Stuart MacBride - Birthdays for the dead

Oh, I ve lived here a hundred and twelve years and nothing like this has ever happened before! Agnes Dalrymple (82)

Not a single picture of me, or Dr McDonald.

He switched the thing off and the screen went black. Then looked up at me, on his arse in the middle of the road. See?

I stuck out a hand and helped him up. You OK?

It s not me you ve got to worry about, it s Jennifer. She s on a bloody mission. He wiped the seat of his trousers. Sorry about your house, by the way.

She been digging into that too?

Off the record? She s digging into everything: you and Len Murray, you and Andy Inglis, you and some pole-dancer

Mrs Elizabeth Dubrowski Flat 2, 48 Hill Terrace

I think it s that Kevin Flemming. Thirty-four and still living at home, what kind of grown man does that? Mrs Dubrowski sniffed, top lip curled as if someone had farted. She d squeezed herself into white stretch jeans and a white fluffy jumper designed for someone half her age, and size. And his mum s no better moaning on the whole time about how her view s been ruined. As if they built these flats to spite her. Egotistical bitch.

And did you see Kevin Flemming acting suspiciously?

Mrs Dubrowski leaned in close and enveloped me in a throat-catching reek of perfume. He smokes dope. And he s got a skateboard. Grown man of thirty-four!

Dear Jesus

The stick-thin teenager shrugged, then closed the door.

I slouched down the stairs and out onto the pavement. Dr McDonald trailed along behind me, yawning.

A misty drizzle made the streetlights sparkle.

I stuck my hands in my pockets. The small velvet box from Little Mike s Pawn Shop was still there. Don t know about you, but I ve had enough tosspots for one day.

Urgh Another yawn. Chinese for tea, I mean if that s OK with you, every time I stay with Aunty Jan we always have Chinese; she s chicken chow mein mad, but it wouldn t be Oldcastle without prawn crackers.

It wasn t far to the car, but my whole face ached from the cold by the time we d clambered inside. I turned on the engine and cranked the heater up full. A whistling roar and the smell of burning dust filled the interior.

Dr McDonald s phone blared out a familiar tune something goth, or emo the kind of thing Katie liked.

Ooh, no one ever calls me She answered it.

Alice speaking Uh-huh, hello, Detective Chief Superintendent, are you Yes No, I don t think I see.

I stuck the headlights on and pulled away from the kerb. Seatbelt.

Sorry. She did as she was told. No, not you, Detective Chief Superintendent, I was talking to Ash Yes he is I Hold on. She held the phone against her chest. It s Detective Chief Superintendent Dickie.

As if I hadn t worked that out already.

He says Megan Taylor s mother and father got a birthday card from the Birthday Boy this morning.

I stared across the car. She only went missing yesterday. And why s it taken them so long to tell anyone?

Dr McDonald grabbed the dashboard with her free hand, eyes wide.

Watch the road, watch the road! Back to the phone.

But she only went missing yesterday Yes, I do Very significant, I mean OK, yes, fine, we ll be right over.

Megan s birthday was on Monday, same as Katie s. She was a little shorter; a little wider; with long blonde hair hauled back from her face; eyes rimmed in red; mouth open in a frozen, silent scream; wearing the same clothes she d had on in the CCTV footage from the shopping centre. Tied to a chair in a filthy little room with a dirt floor and exposed wooden beams.

I handed the homemade birthday card secure in its clear plastic envelope back to Dr McDonald. She isn t gagged.

He s tired of the silence, tired of them wriggling and grunting behind the duct tape, he wants to hear Megan scream.

The bedroom was plastered in posters horses, boy bands, girl bands, puppies, kittens There was barely any wallpaper left. A single bed sat beneath the window, a computer desk with a sticker-covered laptop on the other side of the room, some books, some stuffed toys, a nineteen-inch flat-screen TV mounted on the crowded wall above an Xbox, a wardrobe full of designer grunge.

The window looked out over a triangular back garden studded with tiny lights, then a fence, then a hill topped with jagged silhouettes. Moncuir Wood. You could almost believe you were living in the country, instead of a sprawling development of identical yellow-brick houses with identical orange pantile roofs and identical built-in garages too small to take a real car.

Murmured voices came through the floor beneath my feet DCS Dickie, a Family Liaison officer, and Megan s parents.

Dr McDonald took out her mobile and snapped a picture of the birthday card, then fiddled with the image a bit. Pressed a button. Thirty seconds later her phone rang. Hello? Henry, how are you? Yes I know. Hold on, I ll put you on loudspeaker She did something with her phone and a tinny version of Henry s voice crackled into the room.

Hello? I hate these things. Are you there? Ash?

Hi, Henry.

Right, the thing we have to consider is why he s varying his pattern. What makes Megan Taylor different to all the others? Why her?

Dr McDonald popped the phone on the bedside cabinet, then propped the birthday card up next to it, wrapped an arm around herself and fiddled with her hair. She s his twelfth victim: this is the penultimate one, he s been building up to number thirteen all this time, Megan s his last chance to get it right before it really matters?

What a lovely thought Rebecca and all those other girls were just a dress rehearsal. They didn t mean anything.

Henry cleared his throat. Maybe we shouldn t be too hung up on numbers.

I picked a book off the shelf, flicked through the first few pages, but it wasn t a first edition. If Megan s number I cleared my throat. If she s number twelve, who s number eleven?

Silence from the other end of the phone.

Henry was going to tell her, I knew it, I never should have trusted him. Should ve kept it to myself.

A sigh came from the speaker. We won t know till next year, when the card arrives. It s halfway through November now; he s only taken girls twice in December; I think he s already got one under his belt. Alice is right: he s experimenting. That s why she s not gagged, and that s why the card arrived today.

I closed the book. So, he had time to grab her, get back to his place, tie her up, take her photo, print it, make the card, and get it in the post before the last collection. What s that: six six-thirty tops?

Perhaps

She s on CCTV leaving the shopping centre at quarter past three. Call it fifteen minutes to abduct her, fifteen twenty minutes to get her home I mean it s do-able, but it d be tight.

He s been planning this for a while, refining his methods. Silence from the other end of the phone. Then,

And let s suppose for a moment that Megan isn t number twelve.

Fuck: here we go. Henry, you

We re assuming that he didn t take a victim five years ago, but what if he did? What if the parents haven t come forward with the birthday card?

Dr McDonald frowned. So he wasn t in prison that year, or abroad somewhere She twiddled her hair.

Why wouldn t the parents come forward?

I licked my lips. Maybe

Perhaps they died, or left the country, or perhaps they think they ve got good reasons for not getting the police involved. Whatever the reason, we can t discount the possibility that Megan Taylor is his thirteenth victim: thirteen girls, killed on their thirteenth birthday. Megan s not an experiment, she s his masterpiece. He needs this to be perfect, because it justifies everything he s done.

Thank you, Henry.

It was like a valve being opened in my chest I could breathe again. You think he s going to stop?