The Coffinmaker's Garden

by Stuart MacBride

  Don’t flinch. Don’t move at all.

  ‘Now, normally I’d take my time – get to know you better over the next three or four hours – but while I’m sure you’re lying about calling the cops, it would be silly to take the risk.’ He held up the electrical cable again. ‘Still, sometimes the important thing is to do your best and hope it’ll all turn out OK, don’t you think?’ He looped the cable over my head, wrapped the ends around his hands. Pulled till it bit into my neck again, not hard enough to choke off the air or blood. Not yet.

  Deep breaths.

  Stay calm.

  Stay still.

  This was a better, quicker end than his torture toys.

  Be a man.

  Don’t beg.

  Don’t cry.

  Don’t scream.

  Don’t give the bastard the satisfaction.

  ‘Hold on a minute, Grandad.’ Leah frowned at my phone’s screen. ‘It’s locked itself again.’ A tut. ‘Going to keep doing that, I suppose.’ She wandered across to where the cutthroat razor had fallen and picked it up. ‘Still, as long as we’ve got his fingerprint, we don’t really need the rest of him, do we?’ Her grin was even more unhinged than Smith’s was as she twisted the blade, making it glitter. ‘We should take the whole finger, though. Better safe than sorry.’

  Oh Christ.

  So much for not screaming …

  38

  Cold. Cold and dark. And numb …

  I hauled in a gritty breath, throat like a tombola full of razor blades.

  Everything else, though: numb.

  Then pins and needles.

  Then the world burst into full-strength agony.

  Clenched my teeth together. Hissing those razor-blade breaths in and out.

  Something pressing down on my back.

  I forced myself over and whatever it was shifted. Not heavy, but everywhere. A blanket of rustling plastic that slithered and clunked. Bin bags?

  Shoving them aside revealed a square of grey corrugated roofing, far, far overhead, surrounded by a tunnel of black that narrowed away from me.

  Still alive.

  Then a coughing fit grabbed hold, slashing through my throat and battering my ribs, each convulsion like being stamped on by a horse.

  And then the real pain set in. Someone had dipped my left hand in a bucket of petrol and set fire to it – flames searing the flesh all the way up to my elbow. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’

  Squeezing my scalded hand in the other one didn’t make things any better.

  It was too dark down here to pick out any details, but when I held my aching hand up it made an imperfect silhouette against that grey patch of roof. One thumb, three fingers – one poking out at an unnatural angle – and a ragged stump marking the first joint past the knuckle where my index finger used to be.

  Closed my eyes and tried not to see the cutthroat razor hacking through the skin and cartilage. Block out the sound of snapping tendons. Bile rising …

  God knows how, but I shoved it all down. Then wriggled backwards, till I bumped into the wall, worked my way up so I was sitting with my back against it. Legs splayed out in front. Breath hard and ragged, throat like I’d gargled boiling drain cleaner.

  OK, she dislocated your middle finger. You’re going to have to reset it. You can do that, right?

  What choice did I have?

  Deep breath.

  I wrapped my right hand around the thing and pulled – out and down, making the joint crackle and scream – and let go. My finger popped back into place. Teeth gritted, air hissing in and out through them, trying to keep everything inside. This time, when I held the hand up, the silhouette looked more hand-shaped, but the relocated knuckle was the size of a squash ball.

  Another coughing fit left me slumped against the wall, blinking the tears from my eyes.

  Still alive.

  That was something, right?

  Still alive.

  Bit by bit, details emerged from the darkness. I was surrounded – no, part-buried under more of that agricultural waste: feedbags and tubs of supplement, the huge tough cobwebs that big round bales of haylage and the like got wrapped in before the plastic went on top.

  They must’ve dumped me in the barn’s inspection pit. Only from down here it was clearly a lot deeper than you’d need to get underneath and fix a tractor.

  Come on, Ash: up.

  Clutching my ruined hand to my chest, I hauled myself upright with the other, the pit’s brick walls rough against my fingertips. But at least I still had all of them on that side.

