Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

One turned and puffed out her cheeks at me. ‘Hope you’re not expecting anything exciting.’ She pointed towards a flap at the back of the tent. ‘We’ve got one alley and one handbag. It’s not exactly Gone with the Wind .’

‘Is that all?’ Alice stood on her tiptoes and peered at the flap. ‘Why isn’t there a body, I thought there’d be a body, if there’s no body then how do they know it’s the Inside Man?’

The tech raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

I grabbed a couple of bagged Tyvek suits and handed one to Alice. Tore my own from its forensic sheath. ‘He leaves a calling card. First couple of times we missed it, but it’s always there.’

‘A calling card? Why wasn’t it-’

‘Suit up. You’ll see.’ I struggled my shoes through the suit’s legs, leaning on Shifty for balance. ‘You’ve done a sweep for DNA?’

The tech nodded. ‘Well, stickytaped the bit around the bag and the baby.’

I got my arms in and shrugged the oversuit over my shoulders. Zipped it up. ‘Any semen?’

A snort. ‘You’re kidding, right? Wishart Avenue is a Mecca for young lovers. Long as you’ve got the cash, or a wrapper of brown.’

I pulled up my hood. Grabbed an oversized evidence bag. ‘Just go back and look, OK?’ The cane went into the evidence bag, held on with a couple of elastic bands. One more to fix a blue plastic bootie over the rubber tip. Bit makeshift, but it’d work.

Alice hopped on one leg, the other tangled in her suit. ‘We just found out that he raped Ruth Laughlin before he abducted her, so he probably did it to the other victims too.’

‘He did?’ The tech’s face soured. ‘Great. Thanks for that.’ She turned and hauled back the tent flap. ‘HOY, RONNIE: DO A SWEEP FOR PUBES AND SPUNK! OUR BOY’S A FIDDLER.’

Alice hauled on the suit and did up the zip. ‘He’s unlikely to wear a condom, given the fact it’s all about putting a baby in the victims’ tummies, and why isn’t the calling card in the case files, how am I supposed to produce coherent behavioural evidence analysis if I don’t have all the facts, it’s-’

‘It’s not in the file because of Sarah Creegan. Now, get your gloves and booties on and let’s go take a look.’

She did, then followed me out through the flap at the back of the tent, leaving Shifty behind. Two suited SEB techs knelt on the alley floor, one dabbing away with a cotton bud, the other pressing a wide strip of clear stickytape against the ground.

A third figure stood in the background, leaning back against the brick wall, arms folded.

Alice did a quick three-sixty. ‘He forced her in here, I mean it’s not on the way to or from anywhere is it, and it’s not like a young nurse is going to nip into a filthy alleyway for a pee, and who’s Sarah Creegan?’

‘Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Bob Richards, he was a very naughty little boy and his mummy and daddy didn’t like him very much. So they beat him with a thick leather belt; broke his fingers and ribs; put their cigarettes out on his naked back; and once, for fun, they poured boiling water over his genitals. Sarah Creegan was little Bob’s social worker.’

‘So she reported the parents?’

‘Nope. She put him out of his misery with a pillow over the face. Then she got his mummy and daddy drunk and gave them both an overdose of heroin. She cut it with slug pellets and caustic soda, just to be sure.’

The tech with the stickytape transferred the strip he’d been pressing against the ground onto an acetate sheet. Labelled it. Then got out more tape.

‘When the second set of shitty parents turned up with a dead kid and veins full of poisoned drugs, we knew we had a problem. The third time it happened we noticed the calling card. Sarah Creegan was leaving tiny teddy bears at the scene — really small, maybe an inch-and-a-bit tall with a safety-pin on the back. Didn’t spot it at first, because Cancer Research were handing them out if you put a quid in the tin for childhood leukaemia.’

A yellow marker with ‘A’ printed on it sat next to the alley wall. Another marked ‘8’ was on the other side. I walked over. ‘So it went in the report: “charity teddy bear left at the scene by killer”. And the next morning it was all over the papers. After that, every crime scene in the city was festooned with the bloody things.’

Marker ‘8’ lay beside a pile of scrunched-up newsprint. I squatted down and looked back at the stickytape tech. ‘You bag and tag it yet?’

An anonymous face looked back at me: bottom half hidden by the mask, top half by the safety goggles. ‘The boss wanted to see it in situ. All photographed though.’

‘Good.’ I raised one corner of the pile. And there it was: one plastic key ring. A little pink baby, the chain coming out of the top of its head with a single Yale key attached to the ring at the end. ‘ That’s how we know the Inside Man abducted someone.’

I straightened up as Alice peered at it.

‘The big question is: how did we find it in the first place?’ The bootie on the end of my cane scuffed against the ground as I hobbled over to the figure leaning against the wall. ‘Well?’

Detective Superintendent Ness’s voice came out through the facemask. ‘We got an anonymous call on Crimestoppers.’ She pointed at marker ‘A’. ‘Working girl found the handbag lying here after servicing one of her clients. Says she thought a purse-snatcher probably dumped it, but maybe there was still something worth having inside. Got to the ID and freaked.’

Ness held up an evidence pouch. It contained a Castle Hill Infirmary identification badge — still attached to its green lanyard: ‘MATERNITY HOSPITAL ~ MIDWIFERY SERVICES’. The photo showed a woman in her mid-to-late twenties, wearing cherry-red lipstick but no other makeup. Her mousey-blonde hair was pulled back in what was probably a loose ponytail. Striking blue-grey eyes and neat eyebrows.

It was the name that brought me up short. I blinked at it. ‘Jessica McFee? Not the Jessica McFee? The bastard grabbed Wee Free McFee’s daughter?’

‘That’s why our anonymous working girl called it in. Didn’t want Wee Free to find out she’d come across the bag and done nothing.’

Wee Free McFee’s daughter. For Christ’s sake…

As if things weren’t bad enough already.

‘Bet he loved that. His little girl, grabbed off the street, raped, slit open…’ I stopped. ‘What?’

‘He doesn’t know. Not yet.’

Alice stood, brushed imaginary dirt off the knees of her SOC suit. ‘Who’s Wee Free McFee?’

‘Good luck with that. He’s going to go absolutely mental.’

Ness cleared her throat. ‘Funny you should mention that. When I tried to get a Family Liaison Officer to go break the news, they all came down with dysentery. Everyone from CID disappeared, and uniform have called in their Federation rep.’

‘Yeah, well, they’re not daft.’

‘Normally I’d make the lazy bastards go — send a firearms team in to break the news, if he’s really as bad as they say — but the Powers That Be want this handled sensitively. Which is why I got DI Morrow to call you.’

I backed up a pace, tightened my grip on the cane’s handle. ‘Oh no you don’t.’

‘Apparently you have some sort of relationship with the man.’

‘No chance — I’m not even a police officer any more, I don’t have to-’

‘I’ve spoken with Bear and he feels it would be appropriate for you to assist us in contacting the bereaved family and questioning them about Jessica’s last known movements.’

‘Well, Detective Superintendent Jacobson can pucker up and-’