The Coffinmaker’s Garden

2

Bloody potholes.

The car lurched from one to the next, sending gouts of water splashing up from the wheel arches as the windscreen wipers squeak-thunked their way back and forth, fighting a losing battle against the pummelling rain. Streetlights made septic halos in the downpour, doing almost nothing to hold back the darkness. Half a dozen of them, then nothing but the angry coal-black sweep of the North Sea.

I grabbed the handle above the passenger door as the wee Suzuki jeep thumped through yet another pothole. ‘Are you aiming for these things?’

Alice hunched closer to the steering wheel, squinting out through the greasy arc of semi-clear glass. ‘Should be somewhere around here...’ She’d bundled herself up in a black padded jacket, a pair of rainbow-coloured fingerless gloves poking out of the too-long sleeves. Curly brown hair pulled back in a bun that jiggled and bounced in time with the jeep’s potholing adventures.

Thump. Lurch. Bump.

‘Only, it’s OK if you don’t hit every single one of them.’

‘Is that it down there?’ She freed a hand for long enough to point at yet another post-war semi in unappealing shades of beige and brown. The only thing that distinguished it from its neighbours was every single light in the place seemed to be on, and it had an a snot-green rattletrap Fiat Panda parked outside.

‘Still say this is a waste of time.’

‘But we—’

‘Supposed to be catching a child-killer, not sodding about with some half-baked Misfit Mob is-it-or-isn’t-it case.’ I stretched my right leg out, rotating the ankle, setting it clicking. Always the same when the weather turned — scar tissue throbbed right the way through my foot, like some sadist was jabbing a soldering iron into the bones. ‘What’s the point of having uniform officers if you don’t give them all the pointless jobs?’

Alice parked behind the Panda. Killed the engine. Sat there as the storm rocked our jeep on its springs. ‘It’s only temporary.’ A shrug. ‘Besides, it was this or attend the post mortem, and I really don’t want to watch another wee boy getting eviscerated.’

Fair point.

‘Ash?’ She cast a sideways glance across the car at me. ‘Have you thought about what you want to do tomorrow? You know, as it’s—’

‘Can we not talk about this right now?’

‘It’s perfectly natural to feel—’

‘I’m fine.’ Which was a lie. ‘And we’ve got a job to do.’ I clicked off my seatbelt and turned, reaching into the back of the car. Ruffled the fur between Henry’s ears. ‘You look after the jeep, OK?’ He gazed up at me with his gob hanging open, wee pink tongue lolling out, nose all shiny and black like a fruit pastille. ‘Bite anyone who tries to steal it.’

Alice groaned. ‘Stop changing the subject. Tomorrow’s a—’

‘Don’t interrupt: I’m arming the Scottie Dog Vehicle Defence System.’ Henry’s head got another pat, his grin widened. ‘Who’s a vicious little monster? You are. Yes, you are.’

‘But—’

‘For a forensic psychologist, you’re really bad at picking up on the subtle signals people give out, aren’t you?’

A bright smile. ‘Oh, I pick them up fine, I’m just choosing to ignore them. For your own good.’

‘Lucky me.’ I grabbed my walking stick from the footwell. ‘Come on: we’ll do our civic duty then go grab a pizza or something.’ The wind tried to rip the door from my hand as I opened it — stinging needles of rain jabbing into my face.

Alice clambered out the other side, head buried in the periscope hood of her coat. ‘Can we have a sitty-inny instead of takeaway for a change?’

‘Got a child-killer to catch, remember?’ Hurpling up the puddled driveway to the front door, where a small wooden overhang offered almost no shelter from the rain. The guttering was broken on one side, letting loose a waterfall to splash down the grubby harling.

Her voice took on a distinct whiny tone. ‘I’m tired of everything we eat coming out of greasy cardboard boxes. Or plastic tubs.’

‘Stop moaning and ring the bell.’

She did, leaning on the button till a harsh drrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnnnnnnnnnnnnng sounded on the other side of the wasp-eaten door. ‘Forgotten what plates and cutlery look like.’

‘I think we should take another look at Steven Kirk. Haul him in and rattle his dentures till something falls out.’

‘And it’s not exactly healthy, is it? When did we last have a salad?’

‘I’m not buying his whole, “I was caring for my dying mother at the time” shtick. Once a nonce, always a nonce.’

‘Or broccoli!’ Alice made a thin keening squeaky sound from deep within her hood. ‘I miss broccoli.’

‘Not as if he couldn’t...’

The door swung open and a greasy-looking bloke with floppy brown hair, a cheap suit, and ginger-pube beard scowled out at me. ‘Took your time.’ One of his eyes didn’t quite point in the same direction as the other, as if he’d put it in squint.

‘DC Watt. Nice to see your winning personality hasn’t deserted you.’

A grunt, then he turned on his heel and marched down the hallway. The move showed off a palm-sized bald patch at the back of his head, complete with thick U-shaped scar, the skin dented inward around it, as if a section of his skull was recessed. ‘Mother’s in the kitchen.’

Alice followed me inside and unzipped her padded jacket, revealing yet another exhibit from her black-and-white-stripy-top collection, teeny red Converse trainers squeaking against the damp linoleum as we made our way into a steamed-up room at the back of the house, redolent with the welcoming scent of mince and tatties.

A heavily pregnant woman sat at the table, with a small boy on her knee, holding him close as he made a pig’s arse of colouring a triceratops in horrible shades of puce and turquoise.

Mother’s wide back was turned towards us, frizzy Irn-Bru hair spilling across the shoulders of her black police-issue fleece. She’d pulled the sleeves up, exposing two large pale forearms clarted with tattoos of roses and thistles. ‘And you’re sure they weren’t animal bones, or something like that?’

The pregnant woman rolled her eyes. ‘I should be graduating with a degree in forensic anthropology tomorrow, but I drank too much prosecco at my birthday party and here we are.’ Pointing at her swollen belly. ‘I know human anatomy, and those bones were definitely human.’

DC Watt cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, Guv, but that’s the LIRU lot here.’ Pronouncing ‘LIRU’ as if it were a venereal disease.

Mother turned and raised an eyebrow at us. ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Ash Henderson. Returned to the land of the living?’

I nodded back. ‘Detective Inspector. You know Dr McDonald?’

Alice scampered forward like an excitable spaniel, hand out for the shaking. ‘Actually, we haven’t met, DI Malcolmson, but please call me “Alice” — I’ve heard a lot about you, it’s a pleasure, and don’t worry, we’re not here to take over your case, we’ve only come because you said you needed our help, well, probably not our help, but Ash’s help anyway and I came along because he can’t really drive, what with his foot and everything.’ All delivered in one long machinegun breath. ‘And I was wondering about your nickname, why do people call you “Mother”, is that because you’re a nurturing influence, which I know is a repressive societal stereotype imposed on the female psyche by the repressive forces of a dictatorial patriarchy, “oh women are so nurturing and soft, they can’t possibly compete with men,” but sometimes that really is the case, isn’t it, well the nurturing bit, not the competition thing, and is that a pot of tea, I’d love a cuppa if there’s one going spare?’

Mother’s eyebrow went up even further. ‘Is she always like this?’

‘More than you could possibly believe.’ I stuck my hands in my pockets. ‘Now, can we get this over with? Alice and I have a child-murdering...’ my eyes flitted to the small boy, staring up at me from his badly coloured dinosaur, ‘naughty man to catch.’

‘I dare say you do.’ Mother waved at Watt. ‘John, be a dear and stay with Miss Compton. Mr Henderson and I need to go check something.’ And with that, she was squeezing her way past me and out into the hall. Hauling on a large wax Barbour jacket. Pausing at the front door. ‘You don’t mind making a wee detour before we get down to it, do you?’ She didn’t bother giving me time to answer that. ‘No? Good. Come on then.’

She flipped her hood up and stepped out into the howling gale. Round shoulders hunched against the wind as she picked her way down the path, between the puddles.

Alice pouted at me. ‘Do you think I made a bad first impression there, because I think I made a bad first impression and I really didn’t want—’

‘No point us both getting soaked. You stay here with DC Watt and the witness. Maybe, if you’re lucky, she’ll give you some mince and tatties. On proper plates. With cutlery.’

‘Be careful, OK?’

‘Promise.’ The horrible weather wrapped itself around me like a fist as I limped after Mother. Down the path and out onto the pockmarked tarmac. Struggling to keep up. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Well, we can hardly take a civilian’s word for it, can we? Even one who almost has a degree in forensic anthropology.’ She pulled out a torch, sending its beam sweeping across the gardens to either side as we made our way towards the end of the road. Raising her voice over the howling wind. ‘We used to come here when I was a wee girl. Every Easter, Mum and Dad would take a cottage down by the beach and we’d play in the dunes and build sandcastles and chase other people’s dogs.’ She stepped over a small picket fence and scuffed her way through wind-whipped clumps of yellowing grass. ‘I remember Clachmara was really pretty, till the old part fell in the sea. Still, that’s climate change for you, isn’t it?’

She came to a halt at a line of chain-link fencing panels. Pursed her lips as she frowned at the gap between two of the segments — pulled tight against a padlocked chain — then down at herself, then back at the gap again. ‘Somehow, I don’t think this is going to work.’

‘A pregnant woman managed to squeeze through, remember?’

‘Not this bit, she didn’t. And besides, you’re in a rush to get back to catching your child-murdering naughty man, remember?’

For God’s sake...

‘Fine: give me the torch.’

I forced my way through to the other side, following the circle of white as it writhed through the long grass, leaving her in darkness.

‘Take photographs, we need evidence!’

Rain soaked through my trouser legs, making the cold wet fabric stick to my skin. Seeped through the shoulders of my jacket. Ran down my face and the back of my neck. ‘“Oh, it’ll be a quick job,” he said, “a simple hand-holding exercise,” he said, “in and out in a jiffy,” he said.’

And on I went, following the torchlight. Limping and stumbling through the tussocky remains of someone’s garden, grass dragging at my walking stick with pale wet tentacles. The house itself was reduced to a single gable end, the rest of it had been ripped away, leaving a jagged line of cliff face with the North Sea roaring beyond.

Jesus, this was bleak.

A gust of wind shoved me back a couple of paces. Punched another fistful of rain into my face.

Sod this for a game of police officers.

The torch’s beam slithered along the boundary between here and oblivion. Off to the left, the near-vertical cliff had given way: a thick spill of rock and earth that ran down into the battering black waves. That would be where the fishing boat had disappeared.

Poor sods.

Waves crashed against the ramp of fallen headland, tearing it away with foaming teeth.

Its upper slopes reached down from the garden opposite. The house sat about a dozen feet back from the edge: a detached bungalow in sagging greys and manky browns. They’d tacked a wooden garage on the side closest to the sea, its up-and-over door hanging squint.

I slid the light across the exposed slab of earth. Faint glimmers of white shone back at me. Yup, those definitely looked like bones.

First couple of snaps on my phone came out as nothing but wobbly blurs, its flash nowhere near strong enough to illuminate anything, even with the torch’s help. The video setting was slightly better, zoomed in full, footage jerking about as wind tore at my back.

Looked as if our heavily pregnant friend was right — what loomed out of the black soil was definitely human. A pair of empty eye sockets stared at me from a skull, tilted to one side, the jaw missing. Then another thumping from the North Sea sent a chunk of dark earth peeling off, taking the skull with it, tumbling and bouncing down into the crashing waves.

A small rumble sounded beneath me, and the garden I was standing in lost another foot of mud and grass.

Yeah, maybe not the best of ideas to hang about here any longer.

Hurry back to the fence line and through to the relative safety of the storm-battered road.

Mother peered out at me from her hood. ‘Well?’

‘One hundred percent human.’

Her shoulders dipped. ‘Sod. Why couldn’t it have been a tasteless hoax? Or a stupid misunderstanding? Maybe a buried pet, or something?’

‘Never mind, leave it a couple of hours and it’ll all have fallen into the sea anyway.’

