I lunged too – left arm up to block it, right swinging hard.
It was like being punched in the bicep. And then the impact of Caroline’s urn, smashing into his head, shuddered up my arm.
‘Ungh …’ Smith reared away from me, a silhouette against the angry storm. ‘Don’t …’
Another push, swinging the urn like a baseball bat.
Thunk.
The crunching thump of old cardboard boxes collapsing under someone’s weight.
Bouncing the urn off Smith’s head must’ve loosened the lid, because it popped off, and a vortex of gritty grey swirled its way through the torchlight, en route to the gaping hole at the end of the basement.
‘CAROLINE!’ Banging and crashing through the junk.
I snatched up the phone and swung the torch around.
There was Smith, on his hands and knees, scraping dirt and ashes from the concrete floor. ‘No!’
Where are you, you rotten …?
There – lying on its back, against the leg of a mouldy old teddy bear. Matt, black, and deadly. The phone went back in my bandaged hand and I snatched the gun up again.
Let’s see how Evil Uncle Abanazar did with a couple of bullets in him.
The basement shook and that ragged slab of grey got bigger. Chunks of the upper floor raining down at the far end, tumbling away into the hungry waves.
‘What have you done?’ He was still on his knees, scooping up handfuls of dust.
I tossed the urn to him. It hit the concrete and bounced with a hollow ringing poonk.
‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’ Reaching for it.
Three limping steps and I was close enough to jam the .22’s barrel into the back of his right knee. ‘It’s after midnight, Smith. Time to turn back into a pumpkin.’ And pulled the trigger.
It was as if someone had slammed a claw-hammer down on a sheet of metal, the sound echoing off the roof before being swallowed by the howling wind.
Must’ve come as a shock, because Smith didn’t start screaming till I stuck the barrel into the back of his left knee.
Another hammer blow.
The room rumbled. The ice cracked. Another chunk of basement vanished.
Definitely time to go.
Gordon Smith stared back at me in the thin beam of the phone’s torch, eyes wide, mouth wide – full of teeth and agony. Both hands wrapped around his knees, blood pulsing out between his pale fingers. Tears streaming down his face. He was saying something, but whatever it was, the storm was louder.
Back to Shifty.
‘God’s sake, man, you weigh a bloody ton …’ But I got my shoulder under him, hauling and shoving and struggling his fat bloody arse up the wooden steps, heaving him onto the living room floor. Rolling him clear of the trapdoor, so I could slam it shut. Wind whistling through the gaps – pulled down by the air roaring out through the basement.
Probably gilding the lily, but in case a double kneecapping wasn’t enough to keep Gordon Smith where I’d left him, I put my shoulder to Helen’s multigym and pushed.
Teeth gritted, putting my back into it …
The entire thing crashed into the floorboards with a wood-splintering crunch, completely covering the trapdoor with about a ton of metal.
Yeah, Smith was going nowhere.
I grabbed a handful of Shifty’s collar and dragged him backwards out of the room, legs aching from the effort, along the hall and out the front—
Bloody thing was locked.
Another booming rumble and the sound of rending beams and cracking mortar drowned out the wind.
Was there time to get him all the way down the hall and out through the kitchen?
He had the keys on him.
Great – why don’t I stand here like a bloody moron, going through Shifty’s pockets WHILE THE BASTARDING HOUSE FALLS DOWN!
‘AAAAAAARGH!’ I turned him around and hauled his lardy backside down the hall, sweat prickling in the cold air, breath huffing out great plumes of steam. ‘If we get out of this alive, you’re going on a massive diet.’
His body slid better on the kitchen linoleum.
Out the kitchen door, and into the thundering rain and screeching storm.
My trainers dug into the wet grass, slipping and skidding through mud, pulling with both hands now. Fire and broken bottles slashing through the severed joint where my finger used to be, scarring their way up my arm. Every single step setting off a fresh explosion of flame in my bullet-hole foot.
We’d almost made it to the garden wall when Helen’s house gave one final groan of pain, then thundered in on itself as the storm ate it whole.
49
The doctor stepped back to admire her handiwork. ‘Not bad. You’ll have a scar, but it could’ve been worse.’
