Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

The MIU’s wall boomed as Helen shoved her victim against it. His hands scrabbled at her forearms, eyes bulging, teeth bared in a red-faced rictus that went all the way up to his retreating hairline. Glasses all squint.

Franklin was faster than me. ‘THAT’S ENOUGH! LET HIM GO!’ Closing in on Helen, baton raised.

No way that was going to end well. Being filmed battering a woman who’d just found out her daughter had been murdered ? Broadcast to the nation on the evening news?

Please don’t let this be going out live...

I limped after Franklin, fast as possible. ‘DON’T!’

A thin shaky warble came from the red-faced man. ‘Please... help... meeeee.’ Head rattling back and forward, glasses shaking loose as Helen throttled him.

Franklin planted her feet. ‘LET HIM GO, NOW!’ Readying herself, baton up, poised to slash down.

God’s sake, did no one do the Officer Safety Training courses any more?

I lurched over there, dropped my walking stick, made a claw of my right hand and dug it into the hard flesh a couple of inches in from Helen’s hipbone. Hobbled past, speeding up, dragging her off balance, twisting her away from the victim.

‘Aaaargh!’ She let go of his throat and slammed into the MIU, head bouncing off the grubby wall.

The man in the Barbour jacket collapsed to his knees, one hand clutching his neck as he coughed and wheezed and spluttered.

Helen aimed a kick at his head, but I grabbed a handful of her collar and pulled. The foot went wide and she tumbled to the potholed tarmac.

‘CUT IT OUT!’ Getting between the two of them: arms out, blocking the way.

She wiped a hand across her twisted mouth, glaring at the man. ‘You want to know how it feels? THAT’S how it feels!’

His back hunched as he dragged in breath after wheezing breath.

‘ That’s how it feels to know your wee girls were killed by a man you thought was one of the family.’ Helen slumped back against the MIU. ‘It feels like that...’

The kitchen of Mother’s commandeered house was bare, except for its abandoned cabinets and one crappy plastic chair from the Mobile Incident Unit. An earwax-coloured kettle rumbled to a boil, filling the room with pale damp steam, thickening the condensation that covered the window.

Helen MacNeil sagged in the solitary chair, head down, chin against her chest. ‘Got a letter from the council this morning.’ She dug into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled envelope. Hurled it down on the table. ‘Gave me two hours to get out of my house, oh and by the way, we want sixteen grand to tear it down and ship away whatever’s left for “environmentally responsible disposal”. Which means chuck it in landfill.’ Shook her head. ‘No wonder Gordon up and left.’

Soon as his name was out of her mouth, her face soured. ‘Then that bunch of fannies come round, with their camera...’

Ah you had to love the media. All the compassion of a starving hyena.

‘“How does it feel?”’ She pulled her shoulders in, shrinking in her seat. Voice so quiet it was barely audible. ‘Why do they have to ask things like that?’

‘Because they’re wankers.’

The mugs weren’t exactly dishwasher clean, but they’d do. I made two cups, heavy on the sugar with one. Handed it over.

‘Drink this.’

She took a sip, grimaced, looked up at me, then away again. ‘Don’t take sugar.’

‘Tough. Drink it.’

Shockingly enough, Helen MacNeil actually did what she was told. Nursing the mug against her flat stomach. ‘“How does it feel to know your daughter and granddaughter were tortured to death by a man you trusted?” How the fuck do they think it feels?’

To be honest, the strangling thing was a pretty good analogy.

I smiled at her. ‘Well, I’ve got good news for you on that one: Gordon Smith didn’t kill Leah. She’s alive. I saw her today in Edinburgh.’

Helen stared at me. Mouth hanging open. ‘Leah...?’

‘Tried speaking to her, but a pair of local plod decided they’d get in the way. But she’s alive.’

‘Oh, thank God.’ Helen’s face slackened, a deep breath whoomping out of her. ‘She’s alive .’

‘Don’t know if she’ll get in touch, or not, but...’ A shrug. ‘Maybe.’

‘She’s alive...’ Helen’s shoulders trembled, she put a hand over her eyes. And sat there, weeping in almost total silence. Rocking in her cheap plastic seat, in an abandoned kitchen, at the end of the world.

A deep, dark rumble sounded, setting the bare lightbulb swinging on the end of its cobweb-tinselled cord.

I stood there and drank my tea.

Strange to think I could’ve happily strangled her this morning. Or caved her head in. Now? Hard not to feel sorry for Helen. Her granddaughter might have escaped Gordon Smith, but her daughter hadn’t. And you had to admit—

A barrage erupted at the front of the house — someone pounding on the front door. Followed by a clatter of feet on bare floorboards.

I stuck my head out of the kitchen and there was Franklin, with Mother right behind her — blocking most of the corridor.

Cold air whipped in through the open front door, a man trembling on the threshold, eyes wide, shock scrawled across his features. ‘You... You’ve got to... There’s been an accident! The cliff gave way...’

Grabbed my coat from the kitchen worktop, my walking stick from where I’d hooked it on a cupboard handle, and limped out after them.

It wasn’t raining, exactly, instead a thin drizzle slapped into us, driven by storm-force winds. Stealing all heat from my exposed hands and face.

Mother grabbed the man by the lapels. ‘Where?’

A trembling hand came up to point through the temporary fencing. Into the darkness.

‘Damn it.’ She let him go. ‘Torches! I need torches!’

Franklin sprinted for the pool car, plipping the locks and rummaging through the boot as DC Watt emerged from the house, hauling on a waxed jacket, a teeny LED torch clutched between his teeth.

She returned from the boot with a pair of big Maglites, each one a good foot long. Held one out to me as she hurried past.

I clicked it on and followed her.

The fence ran straight across the road, each one of the junctions chained and padlocked, until we got between Helen MacNeil’s house and her nearest surviving neighbour’s place. Someone had snipped the chain clean through, leaving it dangling against the metal upright.

‘Idiot...’ Franklin yanked it free. ‘OVER HERE!’ Then slipped through the unchained gap, following her torch beam through a drooping swathe of green-and-yellow grass. Slowing to a walk now.

‘You do realise this is a very stupid thing to be doing?’ I hobbled along beside her, running my light along the edge of the garden. A waist-high brick wall separated Helen’s house from Gordon Smith’s. Now that the council had taken the old temporary fencing away, that small wall was the only thing between us and the storm.

We stopped when we got to it, wind tearing at our clothes, pushing and shoving like a schoolroom bully.

‘WHAT DO YOU THINK?’ Having to raise her voice now, over the angry boom of waves crashing against the headland.

I slid my torch across Gordon Smith’s back garden, to the point where the autumn-bleached grass ended in a ragged black line. ‘I THINK WE SHOULD TURN ROUND, RIGHT NOW, AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE.’ Took a deep breath, then clambered over the wall.

‘YEAH, THAT’S WHAT I THINK TOO.’

‘ANYONE STUPID ENOUGH TO COME OUT IN THIS DESERVES ALL THEY GET.’ I inched my way closer to the edge, bending my knees, hunkering down, turning sideways-on to make less of a target for the wind.