A Song for the Dying

10

‘… and that was Mister Bones with “Snow Loves A Winter”. You’re listening to Jane Forbes, holding the fort till Sensational Steve kicks off the Breakfast Drive-Time Bonanza at seven. Stick around for that, it’s going to be … awesome!’

I blinked at the ceiling. It wasn’t the right shape, the light was all wrong. Why the hell was…

A breath shuddered its way out of my chest and the thumping in my ears faded, slowed. Another breath.

Right. Not in a cell any more.

‘We’ve got the news and weather coming up — spoiler alert, it’s going to be a wet one — but first here’s Halfhead, with their Christmas single “Sex, Violence, Lies, and Darkness”…’ The sound of distorted piano and mournful guitars oozed out of the radio alarm clock’s speakers.

The lead singer’s voice was like barbed wire dipped in molasses. ‘Bones in the garden, they sing like an angel…’

I rolled over and checked: quarter past six. What was the point of getting out of prison if you couldn’t even have a lie-in? Bloody Jacobson.

‘The shadows are sharp and they burn deep inside…’

Morning prayers at Force Headquarters. That was going to be fun. Perhaps I’d get lucky and not have to break anyone’s jaw…?

Keep it calm today. Nothing rash. No lashing out. Nothing that could get me sent back to prison before Mrs Kerrigan could meet with that unfortunate accident.

‘Her body is cold, her voice hard and painful…’

No hitting anyone. Eyes on the prize.

Come on, Ash. Up.

In a minute.

I spread out beneath the duvet, taking up the whole double bed. Just because I could.

‘A knife-blade of bitterness, spite, and hurt pride…’

Then the pressure in my bladder had to go and spoil everything. Groaning, I levered myself up, swung my legs out of bed, sighed. Rolled my right foot in small circles from the ankle. One way, then the other. Flexing the toes. Making little blades of hot iron grate along the bones — scraping away beneath the puckered knot of scar tissue the bullet left. A metaphor for my whole bloody life, right there.

‘Sex, lies, and violence, a love filled with sharpness…’

No point putting it off any longer. Up.

I limped over to the chest of drawers.

‘Stoking the fires to stave off the darkness…’

A brief search turned up a couple of big towels in the third drawer. I wrapped one around my waist, grabbed my cane, then unlocked the bedroom door as the song headed into an instrumental break. All minor chords and misery.

The sound of someone murdering an old Stereophonics tune rattled down the corridor, with a boiling kettle as backup. Shifty poked his head out of the living room and grinned at me. His eyes were all shiny and bright, despite the fact he’d put away enough champagne and whisky last night to fill a bathtub. He’d even shaved. ‘Hope you’re hungry, we’ve got enough here to feed a family of six. Breakfast on the table in five, whether you’re there or not.’ And then he was gone again.

‘Morning, Shifty.’ I tried the bathroom door handle. Locked.

Alice’s voice came from inside, the words all muffled and rounded as if she had her mouth full. ‘Hold on…’ Then some spitting and a running tap. The bathroom door opened and there she was, wearing a fluffy bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her head. A cloud of orange-scented steam billowed out behind her. ‘Are you not dressed yet, only we’ve got the morning briefing at seven and it’s-’

‘What happened to the hangover?’

‘Coffee. Coffee’s great it really is and it’s just, like, pow first thing in the morning and I think I got up in the middle of the night to drink some water, I was having the strangest dream and I was in a car crash and there was a dog and I’m chasing someone into the train station only it turned into a rock concert and there was a woman in a blue tracksuit and everyone was all sweaty, isn’t that weird?’ She squeezed past, and opened the door to her room. Froze on the threshold. A crease formed between her eyebrows. ‘Maybe it was the pizza, probably shouldn’t eat a quattro formaggio that close to bedtime, only it wasn’t really bedtime was it, it was a slightly late dinner, and I like cheese, don’t you, it’s-’

‘OK.’ I held up a hand. ‘No more coffee for you.’

‘But I like coffee, it’s the best, and Dave brought this little metal teapot thing with him that you put on the cooker and coffee goes in one end and water in the bottom and you get great espresso-’

‘Shifty says breakfast’s in five minutes.’

‘Oh, right, better get dressed and really you should try his espresso it’s terrific, it-’

I slipped into the steamy bathroom and locked the door behind me.

Alice leaned in close, her voice cranked right down to a whisper. ‘So it wasn’t a dream?’

The briefing room must have been given a coat of paint recently, the cloying chemical smell still coiling out of the walls. Uniform and plainclothes had arranged themselves in a semicircle of creaky plastic chairs around the table at the front of the room, the distance between them marking out the individual tribes. Front left: the men and women who’d have to go out and patrol the streets. Front right: the boys and girls from the Specialist Crime Division, looking prickly in their sharp suits. Behind them: Oldcastle CID, looking like a riot in a charity shop. Everyone with their pens out and notebooks at the ready.

