A Song for the Dying

24

‘Thank you for organizing that.’ Alice turned the key in the ignition.

Sitting in the back seat, I shrugged, then deleted Shifty’s text message about not forgetting to pick up some beer. ‘Ruth deserves better than she got.’ Promising career slashed short by some scumbag with a scalpel, a private operating theatre, and a thing for torturing nurses.

The windscreen wipers squeaked back and forth in slow-motion arcs, clearing away the drizzle. Outside, the door to number thirteen opened, spilling warm light across the driveway. Ruth and Laura hugged, the physical contact looking awkward as they tried to accommodate the pregnant bulge. Then some laughter. A kiss on the cheek. And Ruth walked towards the car, pausing twice to look back over her shoulder.

Alice smiled at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘What if people found out you weren’t the scary grumpy old horror you pretend to be?’

‘Less of the cheek.’

Ruth clunked open the passenger door and climbed in. Wiped her shining cheeks. ‘Thank you.’

Alice pulled away from the kerb, skirting Camburn Woods, heading back towards Cowskillin while Ruth babbled about how great it was to see Laura again and how they were best of friends and wasn’t it wonderful about the baby and there was hope for everyone when you thought about it and wasn’t it lovely…

My phone went while we were negotiating the Doyle roundabout: Professor Huntly.

‘What?’

‘Ah, Mr Henderson, tell me, are you planning on gracing us with your presence at the Postman’s Head this evening?’

‘What do you want, Huntly?’

‘It’s traditional for the team to get together to discuss the day’s adventures. It’s how we keep abreast of developments.’

Great — an extra couple of hours listening to everyone droning on about how little they’d actually managed to achieve today. Perfect.

And there was no way I could just skip it… Was there?

Worth a go.

‘Is Jacobson there?’

‘Hold on.’

The City Stadium drifted by on our right. Dark and barren. Someone had strung up a couple of bed sheets from the metal superstructure. ‘BRING BACK THE WARRIES!’ and ‘SUPPORT FOOTBALL NOT CUTS!’ daubed in blood-red paint. They’d obviously been there for a while — the fabric grimy and tattered, frayed at the edges by the wind.

Ruth just stared out of the window, a big soppy smile on her face.

Jacobson came on the line, sounding as if he was in the middle of chewing something. ‘Ash?’

‘Yeah, this team meeting — any chance I can give it a miss? I got a sawn-off shotgun’s worth of rocksalt in my ribs at Wee Free’s place. Every time I breathe it’s like being stabbed. Need to go home and soak in the bath before I seize up completely.’

‘He shot you?’

‘No, Babs did. But to be fair, Wee Free’s dogs were trying to tear my throat out at the time.’

‘I see…’ A sigh. ‘Well, if you’ve been in the wars, I dare say we can probably manage in your absence.’

‘Sorry.’ Show willing. Don’t give him any excuse to send you back. ‘Anyway, do you want to give me an update? Let me know where we’re at?’

Jacobson’s voice got all echoey, as if he’d turned away from the phone. ‘Bernard? Bring Mr Henderson up to speed. He’s not joining us tonight.’

A rustling clunk, and Huntly was back. ‘Well, while you’ve been off larking around I, as usual, have been a superstar. That syringe I found contained Labetalol Hydrochloride, it’s a beta-blocker frequently used to treat hypertension in pregnant women. Lowers the blood pressure. Just the ticket if you’re planning on hacking someone open, but aren’t too keen on them bleeding to death. Not exactly widely available at your local Boots the Chemists.’

He found it?

‘What does Doc Constantine say about the PM?’

‘I could give you the full medical details, but I doubt you’d understand them, so we’ll try the CBeebies version. Claire-’

‘You think I won’t kick your arse, don’t you? First thing tomorrow morning you and I are going to have a wee chat, you pompous little prick.’ Just because I had to keep in with Jacobson it didn’t mean everyone else got a free pass.

‘Ah… Well, perhaps I did misjudge your sense of humour there.’