‘I knew this one was a poisoned chalice soon as I saw it. But I couldn’t go home early when everyone else did, could I? Couldn’t leave it for the nightshift to deal with. No, I had to be all stoic and dedicated.’ She sagged. Huffed out a long sad breath. ‘Take it from me, Mr Henderson, never ever answer the office phone two minutes before your shift ends. It’s always a disaster.’ Deep breath. Then a nod. ‘Suppose we’d better get Scene Examination Branch down here. Pathologist, Procurator Fiscal, search teams...’

Wind howled through the chain-link, sending us lurching sideways until we leaned into it.

‘Good luck with that.’ I gave her the torch back. ‘Now, any chance we can get on with the reason I’m actually here, while there’s still some of me that’s not drenched?’

‘Sure you don’t want to hang around and help?’ Pointing the beam at the crappy green Fiat Panda parked outside the pregnant not-quite-qualified forensic anthropologist’s house. ‘I’ve got biscuits in the car.’

‘Still got a child-killer to catch.’ No one ever listened, did they?

‘Can’t blame a girl for trying.’ Mother swung the torch around, shining it across the street at the last house on this side of the fence, the one next door to where the body was buried. A semi-detached with sagging guttering and a lichen-acned roof. An old blue Renault rusting away by the kerb and a filthy caravan in the driveway. A light in the living room window. ‘Shall we?’

‘Still don’t see why you couldn’t have done this without me.’

‘Because Helen MacNeil won’t talk to me. And she won’t talk to John. And when I sent a uniform round to try, she came this close,’ holding up two fingers, millimetres apart, ‘to making him cry. Control says you and Helen have history, so maybe she’ll talk to you. What with your overabundance of charm and everything.’

Sarcastic sod.

Besides, the kind of history Helen MacNeil and I had wasn’t exactly the good kind.

I followed Mother over to the house. The caravan acted as a windbreak, groaning on its springs as the storm pushed and shoved into the other side.

She leaned on the bell for a second or five, then squatted down and levered the letterbox open. ‘Helen? Helen, it’s Flora, can you come to the door please?’

No reply.

She tried again. ‘Helen? Hello, can you hear me?’

‘Can we stop pussyfooting about?’ I whacked the head of my walking stick against the door, three times, nice and hard. Hauled in a deep breath. ‘HELEN MACNEIL, POLICE! OPEN UP OR I’M KICKING THIS BLOODY DOOR IN!’

A tut from Mother. ‘The epitome of diplomacy, as ever.’

Three more whacks. ‘I’M NOT KIDDING, HELEN, OPEN THIS DOOR OR IT’S—’

The door swung open and a middle-aged woman scowled out at us. ‘All right, all right.’ The years hadn’t been kind to Helen MacNeil, each one of them carved into her heart-shaped face in deep spidery wrinkles. She hadn’t lost any of her bulk, though: broad of shoulder and thick of bicep, wearing a black muscle shirt with a pentagram and goat’s head on it. Short cropped grey hair. A long sharp nose that had been broken two or three times since we’d last met.

Helen clearly didn’t like me staring. ‘What the hell are you looking at?’

Mother shuffled closer, trying on her big dimply smile. ‘I know you weren’t keen on talking to us before, Helen, but it’s really important we—’

‘Wasn’t asking you. Him.’ Pointing. ‘The lump with the limp.’ Her chin came up. ‘Think I don’t know who you are?’

I nodded. ‘Helen, you’re looking well.’

Her eyes narrowed, the wrinkles around them deepening. ‘Eleven years in HMP Bastarding Oldcastle — I missed my granddaughter’s birth because of you!’

‘No, Helen, you missed your granddaughter’s birth because you battered Neil Stringer’s head in with a pickaxe handle. And you’d have been out after eight years, if you hadn’t chibbed Ruth Anderson in the prison library too.’

‘Hmmph... Bitch was asking for it.’

‘Sure she was.’ I jerked my head towards next door, on the other side of the chain-link fencing. ‘You heard about the body?’

‘Alleged body.’ Helen folded her thick arms, muscles bulging through the freckled skin. ‘Fat Girl here said it was—’

‘Who are you calling fat?’ Mother pulled herself up to her full height, shoulders back, considerable chest out. ‘I’ll have you know—’

‘—don’t see what it’s got to do with me, and—’

‘—because big bones are nothing to be ashamed of! It’s—’

I thumped my cane on the door again. ‘ALL RIGHT, THAT’S ENOUGH! Both of you.’

Mother shuffled her feet. Turned her reddened face away. ‘Not fat.’

Helen shrugged. Looked at the ground. Cleared her throat. Didn’t say anything.

Better.

‘There’s nothing “alleged” about the body, it’s real.’

‘Still don’t see what it’s got to do with me.’

‘With your reputation? A dead body miraculously turns up next door: you really think we’re not going to connect the dots?’

The chin came up again. ‘No comment.’

‘Just like old times.’ I took a step back and made a show of examining the roof, then the walls on either side. ‘Place looks ready to fall down round your ears. Crime really didn’t pay for you, did it? What, they didn’t have a retirement package waiting when you got out of prison? A nice golden handshake to say thank you for keeping your mouth shut?’

‘No comment.’

‘Dropped you like a radioactive jobbie, didn’t they? And I thought loyalty was supposed to go both ways?’

Her eyes hardened. ‘No comment.’

‘There you are, sent down for killing Neil Stringer, on their orders, and I bet they didn’t even bother picking you up from prison when you finally got released. Bet they stopped taking your calls. Bet they ghosted you. Like you were nothing to them.’

‘No — comment!’ Both words squeezed out through gritted teeth.

‘Stuck out here, waiting for your craphole house to fall into the sea. An irrelevant, useless old lady.’

Helen stiffened, as if she was about to take a swing... then licked her lips. Blinked. Let her shoulders drop. ‘I know what you’re doing.’

Mother huffed out a breath. ‘I’m glad someone does.’

‘You think if I kick off, you can do me for assaulting a police officer. Drag me down the nick and fit me up for whoever got buried over there.’ Pointing in the vague direction of next door’s garden. ‘Well I’m not stupid and you can bugger right off. Go on, and take your fat bitch with you.’

Mother’s eyes bulged. ‘There’s no need to be so rude!’ Fists curled, trembling.

A voice peeped up at my shoulder: ‘Hello?’ And there was Alice, slipping into the gap between Mother and Helen MacNeil, the hood on her jacket thrown back, nose a Rudolf-shade of pink. She had Henry’s lead in one hand, the other held out for Helen to shake. ‘I’m Dr McDonald, but you can call me Alice if you like, because it’s easier when everyone’s not standing on ceremony, isn’t it, and I like your T-shirt — is that Crowley’s Ghost, I used to listen to them all the time, there’s a lovely urgency to proper death metal, isn’t there — anyway I was taking Henry for a walk and I heard raised voices and thought maybe I could help?’

Helen MacNeil stared at her.

Alice handed Henry’s leash to me. ‘Excellent, right, now: Ash, DI Malcolmson, could you give me and... Helen, isn’t it? Yes, so if you can give us a moment — if that’s OK with you, Helen — and we can have a chat, you and me, two girls together, and see if we can’t find a way to be all friendly about things and really work as a team, right?’ She turned a full-strength smile on all of us. ‘Great, let’s do it!’ Clapping her hands as she advanced on the door.

Helen’s face went a bit pale as she backed away, looking as if an articulated lorry was bearing down on her, but Alice followed her in anyway.

Thunk, the door closed behind them, leaving Mother, Henry, and me outside in the rain.

A shuffle of feet, then Mother cleared her throat. ‘Are you sure your wee friend’s safe in there? Like you said, Helen MacNeil’s reputation isn’t exactly—’

‘You mean the organised crime, loan-sharking, enforcement beatings, general mob violence, and involvement in at least three murders, two of which we couldn’t pin on her?’

‘That kind of thing, yes.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not Alice I’m worried about. Helen MacNeil doesn’t stand a chance.’

3

‘Well, this is nice, isn’t it?’ Alice patted the arm of the saggy couch she was sitting in, smiling around at a living room that had all the warmth and charm of a decomposing corpse.

In addition to the two horrible couches; horrible armchair; horrible painting of a wee girl holding a balloon, above the horrible china dogs on the mantelpiece; horrible Anaglypta wallpaper; and horrible brown carpet; a large multigym took up a good third of the space. But unlike any normal person, the stainless-steel bars and weights weren’t draped with washing and furred with dust. The thing shone, the scent of metal and WD40 almost strong enough to mask an underlying grubby taint of mildew.

God knew how she’d done it, but Alice hadn’t just managed to get us all invited inside, she’d even talked Helen MacNeil into producing four mugs of tea. And a couple of biscuits for Henry, too.

The wee lad sat at my feet, crunching away on his Hobnobs, tail thumping against the armchair’s side, as Helen wriggled backwards along a black leather bench until her head and shoulders were under the metal rod of a loaded barbell. Hissing as she lifted it off its metal pegs and bench-pressed what had to be about sixty kilos.

‘So, Helen,’ Mother had a sip of tea, grimaced, then put the mug back on the coffee table, ‘if you had nothing to do with the body buried next door, who did?’

‘See, the trouble with most people is they bulk up in prison for protection.’ The weights went up and down again. ‘No one messes with you when you’re solid muscle.’ Another rep. ‘Then they get out and it all turns to flab.’

‘Tell us about your next-door neighbour...’ She checked her notebook. ‘Mr Gordon Smith?’

Another rep. ‘No comment.’

Alice leaned forward. ‘Please, Helen, I know it can’t be easy, helping the police after everything that’s happened, but if—’

‘You useless buggers didn’t help me when our Leah went missing, so why should I?’ The barbell made another trip. ‘My granddaughter disappears and you tossers didn’t even bother your arses sending someone round.’

I looked at Mother; she just shrugged.

OK.

Good to see Oldcastle Division was every bit as useless as it’d always been. You’d think any competent police officer would have run a PNC search on someone before trying to interview them.

‘How long ago was this?’

Helen clunked the barbell back on its support pegs. ‘Don’t pretend you care. None of you police bastards ever do.’

‘We’re not police. Well, DI Malcolmson is. Alice and I work for the Lateral Investigative and Review Unit: think the A-Team meets New Tricks, only with civilian experts bailing the local cops out when they cock stuff up. Like this.’

That got me a slightly outraged stare from Mother.

Tough. Truth hurts.

‘So when did Leah go missing?’

‘Friday, ninth of October. Walked out of here to go shopping, never came back.’

What was that... five weeks ago? So too recent to be our skeletonised remains. Well, unless he boiled her down, of course.

‘How old was she?’

Helen wriggled out from under the bar and sat up, wiping the sweat from her face with a holey tea towel. ‘Eighteen. Which means your lot did bugger all.’

‘Eighteen’s old enough to make her own decisions.’

‘Leah wouldn’t run away! She wouldn’t do that to me. Not after her mother...’ A deep breath. Silence settled into the room as Helen wiped the tea towel across her eyes again. ‘She wouldn’t.’

That was the thing about missing people, though — no one they left behind ever believed their loved one was unhappy enough to disappear without a word.

‘OK.’ Trying to sound like I actually cared. ‘You give me her details and I’ll see what I can do.’

Alice sat forward. ‘You should get a tracker app on Leah’s phone. For peace of mind. I’ve got one on Ash’s, haven’t I, Ash?’

‘Can we not do this, right now?’ I turned back to Helen. ‘I promise I’ll chase up whoever’s looking for your granddaughter, OK?’

A nod. Another breath. ‘Gordon Smith was the best neighbour you could ever have. Him and his wife, Caroline, were like grandparents to my Sophie. Then when she... After that, they looked after Leah for me, while I was inside.’ Helen picked at the holes in her tea towel. ‘Broke her heart when Caroline died. Bowel cancer, four years ago. Took eighteen months.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘Gordon? End of September, the council come round and condemn his house. Poor old sod’s been living there for fifty-six years and some spotty Herbert with a clipboard tells him he’s got three weeks to get out. Oh, and not only does he get bugger-all compensation, he’s got to pay for their contractors to tear down his home and ship it off to landfill somewhere? How’s that fair?’

