A Song for the Dying

49

Rain crackled against the window. Outside, on the street below, a man slogged past, baseball cap pulled low, shoulders hunched against the onslaught. He didn’t stop. Didn’t look across the road at the Postman’s Head.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t watching it.

The sound of a TV news bulletin oozed up from the bar downstairs.

If anything, it made the silence in the manager’s flat even thicker. Nearly all the furniture was gone, leaving a small table, two wooden chairs — that looked as if they’d been liberated from the pub — and a cracked mirror above the bathroom sink. A broken chest of drawers in the bedroom. An ancient fitted kitchen with no cooker or fridge, just grey tidelines of dust and grease to mark their passing.

I went back to my phone. ‘And?’

On the other end, Noel Maxwell huffed out a breath. ‘Still off her face on morphine and sedatives.’

The guy in the baseball cap kept going, until the night swallowed him.

‘She had any visitors?’

‘Couple of heavies been in since nine this morning. Scary, scary blokes all covered in bruises. One of them’s got his head bandaged up like a mummy, the other’s on crutches.’

That would be Joseph and Francis.

Noel cleared his throat. ‘Listen, about Boxer, you didn’t tell anyone I clyped on him, did you? Cause if the guys find out-’

‘When they releasing her?’

‘-reputation and they’ll kick the crap out of me too.’

God’s sake. ‘I didn’t tell anyone, OK? Now when are they letting Mrs Kerrigan out of hospital?’

‘Not today. Probably not tomorrow either. You know what it’s like up there on the private floor — place is a sodding hotel. Fine dining, wine, and all the drugs you want, who’d leave?’

So twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight before she came looking for us… Of course, she’d want to be there in person to rip out our teeth with pliers, but there was nothing to stop her getting a few of her dogs to grab Alice and me off the street any time she wanted. Keep us somewhere cold, dark, and painful until she was ready to play.

Outside, there was no sign of the guy in the hat making another pass.

‘Hello?’

I blinked. Looked down at the phone. ‘Thanks, Noel.’

‘Hey, no probs. What are friends-’

I hung up.

‘Ash?’ Alice stood in the doorway to the living room, tumbler in one hand, pint glass in the other. She scuffed her way across the floorboards and held the pint out. ‘I got you a Coke.’

‘Thanks.’ Cold and brown and sweet and fizzy. And somehow it still managed to taste of death.

‘So… We’re ordering pizza, do you want something specific, or do you just want one of those mixed jobs, and what are you doing up here?’

I turned my back on the window. ‘Nothing. Just getting some air. Thinking about Shifty.’

She peered at the case files spread out on the rickety table. Victims and deposition sites. Post-mortem results and statements.

‘You should come down for a bit. Try to switch off for ten minutes.’

A sliver of varnish peeled away beneath my fingernail, leaving a streak of pale wood on the head of my cane. ‘He’s my friend. And he’s only in trouble because… The only reason she did that to him, is because of me. I screwed up, Alice. I should’ve killed her when I had the chance.’

‘You can’t-’

‘If I had, Parker would still be alive. Shifty would be safe.’ And I wouldn’t have spent two years in prison. I could have gone to my little girls’ funeral. I wouldn’t be stood at the window, waiting for the dogs to come.

Well, I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

Alice put a hand on my arm. ‘You think she’s going to come after us, don’t you? Mrs Kerrigan.’

Force a smile. Lie. ‘No. Don’t be daft: she’ll be after Wee Free. We didn’t lay a finger on her, did we? It was all him.’

Alice blinked at me. Tried to hide a sigh. Then nodded. ‘You need to take a break. Prolonged periods of concentration deplete the mind’s ability to process new information and make connections. Take fifteen minutes. Come downstairs and argue with Professor Huntly, or tease Constable Cooper. Or just hang about watching TV till the pizza gets here.’ She reached up and tapped a finger against my forehead. ‘Let the little grey cells percolate away on their own for a bit, and maybe they’ll have something for you when you come back.’

