Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

I stuck the porridge pot and my bowl in to soak. Rinsed out my mug. Raised my voice so it would carry through into the living room. ‘You’ll be shocked to hear there’s been nothing on the news about Gordon Smith and his basement of horrors.’

‘Thanks, Bob. We’ve got an unsettled couple of days ahead as Storm Trevor continues to track north...’

‘Alice?’ Back through the kitchen door.

She’d barely moved. Slumped there, arms dangling, face screwed shut. Groaning.

Oh, for God’s sake.

My old walking stick wasn’t exactly pristine — the varnish worn off the handle, the rubber tip blackened and cracked — but it was perfect for poking people, so I did. Right in the shoulder. Putting some weight behind the thing. ‘You: wretch. Arse in gear. I want your teeth brushed, face washed, hair combed, and ready to go in five minutes.’

Alice’s response was barely audible, ‘Urgh...’

We followed the curling cobbled sweep of Shand Street, down the hill, moving from one yellowy patch of streetlight to the next — Henry trotting along at my side, Alice’s folding umbrella drumming in the rain that pummelled down from a coal-grey sky. Tiny rivers gurgling in the gutters. Past darkened shops with ‘TO LET / MAY SELL’ in the windows. Boarded-up newsagents, tea shops, and empty banks. A couple of charity shops and a bookies still held on, the grilles down over their grimy windows, waiting for the day to begin, but the baker’s was open.

‘Wait here.’ I handed her Henry’s lead, ducked out from under the brolly and limped inside. Came back out again with a mince bridie, a beetroot-and-stovies pie, and a cheese-and-onion pasty, all three turning the paper bag they shared semi-transparent with grease. Handed them over. ‘Get those down you.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Eat.’

She passed me the umbrella and Henry, then grimaced at the bag’s contents. ‘Don’t feel well.’

‘Trust me: nothing better for a hangover than baked stuff in pastry.’

‘Why do you have to be so mean to me?’ But Alice pulled out the bridie, steaming in the cold morning air, bringing with it the rich savoury scent of hot meat and butter, scrunched her eyes closed, and ripped out a big bite. Getting wee golden flakes all down the front of her parka.

Henry bounded along beside her, nose up, sniffing the pastry-scented air. Making hopeful noises as we headed downhill towards St Jasper’s Lane.

‘Right, soon as the team briefing’s over, I want to go jangle Steven Kirk again.’

‘Mmmmngghnnphff, mnngnnn mnnnfff?’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’ A four-by-four rattled up the hill, splashing through the lake formed by an overflowing drain and sending out a spray of grimy water that only missed us by an inch. Tosser. ‘Kirk was in Kingsmeath when Andrew Brennan went missing, I’d put money on it. The only reason he’d lie about that is because he knows we’re onto him.’

‘Still don’t see why we couldn’t have taken the car. It’s cold and it’s raining and my head hurts.’ Whine, moan, whinge. But she polished off the bridie anyway, then started on the pie.

‘We should speak to his mother’s care home: double-check his alibi.’

St Jasper’s Lane thickened with traffic — cars and vans heading off to work. An ambulance crawled past with its blue-and-whites off, the driver and passenger looking about as cheerful as a biopsy. More shops here. A young man in turban and leathers, hauling the shutters up outside a vaping shop. A slouch of people, hunched into themselves as they tromped along the uneven pavement. A young woman huddling outside a newsagent’s, puffing away on a cigarette as if it was the only thing keeping her upright. A figure, lying on their side in the doorway of a boarded-up nail salon, bundled in a filthy-grey sleeping bag, their back to the road.

The pedestrian crossing bleeped and we followed a knot of women dressed in identical black suits across the road.

Alice looked up from her pie. ‘I’ve been thinking about that profile of Gordon Smith.’

‘Don’t know why you’re bothering, it’s not like we don’t know who he is.’

Past the King James Theatre — its gaudy billboards advertising the Christmas panto — a droopy old man in a high-viz jacket hosing vomit off the top step.

‘That’s the point, though,’ pastry flakes going flying, ‘ no one did. Well, except his wife. And his victims, of course. Everyone else will tell you what a lovely man he was and he’d never hurt a fly and he was always such a considerate neighbour who’d give you the shirt off his back and other assorted clichés and actually you might be right about baked goods and hangovers.’ Munching down the last mouthful of pie. ‘Could really go something to drink, though, I’m—’

‘Here.’ I reached into my pocket and pulled out the chilled tin of Irn-Bru I’d got her in the baker’s.

‘Ooh!’ She clicked the ring-pull and gulped away.

‘Doesn’t matter, in the end, though, does it? We know it was him; Mother’s got a lookout request on the go; someone will spot him somewhere; uniform will swoop in and pick him up; and he’ll go down for life, with sod-all chance of parole. In the meantime , we’ve got a child-killer to catch. So can we please forget about Gordon Smith? It’s not our—’

A juddering belch burst out of Alice, like a lowbrow foghorn. ‘I think we should visit Rebecca this morning.’

A bus rumbled past, the steamy windows filled with unhappy faces, pale as margarine and twice as depressing.

‘Ash, did you hear me? I said, I think—’

‘Can we get on with the day, please? Enough on my plate as it is, without you—’

‘It’ll be good for you, though.’

We turned right, onto Peel Place. The elegant sandstone buildings were blighted by the manky Victorian redbrick lump of O Division Headquarters, like a big hairy wart on a supermodel’s cheek. Its narrow windows scowled out at the rainy gloom, through bars and grilles. A handful of outside broadcast vans were parked in front of the building: Sky News, BBC, ITV, Channel 4... Getting ready to hear all about the poor wee dead boy found in the woods yesterday.

The BBC lot were doing a piece to camera, the reporter huddled under his red-and-white brolly, trying to stay dry and keep the ‘POLICE SCOTLAND’ sign in shot at the same time.

‘Eat your pasty.’

‘You’re impossible, you know that, don’t you?’ She dipped back into the greasy bag, though. ‘And we still need to do something for our anniversary: celebratory meal, or something. Somewhere fancy, though, no sticky floors or plastic tablecloths.’

A figure huddled in the lee of the war memorial on the other side of the street — three soldiers in kilts and full WWI pack, bayonets fixed, charging towards the machineguns. She pushed away from the memorial and marched across the road, on an intercept course. Short grey hair plastered to her head, shoulders hunched, bloodshot eyes narrowed against the rain — the bags under them heavy and bruised. Helen MacNeil.

She looked the pair of us up and down, then ignored Alice completely. ‘I spent all night on the internet.’

‘Didn’t they assign you a Family Liaison Officer? They’ll keep you up to date on—’

‘And I’ve been googling you.’ Stepping closer. ‘Thought you were just some thug copper who liked throwing his weight about, but you know , don’t you? You know what it’s like.’

Oh Christ, not this...

‘Mrs MacNeil, it’s not—’

‘You’re telling me that Gordon killed my Sophie. That he’s killed other people. That the man I let look after my child and my grandchild was a bloody serial killer!’