A Song for the Dying

by Stuart MacBride

  I checked my phone. The screen was green. She was near.

  ‘Alice?’

  Two steps further into the darkness between the containers, the rusting metal walls not much more than shoulder-width apart. The smell of burnt plastic and mould. Another two steps. Then two more.

  ‘Oh no…’

  She was on her side, curled, knees up to her chest, little red shoes sticking out at twenty to nine. One arm draped across herself. A line of blood ran sideways across her forehead. Her satchel lay open beside her, the lump hammer notable by its absence.

  Bastard.

  I knelt beside her, brushed the damp hair from her face. ‘Alice? Can you hear me?’

  Two fingers in the dip behind her jawline… There – a pulse.

  Breath hissed out of me. My head curled forwards until it rested on her shoulder. Thank God.

  Then something dark burrowed into my chest.

  I stood, marched back to where Joseph lay and slammed my good foot into his stomach a couple of times. Nothing. Grabbed the pickaxe handle. ‘You rancid little shite.’

  Pick a leg, any leg.

  The impact shuddered up the wood and into my hands. Once. Twice. Three times. He didn’t even grunt, just lay there as I shattered the bones.

  One more kick for luck, then I dumped the pickaxe handle, scooped Alice up in my arms and hobbled back to the car park, right heel thumping against the ground with every step, knives of dirty ice shredding through the bone and tissue.

  By the time I’d made it to the car, there was no sign of Shifty, or Mrs Kerrigan. But Paul Manson was still stretched out on the ground, face up, the bullet holes in his chest and forehead glistening like mini black holes.

  Wee Free stood where I’d left him, holding the lump hammer in one hand and my gun in the other. He jerked his chin up. ‘She all right?’

  I lowered Alice into the Jaguar, laying her along the back seat. ‘She’s alive.’

  ‘Good.’ He walked over and nudged Manson with the toe of his shoe. ‘Take this with you. I’ve got enough bodies.’

  The door clunked shut. I pulled my shoulders back. ‘Where’s Shifty?’

  ‘The fat naked guy? I’m keeping him. You get to keep the dead accountant, and the girl. And then you get out there and you find my daughter.’

  My mouth was full of sandpaper. ‘I’m not leaving without him.’

  ‘Jessica’s fifth birthday. We had the party in the hospital so her mother could be there. Smiling away with tubes in her arms and nose, barely able to lift her head off the pillow. And Jessica kisses her on the cheek and tells her she’s going to be an angel soon.’

  ‘He needs help.’

  ‘Asks if she’ll come back and be her guardian angel and turn pumpkins into carriages and mice into horses.’

  ‘Wee… William, he needs a doctor.’

  Wee Free raised the gun. ‘When she was six she asked for another slice of wedding cake at the reception, and when her stepmother asked why, she said her mum always loved cake, and that next time we visited her grave we could give it to her.’

  I turned my back on him, searched the ground around the car. Where the hell was Mrs Kerrigan’s gun?

  Everything was darkness and clumps of weeds and rain-filled potholes.

  ‘When she was seven, Jessica’s rabbit died. She cried for a week, because rabbits can’t get into heaven, because they haven’t got souls. Took me that long to convince her they don’t go to hell either.’

  Where was the sodding gun?

  ‘She grew up. Got rebellious. Turned her back on the Lord. But she’s still my little girl.’

  It wasn’t as if I had another three hundred quid to buy a new one.

  ‘So this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to keep your friend until you find her. And every day she stays missing, I’m going to send you a bit of him. And if…’ Wee Free’s voice crackled for a moment. He cleared his throat. ‘If she dies—’

  ‘Let me guess: “Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe”?’

  Where the hell was the bloody gun?

  Wee Free bent down and picked something up from the ground at his feet. ‘This what you’re looking for?’ Mrs Kerrigan’s semiautomatic. He ejected the clip, dropped it, then tossed the gun over. It clattered against the wet tarmac, two feet from me.

  ‘Did you kill her?’

  ‘An eye for an eye. Now find my daughter.’

  He climbed behind the wheel of the big 4×4. The engine roared into life. Then the BMW backed away, turned, and headed out through the open gates.