‘Yes, but where is he?’

She draped the tea towel over the pull-up bar. ‘Gordon wouldn’t hurt a fly. Everybody loved him and Caroline. And how do you know your dead body wasn’t there when they moved in? Got nothing to do with him.’

‘Indulge me, Helen: where’s your sainted next-door neighbour?’

A pause as she frowned at me.

‘And before you try “no comment” again, I’m tired, I’m soaked through, and I’m in no mood to fanny about. Where — is — he?’

‘His brother’s got a croft on the Black Isle. Gordon said something about staying there till he figured out what to do.’

‘There we go, that wasn’t difficult, was it?’ I stood. Nodded at Mother. ‘And that concludes our hand-holding duties. You can take it from here.’

‘Actually,’ Alice put her hand up, ‘if he had to pay the council to tear his house down, why is it still...?’ Pointing at the wall nearest next door.

‘He told them to stuff their landfill charge. Sixteen grand? They try getting sixteen grand out of me, I’ll break every bone in their bodies.’

Another grimace, then Mother levered herself to her feet. ‘Helen, if Gordon Smith was like a grandad to your girls, any chance you’ve still got the keys to his house?’ Frown. ‘And you wouldn’t happen to have a pair of bolt cutters, would you?’

‘Are we certain this is a good idea?’ Alice turned on the spot, breath making a trail of white that glowed in the light of her phone’s torch app. ‘I mean a hundred percent, definitely, shaky-boots, cast-iron certain, because it feels like a really risky thing to be inside a condemned house on the edge of a crumbling cliff during a massive storm...’

Mother’s real torch drifted across the pile of furniture heaped up in the living room. Didn’t look as if Gordon Smith had bothered taking any of his stuff with him. When he left, he heaved it all in here and left it in a big mound of sofas, sideboards, a double bed, a Welsh dresser, dining table and chairs, medicine cabinet, spare bed, wardrobes, what looked like a wicker laundry basket. All piled up, higgledy-piggledy, as if he’d been planning an indoor bonfire but forgotten to set fire to it.

Rain crackled against the window, no sign of anything through the dirty glass but blackness. As dark outside as it was in.

‘What if the house falls down while we’re here?’ Alice huddled closer as wind screeched across the roof. ‘Or the whole thing ends up in the sea?’

‘You’re right. Here,’ I held out Henry’s lead, ‘take the wee lad and go wait in the car.’

That got me a pout. ‘Bit sexist. Just because I’m a woman, I have to go wait in the car?’

‘It’s not because you’re a woman, it’s because you’re a whinge. And DI Malcolmson’s a woman, aren’t you, DI Malcolmson?’

‘Last time I checked...’ She opened one of the wardrobes — a heavy mahogany job that lay at forty-five degrees, propped up on the back of a dusty floral sofa — and peered inside. ‘Women’s clothes. The dead wife’s?’

‘And I’m serious: go wait in the car.’

Alice shook her head. ‘If it’s safe enough for you, it’s safe enough for me.’ Then raised her fist. ‘Smash the patriarchy.’ And followed Mother out into the hall again.

Why did every single woman in my life have to be a card-carrying nutjob?

Ah well, can’t say I didn’t try.

My walking stick made hollow thunking noises as we did a quick sweep of the house.

Bathroom: empty, a darker square of wallpaper where that medicine cabinet had sat above the avocado-coloured toilet. Master bedroom: nothing left but the carpet. Spare bedroom: same again. Dining room: more nothing. Kitchen: empty, all the doors hanging open on the units, exposing bare shelves. A small utility room led off it: either the washing machine and chest freezer were too heavy to shift, or Gordon Smith didn’t think they’d be flammable enough for his bonfire that never got lit.

I levered the lid up on the freezer: better safe than sorry...

Nothing but a thin layer of rancid greasy water. No dead bodies in sight.

Mother pointed her torch down the far end of the dog-legged corridor. ‘You want to try that one?’

Alice crept over, turned the handle — the howling wind got a lot louder. She stuck her head and her phone arm in through the gap for a moment, then shoved the door shut again. ‘Garage. Nothing in there, either.’

‘Hmph.’

So, that was all the doors taken care of, but there had to be an attic, right?

My phone’s torch wasn’t half as good as Alice’s but I played it around the hall ceiling anyway. ‘There we go.’ A hatch, set into the plasterboard, about six foot in from the front door. ‘Alice, can you grab a chair from the living room?’

‘Urgh... You know the only thing that’ll be up there is spiders, don’t you? Spiders and dust and fibreglass insulation, all itchy and sneezy and creepy-crawly, so bags I don’t have to be the one who goes up there.’

‘What, you expect the man with a walking stick and buggered foot to do it?’

Mother shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me: they never make these hatches big enough for normal-sized people.’

Alice slumped. Groaned. Then scuffed her way into the lounge and sulked back out again dragging one of the wooden dining-room chairs behind her. Thumped it down beneath the hatch. ‘It’s because I’m a girl, isn’t it?’

‘Up you go, Monkey Girl.’

‘Should’ve gone and waited in the car.’ She clambered up onto the seat, wobbled a bit, then shoved at the hatch, forcing it up on squealing hinges. ‘If I get spiders in my hair, I’m suing Police Scotland for mental cruelty, PTSD, and punitive damages.’

‘Stop milking it.’

Another slump, then Alice grabbed the edges of the hatch and pulled herself up into the attic. Sat there, black jeans and red shoes dangling in the mildewed air over our heads.

‘Anything?’

Her muffled voice filtered down from above. ‘Filthy up here. And cold! And... Aaaahhh... Aaaaaahhh...’ A high-pitched squeaky sneeze. ‘Dusty! Horribly dusty.’

‘What about boxes, or suitcases, anything like that?’

‘No, it’s all dust and fibreglass insulation and SPIDERS! OH GOD, THEY’RE SODDING HUGE!’ Her legs kicked and squirmed, then she dropped from the hatch, arms at full stretch, hands clinging to the edges, feet swinging as the chair clattered over onto its back. ‘AAAARGH!’ Alice let go and crashed to the hall carpet in a tangle of limbs and chair legs. Then lay there, making spitting noises as she wiped at her face.

‘Well, that was dignified.’

‘I hate you both.’

Mother’s face soured. ‘That’s that, then. No further forward than we were half an hour ago.’

Alice accepted my hand, scrambling to her feet and scowling. ‘Honestly, they were this big!’ Holding her hands about a foot apart. ‘Now can we get out of this spider-infested horror show before the house falls down?’

Might as well.

‘Come on then.’ I chucked the chair back into the living room where it bounced off the pile, setting loose a little mahogany avalanche of furniture. That medicine cabinet crashed into the floor, the doors flying open as the mirrors shattered; a wardrobe keeled over, jammed against the double bed; and a coat stand timbered down, the curled crown snapping off as it battered into the rug. BOOOM...

Henry jumped about two feet in the air, scuttling away from the living room, hackles up. Barking at the pile of furniture.

The echoes faded away, but the pall of dust — kicked up by the falling pieces — lingered in the cold dark air.

Hmm...

Mother wafted a hand in front of her face, spluttering the dust away. ‘We’ll get a lookout request sorted, see if N Division can find the brother’s croft and get Gordon Smith picked up.’ She opened the front door and a scream of wind shoved its way into the house, bringing with it the hissing roar of the sea as it gnawed on the headland only thirty or forty feet away.

Alice followed her out, muttering about spiders and lawsuits.

Leaving Henry and me alone in the darkness, with nothing but the weakening light from my phone for company.

I raised the rubber tip of my walking stick and jabbed it down again, into the hall carpet. It made the same hollow thumping noise it had when we’d searched the place. Henry barked at that too.

Might be nothing, but still...

The hallway was completely carpeted, as were both bedrooms and dining room. Linoleum down in the bathroom, kitchen, and utility room. Which left two options.

Down to the end of the corridor — shouldering open the door through to the garage. A row of empty shelves ran along the rear wall, a pegboard opposite the door, with black marker outlines where tools were meant to be. Spattered spray paint making a crime-scene outline of a workbench that wasn’t there any more. A concrete floor, littered with leaves blown in through the sagging up-and-over door. With the front door open, the wind whipped straight through the house, sparking the fallen leaves up into an angry ballet of whirling greys.

Hard not to picture the waves crashing against the cliff, less than a dozen feet away. Eating them.

Henry looked up at me, a whine rattling at the back of his throat.

Yeah. Good point.

I got out of there fast and shoved the door shut again, killing the wind tunnel.

One place left.

By the time I’d returned to the living room, Alice was standing in the hall, arms folded, crease between her eyebrows, mouth turned down. ‘Can we please go now? Before the house falls into the sea?’

‘Give me a minute.’

She took the proffered lead and frowned down at the wee man. ‘Your dad’s got a death wish.’

The daft hairy sod sat on his bum, tail wagging as he gazed at her with his gob hanging open.

‘See, I’ve been wondering: why pile all the furniture up like this? There’s only two reasons I can think of.’ I clunked my walking stick down on the windowsill and grabbed the wardrobe that had nearly fallen over. Helped it all the way. ‘One: you’re planning to burn the place down and maybe claim on the insurance. Assuming you can insure a house somewhere like this.’ The double bed’s legs juddered across the carpet as I dragged it into the corner. The armchair went on top of it.

‘What’s reason number two?’

Foot was beginning to ache now. Every step sending another burning needle slicing all the way through to the sole.

The broken medicine cabinet got picked up and tossed onto the bed.

‘Ash?’

I did the same with a pair of dining room chairs. ‘Who do you think our victim is?’

Then a bedside cabinet joined them.

‘What’s the second reason?’

‘Someone he knew, or a complete stranger?’ A standard lamp got javelined into the corner. ‘And how long does it take for a body to rot down to a skeleton? Twenty years?’

‘Eight to twelve. Assuming it’s not been embalmed, and you’ve not buried it in a coffin, or sand, or peat.’ The light from her phone cast shadows on the wall as I heaved another wardrobe off the pile. ‘I’d really like to go now, so if you can stop messing about, we—’

‘That means we’re looking for someone who went missing between eight and... how long did Helen MacNeil say Gordon Smith lived here? Fifty-six years, wasn’t it?’ The kitchen table thumped into the bed with the sound of cracking wood, as one of the legs gave way. ‘So our victim went into the ground sometime between then and eight years ago.’

‘If they weren’t already here when the Smiths moved in.’

‘True. Which makes it at least forty-eight years’ worth of missing persons to troll through. Assuming anyone missed them enough to report it.’ The sideboard was a sod to shift, but it hit the wardrobe with a satisfying crash. ‘And, given the storm’s currently busy washing the remains out to sea, we’ll probably never find out who they were.’ Welsh dresser next. Thing weighed a ton. ‘Unless Gordon Smith coughs to it, when we catch him, of course.’

And there was sod-all chance of that happening.

The shirt stuck to my back, steam rising from the shoulders of my damp coat. Breathing heavy.

Used to be a lot more fit than this.

Another couple of dining room chairs went flying. ‘Mind you, see if I was him? I’d “no comment” everything. No way anyone’s going out there, on a crumbling clifftop, to dig up what’s left of the bones. Health and Safety would have a prolapse.’ The sofa groaned and squealed as I pushed it back, off the rug. ‘So Gordon Smith can sit there, smug and quiet, while the North Sea destroys every last bit of evidence, and get away with murder.’

‘This is all fascinating, but can we please get out of here now?’

I stepped back, one hand rubbing at the dull ache throbbing its way up my spine, puffing and wheezing. Definitely used to be fitter than this. Condensation from the window made the walking cane’s handle slick against my palm. Cold. Like the dead. ‘You want to know what reason number two is?’

