The Coffinmaker's Garden

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘Oh, to be a wee kid again …’

  ‘Answer the bloody question! What – are – you – doing – here?’

  The Mondeo’s roof was cold beneath my shirt sleeves. ‘I’m not allowed to go out and do official police things, today. Apparently I’d scare the natives, what with all the bruises. So I’m off to search Gordon Smith’s brother’s farm.’

  ‘We should be rattling people’s teeth! Some bastard knows where he is.’

  ‘Course, N Division have already searched it, but if there’s one thing I learned from all my years on the force: never trust a police officer you can’t look in the eye or kick in the arse.’

  She banged her fist down on the car’s roof. ‘You’re not helping!’

  A pair of ravens scudded sideways across the car park, wings shuddering with the effort of holding on. A minibus grumbled up to the ski resort lodge, a gaggle of schoolgirls avalanching out of the doors soon as it came to a halt. Shouts and laughter whipped away by the wind.

  ‘This security van full of cash, art, and jewellery: how easy is it to get to? Assuming someone had to make themselves scarce before the police started sniffing around. Hypothetically speaking.’

  Helen turned and leaned back against the Mondeo. ‘So you are interested.’

  ‘Let’s pretend I am. How easy is this stuff going to be to shift?’

  ‘The thing about prison is you get to meet a lot of people who’re up to their ears in dodgy stuff. And it’s quality stuff.’

  The squealing horde battered into the lodge, out of the wind, leaving a ragged man in a corduroy jacket to lock up and follow them in. Leather patches on his elbows, so I’m guessing geography teacher.

  ‘Cash has to be clean. Nothing sketchy or traceable.’

  ‘Do I look like an amateur to you?’

  ‘And in case you’re in any way unclear on this: I’m not the forgiving kind when it comes to being screwed over.’

  She leaned in closer. ‘Neither am I.’

  Fair enough.

  Helen plipped the locks on her Renault, then marched around the Mondeo and got into the passenger seat.

  I opened the driver’s door and stuck my head in. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  She hauled on her seatbelt. ‘Why follow you all the way to the Black Isle, in my own car, when Police Scotland’s paying for your petrol?’

  Great. A passenger.

  I climbed in behind the wheel. ‘Radio doesn’t work.’

  Helen reached into her jacket and pulled out a business card. ‘Got you a souvenir from last night.’

  ‘J&F ~ FREELANCE CONSULTANTS.’ The bottom half of the card was stained with dark brown smears. Could’ve been Francis’s blood, but it was probably mine.

  ‘Why the hell would I want that.’ Tossing it back to her.

  She dipped into her jacket again, only this time it was Joseph’s cutthroat razor that appeared. ‘Thought you might want to give that mobile number a call.’ A flick of the wrist and the blade clacked out of the handle, shining and sharp. ‘You could set up a meeting. And make sure neither of them survives it.’

  Can’t say it wasn’t tempting …

  Sunshine washed across the patchwork of grey and brown on both sides of the single-track road, a sliver of the Cromarty Firth sparkling between the fields and the next set of hills. Land rising on the right of the car, speckled with more dead ragwort, and falling away on the left. Small jagged flashes of white marking the end gables of tiny farmhouses.

  Sky the colour of wet slate.

  Helen curled her top lip. ‘Why are we stopping?’

  ‘Because N Division should have someone watching the place, in case Gordon Smith decides to use it as a bolthole. And I kinda think whoever’s on guard duty will want to ask a load of questions about why I’ve got one of the victims’ mothers in my car.’

  She turned and scowled at the back seat and the drifts of litter in the footwell. ‘How big’s the boot?’

  Big enough.

  We both got out and she clambered into the Mondeo’s boot, lying on her side – knees drawn up to her chest.

  ‘Make yourself comfy, might be in there for a while.’

  ‘This better be worth it.’

  ‘Hey, you could’ve stayed at the Lecht, or headed back to Oldcastle. Cadging a lift was your idea, remember?’ I clunked the boot shut again, before she could say anything. Got back behind the wheel.

  Half a mile further on, a sign sat at the side of the road, the post knocked squint, the paint peeling, but the name was still visible: ‘WESTER BRAE OF KINBEACHIE FARM’ pointing to a rutted track with grass growing up the middle.

