The Coffinmaker's Garden

by Stuart MacBride

  I held up Alice’s phone in my bandaged hand, screen filled with the map of Kingsmeath. ‘Way I see it, she could go two ways to her appointment at Burgh Library,’ pointing at the massive roundabout it sat in the middle of, ‘one: you go down to Montrose Road, back to the bridge, then up King’s Drive. Two: you cut through Kingsmeath. Banks Road, straight through to McNamara Row, then left onto Glensheilth Crescent.’

  Shifty pulled a face. ‘What about Denmuir Gardens?’

  ‘They’ve dug it all up in front of the primary school, after that sewage-pipe leak.’

  ‘Still doesn’t explain where her car is. She’d—’ His phone launched into the theme tune from Mastermind, and he pulled it out. Checked the caller ID. Answered it. ‘Rhona? … Uh-huh … Uh-huh … OK … No, thanks anyway … Yeah, I will. Thanks. Bye … OK, bye.’ Puffing out a breath as he slid the phone back in his pocket. ‘Henry’s not at your flat.’

  Maybe he was still in the car? Because the alternative didn’t really bear thinking about.

  But one thing was certain, Chris McHale was about to have a very bad evening.

  I struggled my right hand into a nitrile glove – not easy with the left all clarted in bandages, climbed out of the car, and limped over to number sixteen. No names on the intercom. The services button had been taped over, so I tried ‘FLAT ONE’ instead, leaning on the buzzer until an irritated voice crackled out of the speaker.

  ‘What? Jesus. I was on the bog!’

  ‘Got a chicken vindaloo, lamb biryani, steamed rice—’

  ‘I didn’t order a curry. You’ve got the wrong flat, muppet.’

  ‘Yeah, but the guy’s buzzer isn’t working, and if I don’t deliver his meal they’re going to take it out my wages. Come on, be a mensch.’

  ‘Gah … Fine.’ A grumbling metal noise, then click, the door was unlocked.

  Worked every time. Well, almost.

  I pushed inside, Shifty following me up the dark winding stairs to the first floor.

  Flat Four had a bicycle chained up outside it, seat and handlebars removed. A small plastic plaque on the scuffed brown door: ‘C MCHALE ESQ’ so an even bigger prick than he’d sounded on the phone.

  Shifty pulled on his own pair of nitrile gloves. ‘What if he’s got someone living with him, or a visitor?’

  ‘Then they get to have a horrible evening too.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Shifty put one fat thumb over the spyhole and knocked with his other hand. Raised his voice for, ‘Deliveroo!’ Knocked again. ‘I wasn’t kidding, by the way, that jacket’s hideous and it stinks of weed.’

  ‘My own coat’s covered in blood, OK? It was this or looking like something off the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’

  Shifty gave the door another knock, louder and harder this time. ‘Not sure it’s much of an improvement.’ Deep breath, another thumping knock. ‘DELIVEROO!’

  A thin metallic rattling noise, then the door popped open a crack and a sliver of puffy face glowered out at us. ‘You’ve got the wrong—’

  Shifty rammed his shoulder into the door, ripping the security chain from its moorings, as he lumbered in over the threshold.

  The man stumbled back, one hand clutching his face. A short bloke, pale and overweight, hair swept up at the front into a greying quiff, wearing tartan lounging trousers and a faded ‘STEAMPUNK SEX TOY ~ WORLD TOUR 2013!’ T-shirt. ‘You can’t—’

  A right hook to the uncovered side of his head sent him crashing against the wall, then slithering down till he was slumped against the skirting board. Shifty stood over him, flexing that big fist.

  ‘Chris McHale?’

  He wobbled where he sat. No reply.

  ‘Fine.’ Shifty grabbed him by the lapels and hauled him upright. ‘Let’s find your bathroom, shall we? See if you float.’ Opening doors at random, then shoving McHale inside.

  While the sound of water splashing into the bath echoed out into the hall, I checked the rest of the flat. It had the clinical tidiness of a neat-freak who lived alone and didn’t get out much. A big collection of vinyl records, all in alphabetically labelled shelving. The same with DVDs. Widescreen TV and a turntable. Bedroom was every bit as neat, and so was the kitchen. A selection of coats and jackets on hangers in a hallway alcove, shoes and boots lined up in pairs beneath them. Which only left the bathroom.