‘Post mortem.’

‘Sheila says Claire’s got four cracked ribs and bruising consistent with an extended period of CPR: Tim really didn’t want to let her go. Her last meal was a bacon cheeseburger with fries and pickles and some sort of maize-based crisps? Followed by chocolate cake. Consumed sixteen hours before she died.’

The spire of the First National Celtic Church rose above the surrounding houses, scratching at the burnt-orange sky. Ruth wrapped her arms around herself and let out a long sigh, as if she’d been holding something in for years and finally let it go.

All that hurt and pain…

I frowned at my reflection. ‘Who the hell is Tim?’

‘That’s what we’re calling him now. T.I.M. The Inside Man. Tim. Sixteen hours means he’s probably waiting for the food to clear their stomachs so they don’t choke on their own vomit under the anaesthetic.’

Bacon cheeseburger with crisps. No prizes for guessing where her last meal came from. A little nugget to keep in my pocket until it was time to throw Jacobson a treat. Look, Detective Superintendent, I have been working after all, not just killing time till I could do the same to Mrs Kerrigan.

‘Sheila also compared the stitches from Claire Young and the young woman they’ve still got in storage from the first time.’

‘Natalie May.’

‘In Sheila’s opinion they’re similar enough to assume they were made by the same person. The only difference is that the newer set are rougher than the ones holding Natalie together. She thinks whoever’s doing the stitching is out of practice. And whilst Sheila is frequently a barb in my flesh and a pain in my posterior, I will, reluctantly, accept that she’s a damn fine pathologist.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Just never tell her I said that.’

There wasn’t a single person on the streets, just parked cars and empty windows. ‘What about CCTV?’

‘Bear got them to pull the Closed-Circuit Television footage all the way along Jessica McFee’s route to work. Cooper’s about halfway through. So far all he’s done is whine about it. The boy’s quite useless.’

‘Well tell him to get his finger out. This isn’t playschool. And make sure Jacobson gets Sabir access to the HOLMES data too.’

‘And while we’re on the subject of useless, did you really ask Bear to see if they did rape kits on the previous victims?’

Alice pulled onto First Church Road, slowing to let a rogue Alsatian lope across the street, tail down as it disappeared between two parked cars.

‘Far be it from me to rain on your parade, Mr Henderson, but even a basic grasp of biological science should tell you that semen doesn’t remain viable in the female body for long. These women are abducted three to five days before they’re dumped, they’re all washed and the incision site cleaned down with chlorhexidine prior to their operations. So unless you’re suggesting he goes to all that trouble to keep things sterile, carries out major surgery, then clambers on-board for a quickie before calling the ambulance, a rape kit isn’t going to pick up much, is it?’

Huntly might be a prick, but he was right.

Didn’t mean he wasn’t crying out for a punch in the mouth though.

Alice stopped outside Ruth’s building. ‘Here we go.’

Ruth turned, leaned across the gap between the seats, and gave her a hug. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘Mr Henderson?’

‘What about combings — they might have got pubic hair from him.’

‘Ah, now that is a possibility.’

Ruth turned in her seat and waved at me. ‘It’s like … like a light’s come on in my life again. It’s been dark for so long…’ She reached back and placed a hand on my knee. ‘Bless you.’

‘Glad we could help.’

‘The only drawback being, they didn’t do any rape kits. I checked with the hospital staff — they were too busy trying to stitch them back together to do anything else.’

Ruth blinked. Placed a hand flat against her chest, as if she was pushing her heart back into place. Then she nodded and climbed out of the car.

‘Of course, in an ideal world we could just check with the dead. But, Sheila tells me two of them were cremated, one disappeared, and — looking at her post-mortem photographs — it’s clear that Natalie May favoured… Shall we call it a “Yul Brynner bikini line”?’

I folded the passenger seat forward and struggled my way into the front. ‘What about Claire Young?’

‘Ah yes, a woman favoured with a full and lustrous mons pubis. One moment.’ A soft bleep and the phone went silent.

