The Coffinmaker's Garden

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘How much?’ Jacobson sounded as if I’d just stabbed him.

  ‘Eight. Well, eight to ten.’ I shifted the phone to the other ear as the pool car thrummmm-thump-thrummmm-thump-thrummmm-thumped its way across the Tay Road Bridge. The river sparkled in the sunlight, a massive slab of slate grey, scarred by the passage of an RNLI lifeboat. A handful of Jackup rigs reaching their latticework ladders into a dull-blue sky.

  ‘Thousand pounds?’

  ‘No, jelly babies.’

  A smile played at the edge of Franklin’s mouth, but she kept her face front, following a wee sandwich van with ‘BINGO BRENDA’S BAPS, BUTTERIES, & BRIDIES!’ on it, at a stately fifty miles per hour.

  ‘I don’t think you’re in any position to be sarcastic, do you?’

  ‘Kenny Dewar is adamant Steven Kirk isn’t our boy. He was doing something else at the time. Something that breaches his Sexual Risk Order.’

  ‘Ten thousand pounds! Do you have any idea what that’ll do to my budget?’

  ‘Kirk’s not going to make something like that up, is he? Well, maybe to get away with abduction and murder …’

  ‘How can you not take this seriously?’

  Thrummmm-thump-thrummmm-thump-thrummmm-thump.

  ‘Look, it happened, and I’m sorry, but it happened.’ I sagged back in my seat. ‘Kirk weaselled his way into Saint Damon’s, got himself a nice little volunteer job where he could slither up to Mary Brennan. It all kind of … happened.’

  ‘Thought you said you went for him because he attacked Alice?’

  ‘That happened after.’ Almost. From my slouched position, the road behind us was dead centre in the rear-view mirror. A wee open-topped sports car, driven by a wrinkly old lady with wild grey hair. A dumpy Mini the colour of dung. A dull-yellow Volkswagen Golf clarted in rust. And behind them the grey swathe of Dundee as it faded into the distance behind us.

  Say what you like about the place, at least it was trying – with its V&A museum and redevelopment and infrastructure plan. More than Oldcastle was doing.

  ‘Ash?’

  Oh, right. Jacobson.

  ‘Look, we’ve got personal liability insurance, haven’t we? Use that.’

  Silence from the other end of the phone.

  Thrummmm-thump-thrummmm-thump-thrummmm-thump.

  Then, ‘How do you manage to be the biggest ache in my rectum, Ash? You’re in a team with Professor Bernard Huntly, for God’s sake, you shouldn’t even come close!’

  ‘And see if you can chase up Sabir, eh? He’s had his eight hours – about time he produced the goods and got us some IDs.’

  ‘The ice is thin, Ash, and you’re skating very, very heavily.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I hung up and put my phone away. ‘I know.’

  Franklin held up her printout of the young woman standing on one leg, then shuffled around until the real-life bandstand lined up with the one in the photograph. In the picture, a blob of pink flowers and a wavy line of red and yellow ones punctuated the grass, but here, in the middle of November, Haugh Park was all faded yellows and browns. No leaves on the trees.

  She nodded. ‘Definitely the same place.’

  Sabir was good for something, then.

  We wandered back up the path, Henry having a good sniff at everything, past some sort of memorial statue, and stopped at the roundabout.

  ‘What now?’ Franklin pointed left, where the road curved past a big sandstone lump of a building. ‘Police station’s that way. Go have a dig through their missing persons’ database?’

  ‘Would be sensible.’ I limped across to the other side of the roundabout, Henry trotting along at my side, tail up and waving. Making for Cupar town centre. ‘So, you nip off and do that.’

  She hurried after me, rolled her eyes. ‘Come on then, out with it.’

  ‘Nothing at all. It’s the sensible thing to do. Like I said.’

  ‘And what will you be doing, while I’m digging through fifty-six years’ worth of misper records?’

  ‘The cops aren’t the only ones who keep tabs on missing people.’

  ‘Ash Henderson, I thought you were dead!’ Vera Abbot held her arms wide for a hug. A spattering of stains marred the front of her flouncy paisley-patterned blouse, dog hairs on the legs of her baggy red trousers, a pair of knee-high boots that probably hadn’t seen a lick of shoe polish since she’d bought them some time in the eighties. The long brown hair was gone, instead it was a short-back-and-sides in shades of grey and white, making her ears stick out even more than normal, dangly gold earrings hanging from the lobes. Dark eyes and a slightly ratty smile, emphasised by the collection of creases and laughter lines.