  Rain seeped through my jacket, stuck my trousers to my legs, dripped from my face as the car’s tail-light glow faded into the night.

  Bastard.

  Now there was nothing left but the lights from the closed cash-and-carry next door.

  Don’t just stand there. Get the scene tidied and get the hell out of it before someone calls 999 to report the gunshots.

  I snapped on a pair of gloves from my investigation kit. Picked up the gun. Then limped over to where Wee Free had been standing and collected the magazine. Four bullets left.

  It clacked back into the handgrip, then the whole thing went in an evidence bag. Just in case. No way in hell I was getting my fingerprints on the murder weapon.

  I popped the Jag’s boot, pulled out a couple of the rubble sacks and worked them over Paul Manson’s head and shoulders, covering the mess where the back of his head used to be. Dragged and shoved him into the boot. Stood, staring down at his body, still bound with duct tape.

  Killed because he’d boasted about his family at a charity dinner.

  ‘I know it doesn’t help, but I’m sorry.’

  I clunked the lid shut.

  The firelighters stank of paraffin as I clicked them into chunks and scattered them across the driest bits of wood I could find – sticks and twigs and newspaper at the bottom, bigger branches on top. All arranged in a ditch beside a drystane dyke in the depths of Moncuir Wood. It’d probably been a farm at some point in the distant past, slowly smothered beneath the boughs of beech and pine. Now it was just a few lines of stone drawn through the dead nettles and mourning brambles. Secluded and forgotten.

  Only the darkness and the rain for company.

  Paul Manson seemed to have got a lot heavier since death. Who would have thought four little bullets would weigh so much? I dragged him over and tipped him in on top of the sticks.

  His top half was still covered with the rubble sack, what was left of his head pressing against the black plastic, making it bulge.

  At least I couldn’t see his face.

  I stood. Rubbed at the small of my back.

  Picked up the five litre container of methylated spirits.

  ‘Like I said, I’m sorry…’ I poured half of it over him, let it seep around his body and into the wood beneath him. Then tossed in a couple of lit matches. Stepped back and watched it take hold.

  Branches popped and crackled, tendrils of smoke joining the blue flicker of burning spirit. Then the kindling caught and gold joined the blue.

  OK, so there wasn’t nearly enough wood to cremate the body, but that wasn’t the point. It just needed to burn long enough and hot enough to get rid of any DNA and trace evidence Alice and I had left.

  Half an hour later, I shovelled dirt over what was left, and limped back to the lay-by.

  The Jaguar sat on one side, Alice’s Suzuki on the other.

  The methylated spirit nipped my eyes, catching my throat as I drenched the Jag’s upholstery with the last two-and-a-bit litres. I chucked the shovel into the back, along with the tarpaulin, then wound down the windows and closed the doors.

  There was one chunk of firelighter left in the bottom of the box. I dropped a lit match on it and waited for it to catch…

  A voice behind me: ‘Ash?’

  I turned.

  Alice wobbled on unsteady legs, one arm out, holding onto the
Suzuki’s roof.

  ‘You’re awake.’

  She blinked at the Jaguar. Pointed. ‘What…?’

  ‘It’s OK, get back in the car. I’ll only be a minute.’ Smoke oozed out from the cardboard box in my hand. I tossed it in through the driver’s window and the methylated spirit went up with a whump. Gouts of flame belched from the open windows, curling up into the rainy night as the first wash of volatiles burned themselves out.

  The lay-by was thrown into sharp relief for a moment, then the light faded, leaving everything wrapped in gloom again.

  I snapped off my SOC gloves and lobbed them in after the box. ‘I’ve lost count of the times we’ve turned up to one of these only to find the silly sod who stole it lying on the other side of the road with second-degree burns and a face full of safety glass. They don’t wind the windows down, so the whole thing’s just one big bomb.’

  It was a fiddle, but I dug the sim card I’d used to call Manson out of my unofficial phone and chucked it into the burning Jag. Replaced it with the original one.

  Leaving nothing to connect us.

  Alice’s face rippled and swam in the light of the blazing car. A massive lump sat on her left temple, it’s crown cracked and oozing blood. ‘Where’s Paul Manson?’

  OK.

