Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

‘ And he says to tell you that you can either get over there and break the news, or I can get someone to give you a lift right back to prison.’ She shrugged, making her SOC suit rustle. ‘Up to you.’

Alice tugged at my sleeve. ‘Why’s everyone afraid of this Wee Free McFee?’

Shifty backed up, keeping pace. ‘Look, it’s not my fault, OK? She made me-’

‘You are not in my bloody good books.’

‘Aw, come on, Ash, it-’

‘Wee Free McFee. Yeah, thanks a lot, Dave . You set me up!’ I stopped, dragged out my official mobile and called Jacobson.

‘ What? ’

‘Did you lend me out to Ness?’

‘ Ah… ’ A small pause. ‘ I was led to understand you’ve got a relationship- ’

‘I arrested him a couple of times, we weren’t moving in together!’

‘ All you have to do is go round, tell him his daughter’s been abducted, and get him to answer a few questions. How hard could it be? ’

‘How hard?’ I lowered the phone, limped off a few steps, then back again. ‘He’s a psychopath. I’ll need some muscle.’

‘ Ash, Ash, Ash… ’ A sigh. ‘ That’s your job. Your prison record is one long list of fights and broken bodies. Why do you think I sprung you? ’

‘Oh, that’s great. Well done. The guy with arthritis and a walking stick is the team muscle. What stellar planning.’

‘ I’m sure it won’t be as bad as all that, you just- ’

‘And there’s no way in hell I’m taking Alice in there. No muscle, no visit.’

A long rattling sigh. ‘ Fine, you can have some muscle. Constable Cooper will be with you in- ’

‘The boy couldn’t beat up a damp nappy.’

‘ Well who do you want then? And it better not be one of your Oldcastle cronies. ’

I told him.

Bad Bill’s Burger Bar was a rusty Transit van — painted matt black, with the menu chalked on the bodywork beside the open hatch. He’d parked it in the far corner of the B amp;Q car park, the air around it heady with the smell of onions frying in the fat that oozed out of the burgers and Lorne sausage.

Alice wandered back towards the car with her shoulders hunched, woolly hat pulled down over her ears, curly hair escaping to sprawl down the shoulders of her padded jacket. The fog of her breath mingled with the steam rising off the Double Bastard Bacon Murder Burger clutched in both hands. She curled in for another bite.

I popped the Suzuki’s boot and loaded the contents of the trolley into it. Shovel. Pick axe. Stanley knife. Three-and-a-bit-foot-long iron crowbar.

Alice chewed — tomato, marie rose, and brown sauce made a Joker-from-Batman smile that nearly reached her ears. The words were barely audible through the mouthful of bun and meat and lettuce and crisps. ‘Sure you don’t want a bite? S’good.’

Duct tape. Bolt cutters. Compost accelerant. Heavy-duty rubble sacks. Firelighters. Lump hammer. Five-litre container of methylated spirits.

‘Not hungry.’

Tarpaulin, plastic washing line, pliers.

‘I’ve never had a burger with Bacon Frazzles on it before.’ More chewing. Then she frowned at the boot full of tools. Shuffled her feet. ‘I still don’t see why you made me buy all this stuff just to go visit Mr McFee.’

‘Because that’s how the law works: if you batter someone to death with a crowbar, it’s assault with a deadly weapon. Why did you have a crowbar? You must have taken it with you to attack the victim. You’re going to prison.’ I clunked the boot shut. ‘But if you’ve got a car full of DIY stuff, because you’re going to do up your new flat in Kingsmeath, you can batter the same person to death and call it self-defence. All about context. And I will pay you back.’

Alice froze, mid-bite. ‘Are we planning on doing that? Killing him?’

Not him, exactly… But it’d make for an evening Mrs Kerrigan was going to remember for as long as she lived. Which would be about two hours if I could keep the blood loss to a minimum.

I turned the trolley around and gave it a shove towards the battered orange pipework corralling a few of its mates. Letting it find its own way in. ‘I don’t care what Jacobson says, muscle or not, there’s no way we’re going to see Wee Free McFee without a bit of hardware.’

And if the crowbar didn’t work, there was always Bob the Builder. He smiled up at me from the back seat, that bright yellow spanner clutched in one hand.

‘Ash…’ She licked a smear of sauce from the side of her mouth. ‘You were really quiet at Ruth Laughlin’s and I think it’d be a good idea if we talked about how you feel about the-’

‘Can you do me a favour?’ I looked back towards Bad Bill’s, where the man himself was hammering a chicken into bits with a cleaver. ‘I know I said I wasn’t hungry, but now I think about it, I could go a stovies. Only, my foot’s killing me, and you know … would you mind?’

She sighed. Took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. ‘Tea?’

‘Yeah, please.’

But Alice stayed put. Tilted her head to one side. ‘When you were on the phone with Bear, why didn’t you tell him about Ruth being raped?’

Why? Because knowledge was power. What was the point of giving it away without getting something back?

I pointed at the Transit van. ‘And make sure Bill doesn’t skimp on the beetroot.’

Another sigh. Then she ripped a bite from her burger, turned, and munched her way back to Bad Bill’s.

When she reached the counter, I ducked into the Suzuki and grabbed Bob the Builder. Gave the car park a quick scan — no security cameras pointing this way, but better safe than sorry. Got into the passenger seat and turned Bob face-down in the footwell. A seam ran up the middle of his back, but it was stitched tight. I flipped him upside down.

A line of Velcro ran up the inside seam of his dungarees. It scritched open, revealing wads of kapok stuffing. The stuff snagged on my nails as I pushed my fingers inside Bob, grabbed the gun, and pulled it out.

Black. Small enough that when I wrapped my hand around the grip and pointed my index finger the tip poked out past the end of the barrel. Light, too. I thumbed the release and the clip slid out into my open palm. Empty.

A quick check over my shoulder — Alice was standing at the hatch of the burger bar, talking to the dark rounded bulk of Bad Bill while he ladled something into a polystyrene container.

I dipped back into Bob and gave him what had to be the world’s roughest full body-cavity search: rummaging through his innards till I had thirteen bullets in my lap. They were tiny — not even as long as the last joint of my thumb — steel-bodied with a copper tip, like a small metallic lipstick.

The first one was a struggle to get into the clip and it just got worse after that as the spring inside compressed. When the final one snapped into place I slipped the magazine into the handgrip again. Hauled back the slide and racked a round into the chamber. Made sure the safety catch was on.

Then gave Bob a loaded-handgun suppository and returned him to the back seat where he’d come from.

A knock at the window: Alice, her face now free of sauce, a polystyrene carton in one hand, a couple of wax-paper cups in the other.

Lunchtime.

Stovies. Couldn’t remember when I’d last had proper ones, made with lamb instead of prison gristle and stock-cubes. The beetroot sat in one corner of the carton, staining the potato like spilled blood. I forked up another mouthful and shovelled it in while Alice sat with her phone pinned to her ear.

‘Uh-huh… No, I don’t think so…’ Her satchel lay in her lap, a makeshift desk for one of the Inside Man letters. Its grainy, badly photocopied scrawl was streaked with yellow highlighter pen and red biro. The rest were stretched across the dashboard. Waiting their turn.