Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

‘Well, do your best, and if you see an in for consultancy services...?’

‘You’re like a scratched CD, you know that, don’t you?’ Ah, found it. But pulling the thing out of my jacket pocket brought a cascade of grubby plastic rectangles with it — all pinned to a mouldy length of string. The Polaroids from the basement wall. The ones where the people being photographed weren’t on holiday any more. They skittered across the stainless-steel surface, caught in the supermarket’s bright lights.

And the wee orange man on the till stared . Mouth hanging wider and wider.

All those ripped open bodies. All the screams and pain. All the wasted lives.

Damn things should’ve been easy to get back into my pocket — they were strung together, for God’s sake — but they wriggled and slipped through my fingers like dying fish as I scrambled to gather them up.

The wee orange man mashed his palm down on the panic button. Rising out of his seat, eyes like pickled eggs against his pumpkin skin. ‘SECURITY! SECURITY! I NEED SECURITY HERE, NOW!’

Great.

A pair of huge women in black fleeces and combat boots thundered towards us, leaving the front door unthugged. Teeth bared. Fists curled.

‘Ash, what’s happening? I can hear yelling.’

‘I’ll call you back.’

Brace yourself...

Thug Number One gave me a lopsided scowl from the other side of the dull grey desk. It wasn’t a black eye, yet, but it was working on it. Sitting there with her thick arms crossed, muscles bulging through the black T-shirt with ‘CASTLE HILL SECURITY LTD.’ embroidered on its left breast.

Alice shifted in her seat, setting the plastic groaning as she leaned forward. ‘I’m really sorry, Maggie, I’m sure it was an accident, I mean in the middle of everything, heat of the moment, and there’s arms and legs and no one really knows what’s going on and it’s all very—’

‘He hit me!’ She pointed a thick, stubby finger across the desk at me.

I gave her a nice innocent shrug. ‘Oops.’

What can I say, I’m a feminist: if you put Alice in a headlock, man or woman, that’s what you get. Lucky I let her off with a black eye, to be honest. Maybe that was sexist of me? Maybe I should’ve broken her arm too?

‘Agnes had to go to A-and-E!’

‘The floor was slippery; wasn’t my fault she hit her head on the shopping trolley.’ Twice. Though hopefully I’d blocked the CCTV camera’s view, so no one would be the wiser.

Like I said: feminist.

A knock on the door and Maggie transferred her wonky scowl from me to it. ‘COME!’

It clunked open and a thin man in a suit and side parting gave everyone an ingratiating smile. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but that’s the police arrived now and they say Mr Henderson,’ a nod in my direction, ‘hello,’ back to Maggie, ‘he definitely is working for Police Scotland, so he’s not a serial killer or anything, and is perfectly entitled to be in possession of the... disturbing images Mr Turnberry encountered on till number seventeen.’

Pink worked its way up Maggie’s wide neck. ‘Yes, well...’

The man’s smile got a bit more obsequious. ‘I’m sorry we had to detain you both, Mr Henderson, Dr McDonald, but given the circumstances, I’m sure you understand. We at Winslow’s take our community responsibilities very seriously.’ He held out a couple of bulging jute bags with snowmen on them. ‘Your shopping. On the house. And I’ve thrown in a fifteen-pound gift voucher as well.’

‘Very kind of you.’ I stood. Picked my still-damp jacket off the back of my chair. ‘Come on, Alice.’

Shifty was waiting for us, bald head gleaming in the strip light of the bare breeze-block corridor, that black eyepatch giving his fat frame a slightly rakish, piratical air. His pale grey suit looked as if a herd of wildebeest had slept in it. Left eye narrowed in disapproval as he shook hands with the man who’d come to get us. ‘Thanks, I’ll take it from here.’ Then turned and marched off, without so much as a word.

I hobbled after him, taking my time, because anything faster than that sent burning daggers lancing through my aching foot. ‘What kept you?’

He shoved through the plain door and back onto the shop floor, between the fish counter and the dairy aisle. ‘I was interviewing a nonce!’

‘At this hour? That your way of getting out of Lewis Talbot’s post mortem?’

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. ‘Shut up.’

Alice bustled alongside, carrying our new jute bags. ‘Did your sex offender say anything?’

Shifty gave her the benefit of his evil eye. ‘You’re supposed to keep Ash on a short leash.’

‘Only, if there’s a ring involved, a paedophile ring, I mean, and the killer’s a member of it, he might have said something incriminating, he might even want to boast about his crimes, or at least his knowledge of the victims, so did he say anything about anyone saying anything like that?’

‘The only thing Willie Bloody McNaughton said was “no comment”. And his buggering solicitor just sat there, preening. Like we were questioning his greasy little client about a parking violation, not three dead kids.’

Kind of inappropriate, but couldn’t help smiling at that one. ‘Thought you said McNaughton’s solicitor was, and I quote, “completely shaggable”.’

‘Completely shaggable people don’t help paedophiles wriggle their way out of custody!’

We passed the line of tills, the carrot-coloured Mr Turnberry doing his best to avoid eye contact as I limped by number seventeen. ‘You let McNaughton go?’

‘Didn’t have any choice, did I?’ Shifty rubbed a hand across his face, pulling the chubby cheeks out of shape. ‘A solid day of interviewing child molesters. Going to take a massive heap of booze to get that taste out of my mouth.’

Alice nudged him, setting the bottles clinking again. ‘Might be able to help you there.’

The automatic doors slid open, and we stepped out beneath the awning, ranks of trolleys sitting chained together on either side.

‘OK.’ I made it as far as the line of large plastic crates filled with bagged firewood, kindling, and four-litre containers of antifreeze — apparently available at ‘BARGAINTASTIC PRICES FOR ALL THE FAMILY!’, because whose kids didn’t love antifreeze? I settled my backside against the logs and stretched out my right leg, foot throbbing like a malfunctioning microwave. ‘Get the car and I’ll wait for you here.’

Alice peered out at the rain, hauled her hood up, then turned to Shifty. ‘David, do you want to join us for dinner? We’re going for a sitty-downy pizza with loads of salad!’

‘Time is it?’ He checked his watch and deflated a couple of inches. ‘Yeah, why not? Supposed to have clocked off hours ago anyway.’

‘God, I needed that.’ Shifty wiped the froth from his pint off his top lip, smiled and let loose a happy belch.

They’d given us a pretty decent table — for quarter to ten on a Friday night — by the window, looking out across the road to the big Victorian glass slug that was Oldcastle Railway Station. All lit up and glistening in the rain. A row of taxis sitting outside it, their drivers huddled in a bus shelter, smoking fags. Working on cancer and hypothermia all in one go.

‘A toast.’ Alice raised her large Shiraz. ‘To not dying in a serial killer’s basement!’

I clinked my Irn-Bru against her glass, then Shifty did the same with his pint and we all drank.

‘Speaking of which.’ Shifty held his hand out, palm up in front of me.

‘What?’

‘You know fine, “what”. The photos you traumatised Satsuma Joe with, back at the supermarket. They’re evidence.’