Стюарт Макбрайд - All That’s Dead

A voice boomed out from somewhere inside the house. ‘WHAT?’

‘DOOR!’ Mrs Shouty folded her arms. ‘What if that moron, Haiden, tries to abduct his little boy? What if he tries to murder us all in our beds? What about that?’

‘Has he?’ King stepped forward, eager. ‘Have you seen him? Has Haiden been in touch?’

‘That’s not the point . You police don’t care, do you? You swan in here and—’

‘What?’ The grumpy woman from the prison photographs appeared behind her, little flecks of yellow on her broad face that looked disturbingly zit-like against the flushed cheeks. More paint on her orange overalls. Her hair — red like Mrs Shouty’s — was mostly hidden beneath a Rosie-the-Riveter headscarf. She scowled at them in exactly the same way her mum had. ‘Oh it’s you , is it?’

Logan stuck out his hand. ‘Cindy Lochhead?’

Mrs Shouty stuck her chin out. ‘It’s Cindy Norton , thank you very much. She gave up that moron’s name when she divorced him. And good riddance.’

‘Quite right too.’ King poured on the charm. ‘Mrs Norton, I know it’s a pain, but I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea, is there?’

‘You’re trying to get me out of the way, aren’t you?’

A you-got-me shrug. ‘Well, we—’

‘Let me tell you: that boy was nothing but trouble for my Cindy! She was a good girl before he came along. Everything that went wrong in her life was his fault.’

Cindy Norton rolled her eyes. ‘Mum—’

‘She was going to go to university for God’s sake, till he got his grubby...’ a little shudder rippled through Mrs Shouty, ‘ seed inside her.’

‘Mum, please, I can—’

She raised a hand. ‘Oh, I love my grandson, don’t get me wrong. I love him like he was my own, but Cindy had a future! She—’

‘MUM!’

That produced an outraged look.

Cindy waved her away. ‘Go on, sod off for ten minutes and let me speak to them, OK?’

A withering silence, then, ‘ Fine .’ She turned and stomped away, nose in the air. ‘But I’m not making tea for useless, lazy policemen!’

Probably just as well. That would be the kind of tea that came with a free order of sputum.

Cindy sniffed at them, grimaced, then turned and marched off down the corridor, leaving the door open. ‘You can have ten minutes. That’s it.’

They followed her along the hall, past the open lounge door where an older man slumped in T-shirt and shorts on the couch, watching a daytime soap on the telly. He didn’t look up as they went by.

Into the kitchen — small and bland, with fitted units that looked as if they were the height of fashion sometime in the seventies. Mrs Shouty stood by the fridge, glowering at them as Cindy opened the back door and ushered King and Logan out into the garden.

Big bushes, a plum tree in the corner laden with unripe fruit, yellowy grass. Everything wilting in the heat.

Cindy made for the side of the scaffolding-shrouded garage.

Logan caught up with her. ‘Has Haiden been in touch?’

She ducked through a sheet of plastic strung between two scaffolding poles and disappeared.

So much for cooperating with the police.

He ducked in after her.

They’d divided the inside up with plasterboard walls, but hadn’t got around to the doors yet, leaving a tiny kitchen, wetroom, and living room on show.

‘Miss Norton, can we please...’

She kept going, into the living room. A ladder was fixed to the far wall, leading up to a hatch in the roof, where, presumably there was an attic bedroom. Because otherwise there’d be nowhere to sleep.

It wasn’t the only ladder in here — a stepladder sat near one wall, a large pot of paint set on top of it.

Cindy picked up a brush and dipped it in the pot. ‘Don’t mind Mum, she’s just pissed because they’d nearly finished paying off the house and now, instead of a new kitchen, they’ve had to extend the mortgage to pay for all this.’ The brush left a thick, warm yellow line across the white plasterboard. Not quite the same colour as in Logan’s house, but close enough.

He had another go: ‘ Has Haiden been in touch?’

‘I saw he’d escaped. Did a runner from some prison-programme bakery thing? He never could stick at anything.’

‘Your mother seems to think he’ll try to abduct your son.’

‘Haiden?’ A small laugh. That got bigger. And bigger. Till she was bent double with it, paintbrush dripping onto the chipboard at her feet. Then she sighed, straightened up, and wiped the tears from her eyes. Stuck her brush in the pot again. ‘He wouldn’t dare. Wouldn’t even care. He’s never shown any interest in Marty.’

King folded his arms, chest out, feet apart. ‘Do you know where he might be?’

Another sigh. ‘I really loved him, you know? At first. Two years older than me, had a motorbike and a job and cash to throw about. Thin as a whippet, but not in a weedy way: like he was tightly coiled and ready to spring. A greyhound. Always had the best weed.’ More paint on the wall.

Logan watched her block out a ragged rectangle of indoor sunshine. ‘It’s important, Cindy.’

‘Mum thinks I was driven snow, till Haiden came along. He wasn’t the first boy I let finger me after Geography. Or the first one I went shoplifting with. Or got stoned with. Or...’ A very dirty smile spread across her face, then she filled in a bit of plasterboard she’d missed. ‘Course, the longer I was with him, the more the veneer wore off. It’s all well and good shagging a bloke who’s a bit thick, but when you’ve finished you want someone who can engage you intellectually. You know? All he could ever talk about was “English imperialism” and how we needed to “take our country back”.’ Cindy shook her head. Slapped on more paint. ‘And they weren’t even his opinions, they were his dad’s. You couldn’t even debate him on them.’

King tried looming again. ‘So you haven’t seen Haiden.’

‘Not since Marty got into my handbag and ate all my birth control pills, because some idiot at school said it’d get him high.’ She jammed the paintbrush in the pot then punished the wall with it. ‘After I’d finished making Marty puke them up, I stuck him in the car and we went right up to Peterhead so he could see what happens to stupid boys who don’t think .’

Nothing like growing up in a happy family where the parents loved each other, was there?

Logan raised his eyebrows at King, who nodded.

Cindy turned and stared at them, paintbrush raised like a knife. ‘Look, Haiden married me because I made him. Because I was pregnant. He bailed on us because he’s a dick. The only use that man is to Marty is as an object lesson.’

Well, it’d been a longshot anyway.

Logan dipped into his pockets for a business card and wrote his mobile number on it. ‘If Haiden gets in touch—’

‘I won’t have Marty making the same mistakes I did. Mum’s right, I was going places. Doing well in school. Next thing you know, I’m a teenaged mother without a standard grade to my name. Now I’m going to evening classes, getting my qualifications.’

King tilted his head on one side. ‘Did Haiden ever mention Professor Wilson, or a woman called Mhari Powell?’

The red of Cindy’s cheeks darkened. ‘Mhari? Never heard of her.’

Yeah, that was a lie.

‘Are you sure?’ Logan pulled out his phone, flicked through to the photo of Mhari Powell they’d shown at the briefing earlier. He held it out. ‘You don’t recognise her at all?’

Cindy barely looked at it. ‘Said so, didn’t I?’

‘Maybe you heard Haiden talking about her?’