  Up close she exuded the mismatched scents of sharp Olbas Oil and stale cigarettes, as she planted a ‘mmmwah’ on both my cheeks.

  Then stepped back to give me a proper once-over. ‘You’re far too thin. How’s Michelle? Or are you still seeing that stripper, Susie?’

  ‘Susanne, and no.’

  ‘Oh, too bad. I know how middle-aged men like you put great store in boinking a twenty-four-year-old.’

  Vera’s office was a sea of paperwork: shelves on the walls, groaning with stacks and stacks of it, file boxes lining the room – three deep and four high in places. A drift of printouts and newspaper cuttings buried her desk. More on the windowsills, blocking off the bottom half of a view out over the Crossgate to the Chinese restaurant opposite.

  She bent double, patting her hands on her knees, and beamed at Henry. ‘And who’s this handsome wee lad?’

  ‘My sidekick. Police Scotland just can’t get the staff any more.’

  ‘True.’ Vera thumped back into her office chair, setting it rocking on groaning springs. ‘Tea?’ Dipping into a desk drawer and coming out with a bottle of Glenfiddich. ‘Or something stronger, perhaps?’

  I cleared a stack of newspapers off the room’s only other chair and eased myself into it. ‘Can’t: pills. And it’s not even ten o’clock, yet.’

  ‘True, shouldn’t be a cliché, should we?’ She popped the whisky back in her desk. Then took a deep breath. ‘SANDY! TWO TEAS! AND NIP DOWN THE BAKER’S FOR A COUPLE OF SAUSAGE BUTTIES!’ Vera winked at Henry. ‘AND AN EXTRA SAUSAGE!’

  A loud teenager groan rattled out from somewhere down the hall, followed by a grudging, ‘All right, all right …’ and a door thunking shut.

  ‘The joy of interns.’ Vera creaked her seat from side to side, smiling at me like a deranged squirrel. ‘Now, I’m guessing you didn’t come here to chat about the good old days, and it’s too early for a booty call, so what can the Fife Daily Examiner do for you? Is this about those murdered little boys? Saw another one went missing yester—’

  ‘You still keep that big file full of missing persons?’

  Her eyes widened at me, eyebrows going up. ‘You have piqued my interest, Mr Henderson. And would there be an exclusive in it for me?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘You know what the other really lovely thing about interns is? You can get them to do all sorts and call it work experience.’ Vera gave a wee nonchalant shrug. ‘Like digitising the entire archive. Fancy a wee squint?’

  Damn right I did.

  22

  I polished off the last mouthful of sausage butty and washed it down with milky tea as a young man in a tartan shirt and polka-dot tie poked at the keyboard on a shiny new laptop. It looked as if he’d modelled his haircut on Vera’s, only with a vaguely obscene quiff. Peering through small round glasses at the array of black-and-white images on his screen. An accent so Fife you could’ve designed rollercoasters with it – up and down and up and down and up again. ‘See, the real trick is getting the metadata right when you’re putting the stuff into the database in the first place.’

  Vera leaned back against an overflowing filing cabinet in what passed for the Fife Daily Examiner’s newsroom – barely big enough to fit in yet more towers of file boxes, an old dining table, and four wooden chairs. ‘You still haven’t said why we’re lookin
g for this woman, Ash.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’

  The young man poked at the keyboard some more. ‘Right, so if we eliminate anyone from the last fifteen years, male, blonde, or over thirty …’ The images refreshed on his screen, narrowing down the field. ‘Then we cut off anything more than sixty years ago …’ They changed again. ‘And that gives us fifty-six possibles.’ He looked up at me with a wee swaggery wobble to his head. ‘You want me to flick through them?’

  No, I was standing here for the good of my health.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Right.’ A woman’s face filled the screen – too old to be standing on one leg and with completely the wrong shape of nose. ‘Well?’

  ‘Keep going, I’ll tell you when to stop.’

  Face after face clicked past, each one staying there for no more than a couple of seconds, their names flashing up underneath the pictures. A list of info down the side: names, dates, all that kind of stuff. Some were professional photo-studio jobs, others were more informal, some blurry and grainy, some done down the local nick with a height chart in the background, some wedding pics, and some were those cheesy end-of-year ones they used to do in secondary schools.

