The Coffinmaker's Garden

by Stuart MacBride

  Even after everything we’d been through.

  Couldn’t help smiling. ‘You’ll have me welling up in a minute.’ The flats gave way to unconverted warehouses and rat-infested alleyways. ‘Actually, speaking of best friends, any chance you can give me a lift out to Clachmara?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake …’

  The pool car rocked on its springs as we crested the hill and looked down on what was left of Clachmara. About another twenty foot of headland had disappeared, swallowed by the North Sea. Waves smashed against what was left, sending up massive spumes of white that were slammed away by the howling wind.

  Half of Gordon Smith’s house had gone, the roof caved in on most of what was left.

  No rain this time, instead we were greeted by blue skies and churning grey sea. Crumbling yellow-green gardens. The houses looking every bit as depressing in daylight as they had last night. The road was a lot busier, though.

  That manky Mobile Incident Unit had been shifted back a couple of houses – now a large white van sat in front of it, while little figures in high-viz outfits and hardhats struggled a new line of temporary fencing into place. Dragging segments from the back of a dirty-big flatbed truck. Looked as if Helen MacNeil’s place was no longer considered safe. She’d love that. Wonder what poor sod had to break the news?

  The caravan that’d sat on the drive had followed the MIU inland. Now it sat in the driveway of a boarded-up house, two doors down. Well, where else was she going to go?

  This side of the Mobile Incident Unit, a couple of patrol cars were parked sideways across the road, holding back a knot of four-by-fours and hatchbacks. The familiar cluster of outside broadcast vans had relocated here from Divisional Headquarters, ready to give Clachmara its miserable turn in the spotlight.

  ‘Wow …’ Shifty peered out at the crumbling village and shook his head, setting his jowls wobbling. ‘What a shitehole.’ Weaving the pool car through the minefield of potholes. ‘And you were in that last night?’ Pointing through the windscreen at the remains of Gordon Smith’s house. ‘You’re dafter than you look. And that’s saying something.’

  He took us past the outside broadcast vans, the four-by-fours, and hatchbacks – where telephoto lenses were jabbed out through hastily opened windows in our direction – and up to the patrol-car barrier. Flashed his warrant card at the PC behind the wheel of the nearest one, and hooked a thumb off to the side.

  A nod, and the Constable reversed far enough to let us squeeze through.

  ‘Don’t say I’m never good to you.’ Shifty pulled up behind the Mobile Incident Unit.

  Would’ve thought all that rain last night might have scrubbed it clean, but the thing was even mankier today – its white walls stained a dirty beige.

  ‘Thanks, Shifty.’ I unclipped my seatbelt, grabbed my walking stick.

  ‘Hoy, Ash!’ He leaned across the car as I shoved my way out into the wind. ‘You’ll have to speak to Alice at some point. Might as well put on your big boy pants and do it sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Bye, Shifty.’ Let the wind slam the car door for me. Staggered over to the kerb as he turned the fusty Vauxhall round and headed back towards town.

  Right, time to get out of this howling-bastard gale. Every single window in the MIU was steamed up, but the door wouldn’t budge. Thumping the handle up and down didn’t help either. So I hammered on the door with the head of my walking stick. ‘OPEN UP, YOU LAZY BUNCH OF SODS!’

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’ It was the patrol car’s driver – the one who’d reversed out of the way – clasping his peaked cap to his head, leaning into the gusts, high-viz vest snapping and crackling against his stabproof. ‘Sorry, sir, but they’re not in there.’ Pointing across the road with his free hand, towards a cheerless bungalow. ‘Said the wind was making it impossible to get anything done.’

  Course it was.

  Mildew filled the gloomy living room with its ancient eldritch scent, fighting against whatever horrible aftershave DC Watt splashed on all over this morning. Mother’s team had kitted the place out with two whiteboards – propped against the peeling wallpaper – and a TV on a stand. They’d even brought in the handful of cheap office chairs that came free with the Mobile Incident Unit, and a solitary Formica desk. Three ancient laptops grumbled away on top: screens glowing, fans whirring. Other than that, the room was empty. Even the carpet was gone, leaving behind an expanse of grubby floorboards that creaked and groaned beneath my feet. The houses on this street must’ve been built from the same set of plans, because a rectangle of solid wood sat in the middle of the floor: a trapdoor down to the basement.

