Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

Babs’s hand landed on my shoulder, her voice barely loud enough to count as a whisper. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

Fair enough.

I let my shoulders slump again.

Dr Alice McDonald — psychiatrist number two — held up her hand. ‘Now hold on a minute: the murder charge was dismissed .’ Her curly brown hair made a loose ponytail at the back of her head, a few stray wisps breaking free to glow in the overhead lights. Pale-lilac shirt cuffs poked out of the sleeves of her pinstripe suit. ‘Mr Henderson didn’t kill his brother, the evidence against him was fabricated. It’s a matter of record. The appeal judge-’

‘I’m not talking about his brother’s murder. I’m talking about this.’ Altringham plucked a sheet of paper from the table in front of him and waved it. ‘In the last eighteen months, he’s assaulted and seriously injured seventeen other inmates. Every time he gets anywhere near being released, he attacks someone.’

‘We’ve been over this, it’s-’

‘Yesterday, he broke a man’s nose, and left another with a fractured cheek!’ Altringham knocked on the coffin again. ‘Does that sound like the actions of someone we should be unleashing on an unsuspecting public?’

Yeah, I got in a couple of good punches, till they forced me into a corner. Grinning and laughing. Letting me swing at them, so it’d look better when they made their formal complaints. But what was I supposed to do, stand there and take it?

Even after all this time…

Alice shook her head. ‘It’s hardly Mr Henderson’s fault that he keeps being attacked. If the prison did a better job of managing inmate interactions, maybe he wouldn’t have to defend himself the whole time.’

The Deputy Governor narrowed her eyes. ‘I resent any implication that this institution isn’t doing its duty where custodial safety is concerned.’

Altringham blew out a breath. ‘No one’s safe where Mr Henderson’s concerned. He’s pathologically incapable of-’

‘That’s not the case at all, there’s a clear pattern to the attacks against Mr Henderson that-’

‘Yes, and that pattern is his self-destructive personality! This is nothing more profound than a simple need to punish himself due to survivor’s guilt. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s simple psychology and if you were able to see past your personal bias on this case you’d know that.’

Alice poked Altringham in the shoulder. ‘I beg your pardon! Are you suggesting that I’m incapable of-’

The Deputy Governor slammed her folder down on the tabletop. ‘All right, that’s enough!’ She glared at Alice, then turned and did the same to Altringham. ‘We’re here to discuss Mr Henderson’s release, or continued incarceration, like professionals. Not bicker and quarrel like small children. So, moving on.’ The Deputy Governor held out a hand. ‘Dr McDonald, you have your report?’

Alice pulled the top sheet from the leather folio in front of her and passed it over.

The Deputy Governor frowned at it for a bit, then turned it over and did the same with the back. Then placed it on the table. ‘And Dr Altringham?’

He slid his along to her and she frowned at that for a while too.

Officer Babs leaned in, her voice still an almost-whisper. ‘How’s the arthritis?’

I flexed my right hand, the knuckles all swollen and bruised from breaking ex-DI Graham Lumley’s cheek. ‘Worth it.’

‘I keep telling you: lead with your elbows, or only punch the soft bits.’

‘Yeah, well…’

The Deputy Governor put Altringham’s report down on top of Alice’s, then sat up straight. ‘Mr Henderson, after careful consideration-’

‘Don’t bother.’ I slouched further down in my plastic seat. ‘We all know where this is going, so why don’t we just cut to the bit where you send me back to my cell?’

‘After careful consideration, Mr Henderson, and having reviewed all the evidence and expert analysis, it is my belief that your continuing use of violence necessitates your retention in this facility until a full investigation can be carried out into the events of yesterday.’

So, same as usual then.

Stuck in here until Mrs Kerrigan finally got bored and had me killed.

Now

(Six Months Later)

Sunday

‘ … more from the scene as we get it. Edinburgh now, and the family of missing six-year-old Stacey Gourdon have issued an appeal, asking her abductors to return her remains… ’ The TV in the rec room was mounted in its own tiny cage, high up on the wall, as if the prison thought it was as likely to do a runner as all the other inmates.

Ex-Detective Superintendent Len Murray picked up a plastic chair and stuck it down next to mine. Settled into it, a smile distorting his Robin-Hood-style grey goatee. The strip-lights glinted off his bald head and little round glasses. A big man with a big rumbling voice. ‘You’re going to have to kill her. You know that, don’t you?’

In her private cell, the woman on the television gave a grim nod. ‘ Stacey Gourdon’s bloodstained dress and trainers were found by officers searching woodland in Corstorphine… ’

I stared at him. ‘Don’t you have something better to do?’

‘Ash, the bog-hopping bitch is going to keep you in here till you top yourself, or she sends someone in to do it for her. Time to be proactive.’

‘I mean, you’ve got what, four more years to serve? You should take up a hobby. Woodwork. Or learning Spanish.’

The picture changed to a run-down two-up two-down in a manky council estate, a scrum of reporters jostling for position as the front doors opened and a hollow woman stared out with dead eyes and trembling fingers. A fat bloke just visible over her shoulder: bloodshot and sniffing, biting his bottom lip.

The woman cleared her throat. Looked down at her shaking hands. ‘ We… ’ Another go. ‘ We just want her back. We want to bury her. We want the chance to say goodbye… ’

Len leaned back in his seat and slapped a hand down on my shoulder. Squeezed. ‘I know a couple of lads who’ll do the job for two grand.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘They’ll go up against Andy Inglis for a measly two thousand pounds? Are they mad?’

‘They’re not local. And they need to get out of the country anyway. Besides: who’d know?’

‘ … please, she’s our little girl … Stacey was everything to her dad and me… ’

‘I’d know.’

Palm it off to some pair of idiots? No chance. When Mrs Kerrigan died, it would be with my hands around her throat. Squeezing…

Assuming I ever got out of here.

I turned back to the screen, where Stacey’s mother was collapsing, every sob caught in the strobe of camera flashes.

Back to the studio. ‘ … with any information can call the number at the bottom of the screen. ’ The newsreader shuffled her papers. ‘ Oldcastle Police have confirmed that the woman’s body, discovered on waste ground behind the city’s Blackwall Hill area in the early hours of yesterday morning, belonged to Claire Young, a paediatric nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary… ’

Len shook his head. ‘The trouble with you is you think revenge has to be up-close to be personal. You never did learn to delegate properly.’

‘I’m not delegating that bitch’s-’

‘What does it matter who does it, as long as she’s dead?’ He shook his head. Sighed. ‘You can’t kill her yourself if you’re still stuck in here. And you can’t get out of here till she’s dead. Catch twenty-two. And for two grand, you can make it all go away.’ Len cocked an imaginary pump-action shotgun and shot the newsreader in the face. ‘Think about it.’