Stuart MacBride - Birthdays for the dead

Deal.

Sheba gave up halfway up the path and groaned down onto her side in the middle of a sunny patch.

And I m not coming back to Oldcastle with you. If I help, it s got to be from here.

Oh Well, maybe we can

My phone buzzed on the tabletop, skittering as the ringing got louder. DC Massie s name flashed on the screen. I picked it up and jabbed the button. Rhona.

A pause. Then, Oh thank God, you re OK You are OK, aren t you? I ve been trying to get hold of you for hours.

Of course, I m OK. Why wouldn t I be? Pause. Look, Rhona, is this important, only I m in the middle of something.

Silence.

Rhona?

I I wanted to check you were OK. No one knew where you were, and your house was trashed, and the Fire Brigade said it was

Fire brigade? I nearly dropped the phone. What the hell were the Fire Brigade Bloody Shifty Dave: I asked him to tidy up, not burn the place down!

Henry sat forward in his seat. Everything all right?

I was worried when you didn t call me back, so I went by your house this morning and there was a fire engine sitting outside, and council vans, and the bastards wouldn t let me in, but there was water everywhere and the whole place was trashed. I mean completely fucked. And no one knew where you were

What the hell did you do to my fucking house?

A large woman with a pushchair full of screaming toddler gave me the evil eye, then hurried past. Well, screw her. How would she like it if someone set fire to her bloody house?

Main Street was relatively busy for a small town on the east coast of Shetland. Parked cars lined one side of the road outside the Scalloway Meat Company shop, its frontage plastered with signs about

Fancy Goods, Toys, and Souvenirs. The flat-fronted houses opposite were painted in various pastel shades. All very quaint.

Shifty Dave Morrow grumbled on the other end of the phone.

You re bloody welcome. You any idea what kind of mess that big bastard made in my car?

Dave, I swear to God

I didn t do anything to it, OK? The place was like that when I got there. And you could ve bloody warned me! Water pishing down the stairs, the walls, all the furniture wrecked, ceiling caving in How was I supposed to tidy that up? What am I, Kim and fucking Aggie?

Water?

Main Street ended at a little make-believe roundabout. I took a right, into a car park overlooking the harbour.

The house wasn t wrecked when I left it! Well, maybe the hall and the stairs, but that s it. So don t

Nah: whole place was smashed up. Don t know how your visitor managed it with his ankle fucked like that, but your house was a bombsite when I got there. A sniff, then a honking snork as Shifty blew his nose. He got a bit rowdy: had to hit him with a spade a couple of times. Dumped him outside A amp;E, so he s either OK by now, or he s dead.

How could he My sodding house? A pair of seagulls stopped pecking at a fishing net draped over a couple of bin-bags, and stared at me, heads tilted on one side. I aimed a kick in their direction. And you can fuck off as well!

They scrambled into the air, screeching abuse.

Should be thanking me: put my back out, dragging that big bastard in from the garden. Bloody suit s ruined. And he puked in the boot.

I slumped back against a big Toyota flatbed. It was stacked with creels, the smell of stale fish and seaweed wafting out into the cold air. Is the whole place really wrecked?

Total bombsite. Hold on. Muffled crunches came from the phone, as if Shifty had stuck a hand over the mouthpiece. Then he was back. Got to go: three-line-whip briefing in the canteen. Party Crashers have turned up and the ACC s going mental. The connection went dead. He d hung up.

I jammed the phone in my pocket, then let my head fall back until it clunked against the truck s roof and stared up at the gathering clouds. It was my house

Even if it was a shithole.

The seagulls were back, swooping and jeering around a fishing boat as it chugged into harbour. Must be nice to be a seagull. You eat, you sleep, you shag, and if you re having a bad day you can shite on everyone from a great height. Doesn t even have to be a bad day, you can do it just for fun.

I leaned against the low stone wall and scowled out at the birds.

The whole house: wrecked.

How the hell could Mr Pain wreck the place on one leg? What did he do hop from room to room, smashing things like a demented Heather Mills?

Maybe it was local neds? Then again, maybe not. After the last thieving git got out of Castle Hill Infirmary the little sods tended to steer clear of my place.

Unless Shifty Dave Morrow was a lying fat bastard and he was the one who d trashed my house? But why go to all that effort? Not as if I couldn t tell his wife about him and Andrew the Barman

Definitely getting colder.

Let s be honest: it was probably more of Mrs Kerrigan s goons, sent to teach me a lesson after I threatened to come after her. What a great idea that had been. Really smooth.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and did the grand tour of Scalloway: all the way back down Main Street, past the various boathouses and halls and shortbread-box terraces, until the buildings ran out and I was walking along with water on one side and a scrubby hill on the other.

Two rows of small boats were tied to a floating walkway about twenty yards from shore. Someone had hauled an upturned fibreglass dinghy onto the grass at the side of the road I perched on the edge. Looked out across the glittering water to the grey-green hills speckled with tiny white houses.

Cold leached into my bones, nipping my ears and nose.

Arnold Burges had a point how did the Birthday Boy find them all the way up here? And how did he manage to track down Hannah Kelly s parents even though they d moved house again and again and again

It was different for us we d stayed put. Well, Michelle had. She got the house and I got a kicking from her divorce lawyer. But all the other parents

I gave Sabir a call and asked.

His Scouse accent was muffled, as if he had a mouthful of something. Dunno.

Oh, come on: don t tell me you guys haven t looked into it. Hannah Kelly s parents couldn t be more difficult to track down if they were in witness protection and they still get a birthday card every year. That doesn t seem a bit suspicious to you?

The sound of slow chewing came from the earpiece.

I waited.

Sabir?

Are youse finished?

I was just

Treatin us like we re a bunch of bell ends. Course we thought about it, you divvie. We gorra big list of jobs our lad could be doing that d let him find out where the victims families live. Might work for the Inland Revenue, or the DMV, or maybe he s a doctor, orra journalist, or he s in the Post Office, or with a telecoms provider, or he s a bizzie

A police officer?

Maybe. Or maybe he s someone who knows how to use the internet, you think about that? I want to find out bout a suspect I don t even bother with the PNC these days, I look them up on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, electoral register Internet s a goldmine: everyone s gorra digital footprint, if you know where to look.

Yeah, right: because Donald Kelly would be updating his status to WE VE MOVED HOUSE TO 36 DUNROSS STREET, OLDCASTLE, OC23 9WP. DON T TELL THE BIRTHDAY BOY! LOL!!!!

Point is, if our lad s computer savvy, it s not gonna take him long The rattle of fat fingers on a keyboard. Ash Henderson: Forty-Two Fletcher Avenue; Royal Bank of Scotland overdrawn by a grand and a bit; mobile number: oh seven eight four two

OK, OK, I get the

Divorced, two children: Rebecca ran away when she was twelve, Katie More keystrokes. Katie lives at Nineteen Rowan Drive, Blackwall Hill, Oldcastle; she goes to Johnston Academy; and is in a relationship with someone called Noah. Apparently it s complicated, but