A Song for the Dying

50

Alice put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Ash, are you OK? Only you look like you’re about to strangle someone…’

Right.

I let go of the mouse. Flexed my hand a couple of times. Deep breath. ‘I’m fine.’

Next clip. Four rugby types in Oldcastle University sweatshirts, wolfing their way through a pile of macaroni pies, with a big digital counter in the background. The one with the biggest forehead wins, pumping his fists above his head and lording it over the other three with a big greasy grin.

‘OK, I’m bailing. Got things to see, people to do.’ On the chat screen, Sabir pointed a sausage finger at the lens. ‘Alice, get your arse down to London and I’ll show you how we do murder cases in the civilized world. And Ash — lighten up, eh? Take the night off. Bleeding crusade will still be there tomorrow.’ He gave a small salute. ‘Sabir, Lord of the Tech, signing off.’ And the window went black.

I logged off. Closed it down.

Alice wrapped her arms around my shoulders and squeezed. Kissed the top of my head. ‘He’s right. You need to relax.’

‘How?’ I took my mobile out. Placed it on the table. Picked it up again. ‘I want to phone Wee Free — find out if Shifty’s OK. But if I do, it’s just going to rub it in, isn’t it? That I haven’t found his daughter yet.’

‘You’re doing everything you can.’

‘Am I?’

‘… five, four, three, two, one, zero!’ The cordon of nurses whoop and cheer, jumping up and down as Ruth throws her arms in the air. Grinning. The ‘TURN MILES INTO SMILES!!!’ flutters behind her.

And cut.

Downstairs, the music was getting louder.

I hit play again.

Leaned forward and peered at the screen, scanning the faces in the crowd behind the nurses. None of them looked familiar. Well, other than Ruth and her friends. But there was something…

What?

Just a woman on a static bicycle, raising money to honour her friend. Blissfully unaware that her own life’s about to be ruined.

Footsteps thumped up the stairs, then the flat’s door clattered open and Rhona staggered to a halt, face stretched in a wide grin, breathing hard. Bottle of champagne clutched in her hand. ‘Guv? We’ve got him. We’ve got the bastard!’

Onscreen, Ruth pedals, knees pumping, sweat colouring the fabric of her T-shirt. Faces in the background cheer, smile, chat to one another. Music from the main stage, just audible under the countdown…

I sat up. ‘What, Docherty?’

Rhona thumped the champagne down on the table, beside the laptop. ‘You were right, Guv!’

‘… four, three, two, one, zero!’ Ruth throws her hands in the air. Turning miles into smiles.

Thank Christ. ‘They were at the caravan park?’

A frown. ‘What? No… We ran the ANPR tapes against his number plate like you said, and guess what? One dark-blue Volvo estate registered to Dr Frederic Docherty leaving the city limits heading north out of the city at ten-o-three p.m.’

‘Did he-’

‘So I got onto Aberdeen City and Dundee, told them to dig out Friday’s tapes and ANPR them from twenty-past ten onwards.’ Rhona paced up and down the floorboards, fingers digging through her lank hair. ‘He hits Aberdeen at half ten. And guess what: I got them to send me every reported crime in the city that night. Bunch of fights, couple of break-ins, two indecent assaults, one indecent exposure, and…’ Rhona pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket and held it out. ‘Ta-da.’

It was an incident report from half four in the morning. Someone had found a half-naked woman, dead and covered in blood, just off Midstocket Road. Only when the patrol car got there she wasn’t dead after all, just sedated. It wasn’t even her blood — it was some sort of artificial theatrical stuff. So they called an ambulance and got her wheeched off to the local A amp;E.

Alice appeared at the top of the stairs, holding her whisky against her chest. ‘Ash? What’s going on?’

Rhona licked her lips, raised her eyebrows. ‘Want to know the best bit?’ She pulled out something else — a print-out of a blurry photograph. ‘The guy who reported it took a photo on his mobile phone. Look familiar?’

A young woman lay on her back, in a hollow. Pale skin gleamed between the strips of black underwear. Dark-red theatrical blood covered her belly — making tracks down either side of her abdomen. Both arms up above her head, one leg twisted out to the side. Exactly the same as Holly Drummond.

I handed it to Alice. ‘He’s recreating the kills.’

She took the photo, frowned at it. ‘Why would he-’

‘And the coup de grâce?’ A grin burned across Rhona’s face. ‘They did a tox screen on the victim’s blood. Special rush job, because we told them what to look for.’

‘Thiopental Sodium?’

‘Thiopental Sodium.’

Alice passed the photo back. ‘Why would he recreate his own kills? He’s not trying to kill them, he’s-’

‘Isn’t it great?’ Rhona threw her arms wide. ‘We got him. And I bet she isn’t the only one either. I’ve got a call out to the rest of the country looking for any other women he’s attacked.’

