The Coffinmaker's Garden Page 16

  ‘HE’S A PERVERT! STOP HIM! HELP ME!’

  People had their phones out now, filming as I struggled after her.

  A woman’s voice, cutting through the press of duffel coats and parkas: ‘You should be ashamed of yourself! Leave that poor girl alone!’

  ‘STOP, POLICE!’

  No chance.

  An overweight bloke in an ill-fitting Santa suit stepped out in front of me, shoulders back, chest out, chin up. ‘You going nowhere, mate! You’re—’ My right knee smacked him right in the balls and he collapsed, both hands clutching himself as he retched.

  Another stepped up – American, going by the stars-and-stripes puffa jacket and buzzcut. ‘We don’t take kindly to perverts.’

  ‘I’m not a pervert, you moron.’ I shoved him out of the way, hurrying after her. ‘LEAH!’

  A hand grabbed the collar of my coat. So I threw an elbow back, felt it connect with something solid as a grunt burst out behind me and the hand let go.

  ‘LEAH!’

  Through to a gap in the crowds, limping as fast as humanly possible up the ramp, every other step jarring steak knives through my stupid foot.

  She was frozen, outside the stall with that ‘HANDMADE ARTISANAL CHEESES!’ sign over it. Staring at me. Must’ve heard what I’d said about her mother. It wasn’t—

  Something solid slammed into the small of my back and that was it – my walking stick went flying as I, and whoever tackled me, crashed to the soggy grey carpeting. Another grunt.

  Bloody Americans never could take a telling, could they?

  I snapped another elbow back, aiming high this time. The jarring thud resonated through my arm as it landed. With any luck, breaking the bugger’s nose.

  The weight reared off me, then someone else piled on. Hands scrabbling for my left wrist. That same Edinburgh accent: ‘LIE STILL! YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!’

  ‘Get off me you idiot!’

  And Leah just stood there, staring.

  ‘I SAID LIE STILL!’

  They twisted my left hand back, putting on the pressure, dragging the arm with it as barbed wire screamed through the wrist joint. Going for the classic hammer-lock-and-bar.

  ‘I’m working for the police!’ The words shoved out through gritted teeth as they upped the pressure on my arm. It wasn’t too late, though: I dug my right hand into my jacket pocket and hauled out that wodge of LIRU business cards.

  ‘JIMMY, GET HIS OTHER HAND!’

  ‘I thing he broge by node …’

  I hurled the whole block at Leah. They made it a good ten or twelve feet before breaking apart into their individual pieces, spinning and whirling like heavy cubist snowflakes. About half a dozen fluttered to the ground at her feet.

  ‘STOP STRUGGLING!’

  Another pair of hands grabbed my outstretched arm.

  ‘I’M TRYING TO HELP, LEAH! YOU NEED TO TALK TO ME!’

  She blinked at me a couple of times. Then bent down and plucked one of the cards from the ground. Clutched it to her chest.

  Then turned and ran.

  The cold metal bar of a handcuff clicked around my left wrist, someone forcing their weight down on top of my head, shoving my face into the damp carpet.

  ‘YOU’RE NICKED!’

  Singing wafted through from somewhere down the corridor – a wobbly baritone, serenading the rest of the cellblock with an X-rated version of ‘A Froggy Would a Wooing Go’.

  The blue plastic-coated mattress creaked beneath me as I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the words in stencilled blue lettering on the ceiling. ‘CRIMESTOPPERS: ANONYMOUS INFORMATION ABOUT CRIME COULD EARN A CASH REWARD’ and an 0800 number. Nothing like taking advantage of a captive audience …

  Everything in here smelled of disinfectant. Which was comforting in some ways – at least it meant they’d cleaned it recently – and disturbing in others – what the hell had someone done in here to require drenching everything in Dettol?

  To be honest, given how crappy a day I was having, it was actually nice to lie down in the peace and quiet. If you didn’t count the filthy song. No one demanding anything. Nothing to achieve. No one to disappoint.

  And it hadn’t all been a waste of time, had it? At least now we knew Leah was still alive. She hadn’t been tortured to death and buried in Gordon Smith’s garden. At least she’d been spared that.

  Helen MacNeil, too. Her granddaughter wasn’t dead.