  Still alive and with most of my fingers.

  No doubt about it, I was a lucky, lucky man.

  Jesus …

  The inspection pit’s lip was a good dozen feet above my head.

  Thrown into my own private oubliette and left for dead.

  Wait a minute …

  A noise coming from deeper into the darkness: scrabbling. Scratching.

  Rats?

  Oh, getting luckier by the bastarding minute.

  And then what might have been a gasp.

  My voice sounded as if I’d stolen it off a very old man: ‘Helen?’

  Swallowing to try again felt like gulping down a deep-fried hedgehog, spines-first. ‘Helen, is that you?’ Wasn’t much of an improvement, to be honest.

  I grabbed the nearest chunk of rubbish and hurled it behind me, did the same with the next one. ‘Helen! Where the hell are you?’

  She was over in the opposite corner, on her side, knees curled up, arms wrapped around her stomach. Skin pale as moonlight against the black-plastic bale wrapping. Breath coming in shallow huffing breaths. ‘Mr … Mr … Henderson …’

  ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I half knelt, half collapsed beside her, trying to inject some sort of jollity into my broken-gravel voice. ‘Going to take more than this to stop Hardcase Helen MacNeil.’

  No reply.

  ‘I’m going to look through your pockets. You’ll be fine.’ I searched her denim jacket: wallet, some chewing gum, a pack of cigarettes, and her car keys. Where was her phone?

  Oh, bloody hell …

  When Leah slapped her – she dropped the damn thing and it ended up in the pit.

  ‘Bastard.’ OK, this wasn’t impossible. Her phone was down here somewhere. All I had to do was rummage through the four billion tons of crap till I found it.

  How hard could it be?

  ‘About bloody time!’ A small Samsung, with a cracked screen, tucked in next to the inspection pit’s wall, buried under a mound of festering black-plastic bin bags. With any luck they’d broken its fall, and Christ knew I was overdue some luck.

  My fingers fumbled around the rim, searching for the power button. The time glowed across the middle of the black screen. ‘14:10’

  Damn thing was locked, though.

  I scrambled back through the bin bags to Helen. ‘What’s your passcode?’

  It took three goes to get the words out of her. ‘Two … zero … zero … two.’

  The screen bloomed in the darkness. The backdrop was that photo of Leah as a toddler, held in her mother’s arms, at Balmedie Beach – Helen had arranged all her app icons so they framed, rather than obscured the pair of them.

  ‘I’m going to disable your lock screen …’ Only took a handful of pokes and swipes. ‘Then let’s get the torch up and see what we’re dealing with.’ All happy, nothing to worry about at all.

  Cold white LED light slashed out from the phone’s flash, pulling bin bags and rubbish into sharp relief.

  I peeled Helen’s arms away from her stomach – getting a sticky skreltching noise as the T-shirt stretched up with them, then tore free of the skin. When I lifted the tattered fabric, everything underneath was dark and slick, individual stab wounds still visible through the caked blood. Had to be a dozen of them. Probably more. Only a couple were still oozing.

  Yeah, this wasn’t good.

  Wriggling out of my jacket brought a fresh round of missing-finger agony
, but I managed. Folded the thing into a rectangle of wadding with an arm sticking out both sides. Then slipped it around her middle and tied it tight. Or as tight as I could with my left hand screaming at me.

  Helen didn’t make a single sound. She lay there, panting out thin shallow breaths.

  ‘I’m going to call nine-nine-nine.’

  ‘D … Don’t.’

  ‘Helen, you’re—’

  ‘I’m … I’m already … dead.’

  Time to force that jolly tone again: ‘Don’t be a moron, it’s—’

  ‘I’m … sorry.’

  ‘This wasn’t your fault, it’s—’

  ‘I was … I was in … the car … when the … Prentice bitch called … them. I knew …’ A small pained smile. The blood-smeared lips dark against her ghost-pale face. ‘Thought I … could … rescue you … and you’d … you’d have to … help me.’

