Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

Above us, the sagging fairy lights twinkled, drawing up towards that vast rusting cross. The rest of the junkyard lay thick with darkness, piles of dilapidated machinery looming around us like the bones of metal dinosaurs.

‘“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”’

I took a sip of my tea. ‘Doesn’t it also say something about thou shall not kill?’

Another line of smoke got caught in the security light’s glare. ‘That was thrown out of court. Insufficient evidence.’

The Beetle sat up on bricks. Both front doors were gone as was all the glass, the interior stripped bare except for the back seat where Fire and Brimstone lay, ears twitching, glittering eyes like polished marbles. Staring at me.

‘According to the hospital, Jessica was doing a split shift, clocked out at midnight. We found her handbag on Wishart Avenue. He probably followed her there.’

In the shadows, over by the shipping container, Babs leaned against the corrugated metalwork, steam rising from her coffee, one hand on Thatcher’s stock.

Wee Free took another drag. ‘I’ve read the papers. He slits them open, stuffs a doll inside, stitches them up again, then dumps them at the side of the road to die.’

‘Did your daughter say anything about strangers hanging around the dorms or the hospital? Anyone bothering her?’

‘You strike me as someone who’s let darkness into his heart.’

Me? ‘You can bloody talk.’

A shrug. ‘Like I said — I read the papers, I take an interest. If she’s alive, I want my daughter back.’

‘That’s what we’re trying to do.’

The tip of his cigarillo glowed like a malignant orange eye. ‘Didn’t manage it with your own, what makes you think you can do it for mine?’

I thumped my mug down on the Beetle’s roof. Tea sloshed out onto the rusty paintwork. ‘Fuck you.’

Inside the car, Fire and Brimstone sat up, ears pricked.

‘Finally: a bit of passion.’ A smile twitched the corners of Wee Free’s moustache. ‘Jessica hasn’t said anything to me for years. Oh, I try, because I’m a good parent, but she’s wilful. Got that from her mother, God rest her tortured soul.’

My knuckles ached, pulled tight into fists. Burning in anticipation. ‘You don’t ever talk about my daughters.’

‘She was seeing someone, I know that. A godless man with a tattoo.’

Over by the container, Babs sniffed. ‘You got something against tattoos, like?’

‘Leviticus 19:28, “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you.”’

‘Says the man with the moustache: Leviticus 19:27. And you cut yourself — we all saw it.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘But not for the dead.’ Then went back to his cigarillo. ‘You’ve no idea where he takes them, do you?’

I stepped back. Took a deep breath. Unclenched my teeth and fists. ‘We’re following a number of leads. I’ll see if we can get a Family Liaison officer to keep you up to date, be your point of contact for the investigation.’

‘In fact, you don’t know a single thing about him.’

‘We will catch him.’

The smile disappeared. ‘Not if I get there first.’

Babs stretched her arms forward, till her fingertips touched the windscreen. Then slumped back. ‘Thought that was going to be a total waste of time, but turned out pretty sweet in the end.’

Alice took the Suzuki down York Street, past the knot of halal butchers and dry cleaners, heading for the border with Castle Hill. The rush-hour traffic thickened the closer we got to the centre of town. ‘You should maybe think about getting some help for your emotional expression mechanism, an overt reliance on violence for serotonin release isn’t healthy.’

‘Meh. Each to their own, right? Sometimes it does you good to shoot things.’

I shifted in the back seat, but the ache in my ribs wouldn’t go away. Someone slammed a fist into them every time I breathed.

‘So,’ Babs turned and grinned at me, ‘what’s next? Anyone else needing a rattle?’

Alice stiffened. ‘The intention wasn’t to “rattle” Mr McFee, we were there to break the news about his daughter, and anyway, don’t you have to get back to work or something, I mean it’s been lovely meeting you again, but we don’t want to be a burden, do we, Ash?’

‘Nah, don’t worry about it. Told them I’d come down with that norovirus, they’re not wanting me back till it’s all cleared up. Can you imagine a prison full of guys with vomiting and the squits? Nightmare.’

I shifted again, but it still didn’t help. So another couple of Prednisolone got popped from their blister pack and swallowed dry. Probably should have read the instructions about maximum dosage and side-effects, but it was too late for that. And besides, everything hurt…

Alice tapped her fingers around the outside edge of the steering wheel, one at a time, like a centipede’s legs. ‘Tell me about the calling card.’

‘The key ring? Cheap plastic from China, sold through cash-and-carries at something like a hundred for a fiver. Nearest wholesale outlet is Colonel Dealtime’s in Logansferry. Retails from corner shops and pound-stores. We checked out all the retailers, but no one matched the profile.’

‘Hmm…’ Alice took the third exit on the Keller roundabout and onto Dundas road, where the traffic slowed to a crawl. ‘What about the key?’

‘Yale. YA-Sixteens. They’re all for different locks. We took the key profiles to every locksmith in the city, and got laughed at. No way to trace what lock they were for.’

The traffic finally ground to a standstill, a long line of red tail-lights stretching away from us. Probably backed up all the way to the bridge.

She pulled on the handbrake and wrapped one arm around herself. Using the other hand to fiddle with her hair. ‘The keys and key rings are symbolic — obviously the little plastic baby represents the bigger plastic baby he’s going to stitch inside Jessica, it’s fertility, fecundity , which means he’s probably sterile himself, I mean if he could get someone pregnant the normal way he wouldn’t have to go through the whole surgery routine, would he, he’d chain them to the floor and rape them.’ A frown. ‘But he did rape Ruth Laughlin, so maybe it’s belt and braces, or he’s mentally compartmentalized sex away from procreation?’

Babs rolled her head from side to side, stretching the cords in her neck. ‘Maybe he’s just a nutter? Maybe he likes cutting women open?’

‘If we want to get all Freudian the key represents the penis and the lock the vagina, it’s a metaphor for penetration and unlocking what’s hidden, but then I always thought Freud was a bit of a pervert, all that stuff about wanting to have sex with your mother is just plain disturbed.’

I tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Can we cut to the chase, here?’

‘What if it’s not a metaphor, what if it’s an invitation…? What if it’s a case of, when you get out of hospital and you’ve had my baby, here is the key to get back to me so we can be together?’

A snort came from the passenger seat. ‘He’s asking them to move in with him? Yeah, real romantic.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t hate women, maybe he loves them, and this is the only way he can express it: by giving them a baby…’

I tapped her on the shoulder again. ‘We’re moving.’

‘What?’

Behind us a symphony for angry car horns filled the night.

‘Oh, right…’

And we were on our way again.

My phone rang — Sabir’s number. I picked up. ‘What have you got?’

‘ What, no pleasantries? No, “Here, Sabir, you’re my favourite bizzie, you are, a star among men and killer with the ladies”? ’