A Song for the Dying

7

We stopped off at the twenty-four hour Tesco in Logansferry, Alice scurrying away into the aisles to buy breakfast supplies while I headed for the electronics bit. One dirt-cheap mobile handset and three pay-as-you-go sim cards. All paid for out of the hundred-quid sub I’d got from Jacobson.

On the other side of the checkouts I dumped the phone’s packaging in the bin and tore open the cardboard and plastic entombing one of the sim cards. Popped it in. Clicked the cover back on. Powered it up and punched in Shifty’s number.

Listened to it ring as I limped out into the car park.

The snow hadn’t come to anything more than a thin crust of ice on the windscreens and a sheen of water on the salted tarmac.

A suspicious-sounding voice came on the line. ‘Hello? Who is this?’

‘How you getting on with that gun?’

‘God’s sake, Ash, I’m on it, OK? Give us a chance — not like I can just waltz down to the nearest ASDA and pick one up, is it?’

‘We’re going to need a car too. Something flammable.’

Silence.

‘Shifty? Hello?’ Only just bought the damn phone and already it was-

‘What do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been sodding about with your new mates? Got us a Mondeo. One careful owner, who’s got no idea it’s missing.’

Ah… ‘Sorry. It’s…’ I rubbed a hand across my chin, making the stubble scratch. ‘Been a while, you know?’

‘This isn’t my first rodeo, Ash. We’ll be fine. Trust me.’

Alice struggled half a dozen carrier-bags from the back seat of the tiny red Suzuki four-by-four. The thing had a big dent in the passenger-side door and looked more like a kid’s drawing of a car than an actual real-life vehicle. Drove much the same way too. She’d parked it beneath one of the three working streetlights, between a rusty white transit and a sagging Volvo. ‘Mmmnnnffffnngh?’ She nodded at the Suzuki, the keys dangling from the leather fob gripped in her teeth.

‘Yeah, no problem.’ I got the last of the shopping, and the bin-bag they’d given me when I left prison, then took the keys from between her teeth and plipped the locks.

‘Thanks.’ Her breath streamed out in a thin line of mist. ‘We’re just there.’ She nodded towards a front door two-thirds of the way down the terrace.

I shifted the bags from one hand to the other. Leaned on my cane.

Ladburn Street had probably been attractive once — a cobbled road lined with tall trees and cast-iron railings. A sweeping row of proud sandstone homes with porticoes and bay windows…

Now the trees were blackened stumps, surrounded by litter and vitrified dog shit. The houses all converted into flats.

Three buildings on this side were boarded up; four on the other, their gardens thick with weeds. Rock music belted out of somewhere down the row, a screaming argument a few doors up. Sandstone turned the colour of old blood. Railings blistered with rust.

Alice shifted from foot to foot. ‘I know it’s disappointing, I mean let’s be honest it’s not far off being a slum, but it was cheap and it’s pretty anonymous and we can’t stay with Aunty Jan because they’re having all the wiring ripped out and-’

‘It’s fine.’

Her nose was going red. ‘I’m sorry, I know Kingsmeath’s not great, but it’s only temporary and I didn’t think you’d want to stay in the hotel with Professor Huntly, and Bear, and Dr Constantine, and Dr Docherty, and-’

‘Seriously, it’s OK.’ Something scrunched beneath my shoes as I limped up the path towards the house. Broken glass, children’s teeth, small animal bones… Around here, anything was possible.

‘Right. Yes.’ She lumbered along beside me, the bags banging against her legs. ‘You see, a lot of people think Kingsmeath was thrown up in the seventies, that it’s one big council estate, but there’s bits of it go back to the eighteen-hundreds, actually, until the cholera outbreak in 1826, this would have been all sugar barons, of course the whole industry ran on slave labour plantations in the Caribbean, and can you get the lock, it’s the Yale key.’

I leaned my cane against the wall, picked my way through the keys. ‘This one?’

‘No, the one with the red plastic bit. That’s it. We’re on the top floor.’