‘Only if it means we can leave before this horrible old house falls into the sea.’

‘Reason number two.’ I slid the head of my walking stick under the edge of the living room rug and flipped it up. The wodge of dusty fabric hinged back, flopping over the corpse of a three-bar electric fire. ‘Abracadabra!’

Alice crept forwards. Frowned down at the floorboards as she swept her phone’s torch across them. ‘I bet Penn and Teller are bricking themselves.’

‘Sod...’ That wasn’t right. ‘Maybe I cleared the wrong bit?’

‘You could get a six-month residency at a swanky Vegas hotel with an act like that.’

The electric fire joined the new pile, as did another bedside cabinet, another mahogany wardrobe, and a bookcase. This time, when I flipped the carpet back, it revealed a trapdoor, with a flush brass handle.

‘Oooh...’ Alice shuffled forward, Henry trotting along at her side. Then her expression soured. ‘Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.’

‘One way to find out.’ I grabbed the handle and pulled.

4

The wooden steps creaked and groaned as I inched my way down into the blackness. It was dark enough on the ground floor, but here in the basement? My phone’s torch barely made a dent in it. The ancient musty smell of dust and mould thickened the air, along with something rancid and sweaty.

Brick walls on either side of the narrow stairs, the mortar furred and whitened as salt leached out.

Alice’s voice worried down from the living room. ‘Ash, you really, genuinely shouldn’t be doing that. What if something happens? You can’t—’

‘This would go much faster if you helped, you know?’

At the bottom of the stairs, the basement opened out. Hard to tell how big the space was, given the anaemic beam from my phone, but the sound of my voice echoed back to me. So not exactly tiny.

Mounds of dirt and dust littered the small circle of concrete floor currently visible in the torch app’s glow.

I scuffed through them, following the pale light till it pulled another brick wall out of the dark. Inched my way along.

‘Ash? I’m serious, Ash, it’s too dangerous!’

Since when had that ever stopped us?

More salt-furred bricks. Then a screw poked out of the wall at chest height, the head all rusted and swollen. Someone had wrapped string around the thing, tying it off in a lumpy knot, the rest stretching away into the gloom, like a washing line.

‘Ash? Don’t make me get DI Malcolmson to arrest you...’

Five or six feet along was another screw, the string looped around it, another length on the other side.

‘Ash?’

Hmm...

An ancient Polaroid photo was clipped to the string, with one of those tiny clothes pegs people displayed their Christmas cards with in the seventies. It captured a young woman, seventeen or eighteen, all blonde hair and cheesy grin, standing on one leg in a park somewhere, a bandstand in the background. The colours tainted with orange and brown. Another one hung next to it: a different young woman, her short brown hair spiky, dressed in T-shirt and shorts, the curving line of a beach visible behind her. Next: a young man, early twenties, maybe, doing a terrible job of trying to grow a moustache as he posed with a pint of lager in what looked like a beer garden. Then a girl — couldn’t have been much over seventeen — all hunched in as an older man wrapped his arm around her shoulders, the pair of them posed and uncomfortable, in ugly retro sportswear, on a putting course somewhere, with water and hills in the background.

Not exactly your usual basement decorations.

‘Ash? I’m not kidding!’

Next Polaroid along showed a laughing man, head thrown back, beard thick and red, eyes shining, arms thrown wide, in front of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. Then another young woman, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with Tony Blair’s face on it, grinning as she sat astride a bicycle on a hedgerow-lined lane somewhere...

There were more, making a strange collection of holiday snaps that never had the same person in them twice. The only common thread was they’d all been taken with a Polaroid camera — that familiar square picture in a white rectangular frame. Tainted with mildew.

‘Ash?’

My phone buzzed against a fingertip as I used the sensor on the back to unlock it. Called up the camera, and set it to video. Which instantly killed the torch app, plunging the basement back into blackness.

Damn.

‘ASH, ARE YOU OK? IT’S ALL GONE DARK DOWN THERE...’

‘GET YOUR BACKSIDE DOWN HERE — I NEED HELP.’

‘IT’S NOT SAFE AND—’

‘ALICE!’

‘All right, all right...’

I fiddled with my phone till the torch flickered into barely-there life again. Couldn’t be much battery left by now.

A bright circle of light bloomed at the bottom of the stairs, followed by the thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk of Converse trainers on wooden steps as Alice finally grumped her way down, Henry’s claws clickity-clacking behind her. ‘I want it on the record that I said this is a terrible idea. If we all die, it’s your fault. And what is that horrible smell?’

‘Thank you. Now shine your torch over here.’

She did, making the wall glow, casting rectangular Polaroid-shaped shadows on the bricks. ‘Ash, why does Gordon Smith have other people’s holiday photographs hanging up in his basement?’

‘Go along the line so I can video it.’ The camera killed my torch again, but at least this time I could film as Alice shuffled her way from one Polaroid to the next, illuminating each in turn. ‘Good, now the other side.’

She turned, sweeping the light across another brick wall to... ah.

Henry let loose a whine.

‘Ash?’

There were shackles fixed to the bricks opposite, the chains furry with rust. A mattress on the floor, filthy with brown stains. Heavy-duty stainless-steel hooks, screwed into the beams of the floor above. More brown stains on the concrete floor beneath them.

Another line of Polaroids hung on either side of the shackles. Only in these ones, the people weren’t smiling. In these ones the colours were mostly reds and blacks.

Alice crept forwards, pulling a reluctant Henry with her. ‘What the hell is this place?’

I cleared my throat.

Wasn’t easy.

All those small square photographs in their rectangular white ‘frames’, the greying plastic stained with the dark swirls of bloody fingerprints.

Just like the ones that used to turn up on those birthday cards for Rebecca...

‘Ash?’

I swallowed something bitter. ‘It’s a kill room.’

She inched forwards and stared at one of the photos. ‘Oh God. Ash, they’re—’

A long, low rumble sounded from somewhere far too close. Henry scrabbled round, barking at the end wall, hackles up. Dust drifted down from the joists and floorboards above our heads.

Alice and I turned and stared.

No way that was a good sign.

Then my phone launched into its bland generic ringtone. Vibrating hard against my fingertips. Nearly dropped the damn thing instead of answering it. ‘Hello?’

Mother’s voice, barely audible over the howling wind: ‘GET OUT OF THERE NOW! THE HEADLAND’S GOING!’

Oh crap.

I took a handful of Alice’s coat and shoved her towards the stairs. ‘Quick! Outside!’

‘No, no, no, no, no...’ She stumbled, nearly tripped, righted herself, then ran. Taking Henry and the light with her, leaving me in the pitch-dark.

God’s sake...

I limped after them, fumbling with my phone, trying to get the bloody torch app to work as darkness overtook the basement again and Mother’s voice crackled out of the tiny speaker:

‘ASH, DID YOU HEAR ME? GET OUT OF THERE!’

Finally, a pale glow shone out of the thing and...

Wait a minute: photographs. I dropped my walking stick and grabbed at the nearest loop of string, the twine cold and damp as I yanked at it, snapping it free of the rusty screws, Polaroids streaming out from my fist like gory bunting as I hobbled across the concrete floor. Another deep rumble thrummed through the basement, trying to pull my feet from under me. Staggering. Half lurching, half falling up the wooden steps. Bursting out into the living room, just in time for one of those horrible tombstone wardrobes on the pile to keel over, sending me scrabbling backwards out of its way as it crashed down, sealing the trapdoor to the basement.

Jesus.

If I’d been two seconds slower, I would’ve been stuck down there. Entombed.

Hands snatched at my jacket, hauling me up, into the corridor, and out through the front door. Alice on one side, Mother on the other, Henry running barking circles around us while they bustled me towards the line of temporary fencing. Rain crackled against my shoulders, slashing at any exposed skin as I stuffed the string of Polaroids in my jacket pocket, where they’d be relatively safe. Wind scrabbling at my back, pushing and shoving, screaming out its rage as we barged through the gap in the fence.

Then a fist thumped into my chest, Mother glaring at me with wide eyes and a hard, pinched mouth. ‘ARE YOU BLOODY INSANE?’

Alice lunged into a bearhug, pinning my arms to my sides, head buried against my shoulder. ‘I thought we’d lost you!’

Gordon Smith’s house no longer sat a dozen feet back from the edge of the cliff. The storm had seen to that. The garage had gone, taking about another six foot of headland with it. Now the basement jutted out into the void. That concrete floor was probably the only thing keeping it, and the house above, in one precarious piece.

Yeah. No way in hell we were ever going back in there.

Mother turned, face sour as she stared at the house and its eighteen-foot-shorter garden. ‘Well, that’s our human remains gone, then. So much for that.’

Helen MacNeil’s bolt cutters still lay where we’d abandoned them after snipping through the chain that’d held two sections of fencing panel together, and soon as Alice let go of me, I picked the things up, using them as a makeshift walking stick as I limped away from the devouring sea. ‘Don’t worry, DI Malcolmson, Gordon Smith’s got a lot more bodies out there.’

Tears of condensation rolled down the small kitchen’s windows as we huddled around the table — the air muggy with the heady scent of mince and the steam rising off one soggy police officer and two soggy civilians. All three of us dripping our own personal lakes onto the cracked linoleum floor. The house’s owner away seeing to her wee boy and his nightmares.

Warmth seeped into my bones from the mug of hot milky tea clutched in both hands.

Alice had hers pressed against her chest, jacket draped over the back of her chair, frizzy curls plastered to her head.

Mother grimacing as she swallowed another mouthful, phone clamped to her ear. ‘No, I understand that, sir, but we need—... Yes, sir, I know, but—... Uh-huh...’ She rolled her eyes at me. ‘Uh-huh...’

A shiver ran its way through Alice, setting her teeth chattering again.

‘Are you OK?’

She shook her head. ‘We could’ve died in there.’

‘Yes, but we didn’t. Now drink your tea.’

A knock on the kitchen door and DC Watt stuck his misshapen head in from the hall. ‘Guv?’

Mother looked up. ‘Can you give me a minute, sir? Something’s come up.’ She pinned the phone against her plus-sized bosom. ‘What is it, John?’

‘I asked DC Elliot to run a PNC check on Gordon Smith: no convictions, but he was picked up in 1968 and prosecuted for assaulting a sex worker in Glasgow. Found “not proven”. She’s got them digging up the paperwork.’ Watt scratched at that bald scarred patch on the back of his head. ‘Well, Elliot is, not the sex worker.’

‘What about his wife?’

‘Nothing we can find. Yet. Oh, and I’ve got an address for the brother’s croft on the Black Isle. Only he won’t be in, because he’s doing a sixteen stretch in HMP Edinburgh. Stabbed a GP to death. I’ve sent the details to N Division; they’ll pop up and see if Gordon’s there.’

A smile. ‘Good boy.’ Mother dug her spare hand into her pocket, pulled out a small paper bag, and tossed it over to him. ‘Help yourself.’ Then back to the phone. ‘Sorry about that, sir, getting an update from my team. Now, about that arrest warrant...?’

Alice shuddered, coiling in, shoulders hunched and forward. ‘What are we going to do now?’

I stood. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’m heading back to the flat and changing into something that doesn’t squelch when I move. You coming?’

‘Can we stop by an off-licence?’

‘Don’t see why not.’ The bolt cutters weren’t an ideal walking-stick substitute, but they’d do for now.

Watt blocked the doorway, frowning down at the contents of his tiny paper bag, poking a finger in. ‘All glued together...’ He plucked out a small, pale-yellow lozenge that made sticky screlching noises as it left its mates. Popped it in his mouth. Gave me the kind of smile that begged for a fist to be smashed right into the middle of it. ‘Where do you think you’re off to?’ Sooked his fingertips, then held out his hand, saliva still glistening on the pink skin. ‘You’ve got something of ours.’

‘If it’s a punch in the gob, you can have it here, or we can take it outside.’

