The Coffinmaker’s Garden

44

Shifty took a right, onto a street with loads of tiny roads leading off both sides of it — each one only big enough for a dozen tiny houses and their tiny gardens. He pulled up about two thirds of the way along. ‘Number fifty-four.’

It wasn’t much to look at: a modest semi, the mirror image of the house it was attached to. No garage, just an empty off-road parking bay. Two windows downstairs, three up. Wooden cladding on the upper storey, as if someone had tried to make this part of the street look less depressing. And failed.

We climbed out.

He gave my shoulder another thump. ‘She’ll be OK.’

I pulled out Alice’s phone and checked her calendar again: ‘K DEWAR — TMM’S LAW’ which had to mean ‘Toby Macmillan’s Mother’s lawyer.’ The mother who broke her wee boy’s arm, invited an abusive stepdad into his life, and was currently appealing against her conviction for neglect.

And Ann Tweedale thought we didn’t know what it was like down in the trenches, as if we didn’t wade through them every single day.

Shifty sniffed as we made our way up to the front door of number fifty-four. ‘Any chance we can grab a bite to eat after this one? Haven’t had anything since lunchtime.’

Right on cue, my stomach growled like an angry bear. Had I eaten since breakfast? Don’t think so. And that was a long time ago. ‘Who’s still serving, after midnight?’

He leaned on the bell. ‘That chippy on Shand Street will be open. Or the Kebab shops down Holland Street.’ No sign of life from inside, so Shifty had another go on the bell. ‘Shawarma-Llama-Ding-Dong’s meant to be good and they don’t shut till the clubs turf out at three.’ The bell rang again. ‘Or we could get something from the big Winslow’s and take it back to—’

The door opened and a blurry figure stood there, blinking out at us. Oily coils of whisky oozed out with him, leaving one of his knees locked and the other one wobbly. Wrapped in a towelling dressing gown, brawny arms poking out of the short sleeves. ‘What?’ Voice all slurred. ‘I was... was in the bath...’

Broad shoulders. Thinning hair, swept back from a tanned scalp. Strong jaw and muscular neck. But it was the eyes that gave it away: bright sapphire, with a dark border.

He was the solicitor I’d met at HMP Oldcastle: the one having a weep, round the side, by the bins; the one who said we could probably buy Steven Kirk off with eight to ten grand, so he wouldn’t press charges.

Shifty gave him a goooood long look up and down. A half smile. ‘Kenny.’

Kenneth Dewar’s bottom lip wobbled for a moment, then tears spilled out of those wolf’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

I banged the tip of my cane on the door. ‘Much though I hate to break the sexual tension, you had an appointment with Dr Alice McDonald at noon.’

He nodded. Palmed the tears from his eyes. ‘I heard on the news. I’m so, so sorry.’

Shifty rubbed his hands together. ‘Look, can we come in? It’s Baltic out here.’

Another nod, then he turned and led the way into a living room festooned with old magazines and empty takeaway containers. Many of which harboured things well on the evolutionary route to sentience. The whole place smelled like a bin bag that’d been left in the sun.

So much for ‘completely shaggable’ — Kenneth Dewar was a slob.

He scooped armfuls of yellowed newspapers off a cheap couch and waved us to sit. Wiped away the tears again. ‘How can I help?’ Sounding slightly more sober now.

When he dumped his hoarded newspapers behind the couch there was a Father Jack clatter of empty bottles.

A quick peek over the back revealed that most of them were supermarket own-brand whisky. So not just a slob, a functioning-alcoholic slob.

Given the state of the place, it was probably more hygienic to stay standing. ‘We need to know what you and Alice talked about.’

‘Yes. Of course.’ Dewar gave a deep, shuddering breath, looking at the floor beneath his wet feet — drips of soapy water soaking into newsprint, turning it a darker shade of grey. ‘She was lovely. She really was. Wanted to know all about Oscar and Lewis and Toby and Andrew. And... she was so easy to talk to, you know?’ Dewar folded his thick arms around himself, muscles rippling beneath the hairy skin. ‘I’ve never met anyone so sympathetic to other people’s problems.’

‘And what problems were those, Mr Dewar?’

His shoulders came up. ‘Sheriff, Gerrard, and Butler do mostly corporate work, but the partners think it’s important to have a presence in the courts as well. And I’m always the one who ends up lumbered with the scumbag defendants — the wife beaters and the sex offenders.’

Sounded familiar. ‘Because there are enough fascist states in the world without us being one of them?’

Another nod. ‘You think it’s easy? Walking into those interview rooms, knowing your client is a rancid piece of shit who ruins everything, every life, they touch? Dr McDonald understood.’ Dewar bit his bottom lip, those wolf’s eyes spilling tears down his cheeks. ‘She gave me her card, for... She said I might benefit from therapy. And now...’

That was Alice, always trying to help the broken and the lonely.

Shifty pulled a face, raising his eyebrows as Dewar stood there and sobbed.

Well what the hell was I supposed to do about it?

I cleared my throat. ‘Do you need us to call someone?’

Dewar scrubbed at his face again. ‘Sorry. You don’t need to see this.’

‘It’s OK.’

Another shuddering breath, then what was probably meant to be a smile. ‘Sorry. I’d better get dressed. Standing here like an idiot. Please,’ pointing at the tip he lived in, ‘make yourselves at home. I’ll only be a minute.’

Then he turned and slumped from the room, one hand over his face, shoulders trembling. Then the heavy damp slap-slap-slap of his feet, climbing the stairs.

‘Jesus.’ Shifty puffed out his cheeks. ‘What a mess.’

Difficult to tell if he was talking about the house or the man.

‘Think you dodged a bullet, there.’

‘Yeah, probably.’

Upstairs, a door clunked shut.

I leaned back against the wall — it was the only clean surface in the room. ‘So Alice comes here, she asks Dewar about all the victims, offers him therapy, then heads off to her next appointment: Chris McHale.’

Shifty checked his watch. ‘Maybe we should’ve tried Ditchburn Road, instead?’

Outside, the first spots of rain clicked against the living room window.

A big tabby cat slunk its way through the front garden, across the empty parking bay, then up the waist-height brick wall and down into next door’s.

Empty parking bay.

Surely someone working for a hotshot corporate law firm would have a car? So where was it? And back at the prison, he’d said he was working on an appeal by a prisoner who’d beaten up the mother of his child, and now wanted access to the kid. Bet that kid was Andrew Brennan’s baby brother.

Alice said there was a paedophile ring operating in Kingsmeath, but what if it wasn’t a ring? What if it was one man?

‘Shifty?’

He puffed his cheeks out at me. ‘I think we should go eat before we interview anyone else.’

‘Oscar Harris’s uncle, the DJ with the neckbeard — you said he gave you an alibi then got his lawyer involved. Who was the lawyer?’

Shifty’s finger came up to point to the ceiling above our heads. ‘Like he said, he has to represent all the dodgy scumbags, so...’ Shifty’s eyes widened.

I followed his gaze to the light fitting. Water oozed out around where the thing fixed to the plasterboard, trickled down the plastic cable and dripped off the lightbulb. Pattering down on the already wet newspapers where Dewar had been standing.

‘Move!’

Out the living room door, lumbering up the stairs, Shifty hard on my heels.

The landing handrail was festooned with clothes, the carpet sticky as I lurched past an open bedroom door — another tip — to the closed bathroom. The handle rattled as I gripped and twisted, but didn’t open.

Locked.

‘Shifty!’

He barged past and slammed his shoulder into the door. It boomed and rattled. So he did it again, only this time the thing smashed inwards, the lock ripping from the doorframe, bottom hinges giving way so the door sagged like a twisted sail.

