Stuart MacBride - Birthdays for the dead

Coming right up. The waiter put the tumbler on his tray, collected the menus and melted away.

As soon as he was gone, Dr McDonald picked her satchel up from the floor and took out a red plastic folder. She laid the contents out on the table: copies of every card Hannah Kelly s parents had received from the Birthday Boy.

You sure you should be doing that in here?

That s why I m sitting in the corner. No one can see over my shoulder. She arranged them in chronological order, oldest top left, newest bottom right. Then wrapped one arm around herself, the other hand fiddling with her hair as she stared. Everything he does has a meaning, we just don t know what it is yet. He dyed Hannah s hair right here in card number three he didn t do that with Amber O Neil. He s turning Hannah into someone else, it s all about projection

Didn t think you were a whisky drinker.

And in number seven he shaves it all off, everything, even the eyebrows, he s not punishing her, he s punishing whoever it is she represents

Dr McDonald stared and twiddled, and stared some more.

How do you know I m not a vegetarian?

Hmm?

You ordered me a steak, how do you know I m not

Your hands.

I held them up. They looked like hands. Bruised and swollen around the knuckles, but other than that? How can you

He doesn t have a physical type: the girls are all different shapes and sizes, straight hair, curly, long hair, short hair; blonde, brunette, ginger I suppose it doesn t really matter if he s going to dye it anyway; some are pretty, some not so pretty, he doesn t really see them, he sees what he wants them to be Dr McDonald unfurled her napkin and draped it over the table, covering the cards. Then smiled the waiter was back.

Large Glenmorangie?

She spanked the second whisky down in one, screwed up her face and stuck out her elbows, hissed a juddery breath.

I sat back, helped myself to some fizzy water. Why do I get the feeling you re not a drinker?

Would you call the Birthday Boy normal, because I wouldn t, but I have to try to think like him if I m going to figure out what he wants, and what he needs, and why torturing young girls makes sense to him, and that s a bit of a stretch, because he s not normal and I am. She put the glass back on the table. Luckily alcohol s a great depressor of inhibitions.

You re normal? I could feel the smile spreading. You sure?

Pink rushed up her cheeks and she broke eye contact, staring down at the photos of Hannah Kelly instead. He s been active for ten years, he abducts one girl a year for the first six except for one twelve-month gap then three years ago he takes two victims within three weeks, then the same again last year

You really think you re normal? and by now he s probably abducted another two. She glugged Pinot Grigio into her wine glass, then gulped down a mouthful. That brings his total to twelve girls, snatched just before their thirteenth birthday, next one will be number thirteen Thirteen thirteen-year-olds: that might be significant Another swig. Or it might not, I mean there was always going to come a time when he d have killed thirteen girls, as long as he keeps doing what he s doing and we keep not catching him, eventually he s going to have nineteen victims, then twenty-one, then

The bread rolls were warm, I slathered one with butter. Unless he s escalating. Last year it was two victims, but this year it might be three, or four. Maybe he ll go on a spree wind up dead in a ditch with a shotgun in his mouth?

Dr McDonald rubbed a hand up and down the sleeve of her stripy top. The number is definitely significant, you don t randomly pick a girl s thirteenth birthday as the trigger-point for your abduction and torture fantasies for no reason, something must have happened to him when he was thirteen This time, when she picked up the wine glass she drained it.

You re going to be sick, you know that, don t you?

She peered at the bottle, licked her lips, then filled the glass up again. Why isn t it working?

Oh give it time.

A lump of marinated herring wobbled on the end of her fork.

Or perhaps whatever happened happened when someone else was thirteen and he was mush younger, which is more likely, I mean to develop a pathology like this you need to be in the early stages of sexual development, when your sense of right an wrong an good an bad an normal annn weird are still still mall malleable The last word rumbled out on a belch that wafted alcohol and vinegared fish across the table. Ooh, pardon. She reached for the wine and topped her glass up again. There wasn t much left in the bottle. Her cheeks were a rosy pink, and so was the point of her chin.

I picked at my smoked salmon. You might want to think about pacing yourself.

I think I think we re looking for someone who was traumatized by a thirteen thirteen-year-old-girl. Dr McDonald closed one eye and glugged Shiraz into my glass. Almost all of it went in, the rest making blood spatters on the white tablecloth. Then again, who hasssn t been traumatized by a thirteen-year-old girl at some at some point. There was this horrible cow at Gordons called Clarissa an she used to say horridible things behind my back.

I pushed the glass away. Let me guess: you stood up to her, she realized she was just as scared as you, and you became bestest friends.

No, she she beat the crap out of me behind the bins at break time. Dr McDonald skewered a lump of black pudding with her fork, held it up and squinted at it. Perhaps she sexually abused him, or he wan he wanted her to and she wouldn t but but he loved her and it was all doomed Doooooomed. You re not dringing your wine, why are you not dringing your wine?

Yeah, sorry about that. I took my card out of the chip-and-pin thing, then dug out a twenty and handed it over too. A pretty generous tip, but then again, given the way Dr McDonald had behaved

She was slumped forwards in her seat, arms folded in her Orkney fudge cheesecake, head on her arms, brown curly hair dangling in a puddle of spilled brandy. Singing quietly to herself.

That was the trouble with psychologists too much time spent grubbing about in the minds of nutters, rapists, killers, and paedophiles, tended to rub the sane off a bit.

I jammed the red plastic folder back in her satchel, hooked it over her head, then hoisted her up by the armpits.

She stopped singing. Frowned. He wasss hurt by a blonde thirteen-year-old girl. She broke she broke his heart An maybe his arm. Or a leg or something.

You ve got cheesecake all over your cheek. I let go and Dr McDonald wobbled a bit, took a step back looked as if she was going to keep on going into the other table. I grabbed her again. Top of your class, eh?

Have you you been has a thirteen-year-old-girl ever broke broken your heart?

Oh, she had no idea.

Can you walk?

I bet she did. Bet she snapped it in two and and stomped on it, like a like a bug.

The sound of vomiting echoed out of the cabin bathroom. I lay back on my bunk, pillows folded behind my head, bare feet on the duvet, flicking through the photos in Dr McDonald s folder. Tramadol and Naproxen wrapped their warm arms around me, more soothing than the ferry s gentle rocking.

Another round of splattering heaves. Then a voice. Ash

Ash hold my hair back

No.

McDonald s printouts didn t seem to be in any sort of order. The Hannah Kelly birthday cards were at the top, but right after those were Helen McMillan s: the twelve-year-old from Dundee with thirty-two grand s worth of signed first editions on her bedroom shelf.

She didn t look much like the photo we d found on her chest of drawers. The fairy princess outfit and the gap-toothed smile were gone; now her Irn-Bru hair hung in lank curls around a heart-shaped face and long, bruised neck. Freckles covered her nose and cheeks, a thin line of blood running from her nose. Too much eye makeup, the mascara smudged and tear-streaked.