Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

DC Watt thrust my walking stick into my hand. ‘NOW CAN WE GET OUT OF HERE?’

‘GOD, YES!’ I hobbled after him, Franklin, and Mother, wind jostling at my back. Clambered over the low wall, and into Helen MacNeil’s garden again.

Soon as we’d put twenty feet between ourselves and the wall, Mother swung her arm back and battered me one across the chest. ‘WHAT THE BUGGERING HELL WERE YOU THINKING? YOU COULD’VE DIED! YOU NEARLY GOT US ALL KILLED!’ She hit me again. ‘YOU IDIOT!’

‘I COULDN’T SAVE HIM! I TRIED, BUT I COULDN’T...’

‘AND WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?’ Jabbing a finger at the filthy red holdall, still clutched in my right hand.

It was heavier than it looked; there was definitely something inside. And given where the thing had been buried, didn’t exactly take a genius to guess what that was...

‘Are you OK?’ Franklin leaned back against the stainless-steel work surface next to me, arms wrapped around herself, keeping her voice low. ‘Because you look like death.’ The words came out in a small plume of white fog.

The throat-catching smell of bleach and punctured bowels filled the ancient mortuary, like thick brown soup. At one point, the wall tiles had probably been white, but they’d turned a grubby ivory, the colour of a smoker’s teeth. Black tiles on the floor — chipped and cracked, their grout stained grey even after generations-worth of disinfectant. A wall of refrigerated drawers, the names of their occupants printed in dry-erase marker on white plastic rectangles. Three cutting tables with drainage channels, their metal surfaces scarred and scratched. The middle one bearing an ugly bundle wrapped in black-plastic bin bags secured with duct tape.

No one else in here but us.

No one living , anyway.

I cleared my throat. ‘Thank you. You know, for not letting me fall.’

‘Meh...’ She shrugged. ‘You bought me a sausage and a go on the carousel, remember?’ Then shivered. ‘Absolutely soaked to the bone, here. These idiots going to be much longer?’

According to the mortuary clock, it was nine o’clock already.

So much for a conciliatory crime-fighting-anniversary dinner with Alice.

‘Teabag doesn’t like working overtime. Mother will have to drag him down here like a sulky child.’

Above us, the sounds of Castle Hill Infirmary oozed through the ceiling. The hum and buzz of heating and electricity, the bang and clank of trolleys and floor polishers. Life.

Down here, the only sounds were us and the faint whirring hiss coming from that bank of refrigerated drawers.

Franklin cleared her throat. ‘You didn’t answer the question. Are you OK? I mean, I feel bad enough and I didn’t even see him, never mind watch him fall.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I only heard the screaming, but to actually be there, holding the other end of—’

‘All right! All right, I get it.’ Maybe sounding a bit more defensive there than I’d hoped, going by Franklin’s raised eyebrows. ‘Look, he was an arsehole, OK? What kind of moron ignores a direct telling, all the warning notices, cuts through the chain, and sods about on the crumbling headland in the middle of a storm? Yes, he died — tragedy, thoughts and prayers etc. — but he nearly got you, me, Mother, and Watt killed too. And while Watt’s death wouldn’t exactly be a great loss to humanity, the rest of us deserve better.’

She pulled her head back, making a tiny double chin. ‘You really have it in for John, don’t you? What did he do?’

‘He’s a dick.’

A shrug. ‘True. But if you need to talk to someone about what happened, don’t be a macho idiot about it. It doesn’t impress anyone.’ Franklin had another shiver. ‘Why do mortuaries have to be so cold ?’

‘You can knock off, if you like? Doesn’t need both of us here for chain of evidence.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not a police officer any more, remember?’

‘True.’ I straightened up. ‘In that case, you stay here, and I’ll see if I can break into Teabag’s office and get a brew on.’

Franklin munched her way through a third Jammie Dodger, getting crumbs down the front of her overcoat. ‘So I punched him.’

‘Good. Sounds like the prick deserved it.’ The tea was almost gone, only a couple of biscuits left in the packet.

‘Only it turns out breaking a superintendent’s nose isn’t a good career move.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not that bad, being in the Misfit Mob. OK, so we don’t get the best of cases, and I do miss Edinburgh...’ She chewed on the inside of her cheek. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Oldcastle’s all right—’

‘Oldcastle’s a shitehole.’ I drained the last of my tea. Stood there, head turned... ‘Stick those biscuits in your pocket!’

‘What?’ Looking at me as if I’d proposed getting naked and romping on one of the dissecting tables.

I snatched up the Jammie Dodgers and stuffed the packet in her overcoat pocket. Took the mug from her hand and limped across the cutting room.

‘Hey, I was drinking that!’

Teabag’s office was a gloryhole of paperwork and things in specimen jars. Barely enough room for the roll-top desk and green-leather swivel chair squeezed in amongst the shelves and filing cabinets. Both mugs went back in his in-tray. And I was out again, just in time to shut the door behind me, before the double ones at the far end of the mortuary banged open and in marched Mother and Teabag.

It looked as if he was on his way to some sort of Jeremy Clarkson convention, in blue jeans, an untucked white shirt, and a tweed jacket. His floppy fringe was a touch greyer than it used to be, the jaw not quite as square — a line of fat softening it and deepening the dimple in his chin. Thin wire-rimmed glasses glinting in the mortuary’s strip lights as he puffed out a long breath. ‘Before we begin, I want everyone to understand that this is not a post mortem. This is an initial, and very brief , impression of the forensic evidence. Assuming there is any.’

He stopped in the middle of the room and frowned down at the bin-bag package. ‘I assume this is it?’

Mother pulled on a pained smile, then nodded. ‘Yes, Professor Twining.’

‘Very well. ALFRED!’

A pause.

‘AAAAAAAAAALFRRRRRRRRRRRRED!’ Teabag marched across the room to his office, took his keys out, then made puzzled expressions when the door swung open without him unlocking it. ‘That’s odd, could’ve sworn ... Never mind.’ Looked back over his shoulder. ‘Wheels up, ten minutes. Assuming Alfred actually shows.’ Then disappeared inside.

Mother slouched over to join us at the work surface. ‘That man is — and I hope you’ll excuse my language, Rosalind — a complete and utter turdjacket.’ She hoicked up the sleeves of her Police Scotland fleece, exposing those tattooed forearms. Pulled a face. ‘Apparently, our beloved Chief Superintendent isn’t too impressed that we let a journalist die on our watch.’

What?

I stared at her.

‘I know, I know: I was there, remember? But if you see him coming, take my advice and run. Turns out the media are less interested in your heroics trying to save Nick James, than they are in our not adequately ensuring that he couldn’t cut through a padlocked chain on a clearly marked safety fence, in the pitch-sodding-dark, and sneak through to get himself killed.’ She let her head fall back and grimaced at the greying ceiling tiles. ‘Some days, I hate my job.’

Franklin reached into a pocket and came out with a Jammie Dodger. ‘Fancy a biscuit? We definitely didn’t steal them from Professor Twining’s office.’