Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

Outside, there was no sign of the guy in the hat making another pass.

‘ Hello? ’

I blinked. Looked down at the phone. ‘Thanks, Noel.’

‘ Hey, no probs. What are friends- ’

I hung up.

‘Ash?’ Alice stood in the doorway to the living room, tumbler in one hand, pint glass in the other. She scuffed her way across the floorboards and held the pint out. ‘I got you a Coke.’

‘Thanks.’ Cold and brown and sweet and fizzy. And somehow it still managed to taste of death.

‘So… We’re ordering pizza, do you want something specific, or do you just want one of those mixed jobs, and what are you doing up here?’

I turned my back on the window. ‘Nothing. Just getting some air. Thinking about Shifty.’

She peered at the case files spread out on the rickety table. Victims and deposition sites. Post-mortem results and statements.

‘You should come down for a bit. Try to switch off for ten minutes.’

A sliver of varnish peeled away beneath my fingernail, leaving a streak of pale wood on the head of my cane. ‘He’s my friend. And he’s only in trouble because… The only reason she did that to him, is because of me. I screwed up, Alice. I should’ve killed her when I had the chance.’

‘You can’t-’

‘If I had, Parker would still be alive. Shifty would be safe.’ And I wouldn’t have spent two years in prison. I could have gone to my little girls’ funeral. I wouldn’t be stood at the window, waiting for the dogs to come.

Well, I wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

Alice put a hand on my arm. ‘You think she’s going to come after us, don’t you? Mrs Kerrigan.’

Force a smile. Lie. ‘No. Don’t be daft: she’ll be after Wee Free. We didn’t lay a finger on her, did we? It was all him.’

Alice blinked at me. Tried to hide a sigh. Then nodded. ‘You need to take a break. Prolonged periods of concentration deplete the mind’s ability to process new information and make connections. Take fifteen minutes. Come downstairs and argue with Professor Huntly, or tease Constable Cooper. Or just hang about watching TV till the pizza gets here.’ She reached up and tapped a finger against my forehead. ‘Let the little grey cells percolate away on their own for a bit, and maybe they’ll have something for you when you come back.’

Well, it wasn’t as if I was getting anywhere here.

I followed her down the crooked wooden stairs to the pub kitchen — all dusty stainless steel and the ghost of chip fat — then through the door and into the bar. The wall-mounted TV was playing News 24: a fat bald bloke in a suit refusing to answer whatever question the woman in the studio had asked. ‘ … if you’ll let me finish, I think you’ll find that under the last government, the financial- ’

I picked the remote off the bar and killed the sound.

Jacobson stood in front of the whiteboard, glass of red in one hand, pen in the other, drawing boxes and lines, filling them with dense blocks of tiny letters.

Dr Constantine sat at the bar, with a bottle of cider and a packet of Monster Munch, leafing her way through a stack of post-mortem photographs. She glanced up at me, then grimaced. ‘They did rape kits on the dead victims, but there’s no sign of semen or alien pubic hair in the combings. No sign of vaginal bruising either. Nothing we can use to nail Docherty.’

Huntly and Cooper were in their separate corners, still hunched over their respective laptops. Huntly looking almost suicidal with a tin of pre-mixed gin-and-tonic.

He took a sip. ‘Can we please not discuss vaginal bruising? Some of us are trying to concentrate…’

While Alice sorted out the pizza order, I joined Jacobson at the whiteboard. It was covered in case names and reference numbers, all linked to a box in the middle, with ‘DR FREDERIC DOCHERTY’ printed inside it.

Jacobson gave a small grunt. ‘He’s been working as a police adviser for eight years. Eight years of rapes and murders and abductions and missing persons… How many of them was he responsible for?’

‘Waterboarding doesn’t leave any marks.’

A little smile tugged at his lips. ‘We’ve been over this.’

‘Just saying. We’d know where they were in fifteen minutes, half an hour, tops. No one would ever find out.’

‘Ah, the good old days…’

I skimmed the board again. ‘Got to be something we can do.’

Jacobson’s smile died. ‘Tell me about it.’

My phone vibrated — a new email. I opened it up.

Hoy, Jock-cop Tartan Boy.

Don’t say I’m never good to you: audio files from the pre-recorded 999 calls (attached). I’ve isolated all the girls’ voices and removed them, everything left is the background noise you asked for.

Got what sounds like a mobile phone on H-Drummond.wav @ 92sec and @ 46sec on M-Jordan.wav Really faint though. Don’t think it’s from the control room, so might be where the phonebox was, or where he recorded it in the first place.

Tried running the electronic buzz through the database, but nothing came back — probably cos it’s a recording of a phonecall of a recording. You got three layers of buzz all mooshed together.

L8R haggis-munchers,

Sabir Lord Of Teh Tech

p. s. your mam says Hi.

Alice stared at me. ‘Well?’

‘Sabir.’

A frown. ‘No: pizza. What do you want?’

‘Anything that doesn’t have pineapple. Or anchovies.’ I poked the icon for the attachments and nothing happened. Tried again. ‘Mushrooms are good.’ Still nothing. ‘Huntly, we got any more of those laptops?’

He sat back and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Nnnngh… You can have this one if you like. I’m beginning to suffer from ocular cuboidism. Complete waste of time, anyway. Docherty isn’t going to march about in plain sight, is he? No, he’ll be wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap. Hiding his identity. Avoiding the streets controlled by CCTV. He might be a vile serial scumbag, but he knows how the system works.’ Huntly clunked the laptop shut, then stuck one hand above his head and snapped his fingers. ‘Dr McDonald, be a pet and make sure mine has extra peperoni on it. And some jalapeños, I’m feeling spicy.’

Lucky us.

I disconnected the external hard drive and tucked the laptop under my arm. Warmth oozed through my sleeve and into my chest as I headed back through to the kitchen. Making for the stairs.

Huntly’s voice echoed out behind me, ‘You’re not exactly great company yourself!’

I called up Sabir’s email and played the audio files again.

Most of them were nothing but hiss, crackle and the occasional buzz. All but those two files — the ones Marie Jordan and Holly Drummond had been forced to record before Docherty slit them open.

Even with the laptop’s speakers turned up full pelt, it was barely discernible. Five or six seconds of a faint tune on M-Jordan.wav, nine on H-Drummond.wav. Too vague and fuzzy to be recognizable.

I logged in to the laptop’s video conferencing software, scrolled through the list of contacts and clicked on SABIR4TEHPOOL.

Thirty seconds later a round face peered out of the screen at me over the top of a pair of little round specs. His skin was the colour of ancient tarmac, the jowls rough with stubble. Bags under his eyes. Bald, with a tiny mouth for such a big head. He curled his lip. ‘ You look like something out of a George Romero movie. ’

‘Well, you look like the Teletubby they kept locked in the attic, in case it scared the kids.’

He leaned back — letting a little of the room leak onto the screen. ‘ Flattery’s not your main strength, mate. What you after this time? ’

‘That ringtone: did you try matching it to manufacturers?’