A Song for the Dying

51

Jacobson peered at the map, leaning on the bar with one hand while he traced a finger around a red-biro circle. ‘And this source of yours is sure?’

I shook my head. ‘A hundred percent? No. But he’s come through in the past. If he says he’s seen Docherty going in and out of there, it’s got to be worth a try, isn’t it?’ My finger poked at the map, just south of Shortstaine. ‘Think about it. Secluded, easy access to the dual carriageway, all paid in cash, no ID needed.’

Rhona’s forehead creased. ‘But, Guv, we-’

‘I know: you think you should tell Detective Superintendent Ness first, but it’s Jacobson’s call. He’s senior officer on the ground.’ I gave him a nod. ‘Boss?’

He looked around the room. ‘Everyone, get the car. We’re going on a field trip.’

Huntly groaned. ‘But it’s all just hearsay. He hasn’t got any evidence and my pizza’s getting cold and-’

‘Then take it with you.’ Jacobson pointed at the door. ‘If there’s any chance of rescuing Docherty’s victims, we’re doing it. Car. Now.’

Another groan, then Huntly slipped two tins of ready-mixed gin and tonic into his pockets.

‘But…’ Rhona stared at me. ‘We-’

‘You’re right.’ I patted her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll only slow them down.’ Then waggled my cane at Jacobson. ‘You lot go ahead. Alice, Rhona, and I can get started on the debriefing strategy.’

Jacobson beamed at me. ‘I knew you’d be a great addition to the team, Ash.’ And then they piled out through the pub doors, leaving the three of us behind.

Pause.

Two.

Three.

Rhona scrunched up her face. ‘But we checked the caravan park. Other than a couple of disused lots, they’re all accounted for. Docherty didn’t rent any of them.’

Four.

Five.

Six.

I pointed Alice towards the door. ‘Go make sure they’ve gone.’

She was back ten seconds later. ‘Jessica, Ruth, and Laura aren’t at the caravan park, are they?’

‘Get the car.’

Rhona pulled the Suzuki in to the kerb, hands skittering back and forth on the wheel, as if it was red-hot and she was scared of getting her fingers burned. ‘Err… Guv, I really think we should’ve told the boss about this…’

Lights shone in the windows of the houses — happy families and venetian blinds all shut up for the night. Only a week after Bonfire Night and some silly sod had a Christmas tree up already.

The shops on the other side of the road sulked beneath the streetlights: a butcher’s, a grocer’s, and a vet’s. Their boarded-up windows still plastered with posters for the ghost of circus past. Every bit as abandoned as they had been when we’d driven past on Monday.

I undid my seatbelt. ‘I’d love to call it in, but I can’t get a mobile signal. Can you, Alice?’

She pulled out her phone. Frowned at it. ‘I’m getting four bars, maybe your…’ And then her face opened up. ‘Ah, right. No, I’m not getting anything. Must be one of those black spots.’

‘Exactly.’ I popped the door handle. ‘Besides, if we go in mob-handed someone’s going to end up dead.’ And God knows there’d been enough of that.

Rhona sat forward, rested her head against the steering wheel. ‘This is, way above my pay grade. What if something happens?’

I climbed out into the rain. ‘Then you’ll be a hero, won’t you?’ Water seeped through my hair as I limped around the car and got the crowbar from the boot. Then used it as a cane to hobble across the road.

‘Ash, wait, wait, wait…’ Alice clambered out of the back seat and scurried up beside me, clutching my other arm, umbrella thrumming above our heads. ‘Don’t we need that little battering-ram thingie, I mean he’s not just going to leave them there with the door unlocked, is he, that would be reckless, they might get out…’ A frown. ‘Or someone might get in, which I suppose would be us, are we going in?’

It wasn’t just the shop windows that were boarded over with chipboard, the doors were too. ‘You stay behind me, understand?’

Rhona caught up.

She stared up at the building, water dripping from the ends of her hair, darkening the grey of her suit. ‘Do we try to kick it in, or go round the back?’

I hobbled onwards. ‘We go round the back.’

An alley led down the rear of the shops, the entrance sealed off with a length of chain bolted to the wall on one side and padlocked on the other. I ducked under it, waited for Alice, then stopped.

A small van sat behind the vet’s — dented and rusted. Reversed in so the back doors faced the building, the lettering for a carpet fitters still visible where the vinyl lettering had been peeled away. I pointed. ‘Rhona? Number plate.’

‘Guv.’ She pulled an Airwave handset from her jacket. ‘Sierra Oscar Four-Forty to Control, I need a vehicle check on a grey Ford Escort van…’

I stuck out my hand. ‘Alice, got any gloves? Used all mine.’

She passed me a pair of purple nitrile gloves and I snapped them on. Tried the van’s back doors. Locked. The rear windows were painted over from the inside.

The back door to the vet’s was locked too.