  Of course, it didn’t change what had happened to her daughter, Sophie.

  What Gordon Smith had done to her.

  All laid out in grisly detail in that bloody Polaroid. A small white rectangle bordering a horrible square picture, the image smeared with dried gore …

  Like the ones that used to arrive on Rebecca’s birthday. Getting worse and worse every year. Until I couldn’t even picture my little girl’s face without seeing them.

  She would’ve been twenty-six today. Could’ve been married with kids by now. A happy family of her own, rather than the fractured mess left behind when the Birthday Boy took her.

  Polaroids.

  Wonder how many sick bastards out there used them to record their handiwork? How many of them spent every night wanking themselves raw to the image of someone’s son or daughter being torn apart?

  Helen MacNeil was right: I knew how it felt. And it didn’t matter that she hadn’t been a doting mother, or even a mediocre one – whether or not she spent most of Sophie’s life in prison and the rest of it enforcing for the mob. Sophie was her child and Gordon Smith took her, same as the Birthday Boy took Rebecca.

  So now, only one thing was certain: I was going to find Gordon Smith, and I was going to make him pay. For Sophie. For Rebecca. And for every other child out there who’d suffered at—

  The cell door banged open, the sound reverberating off the bare concrete walls.

  ‘Henderson! On your feet.’ A Police Custody And Security Officer filled the doorway: an unassuming middle-aged man with thinning hair, grey moustache and soul patch. Glasses. Like a disappointed uncle, in his black polo shirt and black jeans. Only you could tell from the way he held himself he was ex-job. Done his time in the force and couldn’t adapt to life on the outside, so came back to work as civilian support. Strange how much ex-cops were like ex-cons. Same problem, different sides of the cell door.

  I swung my legs around, placed my stocking soles on the cold terrazzo floor. ‘Any chance I can get my walking stick back, if I promise not to go the full Rambo?’

  ‘Arse in gear; the Super wants to see you.’

  Take that as a no, then.

  A tall thin woman looked me up and down as I shuffled into the small room, in my socks. She was dressed in formal Police Scotland black, wiry arms poking out from the sleeves of her T-shirt, a silver crown on both lapels. Probably best not to stare at the big hairy mole poking out beneath the line of her sharp jaw.

  I nodded. ‘Superintendent.’

  She wasn’t the only one in here. Franklin leaned back against a row of grey filing cabinets, and a uniformed PC scowled out from a pair of bloodshot eyes, the skin beneath them darkening in purple arcs. Crusty flakes of dark scarlet clinging to both nostrils.

  ‘Mr Henderson.’ The Super folded her arms. ‘Would you like to explain why I shouldn’t charge you with a public order offence, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer?’

  ‘Because you know who I am, or DS Franklin wouldn’t be here.’ I tipped my head toward her – Franklin rolled her eyes and pulled a face. ‘I was in pursuit of a witness in a murder investigation, when your … let’s be nice and call them “halfwit minions” carried out an unprovoked assault and illegal detention.’

  The PC with the black eyes soured his mouth. ‘Now wait a buggering minute! We were doing our—’

  ‘All right, Constable Marshall. I’m sure Mr Henderson meant “halfwit minions” in a nice way. Didn’t you, Mr Henderson?’

  Franklin shot me a glare: play nice.

  Yeah, she was probably r
ight.

  ‘Of course I did. It was banter, that’s all. No offence, etc.’

  ‘Good. Now, I believe you have something to say to Constable Marshall?’

  Another glare from Franklin.

  ‘I’m sorry about your nose. I thought you were that idiot American, back for another go.’

  The Superintendent raised an eyebrow at the PC. ‘And Constable Marshall, I believe you have something to say to Mr Henderson?’

  He looked as if he was trying to force a pineapple up his arsehole, the wrong way around, but eventually he managed to shove it in: ‘I’m sorry we mistook you for a sex offender, but given the circumstances …’

  I puffed out a breath. Nodded. ‘She kinda screwed with the lot of us.’

  A smile from the Superintendent. ‘Well, I’m glad we got that all sorted out.’ She turned, plucked a large, bulky, brown paper bag from the room’s tiny desk and tossed it in my direction. Followed it up with my walking stick. ‘You’re free to go.’