Water covered the bathroom floor, spilling out over the sides of an overfilled bath.

And there was Kenneth Dewar, lying naked in it, both arms stretched out in front of him, slashed from elbow to wrist the flesh inside dark — pulsing deep-red swirls out into the tub. A serene smile on his face. ‘I’m sorry...’ as his head fell back to thunk against the mould-blackened tiles.

‘Bastard!’ I grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved his head under the water.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Shifty tugged at my arms. ‘Get off him!’

I let go with my bad hand and threw an elbow backwards. It thumped into something solid, but Shifty didn’t let go.

‘It was him! He hit Alice with his car — that’s why it’s not parked outside! Hiding the evidence. He’s Gòrach.’

‘If he’s Gòrach, he’s the only one who knows where Toby Macmillan is, you idiot!’

Oh for...

Shifty was right.

I hauled Dewar out of the bath and onto the bathroom floor, bringing a tidal wave of pink-tinged water with him. ‘We need tourniquets!’

‘On it.’ Shifty lurched out to the landing and returned seconds later with a T-shirt from the railing and a pair of jeans. He twisted the T-shirt into a thick cord and tied it around Dewar’s upper arm, as close to the elbow as possible, tendons straining in his neck as he pulled it tight enough to make the stitches creak. ‘Come on, come on, come on. Stop bleeding, you wanker...’

It was the jeans next: twisting one leg then tying it around Dewar’s other arm.

Sat back on his haunches. ‘Not great, but it’ll have to do.’

I curled a hand into a fist. ‘Only needs to last till he tells us where Toby Macmillan is. Then he dies.’

Shifty shook his head. ‘Are you off your head? If he dies now, he dies pissed on whisky — anaesthetised, feeling no pain, and by his own hand. Thought you wanted to make him suffer?’

My mouth opened, then closed again.

Had to admit it: Shifty had a point.

He took hold of Dewar’s ankles and dragged him out onto the landing, making for the stairs. ‘This bastard’s going to hospital, and when he gets better, he’s going to prison, where we’ll make sure every single day is like the Marquis de Sade’s worst nightmare.’ Shifty paused, frowning down at the pale naked body — the lolling head, open mouth, and closed eyes. ‘Well, as long as he doesn’t die on the way to A-and-E.’

‘We need to question him before we call an ambulance.’ Not that he looked in any fit state to be interviewed. Better get his attention first — wake him up a bit. I limped forward onto my bullet-holed right foot, took the weight, then smashed my left heel down on the bastard’s balls.

He sat upright, howling, elbows coming in towards his groin — the arms and hands dangling from them already going a blueish grey.

I squatted down beside him. Slapped him hard enough to shut him up.

He blinked back at me, mouth a trembling wet line. ‘I’m sorry...’

‘It was you, wasn’t it? You killed Andrew Brennan and Oscar Harris and Lewis Talbot and Toby Macmillan. It wasn’t a paedophile ring, it was you. You had access to every one of those little boys, because you represented their abusers, didn’t you?’

‘I...’

‘But Alice was on to you, wasn’t she? So you tried to kill her.’ I grabbed a handful of that thinning hair and yanked his head back, glared down into his bloodshot eyes. ‘Two questions. One: where’s Toby Macmillan? And two: WHERE’S MY FUCKING DOG?’

The paramedic hissed out a breath, shook her head, then tutted. Clunked the ambulance’s back door shut. ‘He’s made a right mess of himself, hasn’t he?’ A nod set bright ginger curls bobbing. ‘Still, he was lucky you were here! Be dead otherwise.’

We stood back as the ambulance pulled away, lights flickering blue-and-white, siren rising in harsh electronic pulses that faded into the distance.

Two patrol cars sat outside the house, parked half on the kerb.

Our backup.

One pair of PCs, in the full high-viz kit, were out setting up a cordon of ‘POLICE’ tape big enough to take in Kenneth Dewar’s semi and the house next door too. Struggling as the wind tried to snatch the tape from their hands, setting it burrrring and whirring.

The second pair of uniforms were on the other side of the road, getting stuck into the door-to-doors, dragging people out of bed at quarter to one in the morning.

Wouldn’t be long before some concerned householder got in touch with the media and the street would be swarming with outside broadcast vans and cameras and microphones and reporters. Doing bits to camera. Asking the neighbours what Kenneth Dewar was like, and had they any idea he was a child-murdering bastard? Oh no, he was always so quiet and polite, kept himself to himself. Same thing everyone said when they lived next to a monster, because if they admitted knowing he was a wrong-un all along, that made them guilty of keeping quiet about it and letting four little boys die.

Shifty stepped back into the doorway, out of the wind and rain. ‘Absolutely starving.’

‘Not much we can do about that now.’

His big round shoulders drooped. ‘Probably not.’

A boxy Range Rover growled its way along Corriemuir Place, parking outside the cordon. Wouldn’t have thought journalists would’ve got here so fast... But it wasn’t a journalist who climbed out of the big ugly car, it was Detective Superintendent Jacobson, wearing his trademark brown leather jacket and pelt-like hair. Holding a hand above his eyes, like the bill on a baseball cap, to keep the rain off his glasses.

He flashed his ID at one of the uniforms and ducked under the cordon. Marched over to us, trying to look stern and serious, while the corners of his mouth twitched. ‘DI Morrow, Ash, you got him?’

Shifty pointed at me. ‘Figured it out.’

All pretence at hiding the smile vanished and Jacobson play-punched me on the arm. ‘Knew there was a reason I keep you on the books! You look like crap, by the way.’ Beaming as he stared up at Dewar’s house. ‘What about Toby—’

‘He buried Toby Macmillan in Camburn Woods, round the back of those abandoned World War Two barracks.’ I tucked my throbbing left hand into my pocket before Jacobson could see it and start asking awkward questions. ‘Doesn’t know exactly which one, but won’t be hard to find with a dog unit.’

‘Oh...’ Jacobson’s smile disappeared, a pained expression blossoming like a gunshot wound. ‘Poor wee sod. Thought we might actually manage to save this one.’ A nod, trying to sound upbeat again: ‘Still, at least we got the guy, right? He won’t be hurting anyone else.’

Shifty jerked his chin up, setting his jowls wobbling. ‘He’s the one who tried to kill Alice.’

‘Is he now.’ Jacobson’s face pinched. ‘Well, I think he’s going to find his time inside very uncomfortable indeed. If I’ve got anything to say about it, anyway.’

Sounded as if torturing Kenneth Dewar was going to be a team sport and, while I wasn’t normally a team player, that sounded like something I could definitely get behind.

Jacobson nodded. ‘Speaking of Alice, any more news?’

Shifty shook his head. ‘No change. They have to wait till she wakes up.’

‘Damn it. Well, if there’s anything I can do, you...’ He raised an eyebrow as a dark Fiat Panda rattled its way up the street towards us. ‘Ash, you might want to brace yourself.’

The Panda screeched to a halt outside the cordon and one of the PCs hurried over, holding his arms out to block the way.

Mother scrambled from the car, leaving the engine running as she marched for the ‘POLICE’ tape. She didn’t bother flashing her ID, instead Mother stuck two hands against the PC’s high-viz chest and shoved him into next door’s garden. Flat on his back in the rose bushes as she ducked under the barrier, stormed right up to me, eyes hard and round, mouth a small tight circle with gritted teeth in the middle. Her right hand flashed up, the slap hard enough to snap my head to the left, leaving the skin hot and stinging as she grabbed me by the lapels. ‘WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU WERE PLAYING AT?’ Then let go and wrapped me in a serious bearhug, setting the ribs squealing all down one side where Francis punched me last night. ‘We were worried sick!’

