A Song for the Dying

by Stuart MacBride

  But then Laura had always been the popular one. Most people couldn’t even name the other two survivors, let alone the four women who died eight years ago.

  I backed away from the bedroom window.

  The mattress was half off the double bed. All the drawers were pulled out of the chest by the door. The wardrobe lay open and emptied. Skirts and jackets and trousers littered the floor, mixed in with socks and pants. The photos on the walls sat in crooked frames, the glass cracked.

  Alice settled onto the edge of the bed frame, her purple nitrile gloves squeaking as she wrung her hands together. ‘He’s going to kill David, isn’t he?’

  ‘Looks as if someone went through the place with a baseball bat.’ I bent and picked a teddy bear from the floor. He was ancient and grey, almost no fur left, the chest patched together like Frankenstein’s monster. I put him on top of the chest of drawers, back to the wall so he wouldn’t fall over.

  A uniformed constable stuck his head around the door: big ears and a squint nose, hair cut so short it was barely there. ‘Just checked with the downstairs neighbour. Old fart’s deaf as a post – didn’t hear anything suspicious.’

  ‘Why haven’t they dusted for prints?’

  He pulled his shoulders up around his ears. ‘SEB are all round Laura Strachan’s place. Got to wait till they’re done there. Cutbacks and that.’

  Alice stood. ‘The Inside Man turns up at Laura Strachan’s house and she goes with him without so much as a whimper. What’s different here? Why the struggle?’

  The hall was littered with coats. I picked my way between them and into the lounge. Both of the armchairs lay on their backs. Whoever took Ruth had ripped the cushions out of the couch – stuffing prolapsed through slashes in the brown corduroy. The three-bar electric fire was dead, the TV face-down in front of the window.

  ‘What if Ruth recognized him for who he really was?’ I scuffed a toe through the broken glass of a clip-frame. ‘She wouldn’t go without a fight. Not after last time.’

  The sound of heavy metal music thrummed through the floor beneath my feet. No wonder the guy downstairs was deaf.

  I did a slow three-sixty. Frowned at the opened sideboard, the broken dishes and paperbacks lying crumpled on the floor. ‘He was looking for something. He ransacked the place, then smashed everything.’

  The kitchen was the same, and the bathroom too – the contents of the medicine cupboard strewn across the floor.

  Alice squatted down by the bath and poked through the bottles and jars. Then frowned up at me. ‘Her antidepressants are missing. She told me she’d just got her prescription for Nortriptyline refilled. Should be at least three or four boxes here.’

  ‘Why would he want her antidepressants?’

  ‘Well … mix Nortriptyline with alcohol and it’s a pretty good sedative?’

  ‘He’s got access to surgical anaesthetics, why would he— God’s sake. What now?’ I pulled my mobile out and pressed the button. ‘Henderson.’

  The voice on the other end was low, twitchy, as if she was trying not to be overheard. ‘We’re screwed. We’re all totally screwed!’

  I pulled back and stared at the screen. Wasn’t a number I knew. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘You need to get over to Carrick Gardens, now. Virginia Cunningham’s house. He’s dead: we need to get our stories straight. Oh, we are so screwed…’ And then she was gone.

  I stuck the phone back in my pocket.

  Virginia Cunningham – your friendly neighbourhood pregnant child abuser.

  Alice stared at me. ‘What?’

  ‘No idea. Get in the car.’

  DC Nenova was waiting for us at the front door, huddling out of the rain. It hurtled down from a heavy grey sky, pummelling the garden flat.

  She shifted her feet, glanced back over her shoulder. ‘It’s not our fault, it wasn’t as if anyone knew, how could we? It’s…’ Nenova licked her lips. ‘We just need to all calm down and work out what we’re going to do. Right?’

  Alice peered past her, into the house. Holding the umbrella in both hands as it trembled in the downpour. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Of course it’s not all right: we’re screwed.’ Nenova turned and marched off down the hall, got to the end and started back again. ‘We didn’t know, OK? How could we know?’