  The bag was heavy – that would be my shoes, belt, jacket, and everything else they’d confiscated when they banged me up in here. ‘One thing, before we go.’

  Her shoulders dipped. ‘What?’

  ‘I need someone to go through the CCTV from the Christmas Market, from noon till three. We’re after an IC-one male, mid-seventies.’ I pointed at Franklin. ‘She’s got a photo. Suspect is responsible for at least a dozen deaths: Gordon Smith.’

  The Superintendent grimaced. ‘You’re not asking for much, are you? That’ll take ages.’

  ‘And a lookout request for Leah MacNeil wouldn’t hurt either.’

  ‘Think they’re going to find anything?’ Franklin took the rusty Ford Focus through the traffic-cone chicane, crawling past roadworks that stretched for miles and miles and miles … Little orange lights winking in the darkness.

  ‘Leah MacNeil, or Gordon Smith?’

  ‘Smith.’

  We passed beneath the motorway matrix sign – its metallic gantry partially covered in scaffolding – ‘WARNING: HIGH WINDS ~ NO HIGH-SIDED VEHICLES’.

  ‘Nah. He’s got away with it for decades, that takes care and planning. He’s not stupid enough to stick around now he knows we’re after him. He’ll have taken one look at the news and done a runner. Changed his appearance. What he’s not doing is hanging about the Edinburgh Christmas Market, buying “artisanal cheeses” and horrible fudge.’

  ‘Hmph …’

  The Forth Bridge loomed into view on the right, like three skeletal Apatosaurus wading their way across the water, brown-red silhouettes in the reflected glow of the city’s lights, caught against an angry, burnt-umber sky. And between us and it, the lonely stick figure of the Forth Road Bridge. Hanging there like a pale ghost. Empty, while we drudged our way through a slow-motion contraflow.

  Franklin chewed on her lip, wrinkles bunching up between her neatly plucked brows in the beams of advancing headlights. ‘Maybe we should get onto Interpol? See if he’s gone abroad somewhere?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s worth a—’

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. Text message.

  SABIR4TEHPOOL:

  Still running those Polaroids against the

  misper DBs. No results yet. But I got

  locations for most of them if UR

  interested?

  Solid pain in my Arsenal BTW

  & where’s my cost code?!?!?!?!?!

  Franklin looked at me. ‘Something important?’

  ‘Not really.’

  I thumbed out a reply.

  Finger out, Sabir. I’ve told everyone you’re

  an IT whizz kid with superhuman powers.

  Making me look bad here!

  SEND.

  He’d like that. Be a bit of motivation for him.

  The first of the bridge’s towers crawled past, its cables stretched out like the sail of a ship.

  ‘You know what worries me?’ I stuck my phone on the dusty dashboard. ‘Leah MacNeil just happens to be in Edinburgh when we are. Where we are. That not strike you as a massive coincidence?’

  ‘Not really. When I worked for E Division, mispers were always turning up there. You’ve run away from home, where are you going to go: Dundee? Aberdeen? Fraserburgh? Oldcastle? No, you head to the capital city, where the streets are paved with opportunities and tourists.’

  My phone buzzed again.

  SABIR4TEHPOOL:

  Cheeky jock haggis-munching

  wankmonkey!

  U should be made up I’m helping U at all!

  At least it gives U idiots somewhere 2

  look!!!!!

  Ah, got to love the wit and wisdom of lazy IT people.

  Again: making me look bad here, Sabir. I

  need names for those faces. Poor sods

  deserve that much, don’t they?

  We owe it to them and their families.

  Might be laying it on a smidgeon too thick there, but what the hell.

  SEND.

  ‘Besides, the Christmas Market’s bound to be a draw, isn’t it? All those flashing lights. Half the smackheads, stoners, and junkies in the city will be like moths round a porch light.’

  ‘True.’

  And on the traffic crawled.

  Just after six, time for the news.

  I reached for the radio, clicked it on. ‘What did Mother say when you told her Leah MacNeil was alive?’

  A woman’s voice crackled out of the speaker. ‘… four Federal buildings, claiming it was “America’s punishment for supporting the rights of gays and coloureds.” The White House issued a statement …’

  ‘Ah, about that.’

  ‘You did tell her, didn’t you?’