Well, it wasn’t as if I was getting anywhere here.

I followed her down the crooked wooden stairs to the pub kitchen — all dusty stainless steel and the ghost of chip fat — then through the door and into the bar. The wall-mounted TV was playing News 24: a fat bald bloke in a suit refusing to answer whatever question the woman in the studio had asked. ‘… if you’ll let me finish, I think you’ll find that under the last government, the financial-’

I picked the remote off the bar and killed the sound.

Jacobson stood in front of the whiteboard, glass of red in one hand, pen in the other, drawing boxes and lines, filling them with dense blocks of tiny letters.

Dr Constantine sat at the bar, with a bottle of cider and a packet of Monster Munch, leafing her way through a stack of post-mortem photographs. She glanced up at me, then grimaced. ‘They did rape kits on the dead victims, but there’s no sign of semen or alien pubic hair in the combings. No sign of vaginal bruising either. Nothing we can use to nail Docherty.’

Huntly and Cooper were in their separate corners, still hunched over their respective laptops. Huntly looking almost suicidal with a tin of pre-mixed gin-and-tonic.

He took a sip. ‘Can we please not discuss vaginal bruising? Some of us are trying to concentrate…’

While Alice sorted out the pizza order, I joined Jacobson at the whiteboard. It was covered in case names and reference numbers, all linked to a box in the middle, with ‘DR FREDERIC DOCHERTY’ printed inside it.

Jacobson gave a small grunt. ‘He’s been working as a police adviser for eight years. Eight years of rapes and murders and abductions and missing persons… How many of them was he responsible for?’

‘Waterboarding doesn’t leave any marks.’

A little smile tugged at his lips. ‘We’ve been over this.’

‘Just saying. We’d know where they were in fifteen minutes, half an hour, tops. No one would ever find out.’

‘Ah, the good old days…’

I skimmed the board again. ‘Got to be something we can do.’

Jacobson’s smile died. ‘Tell me about it.’

My phone vibrated — a new email. I opened it up.

Hoy, Jock-cop Tartan Boy.

Don’t say I’m never good to you: audio files from the pre-recorded 999 calls (attached). I’ve isolated all the girls’ voices and removed them, everything left is the background noise you asked for.

Got what sounds like a mobile phone on H-Drummond.wav @ 92sec and @ 46sec on M-Jordan.wav Really faint though. Don’t think it’s from the control room, so might be where the phonebox was, or where he recorded it in the first place.

Tried running the electronic buzz through the database, but nothing came back — probably cos it’s a recording of a phonecall of a recording. You got three layers of buzz all mooshed together.

L8R haggis-munchers,

Sabir Lord Of Teh Tech

p. s. your mam says Hi.

Alice stared at me. ‘Well?’

‘Sabir.’

A frown. ‘No: pizza. What do you want?’

‘Anything that doesn’t have pineapple. Or anchovies.’ I poked the icon for the attachments and nothing happened. Tried again. ‘Mushrooms are good.’ Still nothing. ‘Huntly, we got any more of those laptops?’

He sat back and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Nnnngh… You can have this one if you like. I’m beginning to suffer from ocular cuboidism. Complete waste of time, anyway. Docherty isn’t going to march about in plain sight, is he? No, he’ll be wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap. Hiding his identity. Avoiding the streets controlled by CCTV. He might be a vile serial scumbag, but he knows how the system works.’ Huntly clunked the laptop shut, then stuck one hand above his head and snapped his fingers. ‘Dr McDonald, be a pet and make sure mine has extra peperoni on it. And some jalapeños, I’m feeling spicy.’

Lucky us.

I disconnected the external hard drive and tucked the laptop under my arm. Warmth oozed through my sleeve and into my chest as I headed back through to the kitchen. Making for the stairs.

Huntly’s voice echoed out behind me, ‘You’re not exactly great company yourself!’

I called up Sabir’s email and played the audio files again.

