The Coffinmaker’s Garden

8

‘... statement that the Justice Secretary, Mark Stalker, has the First Minister’s complete support.’

And we all knew what that meant.

‘Thank you, Janet.’ On the TV screen, a greasy wee man in a too-tight suit pulled on his serious face for the camera. ‘Police Scotland are expected to confirm, later today, that remains of a small boy, found in woods to the south of Oldcastle, are those of missing four-year-old, Lewis Talbot. Our crime correspondent Hugh Brimmond is live at the scene for us now. Hugh?’

Outside, it was still dark, the city’s lights twinkling in the inky black, as I scooped up another spoonful of porridge. With salt, not sugar. Washed down with a sip of decaf tea.

Rock and roll.

A broad-shouldered rugby type appeared on screen, standing in the dark with some trees behind him, lit up by the headlights of passing cars, rain thrumming down on a red-and-white golf brolly. ‘That’s right, Bob. We’re here in a large stretch of woodland known locally as “The Murders”, a name from the sixteenth century that’s been horribly prescient...’

‘Urgh...’ Alice slumped her way in from the kitchen, clanked a big mug of coffee down on the dining table, and collapsed into a chair. Folded over forwards and rested her forehead against the cool glass surface as I finished off the last of my breakfast.

‘... bringing the tragic death toll to three young boys, all under the age of six.’

‘Morning.’

‘I said, “Urrrrrrgh!”’ Not looking up.

The greasy guy in the suit was back. ‘Sport now, and Inverurie Loco Works are looking to make it a hat-trick today as they go up against favourites, Buckie Thistle...’

‘Well, whose fault is that, then?’ Downed the last dregs of tea, picked up my bowl and stood. ‘Briefing’s at quarter to, so better get your bumhole in gear.’

‘URGH!’

‘Don’t “Urgh” me. You know what Jacobson’s like when people are late.’ Putting on a fairly decent impersonation of the man, even if I say so myself: ‘“I’d like to remind everyone that LIRU also stands for ‘Late Is Really Unprofessional’.”’ Back to normal. ‘Hairy wee tosspot that he is.’

A tad harsh, maybe, but what did you expect at quarter past seven on a Saturday morning?

Alice folded her hands over her head. ‘Urgh...’

‘Don’t care. Go get ready.’ The flat’s kitchen wasn’t bad: enough space to throw together a decent meal, if you actually had the time. The clunk-scuff of my limping echoed back from slate tiles and shiny white flat-panel kitchen units.

‘... opening games of the new season. And now here’s Valerie with the weather.’

I stuck the porridge pot and my bowl in to soak. Rinsed out my mug. Raised my voice so it would carry through into the living room. ‘You’ll be shocked to hear there’s been nothing on the news about Gordon Smith and his basement of horrors.’

‘Thanks, Bob. We’ve got an unsettled couple of days ahead as Storm Trevor continues to track north...’

‘Alice?’ Back through the kitchen door.

She’d barely moved. Slumped there, arms dangling, face screwed shut. Groaning.

Oh, for God’s sake.

My old walking stick wasn’t exactly pristine — the varnish worn off the handle, the rubber tip blackened and cracked — but it was perfect for poking people, so I did. Right in the shoulder. Putting some weight behind the thing. ‘You: wretch. Arse in gear. I want your teeth brushed, face washed, hair combed, and ready to go in five minutes.’

Alice’s response was barely audible, ‘Urgh...’

We followed the curling cobbled sweep of Shand Street, down the hill, moving from one yellowy patch of streetlight to the next — Henry trotting along at my side, Alice’s folding umbrella drumming in the rain that pummelled down from a coal-grey sky. Tiny rivers gurgling in the gutters. Past darkened shops with ‘TO LET / MAY SELL’ in the windows. Boarded-up newsagents, tea shops, and empty banks. A couple of charity shops and a bookies still held on, the grilles down over their grimy windows, waiting for the day to begin, but the baker’s was open.

‘Wait here.’ I handed her Henry’s lead, ducked out from under the brolly and limped inside. Came back out again with a mince bridie, a beetroot-and-stovies pie, and a cheese-and-onion pasty, all three turning the paper bag they shared semi-transparent with grease. Handed them over. ‘Get those down you.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Eat.’

She passed me the umbrella and Henry, then grimaced at the bag’s contents. ‘Don’t feel well.’

‘Trust me: nothing better for a hangover than baked stuff in pastry.’

‘Why do you have to be so mean to me?’ But Alice pulled out the bridie, steaming in the cold morning air, bringing with it the rich savoury scent of hot meat and butter, scrunched her eyes closed, and ripped out a big bite. Getting wee golden flakes all down the front of her parka.

Henry bounded along beside her, nose up, sniffing the pastry-scented air. Making hopeful noises as we headed downhill towards St Jasper’s Lane.

‘Right, soon as the team briefing’s over, I want to go jangle Steven Kirk again.’

‘Mmmmngghnnphff, mnngnnn mnnnfff?’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’ A four-by-four rattled up the hill, splashing through the lake formed by an overflowing drain and sending out a spray of grimy water that only missed us by an inch. Tosser. ‘Kirk was in Kingsmeath when Andrew Brennan went missing, I’d put money on it. The only reason he’d lie about that is because he knows we’re onto him.’

‘Still don’t see why we couldn’t have taken the car. It’s cold and it’s raining and my head hurts.’ Whine, moan, whinge. But she polished off the bridie anyway, then started on the pie.

‘We should speak to his mother’s care home: double-check his alibi.’

St Jasper’s Lane thickened with traffic — cars and vans heading off to work. An ambulance crawled past with its blue-and-whites off, the driver and passenger looking about as cheerful as a biopsy. More shops here. A young man in turban and leathers, hauling the shutters up outside a vaping shop. A slouch of people, hunched into themselves as they tromped along the uneven pavement. A young woman huddling outside a newsagent’s, puffing away on a cigarette as if it was the only thing keeping her upright. A figure, lying on their side in the doorway of a boarded-up nail salon, bundled in a filthy-grey sleeping bag, their back to the road.

The pedestrian crossing bleeped and we followed a knot of women dressed in identical black suits across the road.

Alice looked up from her pie. ‘I’ve been thinking about that profile of Gordon Smith.’

‘Don’t know why you’re bothering, it’s not like we don’t know who he is.’

Past the King James Theatre — its gaudy billboards advertising the Christmas panto — a droopy old man in a high-viz jacket hosing vomit off the top step.

‘That’s the point, though,’ pastry flakes going flying, ‘no one did. Well, except his wife. And his victims, of course. Everyone else will tell you what a lovely man he was and he’d never hurt a fly and he was always such a considerate neighbour who’d give you the shirt off his back and other assorted clichés and actually you might be right about baked goods and hangovers.’ Munching down the last mouthful of pie. ‘Could really go something to drink, though, I’m—’

‘Here.’ I reached into my pocket and pulled out the chilled tin of Irn-Bru I’d got her in the baker’s.

‘Ooh!’ She clicked the ring-pull and gulped away.

‘Doesn’t matter, in the end, though, does it? We know it was him; Mother’s got a lookout request on the go; someone will spot him somewhere; uniform will swoop in and pick him up; and he’ll go down for life, with sod-all chance of parole. In the meantime, we’ve got a child-killer to catch. So can we please forget about Gordon Smith? It’s not our—’

A juddering belch burst out of Alice, like a lowbrow foghorn. ‘I think we should visit Rebecca this morning.’

A bus rumbled past, the steamy windows filled with unhappy faces, pale as margarine and twice as depressing.

‘Ash, did you hear me? I said, I think—’

‘Can we get on with the day, please? Enough on my plate as it is, without you—’

‘It’ll be good for you, though.’

We turned right, onto Peel Place. The elegant sandstone buildings were blighted by the manky Victorian redbrick lump of O Division Headquarters, like a big hairy wart on a supermodel’s cheek. Its narrow windows scowled out at the rainy gloom, through bars and grilles. A handful of outside broadcast vans were parked in front of the building: Sky News, BBC, ITV, Channel 4... Getting ready to hear all about the poor wee dead boy found in the woods yesterday.

The BBC lot were doing a piece to camera, the reporter huddled under his red-and-white brolly, trying to stay dry and keep the ‘POLICE SCOTLAND’ sign in shot at the same time.

‘Eat your pasty.’

‘You’re impossible, you know that, don’t you?’ She dipped back into the greasy bag, though. ‘And we still need to do something for our anniversary: celebratory meal, or something. Somewhere fancy, though, no sticky floors or plastic tablecloths.’

A figure huddled in the lee of the war memorial on the other side of the street — three soldiers in kilts and full WWI pack, bayonets fixed, charging towards the machineguns. She pushed away from the memorial and marched across the road, on an intercept course. Short grey hair plastered to her head, shoulders hunched, bloodshot eyes narrowed against the rain — the bags under them heavy and bruised. Helen MacNeil.

She looked the pair of us up and down, then ignored Alice completely. ‘I spent all night on the internet.’

‘Didn’t they assign you a Family Liaison Officer? They’ll keep you up to date on—’

‘And I’ve been googling you.’ Stepping closer. ‘Thought you were just some thug copper who liked throwing his weight about, but you know, don’t you? You know what it’s like.’

Oh Christ, not this...

‘Mrs MacNeil, it’s not—’

‘You’re telling me that Gordon killed my Sophie. That he’s killed other people. That the man I let look after my child and my grandchild was a bloody serial killer!’

I pulled on my best reassuring-police-officer voice. ‘Look, it isn’t—’

‘YOU THINK I’M STUPID?’ Bellowing it, right in my face. ‘HE KILLED HER TOO, DIDN’T HE?’

Over by the outside broadcast vans, the hyenas were looking our way. Peering out through their windscreens. Scrambling for cameras.

‘DIDN’T HE? HE KILLED MY LEAH!’

Alice put a hand on her arm. ‘Please, this isn’t—’

‘DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH ME!’ Helen’s right hand flashed out, a backhanded slap that sent Alice spinning, stumbling to the ground.

The two silent seconds that followed were broken by Henry growling, hackles up, four little feet set on the wet pavement.

And that was it.

I grabbed a handful of Helen’s collar and slammed her backwards into a scabby Land Rover hard enough to set the car’s alarm shrieking. Hazard lights flashing their orange warning as I bared my teeth and forced my face into hers. Rain hissing down around us like the end of days. ‘You EVER lay a finger on her again and I will FUCKING KILL YOU!’

The growling turned into barking.

Helen grinned back at me, but there was no warmth or humour in it. It was cold and vicious, like her eyes. ‘You know what it’s like.’

I bounced her off the Land Rover again. Then let go. Squatted down beside Alice. Brushed the hair from her face. Helped her sit up. ‘Are you OK?’

Her bottom lip was already swelling up. A thin crack of red bisecting it, glistening. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine...’ Clothes and jacket stained with water where she’d hit the deck.

Helen loomed over us. ‘The Birthday Boy took your daughter, didn’t he? Tortured and killed her.’ A bitter laugh. ‘Oh, I know alllll about it. Even downloaded the e-book.’

‘Come on, let’s get you up.’

The car alarm was still screaming as I helped Alice to her feet.

‘You OK? Not feeling dizzy or anything?’

She brushed my hands away. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Good.’ I dropped my walking stick and Henry’s lead, turned, snatched a handful of Helen’s coat and hauled back a fist to—

‘Ash, no!’ Alice — hanging off my raised arm, pulling it back down again. ‘The TV people.’

They were hurrying across the road, getting their cameras up.

I let go and gave Helen another shove. ‘You don’t touch her again.’

‘You were never that squeaky clean, even when you were a copper. So I’ve got a deal for you: you help me find Gordon Smith before these wankers do, and I’ll make it worth your while.’

Deep breath. ‘Go home, Mrs MacNeil.’

‘I know where an armoured-car job’s hidden. Six million in jewellery, paintings, sculptures, antiques, and the like. You help me, you get a third of it.’

‘Ash, we have to go!’

The cameras were up on their shoulders now, reporters trotting alongside, microphones out, umbrellas up. Closing in for the kill.

I grabbed my walking stick, turned on my heel, and hobbled off down Peel Place, Henry trotting along beside me, Alice scrambling to catch up.

Her umbrella was all collapsed in on one side, where it had bounced off the pavement.

An idiot in a grey suit, stopped right in front of me, holding out his microphone. Eyes widening when he finally realised I wasn’t stopping. He jumped to one side, and the three of us marched past, Helen MacNeil’s voice ringing out behind us: ‘YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE!’

9

Alice shuffled up beside me. ‘She still there?’

‘Yup.’

Down on the street below, Helen MacNeil was standing in the rain, talking to the Sky News people, glaring at the camera as if it’d refused to pay protection money.

Not our case.

Not our problem.

Not our—

A sharp rapping noise came from the front of the room, followed by a pointed, ‘I’m not boring you, am I, Ash?’

When I turned, there was Detective Superintendent Jacobson, tapping the tip of his extendable pointer against one of the small room’s four whiteboards. He’d peeled off his trademark brown leather jacket, leaving it draped over the back of a chair to drip onto the scabby carpet tiles, exposing a dark red shirt that was about two sizes too big for a wee hairy bloke in tiny square glasses.

He wasn’t the only one staring at us.

Professor Bernard Huntly: in his immaculate pinstriped suit, starched white shirt, and pastel silk tie; battleship-grey short-back-and-sides; Sandringham moustache; and a pair of performance eyebrows — both of which were raised as he smirked in our direction.

Dr Sheila Constantine: buried somewhere within a big padded jacket with a furry collar, a tartan scarf wrapped around her neck and chin, two apple cheeks and button nose poking out over the top. Woolly hat covering most of her thick blonde hair, even though the radiators in here were pounding out heat.

Henry: tail going like a furry windscreen wiper, mouth hanging open, tongue lolling out, the smell of wet dog rising off him like a fusty chemical weapon.

And PC Thingy. No idea what her real name was, because I hadn’t been paying attention when Jacobson introduced her. Some no-hoper O Division had lumbered us with, in order to look as if they were cooperating. A stringy scarecrow with oversized hands and a buzzcut, whose nose and chin entered any crime scene about half a step before the rest of her.

Which only left one member of LIRU: Sabir. He wasn’t there in person, but his chubby face looked out from a monitor, placed on a wheelie trolley near the front of the room. Mouth a small twitching horror show as he shovelled in crisps, crumbs and stubble on his jowls, bald as a long-dead egg, skin the colour of slightly mouldy beetroot. Someone had stuck a strip across the top of the monitor with ‘DS AKHTAR’ printed on it. Sabir’s voice crackled out of the speaker, sounding about as Liverpool as you could get. ‘No offence, like, but can we get this thing wrapped up, or wha’? I’m meant to be hackin’ into a crime-syndicate an’ planting Trojan viruses on their Dark Web servers in twenny-five minutes, and I’d kina like to go for a crap first.’

‘Quite.’ Jacobson clicked his pointer against the board again, underlining a bullet-pointed list. ‘So, to recap, now everyone’s paying attention: eighteenth of June, victim one is strangled by hand. Twentieth of August, victim two is strangled with his own belt. And fourteenth October, victim three is strangled with a silk cord—’

‘Actually, Bear,’ Professor Huntly held up a manicured finger, ‘speaking as this delightful little team’s physical evidence guru, I think you’ll find the strangling ligature was probably a curtain tie.’

That got him a scowl. ‘Speaking as this delightful little team’s boss, you lost “call me ‘Bear’” privileges yesterday, when you pissed off the Procurator Fiscal.’

Huntly sniffed. ‘I merely pointed out that decomposition products were—’

‘Don’t make me tell you again!’

A shrug. ‘Sorry, Detective Superintendent.’

‘Better.’ Jacobson frowned at the whiteboard for a moment. ‘Now, where was I? Yes, right: silk ligature. No sign of it at the deposition site, so it was taken to and from the scene by our killer.’ The pointer came around to aim at Dr Constantine. ‘Sheila?’

She dug her hands into her armpits, smothering them in the padded fabric. ‘The transition to ligatures isn’t the only change: there’s a definite difference in how long he takes to kill his victims. With Andrew Brennan he crushes the hyoid bone and the windpipe, so death would be reasonably quick. Oscar Harris has a worse time — going by the bruising, our killer tightened and released the belt around his throat three times, before committing to it. Lewis Talbot...’ She puffed out a breath and dug her hands in deeper. ‘First off, the state of the body didn’t help any: four weeks half-buried in the woods. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve post-mortemed worse, but once the soft tissue starts to go, we lose a lot of structural detail. So while it’s impossible to say one hundred percent for sure, I think he was strangled and revived and strangled and revived at least eight times. And given the infusion of blood in the tissue around his neck, it could’ve taken anything up to an hour. Maybe an hour and a half.’

PC Thingy whistled. ‘Poor wee sod...’

‘Another thing: Andrew Brennan suffered multiple broken ribs. Our killer knelt on top of him while he strangled him. No broken ribs on Oscar Harris, and most of the bruising is around the front of the neck, so I think he was probably standing or kneeling behind Oscar while he strangled him. And Lewis Talbot has broken ribs again.’

Outside, in the corridor, someone laughed as they thumped past with a couple of their mates. It faded away like blood down the mortuary drain.

‘Anything else?’

Sheila curled her top lip. ‘Only that there’s evidence of abuse on all three victims. Physical on Andrew and Lewis, but Oscar Harris was definitely sexually abused at some point. Here’s the thing though, it was before they were killed. And I don’t mean immediately before, I mean weeks, possibly months. No sign of semen or penetration of any kind on the bodies.’

Jacobson cleared his throat. ‘Thank you, Sheila. Alice?’

Alice shuffled forward in her soggy red Converse trainers, one arm wrapped around herself, the other hand fiddling with the curls by her ear. ‘We’re seeing a definite progression in his behaviour. Andrew is a victim of chance — he, I mean, our killer...’ A frown. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I think we need a name for him. Otherwise, it’s all going to get pretty confusing on the pronoun front.’

‘I have a suggestion,’ Huntly straightened his cuffs, a nonchalant wobble to his head, ‘Cronus.’ He turned to Sheila. ‘He was the first of the Titans, in Greek mythology, father of Zeus. Ate his own children, because—’

Sheila hit him. ‘We know who Cronus is, you patronising wankspasm.’

‘Did you know he castrated his own dad, Uranus, from inside his mother’s womb? That would rather put the scuppers on a romantic evening, don’t you think? You’re getting all hot and bothered, next thing you know—’

Jacobson rapped on the whiteboard again. ‘All right, if we can stick to the topic in hand?’

‘Well...’ Alice tilted her head on one side, still twiddling with her hair. ‘I suppose we could go with Cronus, but our killer isn’t actually eating these boys and it sounds too much like we want him to seem cool when it’s probably better if we pick a name that’s not going to be something to live up to, if that makes sense, so why don’t we call him... Gòrach? Which is Gaelic for stupid, so we’re not putting him on some sort of pedestal, or making people think he’s in any way special, which I think we can all agree is counterproductive, and Bernard got to name the last person we were after, so I think it’s only fair I get a turn.’ She printed the name up on the board in squeaky green marker pen.

Sabir clicked some buttons and the camera zoomed in on his eye. ‘Go-rat-ch?’

‘No, “Gòrach”. That back-tick above the “O” is a grave, so you pronounce it “aw”, like in caught, or bought, or thought, and the “CH” at the end is an unvoiced dorsal velar non-sibilant fricative, like in “loch”.’

‘An unvoiced McWhatnow?’

‘Imagine making a guttural hissing sound at the back of your throat, like an espresso machine, and you’ll be halfway there. Ooh: or if you’ve ever watched Star Trek, the Klingons do it all the time. “Chhhhhhh...”’

‘Gow-ra-chhhhhhhhhhhh?’

Jacobson pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, face creased up. ‘I think we’re straying from the point. Again.’

‘Yes. Sorry.’ Alice went back to playing with her hair. ‘Anyway, Gòrach has fantasised about killing a small boy for a long, long time, and then he sees Andrew and he’s not prepared for it or anything, but Andrew’s there, and no one’s looking and this is his chance to finally do what he’s been dreaming about. Only it’s nothing like how he imagined it and it’s messy and Andrew’s struggling and Gòrach’s panicking and he just wants to get it over with and what if someone sees him and oh my God it was meant to be so much better than this... So he abandons the body and runs.

‘Andrew’s discovered a couple of hours later and it’s on the news and in every paper and Gòrach’s panicking for real now — they’re going to find him, they’re going to catch him and he’ll go to prison with the perverts and he can’t take that, he can’t, he’d rather kill himself than go to prison.’ She tilted her head to the other side. ‘It’s all so horrible and scary but, now that he’s done it, he can’t stop thinking about the power and he’s reassessing the experience; maybe it wasn’t so bad after all, maybe it was exciting, and he’s using it to reinforce the fantasy and he’s masturbating with the same hands he used to strangle a wee boy, and over the next two months he’s convincing himself that it’ll be perfect next time, because he knows what he’s doing now.’

PC Thingy shifted in her seat, face pulled down around the edges, as if she’d trod in something warm and squishy.

‘So now Gòrach’s looking for the next child to be perfect with and he sees Oscar Harris and this time he’s going to get it right and he abducts him and takes him deep into the woods and strangling Andrew with his hands was too scary to do it again and he doesn’t want Oscar looking at him, so he uses the boy’s own belt and he does it from behind and maybe he doesn’t do it right, and Oscar’s still breathing, so he tries again, but Oscar still won’t die — why won’t the little bastard die? — so one last time and this time Oscar’s dead and how did he manage to make such a mess of it and he’s ashamed, so Gòrach hides the body under a rhododendron bush and slinks away.’

Jacobson nodded. ‘So he’s experimenting?’

