you put a quid in the tin for childhood leukaemia.’

  A yellow marker with ‘A’ printed on it sat next to the alley wall. Another marked ‘8’ was on the other side. I walked over. ‘So it went in the report: “charity teddy bear left at the scene by killer”. And the next morning it was all over the papers. After that, every crime scene in the city was festooned with the bloody things.’

  Marker ‘8’ lay beside a pile of scrunched-up newsprint. I squatted down and looked back at the stickytape tech. ‘You bag and tag it yet?’

  An anonymous face looked back at me: bottom half hidden by the mask, top half by the safety goggles. ‘The boss wanted to see it in situ. All photographed though.’

  ‘Good.’ I raised one corner of the pile. And there it was: one plastic key ring. A little pink baby, the chain coming out of the top of its head with a single Yale key attached to the ring at the end. ‘That’s how we know the Inside Man abducted someone.’

  I straightened up as Alice peered at it.

  ‘The big question is: how did we find it in the first place?’ The bootie on the end of my cane scuffed against the ground as I hobbled over to the figure leaning against the wall. ‘Well?’

  Detective Superintendent Ness’s voice came out through the facemask. ‘We got an anonymous call on Crimestoppers.’ She pointed at marker ‘A’. ‘Working girl found the handbag lying here after servicing one of her clients. Says she thought a purse-snatcher probably dumped it, but maybe there was still something worth having inside. Got to the ID and freaked.’

  Ness held up an evidence pouch. It contained a Castle Hill Infirmary identification badge – still attached to its green lanyard: ‘MATERNITY HOSPITAL ~ MIDWIFERY SERVICES’. The photo showed a woman in her mid-to-late twenties, wearing cherry-red lipstick but no other makeup. Her mousey-blonde hair was pulled back in what was probably a loose ponytail. Striking blue-grey eyes and neat eyebrows.

  It was the name that brought me up short. I blinked at it. ‘Jessica McFee? Not the Jessica McFee? The bastard grabbed Wee Free McFee’s daughter?’

  ‘That’s why our anonymous working girl called it in. Didn’t want Wee Free to find out she’d come across the bag and done nothing.’

  Wee Free McFee’s daughter. For Christ’s sake…

  As if things weren’t bad enough already.

  ‘Bet he loved that. His little girl, grabbed off the street, raped, slit open…’ I stopped. ‘What?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. Not yet.’

  Alice stood, brushed imaginary dirt off the knees of her SOC suit. ‘Who’s Wee Free McFee?’

  ‘Good luck with that. He’s going to go absolutely mental.’

  Ness cleared her throat. ‘Funny you should mention that. When I tried to get a Family Liaison Officer to go break the news, they all came down with dysentery. Everyone from CID disappeared, and uniform have called in their Federation rep.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they’re not daft.’

  ‘Normally I’d make the lazy bastards go – send a firearms team in to break the news, if he’s really as bad as they say – but the Powers That Be want this handled sensitively. Which is why I got DI Morrow to call you.’

  I backed up a pace, tightened my grip on the cane’s handle. ‘Oh no you don’t.’

  ‘Apparently you have some sort of relationship with the man.’

  ‘No chance – I’m not even a police officer any more, I don’t have to—’

  ‘I’ve spoken with Bear and he feels it would be appropriate for you to assist us in contacting the bereaved family and questioning them about Jessica’s last known movements.’

  ‘Well, Detective Superintendent Jacobson can pucker up and—’

  ‘And he says to tell you that you can either get over there and break the news, or I can get someone to give you a lift right back to prison.’ She shrugged, making her SOC suit rustle. ‘Up to you.’

  Alice tugged at my sleeve. ‘Why’s everyone afraid of this Wee Free McFee?’

  Shifty backed up, keeping pace. ‘Look, it’s not my fault, OK? She made me—’

  ‘You are not in my bloody good books.’