I pushed through into a dim hallway that had the eye-nipping reek of a pub urinal. A small drift of leaflets, charity letters and takeaway menus spread across the cracked tiles from behind the door. ‘CAMMYS A WANKA!!!’ scrawled in magic marker on the peeling mildewed walls.

Not far off being a slum?

The stairs creaked beneath my feet all the way up to the third floor, walking cane thudding on the mangy carpet.

Alice dumped her carrier-bags on the floor and took the keys back, working them through her fingers like a string of rosary beads. Then undid each of the door’s four security locks — their brass casings all shiny and un-scratched. Newly fitted.

She tried on a smile. ‘Like I said, it’s not exactly great…’

‘It’s got to be better than where I’ve been for the last two years.’

Then she opened the door and flicked on the light.

Bare floorboards stretched away down a short corridor, lined with gripper rod, little tufts of blue nylon marking where the carpet had been, exposing a dark brown stain that was about eight pints wide. A single bare lightbulb hung from a flex in the ceiling — surrounded by coffee-coloured blotches. It smelled meaty, like a butcher’s shop.

Alice ushered me inside, then closed the door behind us, locking and snibbing each of the deadbolts. ‘Right, time for the tour…’

There wasn’t enough room for both of us in the kitchen, so I stood on the threshold while Alice clattered and clinked her way through making a pot of tea for two. Cardboard boxes formed a wobbly pile next to the bin — one for the toaster, one for the kettle, another for the teapot, cutlery…

She unpacked two mugs from a box and rinsed them under the tap. ‘So, is there anything you want to do tonight, I mean we could go to the pub or the pictures, only it’s a bit late for the pictures, unless they’re doing a late-night showing of something, or there’s some DVDs I could put in the laptop, or we could just read books?’

After two years of being stuck inside, in a little concrete room with the occasional accident-prone cellmate, there should’ve been no contest. ‘Actually … I’d rather stay in. If that’s OK?’

The living room wasn’t exactly huge, but it was clean. Two folding chairs — the kind sold in camping shops — sat on either side of a packing crate in front of the fireplace. She hadn’t taken the price-tag off the rug, leaving it to flutter like an injured bird in the draught of a small blow heater.

The curtains were a washed-out blue colour that still wore the chequerboard creases from when they were in the packet. I pulled one side back.

Kingsmeath. Again. As if last time hadn’t been bad enough.

Mind you, it didn’t look quite as awful in the dark, just a sweeping ribbon of streetlights and glowing windows stretching down to the Kings River — the train station on the other side of the water shining like a vast glass slug. Even the industrial estate in Logansferry had a sort of fairy-tale mystery to it. Security lights and illuminated signs. Chain-link fences and guard dogs.

To be honest, most of Oldcastle looked better at night.

And then a trail of gold streaked into the sky. One… Two… Three… BANG — a glowing sphere of red embers punctured the night sky, throwing a pair of gravestone tower blocks into sharp relief, washing them with blood.

It slowly drained away until everything was in darkness again.

Alice appeared at my shoulder. ‘They’ve been letting them off for a fortnight. I mean don’t get me wrong I love fireworks as much as the next person, but it’s nearly a whole week after bonfire night and soon as the sun goes down it’s like Beirut out there.’

Another firework burst in a shower of blue and green. The change of colour didn’t improve anything.

She handed me a cup of tea. ‘You know, it might help to talk about what happened to Katie and Parker, now you’re not inside, because you’re safe here and you don’t have to worry about being recorded or people-’

‘Tell me about Claire Young.’

Alice closed her mouth. Bit her lips together. Then sank into one of the folding chairs. ‘Her mother blames herself. We’re not making it public, but she’s on suicide watch. Tried it twice before, apparently and-’

‘No, not her mother: Claire.’

‘OK. Claire.’ Alice crossed her legs. ‘Well, she’s definitely in the target range of the previous Inside Man victims — nurse, mid-twenties, very … fertile looking.’