‘He’s learning. This time he goes home and watches the media and there’s Oscar Harris’s parents on TV crying because their son’s missing and maybe Gòrach likes that, likes seeing the pain in their eyes and knowing he’s the one who did that, that he’s got the power of life and death, not just over the children, but over their families too, maybe even the whole city? And he relives killing Oscar and Andrew, over and over, and he takes the best of both murders and puts them together to make a new and better fantasy that builds and grows till it’s all he can think of, which is when he goes out and abducts Lewis Talbot.’ Alice frowned at the whiteboard with the crime-scene photos on it, in all their horrible technicolour glory. ‘It’s not perfect, but then nothing ever is, but he’s in control this time, he takes the silk rope with him, probably carries it about in his pocket for days beforehand, running his fingers over it and daydreaming about that wonderful moment when he finally gets to use it, and when he finds Lewis he’s prepared, he takes him out to the middle of nowhere, deep in the woods, where no one will ever find them and Gòrach strangles and resuscitates him and strangles and resuscitates, because he has the power of death and life, and what’s one without the other, only now he knows he likes the look of fear in his victim’s eyes, he wants to see it as he kills and brings back and kills and brings back... that beautiful moment when the light flickers out, only to come back on again, so he can snuff it out one more time.’

Silence.

‘Andrew was a victim of chance. Oscar was on purpose.’ Alice let go of her hair. ‘Lewis was the culmination of the first two murders, a return to all the things he loved about killing those little boys.’

‘Yawn.’ Huntly stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankle, exposing a swathe of bright-purple socks. ‘This is all very touchy-feely, but — and I hope I’m not speaking out of turn here — perhaps we could have some sort of revelation that actually helps us catch him?’

Tit.

Alice pointed at the map that took up Whiteboard Number Four: where brightly coloured magnetic buttons marked the site of each abduction and dead body. ‘Andrew Brennan was playing under the railway lines in Kingsmeath when he was murdered. For him to be a victim of opportunity, Gòrach had to be there too. But he went hunting for Oscar in Castleview — picked somewhere new to decrease his chance of getting caught — changing things up, going for a slightly older boy from a more affluent family, using the belt instead of his hands, trying new things. But Lewis Talbot is Gòrach’s return to form. His return to Kingsmeath. Gòrach’s comfortable there, it’s his patch. He either grew up there and moved away, or he’s never left. He knows this place.’

‘Hmmph.’ Huntly shrugged. ‘It’s a start, I suppose.’

‘He has access to a vehicle — otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to take Lewis to where they found the body. He’s confident in himself, otherwise he wouldn’t have transported his victim so far away from where he abducted him. See, there’s that pronoun thing again. Gòrach’s either self-employed, or he works shifts, or maybe some job where he’s got a lot of autonomy? Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to hunt children during the day, and during the week.’

Jacobson scribbled something down in his notebook, then looked up at her. ‘What about previous?’

Alice shook her head, setting the curls bouncing. ‘He’s not had an outlet for these feelings. They’ve been brewing inside him for years but he hasn’t dared do anything about them. That’s why he doesn’t sexually assault his victims — it’s not about them as sexual beings, it’s about him and his fantasies. He’d rather go home and replay the murder and masturbate than actually do anything with their bodies. Probably thinks that kind of thing is perverted: beneath him.’

‘Because what the world really needs is more child-murdering tosspots with a well-developed sense of moral rectitude.’

Alice’s shoulders curled up around her ears, eyebrows pinched. ‘One more thing: I think this two-month cycle he’s on is going to accelerate now he’s found what he likes. He took the time between Oscar and Lewis’s murders to learn. Lewis died in October, it’s November now, he’s probably already hunting for victim number four. And he’ll be a lot better at it, this time.’

‘Groan! Sigh. Wilt...’ Huntly pulled himself up to his full height, in the back seat, then slumped again. ‘Why are we going so slowly?’

I turned up the Suzuki’s radio — a boy band warbling their way through an autotuned cover of an old Led Zeppelin song. Awful, but with any luck it would drown him out.

Instead, the annoying pinstriped git got louder. ‘And why is this car so small? It’s like something that comes with a Barbie playset. And it positively reeks of wet dog.’

Henry’s glistening blackcurrant nose poked over the back seat, hairy eyebrows raised, mouth hanging open in a gaping grin, as if that’d been a compliment.

I gave Professor Bernard Huntly a scowl in the rear-view mirror. ‘No one asked you to come.’

‘I know. Sadly, it’s my burden to be so incredibly useful that none can cope without my genius. So when I see a fair maiden in need, how can I possibly refuse to help?’

Outside, the rush hour proved what an oxy-sodding-moron it was — nose-to-tail cars, vans, and lorries, crawling their way across Calderwell Bridge in the pelting rain, while an occasional taxi stuttered past in the empty bus lane. The thick grey river turned pewter by the thin greasy light.

Huntly wriggled in his seat again, turned nearly sideways. ‘Honestly, I swear this thing wasn’t designed for full-sized human beings. Oompa Loompas, perhaps, but not human beings.’

Alice shrugged when I transferred the scowl to her instead. ‘Well, what was I supposed to do? He annoyed Sheila all day yesterday, and it was Bear the day before that, so now it’s our turn. You’ve seen the roster.’

We finally made it to the other side of the river, swinging around the roundabout and onto Montrose Road, heading east. The sign used to read, ‘WELCOME TO KINGSMEATH ~ OLDCASTLE’S FRIENDLIEST NEIGHBOURHOOD’, but the letters were barely visible under layers and layers of foul-mouthed graffiti.

‘Friendliest neighbourhood’ my arse.

At least the traffic was a bit lighter here — most of it going the other way, trying to get out of Kingsmeath.

Huntly leaned forwards again. ‘So, my dear Dr McDonald, have you a plan for when we visit our first deposition-slash-crime scene?’

Alice fixed a smile in place. ‘I’m going to look at things.’

‘Ah, a very wise choice. I too have “looking at things” in mind.’ Huntly wriggled about some more, setting the tiny jeep rocking on its springs. ‘I know it’s five months since poor Andrew Brennan met his unfortunate end, and it’s unlikely anything will have survived the intervening period and this horrible weather, but we troupers must troupe, must we not?’

‘I say we pull over, chuck Huntly in the river, and swear blind we haven’t seen him.’

‘Ash!’ She shook her head. ‘We’re not throwing anyone in the river.’

‘How about we fill his pockets with bricks first?’

The railway bridge lumped its way across Kings River on thick stone pilings, the heavy metalwork boxy and functional, rather than elegant and sculptured. It started climbing as soon as it made landfall at Kettle Docks, arching over the road in front of us — a lumpen granite bridge that hung with stalactites of rusting steel.

‘No one’s filling anyone’s pockets with bricks!’

We passed through the gloomy archway, and Alice took a left onto Denholm Road. Heading uphill.

The street had probably been quite grand in its day — sweeping terraces of sandstone townhouses, lined with trees and wrought-iron railings — before they built Castle View and all the smart money moved out, leaving this part of the city to the mercy of town planners, council housing, and tower blocks. Now, the once-fancy buildings of Denholm Road were carved up into multiple occupancy flats, stuffed full of people whose benefits wouldn’t stretch to anything less crappy. The trees reduced to vitrified stumps years ago, the railings long gone. The pristine sandstone striped with brown where its satellite-dish acne had rusted away. Blackened by decades of soot and grit and no one caring enough to clean it.

Huntly tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Tell me, my dear ex-Detective Inspector, would you like to place a small wager on my turning something up here that will, as they say in the more excitable crime novels, “blow the case wide open”?’

Kept my eyes front. ‘And would you like to wager that you’ll do something that earns you a punch on the nose before that happens?’

‘Oh, I do like a challenge!’

Alice pulled the Suzuki in behind the crumbling remains of an outside catering van — a boxy trailer, no bigger than four portaloos strapped together, slouching on flat tyres, its wooden walls bloated and peeling. The words ‘SHAKY DAVE’S TATTIE SHACK’ sitting proudly above a serving hatch that gaped like a corpse’s mouth. She pointed at the junction with William Terrace. ‘There’s a way through, over there.’

‘You, my dear, Dr McDonald, shall be the banker for our bet, this rainy day. Here...’ He dug into his wallet and came out with a slithery plastic fiver. ‘This says I come up with some devastating insight into Gòrach’s actions before Mr Henderson deems it necessary to resort to physical violence due to his hyperactive amygdala and sluggish frontal lobe.’

I turned in my seat. ‘Are you asking for a fist in the face before we’ve even left the car?’

‘But of course: I do like to make things spicy.’ A wink. ‘Now, is there any chance we can exit this two-door motorised sardine can before I lose all feeling in my legs?’

‘One punch and you’ll lose all feeling in your everything.’ But I got out anyway and folded the passenger seat forward so he could clamber into the rain like a pinstriped stick insect.

Huntly pulled a rainbow-coloured golf brolly from the rear footwell and popped it open. Standing there, brushing at the damp shoulders of his jacket.

I went back in for the two new-ish umbrellas I’d liberated from the station’s Lost-and-Found. Handed the collapsible one to Alice. ‘Here.’

She pressed the button and it sprung out, the canopy opening with a whooomp. A big smile spread across her face. ‘It’s a ladybird!’ Bright red with black dots, a happy face, and sticky-out antennas that wobbled in the rain. It even had six short dangly legs.

‘Thought you’d like it.’ Mine was a plain black job.

Huntly finished preening, then snapped his fingers. ‘Now, dear colleagues, join me at the crime scene, and witness the glory of my unfettered material-evidence genius!’ Marching off with his nose in the air.

It was going to be a very long day.

10

‘Well, isn’t this fun?’ Huntly hunched under his multicoloured brolly, face all puckered and lined, arms drawn in against his chest as he picked his way through the tussocks of pale-green and yellowy-brown grass and the rain hissed down. ‘Remind me: whose idiotic idea was it to come out here?’

Our patch of waste ground made a gloomy strip, with the back of William Terrace and Denholm Road on one side, and the fifty-foot cliff that separated them from McArthur Drive on the other. The railway line soared above our heads, held aloft on substantial steel pillars painted in various shades of rust-flecked black. So thickly coated that the rivets were barely visible on some sections.

A long line of bare branches stuck up above the garden fences — beech and sycamore, with broom spilling out in dark-green profusion. The grey ranks of dead nettles wrapped around with curled bramble barbed wire.

Be a miracle if daylight ever made its way down here.

What a horrible place to die...

Alice wandered on ahead, her ladybird brolly thrumming in the downpour. Looking up and down, left and right, turning on the spot, then heading off again. Henry sulked along after her, tail down, whimpering and complaining on the end of his leash. Getting soggier and soggier.

‘First observation,’ Huntly pointed at the back of the buildings to our right, ‘the only way you’d know a child was playing here is if you saw them from the windows, there. Or you were here too.’

I shook my head. ‘Alice already said that, back at the briefing.’

‘Has someone done door-to-doors?’

‘No, because not one police officer in Oldcastle has ever worked a murder investigation.’ I gave him the most sarcastic smile I could muster. ‘You muppet.’

‘Very well, I see I shall have to increase my levels of brilliance.’ His arm swept north, following the line of the tracks above. ‘The only entrances to this horrible strip of yuck are where we came in, and up there at Saint Damon of the Green Wood. And it’s not as if you’d use this as a rat run to or from anywhere. So why would you be here?’

Should’ve gone with my first thought and thrown him in the river.

‘The answer, my dear ex-DI, is “illicit reasons”.’ Huntly picked his way across to the base of one of the pillars, running the toe of his polished black brogues through the grass around the base. ‘Which means the three “D”s: Drink, Drugs, and-slash-or Depravity.’

A thin metallic pinging rang through the air above, getting louder, like a metal rod drawn down a piano wire. Then rattling. And the shadow of a train growled overhead, adding a small shower of dust and grit to the rain.

I checked my watch: 08:32, so that would be the ten past eight to Aberdeen. Late again.

Huntly pulled his shoulders in, squatting beneath his brolly as if trying to make himself as small a target as possible. Only standing up again once the train had passed. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I’m never keen to be spattered with human sewage. And once the train has left the station...’ He scuffed his shoe through the grass again. ‘And while we’re on the subject, who ever heard of Saint Damon? No such beast exists, and I speak as someone who’s studied the Catholic faith fairly intensively.’

‘You’re a Catholic?’

‘Well, not any more, obviously — their views on homosexuality being somewhat Levitican — but I was quite the altar boy when I was younger. Had a singing voice that would put joy in the bleakest of hearts. Even yours.’ He shrugged. Curled his top lip. ‘That’s the trouble with Oldcastle, you lot have no respect for proper church procedures. You can’t just go about making up your own saints without formal permission. Saint Jasper, Saint Damon, Saint Ailsa of the Immaculate Death, Saint Whatever-That-Church-In-The-Wynd is called.’

‘Saint Fraser of Ochenbrook.’

‘It’s sacrilegious. No wonder Pope Innocent the Twelfth excommunicated the lot of you... Aha!’ He stared at the grass where his toecap was, then pinned his brolly between his cheek and shoulder — freeing up both hands to snap on a pair of purple nitrile gloves. Bent and retrieved a used syringe, holding it aloft like a prize salmon. ‘Voila.’

‘That supposed to prove something?’

A condescending smile. ‘That this place is being used for the consumption of drugs, my dear ex-Detective Inspector.’

‘Wow!’ I slapped a hand to my cheek. ‘You — don’t — say? A patch of waste ground in Kingsmeath being used by druggies? Shock, and indeed, horror! Who would ever have guessed?’

Huntly’s eyes narrowed. ‘A chap could go off you, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Every bloody park, kids’ playground, and bus shelter from here to Kings Drive is awash with people shooting up. Be more of a surprise if you found somewhere that wasn’t.’

He dropped the syringe, rubbed his squeaky purple fingertips together. ‘Fine. Then you tell me what Gòrach was doing here.’

‘Found it!’ Alice’s voice wafted back to us, through the rain. ‘This is where Andrew died.’

‘Maybe Gòrach followed him in. Maybe he snatched Andrew off the street and brought him here. Or maybe he knew kids played here so he turns up, hoping some kid will happen past.’

‘Or maybe he’s already here, shooting up, and then he sees Andrew Brennan and decides to make his high that bit more dangerous?’

‘ARE YOU TWO COMING, OR WHAT?’

I shrugged, followed the sound of her voice, damp grass clutching at my trouser legs. ‘If you can afford a car, or vehicle, why the hell would you come here to cook up? Why not go somewhere safe, secluded, warm?’

Huntly lumbered along beside me. ‘Well, perhaps the good doctor is right and Gòrach lives locally? Or he comes back here to connect to his past...’ A frown. ‘To be honest, all this behavioural analysis stuff is somewhat beneath my skill level. I make deductions based on facts and realities, I don’t do speculative nonsense. What we know is that Gòrach was here and Andrew Brennan was here, and they can only have come through the gate we did, or the one by the improperly named church.’

Alice stood in a small trampled circle of grass, frowning at the grubby remnants of a large teddy bear someone had cable-tied to a wooden fencepost. One of its arms was missing, the stuffing poking out of multiple holes in its legs. Its stomach spilling out into its lap. A handful of floral tributes lay scattered around it, as if tossed about in a fit of rage, the grimy cellophane wrappers of long-dead bouquets marking where people had paid their respects and not come back to clean them up afterwards.

Henry let loose a whimper and Alice rubbed the fur between his ears. ‘Which house was Andrew Brennan’s?’

Huntly consulted his phone. ‘That one, there.’ Pointing down the hill, to the back of William Terrace. ‘Mother, younger brother, Andrew, and a succession of the mother’s boyfriends. Three of whom are currently taking their ease at Her Majesty’s pleasure for extortion, aggravated assault, and domestic violence, respectively. The local numpties interviewed all of her beaux, but to no avail.’

I tilted my head back, let the rain patter against my cheeks and chin. ‘Let’s say he knows Andrew. Let’s say he’s watched him play here in the past, what’s different about this time?’

‘Hmph. I’ll let the good doctor take that one.’

Alice cleared her throat. ‘Well, I mean, you could look on it as a crime of opportunity, like I said this morning, because he’s always fantasised about it and the question then has to be why would no one know about the murder, because all it would take is someone looking out of their back window and they’d see you there, strangling a wee boy, wouldn’t it?’

Huntly went back to his phone. ‘According to the report, the mother called the police when Andrew didn’t come in for his dinner. That was a little after five o’clock.’

Back under my umbrella again, I nodded towards the skeletal trees and spiny bushes. ‘I checked the weather reports: eighteenth of June, the city was thick with haar. Down here, in the gloom? You’d be lucky to see your hand in front of your face.’

Alice nodded. ‘Do you think I could talk to the mother, Ash? Would that be OK?’

‘Don’t see why not.’

Huntly leaned on the bell, setting its high-pitched trill ringing on and on and on and on.

The building must have been impressive in its day: a grand mid-terrace home with its garden out front, tiled entrance hall, and mahogany staircase, but carving the thing up into six small flats had turned its sweeping grandeur into a claustrophobic warren. The lighting wasn’t on in the communal stairwell, hiding things in the darkness.

And still the bell trilled.

Alice’s boxy wee Suzuki sat at the kerb outside, Henry’s nose pressed against the passenger window as the car slowly steamed up, marinating the interior in the stink of wet Scottie dog.

Finally, a man’s voice grumbled through the door to Flat 1L, getting louder. ‘God’s sake, buncha bastards...’ Then the door burst open, revealing a tousle-haired bloke in his mid-forties with tattoos visible on his arms and neck where they poked out of a pink towelling dressing gown two sizes too small for him. Puffy eyes. Chin blue with stubble. A droopy moustache. Squint teeth on show as he bellowed at us. ‘STOP RINGING THAT BELL!’ Jabbing a hand back inside the flat. ‘YES, I WAS ASLEEP: I’M ON BLOODY NIGHTS!’

Huntly took his thumb off the bell. ‘So sorry to wake you.’ Not sounding in the least bit genuine. ‘Is Mrs Brennan home?’

‘Why?’ The man tucked his chin in, creating a roll of fat around his neck as he looked the pinstriped tit up and down. Clenched his fists. ‘You some sort of lawyer?’ Making that last word sound as if it was code for intestinal parasite.

Alice got herself between the two of them, and gave him a wave. ‘Hello, I’m Dr McDonald, but you can call me Alice, if you like, and we’re looking to speak to Mrs Brennan, because we’re trying to help the police find out what happened to Andrew and why it happened, and who made it happen, of course — that’s the really important thing, isn’t it — so if you can help us to help them, that’ll really help, OK?’

The rolls of fat got deeper. ‘Mary’s not here.’

‘Oh, right, can we come in and wait, because it’s—’

‘What part of, “I’m on nights” did you not get?’ Closing the door on us. ‘She’s up the church. Been going there every morning since... you know, Andrew.’

‘Yes, right, well we can—’

‘Hang on.’ I stuck the tip of my walking stick in the gap, stopping the door from shutting. ‘What lawyers are these, then? The ones you were expecting.’

He stared at his bare feet. ‘I need to get back to bed.’

‘Professor Huntly, would you be so kind as to lean on this gentleman’s bell again?’

A raised eyebrow. ‘I hope that’s not a euphemism...’ But Huntly did as he was asked and that irritating trill rang out once more.

‘All right, all right!’ Our sleepy friend scrubbed his hands across his face. Sagged. ‘It’s Mary’s ex, Billy’s dad. The wanker who broke her arm and knocked out two of her teeth. He’s suddenly decided he wants visitation rights.’

Huntly raised the other eyebrow. ‘But he’s in prison.’

‘Yeah, but he wants Billy to visit him there. And Billy’s only fourteen months, so Mary would have to go with him. And that means Charlie Mitchell gets to screw with her head again. It’s all about control with tossers like that.’ The man tightened his too-short pink dressing gown about his middle. ‘Now, if you don’t mind: bugger off so I can go back to sleep.’

‘What do you reckon to our sleepy friend, then?’ Water gushed down the gutters on Denholm Road, rain drumming on the roofs and bonnets of the cars, bouncing off the overflowing municipal wheelie bins, as we slogged our way uphill.

Alice peered out from beneath her ladybird umbrella. ‘As a suspect? Possible, I suppose — clearing the nest, getting rid of any offspring sired by Mary Brennan’s former partners so he can repopulate it with his own, but it doesn’t really fit, I mean, why would he go after Oscar Harris and Lewis Talbot as well?’ She frowned. ‘Unless they were killed by someone else, but then we wouldn’t see such a clear progression of MO, would we, so on balance I don’t think it’s likely and anyway wouldn’t local police have interviewed him already?’

‘Ah, my dear Doctor,’ Huntly gave her one of his more patronising smiles, ‘you’re forgetting one very salient point: the local police are morons.’

Bit harsh, but not necessarily untrue.

The road curved around to the right, coming to a halt at a roundabout circled by shuttered shops. A lone newsagent’s was still operating, the sandwich board outside it proclaiming, ‘BOY’S BODY FOUND IN WOODS ~ PHOTO EXCLUSIVE!’

From here, Banks Road climbed away on the left, an arched bridge taking it over the raised railway lines. And down below, in the hollow beneath both, lurked the dark grey lump of Saint Damon of the Green Wood. Its jagged spire barely reached road level, the roof done with semicircular slate tiles, like fish scales. Miserable gargoyles. Stained glass that looked as if it’d never seen sunlight or soapy water. A steep set of stairs curled away down into the gloom.

‘Well, that’s not depressing in any way, shape, or form, is it?’ Huntly peered over the railings that separated the pavement from the near-vertical drop to the graveyard, fifty feet below. ‘What a silly place to put a church.’

A pair of stone pillars stood amongst the headstones, holding up the railway line, a vast bowed arc of steel allowing it to span the main body of the church, another set of pillars on the far side of its sharp pitched roof.

Alice wrapped an arm around herself. ‘Can you imagine being buried down there?’

Not yet.

‘Come on: less melodrama, more work.’ I opened the gate and led the way, descending the slippery steps. A drift of rubbish had built up at the base of the steep drop, empty crisp packets and plastic bottles mingling with wilting newspapers and takeaway containers, stretching out to touch the nearest gravestones.