  Don’t know what Peter Smith had been complaining about: the fields on either side looked solid and well drained, without the usual bouquets of weeds and rushes. And then I got to the brow of the hill.

  Only it wasn’t really the top. The hill continued on up, but between here and there was a depression – like some vast rusty spoon had scooped out a hollow that stretched from left to right, leaving a smear of mist lying in the dip. It cast a veil over water-puddled fields thick with the pale-beige spines of dead reeds. A huge clump of gorse spread out from the edge of what looked like forestry commission pines. But while the pines were up on the lip of the crater, the heavy dark-green gorse reached way down into it, covering a good five or six acres. And right in the middle, where the sun probably never shone, sulked a farmhouse that would’ve fit right into a low-budget horror story. The corrugated roof was corroded and saggy, one wall bulging out around a cracked windowsill. It might have been white once, but now what little paint remained was flaking off, the colour of ancient bones. One storey of misery, with two dormer windows that made angry eyes on its miserable face. It sat, surrounded by a collection of farm buildings, some of which still had functional roofs. Just about.

  And no sign of a patrol car.

  Because, hey, we’re only trying to catch someone who’s been murdering people for fifty-six years, right? Why expend any bloody effort at all?

  I followed the track down into the mist, potholes making the Mondeo lurch no matter how hard I tried to steer around the damn things. Which wouldn’t be doing Helen many favours, stuck in the boot.

  A flat area sat at the track’s end – grass and weeds flattened in ragged circles that expanded and spawned tangents off to the house and every outbuilding. That would be the N Division search team, then.

  Going by the tracks they’d trampled, they’d been pretty thorough, but that was still no excuse for leaving the place unwatched. Unless they had someone lurking in one of the outbuildings?

  I pulled on the handbrake. ‘Stay here, and keep quiet. I’m going to check.’

  Nothing back from Helen.

  Good.

  Nice to know someone could do as they were told.

  I climbed out into the gloom.

  36

  Up on the ridge, those forestry commission pines shuddered in the wind, but down here it was still as a shallow grave. The bushes and trees undisturbed. My breath added to the fog, drifting away into the pale grey air. It was thicker down here that it’d looked coming down the hill, softening the edges and draining the colour out of everything.

  God it was bleak. No wonder Peter Smith abandoned the place.

  ‘Hello? Anyone here?’

  Silence. Not even an echo.

  ‘HELLO? POLICE!’

  Took out my phone and called Mother as I followed the track over to the miserable farmhouse. ‘I’m at Peter Smith’s farm – drove right in, not so much as a tape cordon. Highlands and Islands have left the place completely unprotected.’

  ‘Oh, in the name of …’ A pause. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No patrol car. And no answer when I shout, either.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Her voice went all muffled. ‘John? … John! Get in touch with N Division and ask, politely, why the hell they don’t have anyone watching Peter Smith’s farm.’

  All the way around the farmhouse, p
eering in through the windows. Looked as if no one had lived there in years – everything was covered in grime and mould. The door wasn’t even locked. It swung open with a push.

  Couldn’t smell anything, what with the wadding stuffed up my nostrils, but the air in here was ripe with the gritty bitter taste of mildew and mice.

  Unlike Gordon Smith’s house, the furniture hadn’t been gathered together into one big unlit bonfire. Instead it’d been abandoned to rot.

  Kitchen: empty. Living room: empty. Bathroom: empty. Storage room: empty.

  The stairs creaked and groaned as I climbed up to the narrow landing. Bookshelves lined the small recess opposite, the paperbacks all bloated and speckled.

  ‘Ash, you still there?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Door number one opened on a small grubby bedroom barely tall enough to stand up in: empty.

  ‘N Division say they haven’t got the resources to mount a twenty-four-hour watch on Peter Smith’s farm. Only they used slightly more colourful language than that and implied if we’d wanted such a thing we should’ve said so and paid for it.’

  The joys of modern policing.

  ‘Well, don’t look at me. Sooner I’m out of this hellhole the better.’

  Door number two opened on the mirror image of door number one: empty.

  So much for that.

  Back downstairs and out into the mist again. ‘Don’t think anyone’s been here since Peter Smith got done for murder.’

