Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Whoever he was talking to, not a single hint of what they said made it down to my end. Not even mumbling.

‘Yes, that’s what I was thinking too. What about you, Leah?’

‘Erm...’ A pause. ‘If you think it’s a good idea?’

‘Got to trust Caroline, she knows about this kind of thing.’

‘OK...’

My phone ding-buzzed.

ROBOSABIR:

>>Target Phone Activation Detected

>>Requesting Location Data

About time too.

Ding-buzz .

ROBOSABIR:

>>Triangulating Source

>>Pending

Come on, come on...

‘Now, what shall we listen to today? How about... Götterdämmerung?’ A small laugh. ‘Remember we played it all night when we had that young woman from Dundee to stay? You remember that, Caroline? Oh, wow, did she have a great set of lungs on her. Screamed and screamed and screamed.’

Then silence. Leah had ended the call.

Ding-buzz .

ROBOSABIR:

>>Target Phone Disconnected

Damn it.

She must’ve switched the thing off as well.

I pulled up my contacts and called the real Sabir.

Took him nearly a dozen rings to answer. ‘What the bloody hell do youse want now ?’ Followed by a full-mouthed yawn.

‘Did you get a location or not?’

‘Mornin’, Sabir. You’re sounding dead sexy today, Sabir. Hope yer not too shagged out from humping my ma all night, Sabir.’

‘I got a text on my phone saying Leah had activated her phone.’

‘Youse are welcome.’

‘I need a location!’

‘How the hell am I supposed to know where they are? I’ve been asleep! You woke us up!’

‘It’s nearly twenty past eight.’

‘And I’ve been up most the night, trying to track down a bunch of internet kiddie fiddlers, so excuse me if I’m not at your beck and bloody call twenny-four hours a day!’

Off in the distance, sunlight flared off something white on the water, followed by the long mournful cry of a ship’s horn.

‘OK, OK. Sorry.’

‘It takes time for the system to triangulate data from mobile phone towers. If your Leah doesn’t leave her phone on long enough, there’s sod all I can do about it.’

‘Can we at least... guesstimate where she is?’

A moany grumbling noise rattled out of the phone. ‘I’ll have a go. But I’m promisin’ nothing.’ He hung up.

So close.

The shining dot in the distance grew, making a beeline for Rothesay. That’d be the ferry from Wemyss Bay. The one we’d be taking back to the mainland.

Of course, the big question was: who on earth had Gordon Smith been talking to in the car? ‘Caroline’, his wife, died four years ago of bowel cancer... Or that’s what Helen MacNeil had told us. So was he talking to himself, someone else, or maybe even Leah? Did he think his neighbour’s eighteen-year-old granddaughter was the woman he’d married nearly half a century ago?

Might explain why he’d kept her alive.

And if Leah had half a brain about her, it was a delusion she’d be playing along with.

Mind you, he’d also spoken to Leah by name. But that could be part of it, couldn’t it? If he had dementia, or something so he couldn’t tell who was who?

This was all really Alice’s field, rather than mine.

What was it she’d said? Something about not knowing what happens when one half of a couple-that-kill dies? Maybe the dominant one mourns for a couple of days, then goes out and finds himself another accomplice? Whether she wants to be, or not.

Especially when Leah said he’d done something terrible last night. Maybe it...

Ah.

Speak of the Devil’s neighbour.

Helen MacNeil stood in the middle of the promenade, scowling back at me, hands curled into fists at her sides.

I nodded. ‘Helen.’ Bent down and grabbed Henry as he returned the tatty ball. Clipped his lead on again. Just in case.

She didn’t move. ‘You know what it’s like.’

‘Yeah.’ Welcome to the world’s most horrible club. I peered past her, towards the strange pavilion thing that bisected the putting course. ‘What happened to your “friend”?’ Adding a stab of bitterness to that last word.

‘All she wants is dirt for her book, she doesn’t give a damn about Sophie or me.’

What could I do but shrug? ‘You want my advice? Avoid Jennifer Prentice like a weeping sore. She’s poisonous.’

‘I want Gordon Smith.’ Helen’s chin came up. ‘He deserves to suffer for what he did to my Sophie. For what he did to all those people!’ Her left arm trembled, as if she was having difficulty keeping it under control. ‘But they won’t do that, will they. They’ll arrest him, if they catch him at all, and they’ll try him, and they’ll stick him in some cushy psychiatric hospital with all the other whackjobs, feed him and water him and dose him up with all the best drugs.’ The arm shook harder. ‘While my Sophie GOT TORTURED TO DEATH!’

Helen’s face flushed.

I took a breath. Tried to sound reasonable. ‘You don’t know Sophie was—’

‘SHE TOLD ME!’ Jabbing a finger back towards the town centre. ‘Jennifer. She showed me the Polaroids — the other ones. The ones he took after what he did to them.’

Oh, for God’s sake.

I let my head fall back and stared up at the sapphire sky.

Oldcastle Police strikes again. Couldn’t keep a secret if you stitched it inside the useless bastards.

Helen’s voice dropped. ‘Jennifer had a copy on her phone — of Sophie, in the basement...’ Voice wobbling as much as her fist now. ‘She showed me... She sent them to me.’

And I knew how that felt as well.

Every year on Rebecca’s birthday: another homemade card from the bastard who killed her, with a photo of my baby girl being tortured on it.

Took some doing, but I cleared the knot out of my throat. ‘She shouldn’t have done that.’

Helen stepped closer. ‘That six million: I’ll split it with you, straight down the middle. Three million pounds, if you help me find Gordon Smith before the police do.’

It was like a weight pushing down on my shoulders. ‘I can’t, it’s—’

‘ Four million! OK?’ Throwing her arms out, eyes shining as the tears welled up. ‘Five? You can take the bloody lot if you want: all six million!’ Her arms fell back to her sides and she sagged. Shrinking into herself. ‘I don’t care. I want him to know how my Sophie felt when he killed her. I want my hands round his throat, staring into his eyes as he gurgles and thrashes and pleads, his blood smeared up to my elbows, bits of him lying on the concrete floor.’

I leaned back against the railing. ‘It won’t bring Sophie back, Helen.’

‘No.’ She ground the heel of one hand into her eye, wiping away the tears. ‘But it’ll make me feel a hell of a lot better.’

Yeah, it probably would.

‘We’re heading back to the mainland on the next ferry. You could do worse than nick Jennifer Prentice’s car and abandon her here.’

With any luck she’d try to swim home.

And drown.

Twenty minutes out of Rothesay, I stepped out of the ferry toilets and there she was. Looked as if Helen hadn’t managed to lose her after all.

‘Ash.’ A semi-frozen smile. ‘I hope you washed your hands.’

I limped straight past her. ‘Whatever you want, Jennifer, you can bugger off.’

‘Oh, don’t be so sulky.’ She eased up beside me, keeping pace. ‘I know things finished on a slightly sour note with us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.’