The Coffinmaker’s Garden

50

‘Well?’

I let the blind fall back. ‘All gone.’

The private room was festooned with Mylar balloons, some at full bobbing strength, others at half-mast, all covered in slogans like ‘GET WELL SOON!’, ‘YOU’RE A STAR!’, and for some bizarre reason, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’

‘Three days.’ Sitting in the visitor’s chair, Shifty curled his lip. ‘You’d think catching two massive serial killers would hold their attention for at least a week. Four dead wee boys and... how many victims for Gordon Smith?’

‘No way of knowing.’ Even if Alice and Franklin were right about Smith keeping all his homemade torture porn on his phone, it got wheeched out into the North Sea — along with the man himself, Leah’s body, and Helen’s house. ‘At least thirty-six, if you count the panto cast and crew that went missing from productions he worked on, plus the basement Polaroids. And we’ve only got IDs for about a dozen of those.’

Shifty scratched at the wadding taped to the back of his head. ‘Bloody media.’

‘Didn’t you hear? Train crash at Waverley Station this morning: thirteen dead, eighty-seven injured. Suspected terrorism.’

A grimace. ‘Fair enough. But they could—’

My new phone blared out its anonymous ringtone. ‘Hold that thought.’ I pulled it out and checked the screen. Not a number I recognised. Pressed the button anyway. ‘Hello?’

‘ASH, YOU UTTER BASTARD!’ For some strange reason, Jennifer Prentice sounded upset. Poor thing. ‘WHAT THE BUGGERING HELL DID YOU DO?’

‘Me? Why do you think I did anything?’

‘Because I’ve had four parking tickets since Wednesday, two on-the-spot fines, AND MY BLOODY BOSS JUST SACKED ME FROM THE BLOODY PAPER!’

‘Oh dear, that does sound terrible.’ Doing my best not to grin. ‘Bye, Jennifer.’ I hung up.

Shifty beamed back at me. ‘She like her present?’

‘Loving it.’ Amazing what could be achieved if you had dirt on the right kind of people.

The room’s door opened and a nurse nodded at us, dressed in pale-green scrubs and white oversized trainers, hair pulled up in a bun, a piercing in each of his nostrils. ‘Did anyone order a forensic psychologist?’

Shifty’s eyebrows went up. ‘With extra cheese?’

The nurse ducked out again, then reappeared wheeling Alice into the room. ‘Ta-daaa...’

She’d put on the baggy blue tracksuit I’d bought her at Abdel’s Bargain Warehouse — roomy enough to fit over the cast on her left leg and the one on her right arm — with ‘UNICORNICOPIA’ picked out in pink sequins across the chest.

One look, and Shifty burst out laughing.

‘What?’ Her voice slightly muzzy. They’d scaled back on the bandages, but most of her face was stained navy and yellow. No white at all in her left eye, only red. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Without meaning to come off as a complete gay stereotype: Girlfriend, you should not go out dressed like that.’

‘Ash?’

‘You do look a teeny bit like a Smurf with jaundice.’

She stared down at herself. ‘Oh, Ash!’

‘It fits OK? That’s all that matters.’ I took hold of the wheelchair’s handles.

The nurse flipped off the brake. ‘Once round the block, then I want her back in bed, understand?’

‘Yeah, we’ll see how we go.’

‘So Dorothy says, “Don’t look at me, I’m vegetarian: I had the falafel for lunch,” and she’s in getting her hip resurfaced because apparently they didn’t put it in properly the first time, which isn’t exactly great, is it, you come in here you think they know what they’re doing, but she’d had the falafel which meant—’

An electronic voice crackled out in the lift. ‘GROUND FLOOR. DOORS OPENING.’

‘—had to be someone else who’d nabbed the packet of Peperami off Rosemary’s bedside cabinet and it can’t have been Jeanette, because they took her dentures out before they did her colonoscopy and lost them.’

Shifty pulled a face over Alice’s head, rolling his eyes and sticking his tongue out.

I wheeled her out into the hospital’s reception area — a wide expanse of brown tiles with steel benches painted in primary colours to match the various wards and lines set into the floor.