And at the rear of the room: Jacobson’s Lateral Investigative and Review Unit, all in a line: Jacobson, PC Cooper, Professor Huntly, Dr Constantine, and Alice. I’d grabbed the seat next to her, on the outside. Right leg stretched out, walking stick hanging on the back of the chair in front as the duty sergeant monotoned his way through the day-to-day assignments.

‘… car thefts up fifteen percent in that area, so keep your eyes peeled. Next, shoplifting…’

I shifted in my seat. ‘Of course it wasn’t a dream, you wanted a bedtime story so I told you one.’

Alice looked up at me. ‘You did? That’s so sweet.’

‘About how the Inside Man got away.’

‘Oh.’ The smile slipped a bit. ‘Still, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it. So you really did round up all the people in blue tracksuits?’

I nodded. ‘Rhona got all nine of them. Two hours earlier and there would’ve been dozens — the whole sodding football team came down to ride on the bikes. The Super checked everyone’s stories and alibis. Nothing.’

She glanced at the front of the room.

The duty sergeant was still droning on: ‘… break-in at the halls of residence on Hudson Street…’

‘What about the train to Edinburgh?’

‘Just missed it at Arbroath, but they were waiting for it at Carnoustie. No one in a blue tracksuit. But the in-carriage security camera caught someone matching the description getting off at the first stop.’

‘… to remember, that just because they’re students it doesn’t mean you can treat them, and I quote, “like workshy sponging layabouts”. Fitzgerald, I’m looking at you…’

‘It was him, wasn’t it?’

‘We put out an appeal, got an ID, and did a dawn raid. Turned out it was a religious education teacher up to do the charity cycle.’

‘Oh.’

Professor Huntly leaned over, glowered past Dr Constantine, teeth bared around a hissing whisper. ‘Will you two shut up?’

‘… Charlie went missing sometime between half eleven last night and six this morning. He’s only five, so keep your eyes peeled. He’s run away twice before, but his mum’s still frantic. Best efforts, people.’

I stared back at Huntly until he licked his lips and looked away. Sat back in his seat.

Should think so too.

I leaned into Alice again. ‘But we searched his house anyway. Came up with a stash of child pornography and an unlicensed firearm. I think he’s on life-support now — someone cracked his head open on a washing machine in the prison laundry.’

‘… but not least: lookout request for one Eddie Barron. He’s got form for GBH and assault with a deadly, so don’t say I never warned you…’

On the other side of Alice, Dr Constantine sat up. ‘Oh-ho, here we go.’

At the front of the room, the duty sergeant brought things to a close. ‘Right, if you’re not on Operation Tigerbalm, you’re excused.’ He held up a sheet of paper with ‘HAVE YOU SEEN CHARLIE?’ in big letters above a photo of a wee dark-haired kid — sticky-out ears, a squint smile, and a face full of freckles. ‘Pick up one of these, then get your backsides out there and catch some villains.’

Half the room shuffled out, Uniform and CID moaning about being told to sod off, bragging about their weekends, or muttering dark curses about having to support Aberdeen or Dundee now the Warriors were gone. The duty sergeant marched after them, arms full of paperwork.

Detective Superintendent Ness took the floor. ‘Someone get the lights.’

A couple of clicks and gloom settled into the room. Then Ness pointed a remote at the projector mounted on the ceiling, and two photos appeared on the screen behind her. The one on the left was a painfully pale woman on the beach at Aberdeen, grinning away in a green bikini and goose pimples. The other was the same woman, curled on her side in a thicket of brambles. Her white nightgown had got caught up on their barbed-wire coils — riding up to show off the purple slash across her belly. The wound’s sides held together with crude black stitches over the distended skin.

‘Doreen Appleton, twenty-two, the Inside Man’s first victim. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary.’

Ness jabbed the remote again. Doreen Appleton was replaced by a happy brunette in a wedding dress, and the same woman lying flat on her back in a lay-by. She was dressed in a similar white nightdress to the first victim, the fabric stained with blood all across her swollen abdomen. ‘Tara McNab, twenty-four. Victim number two. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary. Someone called nine-nine-nine from a public phonebox a mile from where she was found…’

Click, then a hissing old-fashioned audio-tape noise, and a man’s voice filled the room, clipped and professional. ‘Emergency Services, which service do you require?’