I turned my elbow out ninety degrees. A neat line of small black stitches ran along a dark puckered ridge of skin halfway up my bicep – stained dark orange with antiseptic. That ‘punch’ had been the cutthroat razor. Good job Gordon Smith hadn’t kept it sharp or the thing would’ve chopped its way right down to the bone. ‘Thanks.’
A blush darkened her cheeks. ‘Twice in one day. We must stop meeting like this.’ Dr Fotheringham put the forceps and needle holder back on the tray. ‘If anyone asks, I gave you amoxicillin.’ Pocketing a couple of small boxes. ‘Obviously I’m not going to really give you more antibiotics, because, well, you know.’
‘Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.’
Outside the curtained cubicle, the sounds of Castle Hill Infirmary A-and-E thrummed and bustled all around us. Moaning, crying, someone singing a sectarian song while someone else screamed at them to shut their orange-bastard mouth.
Fotheringham wrapped the wound in gauze, then cotton wool, then crisp white bandages. Pulling them tight and tying them off. She didn’t look me in the eye once. ‘Well, that’s us all done. You’ll need to get those stitches out in about a fortnight: better safe than sorry.’
The sound of someone being copiously sick echoed through from the next-door cubicle, but Fotheringham didn’t even flinch. ‘Can I ask,’ she pointed at my arm, ‘was this the same “serial killer”?’
I pulled my bloodstained shirt back on and hopped off the trolley. ‘Not any more.’
Fotheringham wrestled me into a bulky black padded sling, adjusting the straps and Velcro till the entire arm was immobile. Then helped me drape my ‘borrowed’ leather jacket over my shoulders. ‘It’ll take a while to heal, so make sure you rest it.’
‘Want to take a little advice from someone who’s been where you are? Once people like Joseph and Francis get their hooks in you, it’s not so easy to wriggle free. Stop the gambling, get help, or you’ll be gutted and filleted by the time they’re done.’
She gave me a small sad smile. ‘Oh, how I wish it was that easy …’
They’d moved Kenneth Dewar out of the High Dependency ward into a private room on the sixth floor, with a uniformed PC sitting guard outside, reading a Hamish Macbeth novel: Death of a Crime Writer. She looked up as I hobbled over on a borrowed NHS walking stick. ‘Guv.’
So, one of the old guard, before my demotion.
I nodded at the observation window. ‘He say anything yet?’
‘Came round about two hours ago. Since then it’s been mostly sobbing and sleeping. Think they’ve got him on some pretty strong meds.’ She put a marker in her book. ‘Mother … I mean, DI Malcolmson’s been looking for you. Says you’re not answering your phone.’
Maybe because I hadn’t actually worked out what, or how much, to tell her yet.
‘Any chance …?’ I pointed at the door.
The PC raised an eyebrow. ‘On your own? Sod all, Guv. Orders from the Chief Super, in triplicate: Dewar goes to trial, dirty wee child-murdering bastard that he is.’
‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’ After all, we needed him to get all better so he could enjoy his daily torture. I opened the door and stepped into the familiar disinfectant-and-misery-scented air.
They’d hooked him up to a drip and a heart monitor, but other than that, he was machinery-free. Lying there, on his back, with his mouth hanging open, chest rising and falling in time to a deep rumbling snore.
Probably loud enough to disturb the other patients. That wasn’t fair, was it? Someone should do something about that.
So I pinched his nose shut, the palm of my hand covering his mouth.
‘Guv!’
Dewar spluttered his way into consciousness, a small scream muffled by my hand.
I let go and gave the PC a smile. ‘Oh look, he’s awake.’
Dewar blinked at me, then around at the room – as if taking it in for the first time. ‘How …?’
The chair’s rubber feet squealed across the green-terrazzo floor as I pulled it closer to the bed. Thumped down in it. ‘Not going to kid you, Kenny, I’m tired, I’m sore, and I’ve had a bastard of a day.’ Pointing at the PC. ‘She’s here to make sure I don’t strangle you, like you strangled Andrew Brennan, Oscar Harris, Lewis Talbot, and Toby Macmillan.’