‘It wasn’t—’

‘You’ve got some explaining to do, young man!’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Sending all those, “life can’t go on” texts — you said you were going to kill yourself! What were we supposed to think when your pool car turned up in the Cromarty Firth?’

Sod.

So much for sneaking back to Oldcastle and keeping everything secret.

45

Well, Mother didn’t need the whole truth, did she? Just the bits that wouldn’t get me arrested.

‘Gordon Smith attacked me at the farm, after I called you.’ Unzipping my new leather jacket to show off the bloodstained shirt, and neck covered in bruises. Then pulling my bandaged hand from my pocket. ‘He set fire to the place. I barely got out alive. Smith must’ve taken my phone and my pool car.’

She pulled her chin in, doubling, then tripling it. ‘But how did you get back to Oldcastle?’

Good question.

Come on then, answer it.

‘I’m... not entirely sure, I’ve been kind of disorientated. Probably in shock from being strangled and all the blood loss.’ Holding up my bandages again. ‘He cut my finger off.’

That should hold her.

And not a single mention of Helen or Leah MacNeil.

Mother’s face softened and she gave me another hug — not so rib-crushing this time. ‘Go home. You look exhausted. It’s—’

‘Sir? Ma’am?’ One of the PCs came huffing up the pavement at a run, face red above her fluorescent-yellow padded jacket, one hand holding the bowler hat on her head. Stopping in front of us with her back to the wind. ‘I’ve found Dewar’s car!’ Pointing over her shoulder. ‘Bonnet’s all dented and there’s what looks like blood in the wheel arch. Silly bugger didn’t even put it through the carwash, ma’am.’

‘Good work.’ Mother patted her on the shoulder. ‘Now off you go and call for a full SOC team, I want this place—’

Jacobson cleared his throat. ‘As senior officer, and someone who’s actually on the Gòrach investigation, perhaps you’d let me be in charge of my own crime scene? After all, DI Malcolmson, I believe you’ve still got a killer of your own to catch?’

Pink flushed Mother’s cheeks. ‘Only trying to help.’ She stuck her nose in the air. ‘And as Ash is seconded to my team, I’m sending him home.’ She made shooing gestures at me. ‘Go on, off you go.’

‘While Mr Henderson is indeed seconded to your team, he remains an active member of mine. And as he’s now caught the man who abducted and killed four children, I’m going to need him to give a statement before he goes anywhere.’

How lovely, two bosses fighting over me. Be still, my girlish heart.

Didn’t matter anyway, whatever happened here, I wasn’t done for the night. Not by a long way.

Sitting on the other side of the interview table, Rhona opened her mouth wide in a jaw-cracking yawn that was disturbingly infectious. Hers finished with a small burp and a shudder. Then she turned her notebook around and pushed it across the table towards me. ‘Sign and date it at the bottom there.’

Soon as I’d done that, she clicked off the recording equipment.

They’d done up Interview Room Three at some point, replaced the sagging stained ceiling tiles with fresh white ones; swapped the tatty blue carpet tiles for hardwearing grey; given it a fresh lick of magnolia and a new Formica table — still bolted to the floor; but they hadn’t managed to shift the lingering scent of sweaty feet and boiled cabbage.

She took her notebook back, pursed her pale lips at it for a moment, then flipped it shut and slipped it into her pocket. ‘And that’s everything that happened, is it?’

‘Scout’s honour.’

Well, I might have left a couple of bits out. Like torturing Chris McHale. And trying to drown Kenneth Dewar as he lay there bleeding to death. And buying a black-market handgun with the intention of blowing lots and lots of holes in the aforementioned Kenneth Dewar’s face, Your Honour. But other than that, my statement was more-or-less the truth.

Oh, and I might have left out the fact that I had an app on Alice’s phone that could locate Leah MacNeil and Gordon Smith, but that was understandable, wasn’t it? What with being in shock because of all the strangling and blood loss I’d suffered.

Amazing I’d managed to make a statement at all...

Rhona stared at me in silence. Letting it stretch long beyond the point where it became uncomfortable.

She was getting better at this interviewing game, but I’d taught her all the tricks she was currently using, so it was easy enough to sit here looking open and innocent.

At last, she nodded. ‘I take it you and Shifty worked this story out between you?’

‘Story, Detective Sergeant Massie? I have no idea what you mean.’

‘Right then. As long as you both stick to it, you’ll be fine.’ She stood. ‘You did a good thing tonight, Ash. Dewar would’ve kept on killing kids if you hadn’t stopped him.’ Rhona placed a hand on my shoulder, on the way past. ‘However you did it.’ Then walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.

I let out a long dry breath.

Got away with it.

I pulled out Alice’s phone and opened the tracking app. The ‘word’ ‘FONEZFINDR!’ flashed up on the screen — so I’d been right about the awful spelling — with a couple of setting options and three numbers listed under the heading ‘PHONES YOU ARE TRACKING’. No idea who the other two were, but my mobile was top of the list.

When I selected it, a stopwatch appeared, the hands turning in one direction while a progress bar rotated around it going the other way.

Please don’t be switched off.

Please don’t be dumped in a bin or some sucker’s pocket.

Please be—

Here we go.

It brought up a map of Scotland, then zoomed in on a red arrow pointing at the east coast, Oldcastle getting bigger on the left of the screen, then disappearing as Clachmara filled its centre. The map wasn’t quite up-to-date — it still included the houses that’d fallen into the sea because of Storm Trevor — but if the arrow wasn’t pointing directly at Helen MacNeil’s house, I’d buy a hat and eat it.

Maybe this was Gordon Smith sending a message? Dumping my phone back where it all began. Showing off for the dress circle.

Or maybe he really was arrogant enough to think he could go back there and we wouldn’t notice?

Suppose I’d find out soon enough.

But, in the meantime, probably best to throw some blood in the water, see if I could distract the sharks. A quick text should do it.

And soon as it was sent, I gathered up my stuff and left.

Shifty was waiting for me when I stepped out of the interview room, leaning back against the wall and playing something on his phone. He barely looked up. ‘Give your statement?’

I hauled on my new jacket. ‘Where’s the rucksack?’

‘In my locker.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

‘Because I know where Leah MacNeil is. Or, at least, I know where she might be.’ I held up my unruined hand. ‘And before you say anything: yes, I know, I should tell Mother so she can get the heavy mob sent in. But we spent all that money on a gun...’

Shifty nodded. ‘Shame to let it go to waste. We’ll need a vehicle too. Something we can burn afterwards.’

‘Helen MacNeil’s Renault’s still parked up the Hospital. No one’ll miss it.’

‘Works for me.’ He pushed off the wall. ‘You want—’

A voice boomed down the corridor. ‘Gentlemen!’ And there was Chief Superintendent McEwan, marching towards us with his sidekick, Samson, scurrying along behind him. They were both in civvies — jeans and a sweatshirt for Samson, tan chinos and blue polo shirt for McEwan. As if he’d only ever seen people wearing casual clothes in eighties catalogues.

McEwan stopped right in front of us and patted Shifty on the shoulder. ‘DI Morrow! David. Excellent work, really excellent.’ I got a pat too. ‘And you, of course, Ash. Well done. This is magnificent news: the Oldcastle Child-Strangler in custody!’ A frown clouded his features. ‘Of course, it’s a shame you couldn’t save Toby Macmillan, but the important thing is our man’s off the streets. Isn’t that right, Alan?’