  I stepped inside. The lounge door was open – her partner, McKevitt, sat in the middle of the couch, knees together, shoulders hunched, one leg twitching like it was marking time to a death-metal beat. The bitter-sharp smell of sick rolled out of the room. He looked up as we passed. ‘It’s not our fault…’

  Alice thumped the front door shut and propped her dripping umbrella in the corner. ‘Ash, what’s going on?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Nenova turned the corner and paused between the bathroom and the bedroom door, pacing the corridor’s width, one hand up to her mouth, biting at the skin around her nails. ‘We just need to get our stories straight, that’s all. It’ll be fine. We just—’

  I grabbed her. ‘What the hell is this?’

  She shook my hand free. ‘We…’ A glance at the bedroom door. ‘We came to search the place for more video tapes, or laptops, or photographs of kids. Should’ve done it yesterday, but they’ve cut the unit and we’ve got three officers off on the stress, and we’ve got a massive load to monitor and it’s not our fault!’

  God’s sake. ‘What – did – you – find?’

  She reached out and turned the bedroom door handle. Pushed. A familiar cloying smell slumped into the hall. Like meat left a little too long in the fridge.

  Nenova pointed at the wardrobe.

  The floor creaked beneath my feet as I picked my way past the bed to the open wardrobe. Shirts and jackets hung in the top part, a couple of long summer dresses to one side. Shoe boxes on the shelf above the rail. A knee-high pile of shoes and boots in the bottom… A little pale hand stuck out from underneath it, the fingers waxy and curled.

  A knot tied itself in my chest.

  She killed someone. Planked the body in here. All the time we were in the house, she had a dead child in the sodding wardrobe.

  Bitch…

  My hands curled into fists, the knuckles aching.

  ‘Call the SEB: I want a full team down here. Seal the street off. Get the kid photographed and canvas the neighbours, see if anyone’s missing, and… What?’

  Nenova stood by the bedside cabinet, shaking her head. Then pulled on a pair of blue-nitrile gloves and picked up a mobile phone. The thing was mounted on a little stand-tripod thing. She cleared her throat. ‘It was set up pointing at the bed, so I checked it.’ A glance at the wardrobe. ‘That was before we found…’ She powered the phone up and poked the screen a couple of times, then turned it around and held it out towards me.

  A video clip played on the screen.

  Virginia Cunningham is in her bra and pants, pregnant bulge pressing against the figure she’s got pinned to the bed. A young boy – can’t be more than four or five – struggles beneath her.

  Her voice crackled out of the phone’s speaker, slightly distorted as she sang.

  ‘When things seem dark and scary, there’s no need to be afraid. Just think of lots of lovely things, like crisps and lemonade…’

  She wraps her hands around the little boy’s throat and squeezes, hunching over him, bringing her full weight down on his neck.

  ‘And you can sing the “Bravery Song”, whenever you get a fright. And, before you know it, everything will be all right…’

  The kid’s hands slap at her bare arms, one leg jerking in time as she rocks forwards, choking him.

  ‘So forget the ghosts and goblins – no they can’t scare us today…’

  He gets a hand up to her face, but she pulls her head back, out of reach and thumps her weight down on him again.

  ‘Cos we can sing the “Bravery Song”, and make them go away…’

  The kid’s ar
ms go rubbery, no longer able to support their own weight. Then fall at his sides.

  ‘The “Bravery Song”, the “Bravery Song”, sing it and you’ll feel big and strong.’

  I swallowed. ‘When was this? Is there a timestamp on the camera? We need to know when the kid went missing.’

  ‘And you can sing it all night long, till good things come along.’

  She lets go of his throat and sits up, a grin stretching her face wide. Pants a couple of times.

  Then faint banging comes from the tiny speaker, followed by a muffled, ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’

  My voice.

  That was me banging on the wall. Didn’t need a timestamp, it was filmed when we were in the house.

  Right there in the next room waiting for her to get dressed…

  Cunningham rolls off the bed, grabs the little boy by the legs and drags him off screen.

  Some thumps and bumps, then she’s back, looming large as she reaches for the phone.

  A clunk, and the door behind her opens. Officer Babs stamps in. ‘All right, that’s enough. Get your bloody clothes on already!’

  The screen went blank, then reverted to a load of stills arranged like tiles.

