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A Song for the Dying

Page 46

by Stuart MacBride

Silence.

  Mrs Kerrigan’s eyes bulged, mouth hanging open, a string of saliva darkened the silk dressing gown. Then she hauled in a deep breath.

  And Alice shoved again.

  Mrs Kerrigan tipped over the edge – hands grasping at nothing but the rain.

  She didn’t make a single sound all the way down. Not until the final thud, ten stories below.

  Shifty whistled, then shuffled out onto the balcony. Peered out at the ground. Water soaked into the shoulders of his borrowed dressing gown.

  I joined Alice at the handrail.

  A broken rag-doll body lay with its top half on the pavement and its bottom half crumpling the bonnet of a little Ford Fiesta. An expanding pool of scarlet seeped out from Mrs Kerrigan’s chest and head, spreading like paint.

  Shifty sniffed. ‘Well, she’s fucked.’

  I turned away. Limped back inside and picked my walking stick off the carpet. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  Alice stood at the rail, staring down. Not saying anything. Not moving.

  ‘Hmm…’ Shifty drummed his fingers on the metal. Then nodded, talking slowly, as if pulling the words, one by one out of rain. ‘Oh dear. We appear to have got here too late. Joseph and Francis must have killed her, just before we got here. Oh, for shame… Uh-ho here comes the cavalry.’ He ducked back from the edge, then reached out and grabbed Alice’s collar and dragged her into the room. ‘Come on, you.’

  She lurched on brittle legs, still facing the balcony. ‘But…’

  I took the napkin from the dining table and wiped the patio door handle clean. ‘Did anyone touch anything else?’

  Shifty steered her out through the door. ‘Time to go.’

  I stopped on the threshold. Looked up and down the corridor – scanning the ceiling tiles. Then put a hand on Shifty’s back and pushed him towards the lifts. ‘Get her out of here, I’ve got something to take care of…’

  Six Months Later

  53

  Haar curled in off the North Sea, hiding the headland on the other side of the bay. Turned everything into a pale facsimile. A photocopy of a photocopy, faded and indistinct.

  Two figures picked their way along the sand, just visible through the fog, one large in a leather jacket and eye-patch, one small in a stripy top.

  A tiny dot of black scampered away from them, then back again, its high-pitched barks muffled by distance and weather.

  On the other end of the phone, Detective Superintendent Ness sighed. ‘And don’t get me started on the trial – It’s like a bloody circus.’

  I leaned on the fencepost outside the cottage, took another sip of tea. ‘Let me guess, Docherty’s being a dick?’

  ‘And it’s not as if I haven’t got enough on my plate with this Kerrigan business. Interpol couldn’t be more of a pain in the backside if they tried.’

  ‘Ah, no joy with the CCTV then?’

  ‘None. How do two thugs manage to make every bit of security camera footage disappear from a hospital?’

  Wasn’t that difficult if you knew the right people. ‘No idea.’

  Down on the beach, Henry the Scottie Dog made a dash for the water’s edge, then yipped and yapped his way back, bouncing up and down in front of Alice.

  ‘And you’re sure you didn’t see anything?’

  ‘Wish I had. But by the time I got there, it was all over.’

  Of course, the receptionist on the private ward could’ve made life a little difficult, but one mention of Andy Inglis’s name and the poor lad came down with amnesia.

  ‘Gah… You know, I don’t even have last names for them? “Francis” and “Joseph”, that’s all anyone seems to know. How am I supposed to get international arrest warrants based on that?’

  Down on the beach, they must have had enough, because Alice and Shifty started back towards the cottage, Henry running loops around them, barking his wee hairy head off.

  A sigh. ‘So how’s Dr McDonald getting on?’

  Still waking up screaming in the middle of the night. Still sitting in the kitchen at two in the morning, sobbing. Still drinking too much. At least the nightmares were beginning to thin out a bit. But Ness didn’t need to know that.

  ‘Alice is good. Enjoying the quiet life for a change.’ I swirled the tea dregs around the mug, then flung them out into the haar. ‘Listen, I know you’re up to your eyeballs, but if you fancy some time off, you should come visit. We’ll have a proper Scottish barbecue: sausages, drizzle, and midges.’

  There was a pause. ‘Is this… Would this be a date, Mr Henderson?’

  ‘I keep telling you: it’s Ash.’

  A smile crept into her voice. ‘I might take you up on that.’

  Henry charged up the grass bank and wriggled under the bottom wire of the fence. Planted all four feet on the tarmac and shook the saltwater off his coat. Alice grinned behind him, one arm linked with Shifty. She raised her other hand and waved.

  OK, so it wasn’t Australia, and we didn’t have a pool, but it was still pretty damn good.

  About the Author

  Stuart MacBride is the No.1 bestselling author of the DS Logan McRae series and Birthdays for the Dead.

  His novels have won him the CWA Dagger in the Library, the Barry Award for Best Debut Novel, and Best Breakthrough Author at the ITV3 Crime Thriller awards. In 2012 Stuart was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Hall of Fame.

  Stuart’s other works include Halfhead, a near-future thriller, Sawbones, a novella aimed at adult emergent readers, and several short stories.

  He lives in the north-east of Scotland with his wife, Fiona, and cat, Grendel.

  For more information visit StuartMacBride.com

  By Stuart MacBride

  The Logan McRae Novels

  Cold Granite

  Dying Light

  Broken Skin

  Flesh House

  Blind Eye

  Dark Blood

  Shatter the Bones

  Close to the Bone

  The Ash Henderson novels

  Birthdays for the Dead

  A Song for the Dying

  Other Works

  Sawbones – a novella

  12 Days of Winter (short stories)

  Writing as Stuart B. MacBride

  Halfhead

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

  Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2013

  Stuart MacBride asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

  Cover design by Jem Butcher

  Cover photographs © Shutterstock / figure by Henry Steadman

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental. The only exception to this are the characters Liz Thornton, Alistair Robertson, Millie Rose Stephen, and Julia G. Nenova, who have given their express permission to be fictionalized in this volume. All behaviour, history, and character traits assigned to these individuals have been designed to serve the needs of the narrative and do not necessarily bear any resemblance to the real people.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompile
d, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007344307

  Ebook Edition © December 2013 ISBN: 9780007542956

  Version: 2013-11-27

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  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

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