Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Jesus .

If I’d been two seconds slower, I would’ve been stuck down there. Entombed.

Hands snatched at my jacket, hauling me up, into the corridor, and out through the front door. Alice on one side, Mother on the other, Henry running barking circles around us while they bustled me towards the line of temporary fencing. Rain crackled against my shoulders, slashing at any exposed skin as I stuffed the string of Polaroids in my jacket pocket, where they’d be relatively safe. Wind scrabbling at my back, pushing and shoving, screaming out its rage as we barged through the gap in the fence.

Then a fist thumped into my chest, Mother glaring at me with wide eyes and a hard, pinched mouth. ‘ARE YOU BLOODY INSANE?’

Alice lunged into a bearhug, pinning my arms to my sides, head buried against my shoulder. ‘I thought we’d lost you!’

Gordon Smith’s house no longer sat a dozen feet back from the edge of the cliff. The storm had seen to that. The garage had gone, taking about another six foot of headland with it. Now the basement jutted out into the void. That concrete floor was probably the only thing keeping it, and the house above, in one precarious piece.

Yeah. No way in hell we were ever going back in there.

Mother turned, face sour as she stared at the house and its eighteen-foot-shorter garden. ‘Well, that’s our human remains gone, then. So much for that.’

Helen MacNeil’s bolt cutters still lay where we’d abandoned them after snipping through the chain that’d held two sections of fencing panel together, and soon as Alice let go of me, I picked the things up, using them as a makeshift walking stick as I limped away from the devouring sea. ‘Don’t worry, DI Malcolmson, Gordon Smith’s got a lot more bodies out there.’

Tears of condensation rolled down the small kitchen’s windows as we huddled around the table — the air muggy with the heady scent of mince and the steam rising off one soggy police officer and two soggy civilians. All three of us dripping our own personal lakes onto the cracked linoleum floor. The house’s owner away seeing to her wee boy and his nightmares.

Warmth seeped into my bones from the mug of hot milky tea clutched in both hands.

Alice had hers pressed against her chest, jacket draped over the back of her chair, frizzy curls plastered to her head.

Mother grimacing as she swallowed another mouthful, phone clamped to her ear. ‘No, I understand that, sir, but we need—... Yes, sir, I know, but—... Uh-huh...’ She rolled her eyes at me. ‘Uh-huh...’

A shiver ran its way through Alice, setting her teeth chattering again.

‘Are you OK?’

She shook her head. ‘We could’ve died in there.’

‘Yes, but we didn’t. Now drink your tea.’

A knock on the kitchen door and DC Watt stuck his misshapen head in from the hall. ‘Guv?’

Mother looked up. ‘Can you give me a minute, sir? Something’s come up.’ She pinned the phone against her plus-sized bosom. ‘What is it, John?’

‘I asked DC Elliot to run a PNC check on Gordon Smith: no convictions, but he was picked up in 1968 and prosecuted for assaulting a sex worker in Glasgow. Found “not proven”. She’s got them digging up the paperwork.’ Watt scratched at that bald scarred patch on the back of his head. ‘Well, Elliot is, not the sex worker.’

‘What about his wife?’

‘Nothing we can find. Yet . Oh, and I’ve got an address for the brother’s croft on the Black Isle. Only he won’t be in, because he’s doing a sixteen stretch in HMP Edinburgh. Stabbed a GP to death. I’ve sent the details to N Division; they’ll pop up and see if Gordon’s there.’

A smile. ‘Good boy.’ Mother dug her spare hand into her pocket, pulled out a small paper bag, and tossed it over to him. ‘Help yourself.’ Then back to the phone. ‘Sorry about that, sir, getting an update from my team. Now, about that arrest warrant...?’

Alice shuddered, coiling in, shoulders hunched and forward. ‘What are we going to do now?’

I stood. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’m heading back to the flat and changing into something that doesn’t squelch when I move. You coming?’

‘Can we stop by an off-licence?’

‘Don’t see why not.’ The bolt cutters weren’t an ideal walking-stick substitute, but they’d do for now.

Watt blocked the doorway, frowning down at the contents of his tiny paper bag, poking a finger in. ‘All glued together...’ He plucked out a small, pale-yellow lozenge that made sticky screlching noises as it left its mates. Popped it in his mouth. Gave me the kind of smile that begged for a fist to be smashed right into the middle of it. ‘Where do you think you’re off to?’ Sooked his fingertips, then held out his hand, saliva still glistening on the pink skin. ‘You’ve got something of ours.’

‘If it’s a punch in the gob, you can have it here, or we can take it outside.’

The smile slipped away. ‘Mother says you filmed evidence in Smith’s basement, so I’m commandeering your phone. You can—’

‘Not if you want to keep your teeth, you’re not.’

A tug at my sleeve. Alice. ‘Ash, maybe we should—’

‘You are aware that threatening a police officer is an offence, Mr Henderson?’

Alice wriggled past, putting herself between me and the greasy prick with a death wish, same as she’d done with Mother and Helen MacNeil. ‘DC Watt, I know this is all very exciting, but it’s been a long day and we nearly died in that basement, so maybe we should all take a deep breath and de-escalate this situation before it turns into something contrary to the smooth running of the investigation?’

He pulled his pube-bearded chin in. ‘What?’

‘After all, we’re all on the same side, aren’t we, and without Ash’s help you’d never have known about the kill room underneath Gordon Smith’s house, so why don’t we do our best to facilitate an interpersonal rapprochement and we can email you all the footage from the basement and that way everyone’s happy, OK? OK. Have you got a business card with your email address on it?’

‘Not happening.’ Watt folded his arms. ‘I want that phone. And you’re going nowhere till I get it.’

Right, it was punch-in-the-face time. ‘Alice, step aside.’

Mother’s voice cut through the muggy air: ‘Will the pair of you grow up? This is a murder inquiry, not a willy-measuring competition.’

‘He’s refusing to hand over vital evidence that—’

‘Alice: step — aside .’

‘One last chance, Henderson: give me that phone!’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’ Mother appeared at my shoulder. ‘Mr Henderson, do you swear on your mother’s life-slash-grave that you’ll email the footage to John and me?’

Alice nodded. ‘Of course he does.’

‘No offence, Dr McDonald, but I’d feel happier hearing it from the man himself.’ She poked me in the back. ‘Well?’

‘I’ll email you the footage, not this greasy wanked-up slice of pish.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Watt clenched his jaw.

‘You heard.’

A disappointed grunt from Mother. ‘Oh let him go, John. We’ve got enough on our plates without a visit to Accident and Emergency.’

There was some grumbling, too low to make out the actual words, then Watt stepped aside. Made a sarcastic ‘after you’ gesture.

Prick.

It was difficult, resisting the urge to give him a hard shoulder-barge on the way past, but with Alice bustling down the corridor right behind me, it wasn’t really doable. He’d have to take an IOU.

My jacket had cooled down while we were in the kitchen, but it hadn’t dried out any, so it clung to my shoulders and back like the cold wet hands of the drowned as I pulled it on and hauled open the front door.