  Alice had her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh no…’

  All the breath in my body leaked out, pulling my shoulders down. We were right there.

  Nenova put the phone back on the bedside cabinet.

  I sank down onto the end of the bed, stared at the wardrobe – that pale hand sticking out from the pile of shoes. ‘We could’ve saved him…’

  She paced up and down beside the bed. ‘We have to get our stories straight. We couldn’t know, right? We couldn’t search the house, we didn’t have time.’

  I should’ve made Babs stay with her. Made sure she wasn’t left unsupervised. I was in charge.

  What was it Cunningham said, sitting on the couch in her maternity dress, flexing her hands, spitting venom and defiance? ‘It’s all your fault. That’s what I’ll tell them. All – your – fault.’

  I pulled on a pair of gloves from my kit and got down on my knees in front of the wardrobe. Lifted shoes and boots out one by one and lined them up on the carpet until I could see the kid’s face.

  Blond hair. Ears he’d never grow into. Freckles standing out like ink spattered on milkbottle skin. Familiar, but not quite right. I screwed up my eyes. Why did he look…?

  ‘Oh, shite…’

  Nenova shuffled up close. ‘We are so screwed.’

  It was the blond hair that was wrong. The bathroom stank of ammonia the first time we were here – a box of dye sitting beside the bath. She’d dyed his hair.

  It took two goes to get the words out. ‘Call Control. Tell them we’ve found Charlie Pearce.’

  ‘… deepest regret I have to announce that the body of Charlie Pearce was discovered by officers today at a home in the Blackwall Hill area of the city. The parents have been informed, and have asked for their privacy at this terrible time to be respected.’

  Rain lashed the windscreen, sounding like a thousand hammers on the Suzuki’s roof.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Elizabeth Ness there, speaking at the press conference a few minutes ago. Sport now, and there’s troubling times ahead for Partick Thistle—’

  I switched off the radio.

  Wind buffeted the car, rocking it on its springs.

  On the other side of the chain barrier, Kings River was thick and dark, swollen against the harbour walls. A lone seagull swooped past, going sideways, wings bent with the strain of holding onto the air.

  Alice curled forwards around Bob the Builder, and rested her head on the steering wheel.

  When my phone rang, we both flinched.

  I pulled it out. ‘~ THE BOSS!’ flashed on the screen.

  Yeah, that could go to voicemail.

  You’d think, after two hours, Jacobson would take the hint.

  Silence.

  Alice shifted in her seat. ‘He was right there, all the time.’

  Yes. Yes he was.

  My neck popped and cracked as I stretched. ‘We need to find Jessica McFee.’

  ‘Ash, he was only five.’

  ‘We didn’t know. How could we?’

  She blinked a couple of times. Then sniffed. ‘He was right, wasn’t he? Detective Superintendent Knight? I’m an embarrassment—’

  ‘You’re not an—’

  ‘—amateur. Unprofessional. She had a terrified little boy trapped in the house, while we were there. I should have known.’ Alice scrubbed a hand across her eyes. ‘I’ve got no right to call myself a psychologist.’

  ‘Alice, don’t, OK?’

  ‘Can’t get anything right. Should just go into private practice. Marriage guidance, or something, where screwing up doesn’t kill people…’

  Sigh. ‘Are you finished?’

  No reply.

  ‘You didn’t kill Charlie Pearce, Virginia Cunningham did. You didn’t screw up. You’re not psychic.’ My other phone went, playing the default ringtone I hadn’t bothered to change.

  God’s sake. As if things weren’t bad enough.

  I dug it out and hit the button. ‘I know, I know – tick-tock.’

  ‘Eh?’ A pause. ‘This Ash Henderson?’

  Not Wee Free after all. ‘Rock-Hammer. You got something for me?’

  ‘I told you: it’s Alistair, and yes. You got an email address I can send these reports from the Social to?’

  What, and let Jacobson and his team find out what we…? You know what? Sod it. Too late to worry about that. I gave him my LIRU email.

  ‘And I spoke to his divorce lawyer. Turns out officially Docherty versus Docherty was about irreconcilable differences brought on by pressures of work. She got half of everything and a regular stipend as well.’

