Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

I left them to it.

Headed down the hall and out the front door.

Mother stood in the garden, curly ginger hair whipping around her head in the wind, throwing her arms about while a young man in an ill-fitting suit withered before her.

He had a face full of acne and teeth, a single solid eyebrow wriggling its way across his brow. A big digital camera slung around his neck. Knees bent, hands raised as if to ward off blows. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’

‘YOU COULD’VE DIED, YOU IDIOT! WHAT WOULD YOUR POOR MUM THINK IF YOU GOT CRUSHED TO DEATH AND WASHED OUT TO SEA?’

‘I’m sorry —’

‘BECAUSE I’D BE THE ONE WHO’D HAVE TO TELL HER, HER LITTLE BOY HAD STUPIDED HIMSELF TO DEATH!’

‘I’m sorry!’

‘GO ON, GET OUT OF MY SIGHT.’ She stabbed a finger westward, away from the cliffs. ‘AND DON’T YOU EVER LET ME CATCH YOU DOING ANYTHING LIKE THAT AGAIN!’

The wee loon scuttled off, jacket snapping about him as the wind tore at his back.

‘Were you trying to make him cry?’

Mother turned. ‘Ah, Ash. Any luck with your IT guru?’

‘Going to take a look for us, but we’ll probably have to give him a cost code to write his time against.’

She sagged, turned, and leaned her thick white fists on the garden wall. ‘Everyone always wants money, these days. Whatever happened to going out and catching crooks? Now it’s all cost centres and codes and balance sheets and budget forecasts.’

‘Look on the bright side,’ I pointed across the road, ‘you’ll save a fortune, not having to pay for a search team, or the scene examination lot.’

A deep dark rumbling noise juddered its way through the gale as another chunk of Gordon Smith’s garden disappeared into the North Sea, taking a four-foot segment of wall and roof with it. The TV crews all swung their cameras around to capture the excitement. No doubt that would get featured on the lunchtime news.

She shook her head. ‘Going to be almost impossible to get a sound conviction on this one.’ Raised a hand towards the crumbling bungalow with its tumbledown roof. ‘No physical evidence, no bodies, no forensics tying Smith to the crimes... Be lucky if we can even prove there’ve been crimes. Any semi-conscious defence solicitor will tear us a fresh bumhole.’

No wonder the top brass had lumbered Mother and her Misfit Mob with the case. Every Superintendent, DCI, and DI in O Division would be running full speed in the opposite direction to this career-killing crapfest.

The camera crews stayed where they were, obviously hoping for a repeat performance.

‘Wouldn’t be the first time someone got sent down for murder with no body.’

‘Jack thinks I should pack it all in. Give up the glamorous life of a police officer and go on cruises instead. Play golf. Do the garden. Spend more time with the grandchildren.’

‘Sounds exciting.’

‘You haven’t met my grandkids.’ She frowned for a moment, then sniffed. ‘Tell your IT guru he can have eight hours and not a penny more. In the meantime, what are you going to do?’

Good question.

‘Think I’ll go see a man about a croft.’

‘When DS Franklin gets back, you can take her with you. She’s driving everyone else round the bend, don’t see why you should be the exception, just because you’re new.’

Oh joy.

‘What?’

Sitting in the driver’s seat, Detective Sergeant Franklin tightened her jaw, eyes fixed straight ahead as the dual carriageway climbed Friarton Bridge, arching over the River Tay. Hands tight around the wheel, knuckles paling her skin. She’d hung the black suit jacket up in the back, her white shirt fitted and a touch more revealing than was strictly necessary. Some would call her handsome, striking, maybe even beautiful — as long as they hadn’t had to share a crappy Police Scotland pool car with her.

‘Come on, out with it: you’ve been shooting daggers at me since before Dundee.’

Still nothing.

‘Not my fault you got assigned to this job, is it? That was your guvnor.’

She bared perfect white teeth. ‘It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?’

‘What is, the sulking?’

Franklin put her foot down, the needle creeping up closer to eighty as she swung the ancient Ford Focus out into the other lane to overtake a Megabus. ‘I’m a detective sergeant , you’re not even a police officer!’

‘And that’s a problem, because...?’

‘I am not a bloody chauffeur! You should be driving me , not the other way round.’

She snapped the car back into the inside lane, getting an angry flash of headlights and a variety of rude hand gestures from a fat woman in a people carrier.

‘Are you always like this?’

‘I’m not like anything.’

‘God, it’s no wonder Mother wanted shot of you for the day.’ I stretched out my right leg, rotating the ankle, setting it clicking. Easing out the burning. ‘And the reason you’re driving me , Detective Sergeant, is one: I used to be a DI, and two: you don’t have a bullet hole in your foot. Which makes driving anything a massive pain in the... foot.’ Tried for a smile. ‘Much like yourself.’

Not so much as a twinkle.

‘So, shall we get on with the obligatory bonding getting-to-know-each-other bollocks, or are you planning on seething all the way to Edinburgh?’

She tightened her jaw again.

‘Fair enough.’ I reclined my seat and closed my eyes. ‘You can wake me up when we get there.’

Something sharp poked me in the shoulder. ‘We’re nearly there.’

I sat up, blinked. Didn’t bother stifling a yawn.

We were on a residential street that could’ve been anywhere in Scotland: short rows of small terraced houses; the occasional bungalow; two-storey blocks of flats arranged around a central stairwell; grey harling, pink harling, bus lanes and speed cameras. Wouldn’t think Saughton was lurking just out of sight.

Franklin pulled up at the junction, sitting there with the indicators clicking, waiting for two taxis and a removals van to pass. ‘You snore.’

‘And you have all the interpersonal charm of a post mortem. But you don’t hear me going on about it, do you?’

She took the corner, up the small hill, and round into the car park.

Suppose one of us should try being a grown-up.

‘Look, we’re going to have to work together for a couple of days, so maybe we could try and keep the mutual loathing down to a gentle simmer? Or we could even have a bash at starting over?’ I held out my hand as she killed the ignition. ‘Ash Henderson, former Detective Inspector. Of course, that was back when it was still Oldcastle Police, before Police Scotland ruined everything and we all went to rat shit in a handcart.’

She looked down at my proffered hand, then up at me. Curled her top lip. And climbed out of the car. Grabbed her jacket from the back and marched off towards the ugly Lego-brick lump of a building lurking behind a weird green-roofed visitor centre. They’d stuck the words ‘HMP EDINBURGH’ on the prison’s façade, above a three-storey wall of tinted glass, framed with beige cladding, but it was like putting stockings-and-suspenders on a pig and hoping no one would notice it wasn’t a glamour model.

Franklin stopped by the line of bollards, turned, and threw her arms out. ‘ARE YOU COMING OR NOT?’

Oh yeah, she was definitely a charmer.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting...’ An ingratiating smile pulled at the man’s face. He’d slicked his hair into a greasy side parting that didn’t really go with the pink polo shirt — stretched tight across a chest and arms that clearly spent a lot of time in the gym. Thick black-rimmed glasses perched on a horsey nose. iPad clutched under one arm. ‘If you’d like to follow me?’