Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Tit.

Alice pointed at the map that took up Whiteboard Number Four: where brightly coloured magnetic buttons marked the site of each abduction and dead body. ‘Andrew Brennan was playing under the railway lines in Kingsmeath when he was murdered. For him to be a victim of opportunity, Gòrach had to be there too. But he went hunting for Oscar in Castleview — picked somewhere new to decrease his chance of getting caught — changing things up, going for a slightly older boy from a more affluent family, using the belt instead of his hands, trying new things. But Lewis Talbot is Gòrach’s return to form. His return to Kingsmeath. Gòrach’s comfortable there, it’s his patch. He either grew up there and moved away, or he’s never left. He knows this place.’

‘Hmmph.’ Huntly shrugged. ‘It’s a start, I suppose.’

‘He has access to a vehicle — otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to take Lewis to where they found the body. He’s confident in himself, otherwise he wouldn’t have transported his victim so far away from where he abducted him. See, there’s that pronoun thing again. Gòrach’s either self-employed, or he works shifts, or maybe some job where he’s got a lot of autonomy? Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to hunt children during the day, and during the week.’

Jacobson scribbled something down in his notebook, then looked up at her. ‘What about previous?’

Alice shook her head, setting the curls bouncing. ‘He’s not had an outlet for these feelings. They’ve been brewing inside him for years but he hasn’t dared do anything about them. That’s why he doesn’t sexually assault his victims — it’s not about them as sexual beings, it’s about him and his fantasies. He’d rather go home and replay the murder and masturbate than actually do anything with their bodies. Probably thinks that kind of thing is perverted: beneath him.’

‘Because what the world really needs is more child-murdering tosspots with a well-developed sense of moral rectitude.’

Alice’s shoulders curled up around her ears, eyebrows pinched. ‘One more thing: I think this two-month cycle he’s on is going to accelerate now he’s found what he likes. He took the time between Oscar and Lewis’s murders to learn . Lewis died in October, it’s November now, he’s probably already hunting for victim number four. And he’ll be a lot better at it, this time.’

‘Groan! Sigh. Wilt...’ Huntly pulled himself up to his full height, in the back seat, then slumped again. ‘Why are we going so slowly ?’

I turned up the Suzuki’s radio — a boy band warbling their way through an autotuned cover of an old Led Zeppelin song. Awful, but with any luck it would drown him out.

Instead, the annoying pinstriped git got louder. ‘And why is this car so small? It’s like something that comes with a Barbie playset. And it positively reeks of wet dog.’

Henry’s glistening blackcurrant nose poked over the back seat, hairy eyebrows raised, mouth hanging open in a gaping grin, as if that’d been a compliment.

I gave Professor Bernard Huntly a scowl in the rear-view mirror. ‘No one asked you to come.’

‘I know. Sadly, it’s my burden to be so incredibly useful that none can cope without my genius. So when I see a fair maiden in need, how can I possibly refuse to help?’

Outside, the rush hour proved what an oxy-sodding-moron it was — nose-to-tail cars, vans, and lorries, crawling their way across Calderwell Bridge in the pelting rain, while an occasional taxi stuttered past in the empty bus lane. The thick grey river turned pewter by the thin greasy light.

Huntly wriggled in his seat again, turned nearly sideways. ‘Honestly, I swear this thing wasn’t designed for full-sized human beings. Oompa Loompas, perhaps, but not human beings.’

Alice shrugged when I transferred the scowl to her instead. ‘Well, what was I supposed to do? He annoyed Sheila all day yesterday, and it was Bear the day before that, so now it’s our turn. You’ve seen the roster.’

We finally made it to the other side of the river, swinging around the roundabout and onto Montrose Road, heading east. The sign used to read, ‘WELCOME TO KINGSMEATH ~ OLDCASTLE’S FRIENDLIEST NEIGHBOURHOOD’, but the letters were barely visible under layers and layers of foul-mouthed graffiti.

‘Friendliest neighbourhood’ my arse.

At least the traffic was a bit lighter here — most of it going the other way, trying to get out of Kingsmeath.

Huntly leaned forwards again. ‘So, my dear Dr McDonald, have you a plan for when we visit our first deposition-slash-crime scene?’

Alice fixed a smile in place. ‘I’m going to look at things.’

‘Ah, a very wise choice. I too have “looking at things” in mind.’ Huntly wriggled about some more, setting the tiny jeep rocking on its springs. ‘I know it’s five months since poor Andrew Brennan met his unfortunate end, and it’s unlikely anything will have survived the intervening period and this horrible weather, but we troupers must troupe, must we not?’

‘I say we pull over, chuck Huntly in the river, and swear blind we haven’t seen him.’

‘Ash!’ She shook her head. ‘We’re not throwing anyone in the river.’

‘How about we fill his pockets with bricks first?’

The railway bridge lumped its way across Kings River on thick stone pilings, the heavy metalwork boxy and functional, rather than elegant and sculptured. It started climbing as soon as it made landfall at Kettle Docks, arching over the road in front of us — a lumpen granite bridge that hung with stalactites of rusting steel.

‘No one’s filling anyone’s pockets with bricks!’

We passed through the gloomy archway, and Alice took a left onto Denholm Road. Heading uphill.

The street had probably been quite grand in its day — sweeping terraces of sandstone townhouses, lined with trees and wrought-iron railings — before they built Castle View and all the smart money moved out, leaving this part of the city to the mercy of town planners, council housing, and tower blocks. Now, the once-fancy buildings of Denholm Road were carved up into multiple occupancy flats, stuffed full of people whose benefits wouldn’t stretch to anything less crappy. The trees reduced to vitrified stumps years ago, the railings long gone. The pristine sandstone striped with brown where its satellite-dish acne had rusted away. Blackened by decades of soot and grit and no one caring enough to clean it.

Huntly tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Tell me, my dear ex-Detective Inspector, would you like to place a small wager on my turning something up here that will, as they say in the more excitable crime novels, “blow the case wide open”?’

Kept my eyes front. ‘And would you like to wager that you’ll do something that earns you a punch on the nose before that happens?’

‘Oh, I do like a challenge!’

Alice pulled the Suzuki in behind the crumbling remains of an outside catering van — a boxy trailer, no bigger than four portaloos strapped together, slouching on flat tyres, its wooden walls bloated and peeling. The words ‘SHAKY DAVE’S TATTIE SHACK’ sitting proudly above a serving hatch that gaped like a corpse’s mouth. She pointed at the junction with William Terrace. ‘There’s a way through, over there.’

‘You, my dear, Dr McDonald, shall be the banker for our bet, this rainy day. Here...’ He dug into his wallet and came out with a slithery plastic fiver. ‘This says I come up with some devastating insight into Gòrach’s actions before Mr Henderson deems it necessary to resort to physical violence due to his hyperactive amygdala and sluggish frontal lobe.’