The Angry Man’s voice was thin and shivery. ‘Come on, you can do this …’ The pole, poking away at Josie’s shoulder, trying to hook onto the tatty lumberjack shirt. Failing. More swearing.
Milne shook his head, trying to make things settle down. Trying to think clearly for the first time in a year and a half.
A bright-yellow Marigold rubber glove appeared in the opening, and then another one, attached to a disgusted-looking man in his late forties with a plastic torch clenched between his teeth. His greying hair was just visible in the torchlight reflected back from the layer of sewage-froth. He stretched out, reaching for Josie’s body … And that was when Milne grabbed him—
Sitting crossed-legged in Colin’s bedroom, ignoring the blaring of the television next door, sinking the needle into his virgin arm. Biting his lip at the bee-sting pain. Pressing the plunger—
There was a high-pitched scream and the man toppled forward, dropping the torch as he pitched head-first into the tank. Arms flailing—
Standing down the docks, selling himself for the price of a hamburger. Enough to pay for a single wrapper. Feeling disgusted as he goes down on a man old enough to be his dead dad—
Milne curled a bony hand into a fist and slammed it into the screaming man. Over and over again, splashing and hitting and punching and biting in the dark. And all the time Josie’s body bumps against them. Like she’s trying to intervene. Trying to break it up. Make them—
Breaking into an old lady’s house in the dead of night. Rifling through her things as she sleeps in the next room. Stealing anything he can sell down the pub for a couple of quid. Passing them out through the window to Josie, who’s standing watch. Punching the old lady in the face when she wakes up to see what all the noise is about. Watching as she lies there on the floor, not moving, too scared to check if she’s still alive—
The man gurgled, struggling as Milne grabbed him by the lapels and forced his battered head beneath the surface. Holding him there. Watching the bubbles pop and froth from under the sewage. An arm swept up from the stinking water, catching Milne on the side of the head, but he didn’t let go. Grunting, teeth gritted, feeling the man start to go limp. Keeping him submerged. Drowning him in piss and shite—
There’s no one in the cemetery at this time of night. No one to watch him drop his trousers and squat over his father’s grave—
The struggling stopped after a couple of minutes, but Milne didn’t let go. Just in case. A long, slow count to five hundred: that should be enough. The bastard deserved what he got. Milne released his grip and the body bobbed to the surface.
He rummaged through the guy’s pockets, taking everything he could find – keys, wallet, spare change, handkerchief – before releasing the body to sink into the sludge. And then he reached up and clambered out of the tank, back into the real world.
He lay on his back, staring up at the night sky. Shivering. Steaming gently. According to Josie’s glow-in-the-dark watch it was half past eleven. Wednesday. Two days without food or water. He was lucky to be alive at all. And that thought set off a fit of the giggles. And then some coughing. And finally some sort of seizure. He was pouring with sweat, juddering away, teeth clamped shut so he wouldn’t bite his tongue in half. Not healthy. Not healthy at all.
Milne rolled over onto his front and levered himself up onto his knees. Trembling all the time. Knowing that without something to drink soon, he was going to die. The world tangoed round his head as he stood upright, the night sky swirling and pulsing. He took a deep breath and lurched towards the darkened row of cottages.
A security light blared into life, catching him halfway down the path, but he staggered on to the front door. Locked. Milne dragged out the keys he’d taken from the bastard who’d killed Josie and tried them in the lock, one by one. None of them worked.
He lurched across the garden and nearly fell over the waist-high fence, clambering into next door. The keys still didn’t fit. Another dose of the tremors grabbed him, shaking him to his knees. Leaving him gasping and wracked with cramp on the top step. The third house was the same, only this time he had to crawl through the garden to get to the front door. The keys were useless.
Give up. Just curl up on the path and die: get it over with.
But there was one more house left – the one on the end. Where McRitchie lived. McRichie would still be banged up in Craiginches, Milne could break in without having to worry about an irate householder coming after him with a shotgun.
It was pitch dark round the back of the cottages. Milne felt his way along the wall, stumbling over a pile of something that rattled and clattered, before finding McRitchie’s back door. It was one of the part-glazed kind beloved of housebreakers everywhere. Smiling, Milne tried to smash one of the panes with his elbow. It bounced, sending shooting pains racing round his body, making his whole arm feel like it was on fire. Biting his tongue he sank to his knees and nearly passed out.
