Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

The gale slammed itself against my chest, stabbing its needles deeper into my face, making the streetlights sway in the darkness. Misty shadows dancing around them. Henry more out for a drag than a walk, whimpering on the end of his leash like a petulant wee hairy anchor.

Past old stone buildings with bay windows, their lights on, showing off warm domestic scenes as the sensible people stayed inside, out of the horrible night. Jammy bastards.

On the other side of the road, waves smashed themselves against the seawall, white spray curling over the metal railings to spatter down against the pavement.

Should’ve made Franklin hand over the keys to the pool car, sore foot or not. Couldn’t hurt more than it did right now, anyway. It was as if someone was taking a cordless drill to the bloody thing, screeching hole after ragged hole into the bones every time my right foot hit the paving slabs. If I’d been driving, it’d still hurt, but at least I’d be dry.

I dug the hand with Henry’s lead deeper into my pocket, the one clutching my walking stick aching and numb all at the same time.

So much for retiring to sunny Rothesay. They could—

Oh, for God’s sake.

My phone, doing its basic ringtone again.

I limped across the road, into a car park outside what looked like a cross between an art deco swimming pool and a car showroom, all concrete and glass, lights blazing in its windows, kept going till I was under the overhanging portico and out of the wind and rain. Hauled out my mobile and stabbed the button. ‘What?’

The sound of a band rehearsing boomed out from the floor above.

‘Not the friendliest of welcomes I’ve had, Ash.’ Mother. ‘I was calling to say I’ve got you and Rosalind rooms at the Hotel Sokoloff, but maybe you’d rather sleep in the car instead?’

‘It’s blowing a gale, I’m cold, I’m soaked through, and my foot’s killing me because I’ve been hobbling all over Rothesay for the last four and a half hours, trying to ID your murder victim!’ Adding an extra scoop of sarcasm to my voice. ‘So excuse me if I’m not in the most sociable of bloody moods.’

The band launched into a grating cover of an old Foo Fighters song, even though the drummer really wasn’t up to it.

They’d staggered their way to the chorus before Mother came back on the line. ‘And has your sore foot discovered anything?’

‘Yes. That it hates sodding about in the buggering wind and rain.’ I leaned back against the steel pillar holding up the concrete portico. Huffed out a breath. ‘No one knows who she is. Got one place left to try.’

‘Dotty and Amanda have IDed our graduating student. According to Aberdeen University, he’s Alex Yates. Got a two-one in Law, 1978. Parents reported him missing three days after the ceremony.’

‘Anyone told them yet?’

‘The Chief Super still doesn’t want any of this getting out till we’ve got Gordon Smith in custody. And before you say anything: no, I don’t think it’s fair either.’ Mother’s voice sagged. ‘Dotty couldn’t get an ID for the girl on the horse in Fochabers, or the young man in the Inverness beer garden. And we’re still no nearer to laying our hands on Smith.’

Thirty / forty years was a long time. People moved away. They died.

‘Then we’ve got no choice: hit the media with Gordon Smith’s “before” Polaroids. Someone has to know who they are.’

Upstairs, the half-arsed rendition of ‘All My Life’ sputtered to a halt. Then started again from the beginning. And the drummer was still terrible.

‘Chief Superintendent McEwan won’t like that.’

‘Tough. You’re thinking of retiring anyway: cruises, golf, gardening, and grandchildren, remember?’

‘Don’t you start. Get enough of that from my Jack.’

Henry whined on the end of his leash, wee sides shivering, tail between his legs, fur all slicked down and dripping.

‘And I thought your IT guru was supposed to get us IDs: what happened to those eight hours I paid him for?’

Good question.

The Black Bull’s monochrome frontage was sandwiched between an angling shop and a café, its olde-worlde mock-Dickensian windows looking out over the marina to the ferry terminal. As Henry and I limped over the threshold, a wall of warm air wrapped its welcoming arms around us, bringing with it the sound of laughter.

Busy in here.

Henry and I worked our way through the crowd to the small bar, where a young woman with far too many piercings and a lopsided haircut was pulling pints of Belhaven. ‘What can I get you, love?’ As if she was a Glasgow granny.

‘Looking for the book club.’

She pointed off to her left, through a narrow passageway. ‘Down there, take a right. Drink?’

‘Pot of tea. Decaf, if you’ve got it?’ Talk about painting the town beige...

‘Aye, I’ll get someone to take it through to you.’

I handed over the cash and then Henry and I squeezed through the gap at the end of the bar; past another, longer bar; and turned right, into a large-ish nook, with a tartan-carpeted floor, red bench seating, and a bunch of old folks — most of them women — sitting around seven wooden tables. The eighth was empty, so we commandeered it: me collapsing into the padded seating, Henry collapsing under the table. The pair of us looking as if we’d swum here.

Everyone else had a paperback in front of them: black cover, moody shot of a crumbly warehouse, author’s name in big yellow lettering. That would be a crime novel, then.

I stretched my right leg out, teeth gritted as the ankle moaned and clicked and complained at the top of its voice.

A large woman, going bald on top, leaned over from the next table. ‘You’re new, aren’t you?’

‘Actually, I’m not—’

‘Here you go.’ A wee tray with a small metal pot of tea, mug, bowl of sugar sachets, and a thing of milk clicked down in front of me. Packet of shortbread on the side. Then the spotty youth who’d delivered it turned and hurried from the room before anyone could order anything from him.

She leaned in again. ‘Where were we? Yes, so, you’re new and—’

‘All right, everyone, we all here?’ A smiling woman in a floaty grey top, body warmer, and council lanyard stood at the head of the room, holding the book in her hand. Blonde hair with a half-inch of grey roots on show. ‘Welcome, everyone, to the Rothesay Library Criminally Good Book Club! Who’d like to start?’

A flurry of hands.

‘Maureen?’

The woman next to me lowered her hand. ‘I don’t understand why it had to be so gory ! I mean, a man who collects dead animals in a steading, it’s horrible.’

Someone else nodded. ‘It was offensive, if you ask me. Sickeningly, cynically, offensive.’

I unwrapped the two tiny shortbread biscuits and fed one to Henry under the table.

‘What about the characters? Anyone?’

‘Yes.’ Another woman, this one done up in a trouser suit with lacquered hair. ‘That lesbian police officer. She was so revolting! Always talking and swearing and scratching and digging at her underwear. I didn’t like her at all: she ruined the whole book.’

Someone else nodded. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with female lesbians in crime fiction.’

‘Well, of course not, but there is when it’s nothing but an excuse for blasphemy and crude so-called “humour”.’

I poured my tea.

‘Can we please have a proper crime novel, next time? Like one of those nice Ann Cleeves ones.’

‘Oh, yes, I do like her books. She was lovely when she came to the crime-writing festival, too.’