The smile slipped away. ‘Mother says you filmed evidence in Smith’s basement, so I’m commandeering your phone. You can—’

‘Not if you want to keep your teeth, you’re not.’

A tug at my sleeve. Alice. ‘Ash, maybe we should—’

‘You are aware that threatening a police officer is an offence, Mr Henderson?’

Alice wriggled past, putting herself between me and the greasy prick with a death wish, same as she’d done with Mother and Helen MacNeil. ‘DC Watt, I know this is all very exciting, but it’s been a long day and we nearly died in that basement, so maybe we should all take a deep breath and de-escalate this situation before it turns into something contrary to the smooth running of the investigation?’

He pulled his pube-bearded chin in. ‘What?’

‘After all, we’re all on the same side, aren’t we, and without Ash’s help you’d never have known about the kill room underneath Gordon Smith’s house, so why don’t we do our best to facilitate an interpersonal rapprochement and we can email you all the footage from the basement and that way everyone’s happy, OK? OK. Have you got a business card with your email address on it?’

‘Not happening.’ Watt folded his arms. ‘I want that phone. And you’re going nowhere till I get it.’

Right, it was punch-in-the-face time. ‘Alice, step aside.’

Mother’s voice cut through the muggy air: ‘Will the pair of you grow up? This is a murder inquiry, not a willy-measuring competition.’

‘He’s refusing to hand over vital evidence that—’

‘Alice: step — aside.’

‘One last chance, Henderson: give me that phone!’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’ Mother appeared at my shoulder. ‘Mr Henderson, do you swear on your mother’s life-slash-grave that you’ll email the footage to John and me?’

Alice nodded. ‘Of course he does.’

‘No offence, Dr McDonald, but I’d feel happier hearing it from the man himself.’ She poked me in the back. ‘Well?’

‘I’ll email you the footage, not this greasy wanked-up slice of pish.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Watt clenched his jaw.

‘You heard.’

A disappointed grunt from Mother. ‘Oh let him go, John. We’ve got enough on our plates without a visit to Accident and Emergency.’

There was some grumbling, too low to make out the actual words, then Watt stepped aside. Made a sarcastic ‘after you’ gesture.

Prick.

It was difficult, resisting the urge to give him a hard shoulder-barge on the way past, but with Alice bustling down the corridor right behind me, it wasn’t really doable. He’d have to take an IOU.

My jacket had cooled down while we were in the kitchen, but it hadn’t dried out any, so it clung to my shoulders and back like the cold wet hands of the drowned as I pulled it on and hauled open the front door.

Stopped dead.

Helen MacNeil stood under the tiny porch, wrapped up in a thick waterproof, dripping as the wind clawed at her. Staring at me with puffy, bloodshot eyes. ‘You said you’d help find my granddaughter.’

Of course I did. Because I’m far too soft for my own good.

I held out the bolt cutters. ‘Thanks for the loan.’

She tucked them under one arm, then dug into her waterproof and came out with a picture frame, about the size of a paperback book. Pressed it into my hands. Voice cracking over the words. ‘She wouldn’t run away, I know she wouldn’t, not after Sophie... Something’s happened to her.’

Don’t look at Gordon Smith’s house. Keep your eyes on Helen MacNeil. Try for a reassuring smile. ‘She’s... probably staying with friends. There’s no need to—’

‘I spoke to all her friends, they haven’t heard from Leah in weeks.’

Alice tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Ash?’

‘Not now.’ Back to Helen, softening my tone as she wiped a hand across her glistening cheeks. ‘You say Leah wouldn’t run away, why not?’

‘Because her mother left us.’ Helen turned her face away. ‘She left us.’

‘That doesn’t mean she—’

‘SHE TOOK HER OWN LIFE! OK? SHE KILLED HERSELF!’ And there was the Helen MacNeil everyone had always been so afraid of — those bloodshot eyes blazing, mouth a hard vicious line. The woman who could batter a rival firm’s drug dealer to death with a pickaxe handle. ‘And you promised you’d help!’

Yeah, I kinda did.

5

Alice frowned at the rear-view mirror as the little Suzuki lurched its way out of Clachmara. ‘He killed her, didn’t he? Gordon Smith took Leah MacNeil down to his horrible basement and... did things to her.’

‘We don’t know that.’ The car lumped through another pothole. ‘Will you keep your eyes on the road! I’m losing fillings here.’

The windscreen wipers’ squeal-thunk added a rhythm section to the blowers’ roar — enough condensation coming off all three of us to mist-up the windscreen and windows, the air heady with the grubby-animal scent of soggy Scottie dog.

‘Why didn’t you tell Helen—’

‘Because until we know for sure, there’s no point making things worse for her. “Oh, yeah, your granddaughter’s probably been tortured to death...”’ A lump twisted inside my throat. Wouldn’t go away when I swallowed. So I cleared it. ‘Right now she thinks Leah might come home. At least she’s got hope.’

Alice nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

Everyone always was, even after all this time. ‘Let’s just... change the subject.’

‘OK. Yes. Changing the subject it is.’ Alice shifted her hands on the steering wheel. ‘The photographs we saw in Gordon Smith’s basement are indicative of a collective personality. Putting them on display like that allows him to relive the hunt and the kill. Burying the bodies in the garden is about keeping them close. He needs to have them with him.’

‘Why would he—’

‘Gordon Smith’s house is right on the coast — well, even more so now the headland’s disintegrating — if you want to dump a body there’s plenty of places you could chuck it in the sea and off it goes. He’s burying them in the garden because he’s a collector, it’s the same deal with the photographs.’ Alice hunched forwards and rubbed her hand across the fogging windscreen, clearing a porthole. ‘He won’t have begun there, though. He’d want to keep them closer than that. In the house. I bet that basement wasn’t concreted when he moved in, he’s done that bit by bit over the years. Probably only started burying them in the garden because he’d run out of room.’

‘Thought that was Rose and Fred West?’

The car thumped through yet another bloody pothole.

‘The question is, why did he leave his beloved photographs behind? Why not take his collection with him? He can’t take their bodies, but the photos would be easy enough...’

‘Your suspension’s going to be ruined, by the way.’ As we thunked into three potholes in a row.

‘He must have copies, I’d take copies if I was him, I mean think of the nostalgia value when you’re reliving past glories and flicking through the souvenirs of all the people you tortured to death, but he’s left his kill room behind, hasn’t he, so maybe that’s because he’s been told his house is going to fall into the sea any minute now and in a way that’s kind of sexy, isn’t it, knowing all this incriminating evidence is sitting right there, but no one can ever lay their hands on it, because A: they don’t know it exists, and B: everything’s going to be washed away in the next big storm.’ Alice nodded, agreeing with herself. ‘It’s all about risk, thrill, and control.’

‘You think that’s sexy?’ I shook my head. ‘You forensic psychologists are weird.’

‘And did Gordon Smith kill them on his own? I mean, it’d be really hard to hide that from your wife, wouldn’t it? You can’t turn your basement into a torture chamber and graveyard without your other half noticing, can you? How would you explain all the screaming?’

I pulled out my phone. Five percent battery left. A quick scroll through my contacts brought up the one marked ‘SHIFTY’ and set it ringing. ‘Not our problem any more. It’s DI Malcolmson’s case, remember?’

‘I wonder if there was a drop in the murders after his wife died? Couples who kill tend to get caught before one of them drops dead of natural causes.’

A hard Oldcastle accent barked out of the earpiece. ‘Detective Inspector David Morrow’s phone?’

‘Rhona? It’s Ash. Is Shifty there?’

The voice softened. ‘Hey, Ash. The big man’s interviewing a nonce — you remember Willie McNaughton? Used to flog—’

‘Hardcore German porn to school kids, I remember. Listen—’

‘And now they can get it all, online, for free. That’s progress for you.’

‘Rhona, I need a favour. Leah MacNeil — her gran reported her missing a month ago. Has anything been done about it? And if not, can you get Shifty to kick someone’s arse for them till they do? I’ve got a recent photo, if they need one.’ After all, you never knew. Maybe she really had run away? Fingers crossed anyway.

‘Hold on.’ The broken-teeth rattle of Rhona battering the living hell out of her keyboard joined our symphony for windscreen wipers and blowers.

At long last, the potholed horror of Clachmara faded behind us as Alice took a left onto a good old-fashioned crappy B road, heading back towards Oldcastle.

‘And while you’re at it, have a dig into what happened to her mum.’

‘You’re not shy, are you?’

‘Nope. And make sure...’ Silence on the other end. ‘Rhona? Hello?’

The screen was black, and poking the fingerprint reader on the back did nothing to change that. Phone was dead.

Alice glanced across the car at me. ‘Problem?’

‘Don’t have a phone charger in here, do you?’

‘Back at the flat. Anyway, as I was saying, normally when you’ve got a couple who kills, one’s dominant and one’s subservient: Rose to Fred West, Myra to Ian Brady. The dominant partner wants to kill, the subservient partner goes along with it to keep the love of their life happy. So what happens when one of them dies?’

‘The world becomes a much better place.’

Wasn’t even the third week in November yet, and the big Winslow’s in Logansferry already had chocolate Santas, mince pies, and Christmas pudding for sale. An entire shelf dedicated to reduced Halloween tat. And a confusing array of mobile phone charging cables.

Alice draped herself over the trolley’s handles, one red-shod foot flat on the floor, the other twisting back and forth on its toes, while she fiddled about on her phone. Face all pinched with concentration.

Why did every bloody mobile manufacturer have to use a different cable?

I picked one that should fit, then dumped it in with the Tunnock’s Teacakes, Quality Street tin, and multipack of pickled onion Monster Munch.

She straightened up, eyes still glued to her phone, bumping the trolley forward with her hips. It wobbled away a couple of feet, then took an unprompted hard left into the memory cards.

At least it gave me something to lean on while we hobbled around to the drinks aisle.

‘You still haven’t answered the question.’ Scuffing along beside me, like a teenager, using radar to avoid hitting anything while she concentrated on that little screen.

‘There’s Pizzageddon on Clay Road, and that new place by the station’s meant to be pretty good.’

She had the teenager’s sigh down pat too. ‘No, not dinner — tomorrow.’

This again.

‘Alice, can we please not—’

‘Apart from anything else, it’s our crime-fighting anniversary, isn’t it? Nine years to the day since we first teamed up to catch bad guys. We should do something to celebrate, that’s all.’

‘Ah...’ Forgotten about that. ‘Suppose it is.’

She plucked a box of orange Matchmakers from the shelf as we passed, apparently without even looking at it. ‘See?’

‘Thought you were the one banging on about not eating properly?’

‘Don’t change the subject.’ A packet of jelly babies joined the rest of her five-a-day. ‘And then there’s Rebecca.’

Sodding hell. ‘I told you I didn’t want to—’

‘You’ve never even visited her grave.’

‘That’s not—’

‘It’s been nine years, Ash.’ A shrug. ‘And I know the first two weren’t your fault, because of... well, what happened with Mrs Kerrigan being a vindictive cow, but it’s not healthy to continually avoid the subject.’

I steered the trolley into the drinks aisle, beer and cider forming two walls of a boozy canyon on either side. ‘I’m not avoiding—’

‘Because sooner or later it’s going to come back and bite you, right on the—’ The phone in her hand launched into something jaunty and she gave out a small startled squeal, before poking at the screen and putting it to her ear. ‘Hello, Bear, how are you getting—... Yes, I know Lewis Talbot’s post mortem is happening now, but—... No, it isn’t, but—... Yes, but you don’t really need us, do you, Bear, I mean we can’t add anything to—... Yes, Bear.’ Her shoulders slumping more with every passing second. ‘No, I am happy being part of LIRU, honest—’

I poked her in the arm and held out my hand. ‘Give.’

She did what she was told.

Detective Superintendent Jacobson’s voice rattled in my ear, wanging on about teambuilding. ‘... vitally important every member of the team is—’

‘What do you want?’

A pause.

‘Ash? Why aren’t you answering your phone?’