Deep breaths. Deeeeeeep breaths … Oh God, he was going to be sick. But there was nothing to be sick with, just a thin string of bile, spiralling bitterly down the front of his soaking, stained clothes. He grabbed a rock from the garden and did the window properly, sending shards of glass shattering into the kitchen. Fumble with the lock and doorknob. And he was in. Oh thank God.
He slumped against the worktop and tried not to pass out. And tried—
It’s his birthday and he’ll cry if he wants to. Nineteen years old and his present is getting the crap beaten out of him by Colin McLeod over a small matter of an unpaid debt. Fifteen pounds. That’s all it takes for Colin McLeod to give him two weeks in hospital. Happy birthday.
The doctors come past and the councillors and the police too, but he doesn’t say anything. Just lies there and tries to move his toes again. They give him methadone and group therapy, but as soon as he gets out he’s back on heroin again. Borrowing money and—
BANG! And his head hit the linoleum floor. Milne lay flat on his back, staring up at McRitchie’s kitchen ceiling, wondering how he got there. He was in hospital and the next thing … He closed his eyes and shivered. Thirsty … Needed a drink.
There was a bottle of whisky on the kitchen table – illuminated by the faint green light from the clock on the microwave. He picked it up with trembling hands and fumbled the lid off, swallowing mouthful after mouthful, not caring that it burnt all the way down. Until it hit his stomach and bounced, spewing out through his mouth and nose, making a slick of alcohol on the kitchen floor.
Water, he needed water, not whisky. Lurch to the sink, turn on the tap and stick his mouth against it. Sucking it down. This time he was bright enough to stop after a couple of mouthfuls, feeling his stomach rebel after two days on ‘nil by mouth’. Two gulps, then a break, then another couple. Slowly building up until he wasn’t thirsty anymore. He was ravenous.
McRitchie’s fridge wasn’t exactly packed with tasty goodies, but Milne didn’t care. He grabbed things at random, stuffing them in his mouth, barely chewing. Eating by the cold-white glow of the fridge light, letting the packaging fall around his feet. Cheese, cold mince, raw bacon. For a moment he thought he was going to bring it all up again, but it stayed down. Now all he had to worry about was the—
Click. The counter-top lights flickered on, then a hard voice boomed out into the messy kitchen: ‘What the FUCK?’
Milne span round, eyes wide, cold beans falling from his open mouth. It was McRitchie, looking very pissed off. He was easily as tall as Milne, but a hell of a lot broader. Muscled, not junky stick-thin. Someone who didn’t sample his own product.
Milne raised his hands, dropping the tin of beans. It bounced off the linoleum, exploding red sauce and pale beans everywhere, joining the whisky vomit. He tried to explain what he was doing there, but his throat wouldn’t work.
McRitchie yanked a drawer open and dragged out a long-bladed kitchen knife. ‘Break into my house? You stupid smack-head bastard!’ He charged forward. ‘I’ll
fucking—’ and stepped right in the slick of spilled beans and whisky. His left leg shot out from underneath him and for a brief second everything went into slow motion: the knife sailing through the air, his head sweeping downward and catching the edge of the kitchen table. The loud thunk as it hit. The knife skittering away across the working surface, clattering into the sink. Another thump as McRitchie hit the floor hard. Eyes shut, mouth open wide. Not moving.
Milne grabbed the knife from the sink and crept forward. Trembling. McRitchie was still breathing. But it didn’t take long to fix that.
The guy’s car was in exactly the same place he and Josie had left it two days ago. It even started first time. Milne sat behind the wheel, shivering and shaking, coughing until the world slipped into shades of black and yellow then disappeared.
He came to with his head resting against the wheel and the car’s horn braying in his ear. Snatched himself back upright, felt everything whooooosh around him. And closed his eyes. Forcing it all back down. Turning the key in the ignition.
It had taken every last ounce of strength to drag McRitchie’s heavy arse round to the septic tank, tumbling him in with Josie and her killer. Then a considerable breather before levering the inspection hatch cover back into place. Good job McRitchie had a HUGE stash of speed hidden in his bedroom or there was no way Milne would have managed it. In fact all of McRitchie’s stash was now stuffed into the glove compartment, Milne’s pockets, and under the drivers’ seat. He had enough to last a couple of months, if he was careful and didn’t go mad in the first week.
All he had to do now was get back to the squat and he’d be fine. Sell the car, get some spare cash and live on drugs and delivery pizza until April. Every junky’s dream.
