Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

‘I forgot I had them, OK? We nearly got crushed to death and washed out to sea. And since when do you care about evidentiary procedures?’

‘Since Professional Standards decided to make me their special little project. Now hand them over.’

I turned in my chair, picked my phone off the windowsill — attached to its new charging cable, stealing the restaurant’s electricity. Battery now at a whole ten percent.

‘Ash, you can’t keep stuff like that.’

My phone went back on the windowsill. ‘You can have them when I’ve taken a copy.’

‘It’s not—’

‘What, you’re going to bail before your starter arrives and hotfoot it back to the station with them?’

He frowned for a moment, then shrugged those wide shoulders of his. ‘No point letting good food go to waste.’

Didn’t think so.

Alice helped herself to a breadstick, the words coming out in a wave of crunching and crumbs: ‘Do you think Bear would let me do some behavioural evidence analysis for DI Malcolmson?’

‘Our Glorious Leader? Without a cost centre to write it to?’ Difficult not to laugh at that. ‘Not a chance in hell.’

‘What if I did it in my spare time, though?’

‘Then you’re undermining a potential revenue stream.’

She scrunched herself up and fluttered her eyelashes at me. ‘Pleeeeeeeease?’

‘You’re a grown woman in your thirties, don’t do that.’

‘Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeease?’ Really hamming it up now, hands clutched sideways under her chin, brown curls cascading either side of her beaming face.

‘OK, OK.’ Anything to make her stop.

‘Good.’ She shifted her cutlery and napkin out of the way and made come-hither gestures. ‘Let’s see the photos, then.’

‘Sure you want to do that right before you eat?’

‘The iron’s hot, we might as well strike with it.’

I snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and eased the photos from my pocket. Still connected to that mouldy piece of string by the tiny clothes pegs.

Shifty winced. ‘You could at least’ve put them in an evidence bag!’

‘Crushed to death and washed out to sea, remember?’ I laid them out in front of Alice, one after the other, putting them closer together, so they’d all fit in two lines. ‘And if it wasn’t for us, no one would even know they existed. So don’t be a dick.’

Eleven Polaroids. Each one showing the last horrific moments of some poor sod’s life.

Shifty bared his teeth. ‘Jesus...’

A row of creases formed between Alice’s eyebrows as she frowned at the pictures. ‘Victims are male and female, so maybe Gordon Smith’s bisexual, because there’s always a sexual element with this kind of serial killer, even if it’s not expressed at the time with the victim present, because what’s the point of killing someone if you can’t fantasise about it before and afterwards? Of course maybe it’s death that turns him on and he’s really only torturing people to heighten his and...?’ She looked up at me, eyebrows raised.

‘Caroline. Smith’s wife was called Caroline.’

‘Thank you.’ Back to the photos. ‘He might be doing it to heighten their arousal. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had sex on that mattress in the basement, right after they killed someone, or even while their victims were dying. They’ve gone to all the trouble of abducting and torturing someone, who needs Viagra when you’ve got a rush like that — the power of life and death, someone screaming in agony while you—’

‘OK.’ Our waiter appeared behind her, looking about as comfortable as a dedicated hipster can when forced into a red-white-and-green waistcoat, dress shirt, and non-ironic bowtie. ‘I’ve got an insalata caprese, antipasto misto platter, and a garlic bread with mozzarella?’

Alice wheeched her napkin over the Polaroids before the waiter could recognise what they were. Pointed at Shifty. ‘Garlic bread, Ash is the antipasto, and I’m the salad.’ Taking the plate from him before he could interfere with the horror show currently taking place beneath her napkin. ‘Thanks.’ Then knocking back three big gulps of wine, finishing the glass and holding it out for the waiter. ‘And can I have another large Shiraz, please, actually better make it a bottle, no point messing about, is there? That’ll be great, excellent, mmmmm, this all smells delicious!’

The waiter’s smile looked very uncomfortable, squashed between his handlebar moustache and big beard, as he backed away from our table like it was a rabid dog. ‘Yes, wine, definitely.’ And he was gone.

She passed her plate across the table to me. ‘Can you look after that? And don’t eat my mozzarella. Or my tomatoes. Or basil. Actually... don’t eat any of it.’ Then peeled her napkin back, exposing the bloody images again. ‘These were from one side of the shackles, weren’t they?’

‘The string closest the stairs.’ Somehow a platter of mixed meat didn’t seem all that attractive, not when the Polaroids were sitting there. ‘All I could get.’

‘I wonder if there’s a “before” and “after” for each of the victims? One wall is them alive, the other is them dead. With sex and torture in the middle.’

Great wafts of garlic oozed out of Shifty’s starter as he tore a big bite from his huge slice of cheese on toast, white strings looping from his mouth back to the bread, like the ones in the basement. Mumbling through his mouthful. ‘You think he rapes them?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. I worked on a case in Boston once — got to go over as part of an exchange programme, it’s a really nice city, lovely people, but by God it’s cold in winter — anyway there was this guy, Chuck Reich. He would abduct men, tie them up, and stab them, but not because he was trying to kill them, he’d stab them in the stomach or the thigh or the buttock and use the holes he’d made to... you know... pleasure himself. It was the screaming he liked the best. Maybe Gordon and Caroline were like that?’

Yeah, I definitely didn’t want the cold meat any more.

‘You never told me about Chuck Reich.’

Alice shrugged at me. ‘He swore, if he ever got out, he’d come after me and I didn’t want you to worry.’ She stared down at the photos again. ‘Anyway, it was years ago, I’m sure he’s a lot less angry now, and it’s not like they’re ever going to release him, is it? Not after what he did to his lawyer...’ She glanced up at me. ‘It’s OK, you can start eating, I won’t mind.’

Nope. Pushed my plate away.

Eleven murder pictures on one side of the shackles, eleven on the other. Which meant twenty-two victims over fifty-six years, the last of which had to be quite a while ago, going by the mould staining those Polaroids.

‘So, why did Gordon Smith stop killing?’

‘Oh, Ash,’ her smile was small and sad, ‘what makes you think he’s stopped?’

I left the engine running, heaters and blowers on full, as Alice escorted Shifty to his front door. The pair of them wobbly as newborn foals, keeping each other upright. Honestly, they were about as much—

A muffled rendition of the Buffy theme burst into life in my pocket and I dragged out my phone. Took the call. ‘Rhona?’

‘Not too late is it, Guv? Only I got some info for you on Leah MacNeil.’

Outside, Alice was helping Shifty find the keys to his tiny house: a two-up two-down at the end of a curling cul-de-sac in Blackwall Hill. The kind of place that must’ve looked quite stylish when it was thrown up thirty years ago, on the wrong side of the railway tracks, and left to rot ever since.

‘Let me guess — no one’s bothered their arse?’

‘Bingo. I’ve rattled some cages and jammed my boot up some bumholes, so at least they’ll start looking. Oh, and I managed to dig a bunch of stuff up on the mother, Sophie MacNeil, too. Suicide, sixteen years ago. Poor cow was only twenty.’ A slurping noise came down the phone. ‘Granny Helen was in HMP Oldcastle at the time, for battering some drug dealer to death, so two-year-old Leah goes to live with the next-door neighbours. Temporary custody, by the look of it.’