Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Kitchen: empty. Living room: empty. Bathroom: empty. Storage room: empty.

The stairs creaked and groaned as I climbed up to the narrow landing. Bookshelves lined the small recess opposite, the paperbacks all bloated and speckled.

‘Ash, you still there?’

‘Maybe.’ Door number one opened on a small grubby bedroom barely tall enough to stand up in: empty.

‘N Division say they haven’t got the resources to mount a twenty-four-hour watch on Peter Smith’s farm. Only they used slightly more colourful language than that and implied if we’d wanted such a thing we should’ve said so and paid for it.’

The joys of modern policing.

‘Well, don’t look at me. Sooner I’m out of this hellhole the better.’

Door number two opened on the mirror image of door number one: empty.

So much for that.

Back downstairs and out into the mist again. ‘Don’t think anyone’s been here since Peter Smith got done for murder.’

‘Well, have a look round then come back. We’ll find you something else to do, where no one’s going to see your battered face and run screaming for the hills.’

‘As my dear departed granny used to say: awa an’ boil yer heid.’ I hung up, went back to the Mondeo and popped the boot. ‘Might as well stretch your legs, there’s no one here.’

Helen climbed out and turned on the spot, grimacing at the dilapidated buildings and crappy fields lurking in the mist. ‘Gordon used to tell me stories about coming up here as a wee boy. Summers spent digging ditches and fixing fences. Couldn’t stand the place.’

No wonder, if his uncle was abusing him.

I headed over to the nearest outbuilding — a cattle byre, going by the concrete floor and barred central walkway. Half the roof was crumpled on the ground, water dripping from the twisted sheeting.

‘So where’s this security van hidden?’

She didn’t even look at me, just stepped through an open doorway, voice echoing against concrete walls. ‘Somewhere no one’s going to find it.’

Ah well, it’d been worth a go.

I followed her through into what looked as if it might have been a feed room at some point. The roof was all in one piece, though the metal rafters must’ve been used by generations of pigeons as a roosting spot, the floor beneath them streaked and spattered with mounds of droppings. Another load of guano speckling a long metal ladder, mounted sideways on hooks. Yet more crusting the upturned corpse of a long-dead wheelbarrow. ‘Did Gordon Smith ever mention anywhere else he went as a kid? Anywhere he might’ve felt safe?’

‘Caravan park near Oban. B-and-B in Carlisle. Some sort of old hotel near Pitlochry? Hated the lot of them.’

Across a courtyard littered with rusting hulks of farm machinery. In through the open double doors to a steading with no roof left at all, and a big pile of broken sheets that may or not have been asbestos. ‘But the security van’s in Oldcastle?’

‘You’ll find out when I get my hands on the bastard who killed my Sophie.’

‘Because I’ve only got your word that you know where it is.’

‘Trust is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?’

Back out into the mist — getting even thicker now, oozing around the grey buildings’ edges. As if it was searching for us.

A big metal shed, three sides open to the gloomy air. Two ancient tractors that would probably be worth a few quid if they weren’t nearly solid rust, sagged on deflated crumbling tyres. Black plastic covered a crumpled pyramid of haylage that probably hadn’t seen the light of day for a decade.

Three more buildings to go.

The first one was a huge chicken shed, still full of the eye-watering spikey ammonia reek of hen piss, strong enough to stab its way through the packing in my nose. But now the shed was home to stacks and stacks of rubbish — bin bags, baling plastic, feed bags, plastic tubs... As if someone had found a nice safe place to fly-tip their commercial waste without having to pay any landfill charges.

My phone did its buzz-ding thing. I left it in my pocket.

‘Is there anywhere else you can think of? Anywhere Gordon Smith might be hiding?’

She stared at me. ‘If there was , why would I need you?’ She spat a gobbet of phlegm out onto one of the few clear patches of floor. Then stepped outside again. ‘And if you expect a cut of my six million, you’d—’

A scream cut through the mist, high-pitched, young, and female. Coming from somewhere close.

Helen’s eyes widened. She spun around. ‘LEAH? LEAH!’ Then charged off towards the biggest of the two remaining buildings: a barn with crumbling walls. ‘GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER, YOU BASTARD!’

I lumbered after her.

The barn was breeze-blocks for the bottom eight feet, above that it was all corrugated concrete panels topped by rusted metal roofing. The only door, on this side anyway, was one of those oversized metal sliding jobs — big enough to drive a tractor and bogey through.

Helen grabbed the handle and hauled, grunting with the effort.

I thumped my shoulder into the edge and shoved.

Between the pair of us, we got the ancient runners squealing, the door juddering open inch by inch, until the gap was big enough to squeeze through: Helen first, then me.

Inside, two thirds of the space was taken up with more fly-tipped agricultural rubbish, bags and baling plastic mounded nearly to the rafters. A chunk of the roof sheets had caved in, lying in a crumpled metal heap on the filthy concrete floor. Sickly yellow-green weeds growing up through the cracks. What looked like an inspection pit off to one side.

And there, in the corner — between a smaller, human-sized door and a dilapidated tractor bogey — was a young woman. The bastard had tied her to a set of metal bars that poked out of the breeze-blocks, spreadeagled like a hunting trophy waiting to be skinned. Sobbing and thrashing against the dirty-brown rope that held her wrists and ankles. Grubby jeans, a stained hoodie open over a once-white T-shirt. The bright-violet hair had turned into out-of-a-bottle blonde, but it was definitely her.

‘LEAH!’ Helen sprinted.

‘GRANNY!’ Tears streaked her face, cheeks and nose hot pink. Every inch of her trembling. ‘OH GOD, GRANNY, HELP ME! HELP ME!’ Jagged, shrill, terrified.

Helen skidded to a halt in front of her. ‘Where is he? Where’s the dead man that did this to you?’

‘YOU HAVE TO GET ME OUT OF HERE!’

‘Where — is — he?’

Leah glanced towards the smaller door. ‘He... He didn’t... I’m so scared, Granny, I can’t—’

‘Shhh... It’s OK, baby, I swear. It’ll all be OK.’ She turned as I hobbled the last few yards. ‘You: get her out of here.’ Helen pulled the cutthroat razor from her pocket and tossed it to me. ‘I’m going after him.’ Then she kissed Leah on the cheek. ‘It’s OK, Ash is a friend. He’ll look after you.’ Then she was off, battering through the door and out into the mist again.

Right.

I pulled out the blade and grabbed the rope holding Leah’s left wrist to the nearest bar. The blocks’ pitted surfaces were stained with brown-black splotches and smears, lots more on the concrete floor at her feet. ‘Told you we’d find you.’

Joseph’s cutthroat razor hissed through the old rope in four or five slices. Say this for the ugly, psychotic little git, he kept his weapons sharp.

‘Ash? Ash Henderson?’ Leah blinked at me, as if finally recognising me from the Edinburgh Christmas Market, then curled her now free hand against her chest. ‘I’ve been so scared...’

‘I know, but it’s over now.’ The rope holding her right wrist parted even easier. ‘You’re going home. He can’t hurt you any more.’