She was right about not wanting to be buried down here, though. Felt as if we were already halfway to hell, without being another six feet closer.

Lichen covered most of the memorials, obscuring the names and dates. It stretched up the church walls too, joining the thick bank of rambling ivy that crawled across the façade, making those dirty stained-glass windows even darker.

Alice and Huntly followed me through the heavy wooden doors, the three of us dripping on the flagstones, breaths fogging the air as the plinky-plonk-squawk of someone not very good practising on the organ filled the vaulted space. The same musical phrase repeated over and over, getting it wrong every time.

‘Dear Lord,’ Huntly hunched his arms in and shivered, ‘colder in here than it is outside...’

Dark too — the only light came from clusters of candle stubs, flickering away in their wrought-iron holders, nowhere near enough of them to dispel the gloom. The cloying scent of incense not quite managing to cover the grubby taint of mould and damp.

Down the far end, looming out of the murk, a twice-life-sized wooden Jesus cried in agony on his oversized cross, eyes screwed shut, mouth open, the blood of his wounds darkened and chipped by time. Ribs visible through the slash in his side.

Rows and rows of hard wooden pews. A marble altar the colour of liver. A lectern decorated with dark metal skulls and bones.

Saint Damon of the Green Wood: about as cheery and welcoming as a landmine.

A woman’s head and shoulders were just visible over the pews, by the front of the church. Kneeling in prayer.

She didn’t look up as I slid into the space next to her.

‘Mrs Brennan?’

Her hair was dark as coal, pulled back from her face and tied with a black ribbon, giving her sharp features a crow-like edge. Bony hands working their way through a string of rosary beads, the fingernails bitten down to ragged stumps. Eyes closed, pale lips moving in silence.

The photo in the case file showed a young woman who’d hung on to her baby weight, smiling away in Montgomery Park, by the boating lake, a baby on her hip and a wee boy at her feet — throwing chunks of sliced white to the ducks. A small happy family, enjoying a day out in the sun.

But those days were long gone.

The organist made another assault on the same passage they’d screwed up at least two dozen times since we’d arrived. Got it wrong again.

And Mary Brennan kept working her way through the rosary.

‘Mrs Brennan, my name’s Ash Henderson. I’m part of a team who’re trying to help the police find out who hurt Andrew. Can we ask you some questions?’

Her eyes screwed tighter shut. ‘I’m praying!’

‘That’s OK.’ I settled back in my pew. ‘We’ll wait.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake...’ She thumped her beads down on the shelf built into the back of the pews in front, the one supporting a row of mildew-blackened Bibles. ‘What do you want now?’

11

‘You think I haven’t asked that every single day since Andrew... Since he...’ Mary Brennan dug a thumb into her temple, a menthol cigarette smouldering away in the other hand. Sheltering beneath the overhang of a gothic memorial to some silk merchant who’d passed away in the cholera outbreak of 1832.

She took a drag on her cigarette, setting the tip glowing bright orange in the gloomy morning. ‘I ask for God’s guidance, I really do, and I want to believe that it’s all part of His holy plan and that Andrew’s at His side. And I tell people I believe in love and forgiveness. But what I really want is for the man who killed my baby to be tortured in hell for all eternity.’

Alice shuffled her little scarlet feet, rain pattering on her ladybird brolly’s cheery red-and-black surface. ‘You don’t have anything to feel ashamed about, Mary, it’s natural to be angry. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t.’

‘I want to wrap my hands round his throat, and squeeze the life out of him myself. An eye for an eye...’

Yeah, we all knew how that worked out.

My turn: ‘And you didn’t see anyone hanging around the place, before it happened? Anyone always walking their dog, for instance, or taking a bit too much interest in the waste ground? Maybe someone trying to get the place done up?’

She glowered at me, through a fug of exhaled smoke. ‘Why do you lot always ask the same bloody questions? Why can’t you do it the once, then leave me alone? Why do you have to rake it all up, over and over and over?’ Cheeks hollowing as she dragged in an angry lungful of menthol. ‘How do you think it feels?’

Yeah.

The memorial’s black marble was cool against my back as I eased further out of the rain. ‘What about the people who go out there to take drugs? Would you recognise any regulars? Any names you could give us?’ Thankfully, Huntly had taken the not-so-subtle hint and kept his tactless arse in the church, but that didn’t mean his druggie theory wasn’t worth a go.

‘And you never answer anything, do you? You ask and ask and ask, and I get sod all back.’

Alice wrinkled her nose. ‘It always looks so easy on the telly, doesn’t it? The detectives rock up, ask a couple of questions, there’s an ad break, then next thing you know the killer’s in handcuffs and everyone lives happily ever after.’ She squatted down in front of Mary Brennan, took hold of her free hand. ‘It takes a lot longer in real life, and we’re really, really sorry about that, but we have to find the man who hurt Andrew before he hurts anyone else. So I know it must be almost unbearable, but please: we need your help.’

A shrug, but she didn’t take her hand away. ‘Local kids use it to drink the booze they’ve shoplifted... Now and then you’ll see someone smoking weed, cos you can’t do it inside or you’ll get kicked out of your flat. Maybe a couple of junkies, but only when the weather’s good. There are nicer places in Kingsmeath than this.’ She sucked on her cigarette again, hissing out a cloud of bitter menthol. A hint of steel in her voice: ‘You think they’re the ones hurt my Andrew?’

Alice shook her head. ‘We’re keeping an open mind, but it’s not likely. They might have seen who did, though. We can get someone to bring round a few mugshots, maybe you can recognise some of them?’

Mary Brennan curled one shoulder up to her ear. ‘Maybe.’

‘OK.’ I took out my phone, called up the memo app and hit record. ‘Can you take us through what happened that day — Thursday the eighteenth — doesn’t matter what it is, anything you can remember could help.’

Mary Brennan looked out across the rows of headstones, back towards the waste ground, with the railway line towering above it on thin metal legs. ‘It was...’ She licked her lips. ‘I wasn’t... good that day. Charlie’s lawyer came past the day before with the legal papers, you know? Wanting visiting rights to Billy. I...’ She bit her top lip. ‘So I woke up, Thursday morning, with a killer hangover. What right’s that bastard got to demand access to my Billy? Never bothered about him before, did he? Not when he could come home reeking of drink and beat the crap out of me.’ A shudder ran its way through her, ending with another furious puff of menthol smoke. ‘And now, all of a sudden, I’m supposed to take my Billy up to prison to visit his violent arsehole dad?’

She gave a small bitter laugh. ‘Yeah, so: hangover like you wouldn’t believe. And Andrew’s begging me to take him to feed the ducks again, but I can’t... You try spending all morning throwing up and changing a toddler’s shitty nappy.’ Deep breath. ‘It was kinda cold and foggy, so I bundled him up in his duffel coat, wellies, and mittens, and stuck him out in the back garden. Was supposed to stay there, where it’s safe.’ Mary’s voice got quieter and quieter. ‘Only he didn’t, did he? And now I’m stuck here, every morning, praying for guidance and wishing I could kill the bastard who took my baby...’

Somewhere, on the street above, a lorry went past, rumbling its way across the bridge as Mary Brennan chewed at her ragged nails. Then a train — rattling the rails above us, sending down a smear of grit and dust to clatter against the church roof. The five carriages taking forever to pass as it made its way south towards the station.

I pulled out the wodge of LIRU business cards from my pocket and slipped one free. ‘If you remember anything else, anything at all, give me a call.’

She took the small rectangle of card and nodded. Biting her bottom lip. Blinking. Breath shuddering.

‘I’m so, so sorry.’ Alice put her hand on Mary’s arm. ‘I know you think nobody cares, but we understand, we really do.’

She shook the hand off. Scrubbed away the tears. ‘Don’t patronise me.’

‘Well, maybe I don’t understand, I mean, how could I... I can empathise, but no one can understand unless they’ve been through something as horrific as that, but Ash has.’ Alice pointed at me. ‘He knows what it’s like.’

‘Alice, don’t.’ Not this. Not now. And certainly not today.

‘His daughter was taken by a man who tortured and killed her. It might feel like the police don’t care, but I promise you, he really, really does.’

The old fire ignited behind my eyes, reached its burning talons deep into my guts. ‘I said, that’s enough!’

Mary stared at me with hungry eyes. ‘Your daughter?’

My Rebecca...

And I’m standing in the kitchen, in my crappy dilapidated council house in Kingsmeath, opening those homemade birthday cards with her photograph on them. One every year. The blood and the pain and the horror in her eyes.

I curled my hands into fists, the knuckles white and aching. ‘This isn’t—’

‘So, you see, Ash and I want to help you find out who did this. We want to make sure they’re punished for what happened to Andrew.’

‘Someone killed your daughter?’

‘Enough.’ I backed away from the memorial, into the rain again. Forcing the words through clenched teeth. Jaw throbbing with the pressure. ‘I don’t want to talk about—’

‘Mary?’ It was a man’s voice, slightly high-pitched. A generic Scottish accent that went up at the end. ‘I brought you a cup of tea. Thought you might...’ He couldn’t have been much over five four, with a beer belly that paunched out over the belt of his brown corduroy trousers. A combover that wouldn’t have fooled Stevie Wonder on a dark night. A podgy face having difficulty holding onto the wispy beard he’d inflicted upon it. His eyes went wide behind his glasses as he saw me. ‘I...’ A mug with, ‘PRAISE THE LORD FOR TEA & BICCIES!’ on it trembled in his hand, steaming beige liquid slopping out to splash against the leg of his cords — darkening the fabric, as if he’d wet himself.

Why did he look so familiar...?

Of course: Steven Kirk.

The same Steven Kirk that swore blind he’d been taking care of his dying mother when all those wee boys were abducted and killed. And he just happened to be at the same church as Andrew Brennan’s mother?

Aye, right.

‘Well, well, well.’ I stepped closer, letting all that pain and anger sizzle in the words: ‘If it isn’t the man we were off to see next. Hello, Steven.’

‘This isn’t... I wasn’t...’ More tea slopped down his front.

‘I think you’ve got some explaining to do.’

But Kirk was off, the mug flying away to crash against a headstone as he sprinted across the graveyard. Wouldn’t have thought a wee fat man would’ve been able to go that fast.

I lumbered after him, brolly bobbing and weaving — more trouble than it was worth, so I let it fly free. ‘COME BACK HERE, YOU GREASY LITTLE GIT!’ Not so easy, running through the thick grass with a buggered foot. Gritting my teeth. Pushing through the stabbing jerk every time my right shoe touched down.

But worth it, because Steven Kirk deserved everything that was about to happen to him.

He scrambled over the rear wall of the graveyard and out into the chunk of waste ground beneath the railway lines. I bent into it, sped up, slapped one hand down on top of the wall and swung my legs up and over. Landing awkwardly on my right foot — a red-hot crowbar slamming through the flesh to lever the bones apart.

Kirk wasn’t slowing — if anything he was getting faster, accelerating down the slight slope. Increasing the distance between us.

‘COME BACK HERE!’ Finding it harder and harder to run now, every other step a screaming ball of agony.

He was going to get away.

And after this, it was pretty damned unlikely he’d head home and wait for us to show, like a good boy. He’d disappear. Properly this time.

MOVE FASTER!

Push.

Bite down on the pain and sodding run.

A jagged huff-huff-huff noise grew louder behind me, then Alice went past, arms and legs pumping, red feet flashing their white soles as she chased after Steven Kirk. Hood thrown back, curly brown hair streaming out behind her in the rain.

Kirk glanced back over his shoulder — face an unhealthy shade of sweaty puce — then put his head down and his elbows up, really going for it. But Alice was fitter. And faster. Getting closer and closer.

Then she was airborne: a flying tackle that slammed into the middle of Kirk’s back, sending them both crashing to the wet grass at the base of one of the railway pilings. Rolling over and over, limbs sticking out, then curling up as they struggled.

Only when they stopped, it was Kirk who came out on top, straddling Alice, rearing up, one fist curled back and ready to smash down into her face.

Which is when I finally arrived. ‘NO YOU DON’T!’

He barely had time to turn and stare at me before I battered into him, tearing him off her and into the grass again. Cracked the bony ridge of my forearm into his nose. Once. Twice. And three time’s the charm. Putting my weight behind it. Bouncing his head off the ground as blood spattered out into the gloom. Doing it for every little boy and girl he’d hurt. For the people’s children he’d brutalised, and tortured, and killed.

He screamed, so I smashed my elbow into his mouth as well. Did that again too.

Because let’s face it, you have to take the tiny moments of joy when you can get them.

Should castrate the bastard, right here. Stamp on his balls till they burst. See if he still feels like interfering with children after they had to surgically amputate whatever ragged scraps of flesh I left him with down there.

His face got another elbowing, my teeth bared as I broke his. Not even bothering to hold back the laughter. Hard and sharp and loud and—

‘God’s sake, you’ll kill him!’ Alice’s hands grabbed at my arm and collar, hauling me backwards. Off Steven Kirk. Pushing me away. Her face all pinched, eyes shining, nose red, tears on her cheeks. ‘Stop it!’ Then she was on her knees beside him, wiping the blood from his cheeks and chin with a handkerchief. Holding him as he sobbed.

I stepped back, a dull throbbing spreading down my right arm, making the fingers tingle, breath heaving in my chest. ‘I did it... for... He was... trying... to hurt... you.’

Alice glared up at me. ‘We’re meant to help people!’ Then she closed her eyes and turned away. ‘I can’t even look at you.’

Raised voices carried from the church’s front doors, down the nave and over the crossing, but by the time they reached the chancel, Saint Damon’s gothic pillars and grimy tapestries had reduced it to nothing more than angry noises, stripped clean of actual words, leaving only trouble behind.

I leaned forward in my pew, arms resting on the row in front, and nodded at Mary Brennan. ‘Are you OK?’

She blinked back at me. Then stared across the rows of plain wooden benches to a small door set into the far wall. The one Saint Damon’s registered first-aider had taken Steven Kirk through. ‘I don’t understand...’

‘How long have you known him?’

‘Steven?’ A frown. ‘Months and months. He helps clean the church.’

Couldn’t help glancing around at that: the mildewed Bibles; the cobwebbed carvings; the paintings of religious icons thick with dust; the fourteen Stations of the Cross, so filthy you could barely make out the suffering in them. Oh yeah, Steven Kirk was doing a great job.

‘Was that before or after Andrew went missing?’

More blinking. Probably trying to process the implications of that.

‘Steven? But... he’s... his mother’s dying.’

The angry voices echoed away into silence, then the noise of marching feet — getting louder. One set of clacking heels, one set of squeaky damp rubber soles.

Sounded like it was time for my shouting at.

Across the apse, that small door opened and out came the large woman in a pastel-purple cardigan who’d taken Kirk away to fix him up. Her flushed-pink scalp clearly visible through the thinning, lank, grey hair. Kirk scuffed along beside her, holding a wodge of blue paper towels over his nose and mouth. Looking everywhere but at me.

The marching came to a halt and when I turned, there they were: Alice — who also wasn’t looking at me — and an old bloke dressed all in black, except for the flash of white at his throat. Jowls hanging over the lip of his dog collar. A fringe of grey stubble above his pendulous ears. Wire-framed glasses and narrowed baggy eyes. ‘What on God’s earth were you thinking?’ Not a local lad. That flat, back-of-the-throat accent definitely marked him out as Dundonian, no matter how hard he was trying to sound posh. ‘How dare you come into the house of the Lord and assault one of my parishioners!’

Never punched a priest before, but there was a first time for everything.

When I got to my feet, I had nearly a foot on him. Looking down on that grey-fringed bald pate. ‘One: it didn’t happen in the church. And two: I’m not the one putting the people coming to this church at risk.’ I poked a finger into his chest. ‘That’s you.’

Spluttering. Jowls wobbling. ‘I’m calling the police.’

I grabbed a handful of his cassock and spun him around till he was facing Steven Kirk.

‘Unhand me!’

Alice glowered at me. ‘Ash!’

Tough.

‘What’s the matter, didn’t you run a background check on the man you’ve got cleaning this tip?’

It was Kirk’s turn to glower — over the top of his blue paper towels as they slowly turned a dark shade of purple. Voice all muffled and squishy. ‘Yooo brurk mai teefff!’

The priest wriggled free. ‘How dare you behave this way in a—’

‘But then your team has a habit of covering up for paedophiles, doesn’t it? Move them on to a different parish, quash the rumours, silence the victims.’

Those baggy eyes widened as he stared at me, then turned to Kirk. ‘He’s... What’s he talking about, Steven?’

‘It’dss nuuunt mai fowwwt!’

‘Steven Kirk, former physical therapist, convicted in 1998 of making and distributing indecent images of children, abusing eleven minors at Blackwall Hospital, and the abduction and rape of a seven-year-old boy. On the Sex Offenders’ Register for life, aren’t you, Steven?’

And now, everyone was staring at him and his wodge of bloody tissues. Not looking quite so sympathetic any more.

The first-aider stepped away from Kirk, wiping her fingers down the front of her cardigan, as if trying to remove the taint of actually touching him.

‘Hhh azzolded mei! Thigggh isssnuunt mai fowwwt!’

‘I THOUGHT YOU WERE MY FRIEND!’ Mary Brennan snatched up one of those manky Bibles and hurled it at him. Face contorted and flushed, spittle flying from her curled lips. ‘YOU DIRTY BASTARD!’

He turned and the book bounced off his shoulder, leaves flapping as it fell, like a dying bird.

‘I’M GLAD HE BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!’ She sent another one winging Kirk’s way — it battered off the top of his bowed head — then another. ‘I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL!’

He’d have a lot of company.

12

‘Well, that was... unedifying.’ Huntly settled himself down on the bench next to me. Dipped into his inside pocket and came out with a silver hip flask. Unscrewed the top and took a swig. Wiped the neck and proffered it to me. ‘You really are somewhat... volatile today, aren’t you? I mean, even more so than usual.’

High up above, the thick lid of grey had lifted, revealing a cold blue sky with wisps of white, travelling fast. No more rain. The sun was even shining, though none of it made its way down here. A graveyard permanently shrouded in gloom.

Knew how it felt...

Huntly waggled the hip flask.

‘Can’t.’ I pushed it away. ‘Pills.’

‘Ah yes, the dreaded medication.’ He knocked back another swig, then put the flask away again. ‘Alice is talking to your friend, Mr Kirk, but it seems he’s determined to press charges.’

Course he was.

‘Apparently you’ve knocked out three of his teeth, broken his nose, and cost him his volunteer position at the church.’ A frown. ‘Difficult to tell which one hurt him the most, to be honest. Seems Father Lucas isn’t so keen on a convicted sex offender hanging around with the choirboys and youth groups.’

At least that was something.

‘Will you permit me to proffer a tiny morsel of advice, Ash?’ Huntly’s hand settled onto my shoulder. ‘Make yourself scarce. Soon as Bear finds out you’ve battered the living bejesus out of a suspect — no matter how well deserved that battering was — he’s going to be less than amused.’

I leaned forward, put my arms on my knees and groaned. ‘He was here, Bernard. He knew Andrew’s mother.’

‘And now we can’t drag him in and grill him about it, without his lawyer bringing up the aforementioned battering. Which rather undermines our ability to prove he did anything.’

‘Yeah.’ Head down, hands covering my face. Squeezing.

Stupid Ash Henderson.

‘And, as if by magic, here comes a chopper to chop off your head...’ The bench shifted as he got to his feet. ‘Dr McDonald, don’t be too hard on Mr Henderson, he’s—’

‘A BLOODY IDIOT!’

I stayed where I was, face still covered. ‘He was about to punch you in the mouth. Remember that?’

‘YOU COULD’VE KILLED HIM!’ Gravel crunched as she marched away, then back again. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Why does everything have to be—’

‘No!’ I dropped my hands. Stood. ‘You always do this. Every time there’s some poor bastard whose child’s been killed, you point at me.’ Jabbing a thumb at my own chest. ‘Enough!’

Alice set her jaw. ‘You can’t attack every—’

‘Rebecca’s death isn’t some lever you can pull, like it’s a bloody one-armed bandit, to make victims pay out in fucking sympathy tokens! HER DEATH MATTERS!’ Deep breath. I uncurled my fists. The ground beneath my feet a trembling sea of filthy gravel. ‘It matters to me.’

‘Wow...’ Huntly backed off, both hands up. ‘Maybe I should give you two a moment.’

Alice closed her mouth. Bit her bottom lip. Looked away. ‘I’m sorry.’

Yeah, well, sometimes ‘sorry’ didn’t cut it.

‘Come on, Ash, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I’m really, really sorry...’ Shuffling along beside me as I limped down Denholm Road. ‘Ash, please talk to me.’

No.

Dragged out my phone and called Shifty instead.

It rang. And rang. And rang.

The rain might have stopped, but the drains were still overflowing, the gutters making their own rapids where the water hit logjams of filth and rubbish.

Alice lurched in front of me, walking backwards, trying to make eye contact. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, I know Rebecca’s death must be painful, I was only trying to—’

‘DI Morrow?’

‘Shifty? It’s Ash. I need a lift.’

‘Don’t be like that, I’ll drive you wherever you need to go, it’s not a—’

‘Oh, Christ, what have you done now?’

‘It’s important.’

‘Ash, please!’

‘You do realise I’m a detective inspector, right? A detective inspector who’s got a murder investigation on the go. I can’t—’

‘Can you give me a lift, or not?’

A long-suffering sigh. ‘All right, all right.’ Some scrunching came down the line, then a muffled, ‘Rhona? I’ve got to go out for a while. Keep an eye on things, and for God’s sake, don’t let the Chief Super put out any more half-arsed statements.’ Then Shifty was back to full volume again. ‘Where are you?’

Alice tried blocking my path. ‘Don’t do this. I said I’m sorry and I meant it.’

I sidestepped her. ‘Heading down Denholm, I’ll be on Montrose Road, going back towards town.’

