Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Mind you, it wasn’t as if I was going to win any prizes for sartorial elegance — done up in the same clothes I’d gone to work in yesterday morning. All covered in dried blood and dirt and dust.

She looked me up and down, drinking it all in. ‘You smell like a fight in an abattoir.’

I pointed at Shifty. ‘DI Morrow got a tipoff that Gordon Smith had been seen in Oldcastle. We thought he might go back to Clachmara, so we headed over there. Turned out we were right.’

‘And?’

‘He resisted arrest. DI Morrow and I barely managed to get out before the house fell into the sea. Gordon Smith didn’t.’ Not sure if it was worth complicating things, but if the bodies washed up somewhere any half-decent pathologist might just notice someone had blown both of Smith’s kneecaps off: ‘When we got there he was fighting with Leah MacNeil, she managed to wrestle the gun off him.’

‘There was a gun ?’

I shrugged. ‘She didn’t get out either. Shifty and I tried, but...’ A long weary sigh. ‘She kept screaming about how he’d killed her mother and she was going to make him pay.’

That should cover it. And with any luck, by the time Leah’s body turned up — if it ever did — it would’ve been battered about enough by the storm, collapsing headland, and waves to obscure any signs she’d been tortured. Wouldn’t hurt if the fish and crabs ate most of the evidence, either.

‘Oh Christ.’ Mother covered her face with her hands. ‘Helen MacNeil will go berserk when she finds out we let her granddaughter die.’

‘Maybe not. Leah did avenge her mother, after all. Old-school gangsters like Helen would’ve appreciated that.’ Sod it: wrong tense. Should’ve been, will appreciate that. But hopefully Mother wouldn’t notice.

She lowered her hands and narrowed her eyes. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything?’

‘No idea. But you should be putting Shifty forward for a Queen’s Medal.’ I patted him on the arm. ‘He was a brave little soldier and a credit to the force. I couldn’t have got out of there, without him.’ Which had the benefit of not actually being a lie — there was no way I’d leave Shifty in a collapsing building.

The sounds of a busy hospital, chuntering away in the wee small hours, throbbed through the floor and air conditioning.

Eventually Mother nodded. ‘I can’t remember, were you always this much of a pain in the backside?’

‘Probably.’

‘Ow...’ I creaked and groaned my way into the high-backed chair beside Alice’s bed. ‘What a sodding day.’ Wasn’t a single inch of me that didn’t ache. And that was after taking a double dose of Dr Fotheringham’s painkillers.

Alice hadn’t moved since I’d last seen her — still lying there, hooked up to her bank of machinery, one arm in a cast from shoulder to fingertips, one leg from hip to toes, bandages and cannulas and drips and wires and a bag dangling from the bedframe.

I struggled out of my jacket and draped it over my chest.

Should probably have gone home first for a shower and a change of clothes, but the last faint wisps of adrenaline had gone, leaving nothing but the inevitable crash into unconsciousness. And if I was going to fall asleep for eighteen hours, I’d much rather do it here.

In case she woke up.

Eyelids were getting almost as heavy as my head.

A jaw-cracking yawn.

I let my head fall back. Up above, the ceiling tiles made a moonscape of tiny pocks and craters. Nearly died twice today, something of a record, even for me.

Tomorrow: going to have a long lie-in, nice big breakfast — sod salted porridge and decaf tea, it was time for a proper fry-up at that greasy spoon down Tollbooth Row — then take the wee man for a hobble in Kings Park. Throw some bread at the...

Oh bugger.

I sat up and fumbled Alice’s phone from my pocket. Unlocked it. Then went searching for that business card. Dialled the number.

A mumbled voice. ‘Hello?’ The sound of lips smacking on sleep-sticky breath. ‘I mean, J-and-F Freelance Consultants, how can—’

‘Joseph, I know it’s late, but I need your help.’

Because sometimes you really did need the assistance of two very capable gentlemen with a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to other people’s physical wellbeing.

‘Well?’

I let the blind fall back. ‘All gone.’

The private room was festooned with Mylar balloons, some at full bobbing strength, others at half-mast, all covered in slogans like ‘GET WELL SOON!’, ‘YOU’RE A STAR!’, and for some bizarre reason, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’

‘Three days.’ Sitting in the visitor’s chair, Shifty curled his lip. ‘You’d think catching two massive serial killers would hold their attention for at least a week. Four dead wee boys and... how many victims for Gordon Smith?’

‘No way of knowing.’ Even if Alice and Franklin were right about Smith keeping all his homemade torture porn on his phone, it got wheeched out into the North Sea — along with the man himself, Leah’s body, and Helen’s house. ‘ At least thirty-six, if you count the panto cast and crew that went missing from productions he worked on, plus the basement Polaroids. And we’ve only got IDs for about a dozen of those.’

Shifty scratched at the wadding taped to the back of his head. ‘Bloody media.’

‘Didn’t you hear? Train crash at Waverley Station this morning: thirteen dead, eighty-seven injured. Suspected terrorism.’

A grimace. ‘Fair enough. But they could—’

My new phone blared out its anonymous ringtone. ‘Hold that thought.’ I pulled it out and checked the screen. Not a number I recognised. Pressed the button anyway. ‘Hello?’

‘ASH, YOU UTTER BASTARD!’ For some strange reason, Jennifer Prentice sounded upset. Poor thing. ‘WHAT THE BUGGERING HELL DID YOU DO?’

‘Me? Why do you think I did anything?’

‘Because I’ve had four parking tickets since Wednesday, two on-the-spot fines, AND MY BLOODY BOSS JUST SACKED ME FROM THE BLOODY PAPER!’

‘Oh dear, that does sound terrible.’ Doing my best not to grin. ‘Bye, Jennifer.’ I hung up.

Shifty beamed back at me. ‘She like her present?’

‘Loving it.’ Amazing what could be achieved if you had dirt on the right kind of people.

The room’s door opened and a nurse nodded at us, dressed in pale-green scrubs and white oversized trainers, hair pulled up in a bun, a piercing in each of his nostrils. ‘Did anyone order a forensic psychologist?’

Shifty’s eyebrows went up. ‘With extra cheese?’

The nurse ducked out again, then reappeared wheeling Alice into the room. ‘Ta-daaa...’

She’d put on the baggy blue tracksuit I’d bought her at Abdel’s Bargain Warehouse — roomy enough to fit over the cast on her left leg and the one on her right arm — with ‘UNICORNICOPIA’ picked out in pink sequins across the chest.

One look, and Shifty burst out laughing.

‘What?’ Her voice slightly muzzy. They’d scaled back on the bandages, but most of her face was stained navy and yellow. No white at all in her left eye, only red. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Without meaning to come off as a complete gay stereotype: Girlfriend, you should not go out dressed like that.’

‘Ash?’

‘You do look a teeny bit like a Smurf with jaundice.’

She stared down at herself. ‘Oh, Ash!’

‘It fits OK? That’s all that matters.’ I took hold of the wheelchair’s handles.

The nurse flipped off the brake. ‘Once round the block, then I want her back in bed, understand?’