A Song for the Dying

28

Alice pulled her shoulders up to her ears, and turned her back to the wind. Brown curls lashed and writhed around her head like angry snakes. ‘But I’m not hungry…’

The Old Castle visitor centre was shut, but Manky Ralph’s — a dirt-streaked catering trailer with four flat tyres — squatted in the corner of the car park. Better than nothing. And besides, the food wasn’t the reason most people handed over their money.

‘I don’t care.’ I held out two napkin-wrapped parcels and a polystyrene container of hot, sweet tea. ‘Eat those and drink that.’

‘But-’

‘This isn’t a discussion. Come on, you need breakfast. You’ll feel better afterwards.’

She puffed out a breath and took one of the butties. Unwrapped it. Pulled a face. Then took a bite. A small smile. ‘Chips.’

‘See?’ I ripped into my sausage and onion, chewing as we wandered into the ruins.

This part was a collection of waist-high lines of crumbling masonry. Further in there were fire pits, an ice cave, and a staircase to nowhere. And, right at the very back, what was left of a three-storey tower. All of it washed in the golden glare of early morning light, glowing against the coal-dark sky.

We huddled in the lee of a section of battlement, a narrow arrow slit giving views out, down the cliff, past Dundas House, the river, and back towards the Wynd where Paul Manson was working out his last day on earth.

Alice finished the chip buttie, then creaked the lid off her tea, sipping as the steam was yanked away by the wind. She leaned against the wall. Kept her eyes on her little red shoes. ‘I’m scared…’

The small, clear, plastic bag Manky Ralph sold me barely weighed a thing. Sat in the palm of my hand like it wasn’t really there. I held it out. ‘Here.’

She peered at it. ‘Pills?’

‘You told Dr Dimwit at the hospital he should get Marie Jordan on some MDMA trial in Aberdeen.’

Alice picked the tiny bag from my hand and held it up. Half a dozen pink heart-shaped pills nestled against each other in the bottom. ‘You bought Ecstasy for me?’

‘You know, for … taking your amygdala down a notch.’

A smile. She reached out and squeezed my arm. ‘No one’s ever bought me chips and drugs before.’ Alice slipped the pills into her pocket. Then her face sagged. ‘But we need to talk about David.’

‘I told you: he’ll be OK.’

She peeled the napkin back from her second buttie — bacon this time. ‘I mean it doesn’t make any sense to kill Paul Manson, if we do-’

‘You’re not killing anyone. You’re not responsible for what happens. And if it wasn’t for these bloody ankle monitors I’d make damn sure you had nothing to do with it.’ Seagulls soared above the Bellows, dipping and wheeling over the hollow shells of the old sanatorium, cast adrift on their island in the middle of the river. ‘But there’s not a lot we can do about that now.’

She shuddered. ‘If it wasn’t for the ankle monitors Mrs Kerrigan would’ve taken me for a hostage instead of David.’

Perhaps they weren’t so bad after all.

Alice peered up at me. ‘You always knew it’d come to this, didn’t you? That’s why you were talking about running away to Australia…’ Her eyes dropped. ‘I should’ve guessed, shouldn’t I? I mean, what else was going to happen?’

‘I’m sorry.’

Wind whipped her hair around her face and she pushed it back, twisted it into a rope with one hand. ‘Can’t we … I don’t know. Can’t we do something?’

‘So everyone lives happily ever after?’

‘Please?’

Off in the distance, a wee child scrambled over a pile of crumbled masonry. A young woman in a chunky jumper stumbled after her. ‘Not too far, Catherine, be good for Mummy!’

I leaned back against the ramparts, closed my eyes. ‘She wants Manson dead, and if I don’t deliver him she’s going to kill Shifty. And then what? What if she tries to hurt you?’

‘It doesn’t matter if he’s a mob accountant or not, we can’t-’

‘I know, OK? I know.’ A weight settled inside my chest, crushing me towards the ground. ‘If I do this, she’s got me connected to a murder. Doesn’t matter how much money I pay back, I’ll never get out of her pocket. She’ll own me.’

‘Then what are we-’

‘Eat your bacon.’