‘Stupid thing’s run out of battery. And before you ask: no, we won’t be attending the post mortem. We almost died an hour ago, thanks to you, so you’ll understand if we’re not in the mood to watch someone fillet a wee boy who’s been dead for a month.’

The visuals would be bad enough, but the smell? On top of everything else we’d been through, tonight? No thanks.

Alice pointed at the shelves, pulled a constipated-frog face, then loped away towards the hard spirits.

‘Almost died? Helen MacNeil got violent, did she? Well, you’re supposed to be good at handling things like that, it’s—’

‘We found a kill room in her next-door neighbour’s basement. Whole place nearly got washed out to sea with us in it.’

‘A kill room? Now, that is interesting... Multiple victims?’ Difficult to describe the tone that’d come into Jacobson’s voice, but it was a cross between cunning and avarice. ‘I take it they’ll need our help interpreting the scene? After all, the Lateral Investigative and Review Unit is uniquely positioned to—’

‘There’s no one going anywhere near the scene. I wasn’t kidding about the place washing out to sea — the headland’s crumbling away underneath the property. Doubt it’ll last the night.’

‘That’s a shame. We’ll probably wrap up this child-killer case soon, and it’d be nice to have something high-profile to move on to. Still, can’t be helped.’

Alice reappeared with a litre of supermarket vodka and a bottle of red wine clutched in her left hand, a twelve-pack of tonic and a bargain-basement brandy cradled in her right arm like a rectangular yellow baby and its alcoholic cuddly toy.

‘Now, about this post mortem—’

‘No.’ I turned the trolley when Alice had finished loading the booze, and pushed for the checkouts. ‘In addition to almost dying — I did mention that, didn’t I? In addition to that, we’re both soaked to the skin. And if you think we’re going to spend the next four to six hours standing in a freezing cold mortuary, catching our deaths, you can shove LIRU where, as Bernard would say, “the light from our nearest star is permanently occluded”.’

‘Ash, that’s not exactly—’

‘AKA: sideways up your hole!’

Silence.

The two old ladies in front of us tremored their way through emptying their trolley onto the checkout conveyor belt: supermarket whisky, white bread, cheese, bacon, cucumber, baby oil, and a jumbo-sized thing of toilet paper. Must’ve been planning one hell of a party.

‘Ash, please remind me: why exactly do I put up with you on my team?’

I stuck the ‘NEXT CUSTOMER PLEASE’ plastic Toblerone down, at the end of the oldies’ shopping. ‘You want the official reason, or the real one?’

‘Ah... Perhaps we should—’

‘Officially: it’s because my twenty years policing the serial-killer capital of Europe looks good on your stupid brochures. Unofficially: it’s because you know sometimes corners have to be cut, rules broken, and heads smashed in, but you don’t want to get your hands dirty. You want plausible deniability so none of it blows back on you. And, more importantly, Alice won’t work without me.’

She grimaced, then unloaded the vodka, tonic, wine, and brandy onto the conveyor belt, bottles and cans clinking and rattling.

‘Have we finished having our sulky tantrum? Because if we have, we might hear me say, “Take the rest of the evening off, Ash. You and Alice have deserved a rest, Ash. Come in fresh tomorrow, Ash.”’

Should bloody well think so too.

The last of the shopping went on the belt, to be bleeped through the till by a short man who’d never see seventy again, with a satsuma-orange fake tan and startled-Weetabix hair. The liver spots on his tiny hands trembling as he tried to get the Monster Munch to scan.

‘Had to promise Helen MacNeil I’d look into her granddaughter going missing.’

‘Unfortunate, but I suppose it won’t take up too much of your time.’

Alice reached for her cards, but I waved her away.

‘I’ll get this lot. Call it an anniversary present.’

‘You’re getting me a present?’

‘Was talking to Alice.’ I pinned the phone between my shoulder and ear and went rummaging for my wallet. ‘And how long it takes depends on whether or not Leah MacNeil’s one of the bodies getting washed out to sea right now. If it is: not so straightforward.’

‘Well, do your best, and if you see an in for consultancy services...?’

‘You’re like a scratched CD, you know that, don’t you?’ Ah, found it. But pulling the thing out of my jacket pocket brought a cascade of grubby plastic rectangles with it — all pinned to a mouldy length of string. The Polaroids from the basement wall. The ones where the people being photographed weren’t on holiday any more. They skittered across the stainless-steel surface, caught in the supermarket’s bright lights.

And the wee orange man on the till stared. Mouth hanging wider and wider.

All those ripped open bodies. All the screams and pain. All the wasted lives.

Damn things should’ve been easy to get back into my pocket — they were strung together, for God’s sake — but they wriggled and slipped through my fingers like dying fish as I scrambled to gather them up.

The wee orange man mashed his palm down on the panic button. Rising out of his seat, eyes like pickled eggs against his pumpkin skin. ‘SECURITY! SECURITY! I NEED SECURITY HERE, NOW!’

Great.

A pair of huge women in black fleeces and combat boots thundered towards us, leaving the front door unthugged. Teeth bared. Fists curled.

‘Ash, what’s happening? I can hear yelling.’

‘I’ll call you back.’

Brace yourself...

6

Thug Number One gave me a lopsided scowl from the other side of the dull grey desk. It wasn’t a black eye, yet, but it was working on it. Sitting there with her thick arms crossed, muscles bulging through the black T-shirt with ‘CASTLE HILL SECURITY LTD.’ embroidered on its left breast.

Alice shifted in her seat, setting the plastic groaning as she leaned forward. ‘I’m really sorry, Maggie, I’m sure it was an accident, I mean in the middle of everything, heat of the moment, and there’s arms and legs and no one really knows what’s going on and it’s all very—’

‘He hit me!’ She pointed a thick, stubby finger across the desk at me.

I gave her a nice innocent shrug. ‘Oops.’

What can I say, I’m a feminist: if you put Alice in a headlock, man or woman, that’s what you get. Lucky I let her off with a black eye, to be honest. Maybe that was sexist of me? Maybe I should’ve broken her arm too?

‘Agnes had to go to A-and-E!’

‘The floor was slippery; wasn’t my fault she hit her head on the shopping trolley.’ Twice. Though hopefully I’d blocked the CCTV camera’s view, so no one would be the wiser.

Like I said: feminist.

A knock on the door and Maggie transferred her wonky scowl from me to it. ‘COME!’

It clunked open and a thin man in a suit and side parting gave everyone an ingratiating smile. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but that’s the police arrived now and they say Mr Henderson,’ a nod in my direction, ‘hello,’ back to Maggie, ‘he definitely is working for Police Scotland, so he’s not a serial killer or anything, and is perfectly entitled to be in possession of the... disturbing images Mr Turnberry encountered on till number seventeen.’

Pink worked its way up Maggie’s wide neck. ‘Yes, well...’

The man’s smile got a bit more obsequious. ‘I’m sorry we had to detain you both, Mr Henderson, Dr McDonald, but given the circumstances, I’m sure you understand. We at Winslow’s take our community responsibilities very seriously.’ He held out a couple of bulging jute bags with snowmen on them. ‘Your shopping. On the house. And I’ve thrown in a fifteen-pound gift voucher as well.’

‘Very kind of you.’ I stood. Picked my still-damp jacket off the back of my chair. ‘Come on, Alice.’

Shifty was waiting for us, bald head gleaming in the strip light of the bare breeze-block corridor, that black eyepatch giving his fat frame a slightly rakish, piratical air. His pale grey suit looked as if a herd of wildebeest had slept in it. Left eye narrowed in disapproval as he shook hands with the man who’d come to get us. ‘Thanks, I’ll take it from here.’ Then turned and marched off, without so much as a word.

I hobbled after him, taking my time, because anything faster than that sent burning daggers lancing through my aching foot. ‘What kept you?’

He shoved through the plain door and back onto the shop floor, between the fish counter and the dairy aisle. ‘I was interviewing a nonce!’

‘At this hour? That your way of getting out of Lewis Talbot’s post mortem?’

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. ‘Shut up.’

Alice bustled alongside, carrying our new jute bags. ‘Did your sex offender say anything?’

Shifty gave her the benefit of his evil eye. ‘You’re supposed to keep Ash on a short leash.’

‘Only, if there’s a ring involved, a paedophile ring, I mean, and the killer’s a member of it, he might have said something incriminating, he might even want to boast about his crimes, or at least his knowledge of the victims, so did he say anything about anyone saying anything like that?’

‘The only thing Willie Bloody McNaughton said was “no comment”. And his buggering solicitor just sat there, preening. Like we were questioning his greasy little client about a parking violation, not three dead kids.’

Kind of inappropriate, but couldn’t help smiling at that one. ‘Thought you said McNaughton’s solicitor was, and I quote, “completely shaggable”.’

‘Completely shaggable people don’t help paedophiles wriggle their way out of custody!’

We passed the line of tills, the carrot-coloured Mr Turnberry doing his best to avoid eye contact as I limped by number seventeen. ‘You let McNaughton go?’

‘Didn’t have any choice, did I?’ Shifty rubbed a hand across his face, pulling the chubby cheeks out of shape. ‘A solid day of interviewing child molesters. Going to take a massive heap of booze to get that taste out of my mouth.’

Alice nudged him, setting the bottles clinking again. ‘Might be able to help you there.’

The automatic doors slid open, and we stepped out beneath the awning, ranks of trolleys sitting chained together on either side.

‘OK.’ I made it as far as the line of large plastic crates filled with bagged firewood, kindling, and four-litre containers of antifreeze — apparently available at ‘BARGAINTASTIC PRICES FOR ALL THE FAMILY!’, because whose kids didn’t love antifreeze? I settled my backside against the logs and stretched out my right leg, foot throbbing like a malfunctioning microwave. ‘Get the car and I’ll wait for you here.’

Alice peered out at the rain, hauled her hood up, then turned to Shifty. ‘David, do you want to join us for dinner? We’re going for a sitty-downy pizza with loads of salad!’

‘Time is it?’ He checked his watch and deflated a couple of inches. ‘Yeah, why not? Supposed to have clocked off hours ago anyway.’

‘God, I needed that.’ Shifty wiped the froth from his pint off his top lip, smiled and let loose a happy belch.

They’d given us a pretty decent table — for quarter to ten on a Friday night — by the window, looking out across the road to the big Victorian glass slug that was Oldcastle Railway Station. All lit up and glistening in the rain. A row of taxis sitting outside it, their drivers huddled in a bus shelter, smoking fags. Working on cancer and hypothermia all in one go.

‘A toast.’ Alice raised her large Shiraz. ‘To not dying in a serial killer’s basement!’

I clinked my Irn-Bru against her glass, then Shifty did the same with his pint and we all drank.

‘Speaking of which.’ Shifty held his hand out, palm up in front of me.

‘What?’

‘You know fine, “what”. The photos you traumatised Satsuma Joe with, back at the supermarket. They’re evidence.’

‘I forgot I had them, OK? We nearly got crushed to death and washed out to sea. And since when do you care about evidentiary procedures?’

‘Since Professional Standards decided to make me their special little project. Now hand them over.’

I turned in my chair, picked my phone off the windowsill — attached to its new charging cable, stealing the restaurant’s electricity. Battery now at a whole ten percent.

‘Ash, you can’t keep stuff like that.’

My phone went back on the windowsill. ‘You can have them when I’ve taken a copy.’

‘It’s not—’

‘What, you’re going to bail before your starter arrives and hotfoot it back to the station with them?’

He frowned for a moment, then shrugged those wide shoulders of his. ‘No point letting good food go to waste.’

Didn’t think so.

Alice helped herself to a breadstick, the words coming out in a wave of crunching and crumbs: ‘Do you think Bear would let me do some behavioural evidence analysis for DI Malcolmson?’

‘Our Glorious Leader? Without a cost centre to write it to?’ Difficult not to laugh at that. ‘Not a chance in hell.’

‘What if I did it in my spare time, though?’