Ruth stood on her top step, turned and waved at us, before letting herself in.

Soon as the building’s door swung shut again, Alice did a three-point turn. ‘We need to get some wine and beer, or should we just get beer, probably we should get both, I mean better safe than sorry, and-’

‘OK, OK: we’ll get some wine.’

‘Hello, are you still there? Sheila says the Tigerbalm pathologist did a rape kit. But, just in case the man’s an idiot, she’s done one too and sent it off along with the tissue samples and bloods. We should hear back in a few days. In the meantime I shall ask Sheila to unleash herself upon the old post-mortem reports.’

Why couldn’t it be like it was on the TV, where DNA and lab results only took fifteen minutes? ‘OK, let me know when they’re in.’ I hung up, before he said anything else that deserved a thumping.

The neon sign above the abandoned cash register buzzed and flickered as rain pelted the off-licence window. Bottles of violently coloured alcopops and minimum-unit-price booze lurked inside wire cages screwed to the wall, filling the six-foot gap between the front door and the short black counter that segregated the shop into two bits. Behind the counter, the whisky, wine, vodka, and beer were kept out of reach of the natives.

Alice opened her satchel and pulled out her Inside Man letters, placed them in a pile by the register. ‘While we’re waiting.’ The yellow highlighter came out to join it.

She streaked a fluorescent line across two-inches of scribbled handwriting.

I turned my back on the counter, leaned against it. ‘Henry thought he called himself “the Inside Man” because of stitching things inside the nurses. What if it’s not, though? What if it’s because he’s on the inside?’

‘Mmm?’ More searing yellow streaks.

‘What if he’s one of us?’

‘Mmmmm…’

‘What if he’s literally on the inside: screwing things up, falsifying evidence, burying the truth so we can’t catch him?’

‘Hmmm…’ A sigh. She tapped the plastic end of the highlighter against the paper. ‘Listen to this: “The panicked surge of her breathing makes my nerves sing. A choir of power and control…”’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘At least, I think it says “panicked surge” — could be almost anything.’

‘What about it?’

Wrinkles creased her forehead. ‘Not sure.’

Dear Lord, a two-word answer. That was a first.

She squeaked on another line of fluorescent yellow. ‘Doesn’t it seem a little verbose to you, like whoever wrote it was trying to make everything sound salacious, or like it was part of a book or something? All that imagery: the “panicked surge”, “choir of power”, “singing nerves”…’

‘So, he’s a pretentious nutter with literary delusions.’

‘Hmmmm…’ The highlighter picked out another sentence, then Alice stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth. ‘Have you ever read the letters the police got from Jack the Ripper? Some are definitely fakes, but the “Dear Boss” and the “From Hell” ones are the most plausible.’

Still no sign of the useless sod. The door at the back of the shop remained resolutely shut. ‘This is taking for ever.’

‘The “From Hell” letter goes: “Mr Lusk, Sor, I send you half the Kidne” — no “Y” — “I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise” — N.I.S.E. — “I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer, Signed Catch me when you can Mishter Liusk.” No punctuation: no commas, apostrophes, or full stops.’

‘For God’s sake.’ I rapped my walking stick on the counter, raised my voice to a shout. ‘Did you fall in and drown, or something?’

No response from the closed door.

Alice took her red biro and circled a couple of highlighted adverbs. ‘Anyway, the handwriting in the “From Hell” letter is nothing like the “Dear Boss” ones. Neither have any punctuation, but the “Dear Boss” one’s three hundred percent neater, and the spelling’s way better. Lots of people think the “Dear Boss” letters are genuine — because they describe events that you could only know if you were Jack, or on the investigation — but “From Hell” came with half a human kidney preserved in wine.’

‘Michelle used to get hers delivered from Tesco.’ I banged on the counter again. ‘Get a bloody shift on!’

‘They can’t both be from Jack the Ripper, can they? He goes from super-neat handwriting to badly spelled scrawl, and you can’t just pick up half a human kidney from the corner shop, so clearly that’s come from a very disturbed individual who’s probably killed and mutilated someone, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same person.’