He closed his eyes and nodded, mouth a tight squirming line as tears squeezed out. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you keep saying.’ I leaned forward. ‘You thought you’d fooled everyone, didn’t you? But you didn’t fool Alice.’
‘She … she’d been so nice to me … and then … then she called and said … and said she wanted to talk to me again.’ Big fat tears plopped onto the sheet, turning the fabric the colour of spoiled milk. ‘And I knew she’d … she’d worked it out.’
‘So you tried to kill her.’
‘I didn’t want … I need you to understand … understand why—’
‘Kenny, Kenny, Kenny: I don’t care.’ I tilted my head back and winked at our uniformed friend. ‘You might want to cover your ears for this part: plausible deniability.’
She shifted her feet, hands opening and closing. ‘You’re not going to hurt him, are you?’
‘Me? Hurt him? Why on earth would I do that? Now Simon says: cover your ears.’
She did.
‘Remember when you said I should find the bastard who killed all those little boys, and make him pay?’ I leaned in. ‘This is for Andrew, Oscar, Lewis, and Toby. But it’s especially for what you did to Alice.’ Had to be quick, before the PC could stop me – standing and slamming my right fist into his face. Putting some weight behind it. Driving his head back into the pillows.
‘GUV!’ She lunged, but I backed away from the bed, hand up.
‘All finished.’ Arthritis howled its way through my knuckles, but it was worth it.
‘What the hell have you done?’ Staring at Dewar as scarlet gushed out of his newly squint nose.
‘I didn’t do anything, Constable. Kenneth Dewar became distressed – probably the guilt of strangling four wee boys – and tried to injure himself. I saw you rush to his aid and save the day. You should get some sort of commendation for that.’
She licked her lips. Looked from Dewar’s sobbing, blood-dripping face, to me, then back again. ‘I saved the day?’
‘Like a pro. Very proud of you.’
A nod. ‘Cool.’
Kenneth Dewar: welcome to the rest of your life.
Shifty threw back his blankets and sat bolt upright in his hospital bed. ‘Come on, time to go home.’
I put a hand against his chest and pushed him back into the crinkled sheets. ‘You’ve got concussion, you silly bugger.’ Pulled the blankets over him again. ‘You’re going nowhere.’
Someone had removed his eyepatch, so instead of a jaunty-big-fat-bald-pirate, he looked more like a confused hairless middle-aged man with a weight problem and a clenched fist of scar tissue where his right eye should have been. He squinted the other one at me. ‘What happened in the basement?’
A voice behind me: ‘Yes, Ash, what did happen in that basement?’
Ah …
‘Mother, I hear you’ve been looking for me?’
When I turned, she was standing in the doorway, a bit on the rumpled side, heavy bags under her eyes, thick brown overcoat flapped open to reveal a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt with a grinning cat on it. Not quite ‘I got dressed in the dark’, but close enough.
Mind you, it wasn’t as if I was going to win any prizes for sartorial elegance – done up in the same clothes I’d gone to work in yesterday morning. All covered in dried blood and dirt and dust.
She looked me up and down, drinking it all in. ‘You smell like a fight in an abattoir.’
I pointed at Shifty. ‘DI Morrow got a tipoff that Gordon Smith had been seen in Oldcastle. We thought he might go back to Clachmara, so we headed over there. Turned out we were right.’
‘And?’
‘He resisted arrest. DI Morrow and I barely managed to get out before the house fell into the sea. Gordon Smith didn’t.’ Not sure if it was worth complicating things, but if the bodies washed up somewhere any half-decent pathologist might just notice someone had blown both of Smith’s kneecaps off: ‘When we got there he was fighting with Leah MacNeil, she managed to wrestle the gun off him.’
‘There was a gun?’
I shrugged. ‘She didn’t get out either. Shifty and I tried, but …’ A long weary sigh. ‘She kept screaming about how he’d killed her mother and she was going to make him pay.’
That should cover it. And with any luck, by the time Leah’s body turned up – if it ever did – it would’ve been battered about enough by the storm, collapsing headland, and waves to obscure any signs she’d been tortured. Wouldn’t hurt if the fish and crabs ate most of the evidence, either.