  Not quite so tidy in here. Not with Chris McHale cowering next to the toilet, while Shifty filled the bath.

  I leaned against the doorframe. ‘You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you, Chris?’

  ‘You can’t … I didn’t …’ Deep breath. ‘Please! This isn’t—’

  ‘Going to give you one chance, then it’s face down in the bath you go.’

  ‘Please! I don’t know what she’s told you, but I never touched her, I swear! She’s a lying bitch, you know that. All she ever does is lie!’

  ‘You greasy bastard.’ A nearly-full bottle of Alberto Balsam Sunkissed Raspberry shampoo didn’t weigh all that much, but if you hurled it with enough force, at someone’s face …

  McHale shrieked, flinching back against the cistern, hand coming up to cover his left eye. ‘I didn’t touch her! She was playing on the swings and she fell off and I helped her up, that’s all! I didn’t mean to see her knickers.’

  Ah. So he wasn’t talking about Alice, then?

  The matching raspberry conditioner felt as if it had a bit more heft to it. ‘Dr McDonald. She interviewed you this morning: one o’clock.’

  ‘Doctor …? This isn’t about Tracy Fordyce?’ A small laugh. ‘It’s not about her. I didn’t—’

  The conditioner battered into his forehead, hard enough to split the plastic and send a gush of sweet-smelling pink out across his chest and the wall behind.

  ‘Aaaaaaaargh!’

  ‘You followed Alice after she left here, didn’t you, Chris?’

  ‘Please, please I don’t—’

  ‘You followed her and somehow you got her out of her car, and then you ran her over.’

  ‘That’s not—’

  ‘She’s in Intensive Care, you little shite!’

  Shifty turned off the taps and hauled Chris McHale from his hiding place. ‘Time for swimming.’ Then whacked him against the side of the bath and shoved his head under the steaming water.

  Arms and legs thrashing, or at least until Shifty knelt one leg across the guy’s calves.

  ‘Think that’s enough?’

  I held out my good hand, fingers counting down to a clenched fist.

  McHale surfaced, bringing an arc of raspberry-scented water with him. Coughing and spluttering between the sobs.

  ‘What did you do with her car, Chris?’

  ‘I … I didn’t … didn’t do … anything … to her! I … I swear! On … my mother’s … grave … I never … touched her.’

  ‘Under you go.’ Shifty put his weight behind it this time, grinding McHale’s face into the bottom of the tub. ‘What if the wee shite’s telling the truth?’

  ‘Alice said there might be a paedophile ring operating in Kingsmeath. Can you think of a better cover than being a Court-Appointed Mentor? Your charges come pre-messed-up, who’s going to notice them going slightly further off the deep end, because you’re fiddling with them too?’

  ‘And he’s seen this Tracy girl’s knickers.’ A frown. ‘That’s probably enough.’ Shifty hauled him back above the waterline.

  ‘AAAAAARGH!’ More coughing, followed by a lot of retching.

  ‘Quiet!’ Shifty slapped him, hard. ‘Want me to give you something to scream about?’

  ‘Please! … I swear … she … she came and … and asked her … questions … and wrote it all down … then … then she left!’

  I picked up a pumice stone – that would do a fair chunk of damage at high velocity. ‘What did she ask you?’

  ‘I don’t … I think it was … mostly stuff about Toby Macmillan and did … did he have any friends and … what was his family really like … Because they all pretend they love
him when the cameras are on, don’t they? But his stepdad liked to … to use the top of his head as an … ashtray, didn’t he? And they broke … broke his arm when … when he was three. And … and his mum’s … doing eighteen months … for neglect.’

  Poor wee sod.

  ‘What else?’

  McHale blinked at me, tears and snot mingling with the water running from his flattened quiff. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Time for another dunk?’ Shifty tightened his grip. ‘In you—’

  ‘No! I …’ Biting his lip. ‘I don’t … She went really weird and quiet … towards the end. Kept flipping back through her notes and staring at something. Underlining bits.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know! Please, I promise you, I don’t. I was telling her about Toby’s mum appealing against her sentence, and that’s when she stopped paying attention. Said she had to go walk her dog. Then she left. I swear that’s all that happened!’

