The Coffinmaker's Garden Page 6

  Alice shifted in her seat, setting the plastic groaning as she leaned forward. ‘I’m really sorry, Maggie, I’m sure it was an accident, I mean in the middle of everything, heat of the moment, and there’s arms and legs and no one really knows what’s going on and it’s all very—’

  ‘He hit me!’ She pointed a thick, stubby finger across the desk at me.

  I gave her a nice innocent shrug. ‘Oops.’

  What can I say, I’m a feminist: if you put Alice in a headlock, man or woman, that’s what you get. Lucky I let her off with a black eye, to be honest. Maybe that was sexist of me? Maybe I should’ve broken her arm too?

  ‘Agnes had to go to A-and-E!’

  ‘The floor was slippery; wasn’t my fault she hit her head on the shopping trolley.’ Twice. Though hopefully I’d blocked the CCTV camera’s view, so no one would be the wiser.

  Like I said: feminist.

  A knock on the door and Maggie transferred her wonky scowl from me to it. ‘COME!’

  It clunked open and a thin man in a suit and side parting gave everyone an ingratiating smile. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but that’s the police arrived now and they say Mr Henderson,’ a nod in my direction, ‘hello,’ back to Maggie, ‘he definitely is working for Police Scotland, so he’s not a serial killer or anything, and is perfectly entitled to be in possession of the … disturbing images Mr Turnberry encountered on till number seventeen.’

  Pink worked its way up Maggie’s wide neck. ‘Yes, well …’

  The man’s smile got a bit more obsequious. ‘I’m sorry we had to detain you both, Mr Henderson, Dr McDonald, but given the circumstances, I’m sure you understand. We at Winslow’s take our community responsibilities very seriously.’ He held out a couple of bulging jute bags with snowmen on them. ‘Your shopping. On the house. And I’ve thrown in a fifteen-pound gift voucher as well.’

  ‘Very kind of you.’ I stood. Picked my still-damp jacket off the back of my chair. ‘Come on, Alice.’

  Shifty was waiting for us, bald head gleaming in the strip light of the bare breeze-block corridor, that black eyepatch giving his fat frame a slightly rakish, piratical air. His pale grey suit looked as if a herd of wildebeest had slept in it. Left eye narrowed in disapproval as he shook hands with the man who’d come to get us. ‘Thanks, I’ll take it from here.’ Then turned and marched off, without so much as a word.

  I hobbled after him, taking my time, because anything faster than that sent burning daggers lancing through my aching foot. ‘What kept you?’

  He shoved through the plain door and back onto the shop floor, between the fish counter and the dairy aisle. ‘I was interviewing a nonce!’

  ‘At this hour? That your way of getting out of Lewis Talbot’s post mortem?’

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again. ‘Shut up.’

  Alice bustled alongside, carrying our new jute bags. ‘Did your sex offender say anything?’

  Shifty gave her the benefit of his evil eye. ‘You’re supposed to keep Ash on a short leash.’

  ‘Only, if there’s a ring involved, a paedophile ring, I mean, and the killer’s a member of it, he might have said something incriminating, he might even want to boast about his crimes, or at least his knowledge of the victims, so did he say anything about anyone saying anything like that?’

  ‘The only thing Willie Bloody McNaughton said was “no comment”. And his buggering solicitor just sat there, preening. Like we were questioning his greasy little client about a parking violation, not three dead kids.’

  Kind of inappropriate, but couldn’t help smiling at that one. ‘Thought you said McNaughton’s solicitor was, and I quote, “completely shaggable”.’

  ‘Completely shaggable people don’t help paedophiles wriggle their way out of custody!’

  We passed the line of tills, the carrot-coloured Mr Turnberry doing his best to avoid eye contact as I limped by number seventeen. ‘You let McNaughton go?’

  ‘Didn’t have any choice, did I?’ Shifty rubbed a hand across his face, pulling the chubby cheeks out of shape. ‘A solid day of interviewing child molesters. Going to take a massive heap of booze to get that taste out of my mouth.’

  Alice nudged him, setting the bottles clinking again. ‘Might be able to help you there.’

  The automatic doors slid open, and we stepped out beneath the awning, ranks of trolleys sitting chained together on either side.

