Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

His umbrella cut into the rain, looming above me like the wings of a massive bat.

I stayed perfectly still. ‘Francis.’

His mouth barely moved. ‘Got a message for you, like.’

‘Indeed we do, Mr Henderson. Our mutual friend is glad to hear that you’ve re-joined the land of the free, home of the Braveheart, and she looks forward to renewing your acquaintance at the earliest possible convenience.’

I bloody bet she did. ‘How did you know I was here?’

Joseph’s hand traced a lazy figure eight through the air. ‘Let’s just say that we’ve been the beneficiaries of a fortuitous happenstance.’

I glanced back towards the mortuary doors and there was Dougal. His eyes widened, then he ducked down out of sight. Two-faced little sod. ‘Tell her, next time I see her, we’re going to have a long hard chat about what she did to Parker. And then I’m going to bury her vicious arse in a shallow grave in Moncuir Wood.’

Francis leaned in close, the words breaking against my cheek on a waft of peppermint. ‘What about the rest of her?’

‘Oh dear.’ Joseph’s smile slipped a bit. ‘I fear Mrs Kerrigan is going to be … somewhat disappointed by your less than warm response to her kind invitation.’

The blowers had made a dent in the fogged-up car windows. Enough to reveal Bob the Builder grinning up at me from the back seat. Typical bloody tradesman, never there when you needed them. ‘She’ll be more than disappointed when I get my hands on her.’

‘I see.’ A nod. ‘Then we shall leave you to enjoy your freedom. While it lasts. Francis…?’

Something exploded in the small of my back, jagged needles ripping through my left kidney. Breath hissing out between clenched teeth. My knees buckled … but I got them in line, stood tall. Shoulders back. Stuck my chin out. Ground my teeth. ‘Big man, aren’t you?’

Francis made a little sooking noise. ‘Nothing personal, like.’

Strictly business.

Joseph raised his umbrella, like he was doffing an imaginary cap. ‘If you change your mind, you know you can always get in touch.’ Then he leaned down and smiled through the open driver’s window. ‘It’s been a pleasure, dear lady. I’m sure our paths shall cross again.’

They better bloody not.

I stayed where I was until they’d got into their big black BMW 4×4 and growled their way out of the car park. Then I opened the Suzuki’s door and eased into the passenger seat. Hissed out a breath as my ribs touched the backrest. Bloody innards were packed with ice and barbed wire.

Two against one, just like every time in prison. Every sodding time.

I balled my right fist and slammed it into the dashboard. ‘BASTARDS!’

The noise overpowered the blowers for a moment, then their roar took over again. Now the barbed wire was threading through my knuckles, every movement tearing through flesh and cartilage. When I stretched out my hand, it wouldn’t stay still, fingers quivering and trembling in time to the blood bellowing in my ears.

‘Ash? Are you OK, only you don’t look so-’

‘Just…’ I clicked on the radio. ‘Just drive.’

‘Look, Marie, you’ve got visitors.’

Marie Jordan didn’t get up, just sat in her high-backed seat, gazing out of the rain-pebbled window — out through the wire mesh to the doctors’ car park and the concrete-and-glass block of the main hospital. Her hair was hacked off short enough to show her scalp in patches, tufts sticking out over one ear, a smattering of dark-red scabs visible in the thinner bits. A slack face, mortuary pale, with sunken red-rimmed eyes and a thin, almost lipless mouth. Dressed in a grey cardigan and jogging bottoms. Her bare feet weren’t flat on the floor, they rested on their outside edges, toes curled in towards each other like claws.

Alice glanced back at me, then pulled up a chair with ‘DON’T TRUST THEM!!!’ scratched into the orange plastic. Sat down with her knees together, hands motionless in her lap. ‘Hi, Marie. I’m Dr McDonald, but you can call me Alice. Marie?’

The room was big enough for half a dozen large padded chairs, a handful of cheap plastic ones, a coffee table covered in drifts of National Geographic s, and a TV mounted high on the wall where no one could get at it. If anything, the place was even less comfortable than the rec room back at the prison.

None of the other patients were here, leaving just Alice, Marie Jordan, an orderly, and me in the antiseptic silence.

I leaned back against the windowsill, blocking Marie’s view of the car park. Didn’t seem to make any difference to her, she just stared right through me as I flexed my right hand. In and out. The bones and cartilage grinding and grating.

My own stupid fault for punching a car…

Alice tried again. ‘Marie?’

The orderly sighed. According to the ID badge pinned to his breast pocket, he was ‘TONY’ and ‘HAPPY TO HELP’. A big lad with round cheeks and a saltire tattoo poking out of the neck of his scrubs. ‘She’s got good days and bad days, I’m afraid. Yesterday wasn’t one of the good ones.’

‘Marie, can you hear me?’

Her head came around. Tilted to one side as if it wasn’t really on properly. A blink.

‘Marie, we need to talk to you about what happened eight years ago. Do you think you can do that?’

Another blink.

Tony, the orderly, shrugged. ‘She saw that thing on the telly last night, on the news, about You-Know-Who being back and went for one of the other patients. Bang, just like that. No warning, no nothing. Poor sod’s got a broken nose and half his ear bitten off.’

‘It’s OK, Marie, we’re here to help.’

‘Took four of us to pull her off him. Had to dose her up a bit. Then this morning she got hold of scissors from God-knows-where and gave herself a short back and sides. Lucky she didn’t hack her wrists open again-’

‘Actually,’ Alice looked back over her shoulder, ‘you know, this might go a little easier if we had some water. Do you think you could go fetch that for us?’

He blew out a breath between pursed lips. ‘Not really supposed to leave patients unsupervised with-’

A bright shiny smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll be fine. My friend Mr Henderson’s a police officer, after all.’

‘Well… Suppose so. Jug of tap water OK?’

Alice waited until the door swung shut behind him. ‘Marie, I know it’s upsetting to think about the man who hurt you being back, but he can’t get to you in here. You’re safe.’

Marie blinked a couple of times, pale lips twitching. And when her voice came, it was a whisper of broken glass. ‘It’s all my fault…’

‘No it isn’t, it’s nobody’s fault but his.’

‘It was me. I shouldn’t have … made him angry.’ Her fingers ended in stubby ragged nails, the skin around them bitten back to the raw pink quick. They fluttered across her stomach. ‘He put it in me, but it didn’t grow…’

‘Marie, have you ever been hypnotized?’

‘It wouldn’t grow because they took it out.’

Alice tried a smile. ‘I think it would help you, if we tried. Are you OK with that?’

‘They took it out and it died and it was all my fault for not making it grow.’

She reached out and picked Marie’s right hand out of her lap. Placed it on top of her own, palm to palm. ‘I want you to sit back in your chair. Isn’t that comfortable?’ Alice’s voice dropped: a little deeper, a little quieter. ‘Can you feel all your muscles starting to relax?’ Deeper still, slower too. ‘Can you feel how warm and comfortable it is?’

‘No.’ Marie turned her head to face me, eyes like pools of blood-rimmed darkness. ‘He was there. Watching…’