Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

OK, well at least that gave me somewhere to start. If Chris McHale was court appointed, his phone number would be on file. I gave Sabir a ring.

It barely rang before his voice boomed in my ear: ‘Alice? Are you OK?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

‘Bastard... Ash? That you? Where the hell you been? Bear’s at DEFCON One, what with all them creepy texts you been sending about doin’ yerself in.’

Not me: Leah MacNeil.

On the other side of the bridge, Shifty threw the car right at the roundabout. Into Kingsmeath.

‘Sabir, can you access Alice’s calendar?’

‘Two seconds.’ Some clacking. ‘In. What do you need?’

‘Can you text me phone numbers for everyone she had an appointment with today? But send them to her mobile, not mine.’

‘See if you catch the tosser what done it? Fuckin’ do him , right?’

‘Thanks, Sabir.’

That’s exactly what I was going to do.

A patch of what was probably supposed to be parkland broke up one side of Glensheilth Crescent. Clearly no one had bothered looking after it for years, leaving the place overgrown and thick with gorse, brambles, and dead nettles. The trees drooping and twisted. At one point, there would have been winding paths and play areas, now the only sign left was the line of concrete lampposts, all of them broken, leaving the place shrouded in darkness.

The seven tower blocks that wrapped around this side of the huge Blackburgh Roundabout hulked in the middle distance, welcoming as tombstones. Somehow all the lights being on made them look even less friendly, while Glensheilth Crescent itself had all the charm of a council estate that’d been designed to make sure the working classes knew their place. Boxy grey-and-brown terraces next to boxy grey-and-brown semis and a boxy grey-and-brown community centre with boarded-up windows.

A square of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape sat at the edge of the ‘park’, the colour leeched from it by the guttering sodium glow of a nearby streetlight. Shifty parked next to it. ‘That’s where they found her.’

I climbed out into the wind. Turned, frowning at the curving line of neglected houses. ‘No witnesses?’

Shifty lumbered after me. ‘None that’ll talk to the police. You know what Kingsmeath is like.’

Should do: lived here long enough.

If it wasn’t for the tape cordon, that square of rough ground probably would’ve blended into the rest of the park. Yes, the overgrown grass had been flattened, but it wasn’t until I played my... Alice’s phone’s torch over it that a big patch glistened a stomach-clenching shade of burgundy.

Shifty’s hand thumped against my shoulder and squeezed. ‘I know.’

Took some doing, but I nodded. Huffed out a breath. Cleared the knotted barbed wire out of my throat. ‘You search the street for her car?’

‘No sign.’

Sod. ‘So what was she doing here, then?’

The phone ding-buzzed. A text from Sabir with names, addresses, and numbers for everyone Alice had in her calendar today.

I tried the one for Chris McHale, the Court-Appointed Mentor. Listened to it ring and ring. ‘What about the surrounding streets?’

Shifty shrugged.

‘OK, we’ll start there, then.’ Limping across the road to Glensheilth Place, a short street with only a handful of terraced houses on either side.

Then, at last, ‘If this is a marketing call, you can shove your—’

‘Mr McHale. Police.’

A groan. ‘Let me guess, Tracy Fordyce has tried burning the school down, again? That wee horror needs locking up, she’s got “future serial killer” written all over her. Tenner says—’

‘You had a meeting with Dr Alice McDonald this afternoon.’

No sign of Alice’s Suzuki Jimny on Glensheilth Place, so I kept going, round onto Forbes Drive, where the houses were slightly more upmarket, but not by much.

‘You cheapskate bastards should be paying me a lot more to mentor horrible shites like Tracy Flipping Fordyce! I tell you, it’s—’

‘Mr McHale!’ Putting some menace behind it: ‘Did you meet with Dr McDonald, or not?’

‘Weird bint: curly hair and verbal diarrhoea? Wanted to talk about Toby Macmillan? Yeah, I met her.’

I checked my watch. Quarter past ten. Forty-five minutes to guntime. ‘Can you come past the station tomorrow and give a statement about what happened to Toby?’

‘What, another one? You better be paying me for this. I’m not running a charity here, you want my time you have to pay for it.’

‘Yes, of course. We’ll sort all that out when you come in tomorrow morning.’

‘Should think so too.’ He hung up.

Prick.

Shifty was staring at me. ‘What was that all about?’

‘Chris McHale was the last person to see Alice. Ten minutes after meeting him, she’s found by the side of the road. You think that’s a coincidence?’

‘Then why did you tell him to come into the station tomorrow—’

‘Because I don’t want him spooked and buggering off before we go over there and break his legs.’ I turned and headed back towards the car. ‘You coming?’

‘Hell yeah.’

Ten minutes later we were parked outside 16 Greenview Drive, which didn’t have a single scrap of green in sight. It was a four-storey grey-brick tenement that stretched the length of the road, mean little windows scowling out over the rutted tarmac to an ugly boxy building that looked more like a Victorian prison than a synagogue. They’d mounted a handful of fixed security cameras high up on the walls, but that hadn’t stopped some moron spraying anti-Semitic graffiti across the front door. Because why live-and-let-live when you could make a bigoted wanker of yourself?

None of the cameras were turned in our direction. Which meant we couldn’t use them to catch Chris McHale following Alice from here to where he ran her over. But it also meant no one could prove Shifty and I had paid him an extremely painful off-the-books visit.

I held up Alice’s phone in my bandaged hand, screen filled with the map of Kingsmeath. ‘Way I see it, she could go two ways to her appointment at Burgh Library,’ pointing at the massive roundabout it sat in the middle of, ‘one: you go down to Montrose Road, back to the bridge, then up King’s Drive. Two: you cut through Kingsmeath. Banks Road, straight through to McNamara Row, then left onto Glensheilth Crescent.’

Shifty pulled a face. ‘What about Denmuir Gardens?’

‘They’ve dug it all up in front of the primary school, after that sewage-pipe leak.’

‘Still doesn’t explain where her car is. She’d—’ His phone launched into the theme tune from Mastermind , and he pulled it out. Checked the caller ID. Answered it. ‘Rhona?... Uh-huh... Uh-huh... OK... No, thanks anyway... Yeah, I will. Thanks. Bye... OK, bye.’ Puffing out a breath as he slid the phone back in his pocket. ‘Henry’s not at your flat.’

Maybe he was still in the car? Because the alternative didn’t really bear thinking about.

But one thing was certain, Chris McHale was about to have a very bad evening.

I struggled my right hand into a nitrile glove — not easy with the left all clarted in bandages, climbed out of the car, and limped over to number sixteen. No names on the intercom. The services button had been taped over, so I tried ‘FLAT ONE’ instead, leaning on the buzzer until an irritated voice crackled out of the speaker.

‘What? Jesus. I was on the bog!’

‘Got a chicken vindaloo, lamb biryani, steamed rice—’

‘I didn’t order a curry. You’ve got the wrong flat, muppet.’