  ‘OK.’ I made it as far as the line of large plastic crates filled with bagged firewood, kindling, and four-litre containers of antifreeze – apparently available at ‘BARGAINTASTIC PRICES FOR ALL THE FAMILY!’, because whose kids didn’t love antifreeze? I settled my backside against the logs and stretched out my right leg, foot throbbing like a malfunctioning microwave. ‘Get the car and I’ll wait for you here.’

  Alice peered out at the rain, hauled her hood up, then turned to Shifty. ‘David, do you want to join us for dinner? We’re going for a sitty-downy pizza with loads of salad!’

  ‘Time is it?’ He checked his watch and deflated a couple of inches. ‘Yeah, why not? Supposed to have clocked off hours ago anyway.’

  ‘God, I needed that.’ Shifty wiped the froth from his pint off his top lip, smiled and let loose a happy belch.

  They’d given us a pretty decent table – for quarter to ten on a Friday night – by the window, looking out across the road to the big Victorian glass slug that was Oldcastle Railway Station. All lit up and glistening in the rain. A row of taxis sitting outside it, their drivers huddled in a bus shelter, smoking fags. Working on cancer and hypothermia all in one go.

  ‘A toast.’ Alice raised her large Shiraz. ‘To not dying in a serial killer’s basement!’

  I clinked my Irn-Bru against her glass, then Shifty did the same with his pint and we all drank.

  ‘Speaking of which.’ Shifty held his hand out, palm up in front of me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know fine, “what”. The photos you traumatised Satsuma Joe with, back at the supermarket. They’re evidence.’

  ‘I forgot I had them, OK? We nearly got crushed to death and washed out to sea. And since when do you care about evidentiary procedures?’

  ‘Since Professional Standards decided to make me their special little project. Now hand them over.’

  I turned in my chair, picked my phone off the windowsill – attached to its new charging cable, stealing the restaurant’s electricity. Battery now at a whole ten percent.

  ‘Ash, you can’t keep stuff like that.’

  My phone went back on the windowsill. ‘You can have them when I’ve taken a copy.’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘What, you’re going to bail before your starter arrives and hotfoot it back to the station with them?’

  He frowned for a moment, then shrugged those wide shoulders of his. ‘No point letting good food go to waste.’

  Didn’t think so.

  Alice helped herself to a breadstick, the words coming out in a wave of crunching and crumbs: ‘Do you think Bear would let me do some behavioural evidence analysis for DI Malcolmson?’

  ‘Our Glorious Leader? Without a cost centre to write it to?’ Difficult not to laugh at that. ‘Not a chance in hell.’

  ‘What if I did it in my spare time, though?’

  ‘Then you’re undermining a potential revenue stream.’

  She scrunched herself up and fluttered her eyelashes at me. ‘Pleeeeeeeease?’

  ‘You’re a grown woman in your thirties, don’t do that.’

  ‘Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeease?’ Really hamming it up now, hands clutched sideways under her chin, brown curls cascading either side of her beaming face.

  ‘OK, OK.’ Anything to make her stop.

  ‘Good.’ She shifted her cutlery and napkin out of the way and made come-hither gestures. ‘Let’s see the photos, then.’

  ‘Sure you want to do that right before you eat?’

  ‘The iron’s hot, we might as well strike with
it.’

  I snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and eased the photos from my pocket. Still connected to that mouldy piece of string by the tiny clothes pegs.

  Shifty winced. ‘You could at least’ve put them in an evidence bag!’

  ‘Crushed to death and washed out to sea, remember?’ I laid them out in front of Alice, one after the other, putting them closer together, so they’d all fit in two lines. ‘And if it wasn’t for us, no one would even know they existed. So don’t be a dick.’

  Eleven Polaroids. Each one showing the last horrific moments of some poor sod’s life.