Most of them were nothing but hiss, crackle and the occasional buzz. All but those two files — the ones Marie Jordan and Holly Drummond had been forced to record before Docherty slit them open.

Even with the laptop’s speakers turned up full pelt, it was barely discernible. Five or six seconds of a faint tune on M-Jordan.wav, nine on H-Drummond.wav. Too vague and fuzzy to be recognizable.

I logged in to the laptop’s video conferencing software, scrolled through the list of contacts and clicked on SABIR4TEHPOOL.

Thirty seconds later a round face peered out of the screen at me over the top of a pair of little round specs. His skin was the colour of ancient tarmac, the jowls rough with stubble. Bags under his eyes. Bald, with a tiny mouth for such a big head. He curled his lip. ‘You look like something out of a George Romero movie.’

‘Well, you look like the Teletubby they kept locked in the attic, in case it scared the kids.’

He leaned back — letting a little of the room leak onto the screen. ‘Flattery’s not your main strength, mate. What you after this time?’

‘That ringtone: did you try matching it to manufacturers?’

‘These days you can get anything your greasy little heart desires on your phone. Download it from iTunes, or your provider, or get some software off the net and rip it yourself.’

‘Yes, but it sounds pretty basic. Probably one of the default ones on an older handset.’

‘Pffff… It was eight years ago. They were all older handsets then. Hold on.’ He hunched forwards again, the clatter of fingers on keyboard crackling out of the laptop’s speakers. ‘Got something you’ll properly love, by the way. There.’

My phone vibrated — another email. I opened it up. Looked like a web address. ‘What’s this?’

‘Been off a-hacking in your local radio station’s servers, haven’t I? And guess what I found?’

‘What?’

‘Click on the link, you scone-head.’

I tried. Nothing.

‘It’s not working. How do I get it up on the laptop?’

‘God save us…’

Two minutes later and there was a window on the screen full of little video previews with nonsense filenames. People in white T-shirts and big grins.

‘It’s the fund raiser they had at that train station. Where you landed on your arse and the Inside Man legged it? They posted highlights on the website and that, but I had a geg and snooped out all the raw footage for youse.’

I hovered the mouse across the first file. ‘Did they get me on film?’

‘Nah. It’s all people dancing in their trainies, and having a pie-eating competition, and doing one of them stupid static-bike rides. Couple of fit judies in there though. You know: if you like them sweaty…’ A frown. ‘How come I can’t hear a party or anything?’

‘Because we-’

‘You caught the bastard, and you’re sitting there on your tod in the dark? You should be off filling your boots, mate. Then I could get back to climbing on top of your ma. She’s feeling frisky tonight.’

‘We can’t find Ruth, Jessica, or Laura.’ I tried a smile. ‘Don’t suppose you fancy doing a bit of digging and see if you can find any properties Docherty’s paying rent for, or bought under a false name or something? Go through his credit cards like you did Laura Strachan’s boyfriend? We’ve been looking for somewhere he could set up an operating theatre, but the guys up here don’t have your … unique talents.’

Sabir chewed on his bottom lip for a bit. ‘Give it a go, I suppose. Take a while though.’ More clicks from the keyboard.

I shrunk the window with him in it, selected the first video clip and set it playing. Laughter boomed from the speakers, tinny and distorted by the train station roof. I turned the volume down till it was almost non-existent.

A group of young men in Oldcastle Warriors tracksuits are cheering on an older man in a suit and tie as he rides the static bike. Poor sod looks ready to peg out. Didn’t he used to be the manager? The timestamp ticks over in the corner — 11:10:15, 11:10:16, 11:10:17…

‘Here, you thought about a van or something? Big Transit van. Strip out the load bay and you’d get a decent operating theatre in there. You could shift it about, park it up and do the business, then just drive off to the dump site. No sodding about.’ Sabir nodded, giving himself another three chins. ‘Better yet, want to make sure they’re still alive when the ambulance gets there? Do the surgery on site, drop the vic out the back, then drive away. Did youse lot check for tyreprints at the scenes?’

