Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

And two days later she goes missing.

Liz laughed, not loud, more of a small, slightly smoky chuckle. ‘Tell you, her dad’s some sort of lay preacher, but by Christ that woman could curdle the air when she wanted to.’ Then silence. ‘I mean she can. Not could. Can .’

Alice nodded. ‘It must be a bit weird, all living here together. Did you know Claire Young?’

‘Not really. Yeah, I’d bump into her at work, or in the car park. Maybe once or twice at a birthday party, or a flatwarming.’ She waved a hand at the window, where the rain lashed against the other two buildings. ‘I know it’s old-fashioned, but living here’s about the only perk we get — cheap rent and a bit of community spirit. Course, the scumbags want to sell the place off for development. Cost-cutting my arse, it’s profiteering.’ She rummaged in her handbag and came out with a creased sheet of paper, half-covered with signatures. ‘Don’t fancy signing our petition to save the halls, do-’

A jingling ringtone blared out of the BlackBerry and she snatched it up from the table. ‘Hello? … What, right now? … No, no, I’ll be right down.… Yes.’ She pressed a button, then sat there frowning at the blank screen. ‘It’s the taxi. Bunch of us are going to the King’s Hussars for a curry. It was supposed to be a birthday treat.’ She looked up at Alice, blinked a couple of times, then wiped a palm across her eyes. It left a smudge of mascara on her cheek. ‘I don’t want to go without Jessica…’

Alice reached across the coffee table, over the piles of gossip and car magazines, and took her hand. ‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. What would Jessica want you to do?’

A small, brittle smile. ‘Stuff myself with poppadums, lamb Jalfrezi, and sauvignon blanc till it’s coming out my ears. “You don’t turn thirty every day, Liz,” she’d say, “might as well enjoy it.”’

‘Then that’s what you should do.’

She stood, laughed. ‘God, look at me, better fix my face or the taxi-driver will freak.’

I levered myself out of the couch. ‘Before you go, give me Jimmy’s name and address. Call it a birthday present from Police Scotland.’

The corridor wall was cold against my back, leaching through the damp jacket to the chilled flesh within. ‘No, Mackay. M.A.C.K.A.Y. Jimmy Mackay, last known address: Flat 50 Willcox Towers, Cowskillin.’

Rhona repeated it back to me, slowly, as if she was writing it down at the same time. ‘ OK, got that. Don’t worry, by the time we’ve finished with him, Jimmy’s not going within a million miles of his ex. ’

‘Thanks, Rhona.’

‘ Ash? ’ She coughed. ‘ Look, I’m really sorry I told Ness you think the Inside Man might be a cop. I didn’t know it was meant to be a secret. Honest .’

‘Well … just make sure Jimmy Mackay gets the fright of his life.’

‘ Deal. ’

The doorway down the hall opened and Alice backed out, talking too quietly to make out more than a couple of words from where I stood. Then she leaned into the flat and hugged whoever it was.

Alice backed away again and the door closed. She stood there for a moment, then slumped in place, took a couple of deep breaths — arching her back — then turned and gave me a weak smile. Waved.

I limped over. ‘Well?’

She rubbed a hand across her face. ‘Claire Young’s flatmates are entrenched in stage three of the Kübler-Ross model — the whole place is like a mausoleum.’ Alice shook herself. ‘I’m sorry you had to leave, it’s-’

‘It’s OK. I understand. They don’t need some policeman intruding on their grief.’

‘Pfff…’ She stepped in close and leaned her forehead against my chest. ‘We did some NLP and some talk therapy and I feel like I’ve run a marathon carrying a washing machine on my back…’

I gave her shoulder a rub. ‘That us?’

A nod. ‘Can we get something to eat?’

I turned and guided her towards the stairs. ‘The hospital canteen’s rubbish, but there’s usually a chip van parked outside.’

Building A’s stairwell was lined in glass, rather than concrete, with views into the dark boughs of Camburn Woods on one side, and the car park on the other. At least there weren’t any journos lying in wait at the front door.

Alice drooped along at my side as I limped over and opened it. She paused beneath the portico, struggling with her collapsible umbrella. ‘Can we walk? From here to the hospital?’

Outside the wind had dropped. Now it just hammered straight down, bouncing back off the paving slabs and tarmac in a ricochet mist. Battering the trees and bushes into submission.

‘You sure?’

‘For the last two hours we’ve done nothing but drink tea and talk to people in pain, every breath tastes of loss and panic and yes I know that sounds melodramatic, but I’m trying to think like he thinks when he looks at nurses, and now I’m tired and I just want to walk in the rain and not have to wallow in fear and grief.’

‘OK…’

She held her umbrella up, so I could hobble in underneath it. Slipped her arm through mine so it’d be above us both. Stepped out from beneath the portico and into the downpour. ‘A choir of power and pain.’

We followed the path from the front of the building around the back, where it snaked off in three directions — right: back towards the gloomy brick lumps of Buildings B and C, straight ahead: into Camburn Woods, and left: along the fringes of the undergrowth, dead lampposts sticking up like bones towards the granite sky.

A sign stood at the junction, pointing left. ‘CASTLE HILL INFIRMARY ~ ALLOW TWENTY MINUTES’.

Alice pulled in closer as we stepped onto the rain-rivered path, the run-off from the buildings making tiny breakwaters against her red All Stars. ‘No one trusts the on-site security, they never seem to do anything unless you force them. I said they should make some sort of formal complaint, I mean what’s the point of having security if it doesn’t make you feel secure?’

‘Anyone hanging around asking about Claire?’

‘No one specific. Well, there are peepers all the time, especially if you’ve got one of the rooms that backs onto the woods. You know what men are like.’ She sniffed. ‘No offence.’

The nurses’ halls disappeared into the rain behind us. Up ahead, high walls hid the back gardens of a block of sandstone tenements. The spires of St Stephen’s, St Jasper’s, and the cathedral reared above their slate roofs. And just visible in the distance, the twin chimneys of the hospital incinerator, their white trails of smoke and steam making parallel scars across the sky.

The only sounds were the hissing leaves and the drumming raindrops on the umbrella’s black skin.

‘They say anything about someone taking photos? Going through their rubbish?’

She shook her head.

Two hours of visiting flat, after flat, after flat of scared and worried nurses and the only lead we had depended on Detective Sergeant Sabir Akhtar being the technical genius he always told everyone he was.

Alice peered past me, into the woods. ‘It’s like something out of the Brothers Grimm.’

‘Funny you should say that. Once upon a time, there was a young woman called Deborah Hill, and she-’

‘Please.’ Alice turned her head away. ‘Not this time. Let’s just … walk.’

The nurse sniffed, then scrubbed a crumpled tissue across her nostrils, squidging her pudgy nose from side to side. ‘No. Well, you know…’ A shrug and a sigh. She was short, with thick purple bags lurking under her eyes, her face round in the shadow of her Puffa jacket’s hood. The zip was open, despite the rain, showing an expanse of blue scrubs and a name badge with ‘BETHANY GILLESPIE’ printed on it.