Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

‘Oh my God, what happened?’

When I looked up, there was Alice, staring, drinks wobbling on a round brown tray.

‘Fixed his nose.’ Helen toasted her with the pint. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘I’ll get a cloth...’ And she was gone again.

‘The exchange rate is: your life, Dr Weirdo’s, and the dog’s for Gordon Smith’s. I think that’s fair, don’t you?’

The throbbing was settling into a dull ache — as if someone was squatting inside my skull trying to shove my eyeballs out of their sockets with hobnail boots on. ‘What happened to the six million?’

‘That’s gone down to two again.’

Not to be sniffed at — assuming my nose ever worked again. Two million would set us up somewhere new. Somewhere that wasn’t Oldcastle. Somewhere Alice could retire and maybe we could open up a bookshop or a pub or a wee hotel or something. Somewhere no one would come looking for us after I skinned Joseph alive.

‘... afraid you’re right, Jane. We’ve barely caught our breath from Storm Trevor and here comes Storm Victoria...’

‘Gah!’ Fumbling for the alarm-clock radio, mashing the button to make the idiots shut the hell up.

‘... have to batten down the hatches for the next three, maybe four days as this area of low pressure—’

Blessed silence.

And then the real pressure kicked in — as if someone had jammed a bicycle pump into my sinuses and was ramming the piston home with every beat of my heart. Mouth, sandpaper dry. That’s what happened when you couldn’t breathe through your nose.

Probably didn’t help that I’d packed it full of cotton wool to stop the bleeding.

And still the world stank of burning bees.

Getting back to sleep wasn’t going to be an option, was it? At least not without a shedload of painkillers and a big glass of water.

I struggled out of bed, ribs screaming like a slaughterhouse, grimaced and winced my way into the tartan dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, and hobbled into the corridor.

Clicking the lights on sent frozen daggers stabbing through my retinas, so I switched them off again. Limped through the gloom.

No sign of Henry in the living room. Probably curled up at the foot of Alice’s bed.

Which was good, because no way in hell could I face any sort of enthusiasm this early in the morning. 06:25 according to the microwave clock.

Two amitriptyline got washed down with a glug of water, followed by a tramadol for good measure.

Getting old, Ash. Used to be a time you’d shake something like this off, and be up and doing the next day ready for anything. But now?

Two punches and a head-butt, and it was as if I’d been run over by a tank.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city was a shroud of faded streetlights, draped over the valley’s corpse. But the glass was cool against my forehead.

Question was, what was I going to do about it?

How about arranging a small accident for Jennifer Prentice? The kind that ended up with her missing a limb or two... Or was that OTT? Didn’t feel like it, going by the rusty sawblades hacking their way through my head and ribs, right now. Something had to happen, though: she wasn’t getting away with it.

And she wasn’t the only one.

No prizes for guessing how Joseph and Francis had found me — that would be PC MacAskill / McAllister. Sitting there fiddling with his phone. Texting them to say I was in the Tartan Bunnet Café. ‘COME GET HIM! LOL! XXX!’ And probably some sort of thumbs-up emoji. Hanging about in the café, till they turned up to take over.

And if he was taking money from ‘J&F ~ FREELANCE CONSULTANTS’ chances were he was doing favours for other scumbags too. Have to add him to the list.

My phone was where I’d left it: plugged into the wall, recharging. When I picked the thing up, the screen came to life, displaying the icon that meant a text message had come in while I’d been asleep / unconscious.

More than one message, as it turned out.

LEAH MACNEIL:

When I was little I wanted 2 B a princess

then I grew up & then I wanted 2 B a vet

and work with all the lovely animals but

I’m 2 stupid 2 get in2 university

LEAH MACNEIL:

It doesn’t matter now because I’ll be dead

& no one will ever find me & that’s

probably OK because I don’t deserve 2 live

no more because of David

LEAH MACNEIL:

I keep thinking about how I could have

saved him how I maybe could have

stopped grandad before he did what he did

but I didn’t & I no its 2 late 2 change it

LEAH MACNEIL:

I hope you told my gran that I love her

and I’m sorry

It’s so cold and dark here

I think I will be dead soon

Thank you 4 trying

Goodbye

The texts had been sent over the space of fifteen minutes, at around three o’clock this morning. Should’ve been plenty of time for RoboSabir to track down where Leah’s texts were coming from. So why wasn’t there a single message from the damn thing giving me coordinates?

Well, don’t see why I should be the only one awake and worrying about it.

I called Sabir.

He answered on the second ring. ‘Not youse again! I’m werking on it, OK? Jesus. Hold on.’ Then the clickity rattle of a keyboard getting punished. ‘There.’

My phone ding-buzzed in my hand. An email, from Sabir, with three names and locations in it:

• TROY CULLEN [MALAGA]

• CHRISTOPHER MULVANEY [NEWCASTLE]

• KERRY DRYBURGH [FOCHABERS]

‘What the hell is this?’

‘What do you think it is? It’s three of yer unknown victims, all right? Thank you, Sabir, well done you true and trusty IT demigod. Have you got any idea how much digging I had to do to get them for ye?’

‘OK, OK. Thank you, Sabir. Now, can you please tell me why your stupid half-arsed phone trace thing doesn’t work any more? Leah MacNeil sent me a bunch of texts at three this morning and I’ve had no notifications about her location at all!’

‘Oh, for the love of Anfield... Hold on.’ More keyboard noises. ‘According to this, her phone’s sitting in your bloody Divisional Headquarters.’

Her phone was what ?

I scrunched my eyes shut, making the stabbing pain behind them even worse. ‘That’s her old phone. It’s supposed to be tracing her new one!’

‘Well, how am I meant to know that? You buncha knobs never tell us anything, I’m not Fox Mulder here, Ash, you do have to actually tell us stuff!’

The window boing ed as I thumped my forehead off it. ‘DC Watt got a new warrant.’

‘Good for DC Watt. But I’m still not feckin’ psychic.’

‘All right, all right, sorry. I’ll text you the number.’

‘Jesus, it’s like amateur hour at the clown college.’

‘Thanks, Sabir, I really...’ Silence from the other end: he’d hung up. ‘Appreciate it.’

At least the tramadol had started to kick in, that nice warm feeling dampening down the burning ache. Enough to try going back to bed, anyway.

The phone’s anonymous ringtone dragged me from one of those bad dreams that wasn’t so much scary as crushingly depressing. Any last wisps of it were battered into oblivion as the thumping headache started up again.

I fumbled my phone from the bedside table. Lay back with the other hand cupped over my throbbing eyes. ‘What?’