The tea was hot and sweet, as if Alice thought I was suffering from shock. ‘So if it is him he’s still hunting at the hospital. Security tapes?’

‘Claire didn’t go missing from work. As far as we can tell, she never made it further than Horton Road. With any luck they’ll let us have the security camera footage from the area tomorrow.’

I turned back to the window. Another baleful red eye exploded over the tower blocks. ‘Is it him?’

‘Ah…’ Pause. ‘Well, that really depends on what happens tomorrow. Detective Superintendent Ness thinks it isn’t. Superintendent Knight thinks it is. Bear’s sitting on the fence till we’ve had a chance to examine the body and the physical evidence.’

‘That why we’re here: to decide if he’s back or not?’

‘No, we’re here because Detective Superintendent Jacobson is empire-building. He wants the Lateral Investigative and Review Unit to be a full-time thing. This is his test case.’

I pulled the curtains closed. Turned my back on the world.

‘So… What DVDs have you got?’

‘No, you listen to me: we’re going to fight this!’ She stops, shifts her grip on the holdall, and stares up at the dark-grey ceiling. Her hair’s like burnished copper, a dusting of freckles across her cheeks and nose. Pretty.

A fluorescent tube clicks and pings above her head, never quite getting going, making strobe-light shadows that jitter around the underground car park.

No place for a woman to be walking alone in the middle of the night. Who knows what kind of monsters might be lurking in the shadows?

Her breath plumes around her head. ‘We won’t let them compromise patient care to save a few grubby pounds.’

Yeah, right. Because that’s how it works.

Whoever’s on the other end of the phone says something, and she stops for a moment, surrounded by manky vehicles, parked in miserable rows of dents and chipped paint. Raises her chin. ‘No, that’s completely unacceptable.’

That’s when the music starts — violins, low and slow, marking time with her footsteps as she walks towards her car: an ancient Renault Clio with one wing a different colour to the others. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll make them rue the day they decided people didn’t deserve their dignity. We’ll…’

A crease puckers the gap between her neatly plucked brows. Her eyes are bright sapphire, set in a ring of ocean-blue.

There’s something wrong with the passenger window of her car. Instead of being opaque with dried road spray, it’s a gaping black hole, ringed with little cubes of broken safety glass.

She peers inside. All that’s left of the stereo is a handful of multi-coloured wires, poking out of the hole where it used to be.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ The phone gets clacked shut and stuffed back into her pocket. Then she stomps round to the Renault’s boot and hurls her holdall inside.

Footsteps sound somewhere behind her, echoing back and forth as she stands there trembling and spiky. Some other underpaid nobody, making for their crappy car so they can go back to their crappy flat after a crappy day at their crappy job.

The violins get darker, joined by a minor chord on the piano.

She roots through her handbag, then pulls out a jangling mass of keys more suited to a prison officer than a nurse. They fumble through her fingers and tumble to the damp concrete. Cling-clatter their way under the car.

The footsteps are louder now.

She thumps her handbag on the bonnet and squats down, reaching into the oily blackness beneath the patchwork Clio, searching, searching…

The footsteps stop, right behind her.

Dramatic chord on the piano.

She freezes, car keys just out of reach.

Whoever it is clears his throat.

She lunges for the keys, grabs them, holds them jagged between her fingers like a knuckle duster, then spins around, back against the driver’s door…

A man frowns down at her, with his big rectangular face and designer stubble. ‘Are you all right?’ He’s wearing a set of pale-blue nurses’ scrubs, his top pocket full of pens. Castle Hill Infirmary ID tag hanging at a jaunty angle. Broad-shouldered. His blond hair, gelled into spikes, glints in the buzzing strip-light. Like something off Baywatch.

The grimace dies on her face, replaced by a small smile. She rolls her eyes, then sticks out her hand so he can help her up. ‘Steve, you frightened the life out of me.’