‘I’ll just be a minute…’ Alice unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out into the windy morning, leaving me sitting in the passenger seat. The Suzuki’s hazard lights clicked on and off, two wheels up on the pavement, the others straddling the double yellows outside the tiny convenience store on John’s Lane: ‘JUSTIN’S TWENTY-FOUR-SEVEN ~ LICENSED GROCER (FOR ALL YOUR SHOPPING NEEDS)’.

The stolen Jag was stashed in the old multi-storey car park on Floyd Street, behind the Tollgate Shopping Centre. The one with no security cameras. Where it could stay until it was time to collect Paul Manson.

I turned on the car radio and Kate Bush filled the speakers, wanting to make a deal with God.

If only it was that easy.

A newspaper billboard sat on the pavement outside the shop: ‘HUNT CONTINUES FOR MISSING FIVE-YEAR-OLD’. Another declared: ‘THIS FRIDAY’S EUROMILLIONS JACKPOT IS £89,000,000’. And a third: ‘INSIDE MAN SNATCHES MIDWIFE — EXCLUSIVE!’ Posters in the window advertised French lessons, missing cats, and bicycles for sale.

Normality.

No one getting tied to a chair, tortured, and their eye gouged out.

No one being bundled into the boot of a stolen Jaguar and driven out to the woods and murdered.

Bob the Builder grinned at me from the back seat.

What choice did I have?

‘And that was little Katey Booooosh, busting those clouds for her dear old dad. Well, it’s a smidgeon after half eight, and you know what that means…’ Klaxons, honking, a choir singing ‘Hallelujah’ in the background. ‘Another heeeeee-larious wind-up call!’

Prick.

I turned ‘Sensational’ Steve down and got on the phone to Sabir instead. Listened to it ring. And ring. And ring.

When he finally picked up he sounded as if he’d just run a marathon — puffing, panting, wheezing. ‘What the bleeding hell do you want?’

‘What’s happening with the HOLMES data?’

‘It’s not even nine yet! I was in me bed.’

‘In bed? Then what’s with all the heavy breathing…?’ Oh. ‘Never mind. What about HOLMES?’

‘Are you kidding me? I’m in the middle of-’

‘If it was that important, you wouldn’t have answered the phone. What did you find?’

‘You used to be less of a tit, you know that, don’t you?’ Some rustling. Then a groan. What sounded like a hand over the mouthpiece, muffling his voice. ‘Sorry, got to take this.’ More rustling. A clunk. And he was back again. ‘Your mam says hello, by the way.’

‘She’s still dead, Sabir.’

‘Thought she wasn’t moving about much.’ More clunking. ‘Your HOLMES data’s a right mess, whoever managed that lot needs taking out and spanking. I’m having to go through the whole lot and reindex it. You got any idea how much of a pain in the plums that is?’

‘Did you run the telephone numbers against it?’

‘Course I did. Had to hack the database to do it, but I did it.’

Silence.

‘And?’

‘More chance of a three-way in a penguin house. Nothing came up. When I get the data sorted I’ll run the names and addresses too. Not surprised you didn’t get the bugger eight years ago: the bell-end who stuck this lot together couldn’t have done a worse job if they tried. Crap in, crap out.’

The shop door opened, and Alice lurched into the wind, a carrier-bag in one hand, a bar of chocolate in the other.

‘Think it was deliberate?’

Sabir made sooking noises for a moment. ‘Dunno. It’s properly rank though.’

‘See if you can find out who did it.’

Alice climbed in behind the wheel, bringing a rush of cold air with her. ‘Sorry. Took a little longer than I thought.’ She reached back between the seats and dumped her carrier-bag on the floor of the footwell. It clinked.

I peered into the back. The label from a half-bottle of Grouse was just visible through the thin plastic bag.

‘How did you manage to buy booze at half eight in the morning? That’s not even legal.’

Alice turned the engine over. ‘I can be quite persuasive when I need to be.’

On the other end of the phone, Sabir coughed. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’m not done banging your mam yet.’

