A Song for the Dying

21

A lone firework streaked into the dark sky on a line of silver, then burst in a rattle of green and yellow.

Wee Free took another draw on his cigarillo and trickled a line of smoke from his lips. The security light turned it into a ribbon of solid white. ‘She was always a pain in the backside. Lippy.’ He shifted his naked feet, elbows resting on the roof of a rusting VW Beetle. Where he’d cut himself, the blood had hardened into a scabby black line across his chest, the dribbles merging with the gore. ‘Never did what I told her.’

Above us, the sagging fairy lights twinkled, drawing up towards that vast rusting cross. The rest of the junkyard lay thick with darkness, piles of dilapidated machinery looming around us like the bones of metal dinosaurs.

‘“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”’

I took a sip of my tea. ‘Doesn’t it also say something about thou shall not kill?’

Another line of smoke got caught in the security light’s glare. ‘That was thrown out of court. Insufficient evidence.’

The Beetle sat up on bricks. Both front doors were gone as was all the glass, the interior stripped bare except for the back seat where Fire and Brimstone lay, ears twitching, glittering eyes like polished marbles. Staring at me.

‘According to the hospital, Jessica was doing a split shift, clocked out at midnight. We found her handbag on Wishart Avenue. He probably followed her there.’

In the shadows, over by the shipping container, Babs leaned against the corrugated metalwork, steam rising from her coffee, one hand on Thatcher’s stock.

Wee Free took another drag. ‘I’ve read the papers. He slits them open, stuffs a doll inside, stitches them up again, then dumps them at the side of the road to die.’

‘Did your daughter say anything about strangers hanging around the dorms or the hospital? Anyone bothering her?’

‘You strike me as someone who’s let darkness into his heart.’

Me? ‘You can bloody talk.’

A shrug. ‘Like I said — I read the papers, I take an interest. If she’s alive, I want my daughter back.’

‘That’s what we’re trying to do.’

The tip of his cigarillo glowed like a malignant orange eye. ‘Didn’t manage it with your own, what makes you think you can do it for mine?’

I thumped my mug down on the Beetle’s roof. Tea sloshed out onto the rusty paintwork. ‘Fuck you.’

Inside the car, Fire and Brimstone sat up, ears pricked.

‘Finally: a bit of passion.’ A smile twitched the corners of Wee Free’s moustache. ‘Jessica hasn’t said anything to me for years. Oh, I try, because I’m a good parent, but she’s wilful. Got that from her mother, God rest her tortured soul.’

My knuckles ached, pulled tight into fists. Burning in anticipation. ‘You don’t ever talk about my daughters.’

‘She was seeing someone, I know that. A godless man with a tattoo.’

Over by the container, Babs sniffed. ‘You got something against tattoos, like?’

‘Leviticus 19:28, “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you.”’

‘Says the man with the moustache: Leviticus 19:27. And you cut yourself — we all saw it.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘But not for the dead.’ Then went back to his cigarillo. ‘You’ve no idea where he takes them, do you?’

I stepped back. Took a deep breath. Unclenched my teeth and fists. ‘We’re following a number of leads. I’ll see if we can get a Family Liaison officer to keep you up to date, be your point of contact for the investigation.’

‘In fact, you don’t know a single thing about him.’

‘We will catch him.’

The smile disappeared. ‘Not if I get there first.’

Babs stretched her arms forward, till her fingertips touched the windscreen. Then slumped back. ‘Thought that was going to be a total waste of time, but turned out pretty sweet in the end.’

Alice took the Suzuki down York Street, past the knot of halal butchers and dry cleaners, heading for the border with Castle Hill. The rush-hour traffic thickened the closer we got to the centre of town. ‘You should maybe think about getting some help for your emotional expression mechanism, an overt reliance on violence for serotonin release isn’t healthy.’

‘Meh. Each to their own, right? Sometimes it does you good to shoot things.’

I shifted in the back seat, but the ache in my ribs wouldn’t go away. Someone slammed a fist into them every time I breathed.

‘So,’ Babs turned and grinned at me, ‘what’s next? Anyone else needing a rattle?’

Alice stiffened. ‘The intention wasn’t to “rattle” Mr McFee, we were there to break the news about his daughter, and anyway, don’t you have to get back to work or something, I mean it’s been lovely meeting you again, but we don’t want to be a burden, do we, Ash?’

‘Nah, don’t worry about it. Told them I’d come down with that norovirus, they’re not wanting me back till it’s all cleared up. Can you imagine a prison full of guys with vomiting and the squits? Nightmare.’

