The Coffinmaker's Garden Read online

  Franklin was faster than me. ‘THAT’S ENOUGH! LET HIM GO!’ Closing in on Helen, baton raised.

  No way that was going to end well. Being filmed battering a woman who’d just found out her daughter had been murdered? Broadcast to the nation on the evening news?

  Please don’t let this be going out live …

  I limped after Franklin, fast as possible. ‘DON’T!’

  A thin shaky warble came from the red-faced man. ‘Please … help … meeeee.’ Head rattling back and forward, glasses shaking loose as Helen throttled him.

  Franklin planted her feet. ‘LET HIM GO, NOW!’ Readying herself, baton up, poised to slash down.

  God’s sake, did no one do the Officer Safety Training courses any more?

  I lurched over there, dropped my walking stick, made a claw of my right hand and dug it into the hard flesh a couple of inches in from Helen’s hipbone. Hobbled past, speeding up, dragging her off balance, twisting her away from the victim.

  ‘Aaaargh!’ She let go of his throat and slammed into the MIU, head bouncing off the grubby wall.

  The man in the Barbour jacket collapsed to his knees, one hand clutching his neck as he coughed and wheezed and spluttered.

  Helen aimed a kick at his head, but I grabbed a handful of her collar and pulled. The foot went wide and she tumbled to the potholed tarmac.

  ‘CUT IT OUT!’ Getting between the two of them: arms out, blocking the way.

  She wiped a hand across her twisted mouth, glaring at the man. ‘You want to know how it feels? THAT’S how it feels!’

  His back hunched as he dragged in breath after wheezing breath.

  ‘That’s how it feels to know your wee girls were killed by a man you thought was one of the family.’ Helen slumped back against the MIU. ‘It feels like that …’

  The kitchen of Mother’s commandeered house was bare, except for its abandoned cabinets and one crappy plastic chair from the Mobile Incident Unit. An earwax-coloured kettle rumbled to a boil, filling the room with pale damp steam, thickening the condensation that covered the window.

  Helen MacNeil sagged in the solitary chair, head down, chin against her chest. ‘Got a letter from the council this morning.’ She dug into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled envelope. Hurled it down on the table. ‘Gave me two hours to get out of my house, oh and by the way, we want sixteen grand to tear it down and ship away whatever’s left for “environmentally responsible disposal”. Which means chuck it in landfill.’ Shook her head. ‘No wonder Gordon up and left.’

  Soon as his name was out of her mouth, her face soured. ‘Then that bunch of fannies come round, with their camera …’

  Ah you had to love the media. All the compassion of a starving hyena.

  ‘“How does it feel?”’ She pulled her shoulders in, shrinking in her seat. Voice so quiet it was barely audible. ‘Why do they have to ask things like that?’

  ‘Because they’re wankers.’

  The mugs weren’t exactly dishwasher clean, but they’d do. I made two cups, heavy on the sugar with one. Handed it over.

  ‘Drink this.’

  She took a sip, grimaced, looked up at me, then away again. ‘Don’t take sugar.’

  ‘Tough. Drink it.’

  Shockingly enough, Helen MacNeil actually did what she was told. Nursing the mug against her flat stomach. ‘“How does it feel to know your daughter and granddaughter were tortured to death by a man you trusted?” How the fuck do they think it feels?’

  To be honest, the strangling thing was a pretty good analogy.

  I smiled at her. ‘Well, I’ve got good news for you on that one: Gordon Smith didn’t kill Leah. She’s alive. I saw her today in Edinburgh.’

  Helen stared at me. Mouth hanging open. ‘Leah …?’

  ‘Tried speaking to her, but a pair of local plod decided they’d get in the way. But she’s alive.’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’ Helen’s face slackened, a deep breath whoomping out of her. ‘She’s alive.’

  ‘Don’t know if she’ll get in touch, or not, but …’ A shrug. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘She’s alive …’ Helen’s shoulders trembled, she put a hand over her eyes. And sat there, weeping in almost total silence. Rocking in her cheap plastic seat, in an abandoned kitchen, at the end of the world.

  A deep, dark rumble sounded, setting the bare lightbulb swinging on the end of its cobweb-tinselled cord.

  I stood there and drank my tea.