‘Ash, please!’ Her voice ringing out behind me as I kept going. ‘Ash?’

‘OK, I’ll be there soon as I can...’

‘Ash! Please, we can talk about this!’

Not this time.

‘So, are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ Shifty was probably going for casual and nonchalant, but it wasn’t working.

I kept my face turned to the passenger window as the manky pool car headed back across Calderwell Bridge. The traffic had eased up a lot since rush hour, sunlight sparking off Kings River like shards of hot glass. Windy enough out there to whip up white horses as the tide tried to fight against it.

‘OK.’ He pointed at the windscreen as we made landfall on the other side. ‘Can you at least tell me where we’re going?’

‘Steven Kirk’s been hanging round the church that leads onto the waste ground where Andrew Brennan was killed. Has been for months.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake...’ Shifty’s hands tightened on the wheel, knuckles standing out like ball bearings. ‘Blakey interviewed him! No mention of it.’

‘I cocked up, Shifty.’

He eyed me across the car. ‘Do I want to know? Actually, scrap that — I don’t. Especially with Professional Bloody Standards poking torches up my fundament.’

Tchaikovsky’s ‘Danse des Mirlitons’ burst out of my pocket. That would be Alice calling. Again.

‘You going to get that?’

‘Nope.’

We passed a couple of bookies and a charity shop. Pulled up at the traffic lights outside the boarded-up remains of Oldcastle’s newest multiplex cinema — still advertising a superhero blockbuster from three years ago, the posters’ colours faded away to a yellow-and-black duotone.

‘Still need to know where we’re going, though.’

Good question.

Tchaikovsky faded off into silence as Alice’s call went to voicemail.

Maybe it was time?

Wasn’t as if the day could get any worse, was it?

‘Take a right.’

Soon as the lights changed, he hit the indicators, setting a slew of angry horns honking behind us.

I clicked on the radio, jabbing the buttons till something suitably unhappy groaned out of the car’s speakers. We drifted along Nelson Street to the sound of someone else’s misery.

Then Tchaikovsky joined in again.

This time I didn’t even let it go to voicemail: hit the ‘reject call’ icon instead.

Shifty shook his head. ‘You’re going to have to talk to her eventually.’

Maybe. But not right now.

Grey buildings slid by the car windows, grey people slumping past in front of them. Oldcastle in November. The whole bloody city needed a Valium.

On the radio, the song gloomed its way to a depressing finale, replaced by a gravel-voiced woman sitting far too close to the microphone in an attempt to sound sultry and intimate. ‘Four Mechanical Mice there, and “Dear Dinosaur”. You’re listening to Midmorning Madness with me, Barbara Chapman, standing in for Annette Peterson. It’s half ten and we’ve got the news coming up, but first, here’s a word from our lovely sponsors...’

‘You going back to the flat tonight, or do you need somewhere to crash as well?’

‘Don’t know, yet.’ The way things were going, once Steven Kirk’s lawyer got his hooks into me, I’d probably be sleeping in a cell for the weekend, waiting till they got me up in front of a sheriff on Monday.

‘... ahar mateys, cos at Blisterin’ Barnacles Chip Shop, you landlubbers and salty seadogs can get two fish suppers and a poke of onion rings for the price of one!...’

Tchaikovsky had another go. Didn’t make it past the first bar before I hung up on him.

‘Look, Ash, it’s—’

‘Just... don’t, OK?’

‘Cluckity cluck, cluck, cluck! Mummy, can we have Chicken MacSporrans for tea tonight? They’re new and improved!’

‘Of course you can, Timmy, because I know I can trust ScotiaBrand Tasty Chickens to deliver on nutrition and taste. They’re fan-chicken-tastic!’

I pointed through the grubby windscreen. ‘Right at the roundabout.’

We joined the queue of traffic, Shifty shaking his head. ‘Only, every time you pair fall out it’s me gets stuck in the middle.’

‘... and feel the magic of pantomime as Sherlock Holmes and the Curse of Tutankhamun’s Tomb comes to the King James Theatre, this December! Fun for all the family! Tickets on sale now!’

‘Well, what am I supposed to do? It’s—’

My phone launched into something else for a change: Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, the words ‘DSUPT. JACOBSON’ glowing in the middle of the screen. To be honest, that took longer than expected. Thought he’d be on the phone yelling at me ages ago.

Ah well.

Nice while it lasted.

Shifty took us out and round onto Castle Drive, the multi-building lumps of Castle Hill Infirmary looming over the houses on our left, the twin towers of its incinerators sending out clouds of white steam to be ripped apart by the wind.

I turned down the radio and took the call. ‘Go on then, get it over with.’

‘Ash, Ash, Ash...’ A disappointed noise. Sounding sad, rather than angry. ‘You don’t make things easy for me, do you? Or yourself. You silly bugger.’

‘It’s—’

‘Alice told me what happened and why. And, while I don’t approve of people beating the hairy snot out of suspects, I appreciate it’s not been easy for you. Not today, anyway.’

Great: sympathy. The perfect way to make anyone feel even worse about themselves.

‘But that’s still no excuse, you complete and utter, total arsehole! You’re supposed to be helping us catch Gòrach, not buggering any chance we have of convicting him!’

‘Yeah.’

‘Now I have to spend the next hour pacifying Steven Kirk’s lawyer; do you have any idea how hard it’ll be getting a warrant to search his house after this? The Procurator Fiscal is going to do her nut.’

The road curved around a patch of woods on the right, the sharp blade of granite towering on the left, with the crumbling remains of the Old Castle on top.

‘Well? Have you got anything to say for yourself?’

‘Yes: I resign.’ Might as well, before he fired me.

‘On no, you’re not getting away with it that easily. I need you off the Gòrach investigation till this blows over, but if you think I’m giving you gardening leave, you’ve got another think coming. I’m not paying you to sit about doing sod all: you can go be a massive pain in someone else’s backside for a change. I’m sure DI Malcolmson would be delighted to have you muck up her caseload for a change.’

No...

That dragged my shoulders down. ‘In that case, I’m definitely resigning.’

‘Have fun in Mother’s Misfit Mob, Ash. Try not to cock anything else up, eh?’ And with that, Jacobson was gone.

Wonderful. Just. Sodding. Wonderful.

When I opened my eyes, Shifty was squinting at me.

‘You look like someone’s slapped a cold jobbie in your Pot Noodle.’

To be honest, that would’ve been an improvement.

Never liked Tarbeth Park.

Saint Bartholomew’s Episcopal Cathedral dominated the semi-manicured grassland, rearing up in all its jagged granite glory, the copper-coated spire scratching at the sky in shades of greeny-brown. All buttresses and lancet windows. Like Saint Damon’s on steroids, only out in the sunlight, rather than down in a dank rainswept hollow. God knew what kind of sins Oldcastle had to atone for in the sixteenth century, but going by the size of Saint Bartholomew’s, they were many and heinous.

Shifty stuck the pool car in one of the parking spots reserved for emergency vehicles. Cleared his throat. ‘Want me to come with you?’

‘Not really.’

He nodded, but clambered out after me, anyway. Scuffing along at my side as I limp-hobbled my way past the retractable metal bollards and onto the slick cobbled road that jinked in towards the cathedral’s nave end. Gusts of frigid air shoved us along, making our coattails flap out in front of us as we followed the road, heading for the biggest graveyard in the city. Well, if you didn’t count the plague pits in Shortstaine.

Shifty stuck his hands deep in his pockets, good eye narrowed as he squinted out into the sunshine. Raised his voice over the howling wind. ‘Least it’s stopped raining.’

From here, the view stretched down, across the park, to the river’s glittering grey ribbon, then across to Cowskillin — with its rows of pre-war terraced houses and the abandoned hulk of City Stadium. Lots of browns and greys, because who wouldn’t want to live somewhere completely devoid of charm or life?

Maybe the idea was that the ranks of the dead wouldn’t see anything to make them jealous?

Saint Bartholomew’s Graveyard sat a good ten-minute limp from the cathedral, as if distancing itself from the wages of all that sin, encircled by a four-foot-high stone wall. Guarded by a large wrought-iron gate, ‘MORS IN NOBIS PONERE DEBEMUS CONFIDUNT IN DEUM’ inscribed in metalwork above the entrance. As if that meant anything to anyone.

Shifty, thankfully, kept his mouth shut and followed me inside.

The part nearest the gate was filled with the oldest headstones: short, blunt, ugly things where most of the carving had been eaten away by weather and lichen, leaving nothing but the ghost of memorials behind. The wind badgered us through the Victorian part, where being buried became all about outdoing your dead neighbours. Seeing who could have the swankiest granite mausoleums, or fanciest marble statues of weeping angels and cherubs. Celtic crosses big enough to crucify someone on. The Georgians were even worse. But the further back from the main path they got, the humbler the graves became.

And then we reached the far side and the modern burial plots, where shiny black headstones with gold lettering sprouted in ordered rows. Photos of loved ones engraved into their surfaces. Wilting flowers and rotting teddy bears slumped against the cold dead stone. Where the grief was still fresh enough to hurt.

Lines and lines and lines of them, with a chunk of woodland rising in the background — branches writhing, the last of their leaves torn away to soar free in the gale.

‘Erm, not meaning to be funny, or anything,’ Shifty did a slow three-sixty, ‘but do you know where she is?’

‘Yeah.’ Never been here in my life, but I knew. ‘Thanks, but maybe I’d better do this bit on my own.’

I left him there and headed down a gravel path fringed with weeds, to a section by the back wall. A pair of plain grey stones, each with a fresh bunch of carnations in front of them. That would’ve been Michelle. Because she’d always been the more responsible parent.

My little girl.

Girls, Ash. Look at the other headstone.

No.

For God’s sake, it’s been nine years.

Deep breath.

But when I tried... it...

My eyes slid off the shiny grey marble, like it’d been greased. Hauled down by the weight of guilt. My fault. My fault she was dead.

Wire and dead leaves filled my chest, pushing their way up to knot in the middle of my throat, not letting the breath in.

I stepped back, focused on Rebecca’s final resting place again. Because at least I wasn’t responsible for that one.

Huffed out a rattling lungful of bitter air.

They were only graves.

Then why was every beat of my shrivelled-up heart like being kicked in the chest?

The carved golden letters swam out of focus and no amount of blinking would get them to snap back again. Standing there, amongst the dead, as the wind whipped at my back. As it howled and screeched through the headstones. As it raged.

I closed my eyes.

Aberdeen beach, when Rebecca was three, the sun hot on my bare back and legs. A picnic in the golden sands, looking out at the supply vessels waiting to come into harbour. Rebecca: testing her courage against the North Sea, chasing the waves as they retreated down the sand, turning around to squeal her way back to us as they doubled back on her.

Only Rebecca’s face... is a blur. Her face isn’t the only thing that wouldn’t come into focus: the bright-red swimming suit, the sturdy little legs and arms, her curly hair.

Why can’t I see her? Why can’t I—

Rebecca: tied to a chair in a dank basement, her pale skin smeared with scarlet, slashed and burned and bruised. Eyes wide. Screaming behind a duct-tape gag. The number ‘5’ scratched into the corner of the bloodstained Polaroid picture, mounted on a homemade birthday card.

No.

I snapped my eyes open again, but that image was burned forever on the back of my retinas.

All these years. All these years and I still couldn’t—

‘Ash?’ A woman’s voice, behind me, sounding pleased and amused. ‘Ash Henderson, it is you. Well, well, well...’

I closed my eyes.

Apparently today could get worse after all.

13

She settled onto the bench next to me, hands in the pockets of her burgundy overcoat, shoulders hunched. Auburn hair escaping from beneath a shapeless woolly hat that was probably meant to look chic, but came off more like a stolen tea-cosy. Jennifer Prentice. She’d lost a chunk of weight, grown hard about the eyes and mouth. Forehead suspiciously smooth and immobile.

Wind whipped at the grass around us, thrashing the bushes, making trees creak like a galleon under full sail. It was billed as an ‘area of quiet contemplation and peace’, but the reality was four rusty park benches, arranged around a ‘fountain of remembrance’. Which turned out to be a sludge-filled concrete roundel with weeds growing out of the rusting pipe where water probably hadn’t sprayed for years.

Jennifer looked me up and down, as if assessing the damage. ‘So how’s it going with you and Whatshername: the Detective Superintendent woman?’

‘None of your business.’ Besides: that wound was much too raw for prodding.

‘Oh, I am sorry.’ A shrug. ‘You never return my calls, Ash. A girl might begin to think you didn’t like her.’

A ‘girl’ would be right.

‘What do you want, Jennifer?’

‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I found you?’

And give her the satisfaction of showing off? ‘Nope.’

‘Used to think that strong-silent act of yours was quite sexy. Now? I’m not so sure.’ Nudging me with her shoulder. ‘A tiny birdie tells me you’re the man to talk to about,’ she left a pause, leaning in closer, as if that was going to build up dramatic tension, ‘The Coffinmaker.’

I held up my middle finger. ‘One: sod off.’ Index finger next, flipping her the ‘V’s. ‘Two: never even heard of “The Coffinmaker”.’ The third finger went up. ‘And three: you really think I’m going to talk to you after what you did?’

A pout. ‘All I did was write a book about the Birthday Boy, Ash. I was there too, remember?’ Another nudge. ‘But I’m really pleased you read it.’

‘You turned my daughter’s murder into torture porn!’

‘Ah...’ She wilted a bit under my stare. Shrugged. ‘OK, so I had to take some artistic liberties with events, but my editor insisted. What’s a girl to do?’ She was probably going for a contrite expression, but with half her face immobilised, it didn’t really work.

How did I ever think it’d be a good idea to cheat on my wife with someone so shallow and greedy and vile? What the hell was wrong with me?

‘Go away, Jennifer.’

‘And “The Coffinmaker” is what we’re calling Gordon Smith. From Clachmara? The man with the “Kill Room” in his basement?’ She took her hand from her pocket and slipped it through the crook of my arm. As if we were dating. ‘I’ve been talking to the neighbours. Did you know he’s a set designer? Worked for theatres all over the UK — the new Sherlock Holmes thing on at the King James? That’s one of his. Anyway,’ lowering her voice, as if the graves on all sides were full of eavesdroppers, ‘whenever some neighbour-kid’s pet died, he’d build a small coffin for it out of plywood, paint it up all fancy, so the kid could have a proper funeral. Course, everyone thought he was being a sweet, thoughtful old guy, but now? Creepy as hell, don’t you think?’ She leaned back again, flashing a smile that barely moved her frozen face. ‘Hence, “The Coffinmaker”.’

God save us from tabloid hacks with overactive imaginations.

A magpie landed on the edge of the sludge-filled fountain, cackling at us, as if we were responsible for the horrible weather. Beady black eyes staring. Head tilted to one side as it popped down onto the gravel path.

‘Ash?’ Jennifer gave my arm a squeeze. ‘I’ve heard rumours you were in Smith’s basement. That you’ve got films and photographs. Of the victims.’

The magpie found the crushed triangular box of a prepacked sandwich, bashing its beak against the crumpled plastic window, trying to get at whatever was left inside.

‘And I was thinking, obviously we couldn’t publish the photos themselves, not with us being a family newspaper and everything, but there’s definitely a book in it, right? “Kill Room: the hunt for the Coffinmaker.” You and me could do that.’ Her words, soft and warm against my ear as she leaned in again. ‘We could do all sorts of things. Like we used to, remember?’

A final jab and the plastic ruptured, spilling toenails of brown crust out onto the gravel as wind whipped the container away.

Jennifer pulled herself closer, till the warmth of her body leached through into my ribs. ‘I could do that thing you like?’

I’d rather swallow a pint of bleach.

‘Well? What did the Wicked Witch of the Wank want?’ Shifty emerged from the shadow of a mausoleum, his one remaining eye narrowed to a suspicious slit.

‘Chucking in the river.’ Turning out to be a bit of a theme today.

He followed me back down the path and out through the big iron gates. Into the full force of the howling wind. High overhead, pale grey clouds snaked across the sky, but down here it was strong enough to turn the simple task of heading for the pool car into an undignified lurch.

Didn’t make getting the Vauxhall’s doors open exactly easy, either.

We tumbled inside, the wind slamming them shut.

Shifty wriggled in his seat. ‘How’d she know we were here?’

‘No idea. And I don’t care.’

He started the engine. ‘Can’t believe you used to shag that. Lucky your poor wee willy didn’t shrivel up and drop off with the cold.’ A three-point turn. ‘We finished now? Can I go back to my actual job?’

‘Yeah.’

Half of St Bartholomew’s Road had already been converted into the kind of luxury flats that cost more than most police officers would earn in ten years, the billboards outside advertising, ‘SPACIOUS EXECUTIVE APARTMENTS WITH RIVER VIEWS!’

‘Shifty?’ I cleared my throat. Watched the unsold flats go by. ‘Thanks. For taking me to see Rebecca.’

‘You’re a daft bugger, you know that, don’t you?’ His hand left the gearstick and thumped down on my arm. Gave it a squeeze. ‘How long we been best friends for, thirty years? No way I’d let you go on your own.’

Even after everything we’d been through.

Couldn’t help smiling. ‘You’ll have me welling up in a minute.’ The flats gave way to unconverted warehouses and rat-infested alleyways. ‘Actually, speaking of best friends, any chance you can give me a lift out to Clachmara?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake...’

The pool car rocked on its springs as we crested the hill and looked down on what was left of Clachmara. About another twenty foot of headland had disappeared, swallowed by the North Sea. Waves smashed against what was left, sending up massive spumes of white that were slammed away by the howling wind.

Half of Gordon Smith’s house had gone, the roof caved in on most of what was left.

No rain this time, instead we were greeted by blue skies and churning grey sea. Crumbling yellow-green gardens. The houses looking every bit as depressing in daylight as they had last night. The road was a lot busier, though.

That manky Mobile Incident Unit had been shifted back a couple of houses — now a large white van sat in front of it, while little figures in high-viz outfits and hardhats struggled a new line of temporary fencing into place. Dragging segments from the back of a dirty-big flatbed truck. Looked as if Helen MacNeil’s place was no longer considered safe. She’d love that. Wonder what poor sod had to break the news?

The caravan that’d sat on the drive had followed the MIU inland. Now it sat in the driveway of a boarded-up house, two doors down. Well, where else was she going to go?

This side of the Mobile Incident Unit, a couple of patrol cars were parked sideways across the road, holding back a knot of four-by-fours and hatchbacks. The familiar cluster of outside broadcast vans had relocated here from Divisional Headquarters, ready to give Clachmara its miserable turn in the spotlight.

‘Wow...’ Shifty peered out at the crumbling village and shook his head, setting his jowls wobbling. ‘What a shitehole.’ Weaving the pool car through the minefield of potholes. ‘And you were in that last night?’ Pointing through the windscreen at the remains of Gordon Smith’s house. ‘You’re dafter than you look. And that’s saying something.’

He took us past the outside broadcast vans, the four-by-fours, and hatchbacks — where telephoto lenses were jabbed out through hastily opened windows in our direction — and up to the patrol-car barrier. Flashed his warrant card at the PC behind the wheel of the nearest one, and hooked a thumb off to the side.

A nod, and the Constable reversed far enough to let us squeeze through.

‘Don’t say I’m never good to you.’ Shifty pulled up behind the Mobile Incident Unit.

Would’ve thought all that rain last night might have scrubbed it clean, but the thing was even mankier today — its white walls stained a dirty beige.

‘Thanks, Shifty.’ I unclipped my seatbelt, grabbed my walking stick.

‘Hoy, Ash!’ He leaned across the car as I shoved my way out into the wind. ‘You’ll have to speak to Alice at some point. Might as well put on your big boy pants and do it sooner rather than later.’

‘Bye, Shifty.’ Let the wind slam the car door for me. Staggered over to the kerb as he turned the fusty Vauxhall round and headed back towards town.

Right, time to get out of this howling-bastard gale. Every single window in the MIU was steamed up, but the door wouldn’t budge. Thumping the handle up and down didn’t help either. So I hammered on the door with the head of my walking stick. ‘OPEN UP, YOU LAZY BUNCH OF SODS!’

‘Excuse me, sir?’ It was the patrol car’s driver — the one who’d reversed out of the way — clasping his peaked cap to his head, leaning into the gusts, high-viz vest snapping and crackling against his stabproof. ‘Sorry, sir, but they’re not in there.’ Pointing across the road with his free hand, towards a cheerless bungalow. ‘Said the wind was making it impossible to get anything done.’

Course it was.

Mildew filled the gloomy living room with its ancient eldritch scent, fighting against whatever horrible aftershave DC Watt splashed on all over this morning. Mother’s team had kitted the place out with two whiteboards — propped against the peeling wallpaper — and a TV on a stand. They’d even brought in the handful of cheap office chairs that came free with the Mobile Incident Unit, and a solitary Formica desk. Three ancient laptops grumbled away on top: screens glowing, fans whirring. Other than that, the room was empty. Even the carpet was gone, leaving behind an expanse of grubby floorboards that creaked and groaned beneath my feet. The houses on this street must’ve been built from the same set of plans, because a rectangle of solid wood sat in the middle of the floor: a trapdoor down to the basement.

Wonder if anyone had thought to check it for bodies yet?

Mother fiddled with a remote control, frowning as she jabbed it at the black TV screen. Getting nothing back for her efforts. ‘Work, you horrible piece of nonsense...’

I cleared my throat and she turned.

Favoured me with a not-quite-smile. ‘Ash. Detective Superintendent Jacobson said you might be joining us for a while. Are you any good with TVs?’

A snort from Watt as he stuck an A3 printout to the wall with a handful of thumbtacks. ‘Laying low, is what I heard. And I don’t see why we need some civilian screwing up our investigation.’

‘You know John, of course,’ pointing her remote at the weaselly pube-bearded git, ‘and this is DS Dorothy Hodgkin.’