I shifted again, but it still didn’t help. So another couple of Prednisolone got popped from their blister pack and swallowed dry. Probably should have read the instructions about maximum dosage and side-effects, but it was too late for that. And besides, everything hurt…

Alice tapped her fingers around the outside edge of the steering wheel, one at a time, like a centipede’s legs. ‘Tell me about the calling card.’

‘The key ring? Cheap plastic from China, sold through cash-and-carries at something like a hundred for a fiver. Nearest wholesale outlet is Colonel Dealtime’s in Logansferry. Retails from corner shops and pound-stores. We checked out all the retailers, but no one matched the profile.’

‘Hmm…’ Alice took the third exit on the Keller roundabout and onto Dundas road, where the traffic slowed to a crawl. ‘What about the key?’

‘Yale. YA-Sixteens. They’re all for different locks. We took the key profiles to every locksmith in the city, and got laughed at. No way to trace what lock they were for.’

The traffic finally ground to a standstill, a long line of red tail-lights stretching away from us. Probably backed up all the way to the bridge.

She pulled on the handbrake and wrapped one arm around herself. Using the other hand to fiddle with her hair. ‘The keys and key rings are symbolic — obviously the little plastic baby represents the bigger plastic baby he’s going to stitch inside Jessica, it’s fertility, fecundity, which means he’s probably sterile himself, I mean if he could get someone pregnant the normal way he wouldn’t have to go through the whole surgery routine, would he, he’d chain them to the floor and rape them.’ A frown. ‘But he did rape Ruth Laughlin, so maybe it’s belt and braces, or he’s mentally compartmentalized sex away from procreation?’

Babs rolled her head from side to side, stretching the cords in her neck. ‘Maybe he’s just a nutter? Maybe he likes cutting women open?’

‘If we want to get all Freudian the key represents the penis and the lock the vagina, it’s a metaphor for penetration and unlocking what’s hidden, but then I always thought Freud was a bit of a pervert, all that stuff about wanting to have sex with your mother is just plain disturbed.’

I tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Can we cut to the chase, here?’

‘What if it’s not a metaphor, what if it’s an invitation…? What if it’s a case of, when you get out of hospital and you’ve had my baby, here is the key to get back to me so we can be together?’

A snort came from the passenger seat. ‘He’s asking them to move in with him? Yeah, real romantic.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t hate women, maybe he loves them, and this is the only way he can express it: by giving them a baby…’

I tapped her on the shoulder again. ‘We’re moving.’

‘What?’

Behind us a symphony for angry car horns filled the night.

‘Oh, right…’

And we were on our way again.

My phone rang — Sabir’s number. I picked up. ‘What have you got?’

‘What, no pleasantries? No, “Here, Sabir, you’re my favourite bizzie, you are, a star among men and killer with the ladies”?’

Alice slid the car forward ten foot, then came to a halt again.

‘Finger out, we’re none of us getting any younger here.’

A pause. Then, ‘Fine. Be like that. Got an address for one Laura Strachan: Thirteen Camburn View Crescent, Shortstaine. And you want to know how I got it? It was doing my head in — they’re not living at the family home, probably cos of all the journos, so-’

‘The short version, Sabir.’

‘You know, I used to like you.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘Bloody long time ago, mind. They’re not registered at the address, it doesn’t belong to a relative, and they’re paying the rent in cash. Playing properly hard-to-get. But her bloke… Now, I accidentally got hold of his credit-card details — don’t ask. He’s getting stuff delivered off the interwebs. And when I accidentally got access to his Amazon account too, guess what he’s using as a delivery address?’

‘Now you see, this is why I stick up for you when people start mouthing off about your general lack of personal hygiene. What about the audio?’

‘Personal hygiene? Cheeky bugger. You’ll get the audio when it’s ready. If I’d known you were going to be this big a pain in the arse, I would’ve had a word with your mam when I was shagging her last night. Got her to give you a clip round the lug.’

‘Bye, Sabir.’ The phone went back in my pocket.

So we finally had an address for Laura Strachan. Mind you, if the calls from that phone box panned out, we might be able to leave the poor woman alone after all… Still, it’d be nice if Ruth Laughlin could talk to her. God knew I owed Ruth that much.

I pointed through the windscreen. ‘Take the next left, we’ll cut along Slaine Road. Should miss the worst of it.’