Samson nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘We’re arranging a press conference for first thing tomorrow — want to stay ahead of the news cycle, don’t we? Yes. It’s going to be good to stand up there and rub all their noses in it. O Division’s full of useless tossers, is it? Ha! And there’ll be a commendation going into your file, DI Morrow, don’t you worry about that.’ Another pat on the shoulder. ‘So, I want you in here, booted and suited, and ready for the cameras by half seven.’ Then McEwan’s eyes drifted back to me. Taking it all in: the black eyes, the bruised throat, the bandaged hand... He bit his top lip and furrowed his brow. ‘Actually, Ash, maybe you should sit this one out and get some rest. Might not be the best optics, you sitting there looking as if you’ve gone the wrong way through a threshing machine. Got Police Scotland’s reputation to think about, after all.’

Like I gave a toss about its reputation or his press conference.

‘Anyway, I want to congratulate you both again for the sterling work you’ve done!’ Then he turned on his heel and marched off.

Samson hesitated a moment, his granite slab of a face working its way into a smile. ‘That was some serious coppering you two did tonight. The boss is right, you—’

McEwan’s voice boomed down the corridor again. ‘Oh, do keep up, Alan. And make sure my dress uniform is cleaned and pressed for tomorrow’s briefing!’

‘Wonderful.’ Samson sagged, stared at the ceiling, took a deep breath, then turned and hurried after the Chief Super. ‘Yes, sir.’

Poor sod.

Soon as they were gone, Shifty cricked his head from side to side. ‘Where we off to? And can we please get something to eat on the way? I’m not—’ His phone rang, getting louder and louder in the corridor. ‘Sorry.’ He pulled it out and answered. ‘DI Morrow.’ Scrunched his forehead up and closed his eyes, listening. Then, ‘No, Russell, I don’t... Are you deaf as well as Hobbit sized? I’m not commenting on an ongoing—... I don’t care what the rumour mill says, “no comment”... OK, I’m hanging up now.’ He did, then hissed out a breath. ‘Bloody journalists. Someone’s leaked we caught the Oldcastle Child-Strangler.’

I checked my watch. ‘Didn’t take them long.’

‘Bet it’s that moron Blakey. Wouldn’t trust him to—’ Shifty’s phone went again and he peered at the screen with his one good eye. ‘Jennifer Prentice? Don’t think so. Decline.’ Poking the button. ‘They’re going to be at this all night, aren’t they?’

‘Probably.’ The frenzy would be gathering outside Kenneth Dewar’s house, cameras focused on his front door, working out how much moral outrage they could whip up. Or doorstepping Dewar’s victims’ parents, milking their grief for a ninety-second slot on the morning news.

On the plus side, it meant that they’d abandon Clachmara for a while. Leaving it all nice and quiet for Shifty and me to rock up and make sure Gordon Smith and Leah MacNeil got exactly what was coming to them.

Strange what one little text can do.

Shifty switched his phone off and put it away. ‘OK. Food first, then murder. Can’t be killing people on an empty stomach.’

The scent of onions, garlic, and slow-cooked lamb mince filled Helen’s manky Renault as Shifty finished his extra-large doner with yoghurt and chilli sauce. Parked here, at the brow of the wee hill, headlights off, engine running, looking down over what was left of Clachmara as Storm Victoria hammered into it. Rain clattering against the car’s roof.

Helen’s street shivered in the darkness, bushes whipping back and forth, lampposts swaying. And not a single press vehicle to be seen.

Even the Mobile Incident Unit had been pulled back, away from the advancing cliff edge. The safety barrier had retreated with it. Now the sections of temporary fencing didn’t cut through the garden between Helen’s house and the one next door — both had been placed on the sacrificial altar of coastal erosion. An offering to the howling gods of wind and rain.

Shifty smacked his lips and sooked the milky-pink juices from his fingers, before scrunching up the waxy paper his kebab came in and chucking it in over his shoulder.

Well, we were going to burn the car anyway, what was the point keeping it tidy?

He scrubbed his face with a napkin. ‘Any joy?’

I put Alice’s phone back in my pocket. ‘No change. Doctor says she’s stable.’

Shifty nodded. ‘But that’s good, right? Stable? Means nothing’s gone wrong.’

‘Yeah...’

Wind tore at the car, rocking it on its springs, screaming around the doorframes, groaning through the gap between the chassis and the potholed road. As if the dying town was crying out in pain.

Shifty’s napkin joined the kebab wrapper. ‘You sure they’re here?’

‘Nope. But my phone is.’

He nodded. ‘Maybe it’s a trap?’

‘How could it be a trap? They think I’m dead. And they don’t know about the tracker app.’ I pulled my new Minion rucksack through from the back, unzipped it, and pulled out the gun. Small and black against the pale grey shape of my gloved hand. The nitrile surface sticky and squeaking against the grip as I held the .22 up. ‘Besides, we’ve got this.’

‘Still think we’d be better with baseball bats.’ But he put the Renault in gear anyway, drifting down the hill, nice and slow. Shame we couldn’t have the headlights on: it might have meant not crunching and lurching through every single sodding pothole on the way down. ‘Can’t see another car, can you?’

Apart from the MIU, the road was empty. Even Helen’s caravan was gone.

‘Maybe they parked somewhere else and walked?’

‘In this?’ Shifty peered out through the rain-lashed windscreen. ‘You’d have to be off your bloody head.’ He slowed to a halt, two houses back from the new fence line. ‘And so do we.’

The safety notice had broken loose from its bottom moorings, leaving the sign to hinge up and clang back down against the chain-link, setting the metal rattling. ‘WARNING! ~ COASTAL EROSION ZONE ~ NO ENTRY ~ DANGER OF DEATH’

‘You ready?’

He reached behind his seat and came out with an extendable baton, then into his jacket for a palm-sized can of pepper spray. Flicked the cover off, gave the thing a shake, then flicked the cover back on again. ‘Ash?’

‘Shifty.’ I pulled the gun’s slide back, racking a round into the breech. Joseph was right — it was easy enough for someone with ‘restricted hand mobility’.

‘It’s... you know?’ Shifty wriggled in his seat. ‘We’ve never killed anyone before. Not killed, killed. Pretty much everything, but.’ A long breath. ‘I guess I’m a bit—’

‘So give me the keys and stay in the car.’

‘Really?’ Looking at me, face sagging at the edges. ‘And let you walk in there, alone? With no backup?’ He turned the engine off. ‘How’s the saying go? A friend will help you move house; a real friend will help you kill a pair of murdering scumbags, dispose of their bodies, and wheech a security van full of stolen artworks out from under the nose of a psychotic religious nutjob.’ A nod, then he opened his car door, letting in the outraged bellowing of Storm Victoria.

I struggled out the other side, clutching onto the car door as the wind tried to tear it from my bandaged fingers. Struggling to hold it and the gun and my walking stick all at the same time. Might be better to stick the safety on again and put the .22 in my pocket. At least till we were inside. Rain battered its frozen nails into my face, sparking like fireworks against my jacket as I lurch-staggered my way along the wet pavement to the security fence.

Shifty got there first, huge round shoulders turned against the storm, water running off his big bald head. He grabbed the two nearest sections of fence and pulled at them — the padlocked chain held them too close to get through.

OK, so Gordon and Leah wouldn’t have cut the chain somewhere obvious, like here, they would’ve done it somewhere out of the way, somewhere less easily spotted.

I worked my way left, along the line, testing as I went. Through the gap between the two houses — caught in a sudden and blissful stillness as they acted as a windbreak — still nothing. Then along the waist-high wall separating their back gardens. Curling forwards into the wind again.

The cut section was at the far end, where the gardens of Helen’s street butted onto those of the next street over. Just as dark and deserted. Which explained how they’d got in without anyone noticing. Have to hope they hadn’t got out the same way.