  Shifty raised the eyebrow above his eyepatch. ‘Once more for luck?’

  Shook my head. ‘No. I think he’s telling the truth.’

  ‘Oh, thank God …’ It was as if all the bones had been removed from McHale’s body, leaving nothing but a soggy limp slough of skin behind. ‘I never touched her.’

  ‘Now then,’ Shifty’s massive paw wrapped itself around McHale’s face, thumb and fingers digging into the cheeks, forcing the lips out into a chicken’s-bum pout, ‘just so we’re clear, I ever hear that you’ve been looking funny at a wee girl you’re supposed to be mentoring? I’m going to come back here and they’re going to find what’s left of you floating in this bathtub. Am I clear?’

  McHale nodded – not easy with his face in the vice of Shifty’s grip, but he did it.

  ‘And see if you think you’ll get any help from the police about our wee visit tonight?’ Shifty reached his free hand into his jacket and produced his warrant card. Shoved it against McHale’s eye. ‘I am the police. And we’re gonna be watching you.’

  ‘Got you a present.’ Shifty tossed a black leather jacket at me as we marched out the main door and back onto the street. ‘Chris McHale decided he didn’t need it any more.’

  Bit old-fashioned, but had to admit: it smelled a lot better than Albert’s stinky denim job.

  I transferred the contents of my pockets and climbed back into the pool car. Clicked the seatbelt on as Helen’s phone ding-buzzed at me.

  UNKNOWN NUMBER:

  Salutations, Mr Henderson. I am pleased

  to confirm that your appointment has been

  arranged for 23:00 at Rushworth House, in

  Camburn Woods.

  Damn it.

  According to my watch, that was only ten minutes from now, and while it wasn’t impossible to make it all the way across the river and through town to Camburn Woods in time, we’d need lights and music on to do it. Which wasn’t exactly low-profile when it came to buying a black-market handgun.

  Shifty started the engine. ‘Where to?’

  And I still hadn’t got my hands on Joseph’s thousand pounds.

  ‘How much cash have you got on you?’

  ‘Dunno.’ He pulled out his wallet and checked. ‘Sixty-two quid and some smush. Why?’

  Mine held the twenty I’d taken off Helen’s body, three ten-pound notes of my own, and that fifteen-quid gift voucher from Winslow’s. Doubt Joseph would accept it, though.

  ‘We need to stop at the nearest cash machine.’

  Shifty did a three-point turn, then took a right at the roundabout – up over the bridge that crossed the railway line, Saint Damon of the Green Wood lurking in the darkness below. ‘What are we buying?’

  ‘Gun.’

  ‘Ah …’ Silence as we headed up Banks Road. ‘Only – and don’t take this the wrong way – your luck with guns is not great.’

  ‘If I take the maximum cash out on my debit card, and you do the same, and we use Alice’s too, plus all the cash we’ve got on us, that’ll cover it.’

  ‘You sure we wouldn’t be better off with something like a machete, or a baseball bat? Something cheaper and less … disastrous?’

  ‘I’ve got three people to kill, Shifty. Maybe four.’ Because Wee Free McFee wasn’t likely to stand back and let me go rummaging through his scrapyard, looking for a buried security van full of stolen jewellery and artwork.

  ‘OK. Four people?’ Shifty puffed out his cheeks. ‘That’s a lot of people.’

  The streets of Kingsmeath drifted by the car windows. Dark and miserable.

  I picked out a reply to Joseph:

  Change of plans. I need you to meet me

  at the Burgh Library. Make it quarter past.

  I have business here I can’t put off.

  SEND.

  They probably wouldn’t like that, but tough.

  The phone went back in my new jacket’s inside pocket. ‘Where’s her notebook? McHale said she was making notes and looking back at them. It wasn’t with her things at the hospital.’

  ‘You sure these four people have to die? We couldn’t, you know, rough them up instead?’

  ‘One of them’s the bastard who put Alice in Intensive Care.’

  ‘Assuming we can catch him.’ Shifty parked outside the Post Office on Greenhorn Place. ‘Cash machine.’

  I sat there, looking out of the passenger window, but barely registering the small row of rundown shops. ‘McHale said Alice told him she had to walk Henry. On her way to the library, she sees that chunk of parkland on Glensheilth Crescent, pulls in, gets out of the car, and this Gòrach bastard runs her over. Which means he was following her.’

