Стюарт Макбрайд: Now We Are Dead

So close.

Tufty got out his notebook, flipping it open at the last marked page. Pen poised. ‘Right, let’s start at the beginning.’

The manky pool car was still slewed half on the road and half on the pavement. Steel slouched back against the bonnet, puffing away on her fake cigarette, making a fog bank all of her own. It gleamed like a solid thing in the moonlight.

Tufty’s phone was warm against his ear, notebook pinned to the roof of the car. He wrote the word ‘MAYBE’ in it and underlined it three times. ‘Yeah. OK. Thanks. Bye.’ He hung up. ‘Maud says she’ll do her best, but the lab’s backed up as it is.’

Steel pulled the e-cigarette from her mouth for long enough to spit in the gutter. ‘Which is secret SEB code for “no’ a chance in hell”. Sod.’

‘This still means you owe me a fish supper, though, right? I mean, I predicted he’d be out and about tonight. And, ta-daaaa!’

But Steel just stared off into the distance, eyebrows knitting away at something just inside her head. ‘You fiddled about two shift patterns to work it out?’

About time she took an interest.

‘Told you: I has a clever.’ He leaned over the bonnet at her. ‘It was pretty obvious he was on a two-week cycle, so probably works offshore. The tricky part was the other shift pattern, but then I had an even cleverer!’

She stared at him. ‘Did your mum drop you on your head when you were a kid?’

That was the trouble with old people — no appreciation of popular culture.

‘See, it had to be a really weird shift pattern to match up them being on nights while he does his thing. And the only shift pattern I could think of that’s that screwed up is the one I had to do for three years up in Banff, back when I was divisional police officer. So...?’

A slow smile dawned as the penny dropped.

‘He’s living with a cop. Some spod in uniform’s boyfriend is the Blackburn Womble Whacker!’ Steel hauled out her phone and dialled, puffing away. ‘Come on, come on, come— Ernie? How many uniform we got living in Blackburn?... Uh-huh.’ She looked up at Tufty. ‘He’s got three.’ Back to the phone. ‘How many off duty tonight?... Two? Oh Ernie: you’re a sexy wee fish, you know that, don’t you? Now give me a name and address for the one who’s working.’

The house wasn’t as big and grand as the last one they’d visited, but it’d been squeezed out of a similar mould. Grey harling, stonework features around the windows, grey tiles on the roof. They’d put the effort in and planted a tree right in the middle of the teabag-sized front garden, though. It didn’t look healthy.

Steel thumped her car door shut with a flourish. Then held her arms wide, beaming. ‘Isn’t it a lovely night?’ She swaggered up the path, leaving a trail of vape behind her that glowed in the moonlight.

Woman was insane. But Tufty followed her anyway.

At the front door she gave a couple of hoppity-skippity dance steps then swept into a curtsey, one hand gesturing at the letterbox. ‘If you would be so kind, my dearest Constable Quirrel?’

Completely crackers.

He rang the bell.

She rocked back and forth on her heels. Hands in her pockets. Grin on her face. ‘Oh, the excitement!’

A shadow moved on the other side of the frosted glass pane set into the middle of the door. Then a muffled mushy voice joined it. ‘Hello?’

Steel pressed the doorbell again.

‘This better not be Jehovah’s Witnesses! I told you lot last time.’ The door opened and there was Mr Parka, only he’d ditched the jacket for a Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt, boxer shorts, and slippers. He had a bag of frozen sweetcorn in one hand, holding it over his nose and mouth.

He took one look at them and his bloodshot eyes widened. ‘Oh...’

Steel grinned at him. ‘Mr Corbet? Mr Alan Corbet? Your wife’s at work tonight, isn’t she? Pounding the beat, while you’re out pounding your meat.’

He lowered the sweetcorn, showing off two swollen lips and a pair of nostrils with toilet paper sticking out of them — bright red where it disappeared up inside his head. He licked his top lip, setting a crack bleeding again. ‘It...’ A deep breath, then Mr Parka stuck his chest out, chin up. ‘Have you found my dog yet?’

Steel’s grin got even wider.

Steel whistled a happy tune as she swaggered her way out of Interview Room Four, paused on the threshold and cast a wink back at the room’s remaining occupants. ‘I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone for a minute. No inappropriate touching though, this is a family show.’

Alan Corbet sat on the other side of the interview table, the skin around his eyes darkening to a lovely shade of reddish-purple. Bottom lip trembling. Shoulders quivering. He reached up with cuffed hands and wiped tears from his cheek.

Sitting next to him, his solicitor sighed and dug a hankie out of her suit pocket. Handed it over as Tufty closed the door.

Steel beamed. ‘Oh, I enjoyed that.’

Tufty sagged and little flakes of dried mud tumbled from his filthy suit to the grey terrazzo floor. ‘Can we go home now?’

‘Don’t be daft: it’s time to celebrate!’ She grabbed him by the shoulders like she was going in for a kiss, then cringed back a bit. Sniffed at her hands. ‘Pffffff... On second thoughts, you really, really need a wash. Gah...’ She wiggled her fingers, then wiped them on the wall. ‘Just make sure you get Mr Corbet back to his cell, before—’

‘ALAN!’ An officer stormed up the corridor in full uniform kit, complete with stabproof vest, utility belt and high-viz waistcoat. Her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Face like the underside of a hammer as it whistles down towards a nail. ‘Where is he, I’LL KILL HIM!’

Steel hissed at Tufty out the side of her mouth. ‘Run away!’

Ahh... Water lapped across Tufty’s chest, bringing a cloudscape of bubbles with it. Frothy white bubbles. Warm and lemony-scented. He reached out and picked his mug of tea off the toilet lid. Had a sip.

Bliss.

OK, so it wasn’t the biggest bathroom in the whole world — wasn’t the grandest either — but right now there was nowhere better. Four walls of off-white tiles, a medicine cabinet, a sink, a wee plastic doodah for holding your toothbrush, a heated towel rail, a toilet of his very own, and a bath. A lovely, luxurious, bubbly bath. Just the thing to share with an old friend.

Mr Einstein floated out from the cumulonimbus foam, orange beak first, followed by his tubby yellow body. Tail last to emerge from the bubbles.

‘Hello, Mr Einstein.’

Tufty put on a high-pitched pirate voice. ‘Arrrrr Jim lad. Ye better watch yerself, there be a vast scary beastie lurkin’ in the water, right next to the hairy islands! Arrrrrrr...’

‘Oh noes, Mr Einstein! What if it’s — dan, dan daaaaaa! — the Cockness Monster ? What if—’

The phone on the toilet lid buzzed, then launched into its generic ringtone.

‘Ah... bums.’ He dried his hands on the towel lying by the bath and answered the thing. ‘Hello?’

Steel’s voice grumped out of the phone at him. ‘For your information, Constable , I didn’t fit Jack Wallace up... OK, so maybe I did, a little, on the paedophile charges, but he’s still a raping scumbag, understand?’

Great. Because Tufty wasn’t allowed to have five minutes’ peace, was he?

‘I’m in the bath.’

‘Four women. That’s how many he brutalised. And we couldn’t lay a finger on him for it. So yes, I fitted him up. Does that make me a bad person?’

‘Well, technically —’