‘Sorry about that.’ He looks away, deeper into the fusty gloom, eyebrows knitting. ‘Listen, about this meeting tomorrow: Audit Scotland.’

‘My mind’s made up.’ Laura picks through her keys, then unlocks the car door.

Seems like a waste of time, when she could reach in through the broken passenger window and open the thing, but there you go.

‘I want you to know that we’re all behind you, one hundred percent.’ He doesn’t just look like something off Baywatch, he sounds like it too.

‘Thanks, Steve, I appreciate that.’ She brushes broken glass from the driver’s seat, and climbs in.

Steve pulls his shoulders back, chest out. ‘If there’s anything you need: I’m here for you, Laura.’

For God’s sake, who actually talks like that?

‘They’ll have to give us more staff. Decent equipment. Cleaners that actually clean things instead of moving the filth around. And I’m not going to give up until they do.’

He nods. Poses for a second more. ‘I’d better get back. These sick people aren’t going to heal themselves.’ He turns and struts away into the shadows, shoulders swinging like John Travolta.

Brilliant. Oscar-winning stuff.

Laura jiggles the keys in the ignition and cranks the Renault’s engine into life. Then she pulls on her seatbelt, checks the rear-view mirror and-

She screams.

A pair of dark eyes glitter back at her from the rear seat, staring.

It’s a big blue teddy bear, wearing a red bow around its neck, cradling an oversized card with ‘HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY!’ on it.

The air hisses out of her as she slumps back in her seat, arms loose in her lap.

Jumping like a frightened schoolgirl; it’s a sodding teddy bear, not Jack the Ripper.

Idiot.

Then someone knocks on the car roof and the pale blue of a nurse’s scrubs fills the driver’s side window. Probably Steve, back to mangle some more dialogue.

She presses the button and lowers her window. ‘Can I help-’

A fist slams into the camera and the screen goes dark.

Alice hit pause. ‘I’m going to make another pot of tea, do you want some, or there’s juice, and I got biscuits too, do you like custard creams or jammie dodgers, stupid question really, who doesn’t love jammie-’

‘Surprise me.’

She nodded, collected the teapot and headed off to the kitchen.

The DVD case lay on the makeshift coffee table, beside her laptop: ‘WRAPPED IN DARKNESS ~ ONE WOMAN’S JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK!’ The subtitle was about as melodramatic as the reconstruction.

Obviously the director really wanted to make a feature film of the story, but didn’t have the budget, or talent, to pull it off.

OK, so he’d got the idea more or less right, but the details? If Laura Strachan and her mate Steve had actually talked like that the day she went missing I’d eat my chair.

I fast-forwarded through some beardy type talking in front of a whiteboard while the kettle rumbled in the kitchen. Never trust a man with a beard — sinister devious bastards the lot of them.

Army ants marched in a line around the top of my left sock.

Bloody thing. I pulled my trouser leg up and raked my nails back and forward along the lip of the ankle monitor, scrabbling at the plastic edge. Blessed relief.

Alice emerged from the kitchen with the teapot and a plate of assorted biscuits. ‘You shouldn’t scratch it, I mean what if you break the skin and it gets all infected and then-’

‘It’s itchy.’ I pressed play again.

Laura Strachan — the real one, not the actress playing her in the reconstruction — has her hands dug deep into her pockets, the wind whipping her curly auburn hair out behind her, ruffling the ankle-length coat as she picks her way along the battlements of the castle. She pauses, looking down the cliff, across Kings River towards Montgomery Park and Blackwall Hill beyond. Sunlight glints on the broad curve of water, turns the firework trees into explosions of amber and scarlet.

Her voice comes in over the background music, even though her lips don’t move.

‘From the moment I was attacked, to the moment I woke up in Intensive Care, everything was a blur. Some fragments are clearer than others, some just … it was like peering into the bottom of a well, with something sharp glinting at the bottom. Sharp and dangerous.’

She leans on the battlement peering down. Then the camera switches so it’s looking back up at her.