A middle-aged woman in a wheelchair gave me a cheery wave. Black leather jacket on over a thick red shirt, blue jeans rolled up and pinned where her legs came to an abrupt halt — not much above the knee. Long brown hair coiling down either side of a round face. Big grin. ‘But you can call me “Dotty”.’

‘Ash.’

Watt stepped back to admire his handiwork. ‘There we go.’

It was a photograph — head and shoulders of a man with a wide easy smile, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that looked as if he’d done a lot of laughing over the last six or seven decades. Grey hair, just about clinging to the fringes of a high forehead, eyebrows that sprouted outwards in curling tufts. A neatly trimmed Santa beard.

Watt produced a pen and printed, ‘GORDON SMITH (75)’ across the bottom of the picture.

Mother nodded. ‘Very good, John.’

‘Got it from the theatre — it’s in the programme for that Sherlock Holmes panto.’ He stuck another printout next to it: an old-fashioned boxy grey Mercedes. Watt had added a mock-up of Smith’s number plate underneath the photograph, along with the car’s make and model details.

‘Well done. Very thorough. Now, I think we should...’ Light bloomed in the gloomy room as the bare bulb above our heads stuttered into life.

Call Me Dotty punched the air. ‘Yes!’

A woman peered in through the living room door — tall, with broad shoulders and a long rectangular face; strawberry blonde hair down past her shoulders, that somehow managed to look expertly styled, even though it was blowing a force nine outside. Striking blue-green eyes, twinkling as she mugged a huge grin. Dark, fitted suit. Soft Invernesian accent. ‘Talked the electricity board into plugging us back in again.’

‘Lovely.’ Dotty spun her wheelchair around. ‘Any chance of a cuppa, then? I’m gasping.’

Mother brought the remote to bear again. ‘Ash, this is Detective Constable Elliot. Amanda, and everyone else, this is ex-Detective Inspector Ash Henderson from the Lateral Investigative and Review Unit.’ Giving Watt a pointed look. ‘Mr Henderson has worked on a lot of serial killer investigations. He’s going to be joining the team for a while, as a consultant.’

DC Elliot held her hand out for shaking. Had a grip on her that could crush a concrete bollard. ‘Mr Henderson. Mother told me all about your trip into Gordon Smith’s basement. That took some guts!’

Gritted my teeth. ‘Any chance I can have my fingers back in one piece...?’ It was as if she’d wrapped each of my knuckles in the heating-element-wire from a toaster and set it to eleven.

‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ Pink rushing up her neck, setting her pale cheeks glowing.

I stuffed the crushed paw under my armpit. ‘Arthritis.’

‘God, I’m such a klutz.’

Mother handed her a mug with ‘WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE INSPECTOR’ on it. ‘Amanda, if you’re making, I’d love a coffee, and I’m sure Mr Henderson would like one too.’

‘Yes, right. Coffee.’ She turned and marched from the room, thumping the door closed behind her.

‘You’ll have to excuse DC Elliot, Ash, she doesn’t know her own strength sometimes.’ Mother jabbed the remote at the blank TV again. Slumped. Held it out in my direction. ‘Don’t suppose you know anything about these things, do you?’

With the curtains shut, the room was plunged into darkness, the only light coming from the TV screen as everyone perched on their plastic chairs, staring as what I’d recorded in Gordon Smith’s basement played out in all its shaky horrible glory. Yet again.

Alice’s voice crackled out of the TV’s speaker: ‘What the hell is this place?’

The picture swam into a gloomy sea of grey-black pixels, then back to the light again as a string of Polaroids came into focus, the colours blown out by the glow from Alice’s phone. Taking in one torture scene after another.

‘Ash?’

My voice sounded weird. Higher than normal, a little shaky. ‘It’s a kill room.’

‘Oh God. Ash, they’re—’

A muffled rumble and the Polaroids shook, faded out of focus into a grainy scrabble of blacks and greys. Henry’s barks stabbed out like gunshots and the screen went dark.

The distorted double-echo of my phone recording its own generic ringtone.

‘Hello?’

Mother shifted in her seat, grimacing as a tinny version of her own voice burst into the room. ‘GET OUT OF THERE NOW! THE HEADLAND’S GOING!’

Then it all became a confused smear of barely visible shapes rushing across the screen.

Me: ‘Quick! Outside!’

Alice: ‘No, no, no, no, no...’ The screen darkened as she ran away, taking the light with her.

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

A hissing click, and the picture changed to a solid blue with ‘HDMI1’ in the top left corner.

Mother poked the remote and turned the TV off, plunging the room into darkness. ‘Comments? Questions? Suggestions?’

‘Leah MacNeil is dead, isn’t she?’ DC Elliot got up and hauled back the curtains, sending up a whoomph of dust — it glowed in the sunlight that spilled through the grubby glass.

A sniff from Watt. ‘Of course she’s dead. She disappears, Friday the ninth, Gordon Smith waltzes off into the wild-blue-yonder one week later. Whatever’s left of her will have washed out to sea by now.’

‘It’s all a disaster...’ Mother levered herself out of her seat and slumped over to the window. Shoulders hunched as she stared out, across the road at Helen MacNeil’s caravan. Then turned to face the new line of fencing, separating the world from what was left of Smith’s house. ‘There’s bodies over there. Evidence. And we can’t get anywhere near it.’

‘Well, how about this?’ Dotty wheeled herself over to join Mother. Craning her neck to look over the sill. ‘They won’t let us put an SOC team in Gordon Smith’s garden, in case the whole thing gets washed away, so what if there was some way to have SOC officers in there, but keep them safe too?’

Another sniff. ‘No way anyone would be daft enough to take that risk.’ Watt stood, one hand straying to that bald scarred patch at the back of his head. ‘Even if you managed to come up with a solution, by the time you’d done a risk assessment, got volunteers organised, set everything up, and put them to work, the garden would be gone.’

‘Well, that’s hardly the attitude, is it?’

‘All I’m saying is: it’s not doable. You couldn’t follow any evidentiary procedures at all, there wouldn’t be time. Best case scenario: they leap over there, dig like crazy and drag back everything they can before disaster strikes. How’s that going to stand up in court?’

‘What if...’ Dotty squeaked her chair from side to side. ‘We could get everyone a harness and someone holds onto the other end, ready to pull them back if something happens?’

That got her a laugh. ‘And if you’re too slow? They die. No one’s going to let you do that.’

‘OK, well, what if we got, like, a big crane?’ She stuck her arm out, palm down, fingers dangling as she mimed it. ‘You could lower a bunch of people suspended from a frame, so if the ground goes, they can’t fall anywhere.’

‘It’s blowing a gale out there! Might as well make a wind chime out of their battered bleeding corpses.’

He was a prick, but he had a point.

Mother raised an eyebrow in my direction. ‘I notice you’re keeping very quiet.’

‘Yup.’

‘Ooh!’ Dotty dumped her mimed crane. ‘If we can’t get anyone to go into the basement, how about we use a drone instead?’

Watt covered his face with a hand, speaking with the slow clear deliberation of someone explaining why you don’t stick fireworks up your brother’s bum to a particularly thick four-year-old. ‘It’s — too — windy.’

‘Oh.’ She stuck her nose in the air. ‘At least I’m trying!’

DC Elliot shrugged. ‘Sorry, I’ve got nothing.’

‘So, that’s it: we’re doomed,’ Mother sagged back against the windowsill. ‘Without the remains, how are we supposed to identify Smith’s victims?’

Ah well. Suppose I might as well play nice.

‘Actually,’ my empty coffee cup clunked down on the desk, ‘I might know someone who can help you with that...’

14

Sabir made a sound like a deflating beach ball. ‘Yer not asking much, are yez?’

I leaned against the wall and shrugged. ‘Well, if you think it’s too difficult...?’

The master bedroom had been stripped bare, like the lounge, but this time they’d even taken the curtains. A large brown stain reached out from the far corner, across the ceiling, spreading down the wall, and finishing up in a patch of twisted floorboards — blackened with mould.

‘You see, I’ve been telling everyone what a computer genius you are, but if you think this one’s too hard for you, I completely understand.’

‘Ash, yer a total—’

‘Won’t make me think any less of you, if this is way beyond your skill level.’

Outside, the TV crews were getting ready for the lunchtime bulletins. Reporters bracing themselves against the battering wind, scarves and hair flying out like an eighties rock video. Cameramen lurching about as they tried to frame their microphone-wielding idiot, Gordon Smith’s house, the headland, and the Mobile Incident Unit, all in the one shot. While at the same time cutting every other channel’s camera crew from the scene.

‘Is this reverse-psychology bullshit supposed to werk on me, like? Cos if it is, I’ve got some bad news for yez.’

‘Come on, Sabir! It’ll only take you a couple of minutes. And I can give you a cost code too.’

‘Really?’

‘All I want you to do is run the Polaroids in the footage against every misper database in the UK, going back fifty-six years. Piece of cake.’

A sharp intake of breath. ‘Fifty-six years? Are you off your haggis-munching—’

‘No, you’re right, Sabir, better make it sixty.’

‘Yez never said nothing about fifty-six years! Half the bloody records probably ain’t even been digitised, never mind put online. Yez’re off yer head if you think—’

‘Unless, of course, it’s beyond even your immense talents?’

Silence.

The BBC lot were getting into a stushie with the Channel 4 brigade: the reporters banging their chests together like elephant seals while the camera crew tried to look the other way.

‘Well?’

‘All right, all right. I can run the ferst set, but you’ve got bugger-all chance with the second. No way you’ll get an image match with people bein’ tortured. Facial recognition’s good, but there’s limits.’

‘Couldn’t you clean them up? Digitally alter them so they look normal?’

‘Oh yeah, and then I’ll climb aboard me flying unicorn and go—’

‘Look, if you can’t—’

‘This isn’t CSI Oldcastle! I can only do what’s actually bloody possible in the real werld. And you better gerra cost code for me, Ash, cos if you don’t—’

‘Thanks, Sabir, you’re a star.’ Then hung up, before he could change his mind. According to my phone, there were eight missed calls from ‘DR MCFRUITLOOP’ and about a dozen text messages. Well tough, Alice could bloody well stew.

Back in the living room, the curtains were shut again, that lonely lightbulb casting hard shadows on the bare walls. DC Elliot was fishing about inside a big lumpy printer, scowling at the mechanisms as she poked. Swearing under her breath while Watt pinned up a blurry still from the video I’d taken in Gordon Smith’s basement. It was the young man in the beer garden, toasting whoever was taking the picture. Smith, presumably. Or his wife.

Maybe they took turns picking victims and killing them?

The photo was one of three — the young woman on one leg, and the other young woman on the beach.

‘Where’s DI Malcolmson?’

‘Hmmm?’ Elliot looked up from her rummaging. ‘Sorry, yes: she’s off shouting at someone, I think.’

Watt stepped back to admire his handiwork. ‘Some moron from the Glasgow Tribune tried to sneak through the fence. Have you still not got that printer working, Amanda?’

‘It’s not my fault it jams on every other page, is it?’ She hauled a crumpled sheet of ink-smeared paper from the machine’s innards, and clunked the lid shut again. ‘Try it now.’

I left them to it.

Headed down the hall and out the front door.

Mother stood in the garden, curly ginger hair whipping around her head in the wind, throwing her arms about while a young man in an ill-fitting suit withered before her.

He had a face full of acne and teeth, a single solid eyebrow wriggling its way across his brow. A big digital camera slung around his neck. Knees bent, hands raised as if to ward off blows. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’

‘YOU COULD’VE DIED, YOU IDIOT! WHAT WOULD YOUR POOR MUM THINK IF YOU GOT CRUSHED TO DEATH AND WASHED OUT TO SEA?’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘BECAUSE I’D BE THE ONE WHO’D HAVE TO TELL HER, HER LITTLE BOY HAD STUPIDED HIMSELF TO DEATH!’

‘I’m sorry!’

‘GO ON, GET OUT OF MY SIGHT.’ She stabbed a finger westward, away from the cliffs. ‘AND DON’T YOU EVER LET ME CATCH YOU DOING ANYTHING LIKE THAT AGAIN!’

The wee loon scuttled off, jacket snapping about him as the wind tore at his back.

‘Were you trying to make him cry?’

Mother turned. ‘Ah, Ash. Any luck with your IT guru?’

‘Going to take a look for us, but we’ll probably have to give him a cost code to write his time against.’

She sagged, turned, and leaned her thick white fists on the garden wall. ‘Everyone always wants money, these days. Whatever happened to going out and catching crooks? Now it’s all cost centres and codes and balance sheets and budget forecasts.’

‘Look on the bright side,’ I pointed across the road, ‘you’ll save a fortune, not having to pay for a search team, or the scene examination lot.’

A deep dark rumbling noise juddered its way through the gale as another chunk of Gordon Smith’s garden disappeared into the North Sea, taking a four-foot segment of wall and roof with it. The TV crews all swung their cameras around to capture the excitement. No doubt that would get featured on the lunchtime news.

She shook her head. ‘Going to be almost impossible to get a sound conviction on this one.’ Raised a hand towards the crumbling bungalow with its tumbledown roof. ‘No physical evidence, no bodies, no forensics tying Smith to the crimes... Be lucky if we can even prove there’ve been crimes. Any semi-conscious defence solicitor will tear us a fresh bumhole.’

No wonder the top brass had lumbered Mother and her Misfit Mob with the case. Every Superintendent, DCI, and DI in O Division would be running full speed in the opposite direction to this career-killing crapfest.

The camera crews stayed where they were, obviously hoping for a repeat performance.

‘Wouldn’t be the first time someone got sent down for murder with no body.’

‘Jack thinks I should pack it all in. Give up the glamorous life of a police officer and go on cruises instead. Play golf. Do the garden. Spend more time with the grandchildren.’

‘Sounds exciting.’

‘You haven’t met my grandkids.’ She frowned for a moment, then sniffed. ‘Tell your IT guru he can have eight hours and not a penny more. In the meantime, what are you going to do?’

Good question.

‘Think I’ll go see a man about a croft.’

‘When DS Franklin gets back, you can take her with you. She’s driving everyone else round the bend, don’t see why you should be the exception, just because you’re new.’

Oh joy.

‘What?’

Sitting in the driver’s seat, Detective Sergeant Franklin tightened her jaw, eyes fixed straight ahead as the dual carriageway climbed Friarton Bridge, arching over the River Tay. Hands tight around the wheel, knuckles paling her skin. She’d hung the black suit jacket up in the back, her white shirt fitted and a touch more revealing than was strictly necessary. Some would call her handsome, striking, maybe even beautiful — as long as they hadn’t had to share a crappy Police Scotland pool car with her.

‘Come on, out with it: you’ve been shooting daggers at me since before Dundee.’

Still nothing.

‘Not my fault you got assigned to this job, is it? That was your guvnor.’

She bared perfect white teeth. ‘It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?’

‘What is, the sulking?’

Franklin put her foot down, the needle creeping up closer to eighty as she swung the ancient Ford Focus out into the other lane to overtake a Megabus. ‘I’m a detective sergeant, you’re not even a police officer!’

‘And that’s a problem, because...?’

‘I am not a bloody chauffeur! You should be driving me, not the other way round.’

She snapped the car back into the inside lane, getting an angry flash of headlights and a variety of rude hand gestures from a fat woman in a people carrier.

‘Are you always like this?’

‘I’m not like anything.’

‘God, it’s no wonder Mother wanted shot of you for the day.’ I stretched out my right leg, rotating the ankle, setting it clicking. Easing out the burning. ‘And the reason you’re driving me, Detective Sergeant, is one: I used to be a DI, and two: you don’t have a bullet hole in your foot. Which makes driving anything a massive pain in the... foot.’ Tried for a smile. ‘Much like yourself.’

Not so much as a twinkle.

‘So, shall we get on with the obligatory bonding getting-to-know-each-other bollocks, or are you planning on seething all the way to Edinburgh?’

She tightened her jaw again.

‘Fair enough.’ I reclined my seat and closed my eyes. ‘You can wake me up when we get there.’

Something sharp poked me in the shoulder. ‘We’re nearly there.’

I sat up, blinked. Didn’t bother stifling a yawn.

We were on a residential street that could’ve been anywhere in Scotland: short rows of small terraced houses; the occasional bungalow; two-storey blocks of flats arranged around a central stairwell; grey harling, pink harling, bus lanes and speed cameras. Wouldn’t think Saughton was lurking just out of sight.

Franklin pulled up at the junction, sitting there with the indicators clicking, waiting for two taxis and a removals van to pass. ‘You snore.’

‘And you have all the interpersonal charm of a post mortem. But you don’t hear me going on about it, do you?’

She took the corner, up the small hill, and round into the car park.

Suppose one of us should try being a grown-up.

‘Look, we’re going to have to work together for a couple of days, so maybe we could try and keep the mutual loathing down to a gentle simmer? Or we could even have a bash at starting over?’ I held out my hand as she killed the ignition. ‘Ash Henderson, former Detective Inspector. Of course, that was back when it was still Oldcastle Police, before Police Scotland ruined everything and we all went to rat shit in a handcart.’

She looked down at my proffered hand, then up at me. Curled her top lip. And climbed out of the car. Grabbed her jacket from the back and marched off towards the ugly Lego-brick lump of a building lurking behind a weird green-roofed visitor centre. They’d stuck the words ‘HMP EDINBURGH’ on the prison’s façade, above a three-storey wall of tinted glass, framed with beige cladding, but it was like putting stockings-and-suspenders on a pig and hoping no one would notice it wasn’t a glamour model.

Franklin stopped by the line of bollards, turned, and threw her arms out. ‘ARE YOU COMING OR NOT?’

Oh yeah, she was definitely a charmer.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting...’ An ingratiating smile pulled at the man’s face. He’d slicked his hair into a greasy side parting that didn’t really go with the pink polo shirt — stretched tight across a chest and arms that clearly spent a lot of time in the gym. Thick black-rimmed glasses perched on a horsey nose. iPad clutched under one arm. ‘If you’d like to follow me?’

We abandoned the small waiting room, Franklin simmering away behind me, glowering at everything and everyone as we followed the bloke down grey concrete corridors that stank of fresh paint.

‘We’re having a spruce up: going for something a bit more cheery.’ A hand came out to wave at the bland walls. ‘This’ll all be bright primary colours when it’s done. I wanted a mural, but there wasn’t the budget.’ A combination of ID card and pincodes got us through a series of thick doors with safety-glass inserts, opening and closing to a running commentary on what colour what wall was going to end up.

Not sure if he was nervous, or really liked the sound of his own voice.

‘And this is us, here.’ He ushered us through into a small meeting room.

No windows. Instead, a watercolour painting of Edinburgh Castle — as imagined by a six-year-old with no artistic skill whatsoever — took pride of place on the far wall. A lone pot plant sagged in the corner, its plastic leaves drooping. One manky coffee table, and four uncomfortable-looking chairs upholstered in vile patterned fabric.

Two occupants: a prison officer, every bit as over-muscled as our guide, leaning with her back against the wall, off-blonde hair pulled into a saggy ponytail; and a man in his late sixties, early seventies. He looked up from a plastic cup of something brown, ran his deep-set eyes across me, then did the same with Franklin.

Leered.

‘Hello, darling. You’re a vision to warm a man’s heart, aren’t you?’ He had a sharp face, not helped by the pointy goatee dangling off the end of his chin. He’d swept his grey hair forward, probably thought it covered that bald shiny crown, but it gave him a look of Nero’s pervier uncle. Prison sweatshirt and jogging bottoms. A pair of white trainers that had never seen the outside world. And never would. ‘Tell you, this place is full of poofs and wankers, so it does a body good to see a real woman for a change. Instead of these muscly dykes.’ He turned his smile on the prison officer. ‘No offence, Shona.’

Shona narrowed her eyes, but didn’t say anything. Not while there were witnesses present, anyway.

There was a pause as Franklin’s cheeks darkened. Winding herself up to a proper explosion.

OK. Time to be the grown-up again.

‘Mr Smith.’ I settled into one of the other chairs. ‘You know why we’re here?’

‘Oh aye: saw it on the lunchtime news. My wee brother’s been a naughty boy, has he?’

‘Runs in the family.’ A smile. ‘Detective Sergeant, would you care to refresh everyone’s memory?’

Franklin pulled a printout from her suit pocket. ‘Peter Smith, currently serving sixteen years in Saughton—’

‘Actually,’ our guide raised a hand, ‘the official name is HMP Edinburgh, so if you don’t mind...?’

Her back stiffened. ‘Fine.’ That one word making it clear it really wasn’t. ‘Serving sixteen years in “HMP Edinburgh” for murdering a GP. According to the file, you stabbed her thirty-two times.’

Smith shrugged. ‘Tempers became heated.’

‘Then there’s the three years you did in Oldcastle for aggravated assault, the stint for attempted abduction, and a four-year stay at Peterhead Prison for sexually assaulting a pregnant schoolteacher.’

A wistful look slid its way across his face. ‘I’ve led quite the colourful life, haven’t I?’

‘Not to mention the four allegations of rape.’

Another shrug.

I hooked my walking stick over the back of the chair next to mine. ‘Tell us about your brother, Peter. What’s Gordon like?’

‘Now you’re asking.’ He sat back, knees spread far apart, crotch pointing in Franklin’s direction. ‘You heard about the coffins, yes? Making them for the kids if their pets died? Aye, that’s not new, Gordy’s been doing that all his life. Turned out a lovely one to bury the neighbour’s Dachshund in, painted it like a racing car and everything.’ Smith shook his head. ‘Course the dog wasn’t dead. At least, not when it went into the coffin. Could hear it whining as Gordy shovelled the soil in on top. Ashes to ashes, and all that.’

No one said anything.

‘Always thought it was a bit of a cliché, myself, but that was Gordy for you. And he learned to hide it well, had to give him that. By his eighth birthday, you’d never have known how screwed up he was inside. Always smiling, singing happy tunes to himself. Course I knew about the humane traps he used on the mice in the basement.’ Smith winked at Franklin. ‘Oh yes, the traps were humane, but what he did to those wee mice when everyone went to sleep? That wasn’t humane at all...’