  Wind scrabbled at my back as I climbed out of the car, stuffed Albert’s stinking denim jacket into the nearest bin, then limped over to the cash machine. Took out the maximum daily allowance, then did the same with Alice’s card – easy enough as she used the same pin number on everything, including the TV’s parental lock at home: 3825, which, apparently, spelled a very rude word in predictive text on the old flip phones.

  ‘Bloody freezing out here.’ Shifty shuffled past as I stepped away to count my cash. Then he swore, nearly dropping his debit card as his phone launched into the Mastermind theme again. Pinning the thing between his ear and shoulder as he slipped the card into the machine and punched in his pin. ‘Rhona? … Uh-huh … Uh-huh … They did? Where?’ Turning to me. ‘They’ve found Alice’s jeep.’ Then back to the phone. ‘Yeah … OK … Uh-huh … OK, look, is the dog there? … Damn it.’

  No Henry.

  ‘Where’s the car?’

  He took his banknotes from the machine and handed them over. ‘Halfway through the front window of that Cash Converters on Brokemere Street. Pair of wee scroats used it as a battering ram. Made off with a bunch of crap jewellery and some electric guitars. Last seen legging it down McLaren Avenue, heading for Camburn Woods.’

  ‘Get them to search the car for Alice’s notebook. See if we can figure out what she saw that tipped her off.’

  ‘Rhona? I want that vehicle searched. We’re looking for a notebook … Uh-huh … Uh-huh …’

  Shifty’s cash went on the pile, bringing our grand total to one thousand and ten pounds.

  ‘Well get them to look again! … Uh-huh … You’re sure? … Bugger … No, if it’s not there, it’s not there … Yeah, thanks, Rhona.’ Shifty put his phone away. ‘Take it you got the gist?’

  ‘If it’s not on her, and it’s not in the car, then he took it.’

  ‘Doesn’t help us any, though, does it?’

  We got back in the car. Sat there with the engine running and the blowers roaring.

  ‘So we look at who she’d already seen. One of the people Alice interviewed said something important about Gòrach.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Shifty bit his top lip and frowned. ‘Ash, you know I’m your best friend, right? And I’d go through … have gone through some pretty rough shit because you needed me.’ A finger came up and pointed at his eyepatch. ‘But tonight you’re talking ab
out killing four people. I’m not going through everyone Alice saw today and torturing the living hell out of them. Chris McHale was different, he’s definitely dodgy …’ Shifty pulled his shoulders in and looked out the driver’s window. ‘I gotta live and work in this town, afterwards.’

  ‘How about—’

  ‘And these people you want to kill: I get the bastard who hurt Alice deserves everything he’s got coming, but who are the other three? Why am I making myself complicit in their murder?’

  ‘They’re …’ Deep breath. ‘I made a promise to Helen MacNeil.’ Pulled down my collar and showed off the necklace of bruises. ‘Gordon Smith killed her. Then he strangled me, dumped me in a pit, and left me for dead.’ I held up what was left of my butchered hand. ‘Leah MacNeil hacked my finger off with a cutthroat razor. She’s been in on it all along.’

  He stared at me. ‘So they’re the ones who gave you the black eyes.’

  ‘No, that was … someone else.’ No point naming names. Joseph and Francis were kind of a sore spot where Shifty was concerned. ‘Jennifer Prentice paid a couple of thugs to jump me. Didn’t go well for them.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Shifty sagged in his seat. ‘So, let me guess: she’s the fourth person who needs murdering?’

  ‘No. I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to do there.’

  ‘Who’s number four, then?’

  ‘If it helps, there’s a cut of six million in it for you, when this is all over.’

  That got his attention. ‘Six million?’

  ‘Security van, stolen from Steve Jericho. Remember him? Owned Hallelujah Bingo? Twenty K in cash, the rest in half-inched artwork and jewellery. It’s buried under a stack of washing machines at Wee Free McFee’s place.’

  ‘Wee Free McFee?’ Shifty covered his face with his hands. ‘No …’

  ‘I’m going to buy a family hotel out on the west coast, and Alice is going to run retreats and things.’

  ‘Yeah, but Wee Free McFee!’

  ‘He’s the possible fourth person.’