Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Lichen covered most of the memorials, obscuring the names and dates. It stretched up the church walls too, joining the thick bank of rambling ivy that crawled across the façade, making those dirty stained-glass windows even darker.

Alice and Huntly followed me through the heavy wooden doors, the three of us dripping on the flagstones, breaths fogging the air as the plinky-plonk-squawk of someone not very good practising on the organ filled the vaulted space. The same musical phrase repeated over and over, getting it wrong every time.

‘Dear Lord,’ Huntly hunched his arms in and shivered, ‘colder in here than it is outside...’

Dark too — the only light came from clusters of candle stubs, flickering away in their wrought-iron holders, nowhere near enough of them to dispel the gloom. The cloying scent of incense not quite managing to cover the grubby taint of mould and damp.

Down the far end, looming out of the murk, a twice-life-sized wooden Jesus cried in agony on his oversized cross, eyes screwed shut, mouth open, the blood of his wounds darkened and chipped by time. Ribs visible through the slash in his side.

Rows and rows of hard wooden pews. A marble altar the colour of liver. A lectern decorated with dark metal skulls and bones.

Saint Damon of the Green Wood: about as cheery and welcoming as a landmine.

A woman’s head and shoulders were just visible over the pews, by the front of the church. Kneeling in prayer.

She didn’t look up as I slid into the space next to her.

‘Mrs Brennan?’

Her hair was dark as coal, pulled back from her face and tied with a black ribbon, giving her sharp features a crow-like edge. Bony hands working their way through a string of rosary beads, the fingernails bitten down to ragged stumps. Eyes closed, pale lips moving in silence.

The photo in the case file showed a young woman who’d hung on to her baby weight, smiling away in Montgomery Park, by the boating lake, a baby on her hip and a wee boy at her feet — throwing chunks of sliced white to the ducks. A small happy family, enjoying a day out in the sun.

But those days were long gone.

The organist made another assault on the same passage they’d screwed up at least two dozen times since we’d arrived. Got it wrong again.

And Mary Brennan kept working her way through the rosary.

‘Mrs Brennan, my name’s Ash Henderson. I’m part of a team who’re trying to help the police find out who hurt Andrew. Can we ask you some questions?’

Her eyes screwed tighter shut. ‘I’m praying !’

‘That’s OK.’ I settled back in my pew. ‘We’ll wait.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake...’ She thumped her beads down on the shelf built into the back of the pews in front, the one supporting a row of mildew-blackened Bibles. ‘What do you want now ?’

‘You think I haven’t asked that every single day since Andrew... Since he...’ Mary Brennan dug a thumb into her temple, a menthol cigarette smouldering away in the other hand. Sheltering beneath the overhang of a gothic memorial to some silk merchant who’d passed away in the cholera outbreak of 1832.

She took a drag on her cigarette, setting the tip glowing bright orange in the gloomy morning. ‘I ask for God’s guidance, I really do, and I want to believe that it’s all part of His holy plan and that Andrew’s at His side. And I tell people I believe in love and forgiveness. But what I really want is for the man who killed my baby to be tortured in hell for all eternity.’

Alice shuffled her little scarlet feet, rain pattering on her ladybird brolly’s cheery red-and-black surface. ‘You don’t have anything to feel ashamed about, Mary, it’s natural to be angry. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t.’

‘I want to wrap my hands round his throat, and squeeze the life out of him myself. An eye for an eye...’

Yeah, we all knew how that worked out.

My turn: ‘And you didn’t see anyone hanging around the place, before it happened? Anyone always walking their dog, for instance, or taking a bit too much interest in the waste ground? Maybe someone trying to get the place done up?’

She glowered at me, through a fug of exhaled smoke. ‘Why do you lot always ask the same bloody questions? Why can’t you do it the once, then leave me alone? Why do you have to rake it all up, over and over and over?’ Cheeks hollowing as she dragged in an angry lungful of menthol. ‘How do you think it feels ?’

Yeah.

The memorial’s black marble was cool against my back as I eased further out of the rain. ‘What about the people who go out there to take drugs? Would you recognise any regulars? Any names you could give us?’ Thankfully, Huntly had taken the not-so-subtle hint and kept his tactless arse in the church, but that didn’t mean his druggie theory wasn’t worth a go.

‘And you never answer anything, do you? You ask and ask and ask, and I get sod all back.’

Alice wrinkled her nose. ‘It always looks so easy on the telly, doesn’t it? The detectives rock up, ask a couple of questions, there’s an ad break, then next thing you know the killer’s in handcuffs and everyone lives happily ever after.’ She squatted down in front of Mary Brennan, took hold of her free hand. ‘It takes a lot longer in real life, and we’re really, really sorry about that, but we have to find the man who hurt Andrew before he hurts anyone else. So I know it must be almost unbearable, but please: we need your help.’

A shrug, but she didn’t take her hand away. ‘Local kids use it to drink the booze they’ve shoplifted... Now and then you’ll see someone smoking weed, cos you can’t do it inside or you’ll get kicked out of your flat. Maybe a couple of junkies, but only when the weather’s good. There are nicer places in Kingsmeath than this.’ She sucked on her cigarette again, hissing out a cloud of bitter menthol. A hint of steel in her voice: ‘You think they’re the ones hurt my Andrew?’

Alice shook her head. ‘We’re keeping an open mind, but it’s not likely. They might have seen who did, though. We can get someone to bring round a few mugshots, maybe you can recognise some of them?’

Mary Brennan curled one shoulder up to her ear. ‘Maybe.’

‘OK.’ I took out my phone, called up the memo app and hit record. ‘Can you take us through what happened that day — Thursday the eighteenth — doesn’t matter what it is, anything you can remember could help.’

Mary Brennan looked out across the rows of headstones, back towards the waste ground, with the railway line towering above it on thin metal legs. ‘It was...’ She licked her lips. ‘I wasn’t... good that day. Charlie’s lawyer came past the day before with the legal papers, you know? Wanting visiting rights to Billy. I...’ She bit her top lip. ‘So I woke up, Thursday morning, with a killer hangover. What right’s that bastard got to demand access to my Billy? Never bothered about him before, did he? Not when he could come home reeking of drink and beat the crap out of me.’ A shudder ran its way through her, ending with another furious puff of menthol smoke. ‘And now, all of a sudden, I’m supposed to take my Billy up to prison to visit his violent arsehole dad?’

She gave a small bitter laugh. ‘Yeah, so: hangover like you wouldn’t believe. And Andrew’s begging me to take him to feed the ducks again, but I can’t ... You try spending all morning throwing up and changing a toddler’s shitty nappy.’ Deep breath. ‘It was kinda cold and foggy, so I bundled him up in his duffel coat, wellies, and mittens, and stuck him out in the back garden. Was supposed to stay there, where it’s safe.’ Mary’s voice got quieter and quieter. ‘Only he didn’t, did he? And now I’m stuck here, every morning, praying for guidance and wishing I could kill the bastard who took my baby...’