Our guide cleared his throat. The prison officer, Shona, shifted against the wall, fidgeting with her keys. The central heating pinged and gurgled.

‘Poor wee Gordy never was... robust like me. He let it get to him. So Dad used to batter the living hell out of us, so what? Even the sexual stuff, you don’t have to let that define you, do you? Bet there’s millions of people out there been interfered with and never killed anyone.’

I sat forward. ‘You killed someone.’

‘That’s not the same thing at all: Dr Griffiths had it coming. If she’d been any sort of real doctor, she would’ve caught Caroline’s cancer before it was too late to do anything about it, wouldn’t she?’ He poked his cheek out with his tongue, head wobbling in faux-modesty. ‘When you think about it, I did the NHS a favour, taking that useless cow out of the gene pool.’

Now that was interesting...

I threw Franklin a glance to see if she’d spotted it, but she was still busy with her scowling.

‘Anyway,’ Smith waved away the notion, ‘that stuff with the animals: Gordy’s way of coping, wasn’t it? I’m sure he had nothing to do with all those alleged dead bodies you say you found, but can’t produce. Because “the nasty storm’s eaten them all”.’ Smith wasn’t making a very good job of hiding his smile. ‘Allegedly. If they ever existed in the first place.’

Sometimes, all you needed to do was leave a long enough gap in an interview, and the suspect would scramble to fill it with something incriminating. But when I gave it a go, Peter Smith settled back in his seat, hands behind his head, legs out, ankles crossed.

OK.

‘Tell me about your croft...?’ I raised my eyebrows at Franklin.

She checked her notes. ‘Wester Brae of Kinbeachie.’

‘Not much to tell. Ninety-three acres, most of it bog and reeds. Loads of gorse. And it’s a farm, not a croft.’ He sniffed, pursed his lips. ‘Inherited it off an uncle. He was “hands on” with wee boys too. Suppose it must’ve run in the family...’ Smith frowned down at his hands. The fingers seemed to have worked themselves into a knot. He unlaced them, one by one. ‘To be honest, it’s amazing Gordon and me turned out as well as we did.’

Talk about setting a low bar.

‘And who’s looking after this “farm” while you’re in here?’

‘Nah,’ he waved that away, ‘nothing worth looking after. Animals all died years ago. Nothing left but weeds and mud and a farmhouse you wouldn’t keep dogs in. Whole place needs burning to the ground.’ A smile. ‘No point salting the earth, though, sod all grows there anyway.’

Franklin pulled her chin up. ‘And where do you think your brother is now?’

That leer returned. ‘He’d like you.’

‘He’s not at your so-called farm, we checked. So where is he?’

‘See, we share a taste in women, Gordon and me.’ Peter sat forward. ‘Young and tight. Bet you know how to treat a man, don’t you? With your low-cut top and pert firm breasts.’

That imminent-explosion look was back on Franklin’s face again.

OK, time to get this back on track. I cut in before she could open her mouth. ‘Let me get this straight, Mr Smith: you murdered a woman because she didn’t diagnose your sister-in-law’s bowel cancer early enough? Does that sound reasonable to you?’

The smile slipped from his face. ‘Think you lot have had enough of my time.’ He stood, gave Franklin another once-over. ‘Don’t fancy coming back to my cell with me, do you, sweet-cheeks? Sure I can show you some moves that’ll get your knickers dripping. No?’

Franklin bared her teeth, fists curled. ‘No.’

‘Ah well, just have to use my imagination, won’t I?’ He gave the front of his joggy bots a squeeze. ‘Be thinking about you, later.’

She didn’t stop swearing till we were back in the car.

15

I opened my mouth, but Franklin got there first:

‘Don’t, OK? Don’t say a bloody word. That misogynistic, sexist, slimy old... Gah!’ She stuck her foot down as the lights changed, wheeching out onto the roundabout. Following the road markings for A71 WEST ~ THE NORTH. Slamming on the brakes again as the next set of lights turned red before we could cross them. Bashing the flat of her palm against the steering wheel. ‘Damn it!’

‘Come on, he can’t be the first creepy weirdo who perved on you to mess with your head.’

‘He did not mess with my—’

‘Difficult to focus on what someone’s saying if you’re standing there dreaming about battering his face off the floor six or seven times.’

She scowled across the car at me. ‘I was focused!’

‘Green.’

‘What?’

Pointing through the windscreen. ‘The light’s gone green.’

‘Bloody hell...’ She nearly stalled it, but got the pool car kangarooing around to the exit.

‘OK, well if you were so focused and non-distracted, what did you make of the sister-in-law thing?’

Down the slip road. ‘What sister-in-law thing?’

‘See?’ God save us from detective sergeants with a chip on their shoulder. ‘Peter Smith says he murdered Dr Griffiths because she cocked up Caroline Smith’s cancer diagnosis. He killed for his sister-in-law. Not his sister, not his wife, his sister-in-law.’

‘So what? Maybe they’re a close family.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. It’s—’

My phone launched into its bland generic ringtone, and when I pulled it out, there was ‘DI MALCOLMSON’ in the middle of the screen. Ah well, might as well. It was that or talk to smiler, here. I hit the button. ‘Hello?’

‘Ash, it’s Mother. How are you and Rosalind getting on?’

‘Like a house on fire.’ People running, screaming, dying...

‘That’s nice. Listen, you don’t fancy doing a teensy favour for me, do you? We put an appeal out on the lunchtime news, did you hear it? Anyway, people have been calling with sightings.’

‘And let me guess: some timewasting loony thinks they’ve seen Gordon Smith in Edinburgh.’

‘And Portree, Kingussie, Clydebank, Hawick, Aberystwyth, Torquay, Billingborough, Methil... So if you can swing past and check, while you’re in the area, that’d be a great help.’

Hard not to groan at that.

‘I know, I know, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it?’

Not really. That was the trouble with police work, though. Ninety-six percent of it was a complete waste of time and the other four percent got you in trouble with Professional Standards.

‘Have the labs got back with anything from those Polaroids? The ones I gave DI Morrow?’

‘DI Morr...? Oh, you mean Shifty? No, not yet. John’s chasing them.’

‘Get them to compare any DNA, blood, or fingerprints with Peter Smith — Gordon’s brother. Doing a sixteen stretch in Saughton.’

Silence from the other end of the phone.

I leaned towards Franklin. ‘Better get in the right-hand lane, we’re going back to Edinburgh.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Make up your mind...’ But she yanked on the steering wheel anyway, sending the Ford Focus careening across the white rumble strip and inches from the rear end of an articulated lorry. A blare of horn from the white Transit we’d just cut in front of. Then out into the overtaking lane, accelerating past the lorry and up the hill, as if we hadn’t been seconds away from ‘FIVE DEAD IN MOTORWAY PILEUP HORROR’.

I forced down the fizzy feeling that’d clamped onto my bowels. Went back to the phone. ‘You still there?’

‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Ash? Why all this interest in Gordon Smith’s brother?’

‘Call it ex-DI’s intuition. Now, where are we meant to be heading?’

‘You’ll like this: be a treat for you.’

Why did that sound highly unlikely?

‘Well how was I supposed to know there wasn’t any parking?’ Franklin stomped past the National Gallery, moping her way between the waist-high sections of temporary fencing and into a world of glittering lights. The thick meaty scent of charcoal and sausages mingled with piped Christmas carols and the whirrrrrr of someone making Irn-Bru-flavoured candyfloss.

‘Can we get on with this, please?’

The sky had gone from bright blue to a dark indigo as we’d tramped all the way from the multistorey round the back of the Traverse Theatre, down Lothian Road, and along Princes Street. Fighting our way through the seething swamp of bloody tourists and bloody-minded locals. Now a sliver of burning red lined the top of the surrounding buildings, doing nothing to compete with the twee gaudy horror of Edinburgh’s Christmas Market.

Lines of small wooden stalls were arranged in three ‘streets’, bedecked with multicoloured lights, bells, stars, oversized candy canes, and bits of pine tree, as if Santa had vomited all over it. Stall after stall after stall, selling tat, tat, and more tat.

Towering over everything, a slow-motion Ferris wheel glittered its way around, overshadowing the gloomy blackened spires of the Scott Monument. And everywhere you looked: fairy lights. Fairy lights and more bloody tourists.

This early in the season, it shouldn’t have been busy, but it was. People jammed in everywhere, circulating at a snail’s pace. Taking selfies, blocking the way, drinking bargain-basement Glühwein from a stall manned by a bloke who wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Sex Offenders’ Register.

Franklin stared at the seething masses, teeth bared. ‘This is a monumental waste of time.’

‘Of course it is. Even if Gordon Smith was here, he’ll be long gone by now.’ I gave her the side-eye. ‘Especially after your parking.’

‘That wasn’t my fault!’

A stall down the end — past one selling socks and gloves, one selling ‘HANDMADE ARTISANAL CHEESES!’, one selling tea-lights in the shape of Edinburgh tenements, and one entirely dedicated to vile flavours of fudge — had a big circular metal grille suspended over a smouldering bowl of red-hot charcoal. An array of golden sausages drifted around in a lazy circle as the woman in charge poked at them with a set of tongs. The smell alone was enough to set my stomach growling. Been a long time since that bowl of salted porridge and cup of decaf tea.

Franklin sniffed, did a three-sixty. ‘So where do we begin this utter waste of time?’

I held up two fingers to the lady with the tongs. ‘One bratwurst, one currywurst. All the trimmings.’

‘Reet you are, pet.’

Franklin stared up at the string of lights that looped from pole to pole, running the length of the fake street. ‘Think the market’s got CCTV? They have to have CCTV, right?’

I took delivery of the sausages, smothered in sauerkraut and crispy onions. Handed over a tenner. Got very little of it back. ‘Here.’

‘What?’ Franklin looked at the proffered currywurst as if it’d recently come out the back end of an Alsatian.

‘You’d rather have the bratwurst?’

‘We pull the CCTV from when Gordon Smith was spotted and we have a look. We see anything, we alert local plod and get them to launch a proper manhunt.’

Gave the sausage a waggle. ‘You wanting this, or not?’

She rolled her eyes, then accepted the thing as if she was doing me a favour. Slathered it in tomato sauce and yellow mustard from the squeezy plastic bottles by the till. First thing she’d done all day that wasn’t annoying.

I followed her lead. ‘According to Mother, Gordon was spotted at two fifteen, near the helter-skelter.’

‘That’s how you know this is bollocks.’ Franklin took a bite off the end of her sausage, getting a mustard moustache for her troubles as we wandered down the aisle between two rows of stalls. Talking with her mouth full. ‘He’s on the run from the police, no way he’s stopping off here to play on the slides.’

True.

The bratwurst snapped between my teeth, setting free an explosion of meaty smoky goodness, sweet and sharp at the same time. ‘Might as well go see if anyone down there recognises him. We’re here anyway.’

So we dawdled through the ‘Nutella and crepes’ section, the tower cakes, the scented candles, munching our way through a very late lunch.

The Scott Monument loomed above us, in all its grim gothic glory.

I stopped. Frowned up at it.

Moved over to the left.

Then forward a couple of paces.

Far as I could tell, this was exactly where Gordon Smith must’ve been standing when he took that Polaroid — the one with the bearded man in it, arms wide, head thrown back, laughing. You didn’t pose like that for a stranger, did you? No, whoever took the photo, they had to be someone you knew. Someone you felt comfortable with.

Franklin seemed to realise I wasn’t with her any more, because she turned and stomped back towards me. ‘Thought we were supposed to be working, not sightseeing.’

‘You do realise, now I’ve bought you a sausage, you have to be less of a grumpy tosser, don’t you?’

Franklin wiped the splodges of red and yellow from her cheeks and chin. ‘I am not a grumpy tosser.’

‘You’ve had a massive retractable bollard up your backside since I met you, and I’m renowned for my charming wit.’ Sort of. On a good day. ‘So come on, then: why the grump?’

She tossed her napkin into the nearest bin. ‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a woman in the police force? Try being black on top of that. So far this week I’ve been propositioned four times, groped once, called a “coloured monkey bitch”, a “fascist darkie”, and told to go back where I came from. Which, for the record, is about a twenty-five-minute bus ride that way.’ Pointing in the vague direction of Waverley Station. ‘And let’s not forget the eighty-two-year-old woman who used the N-word so much she must’ve got a discount for bulk, and spat on me for daring to suggest she couldn’t put rat poison down for her neighbour’s dog, even if it does crap on her lawn. So you’ll excuse me if I’m a bit less than sodding cheerful about it!’

Jesus...

‘I’m sorry.’ It’d be nice to think Scotland was better than that. That we were more enlightened and accepting and welcoming. That we were just a wee bit brighter. Always depressing to be reminded we had our fair share of thick-as-pig-shit racist wankers, same as everywhere else. ‘Did you arrest her? The old lady?’

Franklin gave a snort. ‘She’s eighty-two, what are the courts going to do?’

True.

‘Give me her address, then: I’ll go round and crap on her lawn myself.’

That almost got me a smile.

We took the steep, leaf-slippery slope down at the end of the fake street.

The sky was dark as ink, our breaths glowing in the light of the yellow-and-red helter-skelter — tall as a four-storey building, ringed around with flickering bulbs. A carousel sat next to it, slowly rotating to the sound of ‘Scotland the Brave’, played on an oom-cha organ, wooden horses rising and falling, taking squealing children round and round in the flash of two dozen parents’ phones.

Franklin’s face softened. ‘I used to love those when I was little...’

‘Don’t see why not. Once we’ve checked with the helter-skelter people.’

She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. And I swear to God, that was almost a smile playing at the corner of her lips. ‘I’m a grown woman.’

‘Never too old to play on a wooden horsey, though, are you.’

There was a queue outside the helter-skelter: people in padded jackets snaking their way up a set of wooden steps to where a fat man in a black bomber jacket and Santa hat was checking tickets, before letting them inside to climb to the top.

Franklin pulled out her warrant card and flashed it at the tourists. ‘Police, we need to get past. Excuse me. Thank you. Police.’ Working her way up the stairs with me limping along behind. ‘Sorry, police business. Thank you. Sir? I need you to step out of the way for a moment. Thanks.’ Until we were face to face with our bouncer in a jolly hat.

He gave her a scowl. ‘No swicking the queue.’

‘Police.’ She stuck her warrant card under his podgy nose. Then dug into her pocket and pulled out a folded A4 sheet. Stuck that under his nose instead. ‘Have you seen this man?’

A frown. Mouth pursed and pulled to one side as he examined the printout.

An impatient tut from the woman next to me. Checking her watch.

But the man in the bomber jacket wasn’t to be rushed.

Eventually he shook his head, setting the white furry bobble on the end of his Santa hat wobbling. ‘Sorry.’

I peered over Franklin’s shoulder. ‘You been on shift all afternoon?’

A nod, setting the bobble going again. ‘Since one.’

She gave the sheet another go. ‘And you’re certain?’

‘Oh aye, I’m good with faces, me. That bloke’s no’ been on my ride the day.’

Ah well, it’d been worth a try.

We thumped our way down the stairs again and out onto the path.

She put her printout away. ‘So what now?’

‘You want a go on the carousel before or after we check for CCTV?’

A wistful look slid across Franklin’s face as she turned to gaze at the merry-go-round, its flashing lights playing across her skin, sparkling in her eyes. ‘I’m a grown woman, and we’re supposed to be working, so—’

‘Both it is, then.’

A white picket fence separated the thing from the walkway, with a perky middle-aged woman, dressed as an elf, in charge of the gate. ‘Hello.’ Beaming like hers was the best job in the world. ‘Are you here to ride the carousel?’

‘Come on, Mr Henderson, we don’t have time to—’

‘One adult, please.’

‘This is ridiculous, I’m not going to—’

‘Listen up, Detective Sergeant: life is fleeting, short, and horrible. Take whatever joy you can, where you can.’

The elf put a hand on her heart. ‘Oh, that’s so true...’ Then did her perky thing again. ‘Now, have you got a token? Because, if you don’t, there’s a machine up by the—’

‘Tenner. No questions asked. And failing that,’ pulled out my old warrant card — the one I should’ve handed back years ago, ‘police business.’

‘Done.’ She opened the gate and waved Franklin through. Throwing in an elaborate bow for good measure as she swept a hand towards the shiny wooden horses. ‘This way, my lady, your noble steed awaits!’

First time around the circuit, Franklin looked vaguely embarrassed, sitting there on her filigreed golden horse with red and blue swirls. The second revolution brought a smile with it. And by the third time around she was grinning away as ‘Flower of Scotland’ omm-cha’d out of the carousel’s organ.

And you know what? There were worse ways to have spent a tenner.

Maybe now she’d be less of a pain in my—

Tchaikovsky’s ‘Danse des Mirlitons’ blared out in my pocket, clashing with the merry-go-round soundtrack.

Alice.

Reject, or take the call?

My shoulders drooped.

Shifty was right, I’d have to speak to her sooner or later.

I moved away from the picket fence, shouldering my way through the crowds to a quieter spot. Hit the green button. ‘Alice.’

‘Ash?’ Sounding breathless, as if she was walking fast. ‘I can’t talk for long. Listen, I’m really, really, really sorry.’

A Japanese family lumbered past, almost swallowed in their huge padded coats, hoods up like gnomes. Then a couple of Eastern-European men in Manchester United replica shirts, their bare arms semi-blue with cold and pebbled with goose bumps.

‘Ash? Did you hear, I really am sorry.’

‘So you should be.’

‘Oh, Ash...’

‘It hurts every time you do it, but today?’

A couple of the local plod smiled and nodded their way through the crowds, conspicuous in their high-viz waistcoats, stabproof vests and peaked caps.

‘I know, I’m an idiot... David tells me you went to see her. Rebecca.’

Or what was left of her.

‘Yeah.’

The Christmas Market was a sea of faces. Happy people, bored people, families, couples, none of whose lives had been torn apart one bloodied Polaroid at a time.

‘We don’t have to talk about it right now, but you know I’m here for you. If you want me to be?’

A sigh dragged my shoulders down. ‘Yeah.’

‘I wanted you to know that I’ve... had a word with Steven Kirk. He’s...’ She cleared her throat. ‘I told the investigating officer that he... attacked me on the waste ground. That he had... a knife. That you were only trying to protect me.’

‘You didn’t have to lie, it’s—’

‘It’s my fault you did what you did, Ash. If I hadn’t... used Rebecca’s death like that—’

‘Yeah. Well.’ Deep breath. ‘Thanks for trying to fix it.’

A gaggle of Aberdonians posed for selfies with the helter-skelter in the background, pouting like constipated ducks. Three Brummies laughed their way past, sharing a plastic tray of something cheesy. Those two police officers stopped for photos with a group of Americans.

‘And I really am so, so sorry... Henry misses you.’

I puffed out a breath. ‘Look, as it’s nine years since we started catching bad guys, maybe we should go somewhere fancy for dinner. I could...’

Hold on a minute.

‘Ash?’

There — in the swarm of faces, gazing along the row of fairground attractions and off towards the line of stalls. A young woman: heart-shaped face, broad forehead, long sharp nose. Wisps of bright-violet hair sticking out from the edge of her hoodie.

Nah. It couldn’t be.

‘Ash, I’ve got to go, Bear’s got a press—’

I hung up, slipped the phone back in my pocket.

Maybe it was?

Shouldered my way through a group of German tourists, waiting to get on the waltzers. Dodged a gaggle of septuagenarians dressed up as schoolgirls and rattling a collection bucket.

The young woman looked away, but those wisps of hair fluoresced in the harsh festive lighting.

Past a young family trying to get their toddler to stop screeching his head off, a cloud of candyfloss grounded on the tarmac at his feet.

Closing the gap.

It couldn’t be her. But if it was...

I slipped around a couple arguing over the head of a miserable-looking young girl in a wheelchair.

Reached out. And grabbed the young woman’s arm.

She spun to face me.

‘Leah? Leah MacNeil?’

And at that her eyes went wide. ‘Shit...’

It was her.

‘Your gran’s been worried sick, she needs—’

‘GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU PERVERT!’ Leah wrenched her arm free, and she was off.

16

‘Leah!’

She barged through a knot of tourists, sending plastic cups of Glühwein and paper cartons of bratwurst flying. ‘HE’S TRYING TO TOUCH ME! HELP!’

God’s sake...

I lumbered after her, but the crowd was turning. Staring at me.

‘KEEP AWAY FROM ME YOU RAPIST BASTARD!’

I shoved through the same group but someone shoulder-checked me on the way. Got my walking stick slammed in his guts in return.

He doubled over, staggered out of the way, but Leah was widening the gap.

‘HELP! HELP, POLICE!’

Over by the candyfloss stall, that pair of uniformed officers meerkated above the crowds, and both of them were definitely looking in my direction.

‘LEAH! I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!’ Shoving past the idiots blocking my way.

Only good thing about this was: she had to wade through the sea of people too. If it wasn’t for the crowd she’d be long gone by now.

‘HE TOUCHED MY BREASTS! POLICE!’

A bellowing Edinburgh accent burst across from the uniforms. ‘HOY, YOU! COME BACK HERE!’

She’d made it as far as the ramp leading up to where the market’s edge ran along the side of the Royal Scottish Academy, its sandstone façade stained in shades of red, yellow, and green in the flashing festive lights.

‘LEAH! YOUR MOTHER DIDN’T KILL HERSELF! SHE—’

‘HE’S A PERVERT! STOP HIM! HELP ME!’

People had their phones out now, filming as I struggled after her.

A woman’s voice, cutting through the press of duffel coats and parkas: ‘You should be ashamed of yourself! Leave that poor girl alone!’

‘STOP, POLICE!’

No chance.

An overweight bloke in an ill-fitting Santa suit stepped out in front of me, shoulders back, chest out, chin up. ‘You going nowhere, mate! You’re—’ My right knee smacked him right in the balls and he collapsed, both hands clutching himself as he retched.