  Wonder if anyone had thought to check it for bodies yet?

  Mother fiddled with a remote control, frowning as she jabbed it at the black TV screen. Getting nothing back for her efforts. ‘Work, you horrible piece of nonsense …’

  I cleared my throat and she turned.

  Favoured me with a not-quite-smile. ‘Ash. Detective Superintendent Jacobson said you might be joining us for a while. Are you any good with TVs?’

  A snort from Watt as he stuck an A3 printout to the wall with a handful of thumbtacks. ‘Laying low, is what I heard. And I don’t see why we need some civilian screwing up our investigation.’

  ‘You know John, of course,’ pointing her remote at the weaselly pube-bearded git, ‘and this is DS Dorothy Hodgkin.’

  A middle-aged woman in a wheelchair gave me a cheery wave. Black leather jacket on over a thick red shirt, blue jeans rolled up and pinned where her legs came to an abrupt halt – not much above the knee. Long brown hair coiling down either side of a round face. Big grin. ‘But you can call me “Dotty”.’

  ‘Ash.’

  Watt stepped back to admire his handiwork. ‘There we go.’

  It was a photograph – head and shoulders of a man with a wide easy smile, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that looked as if he’d done a lot of laughing over the last six or seven decades. Grey hair, just about clinging to the fringes of a high forehead, eyebrows that sprouted outwards in curling tufts. A neatly trimmed Santa beard.

  Watt produced a pen and printed, ‘GORDON SMITH (75)’ across the bottom of the picture.

  Mother nodded. ‘Very good, John.’

  ‘Got it from the theatre – it’s in the programme for that Sherlock Holmes panto.’ He stuck another printout next to it: an old-fashioned boxy grey Mercedes. Watt had added a mock-up of Smith’s number plate underneath the photograph, along with the car’s make and model details.

  ‘Well done. Very thorough. Now, I think we should …’ Light bloomed in the gloomy room as the bare bulb above our heads stuttered into life.

  Call Me Dotty punched the air. ‘Yes!’

  A woman peered in through the living room door – tall, with broad shoulders and a long rectangular face; strawberry blonde hair down past her shoulders, that somehow managed to look expertly styled, even though it was blowing a force nine outside. Striking blue-green eyes, twinkling as she mugged a huge grin. Dark, fitted suit. Soft Invernesian accent. ‘Talked the electricity board into plugging us back in again.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Dotty spun her wheelchair around. ‘Any chance of a cuppa, then? I’m gasping.’

  Mother brought the remote to bear again. ‘Ash, this is Detective Constable Elliot. Amanda, and everyone else, this is ex-Detective Inspector Ash Henderson from the Lateral Investigative and Review Unit.’ Giving Watt a pointed look. ‘Mr Henderson has worked on a lot of serial killer investigations. He’s going to be joining the team for a while, as a consultant.’

  DC Elliot held her hand out for shaking. Had a grip on her that could crush a concrete bollard. ‘Mr Henderson. Mother told me all about your trip into Gordon Smith’s basement. That took some guts!’

  Gritted my teeth. ‘Any chance I can have my fingers back in one piece …?’ It was as if she’d wrapped each of my knuckles in the heating-element-wire from a toaster and set it to eleven.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ Pink rushin
g up her neck, setting her pale cheeks glowing.

  I stuffed the crushed paw under my armpit. ‘Arthritis.’

  ‘God, I’m such a klutz.’

  Mother handed her a mug with ‘WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE INSPECTOR’ on it. ‘Amanda, if you’re making, I’d love a coffee, and I’m sure Mr Henderson would like one too.’

  ‘Yes, right. Coffee.’ She turned and marched from the room, thumping the door closed behind her.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse DC Elliot, Ash, she doesn’t know her own strength sometimes.’ Mother jabbed the remote at the blank TV again. Slumped. Held it out in my direction. ‘Don’t suppose you know anything about these things, do you?’

  With the curtains shut, the room was plunged into darkness, the only light coming from the TV screen as everyone perched on their plastic chairs, staring as what I’d recorded in Gordon Smith’s basement played out in all its shaky horrible glory. Yet again.