  Shifty bared his teeth. ‘Jesus …’

  A row of creases formed between Alice’s eyebrows as she frowned at the pictures. ‘Victims are male and female, so maybe Gordon Smith’s bisexual, because there’s always a sexual element with this kind of serial killer, even if it’s not expressed at the time with the victim present, because what’s the point of killing someone if you can’t fantasise about it before and afterwards? Of course maybe it’s death that turns him on and he’s really only torturing people to heighten his and …?’ She looked up at me, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Caroline. Smith’s wife was called Caroline.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Back to the photos. ‘He might be doing it to heighten their arousal. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had sex on that mattress in the basement, right after they killed someone, or even while their victims were dying. They’ve gone to all the trouble of abducting and torturing someone, who needs Viagra when you’ve got a rush like that – the power of life and death, someone screaming in agony while you—’

  ‘OK.’ Our waiter appeared behind her, looking about as comfortable as a dedicated hipster can when forced into a red-white-and-green waistcoat, dress shirt, and non-ironic bowtie. ‘I’ve got an insalata caprese, antipasto misto platter, and a garlic bread with mozzarella?’

  Alice wheeched her napkin over the Polaroids before the waiter could recognise what they were. Pointed at Shifty. ‘Garlic bread, Ash is the antipasto, and I’m the salad.’ Taking the plate from him before he could interfere with the horror show currently taking place beneath her napkin. ‘Thanks.’ Then knocking back three big gulps of wine, finishing the glass and holding it out for the waiter. ‘And can I have another large Shiraz, please, actually better make it a bottle, no point messing about, is there? That’ll be great, excellent, mmmmm, this all smells delicious!’

  The waiter’s smile looked very uncomfortable, squashed between his handlebar moustache and big beard, as he backed away from our table like it was a rabid dog. ‘Yes, wine, definitely.’ And he was gone.

  She passed her plate across the table to me. ‘Can you look after that? And don’t eat my mozzarella. Or my tomatoes. Or basil. Actually … don’t eat any of it.’ Then peeled her napkin back, exposing the bloody images again. ‘These were from one side of the shackles, weren’t they?’

  ‘The string closest the stairs.’ Somehow a platter of mixed meat didn’t seem all that attractive, not when the Polaroids were sitting there. ‘All I could get.’

  ‘I wonder if there’s a “before” and “after” for each of the victims? One wall is them alive, the other is them dead. With sex and torture in the middle.’

  Great wafts of garlic oozed out of Shifty’s starter as he tore a big bite from his huge slice of cheese on toast, white strings looping from his mouth back to the bread, like the ones in the basement. Mumbling through his mouthful. ‘You think he rapes them?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. I worked on a case in Boston once – got to go over as part of an exchange programme, it’s a really nice city, lovely people, but by God it’s cold in winter – anyway there was this guy, Chuck Reich. He would abduct men, tie them up, and stab them, but not because he was trying to kill them, he’d stab them in the stomach or the thigh or the buttock and use the holes he’d made to … you know … pleasure himself. It was the screaming he liked the best. Maybe Gordon and Caroline were like that?’

  Yeah, I definitely didn’t want the cold meat any more.

  ‘You never told me about Chuck Reich.’

  Alice shrugged at me. ‘He swore, if he ever got out, he’d come after me and I didn’t want you to worry.’ She stared down at the photos again. ‘Anyway, it was years ago, I’m sure he’s a lot less angry now, and it’s not like they’re ever going to release him, is it? Not after what he did to his lawyer …’ She glanced up at me. ‘It’s OK, you can start eating, I won’t mind.’

  Nope. Pushed my plate away.

  Eleven murder pictures on one side of the shackles, eleven on the other. Which meant twenty-two victims over fifty-six years, the last of which had to be quite a while ago, going by the mould staining those Polaroids.

  ‘So, why did Gordon Smith stop killing?’

  ‘Oh, Ash,’ her smile was small and sad, ‘what makes you think he’s stopped?’

  I left the engine running, heaters and blowers on full, as Alice escorted Shifty to his front door. The pair of them wobbly as newborn foals, keeping each other upright. Honestly, they were about as much—

  A muffled rendition of the Buffy theme burst into life in my pocket and I dragged out my phone. Took the call. ‘Rhona?’

  ‘Not too late is it, Guv? Only I got some info for you on Leah MacNeil.’

  Outside, Alice was helping Shifty find the keys to his tiny house: a two-up two-down at the end of a curling cul-de-sac in Blackwall Hill. The kind of place that must’ve looked quite stylish when it was thrown up thirty years ago, on the wrong side of the railway tracks, and left to rot ever since.

  ‘Let me guess – no one’s bothered their arse?’