  ‘Aw, come on, Ash, it—’

  ‘Wee Free McFee. Yeah, thanks a lot, Dave. You set me up!’ I stopped, dragged out my official mobile and called Jacobson.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you lend me out to Ness?’

  ‘Ah…’ A small pause. ‘I was led to understand you’ve got a relationship—’

  ‘I arrested him a couple of times, we weren’t moving in together!’

  ‘All you have to do is go round, tell him his daughter’s been abducted, and get him to answer a few questions. How hard could it be?’

  ‘How hard?’ I lowered the phone, limped off a few steps, then back again. ‘He’s a psychopath. I’ll need some muscle.’

  ‘Ash, Ash, Ash…’ A sigh. ‘That’s your job. Your prison record is one long list of fights and broken bodies. Why do you think I sprung you?’

  ‘Oh, that’s great. Well done. The guy with arthritis and a walking stick is the team muscle. What stellar planning.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be as bad as all that, you just—’

  ‘And there’s no way in hell I’m taking Alice in there. No muscle, no visit.’

  A long rattling sigh. ‘Fine, you can have some muscle. Constable Cooper will be with you in—’

  ‘The boy couldn’t beat up a damp nappy.’

  ‘Well who do you want then? And it better not be one of your Oldcastle cronies.’

  I told him.

  18

  Bad Bill’s Burger Bar was a rusty Transit van – painted matt black, with the menu chalked on the bodywork beside the open hatch. He’d parked it in the far corner of the B&Q car park, the air around it heady with the smell of onions frying in the fat that oozed out of the burgers and Lorne sausage.

  Alice wandered back towards the car with her shoulders hunched, woolly hat pulled down over her ears, curly hair escaping to sprawl down the shoulders of her padded jacket. The fog of her breath mingled with the steam rising off the Double Bastard Bacon Murder Burger clutched in both hands. She curled in for another bite.

  I popped the Suzuki’s boot and loaded the contents of the trolley into it. Shovel. Pick axe. Stanley kni
fe. Three-and-a-bit-foot-long iron crowbar.

  Alice chewed – tomato, marie rose, and brown sauce made a Joker-from-Batman smile that nearly reached her ears. The words were barely audible through the mouthful of bun and meat and lettuce and crisps. ‘Sure you don’t want a bite? S’good.’

  Duct tape. Bolt cutters. Compost accelerant. Heavy-duty rubble sacks. Firelighters. Lump hammer. Five-litre container of methylated spirits.

  ‘Not hungry.’

  Tarpaulin, plastic washing line, pliers.

  ‘I’ve never had a burger with Bacon Frazzles on it before.’ More chewing. Then she frowned at the boot full of tools. Shuffled her feet. ‘I still don’t see why you made me buy all this stuff just to go visit Mr McFee.’

  ‘Because that’s how the law works: if you batter someone to death with a crowbar, it’s assault with a deadly weapon. Why did you have a crowbar? You must have taken it with you to attack the victim. You’re going to prison.’ I clunked the boot shut. ‘But if you’ve got a car full of DIY stuff, because you’re going to do up your new flat in Kingsmeath, you can batter the same person to death and call it self-defence. All about context. And I will pay you back.’

  Alice froze, mid-bite. ‘Are we planning on doing that? Killing him?’

  Not him, exactly… But it’d make for an evening Mrs Kerrigan was going to remember for as long as she lived. Which would be about two hours if I could keep the blood loss to a minimum.

  I turned the trolley around and gave it a shove towards the battered orange pipework corralling a few of its mates. Letting it find its own way in. ‘I don’t care what Jacobson says, muscle or not, there’s no way we’re going to see Wee Free McFee without a bit of hardware.’

  And if the crowbar didn’t work, there was always Bob the Builder. He smiled up at me from the back seat, that bright yellow spanner clutched in one hand.