‘Then you’re undermining a potential revenue stream.’

She scrunched herself up and fluttered her eyelashes at me. ‘Pleeeeeeeease?’

‘You’re a grown woman in your thirties, don’t do that.’

‘Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeease?’ Really hamming it up now, hands clutched sideways under her chin, brown curls cascading either side of her beaming face.

‘OK, OK.’ Anything to make her stop.

‘Good.’ She shifted her cutlery and napkin out of the way and made come-hither gestures. ‘Let’s see the photos, then.’

‘Sure you want to do that right before you eat?’

‘The iron’s hot, we might as well strike with it.’

I snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and eased the photos from my pocket. Still connected to that mouldy piece of string by the tiny clothes pegs.

Shifty winced. ‘You could at least’ve put them in an evidence bag!’

‘Crushed to death and washed out to sea, remember?’ I laid them out in front of Alice, one after the other, putting them closer together, so they’d all fit in two lines. ‘And if it wasn’t for us, no one would even know they existed. So don’t be a dick.’

Eleven Polaroids. Each one showing the last horrific moments of some poor sod’s life.

Shifty bared his teeth. ‘Jesus...’

A row of creases formed between Alice’s eyebrows as she frowned at the pictures. ‘Victims are male and female, so maybe Gordon Smith’s bisexual, because there’s always a sexual element with this kind of serial killer, even if it’s not expressed at the time with the victim present, because what’s the point of killing someone if you can’t fantasise about it before and afterwards? Of course maybe it’s death that turns him on and he’s really only torturing people to heighten his and...?’ She looked up at me, eyebrows raised.

‘Caroline. Smith’s wife was called Caroline.’

‘Thank you.’ Back to the photos. ‘He might be doing it to heighten their arousal. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had sex on that mattress in the basement, right after they killed someone, or even while their victims were dying. They’ve gone to all the trouble of abducting and torturing someone, who needs Viagra when you’ve got a rush like that — the power of life and death, someone screaming in agony while you—’

‘OK.’ Our waiter appeared behind her, looking about as comfortable as a dedicated hipster can when forced into a red-white-and-green waistcoat, dress shirt, and non-ironic bowtie. ‘I’ve got an insalata caprese, antipasto misto platter, and a garlic bread with mozzarella?’

Alice wheeched her napkin over the Polaroids before the waiter could recognise what they were. Pointed at Shifty. ‘Garlic bread, Ash is the antipasto, and I’m the salad.’ Taking the plate from him before he could interfere with the horror show currently taking place beneath her napkin. ‘Thanks.’ Then knocking back three big gulps of wine, finishing the glass and holding it out for the waiter. ‘And can I have another large Shiraz, please, actually better make it a bottle, no point messing about, is there? That’ll be great, excellent, mmmmm, this all smells delicious!’

The waiter’s smile looked very uncomfortable, squashed between his handlebar moustache and big beard, as he backed away from our table like it was a rabid dog. ‘Yes, wine, definitely.’ And he was gone.

She passed her plate across the table to me. ‘Can you look after that? And don’t eat my mozzarella. Or my tomatoes. Or basil. Actually... don’t eat any of it.’ Then peeled her napkin back, exposing the bloody images again. ‘These were from one side of the shackles, weren’t they?’

‘The string closest the stairs.’ Somehow a platter of mixed meat didn’t seem all that attractive, not when the Polaroids were sitting there. ‘All I could get.’

‘I wonder if there’s a “before” and “after” for each of the victims? One wall is them alive, the other is them dead. With sex and torture in the middle.’

Great wafts of garlic oozed out of Shifty’s starter as he tore a big bite from his huge slice of cheese on toast, white strings looping from his mouth back to the bread, like the ones in the basement. Mumbling through his mouthful. ‘You think he rapes them?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. I worked on a case in Boston once — got to go over as part of an exchange programme, it’s a really nice city, lovely people, but by God it’s cold in winter — anyway there was this guy, Chuck Reich. He would abduct men, tie them up, and stab them, but not because he was trying to kill them, he’d stab them in the stomach or the thigh or the buttock and use the holes he’d made to... you know... pleasure himself. It was the screaming he liked the best. Maybe Gordon and Caroline were like that?’

Yeah, I definitely didn’t want the cold meat any more.

‘You never told me about Chuck Reich.’

Alice shrugged at me. ‘He swore, if he ever got out, he’d come after me and I didn’t want you to worry.’ She stared down at the photos again. ‘Anyway, it was years ago, I’m sure he’s a lot less angry now, and it’s not like they’re ever going to release him, is it? Not after what he did to his lawyer...’ She glanced up at me. ‘It’s OK, you can start eating, I won’t mind.’

Nope. Pushed my plate away.

Eleven murder pictures on one side of the shackles, eleven on the other. Which meant twenty-two victims over fifty-six years, the last of which had to be quite a while ago, going by the mould staining those Polaroids.

‘So, why did Gordon Smith stop killing?’

‘Oh, Ash,’ her smile was small and sad, ‘what makes you think he’s stopped?’

I left the engine running, heaters and blowers on full, as Alice escorted Shifty to his front door. The pair of them wobbly as newborn foals, keeping each other upright. Honestly, they were about as much—

A muffled rendition of the Buffy theme burst into life in my pocket and I dragged out my phone. Took the call. ‘Rhona?’

‘Not too late is it, Guv? Only I got some info for you on Leah MacNeil.’

Outside, Alice was helping Shifty find the keys to his tiny house: a two-up two-down at the end of a curling cul-de-sac in Blackwall Hill. The kind of place that must’ve looked quite stylish when it was thrown up thirty years ago, on the wrong side of the railway tracks, and left to rot ever since.

‘Let me guess — no one’s bothered their arse?’

‘Bingo. I’ve rattled some cages and jammed my boot up some bumholes, so at least they’ll start looking. Oh, and I managed to dig a bunch of stuff up on the mother, Sophie MacNeil, too. Suicide, sixteen years ago. Poor cow was only twenty.’ A slurping noise came down the phone. ‘Granny Helen was in HMP Oldcastle at the time, for battering some drug dealer to death, so two-year-old Leah goes to live with the next-door neighbours. Temporary custody, by the look of it.’

Interesting...

‘And Child Protection were happy with that? The Smiths weren’t related to her, why didn’t she get put into care?’

‘No idea. Can find out, if you like, but you’ll have to wait till Social Services get in, Monday morning.’ More slurping, the words after it mumbled around whatever Rhona was eating. ‘Anyway, I say “poor cow”, but Sophie wasn’t exactly a choirgirl. We’ve got three arrests for possession with intent, two warnings for fighting, one six-month stretch for assault. Chip off her good old mum’s block, that one.’

Alice and Shifty finally got the door open, and he stumbled inside, leaving Alice to wobble on the top step all alone.

‘And Leah’s been a chip off her granny’s, too. Mostly assault, some petty theft, possession — didn’t have enough blow on her to count as dealing, so the arresting officer let her off with a caution — and one theft from a lock-fast place. Guess your mum throwing herself off Clachmara Cliffs screws you up.’

That was a relief, to be honest. At least now we knew Sophie MacNeil hadn’t ended up in Gordon Smith’s private graveyard.

‘They know why she did it?’

‘Oh yeah. She left this reeeeeeealy long, rambling suicide note. There’s a copy in the file. You want me to read it out to you?’

‘Not particularly.’

Alice did an about-face, nearly crashed into the jagged crown of an un-pruned rose tree, and staggered back towards the car. Moving like she was on the deck of a rolling ship.

‘It’s all boy trouble, and not wanting to be pregnant again, and not being able to cope, and everything being so hard. Six pages of it.’ Slurp. ‘Looks like it’s been written by a drunken spider too.’

It took Alice three goes to get the door open and collapse into the passenger seat. She pulled her chin in, grinned, then let free with a diaphragm-rattling burp. ‘Par... Pardon... me.’

‘Thanks, Rhona.’

‘Nah, no trouble. I was twiddling my thumbs here anyway. The joys of nightshift.’

There was some fumbling with the seatbelt.

‘Ooh, you hear about the post mortem? Your physical evidence guru, AKA: the Pinstriped Prick, says Lewis Talbot was strangled with some sort of silk rope. Maybe a curtain tie, or something from a soft-porn bondage starter set. Don’t know about you, but that sounds like an evolving pattern, to me. He’s getting more sophisticated.’ Slurp, slurp, slurp.

‘What on earth are you eating?’

‘Bombay Bad Boy, Pot Noodle, nightshift lunch of champions.’ An extra-long slurp for effect.

‘You’re disgusting.’

A laugh, then she hung up, and I slipped the phone back into my pocket.

Turned to look at the wobbly wreck in the passenger seat, still fighting with the seatbelt.

I took the end off her and clicked it home in the buckle. ‘You planning on throwing up at some point?’

Alice stuck two thumbs up.

‘Wonderful.’

My life just kept getting better and better and better...

7

Rasping snores perfumed the air with garlic, wine and the sour taint of vomit, as I placed the washing-up bowl on the floor beside Alice’s bed and tucked her in. Then ruffled the fur between Henry’s ears. ‘You look after our stinky drunkard, OK?’

He stared back at me with his shiny button eyes, then lowered his head onto her ankles again, curled up on the floral-print duvet.

I clicked the light off. Took one last look.

OK, so she probably wasn’t going to throw up again. Because, let’s face it, there couldn’t be much left to throw up. Two bottles of wine, plus the large glass of red she’d had while we were waiting for our starters, plus the three brandies she’d downed instead of dessert, and half of Shifty’s rum-and-Coke when he wasn’t looking. No wonder she’d spent the last half hour evicting everything she’d eaten since breakfast.

Silly sod.

Could it really be nine years? Nine years of trying to keep her safe, while we went after murdering arseholes. Nine years of watching her drink herself to death, and clearing up after her. Nine years of violence and killers and pain and horror...

Great. Well done, Ash. That wasn’t depressing at all, was it?

Alice wasn’t the only silly sod in the place.

I closed the door to her room. Took my mug of tea back through to the lounge.

Had to hand it to Jacobson, he’d actually got us a nice place to stay, instead of the usual manky B-and-Bs. And on Shand Street — very swanky. High up, too: a fourth-floor, self-catering, two-bedroom flat in a new six-storey development, perched on the blade of granite that pierced the heart of Castle Hill. The panoramic windows looked out over the jagged remains of the Old Castle, its tumbledown walls and stone stumps lit up in shades of yellow and red, and beyond that the land dipped away in a tangled ribbon of streetlights. The wide black expanse of Kings River separated them from the regimented roads and houses of Blackwall Hill on the right and Castleview on the left — with the Wynd rising up behind it.

It was almost pretty.

But then Oldcastle always did look better in the dark.

Especially if you couldn’t see Kingsmeath.

Sitting on the floor, by its charger, my phone let out the ding-buzzzz that announced an incoming text.

The number wasn’t recognised, but the message made it clear enough:

Autocorrect strikes again.

Might as well get it over with.

Mother’s business card had gone limp from its stint in my damp pocket, but I dug it out anyway and sent her everything we’d filmed in Gordon Smith’s basement, even the duff bits. Then unplugged my phone and settled into the squeaky leather couch.

Pressed play.

Footage was shaky, but the camera lingered long enough on each Polaroid to capture most of the details. The young blonde woman on one leg, in a park. The brunette on a beach. The young guy in a beer garden. The old man and younger woman, looking awkward on a putting green... Then more. And more. All those people, smiling and alive. Then all those people in life-ending agony.

By my count there were sixteen people in the ‘before’ pictures, and twenty-two in the ‘after’ ones. Couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if most of the first lot were in the second. Not all of them, though. And there were definitely people getting tortured who didn’t have ‘before’ shots.

I went back to the start and pressed play again.