The woman who answered sounded as if she’d been caught in the middle of a two-day bender, the words thick and slurred. Distorted. ‘A woman’s been … been dumped in a lay-by, one … one point three miles south of Shortstaine Garden Centre on the Brechin Road. She’s…’ A small catch in her voice, as if she was holding back a sob. ‘She’s not moving. If you … hurry, you can save her. She’s, very weak, possible internal bleeding… Oh God… Blood type: B-positive. Hurry, please…’

‘Hello? Can you tell me your name? Hello?’

Silence.

‘Sodding hell.’ A scrunching noise, as if the controller had put a hand over the microphone on the headset, muffling his voice. ‘Garry? You won’t believe what I’ve just-’

Ness held the remote up. ‘Ambulance crew arrived fifteen minutes later, but she was dead when they got there. Audio analysis showed that the voice on the nine-nine-nine call was hers.’

One of the Specialist Crime Division team stuck his hand up. ‘She made the call herself?’

There was a pause, then Ness pulled her brows down, bit her lips together. Closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Does anyone want to take that?’

Professor Huntly laughed. ‘How, exactly, do you imagine a woman with extensive blood loss and internal trauma managed to make a call from a public phone box, then walk a mile to the bus stop where she was found? It was obviously taped prior to her being dumped there. He drugs them, then makes them record their own SOS before he cuts them open.’

The guy from SCD put his hand down. Cleared his throat. Fidgeted. ‘Perfectly valid question…’

Ness pointed at the photo of Tara’s body. ‘Original investigation tracked down the nightdresses: all from a stall down at Heading Hollows Market. Three for a fiver. The stallholder had no idea who he’d sold them to or when.’

She pressed the remote and victim number two was replaced by a sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad. Blue ink scrawled along the lines, the handwriting barely legible. ‘Two days after Tara McNab’s body turned up, this letter was delivered to Michael Slosser at the Castle News and Post. In it the writer complains about the papers calling him “the Caledonian Ripper”, says there’ll be more bodies to come, claims the police are powerless to stop him, and signs off as “the Inside Man”.’ She raised the remote again. ‘Next.’

Victim three appeared. Her caramel skin was thick with bruises across one side, her slack face staring up from a ditch, both arms up above her head, one leg twisted to the side. She’d been dressed in another white nightdress, torn on one side and drenched almost black with blood. In the other photo she was frozen at what looked like a birthday party, laughing, her red silk dress swung out as she danced. ‘Holly Drummond, twenty-six. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary. Emergency Services got the pre-recorded nine-nine-nine call at half-two in the morning. Voice was the victim’s. She was pronounced dead at the scene.’

Holly Drummond was replaced on the screen by another sheet from a legal pad. ‘This arrived at the paper the day we found her body. He’s getting into his stride now: telling us all about how powerful and clever he is, and how we’ll never catch him. From here on, all the letters are much the same.’

Victim four was a large woman in a strapless dress and mortarboard. Then face down at the bottom of a railway culvert, her nightdress scrunched up around her waist, pale buttocks on show. Skin flecked with green and black. ‘Natalie May, twenty-two. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary. No call this time. She was found by a railway maintenance team who were out replacing a section of cabling.’

Click, and another letter filled the screen. ‘It complains that she was, and I quote, “not pure enough to receive his bounty”.’

Pause.

The screen went black. ‘And then we got lucky.’

Laura Strachan’s broad smiling face appeared, freckles glowing on her nose and cheeks, a Ferris wheel in the background. The other photo was her being lifted into the back of an ambulance, face slack and waxy, freckles partially obscured by an oxygen mask.

Ness pointed at the picture. ‘Our first survivor. Call was made from a public phone in Blackwall Hill. They had to start her heart twice on the way to the hospital and she came this close,’ Ness pinched two fingers together, ‘to bleeding out, but they saved her.’

Ness clicked the remote again and Marie Jordan’s face filled half of the screen. On the other side she lay in a hospital bed, wires and tubes connecting her to about half-a-dozen bits of machinery. ‘Marie Jordan, twenty-three, nurse. Another pre-recorded call. Found wrapped in a sheet just off the road in Moncuir Wood. There was a bit of brain damage caused by hypoxia and blood-loss, but she lived. The letter compliments her on being a “good girl”.’

Pause.

‘Final victim.’ Click. And there was Ruth Laughlin, sitting on a stationary bicycle in her shorts and sweaty T-shirt, both hands up as if she was crossing the finishing line. A circle of people cheered in the background, beneath a ‘TURNING MILES INTO SMILES!!!’ banner. Must have been taken the day she took care of me.

The day I let the Inside Man get away.

‘Ruth Laughlin, twenty-five, paediatric nurse. No call this time because he didn’t make it past the initial incisions. Far as we can tell he was disturbed during the operation, ran off and left her to die.’

All because she stopped to help me.