‘Is there a point to this?’

The sound of a toilet flushing filtered out through the door at the back.

She circled another pair of words. ‘So what we have to ask ourselves is was “Dear Boss” the real Jack the Ripper and “From Hell” a copycat, or was it the other way around? Or were neither of them really him?’

‘Still not seeing how this helps.’

‘Just thinking out loud. “A choir of power and pain”… That’s how I’d put it. Power and pain.’

The back door opened and the guy left in charge of the shop lurched out, face pale beneath the short spiky haircut and designer stubble. He had one hand pressed against the middle button on his chunky cable-knit cardigan, cheeks puffed out, a black spike sticking out of his left earlobe. Donald’s name badge was squint, a gold star stuck to the plastic. ‘Sorry about that… You wanted half a dozen Cobra and some alcohol-free lager, right?’ He crossed to the shelves on the right and picked up a pair of six-packs. Placed them on the counter beside Alice’s letters. ‘God knows what I ate, but dear God…’ He rubbed at the button. ‘Anything else?’

She nodded. ‘Bottle of shiraz, a chardonnay — Australian if you’ve got it — and a bottle of Gordon’s. And some tonic.’

‘Right. Cool.’ Donald peered down at the photocopy with its whorls of red biro and streaks of yellow highlighter. ‘You see the documentary? I did it for my media studies dissertation. Some people think the hyperrealism of the re-enacted segments breaks the implicit contract of truth between director and viewer, but I think it represents a more fundamental inner truth by mirroring Laura Strachan’s emotional narrative.’ He pulled a little smile, waggled his head from side to side. ‘Got a two-one.’

I picked up the Cobra and tucked it under my arm. ‘Glad to see that’s working out for you.’

He shrugged. ‘Recession.’ A bottle of red and a bottle of white got dumped on the counter, followed by one of gin. ‘Most people just don’t understand that the documentary works on so many levels. Take the characters: they’re not just people, they function as fable archetypes. Laura Strachan is the Imprisoned Princess, Detective Superintendent Len Murray is the Troubled Knight, the psychologist Henry Forrester is the Venerable Mage, and Dr Frederic Docherty is the Wizard’s Apprentice, isn’t he?’ Donald took a step towards the chiller cabinet. ‘You want regular tonic, or diet?’

Alice slipped the letters back into her satchel. ‘Regular.’

‘He’s even got his own narrative arc, hasn’t he? From bumbling curly-haired sidekick to this slick TV personality in a suit, right? And we all know what Nietzsche says about staring into the abyss. Wouldn’t it be the perfect transformative actualization if it was classic Thomas Harris — the psychologist battles his patients’ inner monsters, but in real-life he’s the monster. You want a bottle or tins? Bit more expensive, but they don’t go flat as quick.’

‘Erm… OK, tins.’ She tilted her head to one side, staring at him as he got the tonic from the chiller cabinet. ‘So, you think Dr Frederic Docherty is a cannibal?’

‘Metaphorically — consuming his mentor’s knowledge and legacy to emerge reborn as a media celebrity.’ Donald returned with a box of six tiny tins. ‘And the Inside Man: he’s the Dragon. Lurking in the darkness, taking virgin sacrifices. Yes, I know they’re not actual virgins, but the analogy’s sound because he gets them pregnant with the dolls. Do you want to stick your card in the chip-and-pin thing?’

The brand-new microwave droned its electronic monotone in the corner of the kitchen while Shifty popped the top off a bottle of Holsten and passed it over, then opened a Cobra for himself. Clinked it against my lager and swigged back a couple of mouthfuls. ‘Ahhh…’ Then nodded at the bottle in my hand. ‘A soft drink’s one thing, but alcohol-free lager? Bit gay, isn’t it?’

‘You can talk.’

The working surface was littered with plastic carryout containers. Curries, rice, dals, side dishes, a silvered paper bag with garlic naan poking out of the top. A plastic bag of salad. Little polystyrene containers of dips and sauces.