  It took a bit, but I managed a smile for her. ‘I got Witness Protection to pick him up. He’s going to turn Queen’s Evidence.’

  Her mouth twisted. ‘Don’t lie to me!’

  ‘I’m not. He’s—’

  ‘Ash, I saw you carrying his body off into the woods. You said you were going to get him to testify!’

  Brilliant. Exactly what I needed to round the day off. As if things weren’t bad enough…

  ‘It was Mrs Kerrigan, she—’

  ‘You said no one had to die, I trusted you.’

  ‘I did my best, OK?’ I waved a hand at the burning car. ‘He was lying there on the ground and she shot him. Four times. Grinning while she did it.’ Sentenced to death because he was boring at dinner. ‘There wasn’t anything I could do.’ My shoulders dipped. ‘I’m sorry. I really, really am.’

  Alice leaned back against the tree, covered her eyes with her hands. ‘Oh God…’

  I cleared my throat. Looked away so she couldn’t see my face. ‘Rule number four: he was a mob accountant. Soon as he started stealing from Andy Inglis he was dead. It’s nobody’s fault but his. His and the people he worked for.’

  Liar. It was all mine. Just like everything else. Just like it always was.

  40

  ‘Feeling any better?’

  Alice squinted up at me. The tea towel had darkened, beads of water ran down her hand and dripped off her palm onto the sticky table top. ‘No.’

  Over at the far end of Buffalo Bob’s, the only other couple in the place were having a low-volume argument. Throwing their arms and hands about, baring teeth and hissing at each other over barbecue chicken, beans, and chips.

  Dark wood panelling covered the walls, just visible between the tsunami of framed photos and vintage memorabilia. A long bar with hand pumps and neon ‘BUD LIGHT’ and ‘COKE’ signs. A ceiling fan creaking round and round. Bruce Springsteen grunting out of the speakers.

  ‘We should get you checked out. It’s—’

  ‘I’m not going to the hospital.’

  ‘—got a concussion, and—’

  ‘Please. It’s…’ She shuddered. Prodded at the spare ribs on her plate. ‘So, is Mrs Kerrigan dead too?’

  The woman jumped to her feet, snatched up her milkshake, and threw the contents in her partner’s face. ‘BASTARD!’ Then stormed out into the car park, slamming the door behind her.

  Two beats, then the man was on his feet, dripping with pink, hurrying after her. He paused at the door to throw us a pained smile. ‘Sorry…’ And then he was gone.

  I dipped a chip in blue cheese sauce, scowled at my reflection in the window. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ Maybe Wee Free McFee was hacking her up on his butcher’s block, feeding strips to his dogs. Eating some himself. His chest smeared with blood and scars.

  She should have been mine.

  A nod. Then Alice picked up a rib. The meat dark and sagging against the charred bone. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘Hey: you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.’

  ‘He was just … there, and I tried to get away, but he hit me and…’ The bone clattered back onto the plate. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s going to be all right. All we have to do is rescue Jessica McFee, get Shifty back, and that’s us.’ One more squeeze. ‘You did everything you could.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Wee Free’s got Mrs Kerrigan, so she can’t come after us. He’s not going to hurt Shifty because he needs us to find his daughter. The only thing that happened tonight is a mob accountant died.’

  She nodded.

  I took another bite of burger, forcing it down like a greasy slab of cardboard.

  Just a mob accountant. Not an innocent man who bragged about his family to the wrong person.

  Alice tried the rib again, getting it as far as her mouth this time. ‘Wonder what his wife and son will think. That he’s run away with another woman? Been grabbed by a rival gang?’

  I kept my eyes on my chips. ‘Probably best not to think about it.’

  Alice sighed. Plopped the rib back on the plate and pushed it away. ‘I know this kind of thing probably happens all the time when you make your living laundering cash for crime lords.’ She lowered her eyes, fidgeted with her napkin. ‘But I can’t help feeling sorry for him.’

  And now the burger tasted like burnt flesh marinated in methylated spirits. I shoved my plate to the side. It clinked against hers.

  ‘OK.’ My fingers spread across the table top. ‘How do we catch the Inside Man?’

  She reached into her leather satchel and pulled out a folder. Placed it on the table. Pulled out a sheaf of papers.