  ‘Bingo. I’ve rattled some cages and jammed my boot up some bumholes, so at least they’ll start looking. Oh, and I managed to dig a bunch of stuff up on the mother, Sophie MacNeil, too. Suicide, sixteen years ago. Poor cow was only twenty.’ A slurping noise came down the phone. ‘Granny Helen was in HMP Oldcastle at the time, for battering some drug dealer to death, so two-year-old Leah goes to live with the next-door neighbours. Temporary custody, by the look of it.’

  Interesting …

  ‘And Child Protection were happy with that? The Smiths weren’t related to her, why didn’t she get put into care?’

  ‘No idea. Can find out, if you like, but you’ll have to wait till Social Services get in, Monday morning.’ More slurping, the words after it mumbled around whatever Rhona was eating. ‘Anyway, I say “poor cow”, but Sophie wasn’t exactly a choirgirl. We’ve got three arrests for possession with intent, two warnings for fighting, one six-month stretch for assault. Chip off her good old mum’s block, that one.’

  Alice and Shifty finally got the door open, and he stumbled inside, leaving Alice to wobble on the top step all alone.

  ‘And Leah’s been a chip off her granny’s, too. Mostly assault, some petty theft, possession – didn’t have enough blow on her to count as dealing, so the arresting officer let her off with a caution – and one theft from a lock-fast place. Guess your mum throwing herself off Clachmara Cliffs screws you up.’

  That was a relief, to be honest. At least now we knew Sophie MacNeil hadn’t ended up in Gordon Smith’s private graveyard.

  ‘They know why she did it?’

  ‘Oh yeah. She left this reeeeeeealy long, rambling suicide note. There’s a copy in the file. You want me to read it out to you?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  Alice did an about-face, nearly crashed into the jagged crown of an un-pruned rose tree, and staggered back towards the car. Moving like she was on the deck of a rolling ship.

  ‘It’s all boy trouble, and not wanting to be pregnant again, and not being able to cope, and everything being so hard. Six pages of it.’ Slurp. ‘Looks like it’s been written by a drunken spider too.’

  It took Alice three goes to get the door open and collapse into the passenger seat. She pulled her chin in, grinned, then let free with a diaphragm-rattling burp. ‘Par … Pardon … me.’

>   ‘Thanks, Rhona.’

  ‘Nah, no trouble. I was twiddling my thumbs here anyway. The joys of nightshift.’

  There was some fumbling with the seatbelt.

  ‘Ooh, you hear about the post mortem? Your physical evidence guru, AKA: the Pinstriped Prick, says Lewis Talbot was strangled with some sort of silk rope. Maybe a curtain tie, or something from a soft-porn bondage starter set. Don’t know about you, but that sounds like an evolving pattern, to me. He’s getting more sophisticated.’ Slurp, slurp, slurp.

  ‘What on earth are you eating?’

  ‘Bombay Bad Boy, Pot Noodle, nightshift lunch of champions.’ An extra-long slurp for effect.

  ‘You’re disgusting.’

  A laugh, then she hung up, and I slipped the phone back into my pocket.

  Turned to look at the wobbly wreck in the passenger seat, still fighting with the seatbelt.

  I took the end off her and clicked it home in the buckle. ‘You planning on throwing up at some point?’

  Alice stuck two thumbs up.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  My life just kept getting better and better and better …

  7

  Rasping snores perfumed the air with garlic, wine and the sour taint of vomit, as I placed the washing-up bowl on the floor beside Alice’s bed and tucked her in. Then ruffled the fur between Henry’s ears. ‘You look after our stinky drunkard, OK?’

  He stared back at me with his shiny button eyes, then lowered his head onto her ankles again, curled up on the floral-print duvet.

  I clicked the light off. Took one last look.

  OK, so she probably wasn’t going to throw up again. Because, let’s face it, there couldn’t be much left to throw up. Two bottles of wine, plus the large glass of red she’d had while we were waiting for our starters, plus the three brandies she’d downed instead of dessert, and half of Shifty’s rum-and-Coke when he wasn’t looking. No wonder she’d spent the last half hour evicting everything she’d eaten since breakfast.

  Silly sod.

  Could it really be nine years? Nine years of trying to keep her safe, while we went after murdering arseholes. Nine years of watching her drink herself to death, and clearing up after her. Nine years of violence and killers and pain and horror …