  Oh well, that was sodding great. ‘You could’ve told me they were going to have a go! I would’ve still—’

  ‘Shut up … and … listen … The security … security van … is buried … under a pile … of washing … machines … in Wee Free … McFee’s … scrapyard … he … he doesn’t … know … it’s there.’

  Wee Free McFee?

  Might as well stick my head in that car crusher of his and save everyone the bother.

  ‘You … you can … have … the lot.’

  ‘Thanks, but he’ll—’

  ‘If you … promise …’ Helen’s head fell back against the plastic. ‘Promise … you’ll kill … Gordon … Smith for … for me.’

  ‘I’ll kill the bloody pair of them.’

  ‘It’s not … It’s not … Leah’s … fault … She’s weak … Gordon … Gordon twisted … her.’ Helen’s hand trembled its way into mine. ‘Make … make the … bastard … suffer … Make him …’ One last breath wheezed out between her bloodied lips, and that was it. She was gone.

  I sat back on my haunches.

  Nothing to stop me calling 999 now, was there?

  But what good would that do?

  They’d get me out of this sodding pit, for a start.

  And then what? They cart Helen off to the mortuary; open an investigation; have some meetings; argue about budgets and resource allocations; draw up a list of actions; and achieve sod all.

  Yes, but—

  Wasn’t as if we didn’t know who killed her, was it? Or who helped.

  But the pit—

  Helen didn’t want Gordon Smith arrested and prosecuted, did she: she wanted him dead.

  And so did I.

  Besides, what was I supposed to do: call 999 and explain how I’d ended up stuck in an inspection pit, in the middle of nowhere, with the dead body of a civilian. A civilian I really shouldn’t have smuggled into a potential crime scene. Suppose I could claim she’d been here when I arrived, but they’d know that was a lie, soon as they questioned Gordon Smith or Leah MacNeil. Or found her car, parked at the Lecht, seventy miles away. At which point I’d be looking at a charge of perverting the course of justice, reckless endangerment, and anything else they could throw at me. Which meant at least eight years back in Glenochil Prison.

  Sod that.

  So no: no 999.

  Time to call Shifty. He’d help. The keypad buttons glowed beneath my grubby fingertip: ‘Zero, seven, eight, four …?’ What the hell was the rest of his mobile number?

  Well, it wasn’t as if I had it memorised, was it? I always pulled it up on my contacts list, same as everyone else.

  Bastard.

  Could always call control – had the station number off by heart – get them to put me through to him … And then there’d be an official record of the call. It’d be on tape. They’d know the number I’d been calling from, they could triangulate it via the base stations. And I’d be screwed again.

  Couldn’t even call Alice. No idea what her mobile …

  Wait a minute.

  I fumbled in my pocket and dug out one of the business cards I’d liberated from Alice’s handbag.

  You wee beauty!

  All her contact details were there. I punched in her number and listened to it ring and ring and ring, then finally go through to voicemail. ‘Alice? It’s Ash. I need you to call me back on this number ASAP, OK? It’s really, really important!’ And in case she didn’t bother listening to her voice mail:

  Alice – I’m in BIG trouble. I need your

  help.

  Call me back on this number!

  SEND.

  Oh for … She’d have no idea who sent it, would she.

  It’s Ash – I’m on someone else’s phone and

  I need you to call me soon as you can!

  SEND.

  Now all I had to do was sit here and wait till she got back to me. Which could take minutes, or hours, knowing Alice. Hours sat here, in the cold and dark, like a useless lump of skin. Because it wasn’t as if the stump where my finger used to be was going to get infected or anything, surrounded by all the crap that’d been dumped in here.

  God’s sake.

  OK, so all I had to do was get myself out of an eighteen-foot-deep brick-lined pit with no ladder and a buggered hand.

  Yeah … Alice was right: I should’ve stayed at home.

  The last chunk of agricultural rubbish went on the pile in the corner. That was pretty much all of it, leaving the inspection pit’s dirt floor bare. Had to be nearly seven feet between the top of the heap and the barn floor above. Reaching distance.