We slipped between the unchained sections, over the boundary wall, and into the back garden of the house next to Helen’s. Sticking as close to the building as possible for shelter. One more short wall and we were on Helen’s property.

The wind was stronger here, punching into my chest, trying to steal my legs out from underneath me. And oh, how the sea roared.

A huge chunk of the garden had already surrendered to the waves, leaving the far edge of the house sticking out into the void. Only by three or four foot, but still... Wouldn’t take much for the entire thing to go crashing over the edge.

Yeah, this was a really stupid idea.

Maybe we should keep an eye on the place instead? Hang back and wait to see if Gordon and Leah came out? Jump on them then?

And give up the cover of night, the element of surprise, and any chance of killing the pair of them. There’d be a police presence back here by seven, doubt whoever got the early shift would look the other way while we did what needed to be done.

So it was this, or nothing.

And with any luck, the house would stay in one piece till we’d got out of there.

Shifty pointed at the kitchen door, and I nodded.

He took Helen’s car keys, then worked his way through the bunch till one slid home into the lock and turned. We crept inside. Closed the door, nice and gentle, behind us.

Stood there, dripping on the linoleum. Trying not to breathe too loudly.

46

The outline of work surfaces and kitchen units lurked in the gloom, not enough light filtering in through the window to make out any detail. Breath a dark grey fog, cold biting at my wet skin.

All around us the house creaked and groaned in the wind. That sizzling hiss of rain smashing itself against the kitchen window.

I slipped the gun from my pocket, gloved fingertips exploring the metal above the handle, till the safety catch clicked off. Keeping my voice barely audible. ‘OK. We search each room, slow and careful.’

Shifty’s reply was equally quiet: ‘Why are they lurking in the dark if this isn’t a trap?’

Now that was a very good question.

‘Well... it’s what, half two in the morning? Maybe they’re asleep.’ In a house that could fall into the North Sea at any minute? Not exactly likely. ‘Look, just be careful, OK?’

I crept out of the kitchen into the hallway. It was even darker — not so much as a sliver of natural light to chisel shapes out of the blackness. Inching forwards, using the walking stick to find the edges of obstacles before I barged into them.

The first door opened on a smallish room with tiled walls, going by the way my scuffing feet echoed back at me. A rectangle of dark grey against the black was probably a bathroom window...

This was stupid. How were we supposed to search the place if we couldn’t see anything? ‘Shifty, where are you?’

His voice was a whisper at my back. ‘Here.’

‘Can you turn the torch down on your phone, or is it full pelt or nothing?’

‘Don’t know...’ Some fumbling noises, then a hard white light lanced out, pulling a circle of detail from Helen’s bathroom. Black and white tiles, a shower curtain with cartoon characters on it, a neat array of shampoo and conditioner bottles along the edge of a salmon-pink bathroom suite. Then the beam faded to a soft yellowish glow, and darkness reclaimed most of the room.

We tried the next door: a faded bedroom, the double bed rumpled and unmade. No sign of personal items or touches in here. Helen’s prison cell was probably more homely than this.

The room next to that was another, smaller, bedroom. But where Helen’s was bare, this one was festooned with posters — boybands and popstars I’d never heard of, for the most part, with the occasional kitten-and-inspirational-quote to break up the monotony. A row of kids’ and YA books. A wicker hamper overflowing with mildewed dirty washing. A single bed with a unicorn bedspread, the sheets cold and damp to the touch. Didn’t look as if anyone had stayed here for months.

So much for catching Gordon Smith and Leah MacNeil asleep.

That left the lounge.

I crept after Shifty, following the thin waxy beam of torchlight.

The multigym’s stainless-steel framework glinted in the dark, still huge and taking up a third of the room. The same ratty furniture lurking around it. The only thing different was the living room rug. It’d been draped over the top of Helen’s coffee table, exposing the edges of a trapdoor.

Bet all the houses round here had one. Oh, some homes might be bigger than others, some might be semidetached, some might have an attic conversion, but in the end they all shared the same DNA. And that DNA included genes for a basement...

Shifty whispered out a cloudy breath. ‘Sod.’ He pulled his shoulders in. ‘We gotta go down there, don’t we?’

‘Yeah. We do.’

He turned on the spot, sweeping the torch’s beam around the room again. ‘Be the perfect place for an ambush. Soon as we’re in the basement, the trapdoor’s nailed shut and we’re stuck there while the whole place collapses.’

Right on cue, the roof growled above our heads, followed by the rattling clatter of what was probably a roof tile coming loose and being swept away.

‘OK.’ I tightened my grip on the gun, took a deep breath, and nodded.

‘Off our bloody heads...’ Shifty bent down, grabbed the ring set into the trapdoor, and pulled. The thing hinged open with a Hammer-House-of-Horror creak. He pointed the torch beam, illuminating a steep flight of wooden steps. ‘Try and not get me killed, OK?’

‘Do my best.’ The steps moaned beneath my feet as I edged my way down into the darkness.

The musty scent of a long-abandoned room mingled with sour dampness and something sharp and metallic. The air tasted of it too.

Impossible to see anything in here, but swinging my walking stick from side to side drew a hollow thunk from something on either side. Cardboard boxes?

Could really do with a light down here.

Sod.

One barely functioning hand for the walking stick, one hand for the gun. How was I supposed to work the torch on Alice’s phone at the same time?

Unless...

I unzipped my jacket, put the .22 away, then started up the torch app on Alice’s phone. Slipped it into the top pocket of my blood-stained shirt. A good inch protruded from the top, letting LED light spill out onto stacks and stacks of sagging boxes. The gun came out to play again, my breath steaming out around my head, caught in the harsh white glow.

Everything the torch beam touched jumped into focus, but everything else was completely and utterly swallowed by the dark. Inky black and impenetrable. Where the light was bright enough to see by, the beam was no wider than a beachball, but anything more than six feet away stubbornly refused to emerge from the gloom.

Still, it was enough to get a feel for the place, and where Gordon Smith’s basement had been empty — except for his killing apparatus — Helen MacNeil’s was littered with the debris of three lives. Kids’ bikes rusted away alongside collapsed boxes of plastic toys. The remains of a teddy bear going mouldy where it poked out the top of a box full of vinyl records.

No point sneaking around now — if they didn’t know we were in here, they never would.

Deep breath. ‘GORDON SMITH! ARMED POLICE! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!’

The only sound was my breath and the distant mourning gale.

Then Shifty’s voice hissed down from the living room. ‘Anything?’

Back to normal volume: ‘Don’t think they’re here.’

‘Bugger.’ His heavy feet thumped down the stairs. ‘We’re too late, then. It’s...’

When I turned, he was standing with one foot on the bottom step, chin up, nostrils flaring.

‘Can you smell that? Sort of... butcher’s shoppy.’

Which probably meant Gordon Smith and Leah MacNeil had got their hands on another victim. Shifty was right: we were too late.

‘BASTARD!’ Bellowing it out, eyes screwed shut, knees bent, walking stick and gun clenched in aching fists.

And now we had yet another crime scene to manage before the damn thing fell into the North Sea.

‘Great.’ Shifty scuffed a toe through the dust. ‘You want to call it in, or sod off out of it? Either way, they’re not here.’

The rubbish didn’t fill the entire basement, Helen had left a meandering path through the boxes. Tempting though it was to get the hell out of here, it meant we’d never know who they’d killed. More importantly, the family would never know what’d happened to their child / brother / sister / parent. So I hobbled along the path, taking my little ball of bright-white light with me. Past rows and rows of long-forgotten crap, the top surface of everything clarted in a thick layer of gritty brown dirt — probably drifted down from the floorboards upstairs.

