Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

She banged her fist down on the car’s roof. ‘You’re not helping!’

A pair of ravens scudded sideways across the car park, wings shuddering with the effort of holding on. A minibus grumbled up to the ski resort lodge, a gaggle of schoolgirls avalanching out of the doors soon as it came to a halt. Shouts and laughter whipped away by the wind.

‘This security van full of cash, art, and jewellery: how easy is it to get to? Assuming someone had to make themselves scarce before the police started sniffing around. Hypothetically speaking.’

Helen turned and leaned back against the Mondeo. ‘So you are interested.’

‘Let’s pretend I am. How easy is this stuff going to be to shift?’

‘The thing about prison is you get to meet a lot of people who’re up to their ears in dodgy stuff. And it’s quality stuff.’

The squealing horde battered into the lodge, out of the wind, leaving a ragged man in a corduroy jacket to lock up and follow them in. Leather patches on his elbows, so I’m guessing geography teacher.

‘Cash has to be clean. Nothing sketchy or traceable.’

‘Do I look like an amateur to you?’

‘And in case you’re in any way unclear on this: I’m not the forgiving kind when it comes to being screwed over.’

She leaned in closer. ‘Neither am I.’

Fair enough.

Helen plipped the locks on her Renault, then marched around the Mondeo and got into the passenger seat.

I opened the driver’s door and stuck my head in. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

She hauled on her seatbelt. ‘Why follow you all the way to the Black Isle, in my own car, when Police Scotland’s paying for your petrol?’

Great. A passenger.

I climbed in behind the wheel. ‘Radio doesn’t work.’

Helen reached into her jacket and pulled out a business card. ‘Got you a souvenir from last night.’

‘J&F ~ FREELANCE CONSULTANTS.’ The bottom half of the card was stained with dark brown smears. Could’ve been Francis’s blood, but it was probably mine.

‘Why the hell would I want that.’ Tossing it back to her.

She dipped into her jacket again, only this time it was Joseph’s cutthroat razor that appeared. ‘Thought you might want to give that mobile number a call.’ A flick of the wrist and the blade clacked out of the handle, shining and sharp. ‘You could set up a meeting. And make sure neither of them survives it.’

Can’t say it wasn’t tempting...

Sunshine washed across the patchwork of grey and brown on both sides of the single-track road, a sliver of the Cromarty Firth sparkling between the fields and the next set of hills. Land rising on the right of the car, speckled with more dead ragwort, and falling away on the left. Small jagged flashes of white marking the end gables of tiny farmhouses.

Sky the colour of wet slate.

Helen curled her top lip. ‘Why are we stopping?’

‘Because N Division should have someone watching the place, in case Gordon Smith decides to use it as a bolthole. And I kinda think whoever’s on guard duty will want to ask a load of questions about why I’ve got one of the victims’ mothers in my car.’

She turned and scowled at the back seat and the drifts of litter in the footwell. ‘How big’s the boot?’

Big enough.

We both got out and she clambered into the Mondeo’s boot, lying on her side — knees drawn up to her chest.

‘Make yourself comfy, might be in there for a while.’

‘This better be worth it.’

‘Hey, you could’ve stayed at the Lecht, or headed back to Oldcastle. Cadging a lift was your idea, remember?’ I clunked the boot shut again, before she could say anything. Got back behind the wheel.

Half a mile further on, a sign sat at the side of the road, the post knocked squint, the paint peeling, but the name was still visible: ‘WESTER BRAE OF KINBEACHIE FARM’ pointing to a rutted track with grass growing up the middle.

Don’t know what Peter Smith had been complaining about: the fields on either side looked solid and well drained, without the usual bouquets of weeds and rushes. And then I got to the brow of the hill.

Only it wasn’t really the top. The hill continued on up, but between here and there was a depression — like some vast rusty spoon had scooped out a hollow that stretched from left to right, leaving a smear of mist lying in the dip. It cast a veil over water-puddled fields thick with the pale-beige spines of dead reeds. A huge clump of gorse spread out from the edge of what looked like forestry commission pines. But while the pines were up on the lip of the crater, the heavy dark-green gorse reached way down into it, covering a good five or six acres. And right in the middle, where the sun probably never shone, sulked a farmhouse that would’ve fit right into a low-budget horror story. The corrugated roof was corroded and saggy, one wall bulging out around a cracked windowsill. It might have been white once, but now what little paint remained was flaking off, the colour of ancient bones. One storey of misery, with two dormer windows that made angry eyes on its miserable face. It sat, surrounded by a collection of farm buildings, some of which still had functional roofs. Just about.

And no sign of a patrol car.

Because, hey, we’re only trying to catch someone who’s been murdering people for fifty-six years, right? Why expend any bloody effort at all?

I followed the track down into the mist, potholes making the Mondeo lurch no matter how hard I tried to steer around the damn things. Which wouldn’t be doing Helen many favours, stuck in the boot.

A flat area sat at the track’s end — grass and weeds flattened in ragged circles that expanded and spawned tangents off to the house and every outbuilding. That would be the N Division search team, then.

Going by the tracks they’d trampled, they’d been pretty thorough, but that was still no excuse for leaving the place unwatched. Unless they had someone lurking in one of the outbuildings?

I pulled on the handbrake. ‘Stay here, and keep quiet. I’m going to check.’

Nothing back from Helen.

Good.

Nice to know someone could do as they were told.

I climbed out into the gloom.

Up on the ridge, those forestry commission pines shuddered in the wind, but down here it was still as a shallow grave. The bushes and trees undisturbed. My breath added to the fog, drifting away into the pale grey air. It was thicker down here that it’d looked coming down the hill, softening the edges and draining the colour out of everything.

God it was bleak. No wonder Peter Smith abandoned the place.

‘Hello? Anyone here?’

Silence. Not even an echo.

‘HELLO? POLICE!’

Took out my phone and called Mother as I followed the track over to the miserable farmhouse. ‘I’m at Peter Smith’s farm — drove right in, not so much as a tape cordon. Highlands and Islands have left the place completely unprotected.’

‘Oh, in the name of...’ A pause. ‘Are you sure?’

‘No patrol car. And no answer when I shout, either.’

‘Hold on.’ Her voice went all muffled. ‘John?... John! Get in touch with N Division and ask, politely, why the hell they don’t have anyone watching Peter Smith’s farm.’

All the way around the farmhouse, peering in through the windows. Looked as if no one had lived there in years — everything was covered in grime and mould. The door wasn’t even locked. It swung open with a push.

Couldn’t smell anything, what with the wadding stuffed up my nostrils, but the air in here was ripe with the gritty bitter taste of mildew and mice.

Unlike Gordon Smith’s house, the furniture hadn’t been gathered together into one big unlit bonfire. Instead it’d been abandoned to rot.