Стюарт Макбрайд - The Coffinmaker’s Garden

I lowered the rucksack. ‘Is it clean?’

‘As a nun’s conscience, Mr Henderson.’ He gave me a wave, then faced front again. ‘Francis, it’s time we were away. I believe Mr Henderson is most eager to be about whatever business instigated his purchase from us this blustery night.’

Another nod from Frances. ‘’Spector.’

‘Oh, one more thing.’ Joseph held out a crisp white business card. ‘If the occasion arises, Mr Henderson, when you feel you might benefit from the assistance of two very capable gentlemen who possess those most admirable of traits: determination, dedication, and a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to other people’s physical wellbeing, I do hope you’ll think of us.’

Well, you never knew. I accepted the card and tucked it away.

‘Excellent. Oh, and I like your new jacket.’ Then the window buzzed up, the Range Rover swung around and disappeared off down the ramp to the Blackwall Hill side of Blackburgh Roundabout again.

Twenty-five rounds would be plenty for what I had in mind.

I took my new Minion back to the pool car.

Shifty glowered at me, from behind the wheel. ‘Tell me that wasn’t who I think it was!’

‘Who we going to interview first?’

‘Ash, I’m serious — that better not’ve been Joseph and bloody Francis!’

My seatbelt clicked into place. ‘Why do you think I made you wait in the car?’

‘OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!’ Battering a fist off the steering wheel. ‘How could... Have you forgotten what they did? To me?’ Pointing at his eyepatch again. ‘HOW COULD YOU?’

I sat there in silence and let him seethe at me while I struggled my right hand into another nitrile glove.

Then unzipped the Minion’s head and pulled out a clear-plastic Ziploc bag with the gun in it. Stubby and black, almost invisible in the gloom. Didn’t weigh much, probably not even half a kilo, but that was without the magazine or bullets, of course.

‘You want to know how I could?’ The gun swung in the bottom of the bag as I held it up. ‘This is how.’

Shifty’s shoulders curled inwards as his scowl turned away from me and out of the windscreen instead. ‘I hate those guys.’

‘You don’t have to go through with this, Shifty. You can drop me back at the hospital and walk away. I’ll take care of it.’ I dipped into the rucksack again. Two more Ziploc bags: one with the empty magazine in it, the other containing a drift of small brass-cased bullets with grey tips. Like tiny metallic lipsticks, not much bigger than a finger bone. Assuming you still had all of yours. ‘But if you are walking away, I need another favour before you go.’

He didn’t look at me. ‘What?’

‘Can you load the bullets into the magazine for me? My hands don’t work properly any more.’

‘Should never have let you talk me into this.’ Shifty pulled up at the kerb, outside a classic seventies bungalow on Muchan Road. Grey harling and brown pantiles. A second-hand Audi in the driveway and a well-manicured garden out front, turned monochrome in the pale-yellow glow of the lamppost two houses down.

‘I told you, you didn’t have to come.’ The Minion joined me from the rear footwell. ‘I can do this on my own.’

‘Bloody reverse psychology.’ But he undid his seatbelt and climbed out of the car anyway.

I joined him, and we hobbled up to the front door. Leaned on the doorbell.

‘But we’re only questioning them, OK?’ Shifty jerked his chin out. ‘No violence, or shooting anyone.’ Pointing at my Minion. ‘Not unless we’re one hundred percent positive they’re the one who tried to kill Alice.’

Deep inside the house, the ringing went on and on and on and on.

‘I said that, didn’t I? God, you don’t half whinge.’ Nudging him with my shoulder and smiling to let him know I didn’t really mean it. In that manly, non-communicative way.

And still the bell rang.

‘Maybe this Dr Lochridge’s not in?’

Beginning to look like it. But of all the addresses Sabir texted me, this was the one closest to the library. Alice’s eleven o’clock appointment — Oscar Harris’s school therapist.

‘OK, who’s next on the—’

A clunk and the door swung open, revealing a middle-aged woman in a silk kimono, eyes bloodshot and unfocused, not exactly steady on her pins. Bottle-blonde hair frizzy and down past her shoulders. Orange dust on her fingertips. She licked her lips a couple of times. Sounding as if she was trying to keep the Aberdonian twang out of her slurry voice. ‘Hello? Can I... help?’ The words rode out on the sweaty-armpit stink of fresh weed, tempered with tangy cheese.

‘Dr Lochridge?’ Shifty showed her his warrant card. ‘Police. Can we come in, please?’

Her bloodshot eyes drooped a little and so did her shoulders, then she turned around and scuffed away down the hall.

We followed her in, down a tidy corridor lined with framed children’s drawings, and into a living room dominated by a saggy leather couch, covered in throws and cat hair. A big ginger tabby, sat on the coffee table, paused in the middle of cleaning itself to glare at us.

Dr Lochridge collapsed into the couch and helped herself to a fresh bag of Wotsits. Eyes drifting to the half-smoked joint perched on the edge of a handmade ashtray. ‘It’s only for personal use. And I never do anything around the children.’

Couldn’t care less.

I took the matching saggy leather armchair. ‘You met with Dr Alice McDonald earlier today.’

‘Did I?’ A frown. ‘Suppose I did. She talks... a lot . And really quickly. How does she manage it? It’s like she never even breathes.’

‘What did you talk about?’

A loose-limbed shrug. ‘Oscar Harris, I think. How was he, did he seem upset or troubled by anything before he went missing?’ More Wotsits disappeared. ‘Course he was. Between you, me, and Sigmund, I think someone was abusing him. Only he was too scared to admit it, even to me. People think that kind of thing doesn’t happen to kids who attend a good school, but it does.’ She chewed, face sagging. ‘Poor tiny soul.’

I looked at Shifty.

He grimaced. Sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Yeah, we got a distinctly greasy vibe off... someone we interviewed, but they had an alibi for when Oscar went missing. Even so, they clammed up and set their lawyer on us.’ Not like Shifty to be so careful about not giving out any hints.

‘So did Alice say anything before she left?’

Dr Lochridge squinted at her cat for a while. Then nodded. ‘She said she liked Sigmund. Which is good, because he’s the loveliest cat in the world.’

Ann Tweedale blinked at us with bleary eyes, voice a clipped whisper. ‘ No . Of course I don’t.’ Soon as we’d appeared on her doorstep, she’d hissed us to silence and escorted us into the kitchen of her tiny mid-terrace house, on Blackwall Hill, right next to the railway line. It ran on a cutting along the end of her back garden, twelve feet higher than the ground her home was built on. Be amazed if much natural light ever made its way in through the windows.

Tweedale was a sporty type, with bags under her eyes and an oversized ‘DONALD TRUMP EST UN BRANLEUR MASSIF!’ T-shirt that hung down to the knees of her penguin pyjama bottoms. Furry slippers on her feet. Curly hair yanked back in a messy comet-tail.

Shifty leaned against the worktop and folded his arms. ‘And there was nothing else?’

‘Shhhh!’ Tweedale pointed up towards the ceiling. ‘You wake Charlene up, I’ll bloody throttle you.’ She gave him a good glower. ‘Your doctor woman turned up, asked a load of questions about Lewis Talbot — all of which I’d already answered for your idiot police mates, by the way — then went away again. I helped all I could, but I was his social worker, not his mother. Lewis had a shitty life, his mum battered the hell out of him, his grandad abused her, and so on and so forth, yeah unto the tenth generation. Then some bastard throttles Lewis to death.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘And I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t for the best.’