Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

I settled on the edge of his desk. Puffed a couple of breaths. Sweat trickled down the gap between my shoulderblades. Someone was hammering rusty nails through the flesh and bone of my foot. Then hauling them out with pliers and thumping them back in again.

Well, I couldn’t let Alice drive, could I? Not until she sobered up a bit.

It took some effort, but I finally managed to fake a smile. ‘Come on, Micky, that’s no way to treat an old friend, is it?’

‘Not dignifying that with a response.’

‘Are you refusing to cooperate with a police investigation? Obstructing the hunt for a serial killer? Seriously?’

He gave the enter key an extra-hard jab. Scooted his chair back a foot. ‘After what you did?’

Ah. I ran a hand around the back of my neck, catching a pad of cold sweat. ‘Len thought you-’

‘I don’t care what Detective Bloody Superintendent Lennox Murray thought. I wasn’t the Inside Man then, and I’m not the sodding Inside Man now!’ Micky grabbed an empty mug, ringed inside with brown tidemarks, and stood. ‘Still hurts when it’s cold.’

‘He was…’ Try again. ‘Len went too far some times. But only because he was trying to save lives.’

Micky bared his teeth. ‘Oh, how noble of him.’

‘Yes, and I know he was wrong, but he’s not here, is he? They banged him up for it. And I’m asking you to help me catch a killer.’

‘Hmph…’ Then Micky limped off towards the recess at the side of the room where the fridge and hot-water urn lurked.

I lumbered after him, jaw clenching every time my right foot hit the ground, cane trembling in my hand.

Prednisolone my arse. The four I’d dry-swallowed on the way over here hadn’t even made a dent in it. ‘You made copies of the originals, didn’t you?’

Alice appeared at my shoulder, flashing her whitest of smiles. ‘Alice McDonald, it’s an honour to meet you, Mr Slosser, I have to say that I’m a big fan of your weekly column. Slosser’s Saturday Sessions is compulsory reading in my house. And your work on the Inside Man case was revelatory, wasn’t it, Ash?’

Revelatory? I stared at her.

She took a breath. ‘Anyway, if you can let us have those copies of the letters and envelopes, that’d be great. Big assistance.’ Alice held her hands out, as if she was holding an invisible beach ball. ‘Huge.’

Micky pursed his lips and leaned back against the working surface. ‘Did you know that before I printed the first letter they were calling him the Caledonian Ripper?’

Her eyes went wide. ‘Really?’ Even though it was in the sodding briefing notes she’d written.

‘Oh yes: the News of the World gave him that nickname soon as Doreen Appleton’s body turned up. Well, it was pretty obvious that the kind of guy who’d cut a woman open and stitch a plastic doll inside wasn’t going to quit at just one, was he? Man like that needs a good nickname so people will know who we’re talking about when the next one turns up.’

‘Wow.’

‘Then, one day, I get this letter from someone saying they’re the bloke who killed Doreen Appleton. Said the papers should stop lying about him being sick and evil, he was only doing what had to be done. That calling him the “Caledonian Ripper” was disrespectful and rude. And he signed himself, “The Inside Man”.’

‘Gosh.’ She stepped closer. ‘So, if it wasn’t for you, we’d never know his real name, I don’t mean the name he was born with, obviously we don’t know that, I mean the more important one — the one he picked for himself.’

Micky nodded. ‘Exactly. You want a coffee?’

I nodded. ‘Tea would be-’

‘Didn’t ask you.’ He thumped two mugs down, snatched a jar of decaf from the countertop. ‘I couldn’t run for two years, you know that, don’t you? Two sodding years.’

I rested my thumping head against the wall. ‘Tell me about it.’

He spooned out gritty coffee granules into both mugs. ‘Do you take sugar, Alice, or are you sweet enough as it is?’

She actually giggled. ‘Two, please.’

Micky lumped in a couple of heaped teaspoons. Then frowned. ‘You think it’s him again, don’t you? All that stuff at the briefings about not jumping to conclusions — you know it’s him. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here scrabbling about for copies of his old love letters…’

I went for nonchalant. ‘Just tidying up a few loose ends.’

He put the milk down. ‘What happened to the originals? You’ve got them on file, don’t you? All boxed up somewhere safe in the archives?’

I sighed. Put in a shrug as well for good measure. ‘You know what they’re like. It’s all about jurisdiction and infighting these days, one big unhappy family choking on its own bureaucracy.’ Probably.

‘So what’s in it for me?’

Alice put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s important.’

‘Hmmm…’ He filled the mugs from the urn and stirred. ‘How about we have a little reciprocity? My back’s very itchy.’

‘Well…’ She looked at me, then back at Micky. ‘How about I tell you where Claire Young’s last meal came from?’

OK, so Jacobson wouldn’t be happy about it, but screw him. Swings and roundabouts. And when it got splashed all over the Castle News and Post tomorrow morning, we could just blame PC Cooper. There is no ‘I’ in team.

Micky handed her a mug. ‘What is it, McDonalds? KFC?’

I shook my head. ‘Nope: local establishment, lots of history.’

He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a bit. Took a sip of coffee. ‘Suppose we could play up the “condemned woman’s final request” angle. “What would your last meal on earth be?” Get in a few local celebs…’ He limped off to his desk again. ‘What else?’

‘Don’t be greedy.’

‘You’re after the letters for a reason. I get first dibs on anything official that comes out of them. Twelve-hour lead.’

‘Maybe. Now let’s see the letters.’

On the other end of the phone, Jacobson made sooking noises. ‘ And Ness and Knight are delighted with Alice’s work on the profile with Dr Docherty. So at least I’ve got one team member who’s doing what they’re meant to. ’

I glanced over to the passenger seat, where she was squinting at one of the photographs Micky had copied for us. Six full-sized, and six blown-up to double the original — cramped black handwriting spidering along the lines of a yellow legal pad. Another set with the envelopes. Her tongue stuck out of the side of her mouth, a crease between her eyebrows as she ran a finger back and forwards along the words.

Outside, rain whipped down across the car park, battering the four-storey block of redbrick flats, the concrete central stairwell marked with: ‘SAXON HALLS — BUILDING C’. The other two halls lurked behind it, the three of them running in a diagonal line along the edge of Camburn Woods.

A handful of cars were parked in front of the entrance, all of them occupied, windows cracked open to let curls of cigarette smoke escape into the downpour. Telephoto lenses, Dictaphones, and chequebooks at the ready. An outpost of the siege in front of FHQ.

‘I’ll tell her.’ I put a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘They say you did great on the profile.’

She curled her top lip, not looking up from the letter. ‘Nothing to do with me, Dr Docherty ignored nearly every one of my suggestions.’

‘Oh… Well, he seems to be giving you credit, anyway.’

‘Is he now…’ Her mouth hardened. A highlighter was jabbed into the paper and dragged across a sentence. ‘How nice .’

Back to the phone. ‘What’s happening with Wee Free?’