Rhona was back. ‘Your van was officially scrapped three years ago. Last registered to a Kenny James, deceased.’

Figured.

I wedged the crowbar’s hook into the gap between the wooden door and the frame.

Rhona shifted her feet. ‘Guv, don’t we need a warrant?’

One hard shove and the wood cracked and splintered around the lock. One more and it gave way with a pop. ‘It was like this when we found it. Wasn’t it, Alice?’

A nod. ‘Must’ve been vandals.’

That’s my girl.

Inside was a bare room with a raised area off to one side. Dark.

Music coiled out through the opened door — something upbeat and poppy, with lots of snare drums — followed by a sharp whiff of pine disinfectant and bleach, underpinned with dirty mildew.

The crowbar’s tip crunched against the painted floor as I limped over the threshold.

Light seeped under a door ahead, but this one wasn’t locked. The handle clicked in my hands. I pushed it open and the music got louder.

It was a wide corridor, with a wall of cages on one side — some small enough for a cat, others big enough for a deer hound. One was occupied.

Alice wrapped her hands around my arm and squeezed. ‘Is she dead?’

Laura Strachan lay on her side in the biggest cage, curled up in a ball, elbows resting against the swell of her pregnant stomach. Fiery red hair hung limp across her face. Her wrists were held together by a thick band of silver duct-tape, ankles too. A strip across her mouth for a gag.

Rhona groaned. ‘Sodding hell…’

Alice knelt in front of the cage, reached a finger through the wire grille and poked her on the forehead.

Laura’s eyes snapped open. ‘Mmmmmmnnnnghghnnnph!’

Alice scrabbled backwards, landed on her backside and kept going till she hit the wall, eyes wide. Then a trembling breath, and she was back in front of the cage again. ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, are you OK, I mean obviously you’re not OK, but it’s all right we’re here and you’re safe and don’t worry we’ll get you out of here.’ She reached for the hasp holding the door shut.

I grabbed her hand. ‘No.’

‘But-’

‘And keep your voice down.’

Rhona squeezed forwards. ‘Are you mad, we need to get this woman to-’

‘Shhh…’ I pointed at Alice, kept my voice low. ‘Stay with her. Wait five minutes, then get her out the back. Quietly.’ I peered into the cage.

Laura Strachan glowered back at me, mouth working behind the gag. ‘Nnnnngh mnnnf gnnn, ynnnnn ffgggnnnnr!’

‘I’m sorry, but you’re safe. Now stop making a bloody racket, before the whole world hears you.’

‘Bloody hell…’ Rhona fumbled her Airwave handset out again. ‘I’ll call it in.’

‘Do it outside, and tell them if I hear sirens I’m going to ram my crowbar down their throats. Understand? Silent running.’

Four doors led off the corridor ahead. I tried the first one: empty store cupboard.

‘Guv?’ Rhona grabbed me, her voice a harsh whisper. ‘Maybe we should wait for them to get here. What if Docherty’s accomplice turns violent? What if they kill Jessica McFee?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with Docherty. He’s a dirty raping bastard, but he’s not the Inside Man.’ Door number two: a bare room with a work surface and floor units down one wall.

Now it was Alice’s turn. ‘What do you mean, he’s not…’ Her eyes widened. ‘Oh… Right.’

The next door opened onto a small reception area. With the windows boarded up, the only light in the room came from the corridor behind me. A chair lurked in the gloom behind the desk, a twirly display stand rusted in one corner, a crumpled pile of plastic sheeting slumped in the middle of the floor.

That left door number four.

I gave Alice a poke. ‘I told you to stay with Laura, remember?’

She blinked at me. ‘But I want to stay with you.’

Of course she did.

I glanced back down the corridor, towards the cages. Laura had managed to wriggle onto her hands and knees, still duct-taped together. I put a finger to my lips.

She glared back.

Right: door number four.

The music got louder as I eased the door open a crack. Then reached a happy-clappy finale and stopped.

‘Isn’t that great? I love that. Anyway, you’re listening to Castlewave FM, I’m Mhairi Rimmington, this is the Evening Show. Remember, the lines are open and we’re talking about the shocking news that TV’s Dr Frederic Docherty has been arrested for sexual assault. But first, it’s Colin with the weather…’

I pushed, and the door swung open.

A wheeled table, like a porter’s trolley, sat in the middle of the room, beneath an array of blinding lights.

‘… bit of sunshine for a change?’

Took a couple of blinks to get the room into focus.

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Mhairi, but it looks as if this area of high pressure’s with us till the weekend.’

A woman lay on top of the trolley — the breathing mask over her nose and mouth hooked up to a canister on the floor. She was flat on her back with one towel draped over her thighs and upper legs, and another over her breasts. The stomach in between was distended. Lumpen. Smeared with orange iodine. A line of puckered skin ran across her torso, just below the ribs, another straight down the middle. Both were held together with black stitches, the knots like tiny bugs, frozen on her skin.