  Assuming my ruined hand held out. The fire had settled to a dull throbbing ache, but knowing my luck, the slightest knock would set it alight again. But it was too late to worry about that now.

  I backed off to the opposite corner.

  Helen lay flat on her back, arms crossed over her chest, eyes pulled closed. And yes, I know it didn’t make any difference to her – she was dead. Still …

  I turned off the phone’s torch again.

  Up above, that rectangle of concrete roofing had darkened a couple of shades. The sun wouldn’t have to sink very far to plunge Wester Brae of Kinbeachie’s ninety-three awful acres into darkness. And there was only so long a mobile phone’s battery would last.

  Right.

  Let’s do this.

  Took off at a lumbering run, across the narrow space, and leapt, my bad foot scrunching into the pile, pushing off, left foot sinking, push off again, right foot—

  The entire thing collapsed, bags and tubs and folded sheets of binding and wrapping slithering off each other in a dusty avalanche. Stumbling. Falling. Arms and legs flailing. Then BANG, smashing into the dirt floor as crap tumbled over me, left hand bouncing off the—

  ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’

  Like someone was holding a lit blowtorch to it, the skin blackening and curling, smoke rising from the hacked stump where my first finger used to be, spreading through my hand and up my arm until the world roared and crackled and …

  Darkness.

  My eyes flickered open, and there was that patch of roofing again, every inch as far above me as it’d been the first time. Only now it was the colour of ancient tarmac. Digging Helen’s phone from my pocket explained why – five minutes to three. I’d been out for about half an hour.

  Just enough time for that bastarding missing finger to settle into pulsing waves of heat and pressure. Each one breaking against my forearm. Probably infected.

  Still no reply from Alice.

  Where the hell are you? I need you to call

  me back! This is serious and urgent, Alice,

  I’m not kidding about here.

  CALL ME ASAP!

  SEND.

  A shiver rattled its way through me. Lying down here, in the cold and damp – it’d seeped its way deep into my bones. Wonder if it was bad enough to cause hypothermia? Maybe not now, but by about three in the morning? In November. In the wilds of Scotland?

  Wonderful.

  I switched on the torch app again. This time the light was sl
ightly less bright than before – the battery showing twenty percent as I drifted the beam around the pit. Brick walls, streaked with mould and glistening with moisture. Patches of greasy white fungus, growing out of the mortar.

  Why the hell wasn’t there a ladder?

  There should’ve been a bloody ladder …

  But there wasn’t, so no point moaning about it, was there? Think.

  OK, so piling the crap up didn’t work.

  What else?

  I shoved a chunk of that spider’s web stuff off my legs and sat up. Then frowned at it. There was a good chunk of it down here – thin plastic netting. Thin, but tough. Robust enough to wind around a four-foot bale of hay to keep it all in place while it got shifted about by tractors and forklifts. Maybe even robust enough to take my weight?

  One way to find out.

  Twenty-two past three, according to Helen’s phone, and the corrugated roofing was nothing but a patch of slightly lighter black overhead.

  Still nothing from Alice.

  I wrapped the end of my makeshift rope around the middle of my walking stick and tied it off with a couple of clove hitches. Mostly by touch – which wasn’t easy with frozen numb fingers – because the mobile’s battery was down to five percent. Half a dozen chunks of webbing, all twisted and tied into a lumpen cord with big knots every twelve inches or so. Seemed solid enough.

  Hopefully …

  Now all I had to do was chuck the walking stick up into the barn above, and it’d catch on something and I’d haul myself out. Easy. Nothing to worry about.

  I rested my forehead against the damp brick wall.

  It was about time my luck turned, right?

  Please.

  I wrapped the loose end of the netting rope around my right wrist, then javelined the walking stick up over the lip of the pit – hard as I could. Clunks and clatters as it bounced off the concrete floor. Then silence.

  OK.

  I pulled on the rope, reeling it back in.

  Come on, come on, catch on something you rotten …

  ‘Bastard!’

  The stick came rattling back over the edge and thumped down into the pit again.

  Another go – trying a different side this time.