  Alice’s voice crackled out of the TV’s speaker: ‘What the hell is this place?’

  The picture swam into a gloomy sea of grey-black pixels, then back to the light again as a string of Polaroids came into focus, the colours blown out by the glow from Alice’s phone. Taking in one torture scene after another.

  ‘Ash?’

  My voice sounded weird. Higher than normal, a little shaky. ‘It’s a kill room.’

  ‘Oh God. Ash, they’re—’

  A muffled rumble and the Polaroids shook, faded out of focus into a grainy scrabble of blacks and greys. Henry’s barks stabbed out like gunshots and the screen went dark.

  The distorted double-echo of my phone recording its own generic ringtone.

  ‘Hello?’

  Mother shifted in her seat, grimacing as a tinny version of her own voice burst into the room. ‘GET OUT OF THERE NOW! THE HEADLAND’S GOING!’

  Then it all became a confused smear of barely visible shapes rushing across the screen.

  Me: ‘Quick! Outside!’

  Alice: ‘No, no, no, no, no …’ The screen darkened as she ran away, taking the light with her.

  ‘ASH, DID YOU HEAR ME? GET OUT OF THERE!’

  A hissing click, and the picture changed to a solid blue with ‘HDMI1’ in the top left corner.

  Mother poked the remote and turned the TV off, plunging the room into darkness. ‘Comments? Questions? Suggestions?’

  ‘Leah MacNeil is dead, isn’t she?’ DC Elliot got up and hauled back the curtains, sending up a whoomph of dust – it glowed in the sunlight that spilled through the grubby glass.

  A sniff from Watt. ‘Of course she’s dead. She disappears, Friday the ninth, Gordon Smith waltzes off into the wild-blue-yonder one week later. Whatever’s left of her will have washed out to sea by now.’

  ‘It’s all a disaster …’ Mother levered herself out of her seat and slumped over to the window. Shoulders hunched as she stared out, across the road at Helen MacNeil’s caravan. Then turned to face the new line of fencing, separating the world from what was left of Smith’s house. ‘There’s bodies over there. Evidence. And we can’t get anywhere near it.’

  ‘Well, how about this?’ Dotty wheeled herself over to join Mother. Craning her neck to look over the sill. ‘They won’t let us put an SOC team in Gordon Smith’s garden, in case the whole thing gets washed away, so what if there was some way to have SOC officers in there, but keep them safe too?’

  Another sniff. ‘No way anyone would be daft enough to take that risk.’ Watt stood, one hand straying to that bald scarred patch at the back of his head. ‘Even if you managed to come up with a solution, by the time you’d done a risk assessment, got volunteers organised, set everything up, and put them to work, the garden would be gone.’

  ‘Well, that’s hardly the attitude, is it?’

  ‘All I’m saying is: it’s not doable. You couldn’t follow any evidentiary procedures at all, there wouldn’t be time. Best case scenario: they leap over there, dig like crazy and drag back everything they can before disaster strikes. How’s that going to stand up in court?’

  ‘What if …’ Dotty squeaked her chair from side to side. ‘We could get everyone a harness and someone holds onto the other end, ready to pull them back if something happens?’

  That got her a laugh. ‘And if you’re too slow? They die. No one’s going to let you do that.’

  ‘OK, well, what if we got, like, a big crane?’ She stuck her arm out, palm down, fingers dangling as she mimed it. ‘You could lower a bunch of people suspended from a frame, so if the ground goes, they can’t fall anywhere.’

  ‘It’s blowing a gale out there! Might as well make a wind chime out of their battered bleeding corpses.’

  He was a prick, but he had a point.

  Mother raised an eyebrow in my direction. ‘I notice you’re keeping very quiet.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Ooh!’ Dotty dumped her mimed crane. ‘If we can’t get anyone to go into the basement, how about we use a drone instead?’

  Watt covered his face with a hand, speaking with the slow clear deliberation of someone explaining why you don’t stick fireworks up your brother’s bum to a particularly thick four-year-old. ‘It’s – too – windy.’

  ‘Oh.’ She stuck her nose in the air. ‘At least I’m trying!’