The basement opened out at the final turn. Not into a wide-open space, but a hollow, not much bigger than a double bed.

I stopped where I was and stared.

The rear wall, the one closest to the devouring waves, the one that stuck about four feet out from the crumbling headland, had a body spread-eagled against it. Her arms were tied to the floor joists of the room above; legs more than shoulder-width apart, ankles tied to the barbell from Helen’s multigym. Head hanging forward, blood... everywhere.

‘Jesus...’

Strips of skin hung from long ragged wounds, showing off the dark glistening muscle beneath, the occasional flash of bone where they’d dug deeper. A wide pool of shining burgundy seeping across the concrete floor.

I stepped closer, and slow-motion ripples spread out from my boot.

David Quinn, back in Stirling, had been bad enough, but this was much, much worse.

A muffled rumbling shook the basement and fresh dust drifted down from the floor above, shining like dying stars in the torchlight.

Cut her down. Cut her down and get her out of here.

With what? They took Joseph’s cutthroat razor off you, remember?

‘Shifty, you got a knife?’

No answer.

‘Shifty!’

Still nothing.

I jammed the gun in my pocket, reached forward, took a handful of dyed-blonde hair and pulled her head up. Nothing but hollow sockets stared back at me, but there was no mistaking that heart-shaped face, the long sharp nose, or the broad forehead.

Just like her grandmother’s.

Leah MacNeil.

47

I huffed out a breath and stepped back, letting her chin fall against her chest again.

How could Smith...? She was like a granddaughter to him. OK, so Leah was a monster, but she didn’t deserve that.

‘Shifty?’

Another rumble, and this time the floor trembled beneath my feet, sending slow sticky ripples spreading across the bloody pool.

I turned, but there was no sign of him. Nothing but darkness where the torch’s beam couldn’t reach. ‘SHIFTY: STOP SODDING ABOUT!’

Maybe he’d done the sensible thing and buggered off out of here, before everything collapsed into the sea? Maybe that wasn’t a daft idea at—

Alice’s phone rang in my top pocket: David Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’. The ringtone she’d set so she’d know it was me calling.

Which could only mean one thing.

I pulled out her mobile and answered it. ‘Gordon Smith.’

‘Ah, Mr Henderson, I’m so glad to hear your voice again!’ It was little more than a whisper, barely audible over the creaks and groans of the storm-battered house. I turned the phone’s volume up full. ‘You’re not a man who likes to stay dead, I like that about you.’

‘You killed Leah.’

‘Yes, well...’ He cleared his throat. ‘Turns out you were right about that, so credit where it’s due. You tried to tell her, remember? But would she listen? Teenagers, eh?’ Putting on a singsong voice for, ‘What ya gonna do?’

Another rumble, and this time a sound like ice cracking on the surface of a very deep dark lake joined it. The torch hadn’t switched off as the call came through, so I held the phone in front of my face, swinging it around. That pool of blood had got a lot shallower around my trainers.

‘Where are you?’

‘You see, I know a lot of people look at someone my age and they think, “He can’t be any good with modern technology and stuff; dinosaurs were roaming the earth when he was a wee boy, for goodness’ sakes!” But you can’t be a Luddite and work in the theatre these days, it’s all electronics and software.’

That cracking noise sounded again.

I backed away from the end wall.

Actually, sod backing away, I turned and hurried through the maze of boxes and family crap. ‘She looked up to you like a grandfather, Gordon. She loved you!’

‘So I had a dig through your phone and discovered the tracker app. Did you know, if you agree to be traced, you automatically get to see where the phone tracing you is? It’s rather sweet, really. An exercise in trust and mutual surveillance.’ Still no louder than a whisper. ‘At first I thought you were this Alice woman, but then I saw you and your fat friend creeping into Helen’s house and I have to admit, it was quite the shocker. I could’ve sworn you were dead when we dropped you in that inspection pit. I clearly need to work on my garrotting skills.’

I turned the last corner, before the stairs, and stumbled to a halt.

‘Anyway, as you’ve come all this way, it would’ve been rude of me not to pop in and say hello.’

Shifty lay facedown on the concrete, one arm twisted beneath him, the other hand still clutching his collapsible baton. The back of his bald pink head was stained, wet scarlet.

‘And I’m sorry Leah couldn’t be with us — not in spirit anyway — but I simply couldn’t cope with her foul language any longer.’

I spun around, torch brushing the nearest boxes with its narrow beam of cold white light. ‘If you’ve killed Shifty, I’m going to tear you to pieces.’

‘So I gave Leah the starring role in her own production: A Delicate and Terrible Death. She was excellent, Mr Henderson, screamed like a professional. Her mother would’ve been so proud.’

I hunkered down beside Shifty, dropped my walking stick and felt for a pulse. Still there. As I stood, something glittered in the torchlight — halfway up the wooden steps to the trapdoor. Like a granite thermos flask with silver handles fixed to it.

The funeral urn from the barn. The one Gordon Smith had been talking to.

That’s why he was whispering down the phone at me: he was in the basement. I swapped the mobile into my bandaged hand and yanked the .22 out again.

‘Do you ever go to the pantomime, Mr Henderson? You should: it’s one of the finest theatrical traditions we have in this country, certainly the purest. People think it’s silly, with its dames and its principal boys and its call-and-response, but it has rules and conventions, traditions and truths that stretch back into antiquity. They connect us with the fairy tales our ancestors told as they cowered in their caves in the night.’

‘Where are you?’

‘After all, what is life if not a pantomime?’

I hung up and turned again, torch sweeping around like a lighthouse. The gun following it. ‘COME ON YOU BASTARD, LET’S SEE IF YOU’VE GOT THE BALLS!’

A laugh slithered out in the basement. ‘He’s behiiiiiiiiiiind you!’

48

Something hard and heavy cracked across my shoulders. I staggered forwards, stumbling over Shifty, the phone flying out of my ruined hand to bounce against the nearest boxes. Its torchlight swinging and tumbling — then thump, it hit the floor, beam shining straight up into the dusty air.

A line of sharp-edged grey whistled towards my head, shining bright as it passed through the LED beam — hooked, like a hockey stick, but longer. More solid looking. And coming in fast.

I got my arms up just in time for it to crack across them instead of my face. Sending me crashing over backwards against the stairs.

The gun hit the ground and skittered away, came to rest with a dull metallic clank.

‘Don’t you play shinty, Mr Henderson? It’s a great game. Very physical. Keeps you fit!’

Another whistling crack and the stick battered into my arms again, hot and numb at the same time, the muscles howling, bones creaking. Wooden steps groaning against my spine.

DO SOMETHING!

Smith loomed out of the darkness, pausing above Alice’s phone so the torch caught him from below. Lit like a monster in an ancient film — his lined face slashed with shadows, eyes glittering in the hollow of their sockets, Santa beard turned into something a lot less wholesome. ‘It’s a shame we don’t have more time, Mr Henderson, I’d love to stay and play, but the house is hungry.’

Another rumble, and this time the cracking noise didn’t stop, it built and grew, thin and cold, snapping and pinging. Concrete and brick giving way, then: WHOOOOOM...

The back wall disappeared. One moment everything beyond the torch’s beam was utter darkness, and the next a pale grey light snarled into the basement — borne on the wings of a howling wind. Sucking the air from the room, sending it spiralling out into the night, as what was left of Leah MacNeil vanished into the North Sea.

Waves booming and roaring right outside that ragged patch of grey.

Gordon Smith leered in his DIY monster-light. As if he wasn’t already horrific enough. ‘Time to say goodnight, children.’ Edging closer, shinty stick in one hand, Joseph’s cutthroat razor in the other.