  ‘Well, have a look round then come back. We’ll find you something else to do, where no one’s going to see your battered face and run screaming for the hills.’

  ‘As my dear departed granny used to say: awa an’ boil yer heid.’ I hung up, went back to the Mondeo and popped the boot. ‘Might as well stretch your legs, there’s no one here.’

  Helen climbed out and turned on the spot, grimacing at the dilapidated buildings and crappy fields lurking in the mist. ‘Gordon used to tell me stories about coming up here as a wee boy. Summers spent digging ditches and fixing fences. Couldn’t stand the place.’

  No wonder, if his uncle was abusing him.

  I headed over to the nearest outbuilding – a cattle byre, going by the concrete floor and barred central walkway. Half the roof was crumpled on the ground, water dripping from the twisted sheeting.

  ‘So where’s this security van hidden?’

  She didn’t even look at me, just stepped through an open doorway, voice echoing against concrete walls. ‘Somewhere no one’s going to find it.’

  Ah well, it’d been worth a go.

  I followed her through into what looked as if it might have been a feed room at some point. The roof was all in one piece, though the metal rafters must’ve been used by generations of pigeons as a roosting spot, the floor beneath them streaked and spattered with mounds of droppings. Another load of guano speckling a long metal ladder, mounted sideways on hooks. Yet more crusting the upturned corpse of a long-dead wheelbarrow. ‘Did Gordon Smith ever mention anywhere else he went as a kid? Anywhere he might’ve felt safe?’

  ‘Caravan park near Oban. B-and-B in Carlisle. Some sort of old hotel near Pitlochry? Hated the lot of them.’

  Across a courtyard littered with rusting hulks of farm machinery. In through the open double doors to a steading with no roof left at all, and a big pile of broken sheets that may or not have been asbestos. ‘But the security van’s in Oldcastle?’

  ‘You’ll find out when I get my hands on the bastard who killed my Sophie.’

  ‘Because I’ve only got your word that you know where it is.’

  ‘Trust is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?’

  Back out into the mist – getting even thicker now, oozing around the grey buildings’ edges. As if it was searching for us.

  A big metal shed, three sides open to the gloomy air. Two ancient tractors that would probably be worth a few quid if they weren’t nearly solid rust, sagged on deflated crumbling tyres. Black plastic covered a crumpled pyramid of haylage that probably hadn’t seen the light of day for a decade.

  Three more buildings to go.

  The first one was a huge chicken shed, still full of the eye-watering spikey ammonia reek of hen piss, strong enough to stab its way through the packing in my nose. But now the shed was home to stacks and stacks of rubbish – bin bags, baling plastic, feed bags, plastic tubs … As if someone had found a nice safe place to fly-tip their commercial waste without having to pay any landfill charges.

  My phone did its buzz-ding thing. I left it in my pocket.

  ‘Is there anywhere else you can think of? Anywhere Gordon Smith might be hiding?’

  She stared at me. ‘If there was, why would I need you?’ She spat a gobbet of phlegm out onto one of the few clear patches of floor. Then stepped outside again. ‘And if you expect a cut of my six million, you’d—’

  A scream cut through the mist, high-pitched, young, and female. Coming from somewhere close.

  Helen’s eyes widened. She spun around. ‘LEAH? LEAH!’ Then charged off towards the biggest of the two remaining buildings: a barn with crumbling walls. ‘GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER, YOU BASTARD!’

  I lumbered after her.

  The barn was breeze-blocks for the bottom eight feet, above that it was all corrugated concrete panels topped by rusted metal roofing. The only door, on this side anyway, was one of those oversized metal sliding jobs – big enough to drive a tractor and bogey through.

  Helen grabbed the handle and hauled, grunting with the effort.

  I thumped my shoulder into the edge and shoved.

  Between the pair of us, we got the ancient runners squealing, the door juddering open inch by inch, until the gap was big enough to squeeze through: Helen first, then me.

  Inside, two thirds of the space was taken up with more fly-tipped agricultural rubbish, bags and baling plastic mounded nearly to the rafters. A chunk of the roof sheets had caved in, lying in a crumpled metal heap on the filthy concrete floor. Sickly yellow-green weeds growing up through the cracks. What looked like an inspection pit off to one side.