  Strange to think I could’ve happily strangled her this morning. Or caved her head in. Now? Hard not to feel sorry for Helen. Her granddaughter might have escaped Gordon Smith, but her daughter hadn’t. And you had to admit—

  A barrage erupted at the front of the house – someone pounding on the front door. Followed by a clatter of feet on bare floorboards.

  I stuck my head out of the kitchen and there was Franklin, with Mother right behind her – blocking most of the corridor.

  Cold air whipped in through the open front door, a man trembling on the threshold, eyes wide, shock scrawled across his features. ‘You … You’ve got to … There’s been an accident! The cliff gave way …’

  Grabbed my coat from the kitchen worktop, my walking stick from where I’d hooked it on a cupboard handle, and limped out after them.

  It wasn’t raining, exactly, instead a thin drizzle slapped into us, driven by storm-force winds. Stealing all heat from my exposed hands and face.

  Mother grabbed the man by the lapels. ‘Where?’

  A trembling hand came up to point through the temporary fencing. Into the darkness.

  ‘Damn it.’ She let him go. ‘Torches! I need torches!’

  Franklin sprinted for the pool car, plipping the locks and rummaging through the boot as DC Watt emerged from the house, hauling on a waxed jacket, a teeny LED torch clutched between his teeth.

  She returned from the boot with a pair of big Maglites, each one a good foot long. Held one out to me as she hurried past.

  I clicked it on and followed her.

  The fence ran straight across the road, each one of the junctions chained and padlocked, until we got between Helen MacNeil’s house and her nearest surviving neighbour’s place. Someone had snipped the chain clean through, leaving it dangling against the metal upright.

  ‘Idiot …’ Franklin yanked it free. ‘OVER HERE!’ Then slipped through the unchained gap, following her torch beam through a drooping swathe of green-and-yellow grass. Slowing to a walk now.

  ‘You do realise this is a very stupid thing to be doing?’ I hobbled along beside her, running my light along the edge of the garden. A waist-high brick wall separated Helen’s house from Gordon Smith’s. Now that the council had taken the old temporary fencing away, that small wall was the only thing between us and the storm.

  We stopped when we got to it, wind tearing at our clothes, pushing and shoving like a schoolroom bully.

  ‘WHAT DO YOU THINK?’ Having to raise her voice now, over the angry boom of waves crashing against the headland.

  I slid my torch across Gordon Smith’s back garden, to the point where the autumn-bleached grass ended in a ragged black line. ‘I THINK WE SHOULD TURN ROUND, RIGHT NOW, AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE.’ Took a deep breath, then clambered over the wall.

  ‘YEAH, THAT’S WHAT I THINK TOO.’

  ‘ANYONE STUPID ENOUGH TO COME OUT IN THIS DESERVES ALL THEY GET.’ I inched my way closer to the edge, bending my knees, hunkering down, turning sideways-on to make less of a target for the wind.

  There wasn’t much of Gordon Smith’s house left: eighteen, maybe nineteen feet? Which meant the kill room had already gone, taking any forensic evidence with it. The living room, with its avalanche of ancient furniture, had gone too. And nearly all of the roof – what was left, clinging to the joists still fixed to its gable end. But nothing would …

  Hold on, what was that?

  ‘ASH?’

  ‘SHUT UP A MINUTE!’ Head on one side. ‘CAN YOU HEAR THAT?’

  It wa
s hard to make anything out, over the crashing waves and bellowing wind, but there was definitely something there.

  I inched closer. Then closer still.

  Franklin grabbed my hand and stepped behind me. Acting as an anchor. ‘JUST IN CASE!’

  Another torch snaked across the ravaged grass – till its tiny white spotlight found us. Then Mother’s voice: ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU IDIOTS PLAYING AT? GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!’

  OK, only a couple of yards till the garden came to a sudden and deadly stop.

  Closer …

  Closer …

  ‘I’M NOT KIDDING: YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!’

  One yard. What was that, three feet?

  Three feet to the roaring maw of the North Sea.

  Oh God …

  I dropped to my knees. ‘GRAB MY FOOT!’

  Franklin let go of my hand and wrapped her fingers around my left ankle. ‘THIS IS STUPID!’

  ‘I KNOW!’ Edging closer to the edge.

  Two feet.

  One foot.

  And then there was nothing between me and Norway but a cold violent death.

  ‘ANYTHING?’