Another stepped up — American, going by the stars-and-stripes puffa jacket and buzzcut. ‘We don’t take kindly to perverts.’

‘I’m not a pervert, you moron.’ I shoved him out of the way, hurrying after her. ‘LEAH!’

A hand grabbed the collar of my coat. So I threw an elbow back, felt it connect with something solid as a grunt burst out behind me and the hand let go.

‘LEAH!’

Through to a gap in the crowds, limping as fast as humanly possible up the ramp, every other step jarring steak knives through my stupid foot.

She was frozen, outside the stall with that ‘HANDMADE ARTISANAL CHEESES!’ sign over it. Staring at me. Must’ve heard what I’d said about her mother. It wasn’t—

Something solid slammed into the small of my back and that was it — my walking stick went flying as I, and whoever tackled me, crashed to the soggy grey carpeting. Another grunt.

Bloody Americans never could take a telling, could they?

I snapped another elbow back, aiming high this time. The jarring thud resonated through my arm as it landed. With any luck, breaking the bugger’s nose.

The weight reared off me, then someone else piled on. Hands scrabbling for my left wrist. That same Edinburgh accent: ‘LIE STILL! YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!’

‘Get off me you idiot!’

And Leah just stood there, staring.

‘I SAID LIE STILL!’

They twisted my left hand back, putting on the pressure, dragging the arm with it as barbed wire screamed through the wrist joint. Going for the classic hammer-lock-and-bar.

‘I’m working for the police!’ The words shoved out through gritted teeth as they upped the pressure on my arm. It wasn’t too late, though: I dug my right hand into my jacket pocket and hauled out that wodge of LIRU business cards.

‘JIMMY, GET HIS OTHER HAND!’

‘I thing he broge by node...’

I hurled the whole block at Leah. They made it a good ten or twelve feet before breaking apart into their individual pieces, spinning and whirling like heavy cubist snowflakes. About half a dozen fluttered to the ground at her feet.

‘STOP STRUGGLING!’

Another pair of hands grabbed my outstretched arm.

‘I’M TRYING TO HELP, LEAH! YOU NEED TO TALK TO ME!’

She blinked at me a couple of times. Then bent down and plucked one of the cards from the ground. Clutched it to her chest.

Then turned and ran.

The cold metal bar of a handcuff clicked around my left wrist, someone forcing their weight down on top of my head, shoving my face into the damp carpet.

‘YOU’RE NICKED!’

Singing wafted through from somewhere down the corridor — a wobbly baritone, serenading the rest of the cellblock with an X-rated version of ‘A Froggy Would a Wooing Go’.

The blue plastic-coated mattress creaked beneath me as I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the words in stencilled blue lettering on the ceiling. ‘CRIMESTOPPERS: ANONYMOUS INFORMATION ABOUT CRIME COULD EARN A CASH REWARD’ and an 0800 number. Nothing like taking advantage of a captive audience...

Everything in here smelled of disinfectant. Which was comforting in some ways — at least it meant they’d cleaned it recently — and disturbing in others — what the hell had someone done in here to require drenching everything in Dettol?

To be honest, given how crappy a day I was having, it was actually nice to lie down in the peace and quiet. If you didn’t count the filthy song. No one demanding anything. Nothing to achieve. No one to disappoint.

And it hadn’t all been a waste of time, had it? At least now we knew Leah was still alive. She hadn’t been tortured to death and buried in Gordon Smith’s garden. At least she’d been spared that.

Helen MacNeil, too. Her granddaughter wasn’t dead.

Of course, it didn’t change what had happened to her daughter, Sophie.

What Gordon Smith had done to her.

All laid out in grisly detail in that bloody Polaroid. A small white rectangle bordering a horrible square picture, the image smeared with dried gore...

Like the ones that used to arrive on Rebecca’s birthday. Getting worse and worse every year. Until I couldn’t even picture my little girl’s face without seeing them.

She would’ve been twenty-six today. Could’ve been married with kids by now. A happy family of her own, rather than the fractured mess left behind when the Birthday Boy took her.

Polaroids.

Wonder how many sick bastards out there used them to record their handiwork? How many of them spent every night wanking themselves raw to the image of someone’s son or daughter being torn apart?

Helen MacNeil was right: I knew how it felt. And it didn’t matter that she hadn’t been a doting mother, or even a mediocre one — whether or not she spent most of Sophie’s life in prison and the rest of it enforcing for the mob. Sophie was her child and Gordon Smith took her, same as the Birthday Boy took Rebecca.

So now, only one thing was certain: I was going to find Gordon Smith, and I was going to make him pay. For Sophie. For Rebecca. And for every other child out there who’d suffered at—

The cell door banged open, the sound reverberating off the bare concrete walls.

‘Henderson! On your feet.’ A Police Custody And Security Officer filled the doorway: an unassuming middle-aged man with thinning hair, grey moustache and soul patch. Glasses. Like a disappointed uncle, in his black polo shirt and black jeans. Only you could tell from the way he held himself he was ex-job. Done his time in the force and couldn’t adapt to life on the outside, so came back to work as civilian support. Strange how much ex-cops were like ex-cons. Same problem, different sides of the cell door.

I swung my legs around, placed my stocking soles on the cold terrazzo floor. ‘Any chance I can get my walking stick back, if I promise not to go the full Rambo?’

‘Arse in gear; the Super wants to see you.’

Take that as a no, then.

A tall thin woman looked me up and down as I shuffled into the small room, in my socks. She was dressed in formal Police Scotland black, wiry arms poking out from the sleeves of her T-shirt, a silver crown on both lapels. Probably best not to stare at the big hairy mole poking out beneath the line of her sharp jaw.

I nodded. ‘Superintendent.’

She wasn’t the only one in here. Franklin leaned back against a row of grey filing cabinets, and a uniformed PC scowled out from a pair of bloodshot eyes, the skin beneath them darkening in purple arcs. Crusty flakes of dark scarlet clinging to both nostrils.

‘Mr Henderson.’ The Super folded her arms. ‘Would you like to explain why I shouldn’t charge you with a public order offence, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer?’

‘Because you know who I am, or DS Franklin wouldn’t be here.’ I tipped my head toward her — Franklin rolled her eyes and pulled a face. ‘I was in pursuit of a witness in a murder investigation, when your... let’s be nice and call them “halfwit minions” carried out an unprovoked assault and illegal detention.’

The PC with the black eyes soured his mouth. ‘Now wait a buggering minute! We were doing our—’

‘All right, Constable Marshall. I’m sure Mr Henderson meant “halfwit minions” in a nice way. Didn’t you, Mr Henderson?’

Franklin shot me a glare: play nice.

Yeah, she was probably right.

‘Of course I did. It was banter, that’s all. No offence, etc.’

‘Good. Now, I believe you have something to say to Constable Marshall?’

Another glare from Franklin.

‘I’m sorry about your nose. I thought you were that idiot American, back for another go.’

The Superintendent raised an eyebrow at the PC. ‘And Constable Marshall, I believe you have something to say to Mr Henderson?’

He looked as if he was trying to force a pineapple up his arsehole, the wrong way around, but eventually he managed to shove it in: ‘I’m sorry we mistook you for a sex offender, but given the circumstances...’

I puffed out a breath. Nodded. ‘She kinda screwed with the lot of us.’

A smile from the Superintendent. ‘Well, I’m glad we got that all sorted out.’ She turned, plucked a large, bulky, brown paper bag from the room’s tiny desk and tossed it in my direction. Followed it up with my walking stick. ‘You’re free to go.’

The bag was heavy — that would be my shoes, belt, jacket, and everything else they’d confiscated when they banged me up in here. ‘One thing, before we go.’

Her shoulders dipped. ‘What?’

‘I need someone to go through the CCTV from the Christmas Market, from noon till three. We’re after an IC-one male, mid-seventies.’ I pointed at Franklin. ‘She’s got a photo. Suspect is responsible for at least a dozen deaths: Gordon Smith.’

The Superintendent grimaced. ‘You’re not asking for much, are you? That’ll take ages.’

‘And a lookout request for Leah MacNeil wouldn’t hurt either.’

‘Think they’re going to find anything?’ Franklin took the rusty Ford Focus through the traffic-cone chicane, crawling past roadworks that stretched for miles and miles and miles... Little orange lights winking in the darkness.

‘Leah MacNeil, or Gordon Smith?’

‘Smith.’

We passed beneath the motorway matrix sign — its metallic gantry partially covered in scaffolding — ‘WARNING: HIGH WINDS ~ NO HIGH-SIDED VEHICLES’.

‘Nah. He’s got away with it for decades, that takes care and planning. He’s not stupid enough to stick around now he knows we’re after him. He’ll have taken one look at the news and done a runner. Changed his appearance. What he’s not doing is hanging about the Edinburgh Christmas Market, buying “artisanal cheeses” and horrible fudge.’

‘Hmph...’

The Forth Bridge loomed into view on the right, like three skeletal Apatosaurus wading their way across the water, brown-red silhouettes in the reflected glow of the city’s lights, caught against an angry, burnt-umber sky. And between us and it, the lonely stick figure of the Forth Road Bridge. Hanging there like a pale ghost. Empty, while we drudged our way through a slow-motion contraflow.

Franklin chewed on her lip, wrinkles bunching up between her neatly plucked brows in the beams of advancing headlights. ‘Maybe we should get onto Interpol? See if he’s gone abroad somewhere?’

‘Maybe. It’s worth a—’

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Text message.

Sabir4TehPool:

Franklin looked at me. ‘Something important?’

‘Not really.’

I thumbed out a reply.

SEND.

He’d like that. Be a bit of motivation for him.

The first of the bridge’s towers crawled past, its cables stretched out like the sail of a ship.

‘You know what worries me?’ I stuck my phone on the dusty dashboard. ‘Leah MacNeil just happens to be in Edinburgh when we are. Where we are. That not strike you as a massive coincidence?’

‘Not really. When I worked for E Division, mispers were always turning up there. You’ve run away from home, where are you going to go: Dundee? Aberdeen? Fraserburgh? Oldcastle? No, you head to the capital city, where the streets are paved with opportunities and tourists.’

My phone buzzed again.

Sabir4TehPool:

Ah, got to love the wit and wisdom of lazy IT people.

Might be laying it on a smidgeon too thick there, but what the hell.

SEND.

‘Besides, the Christmas Market’s bound to be a draw, isn’t it? All those flashing lights. Half the smackheads, stoners, and junkies in the city will be like moths round a porch light.’

‘True.’

And on the traffic crawled.

Just after six, time for the news.

I reached for the radio, clicked it on. ‘What did Mother say when you told her Leah MacNeil was alive?’

A woman’s voice crackled out of the speaker. ‘... four Federal buildings, claiming it was “America’s punishment for supporting the rights of gays and coloureds.” The White House issued a statement...’

‘Ah, about that.’

‘You did tell her, didn’t you?’

‘... retribution would be both swift and disproportionate. ~ Reality TV star and tabloid journalist Marian Shires has been found guilty of murdering Kelly Strickland in a drunken brawl outside notorious Glasgow nightclub...’

Franklin kept her eyes front, mouth closed.

‘Why didn’t you tell her?’

‘Well, I... didn’t see Leah, did I? Not personally.’

‘... sentencing later this month. ~ The hunt continues for the man thought to be responsible for the death of at least twenty people in Oldcastle today, after human remains were spotted as Storm Trevor made landfall to the east of the city...’

‘You think I’m making it up?’

‘Well, maybe not “making it up”, but I didn’t—’

‘I bought you a sausage, and a go on the carousel!’

‘... police are keen to trace the whereabouts of Gordon Smith, last seen in Clachmara four weeks ago. ~ BBC Scotland has announced a major new crime drama to be shot in the picturesque northeast town of Portsoy. Based on the novels of J.C. Williams, PC Munro and the Poisoner’s Cat will...’

‘I thought you’d like to tell her yourself, without me taking credit?’

Aye, right.

‘I was not making it up.’ Pulled out my phone and picked ‘DI MALCOLMSON’ from the list. Listened to it ringing. ‘Thought you and I had actually managed to—’

‘Ash?’

‘... Justice Secretary, Mark Stalker, continues to deny any wrongdoing after...’

I clicked the radio off. ‘Leah MacNeil’s alive. I saw her at the Christmas Market, but a pair of Edinburgh’s finest tackled me before I could get to her.’

‘Oh, that is good news! I was certain she’d be one of Gordon Smith’s victims. Her gran’s going to be delighted.’

‘You need to get a warrant sorted for whoever Leah’s mobile phone provider is: get her location tracked.’

We finally reached the other side of the bridge and Franklin wove us through another traffic-cone chicane. The space between vehicles opened up as people accelerated.

Still nothing from Mother.

‘Hello, you there?’

Maybe reception wasn’t good in Fife?

‘Ash, if Leah’s alive — and I’m very glad she is — then it’s exactly what officers thought in the first place: she’s not been murdered or abducted, she’s left home. And she’s an adult, so she’s perfectly within her rights to do that. We don’t have any grounds for a warrant.’

‘Her mum’s been killed by the serial killer living next door, don’t you think she deserves to know?’

A long pause was followed by what might have been a groan. ‘I do, but she has rights. No judge is going to give us a warrant for that. Let’s be happy she didn’t end up in Gordon Smith’s torture basement.’ A strangled straining noise came down the line. ‘Not that there’s much of it left; lost another dozen feet of headland today. And these idiot journalists are still sneaking through the safety fence, trying to get photos! It’s pitch-black out there, what are they going to see?’

She was probably right about the warrant, but that didn’t make it any less crap.

‘You’ll tell Helen MacNeil her granddaughter’s OK?’

More silence.

We overtook an articulated lorry — ‘MRS LOVETT’S FABULOUS FAMILY PIES ~ PACKED FULL OF DELICIOUSNESS!’ — following the signs for Perth and Dundee.

‘Hello? Are you still—’

‘Actually, Ash, given that you’ve got such a good rapport with her—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘I think it might be better coming from you.’

Because we’d got on so well this morning, outside Divisional Headquarters.

Looked as if someone up there hated me almost as much as I hated them...

17

Oh for...

Just when things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

Helen MacNeil was framed, dead centre, in the pool car’s headlights, standing in the middle of the road, right in front of the Mobile Incident Unit, hands wrapped around the throat of some idiot in a Barbour jacket, while a soundman tried to prise her off and a cameraman filmed it.

I undid my seatbelt. ‘Out, now!’

Franklin and I both scrambled from the car — the howling wind slamming against my chest, ripping the car door from my fingers. She ducked into the back seat for a moment and came out with an extendable baton, clacking it out to full length as we closed the gap.

The MIU’s wall boomed as Helen shoved her victim against it. His hands scrabbled at her forearms, eyes bulging, teeth bared in a red-faced rictus that went all the way up to his retreating hairline. Glasses all squint.

Franklin was faster than me. ‘THAT’S ENOUGH! LET HIM GO!’ Closing in on Helen, baton raised.

No way that was going to end well. Being filmed battering a woman who’d just found out her daughter had been murdered? Broadcast to the nation on the evening news?

Please don’t let this be going out live...

I limped after Franklin, fast as possible. ‘DON’T!’

A thin shaky warble came from the red-faced man. ‘Please... help... meeeee.’ Head rattling back and forward, glasses shaking loose as Helen throttled him.

Franklin planted her feet. ‘LET HIM GO, NOW!’ Readying herself, baton up, poised to slash down.

God’s sake, did no one do the Officer Safety Training courses any more?

I lurched over there, dropped my walking stick, made a claw of my right hand and dug it into the hard flesh a couple of inches in from Helen’s hipbone. Hobbled past, speeding up, dragging her off balance, twisting her away from the victim.

‘Aaaargh!’ She let go of his throat and slammed into the MIU, head bouncing off the grubby wall.

The man in the Barbour jacket collapsed to his knees, one hand clutching his neck as he coughed and wheezed and spluttered.

Helen aimed a kick at his head, but I grabbed a handful of her collar and pulled. The foot went wide and she tumbled to the potholed tarmac.

‘CUT IT OUT!’ Getting between the two of them: arms out, blocking the way.

She wiped a hand across her twisted mouth, glaring at the man. ‘You want to know how it feels? THAT’S how it feels!’

His back hunched as he dragged in breath after wheezing breath.

‘That’s how it feels to know your wee girls were killed by a man you thought was one of the family.’ Helen slumped back against the MIU. ‘It feels like that...’

The kitchen of Mother’s commandeered house was bare, except for its abandoned cabinets and one crappy plastic chair from the Mobile Incident Unit. An earwax-coloured kettle rumbled to a boil, filling the room with pale damp steam, thickening the condensation that covered the window.

Helen MacNeil sagged in the solitary chair, head down, chin against her chest. ‘Got a letter from the council this morning.’ She dug into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled envelope. Hurled it down on the table. ‘Gave me two hours to get out of my house, oh and by the way, we want sixteen grand to tear it down and ship away whatever’s left for “environmentally responsible disposal”. Which means chuck it in landfill.’ Shook her head. ‘No wonder Gordon up and left.’

Soon as his name was out of her mouth, her face soured. ‘Then that bunch of fannies come round, with their camera...’

Ah you had to love the media. All the compassion of a starving hyena.

‘“How does it feel?”’ She pulled her shoulders in, shrinking in her seat. Voice so quiet it was barely audible. ‘Why do they have to ask things like that?’

‘Because they’re wankers.’

The mugs weren’t exactly dishwasher clean, but they’d do. I made two cups, heavy on the sugar with one. Handed it over.

‘Drink this.’

She took a sip, grimaced, looked up at me, then away again. ‘Don’t take sugar.’

‘Tough. Drink it.’

Shockingly enough, Helen MacNeil actually did what she was told. Nursing the mug against her flat stomach. ‘“How does it feel to know your daughter and granddaughter were tortured to death by a man you trusted?” How the fuck do they think it feels?’

To be honest, the strangling thing was a pretty good analogy.

I smiled at her. ‘Well, I’ve got good news for you on that one: Gordon Smith didn’t kill Leah. She’s alive. I saw her today in Edinburgh.’

Helen stared at me. Mouth hanging open. ‘Leah...?’

‘Tried speaking to her, but a pair of local plod decided they’d get in the way. But she’s alive.’

‘Oh, thank God.’ Helen’s face slackened, a deep breath whoomping out of her. ‘She’s alive.’

‘Don’t know if she’ll get in touch, or not, but...’ A shrug. ‘Maybe.’

‘She’s alive...’ Helen’s shoulders trembled, she put a hand over her eyes. And sat there, weeping in almost total silence. Rocking in her cheap plastic seat, in an abandoned kitchen, at the end of the world.

A deep, dark rumble sounded, setting the bare lightbulb swinging on the end of its cobweb-tinselled cord.

I stood there and drank my tea.

Strange to think I could’ve happily strangled her this morning. Or caved her head in. Now? Hard not to feel sorry for Helen. Her granddaughter might have escaped Gordon Smith, but her daughter hadn’t. And you had to admit—

A barrage erupted at the front of the house — someone pounding on the front door. Followed by a clatter of feet on bare floorboards.

I stuck my head out of the kitchen and there was Franklin, with Mother right behind her — blocking most of the corridor.

Cold air whipped in through the open front door, a man trembling on the threshold, eyes wide, shock scrawled across his features. ‘You... You’ve got to... There’s been an accident! The cliff gave way...’

Grabbed my coat from the kitchen worktop, my walking stick from where I’d hooked it on a cupboard handle, and limped out after them.

It wasn’t raining, exactly, instead a thin drizzle slapped into us, driven by storm-force winds. Stealing all heat from my exposed hands and face.

Mother grabbed the man by the lapels. ‘Where?’

A trembling hand came up to point through the temporary fencing. Into the darkness.

‘Damn it.’ She let him go. ‘Torches! I need torches!’

Franklin sprinted for the pool car, plipping the locks and rummaging through the boot as DC Watt emerged from the house, hauling on a waxed jacket, a teeny LED torch clutched between his teeth.

She returned from the boot with a pair of big Maglites, each one a good foot long. Held one out to me as she hurried past.

I clicked it on and followed her.

The fence ran straight across the road, each one of the junctions chained and padlocked, until we got between Helen MacNeil’s house and her nearest surviving neighbour’s place. Someone had snipped the chain clean through, leaving it dangling against the metal upright.

‘Idiot...’ Franklin yanked it free. ‘OVER HERE!’ Then slipped through the unchained gap, following her torch beam through a drooping swathe of green-and-yellow grass. Slowing to a walk now.

‘You do realise this is a very stupid thing to be doing?’ I hobbled along beside her, running my light along the edge of the garden. A waist-high brick wall separated Helen’s house from Gordon Smith’s. Now that the council had taken the old temporary fencing away, that small wall was the only thing between us and the storm.

We stopped when we got to it, wind tearing at our clothes, pushing and shoving like a schoolroom bully.

‘WHAT DO YOU THINK?’ Having to raise her voice now, over the angry boom of waves crashing against the headland.

I slid my torch across Gordon Smith’s back garden, to the point where the autumn-bleached grass ended in a ragged black line. ‘I THINK WE SHOULD TURN ROUND, RIGHT NOW, AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE.’ Took a deep breath, then clambered over the wall.

‘YEAH, THAT’S WHAT I THINK TOO.’

‘ANYONE STUPID ENOUGH TO COME OUT IN THIS DESERVES ALL THEY GET.’ I inched my way closer to the edge, bending my knees, hunkering down, turning sideways-on to make less of a target for the wind.

There wasn’t much of Gordon Smith’s house left: eighteen, maybe nineteen feet? Which meant the kill room had already gone, taking any forensic evidence with it. The living room, with its avalanche of ancient furniture, had gone too. And nearly all of the roof — what was left, clinging to the joists still fixed to its gable end. But nothing would...

Hold on, what was that?

‘ASH?’

‘SHUT UP A MINUTE!’ Head on one side. ‘CAN YOU HEAR THAT?’