I scrabbled backwards, up the bottom couple of steps. And something bumped against my shoulder. Something about the size of a thermos flask with silver handles. Cold and smooth against my palm as I grabbed it. ‘Oh no it isn’t.’

‘That’s the spirit!’ The razor’s blade glinted in the narrow torch beam. ‘OH YES IT IS!’ Lunging for me, cutthroat sizzling through the angry air.

I lunged too — left arm up to block it, right swinging hard.

It was like being punched in the bicep. And then the impact of Caroline’s urn, smashing into his head, shuddered up my arm.

‘Ungh...’ Smith reared away from me, a silhouette against the angry storm. ‘Don’t...’

Another push, swinging the urn like a baseball bat.

Thunk.

The crunching thump of old cardboard boxes collapsing under someone’s weight.

Bouncing the urn off Smith’s head must’ve loosened the lid, because it popped off, and a vortex of gritty grey swirled its way through the torchlight, en route to the gaping hole at the end of the basement.

‘CAROLINE!’ Banging and crashing through the junk.

I snatched up the phone and swung the torch around.

There was Smith, on his hands and knees, scraping dirt and ashes from the concrete floor. ‘No!’

Where are you, you rotten...?

There — lying on its back, against the leg of a mouldy old teddy bear. Matt, black, and deadly. The phone went back in my bandaged hand and I snatched the gun up again.

Let’s see how Evil Uncle Abanazar did with a couple of bullets in him.

The basement shook and that ragged slab of grey got bigger. Chunks of the upper floor raining down at the far end, tumbling away into the hungry waves.

‘What have you done?’ He was still on his knees, scooping up handfuls of dust.

I tossed the urn to him. It hit the concrete and bounced with a hollow ringing poonk.

‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’ Reaching for it.

Three limping steps and I was close enough to jam the .22’s barrel into the back of his right knee. ‘It’s after midnight, Smith. Time to turn back into a pumpkin.’ And pulled the trigger.

It was as if someone had slammed a claw-hammer down on a sheet of metal, the sound echoing off the roof before being swallowed by the howling wind.

Must’ve come as a shock, because Smith didn’t start screaming till I stuck the barrel into the back of his left knee.

Another hammer blow.

The room rumbled. The ice cracked. Another chunk of basement vanished.

Definitely time to go.

Gordon Smith stared back at me in the thin beam of the phone’s torch, eyes wide, mouth wide — full of teeth and agony. Both hands wrapped around his knees, blood pulsing out between his pale fingers. Tears streaming down his face. He was saying something, but whatever it was, the storm was louder.

Back to Shifty.

‘God’s sake, man, you weigh a bloody ton...’ But I got my shoulder under him, hauling and shoving and struggling his fat bloody arse up the wooden steps, heaving him onto the living room floor. Rolling him clear of the trapdoor, so I could slam it shut. Wind whistling through the gaps — pulled down by the air roaring out through the basement.

Probably gilding the lily, but in case a double kneecapping wasn’t enough to keep Gordon Smith where I’d left him, I put my shoulder to Helen’s multigym and pushed.

Teeth gritted, putting my back into it...

The entire thing crashed into the floorboards with a wood-splintering crunch, completely covering the trapdoor with about a ton of metal.

Yeah, Smith was going nowhere.

I grabbed a handful of Shifty’s collar and dragged him backwards out of the room, legs aching from the effort, along the hall and out the front—

Bloody thing was locked.

Another booming rumble and the sound of rending beams and cracking mortar drowned out the wind.

Was there time to get him all the way down the hall and out through the kitchen?

He had the keys on him.

Great — why don’t I stand here like a bloody moron, going through Shifty’s pockets WHILE THE BASTARDING HOUSE FALLS DOWN!

‘AAAAAAARGH!’ I turned him around and hauled his lardy backside down the hall, sweat prickling in the cold air, breath huffing out great plumes of steam. ‘If we get out of this alive, you’re going on a massive diet.’

His body slid better on the kitchen linoleum.

Out the kitchen door, and into the thundering rain and screeching storm.

My trainers dug into the wet grass, slipping and skidding through mud, pulling with both hands now. Fire and broken bottles slashing through the severed joint where my finger used to be, scarring their way up my arm. Every single step setting off a fresh explosion of flame in my bullet-hole foot.

We’d almost made it to the garden wall when Helen’s house gave one final groan of pain, then thundered in on itself as the storm ate it whole.

49

The doctor stepped back to admire her handiwork. ‘Not bad. You’ll have a scar, but it could’ve been worse.’

I turned my elbow out ninety degrees. A neat line of small black stitches ran along a dark puckered ridge of skin halfway up my bicep — stained dark orange with antiseptic. That ‘punch’ had been the cutthroat razor. Good job Gordon Smith hadn’t kept it sharp or the thing would’ve chopped its way right down to the bone. ‘Thanks.’

A blush darkened her cheeks. ‘Twice in one day. We must stop meeting like this.’ Dr Fotheringham put the forceps and needle holder back on the tray. ‘If anyone asks, I gave you amoxicillin.’ Pocketing a couple of small boxes. ‘Obviously I’m not going to really give you more antibiotics, because, well, you know.’

‘Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.’

Outside the curtained cubicle, the sounds of Castle Hill Infirmary A-and-E thrummed and bustled all around us. Moaning, crying, someone singing a sectarian song while someone else screamed at them to shut their orange-bastard mouth.

Fotheringham wrapped the wound in gauze, then cotton wool, then crisp white bandages. Pulling them tight and tying them off. She didn’t look me in the eye once. ‘Well, that’s us all done. You’ll need to get those stitches out in about a fortnight: better safe than sorry.’

The sound of someone being copiously sick echoed through from the next-door cubicle, but Fotheringham didn’t even flinch. ‘Can I ask,’ she pointed at my arm, ‘was this the same “serial killer”?’

I pulled my bloodstained shirt back on and hopped off the trolley. ‘Not any more.’

Fotheringham wrestled me into a bulky black padded sling, adjusting the straps and Velcro till the entire arm was immobile. Then helped me drape my ‘borrowed’ leather jacket over my shoulders. ‘It’ll take a while to heal, so make sure you rest it.’

‘Want to take a little advice from someone who’s been where you are? Once people like Joseph and Francis get their hooks in you, it’s not so easy to wriggle free. Stop the gambling, get help, or you’ll be gutted and filleted by the time they’re done.’

She gave me a small sad smile. ‘Oh, how I wish it was that easy...’

They’d moved Kenneth Dewar out of the High Dependency ward into a private room on the sixth floor, with a uniformed PC sitting guard outside, reading a Hamish Macbeth novel: Death of a Crime Writer. She looked up as I hobbled over on a borrowed NHS walking stick. ‘Guv.’

So, one of the old guard, before my demotion.

I nodded at the observation window. ‘He say anything yet?’

‘Came round about two hours ago. Since then it’s been mostly sobbing and sleeping. Think they’ve got him on some pretty strong meds.’ She put a marker in her book. ‘Mother... I mean, DI Malcolmson’s been looking for you. Says you’re not answering your phone.’

Maybe because I hadn’t actually worked out what, or how much, to tell her yet.

‘Any chance...?’ I pointed at the door.

The PC raised an eyebrow. ‘On your own? Sod all, Guv. Orders from the Chief Super, in triplicate: Dewar goes to trial, dirty wee child-murdering bastard that he is.’

‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’ After all, we needed him to get all better so he could enjoy his daily torture. I opened the door and stepped into the familiar disinfectant-and-misery-scented air.