The A90 was quiet as he pulled onto it, face screwed up in concentration, keeping the car at a steady thirty, trying to stay between the white lines. And doing a pretty good job of it too. Three tablets of speed and he was back on form. No more shakes and shivers. No, he was feeling— Oh shite.
A flash of blue light in the rear-view mirror. SHITE!
Eyes front. Maybe it wasn’t for him? Maybe the police wanted to pull someone else over and they were just … No. It was him. And he was too wasted to make a run for it. He pulled over.
The traffic policeman was a woman. She rapped on the driver’s window and Milne fumbled with the electric button thing until it slid down. She recoiled back, one hand covering her mouth, gagging. ‘Holy Christ!’ Her whole face curdled. ‘What the hell is that stink?’
Milne shrugged. After two days in the tank he couldn’t smell himself anymore. ‘I fell in some shite.’ Sit perfectly still. Don’t twitch, or shiver, or sound like a junky tosspot off of his face on stolen drugs.
‘You OK sir?’ She shone her torch into the car, spotlighting him in all his manky glory. ‘You look ill.’
Milne nodded. She had him there, he could see himself in the rear-view mirror: pale grey, sweaty, dark purple bags under his eyes, threads of fiery red spreading through his skin. ‘I fell in some shite.’
She turned and waved at the traffic car: ‘Norm! Get an ambulance up here sharpish!’ then knelt down, breathing through her mouth, like she didn’t want to smell him anymore. ‘You’re going to be OK, we’re going to get you to the hospital.’
He opened his mouth to tell her he just wanted to go home, but couldn’t. All that came out was, ‘I fell in some shite …’ Sitting there, watching the policewoman fading away until there was nothing left but darkness and—
Headache. Killer, bastard headache. Like a chisel driven between the ears. Milne cracked open an eye to see a pretty nurse hovering over him with a syringe.
‘Where am I?’ was what he tried to say, but all that came out was a dry croaking sound. The nurse didn’t smile at him, just held a squeezy bottle to his lips and let him take a small sip. ‘Thank you …’ weak, but almost sounding human again.
The nurse nodded. Brisk, matter of fact. Nose creased like he still stank of shite. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’ She beckoned over a uniformed constable and a big, fat bald bloke with a tight suit and a constipated expression.
‘Mr Milne.’ The fat bloke loomed over the bed. ‘We’d like to talk to you about the car you were driving when you were brought here.’
Milne frowned. ‘I …’ Shite – they’d found the drugs. All of McRichie’s lovely drugs and he’d barely had a chance to sample any of them.
‘Specifically, we’d like to talk to you about the car’s original owner. And how his dead body wound up in the boot covered in your fingerprints.’
And that was it: Duncan ‘Manky’ Milne was up to his neck in shite again.
By Stuart MacBride
The Logan McRae Novels
Cold Granite
Dying Light
Broken Skin
Flesh House
Blind Eye
Dark Blood
Shatter the Bones
Other Works
Birthdays for the Dead
Sawbones – a novella
12 Days of Winter (short stories)
Writing as Stuart B. MacBride
Halfhead
About the Author
Stuart MacBride is the No.1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae series and Birthdays for the Dead. The McRae novels have won him the CWA’s Dagger in the Library, the Barry Award for Best Debut Novel, and Best Breakthrough Author at the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards. In 2012 Stuart was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Hall of Fame.
Stuart’s other works include Halfhead, a near-future thriller, Sawbones, a novella aimed at adult emergent readers, and several short stories.
He lives in the north-east of Scotland with his wife, Fiona and cat, Grendel.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental. The only exceptions to this are the characters Alex (Zander) Clark, Ian Falconer, April Logan/Graham, and Emma Sim, who have given their express permission to be fictionalized in this volume. All behaviour, history, and character traits assigned to these individuals have been designed to serve the needs of the narrative and do not necessarily bear any resemblance to the real people.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2012
Stuart MacBride asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
The Ballad of Manky Milne by Stuart MacBride © 2009. First appeared in Uncage Me, edited by Jen Jordan, Bleak House Books. Reproduced by permission of the author.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007344260
EPub Edition © January 2013 ISBN: 9780007344284
Version 1
FIRST EDITION
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Without Whom
Saturday
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Sunday
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Monday
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Tuesday
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Wednesday
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Close to the Bone (Special Edition) (Logan McRae, Book 8) Page 48