  ‘And unofficially?’

  ‘Mrs Docherty wasn’t down with the role-playing or the pornography. And I don’t mean roll-a-dice-and-pretend-you’re-an-elf role-playing: he liked her to pose like the dead women in his crime-scene photographs before doing it. Even covered her in fake blood.’

  ‘Yeah, I can see why that’d be kind of a turn-off.’

  Alice rose from the steering wheel, Bob pressed tight against her chest. ‘What?’

  ‘Dr Frederic Docherty has a thing for dead women.’ Back to the phone. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Right now he’s at Division HQ. Patrol car picked him up from the hotel at six forty-five. Not been out since.’

  The seagull was back, a pale streak against the dark sky.

  ‘Does he have a car, or did he come up by train?’

  ‘Got the number plate from the register this morning. Hold on…’ Some rustling.

  My official mobile bleeped. That’d be the reports from Social Services. I dug it out, called up the email, then handed the phone to Alice. ‘Read.’

  ‘Sorry, the DVLA’s slow this morning… Right: it’s a dark-blue Volvo V-Seventy. You want the reg number?’

  I scribbled it down in my notepad. ‘Thanks, Alistair. Let me know if Docherty goes anywhere, OK?’

  ‘Will do.’ And he was gone.

  I tapped the phone against my chin. A thing for dead women…

  Time to give Noel Maxwell a shout – see what info he’d got from his fellow hospital drug dealers. His mobile rang nearly a dozen times, before,

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Noel? It’s me.’

  A pause. ‘Ah, right, Mr Henderson, great. Erm … what a coincidence, I was just about to call you.’

  Sure he was. ‘Well?’

  ‘Still a couple of guys on nights I’ve not spoke to yet, but I did hear rumours about someone flogging on a couple vials of Thiopental Sodium. Kinda like the stuff … you acquired, only a bit more risky for breathing and heart problems and that.’

  I got the pen back out. ‘Who to?’

  ‘Like I said, I’ve not spoken to everyone yet, so could just be lo
cker-room bollocks. You know what these guys are like.’

  ‘Who, Noel, before I come up there and divine it from your entrails.’

  ‘OK, so word is Boxer’s been flogging stuff to that psychiatrist bloke off the telly. You know: the one who caught the serial guy butchering those wee boys in Dundee?’

  Dr Frederic Docherty.

  ‘This “Boxer” – I want a real name, and an address, and a contact number.’

  ‘How do I know his address? I’m not his—’

  ‘Find out and text me.’ I hung up. Looked across the car to Alice. Grinned. ‘Better and better.’

  The wind tried to rip my door off when I clambered out into the slanting rain. It battered icy nails into my face and neck as I limped around to the driver’s side and shooed Alice across into the passenger seat.

  She scrambled over the handbrake and gearstick, taking Bob the Builder and my phone with her. ‘This is … interesting.’

  ‘Thought it might be.’ The engine growled into life, drowning out the rain for a moment until the diesel warmed up. ‘Put your seatbelt on.’

  She did what she was told. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Breaking and entering.’

  46

  Overhead lights made pools of grey on the concrete floor, the bulbs not quite strong enough to banish the gloom.

  I checked the number plate against the note again, just to be sure. Not that the hotel car park was stuffed with blue Volvo estates, but better safe than sorry. Docherty’s car sat in the corner furthest away from the entrance, passenger-side tight into the wall, leaving plenty of space between it and the next bay. Trying to make sure no one would dent or scratch the bodywork.

  Nice try.

  My crowbar squealed along the driver’s door, curling off twin strips of paint, exposing the metal beneath. Oops.

  The place was nearly empty – most of the guests would be away at work or attending conferences, or doing whatever it was tourists did on a rainy Wednesday lunchtime in Oldcastle – leaving just a handful of hatchbacks and one Range Rover Sport, all parked near the door that led back into the hotel.

  Alice shuffled her little red shoes, glancing back through the grid of pillars towards the entrance. ‘I’m really not sure we should be doing this, I mean I know the whole “making his wife pretend to be a murder victim” thing is creepy, but—’