  ‘Ash…’ She licked a smear of sauce from the side of her mouth. ‘You were really quiet at Ruth Laughlin’s and I think it’d be a good idea if we talked about how you feel about the—’

  ‘Can you do me a favour?’ I looked back towards Bad Bill’s, where the man himself was hammering a chicken into bits with a cleaver. ‘I know I said I wasn’t hungry, but now I think about it, I could go a stovies. Only, my foot’s killing me, and you know … would you mind?’

  She sighed. Took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yeah, please.’

  But Alice stayed put. Tilted her head to one side. ‘When you were on the phone with Bear, why didn’t you tell him about Ruth being raped?’

  Why? Because knowledge was power. What was the point of giving it away without getting something back?

  I pointed at the Transit van. ‘And make sure Bill doesn’t skimp on the beetroot.’

  Another sigh. Then she ripped a bite from her burger, turned, and munched her way back to Bad Bill’s.

  When she reached the counter, I ducked into the Suzuki and grabbed Bob the Builder. Gave the car park a quick scan – no security cameras pointing this way, but better safe than sorry. Got into the passenger seat and turned Bob face-down in the footwell. A seam ran up the middle of his back, but it was stitched tight. I flipped him upside down.

  A line of Velcro ran up the inside seam of his dungarees. It scritched open, revealing wads of kapok stuffing. The stuff snagged on my nails as I pushed my fingers inside Bob, grabbed the gun, and pulled it out.

  Black. Small enough that when I wrapped my hand around the grip and pointed my index finger the tip poked out past the end of the barrel. Light, too. I thumbed the release and the clip slid out into my open palm. Empty.

  A quick check over my shoulder – Alice was standing at the hatch of the burger bar, talking to the dark rounded bulk of Bad Bill while he ladled something into a polystyrene container.

  I dipped back into Bob and gave him what had to be the world’s roughest full body-cavity search: rummaging through his innards till I had thirteen bullets in my lap. They were tiny – not even as long as the last joint of my thumb – steel-bodied with a copper tip, like a small metallic lipstick.

  The first one was a struggle to get into the clip and it just got worse after that as the spring inside compressed. When the final one snapped into place I slipped the magazine into the handgrip again. Hauled back the slide and racked a round into the chamber. Made sure the safety catch was on.

  Then gave Bob a loaded-handgun suppository and returned him to the back seat where he’d come from.

  A knock at the window: Alice, her face now free of sauce, a polystyrene carton in one hand, a couple of wax-paper cups in the other.

  Lunchtime.

  Stovies. Couldn’t remember when I’d last had proper ones, made with lamb instead of prison gristle and stock-cubes. The beetroot sat in one corner of the carton, staining the potato like spilled blood. I forked up another mouthful and shovelled it in while Alice sat with her phone pinned to her ear.

  ‘Uh-huh… No, I don’t think so…’ Her satchel lay in her lap, a makeshift desk for one of the Inside Man letters. Its grainy, badly photocopied scrawl was streaked with yellow highlighter pen and red biro. The rest were stretched across the dashboard. Waiting their turn.

  The view from the lay-by wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been: out across a ditch, then a couple of fields, a garden centre, a static caravan park, a patch of woodland, ending at the sprawling boundary of Shortstaine. From here, the suburb was a soulless swathe of gingerbread houses crammed into twisting cul-de-sacs. Eight years ago, it was all fields.

  ‘Yeah… Uh-huh… I’ll ask.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Bear wants to know where we are.’

  I lifted my left shoe from the footwell and jiggled it. The ankle monitor shoogled against my skin. ‘Thought that was the point of the GPS.’

  Alice’s face turned down at the edges. ‘But he’s—’

  ‘Tara McNab.’ I sooked my plastic fork clean and pointed it at the bins by the side of the lay-by, overflowing with McDonald’s bags and empty drink cans. ‘The Inside Man’s second victim was found right there. Flat on her back, staring up at the dawn.’

