Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

OK, time to get this back on track. I cut in before she could open her mouth. ‘Let me get this straight, Mr Smith: you murdered a woman because she didn’t diagnose your sister-in-law’s bowel cancer early enough? Does that sound reasonable to you?’

The smile slipped from his face. ‘Think you lot have had enough of my time.’ He stood, gave Franklin another once-over. ‘Don’t fancy coming back to my cell with me, do you, sweet-cheeks? Sure I can show you some moves that’ll get your knickers dripping. No?’

Franklin bared her teeth, fists curled. ‘No.’

‘Ah well, just have to use my imagination, won’t I?’ He gave the front of his joggy bots a squeeze. ‘Be thinking about you, later.’

She didn’t stop swearing till we were back in the car.

I opened my mouth, but Franklin got there first:

‘Don’t, OK? Don’t say a bloody word. That misogynistic, sexist, slimy old... Gah!’ She stuck her foot down as the lights changed, wheeching out onto the roundabout. Following the road markings for A71 WEST ~ THE NORTH. Slamming on the brakes again as the next set of lights turned red before we could cross them. Bashing the flat of her palm against the steering wheel. ‘Damn it!’

‘Come on, he can’t be the first creepy weirdo who perved on you to mess with your head.’

‘He did not mess with my—’

‘Difficult to focus on what someone’s saying if you’re standing there dreaming about battering his face off the floor six or seven times.’

She scowled across the car at me. ‘I was focused!’

‘Green.’

‘What?’

Pointing through the windscreen. ‘The light’s gone green.’

‘Bloody hell...’ She nearly stalled it, but got the pool car kangarooing around to the exit.

‘OK, well if you were so focused and non-distracted, what did you make of the sister-in-law thing?’

Down the slip road. ‘What sister-in-law thing?’

‘See?’ God save us from detective sergeants with a chip on their shoulder. ‘Peter Smith says he murdered Dr Griffiths because she cocked up Caroline Smith’s cancer diagnosis. He killed for his sister-in-law. Not his sister, not his wife, his sister-in-law .’

‘So what? Maybe they’re a close family.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. It’s—’

My phone launched into its bland generic ringtone, and when I pulled it out, there was ‘DI MALCOLMSON’ in the middle of the screen. Ah well, might as well. It was that or talk to smiler, here. I hit the button. ‘Hello?’

‘Ash, it’s Mother. How are you and Rosalind getting on?’

‘Like a house on fire.’ People running, screaming, dying...

‘That’s nice. Listen, you don’t fancy doing a teensy favour for me, do you? We put an appeal out on the lunchtime news, did you hear it? Anyway, people have been calling with sightings.’

‘And let me guess: some timewasting loony thinks they’ve seen Gordon Smith in Edinburgh.’

‘And Portree, Kingussie, Clydebank, Hawick, Aberystwyth, Torquay, Billingborough, Methil... So if you can swing past and check, while you’re in the area, that’d be a great help.’

Hard not to groan at that.

‘I know, I know, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it?’

Not really. That was the trouble with police work, though. Ninety-six percent of it was a complete waste of time and the other four percent got you in trouble with Professional Standards.

‘Have the labs got back with anything from those Polaroids? The ones I gave DI Morrow?’

‘DI Morr...? Oh, you mean Shifty ? No, not yet. John’s chasing them.’

‘Get them to compare any DNA, blood, or fingerprints with Peter Smith — Gordon’s brother. Doing a sixteen stretch in Saughton.’

Silence from the other end of the phone.

I leaned towards Franklin. ‘Better get in the right-hand lane, we’re going back to Edinburgh.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Make up your mind...’ But she yanked on the steering wheel anyway, sending the Ford Focus careening across the white rumble strip and inches from the rear end of an articulated lorry. A blare of horn from the white Transit we’d just cut in front of. Then out into the overtaking lane, accelerating past the lorry and up the hill, as if we hadn’t been seconds away from ‘FIVE DEAD IN MOTORWAY PILEUP HORROR’.

I forced down the fizzy feeling that’d clamped onto my bowels. Went back to the phone. ‘You still there?’

‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Ash? Why all this interest in Gordon Smith’s brother?’

‘Call it ex-DI’s intuition. Now, where are we meant to be heading?’

‘You’ll like this: be a treat for you.’

Why did that sound highly unlikely?

‘Well how was I supposed to know there wasn’t any parking?’ Franklin stomped past the National Gallery, moping her way between the waist-high sections of temporary fencing and into a world of glittering lights. The thick meaty scent of charcoal and sausages mingled with piped Christmas carols and the whirrrrrr of someone making Irn-Bru-flavoured candyfloss.

‘Can we get on with this, please?’

The sky had gone from bright blue to a dark indigo as we’d tramped all the way from the multistorey round the back of the Traverse Theatre, down Lothian Road, and along Princes Street. Fighting our way through the seething swamp of bloody tourists and bloody-minded locals. Now a sliver of burning red lined the top of the surrounding buildings, doing nothing to compete with the twee gaudy horror of Edinburgh’s Christmas Market.

Lines of small wooden stalls were arranged in three ‘streets’, bedecked with multicoloured lights, bells, stars, oversized candy canes, and bits of pine tree, as if Santa had vomited all over it. Stall after stall after stall, selling tat, tat, and more tat.

Towering over everything, a slow-motion Ferris wheel glittered its way around, overshadowing the gloomy blackened spires of the Scott Monument. And everywhere you looked: fairy lights. Fairy lights and more bloody tourists.

This early in the season, it shouldn’t have been busy, but it was . People jammed in everywhere, circulating at a snail’s pace. Taking selfies, blocking the way, drinking bargain-basement Glühwein from a stall manned by a bloke who wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Sex Offenders’ Register.

Franklin stared at the seething masses, teeth bared. ‘This is a monumental waste of time.’

‘Of course it is. Even if Gordon Smith was here, he’ll be long gone by now.’ I gave her the side-eye. ‘Especially after your parking.’

‘That wasn’t my fault!’

A stall down the end — past one selling socks and gloves, one selling ‘HANDMADE ARTISANAL CHEESES!’, one selling tea-lights in the shape of Edinburgh tenements, and one entirely dedicated to vile flavours of fudge — had a big circular metal grille suspended over a smouldering bowl of red-hot charcoal. An array of golden sausages drifted around in a lazy circle as the woman in charge poked at them with a set of tongs. The smell alone was enough to set my stomach growling. Been a long time since that bowl of salted porridge and cup of decaf tea.

Franklin sniffed, did a three-sixty. ‘So where do we begin this utter waste of time?’

I held up two fingers to the lady with the tongs. ‘One bratwurst, one currywurst. All the trimmings.’

‘Reet you are, pet.’

Franklin stared up at the string of lights that looped from pole to pole, running the length of the fake street. ‘Think the market’s got CCTV? They have to have CCTV, right?’

I took delivery of the sausages, smothered in sauerkraut and crispy onions. Handed over a tenner. Got very little of it back. ‘Here.’