I had a sip of the lager. Malty and hoppy and bitter. Five years on the wagon and it was like being eleven again, trying it for the first time and wondering what all the fuss was about. Should’ve just got some more Irn-Bru. ‘So, where does she live?’

Shifty peered through into the lounge, then lowered his voice. ‘Cullerlie Road, in Castleview? Victorian townhouse with private parking and big back garden. Mind that family where the dad stabbed them all to death in their sleep, then slit his throat in the bathroom? Just down the street from that.’

Tendrils of cumin and coriander reached out into the kitchen as Shifty pulled open the microwave door, before it went bleep.

‘Security?’

‘Bluelight special. Window locks and three-point UPVC door with deadlock.’ The containers in the microwave got replaced by another set. ‘According to my bloke, she’s got a pair of dogs too — Doberman-Alsatian cross. So I win.’

‘Need a couple of tasers then.’

Shifty sucked on his teeth as he programmed the microwave and set it going again. ‘No chance. They’re a lot stricter about that kind of thing since the merger. Could just pop the dogs, but … noisy. And bit of a shame too — not their fault their mistress is a bitch, is it?’

Alice stuck her head in from the lounge. ‘Who’s a bitch?’

‘Erm…’ He pulled on a frown. ‘We raided a bondage dungeon in the Wynd this morning. Shocking language off the woman running it.’

‘We about ready to eat? I’m starved.’

‘Just got the rice and naan to do.’

‘Great. I’ll set the table.’ She opened three drawers before she found the cutlery, then went back through.

‘How about pepper-spray then?’

He nodded. ‘That I can do. Been squirrelling it away for months: Andrew…’ Shifty cleared his throat. ‘Bastard was cheating on me. He’d come home reeking of Paco Rabanne, but he only ever wore Lacoste. Like I couldn’t tell the difference? Really?’ A shrug. Then Shifty stared down at his hands, the kitchen light reflecting off his bald head. ‘Was going to swap them over — you know, booby-trap his aftershave with it. Didn’t have the guts in the end. Didn’t want to confront him about it, in case he picked whoever it was over me. How pathetic is that?’

The microwave bleeped time.

I patted him on the shoulder. ‘He was an arsehole. And you were too good for him.’

‘You’re a lying bastard.’ A little smile curled the corner of Shifty’s mouth. ‘But I’ll take it.’

‘How about this — soon as we’ve dealt with Mrs K, we’ll pay him a visit with a baseball bat.’

The smile became a grin. ‘Deal.’

I swapped the containers in the microwave for the rice. Stopped with a finger on the controls. ‘One more thing: we’ll need a sedative. Something to keep Alice … comfortable in the car while we’re at-’

‘Nah, no way. You’re not taking her with you. Me, I don’t mind helping you kill the old bag, but Alice? No. You can’t.’

I reached down and pulled up my left trouser leg. Flashed the grey plastic ankle tag. ‘Don’t have any choice. If the two of us are more than a hundred yards apart, this’ll bring the full force of the law down on me like a ton of incompetent lard. She’s coming.’

Shifty started the microwave going again. ‘It’s not right. Alice-’

‘Will be fine. It’ll be clockwork: we drive over there… What?’

Shifty’s grimace turned into a blush. ‘Bit of a wrinkle: we need another car.’

‘What happened to the Mondeo? I thought you-’

‘I parked it round the corner, yesterday.’

Oh that was just brilliant. ‘You left it in Kingsmeath?’

‘Well, how was I supposed to know?’

‘It’s Kingsmeath!’

He picked at the label on his beer bottle. Stared at the floor. ‘Yeah.’

Deep breaths. OK… Not the end of the world. ‘We steal another car. Go over there, disable the alarm, in, stun the dogs, grab the murdering cow, out, woods, shallow grave, burn the car, home.

‘But what if-’

‘Nothing’s going wrong. Trust me.’

Tuesday