They’d hooked him up to a drip and a heart monitor, but other than that, he was machinery-free. Lying there, on his back, with his mouth hanging open, chest rising and falling in time to a deep rumbling snore.

Probably loud enough to disturb the other patients. That wasn’t fair, was it? Someone should do something about that.

So I pinched his nose shut, the palm of my hand covering his mouth.

‘Guv!’

Dewar spluttered his way into consciousness, a small scream muffled by my hand.

I let go and gave the PC a smile. ‘Oh look, he’s awake.’

Dewar blinked at me, then around at the room — as if taking it in for the first time. ‘How...?’

The chair’s rubber feet squealed across the green-terrazzo floor as I pulled it closer to the bed. Thumped down in it. ‘Not going to kid you, Kenny, I’m tired, I’m sore, and I’ve had a bastard of a day.’ Pointing at the PC. ‘She’s here to make sure I don’t strangle you, like you strangled Andrew Brennan, Oscar Harris, Lewis Talbot, and Toby Macmillan.’

He closed his eyes and nodded, mouth a tight squirming line as tears squeezed out. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So you keep saying.’ I leaned forward. ‘You thought you’d fooled everyone, didn’t you? But you didn’t fool Alice.’

‘She... she’d been so nice to me... and then... then she called and said... and said she wanted to talk to me again.’ Big fat tears plopped onto the sheet, turning the fabric the colour of spoiled milk. ‘And I knew she’d... she’d worked it out.’

‘So you tried to kill her.’

‘I didn’t want... I need you to understand... understand why—’

‘Kenny, Kenny, Kenny: I don’t care.’ I tilted my head back and winked at our uniformed friend. ‘You might want to cover your ears for this part: plausible deniability.’

She shifted her feet, hands opening and closing. ‘You’re not going to hurt him, are you?’

‘Me? Hurt him? Why on earth would I do that? Now Simon says: cover your ears.’

She did.

‘Remember when you said I should find the bastard who killed all those little boys, and make him pay?’ I leaned in. ‘This is for Andrew, Oscar, Lewis, and Toby. But it’s especially for what you did to Alice.’ Had to be quick, before the PC could stop me — standing and slamming my right fist into his face. Putting some weight behind it. Driving his head back into the pillows.

‘GUV!’ She lunged, but I backed away from the bed, hand up.

‘All finished.’ Arthritis howled its way through my knuckles, but it was worth it.

‘What the hell have you done?’ Staring at Dewar as scarlet gushed out of his newly squint nose.

‘I didn’t do anything, Constable. Kenneth Dewar became distressed — probably the guilt of strangling four wee boys — and tried to injure himself. I saw you rush to his aid and save the day. You should get some sort of commendation for that.’

She licked her lips. Looked from Dewar’s sobbing, blood-dripping face, to me, then back again. ‘I saved the day?’

‘Like a pro. Very proud of you.’

A nod. ‘Cool.’

Kenneth Dewar: welcome to the rest of your life.

Shifty threw back his blankets and sat bolt upright in his hospital bed. ‘Come on, time to go home.’

I put a hand against his chest and pushed him back into the crinkled sheets. ‘You’ve got concussion, you silly bugger.’ Pulled the blankets over him again. ‘You’re going nowhere.’

Someone had removed his eyepatch, so instead of a jaunty-big-fat-bald-pirate, he looked more like a confused hairless middle-aged man with a weight problem and a clenched fist of scar tissue where his right eye should have been. He squinted the other one at me. ‘What happened in the basement?’

A voice behind me: ‘Yes, Ash, what did happen in that basement?’

Ah...

‘Mother, I hear you’ve been looking for me?’

When I turned, she was standing in the doorway, a bit on the rumpled side, heavy bags under her eyes, thick brown overcoat flapped open to reveal a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt with a grinning cat on it. Not quite ‘I got dressed in the dark’, but close enough.

Mind you, it wasn’t as if I was going to win any prizes for sartorial elegance — done up in the same clothes I’d gone to work in yesterday morning. All covered in dried blood and dirt and dust.

She looked me up and down, drinking it all in. ‘You smell like a fight in an abattoir.’

I pointed at Shifty. ‘DI Morrow got a tipoff that Gordon Smith had been seen in Oldcastle. We thought he might go back to Clachmara, so we headed over there. Turned out we were right.’

‘And?’

‘He resisted arrest. DI Morrow and I barely managed to get out before the house fell into the sea. Gordon Smith didn’t.’ Not sure if it was worth complicating things, but if the bodies washed up somewhere any half-decent pathologist might just notice someone had blown both of Smith’s kneecaps off: ‘When we got there he was fighting with Leah MacNeil, she managed to wrestle the gun off him.’

‘There was a gun?’

I shrugged. ‘She didn’t get out either. Shifty and I tried, but...’ A long weary sigh. ‘She kept screaming about how he’d killed her mother and she was going to make him pay.’

That should cover it. And with any luck, by the time Leah’s body turned up — if it ever did — it would’ve been battered about enough by the storm, collapsing headland, and waves to obscure any signs she’d been tortured. Wouldn’t hurt if the fish and crabs ate most of the evidence, either.

‘Oh Christ.’ Mother covered her face with her hands. ‘Helen MacNeil will go berserk when she finds out we let her granddaughter die.’

‘Maybe not. Leah did avenge her mother, after all. Old-school gangsters like Helen would’ve appreciated that.’ Sod it: wrong tense. Should’ve been, will appreciate that. But hopefully Mother wouldn’t notice.

She lowered her hands and narrowed her eyes. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything?’

‘No idea. But you should be putting Shifty forward for a Queen’s Medal.’ I patted him on the arm. ‘He was a brave little soldier and a credit to the force. I couldn’t have got out of there, without him.’ Which had the benefit of not actually being a lie — there was no way I’d leave Shifty in a collapsing building.

The sounds of a busy hospital, chuntering away in the wee small hours, throbbed through the floor and air conditioning.

Eventually Mother nodded. ‘I can’t remember, were you always this much of a pain in the backside?’

‘Probably.’

‘Ow...’ I creaked and groaned my way into the high-backed chair beside Alice’s bed. ‘What a sodding day.’ Wasn’t a single inch of me that didn’t ache. And that was after taking a double dose of Dr Fotheringham’s painkillers.

Alice hadn’t moved since I’d last seen her — still lying there, hooked up to her bank of machinery, one arm in a cast from shoulder to fingertips, one leg from hip to toes, bandages and cannulas and drips and wires and a bag dangling from the bedframe.

I struggled out of my jacket and draped it over my chest.

Should probably have gone home first for a shower and a change of clothes, but the last faint wisps of adrenaline had gone, leaving nothing but the inevitable crash into unconsciousness. And if I was going to fall asleep for eighteen hours, I’d much rather do it here.

In case she woke up.

Eyelids were getting almost as heavy as my head.

A jaw-cracking yawn.

I let my head fall back. Up above, the ceiling tiles made a moonscape of tiny pocks and craters. Nearly died twice today, something of a record, even for me.

Tomorrow: going to have a long lie-in, nice big breakfast — sod salted porridge and decaf tea, it was time for a proper fry-up at that greasy spoon down Tollbooth Row — then take the wee man for a hobble in Kings Park. Throw some bread at the...

Oh bugger.

I sat up and fumbled Alice’s phone from my pocket. Unlocked it. Then went searching for that business card. Dialled the number.

A mumbled voice. ‘Hello?’ The sound of lips smacking on sleep-sticky breath. ‘I mean, J-and-F Freelance Consultants, how can—’

‘Joseph, I know it’s late, but I need your help.’

Because sometimes you really did need the assistance of two very capable gentlemen with a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to other people’s physical wellbeing.