Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

I frowned at my reflection. ‘Who the hell is Tim?’

‘ That’s what we’re calling him now. T.I.M. The Inside Man. Tim. Sixteen hours means he’s probably waiting for the food to clear their stomachs so they don’t choke on their own vomit under the anaesthetic. ’

Bacon cheeseburger with crisps. No prizes for guessing where her last meal came from. A little nugget to keep in my pocket until it was time to throw Jacobson a treat. Look, Detective Superintendent, I have been working after all, not just killing time till I could do the same to Mrs Kerrigan.

‘ Sheila also compared the stitches from Claire Young and the young woman they’ve still got in storage from the first time. ’

‘Natalie May.’

‘ In Sheila’s opinion they’re similar enough to assume they were made by the same person. The only difference is that the newer set are rougher than the ones holding Natalie together. She thinks whoever’s doing the stitching is out of practice. And whilst Sheila is frequently a barb in my flesh and a pain in my posterior, I will, reluctantly, accept that she’s a damn fine pathologist .’ He cleared his throat. ‘ Just never tell her I said that. ’

There wasn’t a single person on the streets, just parked cars and empty windows. ‘What about CCTV?’

‘ Bear got them to pull the Closed-Circuit Television footage all the way along Jessica McFee’s route to work. Cooper’s about halfway through. So far all he’s done is whine about it. The boy’s quite useless. ’

‘Well tell him to get his finger out. This isn’t playschool. And make sure Jacobson gets Sabir access to the HOLMES data too.’

‘ And while we’re on the subject of useless, did you really ask Bear to see if they did rape kits on the previous victims? ’

Alice pulled onto First Church Road, slowing to let a rogue Alsatian lope across the street, tail down as it disappeared between two parked cars.

‘ Far be it from me to rain on your parade, Mr Henderson, but even a basic grasp of biological science should tell you that semen doesn’t remain viable in the female body for long. These women are abducted three to five days before they’re dumped, they’re all washed and the incision site cleaned down with chlorhexidine prior to their operations. So unless you’re suggesting he goes to all that trouble to keep things sterile, carries out major surgery, then clambers on-board for a quickie before calling the ambulance, a rape kit isn’t going to pick up much, is it? ’

Huntly might be a prick, but he was right.

Didn’t mean he wasn’t crying out for a punch in the mouth though.

Alice stopped outside Ruth’s building. ‘Here we go.’

Ruth turned, leaned across the gap between the seats, and gave her a hug. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘ Mr Henderson? ’

‘What about combings — they might have got pubic hair from him.’

‘ Ah, now that is a possibility. ’

Ruth turned in her seat and waved at me. ‘It’s like … like a light’s come on in my life again. It’s been dark for so long…’ She reached back and placed a hand on my knee. ‘Bless you.’

‘Glad we could help.’

‘ The only drawback being, they didn’t do any rape kits. I checked with the hospital staff — they were too busy trying to stitch them back together to do anything else. ’

Ruth blinked. Placed a hand flat against her chest, as if she was pushing her heart back into place. Then she nodded and climbed out of the car.

‘ Of course, in an ideal world we could just check with the dead. But, Sheila tells me two of them were cremated, one disappeared, and — looking at her post-mortem photographs — it’s clear that Natalie May favoured… Shall we call it a “Yul Brynner bikini line”? ’

I folded the passenger seat forward and struggled my way into the front. ‘What about Claire Young?’

‘ Ah yes, a woman favoured with a full and lustrous mons pubis. One moment .’ A soft bleep and the phone went silent.

Ruth stood on her top step, turned and waved at us, before letting herself in.

Soon as the building’s door swung shut again, Alice did a three-point turn. ‘We need to get some wine and beer, or should we just get beer, probably we should get both, I mean better safe than sorry, and-’

‘OK, OK: we’ll get some wine.’

‘ Hello, are you still there? Sheila says the Tigerbalm pathologist did a rape kit. But, just in case the man’s an idiot, she’s done one too and sent it off along with the tissue samples and bloods. We should hear back in a few days. In the meantime I shall ask Sheila to unleash herself upon the old post-mortem reports. ’

Why couldn’t it be like it was on the TV, where DNA and lab results only took fifteen minutes? ‘OK, let me know when they’re in.’ I hung up, before he said anything else that deserved a thumping.

The neon sign above the abandoned cash register buzzed and flickered as rain pelted the off-licence window. Bottles of violently coloured alcopops and minimum-unit-price booze lurked inside wire cages screwed to the wall, filling the six-foot gap between the front door and the short black counter that segregated the shop into two bits. Behind the counter, the whisky, wine, vodka, and beer were kept out of reach of the natives.

Alice opened her satchel and pulled out her Inside Man letters, placed them in a pile by the register. ‘While we’re waiting.’ The yellow highlighter came out to join it.

She streaked a fluorescent line across two-inches of scribbled handwriting.

I turned my back on the counter, leaned against it. ‘Henry thought he called himself “the Inside Man” because of stitching things inside the nurses. What if it’s not, though? What if it’s because he’s on the inside?’

‘Mmm?’ More searing yellow streaks.

‘What if he’s one of us?’

‘Mmmmm…’

‘What if he’s literally on the inside: screwing things up, falsifying evidence, burying the truth so we can’t catch him?’

‘Hmmm…’ A sigh. She tapped the plastic end of the highlighter against the paper. ‘Listen to this: “The panicked surge of her breathing makes my nerves sing. A choir of power and control…”’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘At least, I think it says “panicked surge” — could be almost anything.’

‘What about it?’

Wrinkles creased her forehead. ‘Not sure.’

Dear Lord, a two-word answer. That was a first.

She squeaked on another line of fluorescent yellow. ‘Doesn’t it seem a little verbose to you, like whoever wrote it was trying to make everything sound salacious, or like it was part of a book or something? All that imagery: the “panicked surge”, “choir of power”, “singing nerves”…’

‘So, he’s a pretentious nutter with literary delusions.’

‘Hmmmm…’ The highlighter picked out another sentence, then Alice stuck the tip of her tongue between her teeth. ‘Have you ever read the letters the police got from Jack the Ripper? Some are definitely fakes, but the “Dear Boss” and the “From Hell” ones are the most plausible.’

Still no sign of the useless sod. The door at the back of the shop remained resolutely shut. ‘This is taking for ever.’

‘The “From Hell” letter goes: “Mr Lusk, Sor, I send you half the Kidne” — no “Y” — “I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise” — N.I.S.E. — “I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer, Signed Catch me when you can Mishter Liusk.” No punctuation: no commas, apostrophes, or full stops.’