‘That’s when I had my revelation, you see... Ash? Are you listening?’

There — over in the pink section with ‘MATERNITY’ in big white letters on the wall behind her. It was thingy, the pregnant almost-qualified forensic anthropologist from Clachmara. The one who’d spotted the bones sticking out of the crumbling headland. Which meant, technically, a lot of this was all her fault.

She must’ve sensed me staring, because she looked up from whatever newspaper she was reading and waved.

Sod.

Suppose I should really go say hello.

‘Stay here a minute, OK?’ I abandoned the wheelchair and limped over there.

She had her kid with her, but he was hunched over a colouring-in book, probably making a dog’s arse of another paleontologically inaccurate rendering.

She smiled and levered herself out of the metal seat, one hand cupping the underside of her bulge. ‘Mr Henderson.’ Face flushed, neck too — the skin bright pink as it disappeared into her stripy top. ‘What are you doing here? Are you here to see me?’

‘No, it’s...’ Pointing back towards Alice and Shifty.

‘Oh, right. Yes.’ Sounding disappointed. ‘Anyway, I wanted to say, thank you. DI Malcolmson said it was your idea to get me involved in that post mortem? Of the remains you found buried in Gordon Smith’s garden?’ She pulled a quick frog face and shrugged, eyes getting wider with every word: ‘Best — day — at — work — ever. We even got an ID! And Professor Twining was so impressed he offered me a job on the spot. Well, soon as I evict this teeny monster.’ Patting her swollen stomach. ‘I can even go back and finish my degree part-time.’

‘Good. I’m glad.’

Her smile slipped. ‘Of course, the council came round the next day and condemned my house, so Alfie and me will be homeless in two weeks, but there you go. At least I got to tell them to shove their sixteen-grand demolition-and-recycling fee up their landfill site. I only rent the thing, not own it.’

‘Well, I thought I should come over and, you know...’ Backing away.

‘If you hear about a council house going spare or anything, let me know, OK?’

‘Will do.’

‘Thanks again.’ Grinning and waving at me as I limped back to Alice and Shifty. ‘Maybe we’ll get to work together, catch more killers! How cool will that be?’

Yeah, she was probably nutty enough to fit right in.

‘Where was I?’ Alice frowned up at me as I took hold of the wheelchair’s handles again. ‘Oh, yes: so that’s when I had my revelation, you see Phyllis was on the ward because they were digging out an ingrowing toenail which is meant to be a day procedure, but she’s got cystitis and kidney stones the size of—’

‘Speaking of revelations,’ heading for the main exit in a last-ditch attempt to derail Dr Alice McDonald and the Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Peperami, ‘Bear interviewed Kenneth Dewar yesterday. Dewar says he killed the boys to “break the cycle”.’

Alice looked up at me. ‘Cycle?’

‘Says he knew most of his clients were abused as children and that turned them into people who abused children. And he knew his clients had abused these little boys, so killing them was breaking the cycle. Thinks he’s a hero for saving all the children they’d have grown up to abuse.’

The doors hissed open and we emerged into the glowing golden light of a sun-drenched Friday morning. Not a cloud in the sky, not a hint of wind.

‘Well that’s...’ Alice shook her head. ‘Hold on, he says he took no sexual pleasure from killing them? He didn’t go home and fantasise about it, while he played with himself?’

‘Purely a selfless act, apparently.’

A large shiny black Range Rover sat at the edge of the turning circle, in defiance of the hospital’s no-entry policy for anything other than ambulances and buses. I aimed for it.

‘If he was doing it for the good of the community, why did he strangle and revive Lewis Talbot over and over again for an hour and a half?’

‘That’s what I asked.’

Shifty sniffed. ‘Because he’s a lying scumbag?’

‘Maybe he believes it himself? Or he needs to.’ Alice tilted her head back, eyes closed, sunning her bruises. ‘After all, he doesn’t want to be a monster, does he? He wants to be the hero of his own story. So he can fantasise and masturbate and think he’s doing the world a good turn all at the same time.’