The sign outside Force Headquarters didn’t say ‘OLDCASTLE POLICE’ any more, now it was ‘POLICE SCOTLAND ~ OLDCASTLE DIVISION’. They’d even ditched the crest for some bland corporate saltire thing.

Shame they hadn’t ditched the building. The large Victorian red-brick wart blemished the street’s sandstone skin — its narrow windows dark and barred, as if it was expecting a siege. Just as well, because one had arrived.

A clan of reporters and camera crews hung around the front doors, smoking and joking, waiting to pounce and tear someone to shreds. Feast on their bones.

One of them looked up as we climbed the stairs, a heavy Nikon hanging around his neck, little brown cigarillo clamped between two fingers. ‘Oy! You two got anything to do with the Inside Man?’

I gave him a big theatrical shrug. ‘Someone broke into our shed and nicked the lawnmower.’

‘Pity…’ He took a couple of photos anyway, then went back to waiting.

I held the door open and Alice slipped past me into reception, carrier-bag clinking against her thigh.

Black-and-white tiles made the room look more like a train-station toilet than somewhere to report a crime. At least it was easy to hose the vomit and blood off the floor…

A raptor-thin man sat behind the desk and a slab of bullet-proof glass. The hair on his head was a close-cropped grey, about half as short as his bushy black eyebrows. Sergeant Peters puckered his mouth, narrowed his eyes. ‘How come you didn’t come in round the back?’

‘Wouldn’t give me the new access code.’

‘Hmph. Tossers.’ He nodded at Alice. ‘Pardon my French, like.’ Back to me. ‘You want us to call someone?’

‘Actually,’ Alice stepped forward, ‘I’m here to see Dr Frederic Docherty, it’s Dr McDonald, well, I’m Dr McDonald, not him, I realized that would sound a bit confusing as I was saying it, but you can call me Alice.’

Peters raised a thick eyebrow. ‘Right… I’ll just do that. What about you, Guv?’

‘Archives.’

He slammed the visitors’ book down on the counter. ‘Right, sign in, I’ll knock you up a pass, keycode is three-seven-nine-nine-one. And you can tell the tossers upstairs they can stick their bloody job if they don’t like it.’ He grumbled over to the computer and battered the keyboard into submission with two-fingered hate. ‘Like it’s my fault I can’t work nights. Don’t see them looking after a sixty-year-old bedridden woman with cancer…’

‘Ah, Dr … McDonald, isn’t it?’ Frederic Docherty half rose from his seat and gestured towards the other side of the conference table. Another sharp suit, this time with a bright blue shirt and white tie. ‘Please, do sit. And will your friend be joining us?’ He looked at me.

I didn’t move. ‘Better things to do.’

‘I see.’

Alice put her carrier bag down on the tabletop, then sat. Pulled out a half-bottle of Grouse and cracked open the top. ‘Would you like one?’

‘Ah…’ He lowered himself back into his seat. ‘Let me guess: you’ve worked with Henry Forrester, haven’t you? He was a big believer in the empathic-slash-cognitive-enhancing power of caffeine and whisky.’

She poured a glug into her mug. ‘Two years ago, we were hunting a serial killer. I … was the one who found Henry’s body in the hotel.’

Docherty’s face pinched, as if something sharp had just burrowed its way beneath his skin. ‘He was a good man. A good mentor. When I heard he’d died…’ A sigh. ‘That must have been horrible for you.’

Alice knocked back a mouthful of laced coffee, then dipped into her satchel and came out with the Inside Man letters, all six of them covered in highlighter strokes and red biro squiggles. She laid them out on the table top. ‘I’ve been analysing the form and content and I think we need to revisit the profile. The Inside Man-’

‘If you want to talk about it, I’ve done a considerable amount of work with bereaved families.’

She added another slug of Grouse to her mug. ‘The language used, the imagery, it’s all heightened, salacious, like he wants us to be there with him. That doesn’t match someone-’

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. When Henry died, it took me months to work through my feelings with my therapist. We’d been very close. It’s-’

‘-kind of background in the profile, so we need to go back and-’

‘-be highly beneficial to your on-going emotional health.’

I left them to it.