It was hard to make anything out, over the crashing waves and bellowing wind, but there was definitely something there.

I inched closer. Then closer still.

Franklin grabbed my hand and stepped behind me. Acting as an anchor. ‘JUST IN CASE!’

Another torch snaked across the ravaged grass — till its tiny white spotlight found us. Then Mother’s voice: ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU IDIOTS PLAYING AT? GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!’

OK, only a couple of yards till the garden came to a sudden and deadly stop.

Closer...

Closer...

‘I’M NOT KIDDING: YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!’

One yard. What was that, three feet?

Three feet to the roaring maw of the North Sea.

Oh God...

I dropped to my knees. ‘GRAB MY FOOT!’

Franklin let go of my hand and wrapped her fingers around my left ankle. ‘THIS IS STUPID!’

‘I KNOW!’ Edging closer to the edge.

Two feet.

One foot.

And then there was nothing between me and Norway but a cold violent death.

‘ANYTHING?’

‘HOLD ON!’ I poked my torch over the edge, running along the tattered cliff edge beneath me. Dark soil, crumbling, making little avalanches that were torn away by the wind. A couple of pipes, poking out into nothingness. Some wires...

Oh. Shit.

The harsh white circle of light slid up the body of a young man, hanging there, still as the dead, a high-pitched moan rattling out of his throat. A young man in a soil-smeared, ill-fitting suit, with a face full of acne and a monobrow. Mouth open and twitching, showing off all those uneven teeth. A big digital camera hanging around his neck. The idiot Mother had shouted at. The one she’d told not to go anywhere near the headland again.

Well, that had worked, hadn’t it?

He had both arms up above his head, hands clenched tight around a loop of flat fabric. Dark. Like, maybe the handle of a duffel bag, or a rucksack strap? It disappeared into the cliff. Something buried in Gordon Smith’s back garden.

I ran the torch downwards. Nothing beneath him to stand on, or break his fall, it was straight down to the angry sea. Grooves in the crumbling muddy cliff face where his feet had scrabbled at it.

Dark waves smashed themselves against the headland, thirty or forty feet below, sending up massive gouts of spray. Each blow like a sledgehammer, BOOOOOMing out, and hissing in. Like the ragged breath of some huge malevolent beast.

OK, so as long as whatever it was he’d caught hold of stayed where it was, and he didn’t let go, we could do this. ‘WE’RE GOING TO GET YOU OUT OF THERE!’

He stared back at me and the moan got louder.

Back, over my shoulder: ‘WE NEED A ROPE!’

Franklin tightened her grip on my ankle, turned. ‘WE NEED A ROPE!’

Mother’s voice cut through the screaming wind. ‘DON’T STAND THERE LIKE A LEMON, JOHN, GET SOME ROPE!’

I wriggled over a couple of feet to the right, until I was directly above the hanging man. ‘YOU’RE A BLOODY IDIOT, YOU KNOW THAT, DON’T YOU?’

Tears sparked in the torchlight. His mouth moved, but whatever he’d said it wasn’t loud enough to make out over the storm.

‘WHAT?’

‘I DON’T... I DON’T WANT... TO DIE! PLEASE DON’T LET ME DIE!’

What the bloody hell did he think I was trying to do, here?

‘IT’S OK, WE...’

Another rumble, and off to the left a piece of cliff tumbled into the crashing waves. Like an enormous hand had scooped a chunk of it away, leaving an overhang behind. Moments later the rumbling got louder as the overhang crumbled, tearing a slab of Gordon Smith’s back garden with it.

The young man screamed.

And the falling earth filled the air with that mouldy-brown-bread scent of broken soil.

I twisted my head around to Franklin. ‘WHERE’S THAT BLOODY ROPE?’

‘I DON’T KNOW!’ Over her shoulder again. ‘MOTHER! WE NEED THAT ROPE, NOW!’

‘GET OUT OF THERE!’

I reached down with my right hand. Fingers straining. About a foot and a half too short. ‘CAN YOU PULL YOURSELF UP?’

He stared at me, then bit his bottom lip, tears streaking the mud on his face. Shoulders bunching as he hauled on the strap, feet scrambling at the dirt. Still not close enough to grab. ‘I CAN’T!’ Then sagged back again, sobbing.

My torch beam ripped across the grass till Franklin was caught in the light. ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE: WHAT’S KEEPING THEM?’

A large shape loomed out of the darkness behind her: Mother. She crouched down by Franklin’s feet and tossed something forwards.

It landed with a clanking slither, level with my chest. A length of chain — the one that was meant to be holding those two fencing panels together, with the padlock still firmly shut on the last two links.

Better than nothing.

The padlock fitted into my palm, chain hanging down between my fingers as I clenched it in my fist, then flipped the end over the cliff edge. ‘GRAB HOLD!’

It dangled about three inches above his hands.

He stared back at me, arms trembling. ‘I CAN’T!’

A wave smashed into the cliff beneath him, tearing loose a chunk of dirt and rocks.

‘GRAB THE BLOODY THING, YOU MORON!’

His left hand twitched, then let go of the strap, fingers stretching up for the chain’s end.

‘COME ON, YOU CAN DO IT!’

Feet digging into the mud, trembling with the effort, straining, reaching...

Another wave battered in, sending up a wall of spray, hiding his flailing legs for a moment.

Then the ground beneath my chest slumped, dropping a good six inches. ‘Shit!’

‘ASH!’ Franklin’s hands tightened around my ankle as a semicircle the size of a couch cracked all around me.

His eyes went even wider. Screaming. The thing he was holding onto slid towards him, pulling away from the crumbling cliff face, slipping free.

It was a big holdall, the red fabric stained almost black by its time in the earth.

I dropped the chain and lunged, fingers curling around the buckle where the strap fixed to the bag. Muscles straining across my shoulders. Joints yanked taut by the sudden weight. Knuckles full of burning rubble. Teeth gritted. But holding on...

‘ASH, GET OUT OF THERE!’

‘PULL ME BACK! PULL ME BACK, NOW!’ Staring down at him. ‘DON’T YOU BLOODY DARE LET GO! WE’RE GOING TO—’

The ground to either side gave way, clattering down, battering into his face and chest, muffling his screams as the weight on the other end of the strap disappeared. Arms pinwheeling as he fell.

‘NO!’

I careened forwards — nothing supporting my chest any more, the torch tumbling end-over-end until the next wave smashed into the cliff and swallowed it.

‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’

18

A second set of hands wrapped around my other ankle, stopping me from falling any further forward, then a third pair snatched at my trouser leg. All of them hauling me backwards, onto semi-solid ground again.

Wet grass against my grateful cheeks and forehead.

Oh Christ, that had been close.

The hands let go and I rolled over. Let the cool drizzle slam down on me. Breath rattling in my chest. Alive.

Then the hands returned, pulling me to my feet.

DC Watt thrust my walking stick into my hand. ‘NOW CAN WE GET OUT OF HERE?’

‘GOD, YES!’ I hobbled after him, Franklin, and Mother, wind jostling at my back. Clambered over the low wall, and into Helen MacNeil’s garden again.

Soon as we’d put twenty feet between ourselves and the wall, Mother swung her arm back and battered me one across the chest. ‘WHAT THE BUGGERING HELL WERE YOU THINKING? YOU COULD’VE DIED! YOU NEARLY GOT US ALL KILLED!’ She hit me again. ‘YOU IDIOT!’

‘I COULDN’T SAVE HIM! I TRIED, BUT I COULDN’T...’

‘AND WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?’ Jabbing a finger at the filthy red holdall, still clutched in my right hand.

It was heavier than it looked; there was definitely something inside. And given where the thing had been buried, didn’t exactly take a genius to guess what that was...

‘Are you OK?’ Franklin leaned back against the stainless-steel work surface next to me, arms wrapped around herself, keeping her voice low. ‘Because you look like death.’ The words came out in a small plume of white fog.

The throat-catching smell of bleach and punctured bowels filled the ancient mortuary, like thick brown soup. At one point, the wall tiles had probably been white, but they’d turned a grubby ivory, the colour of a smoker’s teeth. Black tiles on the floor — chipped and cracked, their grout stained grey even after generations-worth of disinfectant. A wall of refrigerated drawers, the names of their occupants printed in dry-erase marker on white plastic rectangles. Three cutting tables with drainage channels, their metal surfaces scarred and scratched. The middle one bearing an ugly bundle wrapped in black-plastic bin bags secured with duct tape.

No one else in here but us.

No one living, anyway.

I cleared my throat. ‘Thank you. You know, for not letting me fall.’

‘Meh...’ She shrugged. ‘You bought me a sausage and a go on the carousel, remember?’ Then shivered. ‘Absolutely soaked to the bone, here. These idiots going to be much longer?’

According to the mortuary clock, it was nine o’clock already.

So much for a conciliatory crime-fighting-anniversary dinner with Alice.

‘Teabag doesn’t like working overtime. Mother will have to drag him down here like a sulky child.’

Above us, the sounds of Castle Hill Infirmary oozed through the ceiling. The hum and buzz of heating and electricity, the bang and clank of trolleys and floor polishers. Life.

Down here, the only sounds were us and the faint whirring hiss coming from that bank of refrigerated drawers.

Franklin cleared her throat. ‘You didn’t answer the question. Are you OK? I mean, I feel bad enough and I didn’t even see him, never mind watch him fall.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I only heard the screaming, but to actually be there, holding the other end of—’

‘All right! All right, I get it.’ Maybe sounding a bit more defensive there than I’d hoped, going by Franklin’s raised eyebrows. ‘Look, he was an arsehole, OK? What kind of moron ignores a direct telling, all the warning notices, cuts through the chain, and sods about on the crumbling headland in the middle of a storm? Yes, he died — tragedy, thoughts and prayers etc. — but he nearly got you, me, Mother, and Watt killed too. And while Watt’s death wouldn’t exactly be a great loss to humanity, the rest of us deserve better.’

She pulled her head back, making a tiny double chin. ‘You really have it in for John, don’t you? What did he do?’

‘He’s a dick.’

A shrug. ‘True. But if you need to talk to someone about what happened, don’t be a macho idiot about it. It doesn’t impress anyone.’ Franklin had another shiver. ‘Why do mortuaries have to be so cold?’

‘You can knock off, if you like? Doesn’t need both of us here for chain of evidence.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not a police officer any more, remember?’

‘True.’ I straightened up. ‘In that case, you stay here, and I’ll see if I can break into Teabag’s office and get a brew on.’

Franklin munched her way through a third Jammie Dodger, getting crumbs down the front of her overcoat. ‘So I punched him.’

‘Good. Sounds like the prick deserved it.’ The tea was almost gone, only a couple of biscuits left in the packet.

‘Only it turns out breaking a superintendent’s nose isn’t a good career move.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not that bad, being in the Misfit Mob. OK, so we don’t get the best of cases, and I do miss Edinburgh...’ She chewed on the inside of her cheek. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Oldcastle’s all right—’

‘Oldcastle’s a shitehole.’ I drained the last of my tea. Stood there, head turned... ‘Stick those biscuits in your pocket!’

‘What?’ Looking at me as if I’d proposed getting naked and romping on one of the dissecting tables.

I snatched up the Jammie Dodgers and stuffed the packet in her overcoat pocket. Took the mug from her hand and limped across the cutting room.

‘Hey, I was drinking that!’

Teabag’s office was a gloryhole of paperwork and things in specimen jars. Barely enough room for the roll-top desk and green-leather swivel chair squeezed in amongst the shelves and filing cabinets. Both mugs went back in his in-tray. And I was out again, just in time to shut the door behind me, before the double ones at the far end of the mortuary banged open and in marched Mother and Teabag.

It looked as if he was on his way to some sort of Jeremy Clarkson convention, in blue jeans, an untucked white shirt, and a tweed jacket. His floppy fringe was a touch greyer than it used to be, the jaw not quite as square — a line of fat softening it and deepening the dimple in his chin. Thin wire-rimmed glasses glinting in the mortuary’s strip lights as he puffed out a long breath. ‘Before we begin, I want everyone to understand that this is not a post mortem. This is an initial, and very brief, impression of the forensic evidence. Assuming there is any.’

He stopped in the middle of the room and frowned down at the bin-bag package. ‘I assume this is it?’

Mother pulled on a pained smile, then nodded. ‘Yes, Professor Twining.’

‘Very well. ALFRED!’

A pause.

‘AAAAAAAAAALFRRRRRRRRRRRRED!’ Teabag marched across the room to his office, took his keys out, then made puzzled expressions when the door swung open without him unlocking it. ‘That’s odd, could’ve sworn... Never mind.’ Looked back over his shoulder. ‘Wheels up, ten minutes. Assuming Alfred actually shows.’ Then disappeared inside.

Mother slouched over to join us at the work surface. ‘That man is — and I hope you’ll excuse my language, Rosalind — a complete and utter turdjacket.’ She hoicked up the sleeves of her Police Scotland fleece, exposing those tattooed forearms. Pulled a face. ‘Apparently, our beloved Chief Superintendent isn’t too impressed that we let a journalist die on our watch.’

What?

I stared at her.

‘I know, I know: I was there, remember? But if you see him coming, take my advice and run. Turns out the media are less interested in your heroics trying to save Nick James, than they are in our not adequately ensuring that he couldn’t cut through a padlocked chain on a clearly marked safety fence, in the pitch-sodding-dark, and sneak through to get himself killed.’ She let her head fall back and grimaced at the greying ceiling tiles. ‘Some days, I hate my job.’

Franklin reached into a pocket and came out with a Jammie Dodger. ‘Fancy a biscuit? We definitely didn’t steal them from Professor Twining’s office.’

That got her a smile.

The biscuit disappeared in two bites, to be followed by a crumb-spilling sigh. ‘Don’t suppose your IT guru has come up with anything, has he, Ash?’

‘Says he’s got locations for most of the photographs, but no IDs yet.’

The smile faded away. ‘The universe hates me, doesn’t it?’

A voice, from over by the main doors: ‘Evenin’ all.’ A middle-aged man scuffed into the mortuary, headphones around his neck, hair scraped back in a thinning ponytail that exposed about sixty percent of his shiny head, a greying beard trimmed to within an inch of its death. All done up in pale-blue hospital scrubs, backpack slung over one shoulder. ‘DI Henderson! As I live and breathe.’

‘Alf.’

He nodded his head towards the closed office door. ‘The Prof here yet, or do I have time to nip out for a fag?’

And right on cue: Teabag emerged, having changed into a rustling white Tyvek oversuit, white wellies, and a thick brown rubber apron. ‘Alfred, get scrubbed up: we’re doing a quick surface examination, then I’ve got a dinner party to get back to.’

‘Right you are, Prof.’

‘The rest of you better put on protective gear. Let’s not have a repeat of the Robert Bradbury fiasco.’

We all struggled into disposable SOC suits, finishing off with safety goggles, face masks, blue plastic booties, and purple nitrile gloves. Then joined Alf and Teabag at the central table. All gathered around that bin-bag package like ghosts at the feast.

Alf switched on a big digital camera and took a couple of test shots. ‘All working.’

‘Then I’ll begin.’ Teabag’s scalpel sizzled through the black plastic, opening it up like dark flower petals, exposing the red holdall within as Alf snapped away. ‘Has this been tested for fingerprints, fibres, or DNA?’

Mother shook her head. ‘You always moan when you don’t get first go with remains.’

‘I do not moan. I apply constructive criticism when people don’t prioritise the correct chain of forensic hierarchies.’ He took hold of the zip and pulled. Nothing. Tugged. Still nothing. So he sliced along the stitching next to it instead. Pulled the sides apart.

A dark, leathery smell joined the mortuary’s foul bouquet, tainted with a compost earthiness.

Whatever was in there, it’d been dead a long, long time.

‘Hmm...’ Teabag peered into the slit. ‘Better move this to the end of the table. We’re going to need some room.’

Soon as it was relocated, he reached in and came out with a dirty length of what looked like grey-brown tubing, about an inch and a half wide, maybe fourteen inches long, both ends ragged and chipped. He laid it down on the stainless-steel surface with an audible click, then went back in for another piece of piping with ragged ends — this one thinner and curved — and laid it out near the end of the table, on the opposite side to the first bit.

The next two things were definitely ribs. They got clicked down in the proper anatomical place. Then a pelvis. A shoulder blade. Then what looked like the head of a femur.

‘You can see here, that the remains have been dismembered.’ Turning the smooth head of bone over to expose the ragged end. ‘Probably an axe, going by the fractures and splintering. A saw would leave much cleaner cuts in the bone.’

A radius and ulna were next, both parts of the arm bone cut short and splintered.

‘Your victim was most likely dead at the time, because, let’s face it, dismembering someone with an axe would be fairly difficult if they were still alive. And even if you tried, they wouldn’t be for long.’ Teabag dipped into the bag again and again, humming away to himself as he reassembled a human skeleton on the cutting table in front of us. ‘I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I rather enjoy this part. I completely get why people like a good jigsaw puzzle.’

Finally he stepped back, hands on his hips. ‘Well, I can safely say your victim is dead.’

Alf was the only one who laughed at that. But it didn’t sound convincing.

‘As you can see, we’re missing a number of phalanges, mostly distal and middle,’ pointing a purple finger at the body’s hands and feet. ‘Given the body was most likely dismembered to make it fit in the holdall, you wouldn’t need to take the fingers off, would you? So, and this is nothing more than an educated guess, but I think they could’ve been removed before death. Which suggests to me that your victim was murdered.’

If Teabag thought he was getting a round of applause for that, he was in for a disappointment. Not when we had the ‘after’ set of Polaroids.

‘These additional kerf marks on both sets of forearms, thighs, and shins — you see how they’re nowhere near the dismemberment points? And the ones on the skull?’ Pointing at a trio of dark lines carved into the bone above the right eye socket. ‘That makes me suspect they might be ante-mortem too. And then there’s the broken-slash-missing teeth...’

He pinged off his gloves, into an open bin marked ‘MEDICAL WASTE ONLY’. Removed his face mask. ‘Don’t quote me on this, but I think there’s a good chance your victim was tortured quite extensively before they died. Male, five-nine, I can’t speculate on ethnicity before we’ve done DNA testing. And for that, and everything else, you’ll have to wait till tomorrow.’ He took off his thick rubber apron and draped it over one of the empty cutting tables. ‘We start at nine o’clock sharp — you should arrange for a forensic anthropologist to be in attendance. In the meantime, thank you for not asking any stupid questions, and I’m going back to my boeuf bourguignon and friends.’

With that, Teabag marched off into his office, thunking the door shut behind him.

Mother pulled a face. ‘I don’t know about anyone else, but I am now officially gagging for a glass of wine. Rosalind, Ash?’

I pushed away from the dissecting table and its collection of bones. ‘Can’t: pills. Besides, I’ve got a prior appointment...’

I unlocked the front door and hobbled into the flat. Eyes full of grit. My back aching like it’d been holding the world up for two years too long. All that weight pressing down on my shoulders — still aching from trying to haul Nick James up from the abyss...

Come on, Ash, dead was dead. At least you tried.

And failed.

The pair of heavy carrier bags swung in my other hand as I limped down the hall, letting loose the spicy-cumin scent of curry.

‘Hello? You still up?’

No reply.

Was only quarter to ten. Maybe she’d gone out?

‘Alice?’

She was in the living room, slumped at the dining table, with a pile of paperwork, her laptop, and two half-bottles of something the wee off-licence on Shand Street passed off as ‘SINGLE MALT SCOTCH WHISKEY’. One of them was empty, the other heading that way.

I picked it up and screwed the top back on. ‘You have to stop drinking this gut-rot. They can’t even spell “whisky” properly — stuff’s probably fifty-fifty antifreeze and horse piss.’

She raised her head from the table. A big oval red patch where the skin had been pressing into the glass surface. A string of drool still connecting her to it. She blinked puffy bloodshot eyes. Wiped the drool away with the back of her hand. ‘Whhtmsit?’

‘Have you eaten anything, or just drunk yourself into a stupor?’ Thunking the carryout down on the table. ‘Punjabi Castle. Got you a chicken dhansak, coconut rice, saag paneer, onion bhajee, and a heap of poppadoms.’ Voice getting harder and sharper. ‘You want to eat it first, or should I flush the whole lot down the toilet now and save you the effort of vomiting it up?’

‘I... Drnn’t shhhowwtme.’

‘I’m not shouting at you. You were the one who said we should do something to mark nine years, remember? This morning? Back when you were sober.’

Alice placed the palms of her hands against the glass top, arms stiff — keeping her upright. Blinking and shaking her head, as if she was trying to get it to work again. ‘Had to... profile.’

‘YOU CAN’T KEEP DOING THIS!’ Picking up the lighter of the two bags and hurling it down in front of her. The muffled crash of a dozen poppadoms shattering. ‘You’re drinking yourself — to — death.’

Tears sparkled at the corners of her eyes, nose going dark pink. ‘Henry always said—’

‘Henry was an idiot! The only reason he didn’t die of liver failure is he killed himself first. Is that what you want?’

‘Ash, why are you being like—’

‘I NEARLY DIED TONIGHT!’

A muffled BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, sounded through the floor beneath us as the tosser downstairs got in on the act.

I raised my left foot and battered it down three times, good and hard. ‘MIND YOUR OWN BLOODY BUSINESS, OR I’LL COME DOWN THERE AND MIND IT FOR YOU!’ Breathing hard. Heat rushing through my cheeks and brain. Pulsing at the back of my eyes. ‘I nearly died.’ Turning away. ‘I won’t always be here to take care of you.’

Her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows wiped away its tears and wobbled to its feet. Picked its way around the table, leaning on the glass for support. Then she was behind me. Wrapping her arms around me, her face buried between my shoulders. Voice catching, popping with snot and pain. ‘He... he took... another one, Ash. Gòrach... abducted... another little boy. Because... because I... because I can’t catch him!’

And I let a journalist die.

Yeah, today had turned out to be some day.

I turned around and hugged her back.

Because, sometimes, what else could you do?