Soon as we got within six feet of the Range Rover, the passenger door popped open and Joseph stepped out — dressed in a sharp black suit with a white shirt and red tie. Greying fibreglass cast poking out the end of his left sleeve. The wad of padding had gone from his head, leaving a small white square dressing behind. He smiled and performed a small bow. ‘Dr McDonald, how delightful to see you up and about, even if it’s in a non-ambulatory capacity.’

Alice stiffened in the wheelchair.

I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s OK.’

‘And Detective Inspector Morrow, I trust you’re enjoying this fine morning and your well-earned veneration for capturing both the Oldcastle Child-Strangler and the Coffinmaker. Bravo!’

Shifty didn’t move. Barely even breathed.

I nodded at the car. ‘You managed?’

‘Oh, indubitably, my dear Mr Henderson, we did indeed manage.’ He turned. ‘Francis, can you bring our guest out, please?’

A thunk from the other side of the huge car, then another one, and Francis emerged, boasting a face that was even more bruised than Alice’s. And there, trotting along behind him, was—

‘Henry!’ Alice threw her working arm out. ‘Oh my lovely hairy man!’

The wee lad scrabbled at the end of his lead, pulling to get to her, but Francis held on tight till Henry jumped up into Alice’s lap, then handed the leash to me with a nod. ‘’Spector.’

Lots of wriggling and giggling as Henry slathered Alice with his big pink tongue.

‘It really was quite a remarkable hunt, Mr Henderson! At first, my plan of attack was to knock on doors and... encourage people to report their sightings of your canine companion, but then Francis came upon the undeniably ingenious idea of putting posters up all over the area and offering a small reward. Alcoholic, rather than monetary in nature, what with our target audience residing in Kingsmeath. Lo and behold, it did indeed garner the desired result.’

Shifty backed off a pace, fists curled, shoulders back, one remaining eye narrowed.

I took my hands off the wheelchair. ‘Shifty, why don’t you take Alice and Henry for a walk? I won’t be long.’

Shifty didn’t move.

‘Please.’

An ambulance siren wailed into life, somewhere behind the main hospital building, grew louder, then dopplered off into the distance.

Finally, he took hold of the handles and Henry’s lead, turned the wheelchair in a sharp one-eighty, and marched off, back stiff as an ironing board.

Joseph raised one eyebrow. ‘DI Morrow seems rather tense to me. I fear he bears some degree of ill-feeling towards Francis and myself as a result of that somewhat unhappy incident involving Mrs Kerrigan.’

‘What do I owe you for finding the dog?’

A quick look left and right, then Joseph dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Just between us, we rather enjoyed the experience, didn’t we, Francis?’

That got him a short upward jerk of the chin.

‘It’s so nice to be involved in a commission that doesn’t involve breaking anything or anyone, and the look on the good doctor’s face when she was reunited with her boon companion... Ah.’ He placed a hand over his heart. ‘That, my dear Mr Henderson, is reward enough for us.’

Dear God, Joseph and Francis were human after all.

‘Thank you.’

‘It is, indeed, our pleasure, Mr Henderson.’ A small bow, then he climbed back into the Range Rover. ‘Francis?’

The big man nodded at me again. ‘’Spector.’ He got in behind the wheel and the huge car drove off, the wrong way up a bus lane, before cutting the corner and heading away towards Logansferry.

So it wasn’t just other people’s physical wellbeing they had a laissez-faire attitude to — it was the Highway Code, too.

By the time I caught up with them, Alice and Shifty were in a patch of green, flanked on two sides by the maternity hospital and the old Victorian sanatorium. Henry charging round and round the wheelchair, legs and tail going like the clappers, mouth hanging open in small-dog joy.

Our small dysfunctional family, back together again.

Now all we had to do was break into Wee Free McFee’s scrapyard and liberate a buried security van full of stolen artwork — without getting hacked to pieces and fed to the psychotic maniac’s dogs — find a reliable fence to sell the stuff, launder the money so no one could trace it, buy a small hotel on the west coast, and retire to a life in the hospitality industry.

How hard could it be...?