Too late.

‘But that’s all set to change on Saturday — we’ve got freezing arctic air on the way, that’ll ramp the temperatures right down and we might even see a touch of snow on the hills…’

The only other person in the room stood with their back to the door, washing their hands in a stainless-steel sink. Green hospital scrubs, white clogs, surgical cap covering their dirty blonde hair.

‘Urgh, that sounds horrid, Colin. So, let’s cheer ourselves up a bit with REM and “Shiny Happy People”…’

I stepped into the room. Reached out and clicked the radio off.

The person standing by the sink stiffened. Then finished up. Dried their hands and turned. Stared at me.

‘Hello, Ruth.’

Silence.

Then the bells of the First National Celtic Church rang out the quarter hour. One bar of four notes, peeling out from the jagged blood-coloured spire. Just like on the audio files. God’s ringtone.

She licked her lips. ‘You can’t come in here, it’s a sterile environment.’

I limped forward anyway, circling the operating table. ‘Is she…?’

Ruth’s hand crept out — the fingers wrapped themselves around a scalpel’s handle. She frowned. ‘I…’ Bit her bottom lip. ‘I told you they should’ve let me die.’

‘I finally figured out what was bugging me about the footage of you on the bike. The timestamp on the clip said twelve-past-two. Over an hour after I staggered in covered in blood. You were dripping with sweat, but you hadn’t even been on the bike by then, had you? You were sweaty from running away. You lied to me.’

‘I saved you.’

Alice inched in through the doorway. ‘It’s all right, Ruth. You’re safe, remember?’ Her voice dropped in tone and volume. ‘Warm and safe, and everything’s all right and you’re comfortable and safe…’

I waved her back. ‘What did you do, dump the tracksuit in the bin? Stuff it in someone’s backpack? Hide it in the toilets?’ Another step. Getting closer. ‘And who else knew where Laura Strachan lived? You did — we took you there. And she wouldn’t see you as threatening, would she? Just an old friend, another one of the Inside Man’s victims.’

‘I told you…’ The scalpel came up, gleaming in the bright lights.

‘You worked at the hospital, had access to drugs, knew all the victims, and when they locked you up in the psychiatric wing the Inside Man stopped doing his thing.’

‘They should’ve let me die.’

‘There’s us, looking all over the city for home-made operating theatres when you had a perfectly good one, right here, all along. Volunteering at the vet’s. That’s why you always dumped the bodies in the wee small hours — you had to wait till everyone else went home before you could operate.’

Clattering sounded in the corridor, then Rhona lurched into the room. ‘Backup’s on the way.’

Ruth pressed the tip of the scalpel against her own throat. Tears shone in her eyes, bright as the blade. ‘Don’t!’

A pause, then Rhona put the Airwave handset away. ‘OK, let’s not do anything stupid here…’

‘All I ever wanted was to be a mother. To have something of my own to love.’

My crowbar-walking-stick boomed down on the stainless-steel work surface, setting it ringing, leaving a dent in the metal. ‘THEN YOU SHOULD’VE GOT A BLOODY CAT!’

She flinched back, and a little bead of blood formed on the tip of the scalpel.

‘Ruth?’ Alice appeared on the other side of the operating table, hands out — palm up. ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to do this. Laura’s safe, and so are you, and there’s still time to get Jessica to hospital.’

‘I didn’t mean…’ She bit her bottom lip.

‘It’s OK. I understand. Shhh…’ Alice’s voice got lower and quieter again. ‘Warm and comfortable and safe.’

‘I just wanted a baby of my own.’

‘I need you to put the scalpel down. Can you do that for me, Ruth?’

Her other hand pressed against her stomach, following the line of hidden scar tissue. ‘A baby in my tummy…’

‘You put the scalpel down and we can sit and have a nice cup of tea — all warm and comfortable and safe — and you can tell me all about it.’

The hand holding the knife jerked out, blade stabbing at the operating room door. ‘Why did it work for her? Why didn’t it work for me? I practised. It should’ve worked…’

‘Wouldn’t you like that, Ruth? To finally tell someone everything? So it’s not just you any more?’

‘By rights, that’s my baby. Mine. I made it. I put it in her tummy. It belongs to me.’ Her chest swelled as she dragged in a huge breath. ‘THAT’S MY BABY, YOU BITCH!’

‘Shhh… Just put the scalpel down. Everything will be OK, you’ll see.’

Ruth’s hand trembled. She let it fall to her side. ‘It’s my baby…’

‘I know.’ Alice nodded. Smiled. ‘But it’s over now. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you.’

She put the scalpel down on the work surface. ‘Mine.’

I gave the nod and Rhona pulled out a pair of cuffs. ‘Ruth Laughlin, I’m arresting you for the abduction of Laura Strachan and Jessica McFee…’

Thursday