  ‘HOLD ON!’ I poked my torch over the edge, running along the tattered cliff edge beneath me. Dark soil, crumbling, making little avalanches that were torn away by the wind. A couple of pipes, poking out into nothingness. Some wires …

  Oh. Shit.

  The harsh white circle of light slid up the body of a young man, hanging there, still as the dead, a high-pitched moan rattling out of his throat. A young man in a soil-smeared, ill-fitting suit, with a face full of acne and a monobrow. Mouth open and twitching, showing off all those uneven teeth. A big digital camera hanging around his neck. The idiot Mother had shouted at. The one she’d told not to go anywhere near the headland again.

  Well, that had worked, hadn’t it?

  He had both arms up above his head, hands clenched tight around a loop of flat fabric. Dark. Like, maybe the handle of a duffel bag, or a rucksack strap? It disappeared into the cliff. Something buried in Gordon Smith’s back garden.

  I ran the torch downwards. Nothing beneath him to stand on, or break his fall, it was straight down to the angry sea. Grooves in the crumbling muddy cliff face where his feet had scrabbled at it.

  Dark waves smashed themselves against the headland, thirty or forty feet below, sending up massive gouts of spray. Each blow like a sledgehammer, BOOOOOMing out, and hissing in. Like the ragged breath of some huge malevolent beast.

  OK, so as long as whatever it was he’d caught hold of stayed where it was, and he didn’t let go, we could do this. ‘WE’RE GOING TO GET YOU OUT OF THERE!’

  He stared back at me and the moan got louder.

  Back, over my shoulder: ‘WE NEED A ROPE!’

  Franklin tightened her grip on my ankle, turned. ‘WE NEED A ROPE!’

  Mother’s voice cut through the screaming wind. ‘DON’T STAND THERE LIKE A LEMON, JOHN, GET SOME ROPE!’

  I wriggled over a couple of feet to the right, until I was directly above the hanging man. ‘YOU’RE A BLOODY IDIOT, YOU KNOW THAT, DON’T YOU?’

  Tears sparked in the torchlight. His mouth moved, but whatever he’d said it wasn’t loud enough to make out over the storm.

  ‘WHAT?’

  ‘I DON’T … I DON’T WANT … TO DIE! PLEASE DON’T LET ME DIE!’

  What the bloody hell did he think I was trying to do, here?

  ‘IT’S OK, WE …’

  Another rumble, and off to the left a piece of cliff tumbled into the crashing waves. Like an enormous hand had scooped a chunk of it away, leaving an overhang behind. Moments later the rumbling got louder as the overhang crumbled, tearing a slab of Gordon Smith’s back garden with it.

  The young man screamed.

  And the falling earth filled the air with that mouldy-brown-bread scent of broken soil.

  I twisted my head around to Franklin. ‘WHERE’S THAT BLOODY ROPE?’

  ‘I DON’T KNOW!’ Over her shoulder again. ‘MOTHER! WE NEED THAT ROPE, NOW!’

  ‘GET OUT OF THERE!’

  I reached down with my right hand. Fingers straining. About a foot and a half too short. ‘CAN YOU PULL YOURSELF UP?’

  He stared at me, then bit his bottom lip, tears streaking the mud on his face. Shoulders bunching as he hauled on the strap, feet scrambling at the dirt. Still not close enough to grab. ‘I CAN’T!’ Then sagged back again, sobbing.

  My torch beam ripped across the grass till Franklin was caught in the light. ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE: WHAT’S KEEPING THEM?’

  A large shape loomed out of the darkness behind her: Mother. She crouched down by Franklin’s feet and tossed something forwards.

  It landed with a clanking slither, level with my chest. A length of chain – the one that was meant to be holding those two fencing panels together, with the padlock still firmly shut on the last two links.

  Better than nothing.

  The padlock fitted into my palm, chain hanging down between my fingers as I clenched it in my fist, then flipped the end over the cliff edge. ‘GRAB HOLD!’

  It dangled about three inches above his hands.

  He stared back at me, arms trembling. ‘I CAN’T!’

  A wave smashed into the cliff beneath him, tearing loose a chunk of dirt and rocks.

  ‘GRAB THE BLOODY THING, YOU MORON!’

  His left hand twitched, then let go of the strap, fingers stretching up for the chain’s end.

  ‘COME ON, YOU CAN DO IT!’

  Feet digging into the mud, trembling with the effort, straining, reaching …

  Another wave battered in, sending up a wall of spray, hiding his flailing legs for a moment.