  ‘Stop!’ I leaned in. ‘Go back a couple.’

  He did.

  And there she was: Julia Kennedy. Fifteen years old – definitely younger than she looked – grinning out at us in front of a mottled background. Blue blazer with the school crest on the breast pocket, white shirt, blue tie with yellow-and-red diagonal stripes, straight skirt. A butterfly hairgrip, holding her side parting in place. Missing for the last thirty-five years.

  Took some doing, but I kept my face as still as possible. As if it didn’t really matter one way or another that we’d found her.

  The printer in the corner creaked and whirred into life, chugging out three or four sheets of A4.

  Vera wheeched them out of the tray. Pursed her lips as she frowned at them. ‘I remember this one: her mother was in absolute bits for years. DI Dickie fancied the stepdad for it, kept waiting for Julia’s remains to turn up, but they never did.’ A grey eyebrow waggled at me. ‘Until now? Is that why you’re here, you’ve found her body?’

  ‘Nope. We found her photo and wanted to know who she was.’ I held my hand out and, eventually, Vera handed the printouts over. ‘You know what investigations are like these days: every stupid little thing has to be followed up.’

  ‘Because if you’ve found her body and you’re not telling me, I’d—’

  ‘We haven’t found her body.’ Which was true. ‘And I promise if anything comes up, I’ll let you know.’ The folded sheets went in my pocket. ‘In the meantime, do me a favour and stay away from the family. No point getting their hopes up for nothing.’

  Vera narrowed her eyes and squinted at me for a while in silence. Then nodded. ‘Deal. But you better not stiff me, Ash Henderson.’

  ‘Would I?’

  ‘Yes, you bloody well would!’

  ‘Don’t know why you’re glowering at me. I IDed our victim, didn’t I?’ I pushed my seat back, reclining it and stretching out my right leg. Trying to work the crackling knots out of the tortured ankle as Franklin scowled her way along the M8.

  Her suit might have started the day a smart shade of black, but it’d developed an off-grey patina, spotted with the occasional clump of fluff. ‘I was digging through those bloody boxes for ages, while you were swanning about having sausage butties and cups of tea!’

  ‘Well, one of us had to take the official route, didn’t they? Besides, we got a result – that’s all that matters.’ Trying to rub some life back into my calf.

  That was the trouble with a walking stick. It was good for belting people with, but after a while the whole ‘hobbling about’ thing set every other muscle in my body squint and aching.

  ‘Hmmph!’

  ‘Look, if I buy you a sausage butty when we get to Glasgow, will that cheer you up?’ Reclining my seat even further, till I could see the motorway behind us in the rear-view mirror. ‘Getting to be a bit of a habit.’

  ‘Oh ha-ha.’

  Yup – it was definitely still there. ‘Can you see what I see?’

  ‘I’m not playing I Spy with you.’

  ‘No, you twit. Three cars back: Rusty VW Golf.’

  ‘Yellow?’

  ‘Been following us since we left Cupar.’

  Franklin shrugged. ‘So what? Lots of people drive to Glasgow. Even Fifers.’

  ‘It followed us across the Tay Road Bridge, too.’

  She pulled herself closer to the mirror, squinting at it. ‘Can’t see the number plate … Journalists?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Or maybe not.

  ‘Want me to lose them?’ Tightening her grip on the steering wheel. No doubt looking forward to another go at ‘FIVE DEAD IN MOTORWAY PILEUP HORROR’.

  ‘Nah. Let’s see if we can’t front them up when we get to Glasgow.’

  Franklin’s shoulders dipped an inch and she loosened her grip. ‘Suppose …’

  Yeah, I was no fun.

  We stood in the shadow of the Nelson Monument – a stubby dirty Cleopatra’s needle that didn’t provide nearly enough shelter from the wind whipping in up the Clyde. Bringing with it the peppery-ozone scent of impending snow.

  Detective Chief Inspector McManus nodded her head towards the squat glazed bulk of the People’s Palace – a silvered jellyfish, washed up in the middle distance – then held up the printout in a gloved hand. She had a large, powerful frame; hair scraped back from a high forehead; small piercing eyes. Voice trying hard to lose the tenement twang and almost succeeding. ‘That’s it there, just visible between the carousel horses.’