  ‘… retribution would be both swift and disproportionate. ~ Reality TV star and tabloid journalist Marian Shires has been found guilty of murdering Kelly Strickland in a drunken brawl outside notorious Glasgow nightclub …’

  Franklin kept her eyes front, mouth closed.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell her?’

  ‘Well, I … didn’t see Leah, did I? Not personally.’

  ‘… sentencing later this month. ~ The hunt continues for the man thought to be responsible for the death of at least twenty people in Oldcastle today, after human remains were spotted as Storm Trevor made landfall to the east of the city …’

  ‘You think I’m making it up?’

  ‘Well, maybe not “making it up”, but I didn’t—’

  ‘I bought you a sausage, and a go on the carousel!’

  ‘… police are keen to trace the whereabouts of Gordon Smith, last seen in Clachmara four weeks ago. ~ BBC Scotland has announced a major new crime drama to be shot in the picturesque northeast town of Portsoy. Based on the novels of J.C. Williams, PC Munro and the Poisoner’s Cat will …’

  ‘I thought you’d like to tell her yourself, without me taking credit?’

  Aye, right.

  ‘I was not making it up.’ Pulled out my phone and picked ‘DI MALCOLMSON’ from the list. Listened to it ringing. ‘Thought you and I had actually managed to—’

  ‘Ash?’

  ‘… Justice Secretary, Mark Stalker, continues to deny any wrongdoing after …’

  I clicked the radio off. ‘Leah MacNeil’s alive. I saw her at the Christmas Market, but a pair of Edinburgh’s finest tackled me before I could get to her.’

  ‘Oh, that is good news! I was certain she’d be one of Gordon Smith’s victims. Her gran’s going to be delighted.’

  ‘You need to get a warrant sorted for whoever Leah’s mobile phone provider is: get her location tracked.’

  We finally reached the other side of the bridge and Franklin wove us through another traffic-cone chicane. The space between vehicles opened up as people accelerated.

  Still nothing from Mother.

  ‘Hello, you there?’

  Maybe reception wasn’t good in Fife?

  ‘Ash, if Leah’s alive – and I’m very glad she is – then it’s exactly what officers thought in the f
irst place: she’s not been murdered or abducted, she’s left home. And she’s an adult, so she’s perfectly within her rights to do that. We don’t have any grounds for a warrant.’

  ‘Her mum’s been killed by the serial killer living next door, don’t you think she deserves to know?’

  A long pause was followed by what might have been a groan. ‘I do, but she has rights. No judge is going to give us a warrant for that. Let’s be happy she didn’t end up in Gordon Smith’s torture basement.’ A strangled straining noise came down the line. ‘Not that there’s much of it left; lost another dozen feet of headland today. And these idiot journalists are still sneaking through the safety fence, trying to get photos! It’s pitch-black out there, what are they going to see?’

  She was probably right about the warrant, but that didn’t make it any less crap.

  ‘You’ll tell Helen MacNeil her granddaughter’s OK?’

  More silence.

  We overtook an articulated lorry – ‘MRS LOVETT’S FABULOUS FAMILY PIES ~ PACKED FULL OF DELICIOUSNESS!’ – following the signs for Perth and Dundee.

  ‘Hello? Are you still—’

  ‘Actually, Ash, given that you’ve got such a good rapport with her—’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I think it might be better coming from you.’

  Because we’d got on so well this morning, outside Divisional Headquarters.

  Looked as if someone up there hated me almost as much as I hated them …

  17

  Oh for …

  Just when things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  Helen MacNeil was framed, dead centre, in the pool car’s headlights, standing in the middle of the road, right in front of the Mobile Incident Unit, hands wrapped around the throat of some idiot in a Barbour jacket, while a soundman tried to prise her off and a cameraman filmed it.

  I undid my seatbelt. ‘Out, now!’

  Franklin and I both scrambled from the car – the howling wind slamming against my chest, ripping the car door from my fingers. She ducked into the back seat for a moment and came out with an extendable baton, clacking it out to full length as we closed the gap.

  The MIU’s wall boomed as Helen shoved her victim against it. His hands scrabbled at her forearms, eyes bulging, teeth bared in a red-faced rictus that went all the way up to his retreating hairline. Glasses all squint.