The scene jumps to a bright white room, lined with what looks like clear plastic sheeting. It’s hard to tell — they’ve sodded about with the picture, making the highlights stretch vertically across the screen, as if everything’s in the process of being beamed up. The room throbs in and out, then lurches to one side until a large stainless-steel trolley sits in the middle of the shot, with the younger, prettier, actress version of Laura lying on it. Her hands and feet are tied to the trolley’s legs, two more bands of rope — one across her chest, under her armpits, the other across her thighs — hold her tight. Naked, except for a pair of strategically placed towels.

‘I remember the smell, more than anything else. It was like detergent and bleach, and something … a bit like hot plastic? And there was classical music playing.’

Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata fades up.

‘And he…’ Her voice breaks. A pause. ‘He was wearing a white apron, on over… Over… It might have been surgical scrubs. I can’t… It was all so blurred.’

A man walks into shot, dressed exactly like Laura described him. His mouth is hidden behind a surgical mask, the rest of his face blurred — reduced to an unrecognizable mess by the video effect.

Then a close-up of a syringe, the needle huge as it moves towards the camera. Fade to black. Then we’re in what looks like a private hospital room.

‘The next thing I know, it’s four days later and I’m lying on a bed in intensive care. And I’m choking on the ventilator, and I’m wired up to half-a-dozen monitors, and this nurse is running around screaming that I’m awake.’

Alice poured the tea.

‘All my life, ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to have babies. A family of my own to love and cherish the way my father never did for me.’

I helped myself to a custard cream.

‘But the doctors said it wasn’t possible any more. The Inside Man took it away from me when he… When he ripped me open.’

Cut to a posh-looking office, lined in wood, with a heap of framed certificates on the wall. A thin balding man sits behind a big oak desk. He’s wearing a dark-blue suit and a bright-red tie. A caption scrolls across the bottom of the screen: ‘CHARLES DALLAS-MACALPINE, SENIOR CONSULTANT SURGEON, CASTLE HILL INFIRMARY’.

His voice is all public school pomp and barely concealed sneer. ‘Of course, when Laura came to me her insides were a mess. It’s a miracle she didn’t exsanguinate in the ambulance.’ A tight-lipped smile. ‘That means, “bleed to death”.’

Really? Wow, hark at him with his posh-boy big words.

‘Luckily, she’d had the good fortune to be on my operating table. Otherwise-’

Three short thumps broke in on Dr Patronizing’s monologue.

Front door.

Alice flinched. ‘Are you expecting someone, because I don’t-’

‘I’ll get it.’

‘-shudder to think. You see, her uterus was-’

I closed the lounge door behind me. Limped across the hall’s stained floorboards, walking stick clunking with every other step. Peered out through the peephole.

A bald head filled the lens with a swathe of pink and grey.

I undid the four security locks and opened the door. ‘Shifty.’

He’d obviously not shaved his head for a bit: a fringe of gunmetal stubble stuck out above his ears. More stubble shaded his collection of chins. Folds of skin drooped beneath watery bloodshot eyes. A bruise rode high on his left cheek. The smell of aftershave oozed out of him, mingling with the rotten oniony whiff of the day’s sweat.

A couple of orange carrier-bags sat on the floor by his feet.

Shifty blinked at me a couple of times, then a massive grin split across his face and he lunged, wrapped his arms around me, pinning my arms to my sides, and squeezed. Laughed. ‘About bloody time!’ He leaned back, lifting my feet off the floor. ‘How’ve you been? I’m gasping here. Any chance of a drink?’

Couldn’t help but smile. ‘Get off me, you big Jessie.’

‘Oh, don’t be so repressed.’ One more squeeze, then he let go. ‘Thought we’d never get you out of there. You look like crap, by the way.’

‘Did you get it?’

He reached into his crumpled jacket and came out with an envelope. Handed it over.

OK. Unexpected.

I tried again, nice and slow. ‘Did — you — get — the — gun?’