Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Next: a smiling young woman in an ugly orange-and-brown one-piece swimming costume, face covered in freckles, mousy-blonde hair tucked behind an ear, rolling sand dunes behind her. Then a young man dressed in a smart suit and academic gown, mortarboard on his head as he posed on the steps outside a pillared portico, what had to be a degree clutched in his...

Hold on a minute.

I rewound the footage, back to the ugly swimming costume, and hit pause.

She looked... familiar.

Well, familiar-ish.

Broad forehead, wide mouth with lots of teeth, long straight nose sitting on a heart-shaped face. A touch overweight. Not conventionally pretty — not someone people would stop to stare at in the street if she walked past — just a normal person, whose luck ran out the moment this photograph was taken.

Maybe she was one of the faces from the other set of Polaroids? The ‘after’ pictures, with their bruises and slashes and blood and screaming. Maybe that’s where I’d seen her?

I called them up and flicked through... yup. There she was.

A hard cold lump turned deep inside my stomach.

How could anyone do that to someone? How could that get your rocks off?

But there was still something else.

Damn.

My jacket lay draped over one of the dining chairs, parked right in front of the radiator, in an attempt to dry the soggy thing out. The framed photo Helen MacNeil had given me still lurked in the side pocket.

The glass was misted with condensation, but a tea towel took care of that.

Two women in the photo: one was Helen MacNeil, smiling for once in her life, a large muscled arm draped across the shoulders of her teenaged granddaughter. It was clearly taken in a photographer’s studio — the mottled backdrop and professional lighting was evidence of that — but while her gran had put in a bit of effort, Leah MacNeil had opted for ripped jeans, a black denim jacket speckled with patches and badges, and a T-shirt for a band I’d never heard of. Wearing so much makeup it looked as if she’d been decorated.

But she had the same heart-shaped face as her grandmother. The same long sharp nose. The same broad forehead. Her hair was dyed a rich purply-blue, but the mousy-blonde roots were clearly visible.

She wasn’t the young woman in the Polaroids, but the family resemblance was obvious.

Damn it. God, sodding, damn it.

‘You were supposed to have killed yourself...’

Maybe it was a coincidence? Someone who looked like her?

I scrolled through to Rhona’s number and pressed the button. Listened to it ring as I placed the photo frame on the coffee table, facing me.

Then, ‘Guv? If you called up hoping to hear me eating again, all I’ve got’s a—’

‘Sophie MacNeil. Where’s her body?’

‘Eh?’

‘Her body, Rhona, if she killed herself, where is it?’

‘Guv, is something wrong?’

‘Yes.’ Finding it difficult to keep my voice calm and reasonable. ‘Now where’s her bloody body?’

‘Hold on.’ Some rustling. ‘Is it something I’ve done? Because if it’s... OK, here we go. Procurator Fiscal’s judgement was that Sophie MacNeil’s remains were washed out to sea. Never recovered. But the suicide note was enough to—’

‘Buggering hell .’

‘Guv?’

‘Sorry, Rhona, got to go. There’s a call I need to make.’

Rain lashed at the patrol car as we left the bright lights of Logansferry behind and headed out the Strathmuir road. Blue-and-whites flickering, turning the downpour into sapphires and diamonds as they rattled against the bonnet and windscreen.

Mother slumped in the passenger seat, face sagging, scrubbing at her eyes. ‘Why me? Why does crap like this always have to happen to me?’

‘Yes, because this is all about you.’ I shifted in the back seat, sat behind the driver because I wasn’t an idiot. ‘How do you think Helen MacNeil’s going to feel?’

The driver, a spotty-faced lump of gristle in the full Police Scotland black with matching accessories, sniffed. ‘Might be a comfort for her: finding out her wee girl didn’t commit suicide.’

My hand tightened around the head of my old walking stick. ‘Is that what you think?’ Knuckles aching as I squeezed the polished wood.

Mother groaned. ‘Come on, Mr Henderson, he didn’t mean anything by that.’

‘You think it’s comforting to find out your daughter was tortured and murdered by a serial killer?’ Getting louder with every word. ‘You think that’ll be an excuse for a party, maybe? Get out the karaoke machine and HAVE A BASTARDING SINGSONG?’

The moron behind the wheel went pink, lips pinched tight together in silence.

‘He doesn’t know, Mr Henderson. He’s young. And a bit thick. Come on, deep breaths.’

I thumped back in my seat. ‘Don’t see why you needed me on this anyway.’

‘Because you’ve got some sort of weird rapport with Helen MacNeil. And things are hard enough as it is.’ Mother seemed to deflate a couple of sizes as darkened fields flashed by the windows. ‘We had to do a risk assessment and now the SEB are refusing to search the basement. They won’t even go into the house. If this was any normal deposition and crime scene, we’d have big plastic marquees up by now, spotlights, generators; there’d be a specialist team digging the garden up and another one going through that kill room with an electron microscope.’ A shudder. ‘But it’s not a normal crime scene, is it? No, of course it isn’t, because if it was , some DCI would’ve waltzed in and wheeched it off me by now. It’s an utter crapfest, so no one else will touch it with a six-foot cattle prod!’

She had a point.

‘What am I supposed to do, Mr Henderson? If I put people in harm’s way and something happens, I’m screwed. If I don’t put them in harm’s way, I’m not doing my job, and screwed. Either way: screwed.’ She slapped both hands over her face again and smothered a small scream.

‘You finished?’

A small bitter laugh jiggled out of her. ‘Probably. Top brass have been trying to get shot of me for six years now, well, this’ll be the perfect opportunity.’ She turned in her seat and scowled at the driver. ‘You want some career advice, Constable Sullivan? Never have a heart attack on O Division’s dime, because if you do the bastards will treat you like a soiled nappy full of radioactive poop!’

PC Sullivan, quite sensibly, kept his mouth shut.

There was hope for the boy yet.

A small village flashed past, the streets empty, the trees thrashing in the wind, overflowing gutters spilling small lakes across the square.

‘You hear anything back from N Division?’

Mother sagged even further. ‘They sent three patrol cars to Smith’s brother’s croft. No one there.’ Her mouth turned down, lips puckered, like she was sucking on something bitter. ‘Said it looked like no one had been there for years. All abandoned and manky. No Gordon Smith. Wherever he’s disappeared to, it isn’t there.’

A Mobile Incident Unit sat in the middle of the potholed road, about two houses back from the warning fence, lights blazing out in the darkness. It wasn’t one of the swanky new ones, either — little more than a grubby shipping container done up in Police Scotland livery with a mobile generator chuntering away behind it.

Mother undid her seatbelt as PC Sullivan parked alongside. Sat there, staring out through the rain-strafed window at Helen MacNeil’s house. ‘Maybe we should wait till morning?’

‘You know what Oldcastle’s like: entire police force leaks information like a colander.’