‘Oh Christ.’ Mother covered her face with her hands. ‘Helen MacNeil will go berserk when she finds out we let her granddaughter die.’
‘Maybe not. Leah did avenge her mother, after all. Old-school gangsters like Helen would’ve appreciated that.’ Sod it: wrong tense. Should’ve been, will appreciate that. But hopefully Mother wouldn’t notice.
She lowered her hands and narrowed her eyes. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything?’
‘No idea. But you should be putting Shifty forward for a Queen’s Medal.’ I patted him on the arm. ‘He was a brave little soldier and a credit to the force. I couldn’t have got out of there, without him.’ Which had the benefit of not actually being a lie – there was no way I’d leave Shifty in a collapsing building.
The sounds of a busy hospital, chuntering away in the wee small hours, throbbed through the floor and air conditioning.
Eventually Mother nodded. ‘I can’t remember, were you always this much of a pain in the backside?’
‘Probably.’
‘Ow …’ I creaked and groaned my way into the high-backed chair beside Alice’s bed. ‘What a sodding day.’ Wasn’t a single inch of me that didn’t ache. And that was after taking a double dose of Dr Fotheringham’s painkillers.
Alice hadn’t moved since I’d last seen her – still lying there, hooked up to her bank of machinery, one arm in a cast from shoulder to fingertips, one leg from hip to toes, bandages and cannulas and drips and wires and a bag dangling from the bedframe.
I struggled out of my jacket and draped it over my chest.
Should probably have gone home first for a shower and a change of clothes, but the last faint wisps of adrenaline had gone, leaving nothing but the inevitable crash into unconsciousness. And if I was going to fall asleep for eighteen hours, I’d much rather do it here.
In case she woke up.
Eyelids were getting almost as heavy as my head.
A jaw-cracking yawn.
I let my head fall back. Up above, the ceiling tiles made a moonscape of tiny pocks and craters. Nearly died twice today, something of a record, even for me.
Tomorrow: going to have a long lie-in, nice big breakfast – sod salted porridge and decaf tea, it was time for a proper fry-up at that greasy spoon down Tollbooth Row – then take the wee man for a hobble in Kings Park. Throw some bread at the …
Oh bugger.
I sat up and fumbled Alice’s phone from my pocket. Unlocked it. Then went searching for that business card. Dialled the number.
A mumbled voice. ‘Hello?’ The sound of lips smacking on sleep-sticky breath. ‘I mean, J-and-F Freelance Consultants, how can—’
‘Joseph, I know it’s late, but I need your help.’
Because sometimes you really did need the assistance of two very capable gentlemen with a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to other people’s physical wellbeing.
— time, gentlemen, please —
50
‘Well?’
I let the blind fall back. ‘All gone.’
The private room was festooned with Mylar balloons, some at full bobbing strength, others at half-mast, all covered in slogans like ‘GET WELL SOON!’, ‘YOU’RE A STAR!’, and for some bizarre reason, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’
‘Three days.’ Sitting in the visitor’s chair, Shifty curled his lip. ‘You’d think catching two massive serial killers would hold their attention for at least a week. Four dead wee boys and … how many victims for Gordon Smith?’
‘No way of knowing.’ Even if Alice and Franklin were right about Smith keeping all his homemade torture porn on his phone, it got wheeched out into the North Sea – along with the man himself, Leah’s body, and Helen’s house. ‘At least thirty-six, if you count the panto cast and crew that went missing from productions he worked on, plus the basement Polaroids. And we’ve only got IDs for about a dozen of those.’
Shifty scratched at the wadding taped to the back of his head. ‘Bloody media.’
‘Didn’t you hear? Train crash at Waverley Station this morning: thirteen dead, eighty-seven injured. Suspected terrorism.’
A grimace. ‘Fair enough. But they could—’
My new phone blared out its anonymous ringtone. ‘Hold that thought.’ I pulled it out and checked the screen. Not a number I recognised. Pressed the button anyway. ‘Hello?’
‘ASH, YOU UTTER BASTARD!’ For some strange reason, Jennifer Prentice sounded upset. Poor thing. ‘WHAT THE BUGGERING HELL DID YOU DO?’
The Coffinmaker's Garden Page 45