‘… I’m not asking you to kill anyone, George, I just want you to check your records: why’s Cunningham on the sex-offenders’ register?’ I shifted my mobile from one ear to the other as Babs squeezed herself out of the Suzuki’s passenger door and into the rain.

There was a pause. Then George’s nasal monotone droned out of the earpiece. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Just interested.’ Because there was no way I was going to tell him Cunningham had been on the receiving end of a call from the phone box where the Inside Man tried to dump Claire Young’s body. It’d be all over the station by the time I hung up the phone, and as soon as Jacobson found out… Well, he wasn’t likely to be very pleased at being kept in the dark, was he? ‘A quick search on the computer, how hard can it be?’

‘It’s not like it was in the old days, we’ve got a duty of care to the dodgy bastards. We can’t just go handing out their personal-’

‘Are you forgetting what happened in Falkirk?’

His voice jumped up an octave. ‘You promised!’

‘Then get me Cunningham’s details.’

Sitting in the driver’s seat, Alice widened her eyes, mouthing the word back at me. ‘Falkirk?’

I waved her away. ‘Now would be good, George.’

‘Wasn’t even my fault…’ The sound of fingers clattering across a keyboard. ‘Cunningham, Cunningham, Cunningham… Right. Here: done eleven years ago for having nine-gig of naked wee boys on a laptop. Two counts of indecent exposure about a month after release. Three assaults on pregnant women. And…’ More typing. ‘And unlawful sex with two minors, six years ago. What sort of idiot puts someone like that in charge of a primary-school swimming club? On the register for life. Gets a visit every other week from McKevitt and Nenova.’

‘How long for the kiddie porn?’

‘Erm… Four years, released on licence after two.’

‘Thanks, George.’ I stuck the phone back in my pocket. ‘Here’s something interesting: our sex offender has form for assaulting pregnant women.’ I climbed out of the car.

After a beat, Alice did too, closed the door and plipped the locks. Put up a little collapsible brolly. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t tell Detective Superintendent Jacobson?’

‘If this works out, we go to him with a result. If it doesn’t pan out, he doesn’t need to know. Everyone wins.’

Carrick Gardens looped away down the hill — two rows of bland, respectable bungalows, some with loft conversions, all with neat front gardens and estate cars in the driveways. Not the poshest bit of Castleview by a long way, but infinitely better than the crappy flat Alice had rented in Kingsmeath. Decent view as well: over the river, Dundas Bridge, and up the cliff to the castle, streetlights twinkling in the darkness.

I hobbled after Babs, up the garden path to number nineteen. The blinds were down on the two front windows, the door painted red, with a semi-transparent stained-glass panel. ‘Cunningham’s been in and out of prison for the last eleven years, but was definitely at large during the Inside Man’s first spree.’

Babs thumbed the doorbell.

Alice stopped halfway down the path. Fiddled with her hair for a bit as the rain drummed on her umbrella. ‘I’m still not convinced we should be deviating so far from the profile.’

‘We’re not here because I think Cunningham’s the Inside Man, we’re here because someone called this number from the phone box where Claire Young was dumped. So perhaps Cunningham knows him? Long shot, but we’ve got sod-all else. Besides, you said it yourself: the profile’s wrong and Dr Docherty is a dick.’

‘I didn’t exactly use those words, I mean he’s a very well-respected psychologist and I’m just a-’ Her mouth shut with a click as a light came on inside. Then the front door opened and a puffy face peered out through the gap.

Mid-thirties, long blonde hair rumpled on one side, small mouth, a flash of what looked like a red towelling dressing gown. ‘Look, I’m not wanting solar bloody panelling, my drive re-tarmacked, a free quote for double glazing, help with a PPI claim, to talk about Jesus, Tupperware, Avon, or a sodding Anne Summers party. For the last time: leave — me — alone!’

I stepped up. ‘Actually-’

‘Go away. I’m not in.’

‘Miss Virginia Cunningham?’ I reached into my pocket and hauled out my old warrant card. The one I wasn’t supposed to have any more. ‘We’d like a word about where you were last night.’

She took one look at the warrant card and her mouth fell open — round and red, like a bullet wound. ‘Oh shite…’ She slammed the door shut before I could get the tip of my cane in the gap. Her voice came through, muffled from inside. ‘Shite, shite, shite…’ The bolt clacked home. ‘Shite, shite, shite…’ Then she turned and lumbered off down the hall, just visible through the stained glass.

Babs clapped her hands. ‘You want me to force entry?’

Alice blanched. ‘But we don’t have a warrant and we’re not-’

‘Do it.’