I sat back in my chair. It was as if something had been sitting on my chest for a week and now it was… ‘No.’ I folded forward, scrubbed my hands across my face. ‘Bastard!’

‘Guv?’

‘Arrgh…’

‘Ash, are you OK?’

I dropped my hands. ‘He left Oldcastle just after ten. When did he get back?’

A frown, then Rhona checked her notebook. ‘Ten to four. Guv, I don’t-’

‘Laura Strachan went missing between eleven last night and three this morning. If he was up in Aberdeen drugging and stripping someone, he wasn’t down here abducting Laura Strachan and Ruth Laughlin.’ My palms clattered against the tabletop, making the laptop jitter. ‘DAMN IT!’

Rhona’s face scrunched, fists curled. ‘He didn’t take them.’ She kicked the other chair, sending it clattering over backwards. ‘We had him!’

There was a pause, then Alice twiddled with her hair. ‘He’s got an accomplice, that’s how he can be up molesting women in Aberdeen and abducting Ruth and Laura at the same time, someone working with him…’ Wrinkles formed in the gap between her eyebrows. ‘Someone he can control and manipulate, someone who thinks they’re connected and special and in love, when it’s really all about power… Someone local.’

Alice slipped out of the room, then the sound of feet thumped down the stairs. She was back two minutes later with her satchel. She tipped the contents out next to the laptop, grabbed the map and unfolded it. It was the one she’d been marking up — covered in red circles, each one covering a deposition site. ‘Think of it as a Venn diagram, the circles represent fifteen minutes’ travelling time, and where the areas intersect we’ve-’

‘These are all wrong.’ Rhona poked a finger just below Cowskillin and traced it along the dual carriageway. ‘He dumps them all at night, or the wee small hours, when the roads are quiet. You can get right across town in five minutes at two in the morning.’

Alice’s shoulders dipped. ‘Oh.’

Rhona pulled a pen from an inside pocket and drew an ‘X’ over Castle Hill Infirmary. Then another one up on Blackwall Hill. ‘Private hospital. And there’s that old World War Two sanatorium here…’ An ‘X’ marked the Bellows. ‘And a Victorian loony bin on Albert Road.’ She clicked her fingers at me, showing off bitten fingernails. ‘Guv, where else? Anywhere there’s likely to be surgical facilities.’

‘Some of the bigger GP practices will do small procedures.’

‘Right.’ She made more marks.

Probably useless, but what else did we have? That and a pair of barely audible audio files.

The door thunked open again and Huntly paused on the threshold. Straightened his tie. Gin and tonic in one hand. The words were slightly soft at the edges, but not enough to count as slurred. ‘So this is where you’re all squirreling away, is it?’

I played the first audio file again, volume cranked up full. There was the ringtone again: distorted, crackly, and — according to Sabir — available on millions of mobiles. It was repetitious, going up and down, but the quality was too poor to make out the actual tune.

Huntly loomed over Rhona and Alice at the map. ‘His Royal Highness the Great Bear has sent me to fetch everyone. For lo, la pizza è arrivata.’ He looked at me. ‘Or for those of you with a less classical bent, “grub’s up”.’

Surgical facilities and a ringtone.

I clicked on M-Jordan.wav and set it playing again. The audio file hissed and crackled in its window, next to the video file I’d been watching. Frozen at the final frame: Ruth Laughlin, arms in the air. Turning miles into smiles.

Why that file? Why keep going back to it? What was wrong with it?

Huntly moved to the other side of the laptop. Made shooing gestures. ‘Well, come on then, don’t want the pizzas getting cold, do we?’

I set the audio playing again. Hiss. Crackle. A short smear of music, so faint it was barely there.

Huntly sniffed. Then picked up my notebook. It was open at the last page, where I’d been scribbling down points while talking to Sabir. ‘I wasn’t aware you were into campanology, Mr Henderson.’

I snatched it back. ‘What did I say about being a dick?’

‘Refreshingly challenging, remember?’ He pointed at the notebook. ‘“Cambridge Quarters”.’

‘Don’t you have someone else you could be annoying?’

‘Here’s a little fact for you. Did you know that Big Ben plays a variation called “Westminster Quarters”? Four bars of four notes to denote each quarter hour. Hence the name.’

Ruth Laughlin frozen for all time. Arms up in triumph. The timestamp for the last frame unblinking in the corner, ‘14:13:42’. A cordon of nurses cheering her on. Happy faces arrayed behind her…

Oh. Shit.

Huntly crossed his arms and smiled at the damp-stained ceiling. ‘I remember I once had to test two hundred mini Big Bens. An enterprising group of Manchester businessmen had mixed heroin and plaster of Paris, with a handful of coffee grounds thrown in to mask the smell.’

Four bars of four notes.

It wasn’t a ringtone.

I pushed back my chair and stood. Grabbed my cane. ‘Get Jacobson, now.’

Alice tugged at my sleeve. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I know where they are.’