  And there, in the corner – between a smaller, human-sized door and a dilapidated tractor bogey – was a young woman. The bastard had tied her to a set of metal bars that poked out of the breeze-blocks, spreadeagled like a hunting trophy waiting to be skinned. Sobbing and thrashing against the dirty-brown rope that held her wrists and ankles. Grubby jeans, a stained hoodie open over a once-white T-shirt. The bright-violet hair had turned into out-of-a-bottle blonde, but it was definitely her.

  ‘LEAH!’ Helen sprinted.

  ‘GRANNY!’ Tears streaked her face, cheeks and nose hot pink. Every inch of her trembling. ‘OH GOD, GRANNY, HELP ME! HELP ME!’ Jagged, shrill, terrified.

  Helen skidded to a halt in front of her. ‘Where is he? Where’s the dead man that did this to you?’

  ‘YOU HAVE TO GET ME OUT OF HERE!’

  ‘Where – is – he?’

  Leah glanced towards the smaller door. ‘He … He didn’t … I’m so scared, Granny, I can’t—’

  ‘Shhh … It’s OK, baby, I swear. It’ll all be OK.’ She turned as I hobbled the last few yards. ‘You: get her out of here.’ Helen pulled the cutthroat razor from her pocket and tossed it to me. ‘I’m going after him.’ Then she kissed Leah on the cheek. ‘It’s OK, Ash is a friend. He’ll look after you.’ Then she was off, battering through the door and out into the mist again.

  Right.

  I pulled out the blade and grabbed the rope holding Leah’s left wrist to the nearest bar. The blocks’ pitted surfaces were stained with brown-black splotches and smears, lots more on the concrete floor at her feet. ‘Told you we’d find you.’

  Joseph’s cutthroat razor hissed through the old rope in four or five slices. Say this for the ugly, psychotic little git, he kept his weapons sharp.

  ‘Ash? Ash Henderson?’ Leah blinked at me, as if finally recognising me from the Edinburgh Christmas Market, then curled her now free hand against her chest. ‘I’ve been
so scared …’

  ‘I know, but it’s over now.’ The rope holding her right wrist parted even easier. ‘You’re going home. He can’t hurt you any more.’

  ‘There was so much blood …’

  My knees creaked as I winced my way down to tackle the rope around her right ankle. ‘We’re going to get you into—’

  ‘LOOK OUT!’

  A noise behind me, like a careful footstep on the gritty dusty floor.

  Sod.

  Before I could turn something thin and white flashed downwards in front of my eyes, then pulled tight around my throat, digging into the skin, burning, crushing. ‘Ulk …’

  Heat rushed up my neck and face, bringing with it the stings of a thousand angry wasps, pressure building behind my eyes. Fingers scrabbling at the plastic cable where it dug into my flesh.

  No air. No air. Can’t …

  I tried a reverse head-butt, but Gordon Smith’s face wasn’t there to slam into, and the cable buried itself deeper into my neck.

  He’d used Leah as bait, and I’d taken it.

  Stupid. Bloody. Idiot.

  Slammed my left heel backwards, but all I got was a grunt in return. Glancing blow. Not hard enough to break his shin.

  The barn went dim and dark at the edges, the middle filling with starbursts.

  A trap. And you fell for it.

  Darker.

  The razor.

  USE THE RAZOR!

  I brought it up, blade shining like neon – leaving a swirling trail behind it as it cut through the air – but fire seared through my wrist and the cutthroat disappeared from my numb fingers. Clatter, thump, scrape.

  Barely even felt the concrete floor cracking into my knees as my legs gave way.

  So much pressure, my skull was going to burst.

  Arms hanging limp now.

  No fight left.

  Let everyone down.

  I’m sorry …

  Darkness.

  ‘AAAARGH!’ My eyes snapped open, then the pain hit, as if someone had stuffed my throat with scalding gravel, making every breath a stinging struggle.

  Gordon Smith lowered the bucket, filthy water dripping from it. A smile pulling at his Santa Claus beard. ‘Hello. I don’t think we’ve met. I’d shake hands, but as you can see, mine are full and yours are tied.’ He tossed the bucket away to bing and whoom against the concrete floor.