  ‘Ah…’ Back to the phone. ‘We’re revisiting the deposition sites from the original investigation… Yes… No, I haven’t met with Dr Docherty yet…’

  A tangent of beetroot clipped off beneath the fork, got skewered, then loaded up with mushy grey potato and a lump of meat. Say what you like about Bad Bill’s grubby van, hairy arms, and collection of tattoos, he made a mean stovie. Lots of meat, sod-all gristle, and comforting as a lover’s embrace. I chewed around the words, ‘Ask him what’s happened with Sabir.’

  ‘Yes … I know, but we’ve been… No, Chief Superintendent Jacobson…’

  Chief Superintendent Jacobson. Sounded as if she’d lost her ‘call me Bear’ privileges.

  ‘Has he got those numbers from Sabir yet?’

  ‘What?… No… Em, Ash wants to know if you’ve heard anything back from Detective Sergeant Akhtar?… Right…’

  The carton squealed as I scraped the last morsels up with the fork. ‘And while you’re at it, when do we get our muscle?’

  ‘Yes, I understand that, Chief Super—… No, it’s… Yes. Soon as we can. Now, about getting someone to come with us to Mr McFee’s house, is… Ah, right, yes…’

  ‘Well?’ The last dobs of mushy potato gravy got wiped up on a fingertip.

  ‘No, I understand… Yes.’

  I scrunched the carton up and opened the car door. ‘Tell him to get his finger out, we’re supposed to be catching a killer here.’

  ‘What? Yes… It’s…’

  At least the drizzle had stopped. I climbed out and limped between the puddled potholes to the bins. Jammed the polystyrene container in with the shells of dead Happy Meals.

  Was it raining that night – when we found Tara’s body? Difficult to remember. Probably. All of us standing around in our white SOC suits, caught in the spotlights’ glow
like ghosts at a party for the dead. The guest of honour laid out, with blood thick and dark on the front of her nightdress…

  Tara McNab’s mother never got over the death of her little girl. She went on the drink. Started hanging about outside Force Headquarters with a thermos full of tea and a placard with ‘POLICE INCOMPETENCE ~ CAN’T CATCH MY DAUGHTER’S KILLER!’ on it in big black letters. Three weeks later she jumped off Dundas Bridge.

  Couldn’t really blame her.

  The worst thing about losing your child was having to go on living every day. Everything else was a bloody cakewalk compared to that.

  ‘Ash?’

  I blinked. Turned.

  Alice was half out of the car, clutching the satchel to her lap with one hand, holding her phone out in the other. ‘Detective Superintendent Jacobson wants to talk to you.’

  I hobbled back and took the mobile. ‘What’s the result on the phone box?’

  ‘Why the hell are you sodding about at old body-dump sites? It’s—’

  ‘Dr Fred Docherty is an idiot. We’re putting together an independent profile: the Inside Man picked these deposition sites for a reason, Alice needs to see them if she’s going to work out what it is.’

  ‘I’m not happy she’s—’

  ‘And while we’re on the subject, I want to limit her exposure to Docherty. He’s got an agenda to push – that’s why his profile for Unsub-Fifteen’s pretty much identical to the one he came up with eight years ago. He’s not interested in the truth, he’s interested in being right.’

  An eighteen-wheeler thundered past the lay-by, tyres kicking up a mist of dirty spray.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘If Professor Huntly’s about, get him to put a fire under the lab for those samples from Wishart Avenue. Probably a waste of time checking if Castle Hill Infirmary did rape kits on the original survivors, but you never know.’

  Silence.

  ‘Jacobson?’

  ‘Normally I’m the one who gives the orders round—’

  ‘Sorry if you’ve got sore toes, but we’re looking for someone who’s killed five women, mutilated three, and right now Jessica McFee’s out there waiting to be slit open like an Arbroath Smokie. We don’t have time to sod about with niceties. We’re doing our jobs, and I need you to make sure everyone else is doing theirs.’