‘Nothing conclusive…’

Next clip. A group of little school kids dance to a Britney Spears number. All elbows and knees and cheesy grins for the camera. It keeps zooming in on one wee girl with dark pigtails and a smile that’s missing two front teeth. Lingering. As if the cameraman is auditioning for a role on the sex offenders’ register. 10:31:01, 10:31:02, 10:31:03…

‘Yeah, well, I’m getting the same from that ringtone. Just been running it through a dozen different filters and some military-grade algorithms I’m really not supposed to have. And it’s definitely polyphonic, but it’s that generic, it’s useless. Can download it from anywhere. Got hits from Nokia, Motorola, Sony, Siemens…’

The next clip is an interview with one of those local celebrities who’s famous for being on reality TV, and then completely forgotten about. Pretty certain he got done for soliciting and possession-with-intent a couple of years later. 15:18:42, 15:18:43, 15:18:44…

‘Case you’re interested, it’s called “Cambridge Quarters”.’

‘OK.’ I scribbled it down in my notebook, underlined it twice and stuck a couple of question marks on the end.

Next clip. A group of three young women grin for the camera, bouncing up and down in time to the music… They’re all nurses — that’s why they look familiar — Laura Strachan’s flatmates. Down to raise money in her name, while she’s in intensive care wired up to half a ton of machinery. 12:41:58, 12:41:59, 13:00:00…

‘You want anything else, or can I go back to giving your ma a good time? She’s pretty demanding. You know, sexually?’

‘Your own fault for digging her up. Should’ve left her where we buried her.’

The noise from the bar downstairs grew louder, as music replaced the drone of the TV.

Then creaking on the stairs, and Alice thumped in through the door. An extra-large whisky sloshed in one hand. ‘Ash? Pizza’s going to be here soon, you should… Oh, is that Sabir?’

She scuffed over to the laptop and hunched down in front of the screen. ‘Sabir!’ Took a sip of whisky, waving at the camera while she drank. ‘We’re having pizza. Are you having pizza? You should have pizza, I’ve not seen you forever, would you like a drink?’

He raised a can of something caffeinated to the monitor. ‘Alice. How’s me favourite Looney Tunes character then?’

She pouted. ‘You have to do the voice.’

‘Nyeaaaaaaah, what’s up, Doc?’

Next clip. More nurses cluster around the bicycle, cheering on a short woman who’s sweated through her T-shirt. Is that Jessica McFee’s flatmate? It is. A young Bethany Gillespie. Presumably before she married Jimmy the control-freak. 12:25:03, 12:25:04, 12:25:05…

I moved on to the next one while Alice and Sabir gossiped like a pair of auld wifies.

Another bicycle shot. This time there was no problem recognizing the rider. Ruth Laughlin hammered away at the pedals, surrounded by Jessica’s friends and colleagues. Sweat darkened her T-shirt, bare knees pumping, face glowing and dripping with sweat. 14:12:35, 14:12:36, 14:12:37…

Poor old Ruth. Hollowed out in a crummy flat in Cowskillin, flinching at her own shadow, terrorized by a bunch of snotty wee kids. Taking antidepressants and being spat at. Wishing the doctors had let her die.

And all because I turned up at the train station, covered in blood, and put her on Dr Frederic Docherty’s radar.

How did he get away? Did he hop the train, slip off at the first stop, and get a taxi back to town? Or just nip out of a side entrance to the station. Scurry away through the streets.

Did he go back to work afterwards or take the rest of the day off?

On screen they do a countdown. Ruth throws her hands in the air, grinning as they reach zero, the ‘TURN MILES INTO SMILES!!!’ banner fluttering behind her.

It was the same image Ness had put up at the briefing.

Did Docherty go to bed with a smile on his face that night? Outwitted the cops again. Made us look like morons. Scott free, with a new victim to target, just because she’d helped me.

And now he had her again, locked away somewhere, waiting to die. Her, and Jessica, and Laura. And it all came back to that one day, in the train station, when I let the bastard get away.