  DC Elliot shrugged. ‘Sorry, I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘So, that’s it: we’re doomed,’ Mother sagged back against the windowsill. ‘Without the remains, how are we supposed to identify Smith’s victims?’

  Ah well. Suppose I might as well play nice.

  ‘Actually,’ my empty coffee cup clunked down on the desk, ‘I might know someone who can help you with that …’

  14

  Sabir made a sound like a deflating beach ball. ‘Yer not asking much, are yez?’

  I leaned against the wall and shrugged. ‘Well, if you think it’s too difficult …?’

  The master bedroom had been stripped bare, like the lounge, but this time they’d even taken the curtains. A large brown stain reached out from the far corner, across the ceiling, spreading down the wall, and finishing up in a patch of twisted floorboards – blackened with mould.

  ‘You see, I’ve been telling everyone what a computer genius you are, but if you think this one’s too hard for you, I completely understand.’

  ‘Ash, yer a total—’

  ‘Won’t make me think any less of you, if this is way beyond your skill level.’

  Outside, the TV crews were getting ready for the lunchtime bulletins. Reporters bracing themselves against the battering wind, scarves and hair flying out like an eighties rock video. Cameramen lurching about as they tried to frame their microphone-wielding idiot, Gordon Smith’s house, the headland, and the Mobile Incident Unit, all in the one shot. While at the same time cutting every other channel’s camera crew from the scene.

  ‘Is this reverse-psychology bullshit supposed to werk on me, like? Cos if it is, I’ve got some bad news for yez.’

  ‘Come on, Sabir! It’ll only take you a couple of minutes. And I can give you a cost code too.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘All I want you to do is run the Polaroids in the footage against every misper database in the UK, going back fifty-six years. Piece of cake.’

  A sharp intake of breath. ‘Fifty-six years? Are you off your haggis-munching—’

  ‘No, you’re right, Sabir, better make it sixty.’

  ‘Yez never said nothing about fifty-six years! Half the bloody records probably ain’t even been digitised, never mind put online. Yez’re off yer head if you think—’

  ‘Unless, of course, it’s beyond even your immense talents?’

  Silence.

  The BBC lot were getting into a stushie with the Channel 4 brigade: the reporters banging their chests together like elephant seals while the camera crew tried to look the other way.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘All right, all right. I can run the ferst set, but you’ve got bugger-all chance with the second. No way
you’ll get an image match with people bein’ tortured. Facial recognition’s good, but there’s limits.’

  ‘Couldn’t you clean them up? Digitally alter them so they look normal?’

  ‘Oh yeah, and then I’ll climb aboard me flying unicorn and go—’

  ‘Look, if you can’t—’

  ‘This isn’t CSI Oldcastle! I can only do what’s actually bloody possible in the real werld. And you better gerra cost code for me, Ash, cos if you don’t—’

  ‘Thanks, Sabir, you’re a star.’ Then hung up, before he could change his mind. According to my phone, there were eight missed calls from ‘DR MCFRUITLOOP’ and about a dozen text messages. Well tough, Alice could bloody well stew.

  Back in the living room, the curtains were shut again, that lonely lightbulb casting hard shadows on the bare walls. DC Elliot was fishing about inside a big lumpy printer, scowling at the mechanisms as she poked. Swearing under her breath while Watt pinned up a blurry still from the video I’d taken in Gordon Smith’s basement. It was the young man in the beer garden, toasting whoever was taking the picture. Smith, presumably. Or his wife.

  Maybe they took turns picking victims and killing them?

  The photo was one of three – the young woman on one leg, and the other young woman on the beach.

  ‘Where’s DI Malcolmson?’

  ‘Hmmm?’ Elliot looked up from her rummaging. ‘Sorry, yes: she’s off shouting at someone, I think.’

  Watt stepped back to admire his handiwork. ‘Some moron from the Glasgow Tribune tried to sneak through the fence. Have you still not got that printer working, Amanda?’

  ‘It’s not my fault it jams on every other page, is it?’ She hauled a crumpled sheet of ink-smeared paper from the machine’s innards, and clunked the lid shut again. ‘Try it now.’

  I left them to it.

  Headed down the hall and out the front door.

  Mother stood in the garden, curly ginger hair whipping around her head in the wind, throwing her arms about while a young man in an ill-fitting suit withered before her.