  ‘Excuse me?’ The young bloke who’d taken our order appeared at the end of the table. Denim shirt going grey around the collar, American-flag waistcoat spattered with stains, a name badge with ‘HI Y’ALL, I’M BRAD ~ YOU WANT IT? WE GOT IT!!!’ His baseball hat was squint on top of his greasy curls. ‘You need any more ice? It’s not a problem, we’ve got loads?’

  Alice took the tea towel from her head and handed it over. ‘Thanks.’

  The egg on her forehead had settled down. Now it was little more than a bump, crowned with a pink-and-yellow scrape. Joseph was bloody lucky to get off with a shattered leg. If I’d had more time…

  Brad pointed. ‘You want another round of drinks?’

  She nodded. ‘Can I have a large Jack Daniel’s with ice please? And a pint of lager. And a pot of tea?’

  ‘Perfect: Jack on the rocks with a beer back, and a tea.’ Brad scurried off with the dripping dishtowel, and Alice spread her papers out on the table.

  Each one had two photos of an Inside Man victim on it: the head-and-shoulders photo of them alive above the deposition site where their body turned up. She put all nine of them in date order. Doreen Appleton – the oldest – on the left, then Tara McNab, Holly Drummond, Natalie May, Laura Strachan, Marie Jordan, Ruth Laughlin, and Claire Young, finishing off with Jessica McFee on the right.

  Alice went back into the folder for post-mortem photos. And followed those up with the copies of the letters she’d charmed out of Micky Slosser.

  And last, but not least, the letter that had arrived today.

  She rocked backwards and forwards in her seat, one arm wrapped around herself, the other hand twiddling its way through a strand of brown curls. ‘Well, the handwriting’s clearly very similar. Not identical – the angle of the letters is a bit more pronounced, the loops messier, which is a good sign.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Is your handwriting exactly the same today as it was eight years ago? Mine isn’t, it gets worse every yea
r, I think it’s because we all spend too much time on computers and not enough with a pen and paper, no one writes letters any more, well, unless they’re serial offenders…’ She picked up the newest one and squinted at it, eyes disappearing under the furrow of her brow. Then she went back into the satchel and came out with a pair of glasses. ‘That’s better. Right. Ahem… “Have you missed me? Because I know I’ve missed you. All of you. My victims, my pursuers, my public. I’ve missed you like a drowning man misses the cold hard earth beneath his feet.”’ Alice blew out a breath. ‘Not exactly subtle, is it?’

  ‘Maybe he’s a literature student, you know what they’re like.’

  ‘“The first one wasn’t right. She wasn’t strong enough for my dark purpose. Didn’t make my heart sing. But Jessica is different. Her cries and curses are the finest wine to my jaded palate. Her flesh, my feast.”’

  The tea was cold, but I drank it anyway. ‘I take it back, not even literature students are that pretentious.’

  ‘It gets worse. “She’s worthy of the love that burns within…”, “The pale skin of her breast rises and falls as she breathes me in, her heart quickening like a startled hare…”, “And soon I will plunge my knife deep into her quivering flesh, laid out naked before me. A sacrificial offering to climb inside…”’ Alice put the letter down, tapped her fingers against the Formica. ‘Is it just me, or is he writing torture porn? I mean, there’s nothing like that in any of the other letters. Yes, they’re just as pretentious, but now he’s going out of his way to push the sex angle.’

  ‘Sex sells.’

  Her fingertip danced across a line of handwritten text. ‘“The pale swell of her hidden pleasures call to me. Oh how she begs for me to enjoy their warm, dark embrace…” If serial killers sent letters in to Playboy, this is what it’d sound like.’

  I picked the very first letter from the set. Dated the day after we found Tara McNab’s body in the lay-by. No mention of sex, or breasts, or warm dark embraces. Lots of stuff about power and control and how disrespectful it was of the papers to call him the Caledonian Ripper, but no sex.

  The next one was dated the day before Holly Drummond turned up. The content was much the same as the first letter. And so was the next one. And the one after that. ‘Maybe his handwriting’s not the only thing that’s changed? Perhaps he’s just being more honest about what’s driving him?’