Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

I backed away from the bedroom window.

The mattress was half off the double bed. All the drawers were pulled out of the chest by the door. The wardrobe lay open and emptied. Skirts and jackets and trousers littered the floor, mixed in with socks and pants. The photos on the walls sat in crooked frames, the glass cracked.

Alice settled onto the edge of the bed frame, her purple nitrile gloves squeaking as she wrung her hands together. ‘He’s going to kill David, isn’t he?’

‘Looks as if someone went through the place with a baseball bat.’ I bent and picked a teddy bear from the floor. He was ancient and grey, almost no fur left, the chest patched together like Frankenstein’s monster. I put him on top of the chest of drawers, back to the wall so he wouldn’t fall over.

A uniformed constable stuck his head around the door: big ears and a squint nose, hair cut so short it was barely there. ‘Just checked with the downstairs neighbour. Old fart’s deaf as a post — didn’t hear anything suspicious.’

‘Why haven’t they dusted for prints?’

He pulled his shoulders up around his ears. ‘SEB are all round Laura Strachan’s place. Got to wait till they’re done there. Cutbacks and that.’

Alice stood. ‘The Inside Man turns up at Laura Strachan’s house and she goes with him without so much as a whimper. What’s different here? Why the struggle?’

The hall was littered with coats. I picked my way between them and into the lounge. Both of the armchairs lay on their backs. Whoever took Ruth had ripped the cushions out of the couch — stuffing prolapsed through slashes in the brown corduroy. The three-bar electric fire was dead, the TV face-down in front of the window.

‘What if Ruth recognized him for who he really was?’ I scuffed a toe through the broken glass of a clip-frame. ‘She wouldn’t go without a fight. Not after last time.’

The sound of heavy metal music thrummed through the floor beneath my feet. No wonder the guy downstairs was deaf.

I did a slow three-sixty. Frowned at the opened sideboard, the broken dishes and paperbacks lying crumpled on the floor. ‘He was looking for something. He ransacked the place, then smashed everything.’

The kitchen was the same, and the bathroom too — the contents of the medicine cupboard strewn across the floor.

Alice squatted down by the bath and poked through the bottles and jars. Then frowned up at me. ‘Her antidepressants are missing. She told me she’d just got her prescription for Nortriptyline refilled. Should be at least three or four boxes here.’

‘Why would he want her antidepressants?’

‘Well … mix Nortriptyline with alcohol and it’s a pretty good sedative?’

‘He’s got access to surgical anaesthetics, why would he- God’s sake. What now?’ I pulled my mobile out and pressed the button. ‘Henderson.’

The voice on the other end was low, twitchy, as if she was trying not to be overheard. ‘ We’re screwed. We’re all totally screwed! ’

I pulled back and stared at the screen. Wasn’t a number I knew. ‘Who is this?’

‘You need to get over to Carrick Gardens, now. Virginia Cunningham’s house. He’s dead: we need to get our stories straight. Oh, we are so screwed…’ And then she was gone.

I stuck the phone back in my pocket.

Virginia Cunningham — your friendly neighbourhood pregnant child abuser.

Alice stared at me. ‘What?’

‘No idea. Get in the car.’

DC Nenova was waiting for us at the front door, huddling out of the rain. It hurtled down from a heavy grey sky, pummelling the garden flat.

She shifted her feet, glanced back over her shoulder. ‘It’s not our fault, it wasn’t as if anyone knew, how could we? It’s…’ Nenova licked her lips. ‘We just need to all calm down and work out what we’re going to do. Right?’

Alice peered past her, into the house. Holding the umbrella in both hands as it trembled in the downpour. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Of course it’s not all right: we’re screwed.’ Nenova turned and marched off down the hall, got to the end and started back again. ‘We didn’t know, OK? How could we know?’

I stepped inside. The lounge door was open — her partner, McKevitt, sat in the middle of the couch, knees together, shoulders hunched, one leg twitching like it was marking time to a death-metal beat. The bitter-sharp smell of sick rolled out of the room. He looked up as we passed. ‘It’s not our fault…’

Alice thumped the front door shut and propped her dripping umbrella in the corner. ‘Ash, what’s going on?’

‘No idea.’

Nenova turned the corner and paused between the bathroom and the bedroom door, pacing the corridor’s width, one hand up to her mouth, biting at the skin around her nails. ‘We just need to get our stories straight, that’s all. It’ll be fine. We just-’

I grabbed her. ‘What the hell is this?’

She shook my hand free. ‘We…’ A glance at the bedroom door. ‘We came to search the place for more video tapes, or laptops, or photographs of kids. Should’ve done it yesterday, but they’ve cut the unit and we’ve got three officers off on the stress, and we’ve got a massive load to monitor and it’s not our fault!’

God’s sake. ‘What — did — you — find?’

She reached out and turned the bedroom door handle. Pushed. A familiar cloying smell slumped into the hall. Like meat left a little too long in the fridge.

Nenova pointed at the wardrobe.

The floor creaked beneath my feet as I picked my way past the bed to the open wardrobe. Shirts and jackets hung in the top part, a couple of long summer dresses to one side. Shoe boxes on the shelf above the rail. A knee-high pile of shoes and boots in the bottom… A little pale hand stuck out from underneath it, the fingers waxy and curled.

A knot tied itself in my chest.

She killed someone. Planked the body in here. All the time we were in the house, she had a dead child in the sodding wardrobe.

Bitch…

My hands curled into fists, the knuckles aching.

‘Call the SEB: I want a full team down here. Seal the street off. Get the kid photographed and canvas the neighbours, see if anyone’s missing, and… What?’

Nenova stood by the bedside cabinet, shaking her head. Then pulled on a pair of blue-nitrile gloves and picked up a mobile phone. The thing was mounted on a little stand-tripod thing. She cleared her throat. ‘It was set up pointing at the bed, so I checked it.’ A glance at the wardrobe. ‘That was before we found…’ She powered the phone up and poked the screen a couple of times, then turned it around and held it out towards me.

A video clip played on the screen.

Virginia Cunningham is in her bra and pants, pregnant bulge pressing against the figure she’s got pinned to the bed. A young boy — can’t be more than four or five — struggles beneath her.

Her voice crackled out of the phone’s speaker, slightly distorted as she sang.

‘ When things seem dark and scary, there’s no need to be afraid. Just think of lots of lovely things, like crisps and lemonade… ’

She wraps her hands around the little boy’s throat and squeezes, hunching over him, bringing her full weight down on his neck.

‘ And you can sing the “Bravery Song”, whenever you get a fright. And, before you know it, everything will be all right… ’

The kid’s hands slap at her bare arms, one leg jerking in time as she rocks forwards, choking him.

‘ So forget the ghosts and goblins — no they can’t scare us today… ’

He gets a hand up to her face, but she pulls her head back, out of reach and thumps her weight down on him again.