Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

Nice place to dump a body. Heft your victim into a ditch, then stand here admiring the view for a bit, before heading off into town to pick up the next poor sod.

I got back in the car. ‘Across the river, then take a left.’

The view from where he’d dumped Natalie May wasn’t nearly as impressive. A railway culvert — just a small stone arch beneath the single line heading north — with a burn running through it. The embankment rose up on both sides, following the tracks, but the burn cut across it at right angles, like a cross.

Alice joined me on the grass verge at the side of the road, one hand on the barbed-wire fence, peering down into the shadows. The drop had to be at least fifteen feet to the water. She stood on her tiptoes. ‘This isn’t like the others.’

‘There isn’t a phone box for eight or nine miles.’ I picked up a stone and tossed it over the fence and down into the burn. ‘Everyone else was dumped where an ambulance could get to them in ten to fifteen minutes, clear directions, nice and easy to find. Natalie gets dumped in the middle of nowhere. If that maintenance team hadn’t come out to fix the wiring, she could’ve stayed hidden for years.’

‘No nine-nine-nine call.’

‘No point, she was already dead. Same with Doreen Appleton and Claire Young. Dumped off the beaten track. Failures. If he thinks they’ve got a chance, he makes the call…’

Alice scuffed her foot along the verge, drawing a line in the mud with the toe of her Converse trainers. ‘Except for Ruth.’

‘Except for Ruth.’

‘It’s not your fault. She was a nurse, she lived in the same halls as the other victims, it was just … bad luck.’

I hurled another stone in after the first. It splashed into the dark water and disappeared. ‘There’s what, thirty nurses in each building? Three halls in total. Ninety nurses to choose from and he grabbed the one who’d helped me. Luck?’ My walking stick squelched through the grass as I limped back towards the car. ‘Of course it’s my fault.’

‘ … train now departing from platform six is the delayed three forty-five to Aberdeen… ’

I stuck my finger in my other ear and leaned back against the photo booth. ‘What?’ The word came out in a fog of breath.

On the other end of the phone, Sabir’s Liverpool accent was like hairy treacle. ‘ I said, you’ve got a bloody cheek. My guvnor wasn’t exactly made up when I got yanked off Operation Midnight Frost .’ Chewing noises came down the phone, and Sabir’s accent got even thicker. ‘ Like it’s my fault youse whackers up there in Jockland can’t work computers? ’

The railway station’s ironwork had faded from green-and-gold to rust-and-grey, the anti-pigeon netting sagging and torn, speckled with feathers. The floor beneath the thicker beams streaked with droppings. The big, domed glass roof was thick with caked-on dirt, painted orange and red by the setting sun. A crowd of people shuffled through the automatic barriers, trundling suitcases and sour faces.

‘Did you find anything?’

‘ Course I did: properly genius, me .’ The sound of thick fingers hammering away at a keyboard rattled through from the other end. ‘ Got thirty calls in the last four weeks. Ten are to local residential numbers, two to the speaking clock, and eighteen to a business in Castle Hill — Erotophonic Communications Limited. Gave ’em a call and spoke to some biddie calling herself “Sexy Sadie”. Premium-rate sexline. Had a nice long chat and a ciggie afterwards. ’

‘Hope you didn’t put that on expenses.’

‘ You gorra email address now you’re out the nick? I’ll send you the numbers, names, addresses, and that. ’

‘Hold on…’ I pulled out the instruction sheet that had come with Dr Constantine’s investigation kit, and read off the address. The arrivals and departures board flickered, updating itself. Sodding Perth train was going to be another ten minutes late. ‘Do me a favour and cross-reference the residential numbers with anyone on the sex-offenders’ register. Doubt there’ll be anything, but better safe than sorry. Then see if you can have a rummage through the HOLMES data for the original investigation. Might be a match there.’

‘ Bleeding heck, not after much, are you? Fancy a foot-massage while I’m at it? I’ve- ’

‘How are you getting on with the background noise on those recorded messages?’

‘ Give us a chance! They’ve only just- ’

‘And I want an address too: Laura Strachan. Still in Oldcastle, but might be living under an assumed name. Local plod can’t seem to find her.’

Munching came down the line again.

‘Sabir? Hello?’

‘ Oh, have you finished? Thought you might’ve been after a pony as well. One that farts rainbows and pukes glitter. ’

‘Sometime today would be good.’

‘ You know the problem with youse Jocks? You’re all a bunch of- ’

I hung up and stuck the phone back in my pocket.

The photo booth whirred and a strip of glossy pics dropped into the hopper. Me, looking like death had come early, staring straight into the lens. A horrible photograph, but it’d be just right for a fake passport.

I let it dry for a minute, then slipped it into my jacket as Alice emerged from WH Smiths with a carton of milk and a packet of extra-strong mints.

She crunched a couple, chasing them down with a swig of milk. ‘They were out of antacids.’

‘Should’ve had the stovies.’ I unhooked my cane from the lip of the photo booth. ‘Sabir says hi.’

Alice placed the palm of her hand below her breastbone and rubbed at the stripy sweater. ‘Is he coming up, because if he’s coming up we should all go out for a meal or something, well, not all of us, I mean Sabir’s not going to get on with Professor Huntly, but then I don’t think many people do, he’s a bit of an acquired taste and-’

‘Sabir’s going to track down an address for Laura Strachan. Just as well, because Shifty’s hopeless.’

The distorted voice crackled out of the station’s tannoy again. ‘ The next train to arrive at platform one is the four seventeen from Edinburgh. ’

She shifted from one red-shoed foot to the other. ‘About this, are you sure-’

‘Positive. Come on.’ I lumbered toward the automatic barriers, joining a boot-faced bloke in a suit, and a teenage girl with big hair and a homemade ‘WELCOME ♥ HOME ♥ BILLY!!!’ banner.

I leaned on the barricade separating the platforms from the concourse. ‘Alice…’

She crunched another mint, staring at me.

‘Alice, what would you say if I told you I had to go away for a bit?’

‘I won’t let them send you back to prison. We’re going to catch the Inside Man and-’

‘I don’t mean back to prison, I mean … away. Maybe Spain, or Australia?’

Her eyebrows pinched. ‘You’re leaving me?’

I cleared my throat. Looked away down the line heading south. ‘You could come with me, if you like.’

‘To Australia?’

‘Just… Just until things calm down a bit. You know, with Mrs Kerrigan.’

Alice stepped in close, stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘Could we get a house with a swimming pool? And a dog? And a barbecue?’

‘Don’t see why not. Money might be a bit-’ There was a warbling bleep and my official mobile vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out — an envelope icon blinked in the middle of the screen above ‘YOU HAVE ONE NEW EMAIL’. That’d be Sabir. I poked the icon and read the message… Ten names, complete with telephone numbers and addresses. He’d even annotated them with the results of a Police National Computer search. Say what you liked about Sabir, he didn’t mess about.