Park; beach; beer garden; putting green; then a man in his mid-twenties and swimming shorts, reclining on a sunlounger, chest and shoulders a painful shade of scarlet, raising a half-coconut with a wee paper umbrella and straw sticking out the top. Two young women, wrapped around each other — one red-haired, the other blonde — caught in the act of laughing, bent nearly double in front of one of those coin-operated binocular things you got at seaside piers. A happy couple, slightly blurred, waving at the camera as the carousel horses they were sitting on galloped past. A teenaged boy wearing a Manchester United top, grinning out of the photo, hot dog in one hand, can of Coke in the other, bunting in the background. A young woman, sat astride a bay pony, crash helmet on, polo shirt and jodhpurs, knee-high riding boots, beaming like this was the best ever day of her life. Rather than the start of the last one.

Clearly, Gordon Smith liked his victims young. The only person over twenty-five was the old guy on the putting green. But then he probably wasn’t the target. The young woman he’d been caught so awkwardly cuddling was.

Next: a smiling young woman in an ugly orange-and-brown one-piece swimming costume, face covered in freckles, mousy-blonde hair tucked behind an ear, rolling sand dunes behind her. Then a young man dressed in a smart suit and academic gown, mortarboard on his head as he posed on the steps outside a pillared portico, what had to be a degree clutched in his...

Hold on a minute.

I rewound the footage, back to the ugly swimming costume, and hit pause.

She looked... familiar.

Well, familiar-ish.

Broad forehead, wide mouth with lots of teeth, long straight nose sitting on a heart-shaped face. A touch overweight. Not conventionally pretty — not someone people would stop to stare at in the street if she walked past — just a normal person, whose luck ran out the moment this photograph was taken.

Maybe she was one of the faces from the other set of Polaroids? The ‘after’ pictures, with their bruises and slashes and blood and screaming. Maybe that’s where I’d seen her?

I called them up and flicked through... yup. There she was.

A hard cold lump turned deep inside my stomach.

How could anyone do that to someone? How could that get your rocks off?

But there was still something else.

Damn.

My jacket lay draped over one of the dining chairs, parked right in front of the radiator, in an attempt to dry the soggy thing out. The framed photo Helen MacNeil had given me still lurked in the side pocket.

The glass was misted with condensation, but a tea towel took care of that.

Two women in the photo: one was Helen MacNeil, smiling for once in her life, a large muscled arm draped across the shoulders of her teenaged granddaughter. It was clearly taken in a photographer’s studio — the mottled backdrop and professional lighting was evidence of that — but while her gran had put in a bit of effort, Leah MacNeil had opted for ripped jeans, a black denim jacket speckled with patches and badges, and a T-shirt for a band I’d never heard of. Wearing so much makeup it looked as if she’d been decorated.

But she had the same heart-shaped face as her grandmother. The same long sharp nose. The same broad forehead. Her hair was dyed a rich purply-blue, but the mousy-blonde roots were clearly visible.

She wasn’t the young woman in the Polaroids, but the family resemblance was obvious.

Damn it. God, sodding, damn it.

‘You were supposed to have killed yourself...’

Maybe it was a coincidence? Someone who looked like her?

I scrolled through to Rhona’s number and pressed the button. Listened to it ring as I placed the photo frame on the coffee table, facing me.

Then, ‘Guv? If you called up hoping to hear me eating again, all I’ve got’s a—’

‘Sophie MacNeil. Where’s her body?’

‘Eh?’

‘Her body, Rhona, if she killed herself, where is it?’

‘Guv, is something wrong?’

‘Yes.’ Finding it difficult to keep my voice calm and reasonable. ‘Now where’s her bloody body?’

‘Hold on.’ Some rustling. ‘Is it something I’ve done? Because if it’s... OK, here we go. Procurator Fiscal’s judgement was that Sophie MacNeil’s remains were washed out to sea. Never recovered. But the suicide note was enough to—’

‘Buggering hell.’

‘Guv?’

‘Sorry, Rhona, got to go. There’s a call I need to make.’

Rain lashed at the patrol car as we left the bright lights of Logansferry behind and headed out the Strathmuir road. Blue-and-whites flickering, turning the downpour into sapphires and diamonds as they rattled against the bonnet and windscreen.

Mother slumped in the passenger seat, face sagging, scrubbing at her eyes. ‘Why me? Why does crap like this always have to happen to me?’

‘Yes, because this is all about you.’ I shifted in the back seat, sat behind the driver because I wasn’t an idiot. ‘How do you think Helen MacNeil’s going to feel?’

The driver, a spotty-faced lump of gristle in the full Police Scotland black with matching accessories, sniffed. ‘Might be a comfort for her: finding out her wee girl didn’t commit suicide.’

My hand tightened around the head of my old walking stick. ‘Is that what you think?’ Knuckles aching as I squeezed the polished wood.

Mother groaned. ‘Come on, Mr Henderson, he didn’t mean anything by that.’

‘You think it’s comforting to find out your daughter was tortured and murdered by a serial killer?’ Getting louder with every word. ‘You think that’ll be an excuse for a party, maybe? Get out the karaoke machine and HAVE A BASTARDING SINGSONG?’

The moron behind the wheel went pink, lips pinched tight together in silence.

‘He doesn’t know, Mr Henderson. He’s young. And a bit thick. Come on, deep breaths.’

I thumped back in my seat. ‘Don’t see why you needed me on this anyway.’

‘Because you’ve got some sort of weird rapport with Helen MacNeil. And things are hard enough as it is.’ Mother seemed to deflate a couple of sizes as darkened fields flashed by the windows. ‘We had to do a risk assessment and now the SEB are refusing to search the basement. They won’t even go into the house. If this was any normal deposition and crime scene, we’d have big plastic marquees up by now, spotlights, generators; there’d be a specialist team digging the garden up and another one going through that kill room with an electron microscope.’ A shudder. ‘But it’s not a normal crime scene, is it? No, of course it isn’t, because if it was, some DCI would’ve waltzed in and wheeched it off me by now. It’s an utter crapfest, so no one else will touch it with a six-foot cattle prod!’

She had a point.

‘What am I supposed to do, Mr Henderson? If I put people in harm’s way and something happens, I’m screwed. If I don’t put them in harm’s way, I’m not doing my job, and screwed. Either way: screwed.’ She slapped both hands over her face again and smothered a small scream.

‘You finished?’

A small bitter laugh jiggled out of her. ‘Probably. Top brass have been trying to get shot of me for six years now, well, this’ll be the perfect opportunity.’ She turned in her seat and scowled at the driver. ‘You want some career advice, Constable Sullivan? Never have a heart attack on O Division’s dime, because if you do the bastards will treat you like a soiled nappy full of radioactive poop!’

PC Sullivan, quite sensibly, kept his mouth shut.

There was hope for the boy yet.

A small village flashed past, the streets empty, the trees thrashing in the wind, overflowing gutters spilling small lakes across the square.

‘You hear anything back from N Division?’

Mother sagged even further. ‘They sent three patrol cars to Smith’s brother’s croft. No one there.’ Her mouth turned down, lips puckered, like she was sucking on something bitter. ‘Said it looked like no one had been there for years. All abandoned and manky. No Gordon Smith. Wherever he’s disappeared to, it isn’t there.’

A Mobile Incident Unit sat in the middle of the potholed road, about two houses back from the warning fence, lights blazing out in the darkness. It wasn’t one of the swanky new ones, either — little more than a grubby shipping container done up in Police Scotland livery with a mobile generator chuntering away behind it.

Mother undid her seatbelt as PC Sullivan parked alongside. Sat there, staring out through the rain-strafed window at Helen MacNeil’s house. ‘Maybe we should wait till morning?’

‘You know what Oldcastle’s like: entire police force leaks information like a colander.’

Sullivan stiffened. ‘That’s not—’

‘Yes it is, and keep your gob shut.’ I grabbed my walking stick. ‘We hold off till morning, this place will be swarming with soggy journalists, wanting to know what it’s like living next door to a serial killer. Won’t take much for her to put two and two together.’ Turned my collar up, and climbed out into the storm. Let the wind slam the car door shut for me. Then banged my hand down on the roof three or four times, raising my voice over the wind. ‘DI MALCOLMSON, ARE YOU COMING OR NOT?’

Her door opened and she joined me on the pavement, face a sour sagging scowl. ‘This is what I get for answering my phone after midnight. I never learn...’ Hunching herself up, lumbering after me as we shouldered our way through the gusts to Helen MacNeil’s front door and the relative shelter of her grubby caravan. She rang the doorbell, then tucked her hands deep in her pockets. ‘And how come I’m “DI Malcolmson” now, you always used to call me Mother.’

I frowned at her. ‘You’ve been calling me “Mr Henderson” ever since I turned up.’

‘I thought you were upset with me for some reason.’ She took a hand out again and patted me on the back with it. ‘Ash.’

Ah, why not: ‘Mother.’

Still no sign of life from the house, so I leaned on the bell again, keeping my thumb there as it drinnnnnnnnged. Ringing on and on and on and on and—

‘WHAT?’ The door was yanked open, and there stood Helen MacNeil, wrapped up in a tatty old blue dressing gown, bare legs and feet poking out the bottom. Glaring at us with puffy eyes. Short grey hair flat on one side. Fists ready.

Mother looked at me. Raised her eyebrows.

Coward.

I stepped forwards. ‘Helen, can we come in, please? I’m... afraid we have some bad news.’

She sat there, staring at me.

I shifted on the couch. ‘Are there any questions you’d like to ask?’

Helen MacNeil looked down at my phone again, clutched in her trembling hands. At the image filling the screen: a smiling young woman in an ugly orange-and-brown one-piece swimming costume, face covered in freckles, mousy-blonde hair tucked behind an ear, rolling sand dunes behind her.

PC Sullivan emerged through the living room door, carrying two mugs in each hand, steam rising off them in the chill air. He put the lot on the rickety coffee table, then held one out to Helen. ‘Milk and three sugars.’

She blinked. Shook her head. Voice hollow and distant. ‘This has to be a mistake...’

And again, Sullivan had the common sense to keep his gob shut.

Mother helped herself to a mug and did the same.

Typical.

‘Do you recognise the photograph, Helen?’

‘Gordon wouldn’t hurt Sophie. He wouldn’t. He’s been like family to us, ever since I was a wee girl. This is bollocks!’

‘It’s definitely her, though, in the picture?’

‘I... It’s...’ She placed a fingertip on the screen. Then placed my phone on the coffee table, stood, and marched out of the room.

‘Pffff...’ Mother looked at me over the rim of her mug. ‘You have to feel for her.’

‘And are you planning on chipping in at any point, or do I have to do everything now?’

A smile, then Mother leaned forward and patted me on the knee. ‘But you’re doing so well.’

‘You can stuff your patronising—’

Helen marched back in, holding out a Polaroid. ‘Look.’

It was almost identical to the one we’d found hanging up in next door’s basement. Taken either just before, or just after it. The main difference being that in this version, the woman in the bathing suit was holding a beaming toddler in a pink sundress, floppy white hat on its head. Pinholes speckled the white plastic edges of the photo and its colours were more faded too. A slight grey patina to the whole thing.

‘Gordon and Caroline took them for a bank holiday weekend in Aberdeen, when Leah was eighteen months. I was three years into my sentence...’

I turned the Polaroid over: ‘BALMEDIE BEACH’ printed on the back in neat black felt pen.

‘Had it pinned above my bed, in my cell. And every time I saw it, I’d think about them,’ Helen narrowed her eyes at me, ‘and what I’d do to you when I got out.’

The Polaroid clicked down against the coffee table. ‘I’m sorry.’

Her chin came up. ‘So what if Gordon had a photo of Sophie in his house? He was like a grandfather to—’

‘There’s another photo. It’s...’ What good would it do, telling her what he’d done to her daughter? No parent should have to know that. ‘Sophie didn’t end her own life. She was murdered.’

‘If there’s another photograph, I want to see it!’

All that blood and pain and horror, captured in one horrible three-inch by three-inch square.

‘No.’ I stood. Put my phone back in my pocket. ‘Trust me, you really don’t.’