Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

‘JIMMY, GET HIS OTHER HAND!’

‘I thing he broge by node...’

I hurled the whole block at Leah. They made it a good ten or twelve feet before breaking apart into their individual pieces, spinning and whirling like heavy cubist snowflakes. About half a dozen fluttered to the ground at her feet.

‘STOP STRUGGLING!’

Another pair of hands grabbed my outstretched arm.

‘I’M TRYING TO HELP, LEAH! YOU NEED TO TALK TO ME!’

She blinked at me a couple of times. Then bent down and plucked one of the cards from the ground. Clutched it to her chest.

Then turned and ran.

The cold metal bar of a handcuff clicked around my left wrist, someone forcing their weight down on top of my head, shoving my face into the damp carpet.

‘YOU’RE NICKED!’

Singing wafted through from somewhere down the corridor — a wobbly baritone, serenading the rest of the cellblock with an X-rated version of ‘A Froggy Would a Wooing Go’.

The blue plastic-coated mattress creaked beneath me as I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the words in stencilled blue lettering on the ceiling. ‘CRIMESTOPPERS: ANONYMOUS INFORMATION ABOUT CRIME COULD EARN A CASH REWARD’ and an 0800 number. Nothing like taking advantage of a captive audience...

Everything in here smelled of disinfectant. Which was comforting in some ways — at least it meant they’d cleaned it recently — and disturbing in others — what the hell had someone done in here to require drenching everything in Dettol?

To be honest, given how crappy a day I was having, it was actually nice to lie down in the peace and quiet. If you didn’t count the filthy song. No one demanding anything. Nothing to achieve. No one to disappoint.

And it hadn’t all been a waste of time, had it? At least now we knew Leah was still alive. She hadn’t been tortured to death and buried in Gordon Smith’s garden. At least she’d been spared that.

Helen MacNeil, too. Her granddaughter wasn’t dead.

Of course, it didn’t change what had happened to her daughter, Sophie.

What Gordon Smith had done to her.

All laid out in grisly detail in that bloody Polaroid. A small white rectangle bordering a horrible square picture, the image smeared with dried gore...

Like the ones that used to arrive on Rebecca’s birthday. Getting worse and worse every year. Until I couldn’t even picture my little girl’s face without seeing them.

She would’ve been twenty-six today. Could’ve been married with kids by now. A happy family of her own, rather than the fractured mess left behind when the Birthday Boy took her.

Polaroids.

Wonder how many sick bastards out there used them to record their handiwork? How many of them spent every night wanking themselves raw to the image of someone’s son or daughter being torn apart?

Helen MacNeil was right: I knew how it felt. And it didn’t matter that she hadn’t been a doting mother, or even a mediocre one — whether or not she spent most of Sophie’s life in prison and the rest of it enforcing for the mob. Sophie was her child and Gordon Smith took her, same as the Birthday Boy took Rebecca.

So now, only one thing was certain: I was going to find Gordon Smith, and I was going to make him pay. For Sophie. For Rebecca. And for every other child out there who’d suffered at—

The cell door banged open, the sound reverberating off the bare concrete walls.

‘Henderson! On your feet.’ A Police Custody And Security Officer filled the doorway: an unassuming middle-aged man with thinning hair, grey moustache and soul patch. Glasses. Like a disappointed uncle, in his black polo shirt and black jeans. Only you could tell from the way he held himself he was ex-job. Done his time in the force and couldn’t adapt to life on the outside, so came back to work as civilian support. Strange how much ex-cops were like ex-cons. Same problem, different sides of the cell door.

I swung my legs around, placed my stocking soles on the cold terrazzo floor. ‘Any chance I can get my walking stick back, if I promise not to go the full Rambo?’

‘Arse in gear; the Super wants to see you.’

Take that as a no, then.

A tall thin woman looked me up and down as I shuffled into the small room, in my socks. She was dressed in formal Police Scotland black, wiry arms poking out from the sleeves of her T-shirt, a silver crown on both lapels. Probably best not to stare at the big hairy mole poking out beneath the line of her sharp jaw.

I nodded. ‘Superintendent.’

She wasn’t the only one in here. Franklin leaned back against a row of grey filing cabinets, and a uniformed PC scowled out from a pair of bloodshot eyes, the skin beneath them darkening in purple arcs. Crusty flakes of dark scarlet clinging to both nostrils.

‘Mr Henderson.’ The Super folded her arms. ‘Would you like to explain why I shouldn’t charge you with a public order offence, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer?’

‘Because you know who I am, or DS Franklin wouldn’t be here.’ I tipped my head toward her — Franklin rolled her eyes and pulled a face. ‘I was in pursuit of a witness in a murder investigation, when your... let’s be nice and call them “halfwit minions” carried out an unprovoked assault and illegal detention.’

The PC with the black eyes soured his mouth. ‘Now wait a buggering minute! We were doing our—’

‘All right, Constable Marshall. I’m sure Mr Henderson meant “halfwit minions” in a nice way. Didn’t you, Mr Henderson?’

Franklin shot me a glare: play nice.

Yeah, she was probably right.

‘Of course I did. It was banter, that’s all. No offence, etc.’

‘Good. Now, I believe you have something to say to Constable Marshall?’

Another glare from Franklin.

‘I’m sorry about your nose. I thought you were that idiot American, back for another go.’

The Superintendent raised an eyebrow at the PC. ‘And Constable Marshall, I believe you have something to say to Mr Henderson?’

He looked as if he was trying to force a pineapple up his arsehole, the wrong way around, but eventually he managed to shove it in: ‘I’m sorry we mistook you for a sex offender, but given the circumstances...’

I puffed out a breath. Nodded. ‘She kinda screwed with the lot of us.’

A smile from the Superintendent. ‘Well, I’m glad we got that all sorted out.’ She turned, plucked a large, bulky, brown paper bag from the room’s tiny desk and tossed it in my direction. Followed it up with my walking stick. ‘You’re free to go.’

The bag was heavy — that would be my shoes, belt, jacket, and everything else they’d confiscated when they banged me up in here. ‘One thing, before we go.’

Her shoulders dipped. ‘What?’

‘I need someone to go through the CCTV from the Christmas Market, from noon till three. We’re after an IC-one male, mid-seventies.’ I pointed at Franklin. ‘She’s got a photo. Suspect is responsible for at least a dozen deaths: Gordon Smith.’

The Superintendent grimaced. ‘You’re not asking for much, are you? That’ll take ages.’

‘And a lookout request for Leah MacNeil wouldn’t hurt either.’

‘Think they’re going to find anything?’ Franklin took the rusty Ford Focus through the traffic-cone chicane, crawling past roadworks that stretched for miles and miles and miles... Little orange lights winking in the darkness.

‘Leah MacNeil, or Gordon Smith?’

‘Smith.’

We passed beneath the motorway matrix sign — its metallic gantry partially covered in scaffolding — ‘WARNING: HIGH WINDS ~ NO HIGH-SIDED VEHICLES’.

‘Nah. He’s got away with it for decades, that takes care and planning. He’s not stupid enough to stick around now he knows we’re after him. He’ll have taken one look at the news and done a runner. Changed his appearance. What he’s not doing is hanging about the Edinburgh Christmas Market, buying “artisanal cheeses” and horrible fudge.’