  Sabir and his magic algorithms strike again.

  ‘Any idea who they are?’

  Something chugged by on the river behind us, accompanied by the faint bmmtssshhh-bmmtssshhh-bmmtssshhh of dance music played too loud on cheap speakers.

  I turned, but McManus was staring off in the opposite direction. Watching as Franklin and Henry wandered through a double avenue of trees, the wee lad’s nose down and tail up. ‘She’s very pretty.’

  ‘She’s a he. Scottie dog.’

  That got me a withering look. ‘Not the terrier, the Detective Sergeant.’

  ‘Oh, you soon get over that if you have to spend any time with her.’ I poked the printout in McManus’s hand. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Hmm?’ McManus dragged herself back to the photo: a man and a woman, waving at the camera as their carousel horses galloped by. He had sideburns and a leather waistcoat, one of those flouncy ceilidh shirts unlaced far enough to expose a ‘V’ of pelt-covered chest, shoulder-length brown hair bouncing out behind him. Maybe mid-twenties. The woman was a good five or six years younger, mousy-blonde hair in a bulbous bob, wide white smile stretching her happy round face. Long, floaty, floral-print dress, ridden up at the side showing a flash of pale thigh. ‘No idea.’

  McManus lowered the printout. ‘One of our history buffs managed to date the picture, though. Going by the fairground, the positioning of the stalls, and the terrible fashion sense, this was taken forty-two years ago, sometime between the fifteenth and twenty-first of April. Circus was in town. I’ve got people going through the archives for all missing person reports within a three-month window.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ I leaned back against the monument, ‘stacks and stacks of dusty boxes?’

  ‘It’s like that scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And every time I even suggest getting everything digitised?’

  ‘Budget cutbacks?’

  ‘Can barely afford to police the streets as it is.’

  ‘You should get yourself some interns.’

  Franklin and Henry made one more pass around the trees and headed back towards us.

  McManus stared at them, a slightly droopy wistful look on her face. ‘Course, there’s no guarantee they were even reported missing here. People come on holiday to Glasgow all the time. Could’ve been from a
nywhere.’

  True.

  I dug my hands deeper into my pockets. ‘You want some unsolicited advice?’

  ‘Not really.’ Curling her lip.

  ‘The last senior officer who perved on DS Franklin ended up with a broken nose. Ask E Division.’

  ‘I do like a challenge …’ McManus returned the printout. ‘Where you off to next?’

  ‘Bute. Smith photographed his brother and a young woman on a putting course.’

  ‘Oh, shame.’ Clearing her throat as Franklin and Henry got closer. ‘I could’ve come with you. You know … to help facilitate access and interdivisional cooperation with local resources, but that’s K Division’s patch.’

  Aye, and there were no prizes for guessing whose inter-divisional cooperation Detective Chief Inspector McManus was trying to access. Standing up straighter and smiling as Franklin finally arrived with the wee hairy boy.

  No prizes at all.

  The pool car passed under a raised walkway, and the landscape opened out to the right – the wide River Clyde a choppy blue smear with hills and mountains disappearing into the lowering sky on the other side – while we roared along the dual carriageway.

  ‘Tell you, it’s an absolute nightmare.’ Rhona gave a disgusted grunt. ‘Soon as Toby Macmillan was reported missing: total media feeding frenzy. “Is missing five-year-old the latest Oldcastle Child-Strangler victim?” Second editions are all “picture exclusive, pages four to nine”, and opinion pieces from every mouth-breathing halfwit who ever wanked into a sock. Shifty looks like his head’s going to pop like an over-ripe pluke any second now. Doesn’t help that your wee friend’s hungover as hell. Been sick three times already this morning.’

  ‘Do me a favour and keep an eye on Alice, OK?’

  Rhona groaned. Then, ‘OK, OK. But if she pukes all over me, you’re for it.’

  Franklin overtook a big green articulated lorry with the ScotiaBrand Tasty Chickens logo down the side, and, ‘ONLY A CLUCKING IDIOT WOULDN’T LOVE SCOTIABRAND CHICKEN MACSPORRANS!’ Someone had finger-painted, ‘VEGAN REVOLUTIONARY ARMY!!!’ and ‘MEAT IS MURDER!!!’ underneath, in the grime.