  Then the ground beneath my chest slumped, dropping a good six inches. ‘Shit!’

  ‘ASH!’ Franklin’s hands tightened around my ankle as a semicircle the size of a couch cracked all around me.

  His eyes went even wider. Screaming. The thing he was holding onto slid towards him, pulling away from the crumbling cliff face, slipping free.

  It was a big holdall, the red fabric stained almost black by its time in the earth.

  I dropped the chain and lunged, fingers curling around the buckle where the strap fixed to the bag. Muscles straining across my shoulders. Joints yanked taut by the sudden weight. Knuckles full of burning rubble. Teeth gritted. But holding on …

  ‘ASH, GET OUT OF THERE!’

  ‘PULL ME BACK! PULL ME BACK, NOW!’ Staring down at him. ‘DON’T YOU BLOODY DARE LET GO! WE’RE GOING TO—’

  The ground to either side gave way, clattering down, battering into his face and chest, muffling his screams as the weight on the other end of the strap disappeared. Arms pinwheeling as he fell.

  ‘NO!’

  I careened forwards – nothing supporting my chest any more, the torch tumbling end-over-end until the next wave smashed into the cliff and swallowed it.

  ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’

  18

  A second set of hands wrapped around my other ankle, stopping me from falling any further forward, then a third pair snatched at my trouser leg. All of them hauling me backwards, onto semi-solid ground again.

  Wet grass against my grateful cheeks and forehead.

  Oh Christ, that had been close.

  The hands let go and I rolled over. Let the cool drizzle slam down on me. Breath rattling in my chest. Alive.

  Then the hands returned, pulling me to my feet.

  DC Watt thrust my walking stick into my hand. ‘NOW CAN WE GET OUT OF HERE?’

  ‘GOD, YES!’ I hobbled after him, Franklin, and Mother, wind jostling at my back. Clambered over the low wall, and into Helen MacNeil’s garden again.

  Soon as we’d put twenty feet between ourselves and the wall, Mother swung her arm back and battered me one across the chest. ‘WHAT THE BUGGERING HELL WERE YOU THINKING? YOU COULD’VE DIED! YOU NEARLY GOT US ALL KILLED!’ She hit me again. ‘YOU IDIOT!’

  ‘I COULDN’T SAVE HIM! I
TRIED, BUT I COULDN’T …’

  ‘AND WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?’ Jabbing a finger at the filthy red holdall, still clutched in my right hand.

  It was heavier than it looked; there was definitely something inside. And given where the thing had been buried, didn’t exactly take a genius to guess what that was …

  ‘Are you OK?’ Franklin leaned back against the stainless-steel work surface next to me, arms wrapped around herself, keeping her voice low. ‘Because you look like death.’ The words came out in a small plume of white fog.

  The throat-catching smell of bleach and punctured bowels filled the ancient mortuary, like thick brown soup. At one point, the wall tiles had probably been white, but they’d turned a grubby ivory, the colour of a smoker’s teeth. Black tiles on the floor – chipped and cracked, their grout stained grey even after generations-worth of disinfectant. A wall of refrigerated drawers, the names of their occupants printed in dry-erase marker on white plastic rectangles. Three cutting tables with drainage channels, their metal surfaces scarred and scratched. The middle one bearing an ugly bundle wrapped in black-plastic bin bags secured with duct tape.

  No one else in here but us.

  No one living, anyway.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Thank you. You know, for not letting me fall.’

  ‘Meh …’ She shrugged. ‘You bought me a sausage and a go on the carousel, remember?’ Then shivered. ‘Absolutely soaked to the bone, here. These idiots going to be much longer?’

  According to the mortuary clock, it was nine o’clock already.

  So much for a conciliatory crime-fighting-anniversary dinner with Alice.

  ‘Teabag doesn’t like working overtime. Mother will have to drag him down here like a sulky child.’

  Above us, the sounds of Castle Hill Infirmary oozed through the ceiling. The hum and buzz of heating and electricity, the bang and clank of trolleys and floor polishers. Life.

  Down here, the only sounds were us and the faint whirring hiss coming from that bank of refrigerated drawers.

  Franklin cleared her throat. ‘You didn’t answer the question. Are you OK? I mean, I feel bad enough and I didn’t even see him, never mind watch him fall.’