Now We Are Dead

by Stuart MacBride

  A bunch of blokes staggered their way through a drunken night out. Next folder: a middle-aged couple taking a Rottweiler for a walk along Aberdeen beach.

  Steel hit him. ‘You said there was porn!’ Then back to her own phone. ‘No, no’ you, Bobby. This idiot here.’

  He tried the next folder … ‘Bingo.’

  The screen filled with a topless woman in a fancy tiled bathroom – long blonde hair, mole on her right cheek, pouty red lips. Then the same woman from various intimate angles all the way to bare-arse naked as he scrolled through the pics. Then the same woman unzipping the photographer’s trousers.

  Barrett blushed. ‘Oh my ears and whiskers.’

  The next ones were even more explicit.

  ‘Ooh, no wonder he wanted his phone back!’

  Steel widened her eyes, eyebrows raised all the way up to her disastrous hairline. ‘Bobby? I’m going to have to call you later.’ She snatched the mobile from Tufty’s hand and leered at the screen. ‘I may need some alone time …’

  Duncan sat on the park bench, rubbing at his forehead while Ellie banged on and on and on and on …

  Didn’t matter what day it was, she always had something to bitch and whinge about.

  Little children squealed and roared and laughed and giggled as they chased each other around the playground. Hung upside down from the swings. Scooted down the slide on their backsides. Twirled and yelled and screamed on the spinning roundabout.

  Look at me, Mummy! Look at me, Daddy!

  Oh to be five again. When the only things you had to worry about was how many marbles you could fit up your nose and how dinosaurs brushed their teeth with those stubby wee arms of theirs. When the scariest thing in the world was running out of chocolate biscuits and the monster that lived under your bed.

  Well you know what? The monster that lived under his bed had nothing on Ellie.

  God knew how something as lovely and warm and wonderful as Lucy came out of that frozen, frigid monster’s fanny.

  She was still at it. ‘… you should’ve known better. For Christ’s sake, Duncan!’

  ‘How is this my fault, Ellie? You’re the one who—’

  ‘And if you think you’re getting her for the holidays, you can bloody well whistle.’

  ‘No. No, that’s not fair and you know it!’

  Lucy roared past, both arms held out, making aeroplane noises, curly blonde hair bouncing out behind her. ‘Look at me, Daddy! Look at me!’

  ‘Yes, Daddy can see you, darling.’ Back to the phone. ‘You’re being completely unreasonable, Ellie.’

  ‘Don’t you take that tone with me, Duncan Nicol. She’s my daughter and if I say she’s coming with us to France, she’s coming with us to France.’

  Lucy made another pass, strafing the dog-poo bin. ‘Rrrrrrraaaaaawww … Dugga-dugga-dugga-dugga! Neeeeewwww … BOOOM!’

  ‘It’s called “joint custody”, Ellie. Joint!’

  ‘Are you watching, Daddy?’ Lucy was looking back at him, eyes so big and bright, smile so wide. Not paying any attention to where she was running. ‘Are you watching—’ She crashed into the bushes and went headlong, disappearing into the greenery with a squeal.

  Duncan jumped to his feet. ‘Lucy? Lucy!’

  ‘What’s happening? Has something happened?’ Ellie’s voice got even shriller as he ran over to the bushes. ‘Duncan, what have you done to our baby?’

  ‘Lucy! Lucy, are you … Oh thank God.’

  She crawled out of the bushes on her hands and knees, little bits of rhododendron poking out of her curls.

  He swept her up. Kissing her on the forehead and cheeks. ‘You silly sausage. Are you OK?’

  She nodded at him, eyebrows down, mouth clamped into a line – her serious face. ‘I fell down.’ Then she glanced over her shoulder at the undergrowth and back again. ‘Daddy? There’s a lady in the bushes and she’s all crying and sticky.’

  Lucy held up her hands. They were clarted with blood.

  Oh no. No. Oh no …

  She almost slipped out of his arms. The phone bounced off the grass at his feet, Ellie’s voice barely audible.

  ‘Duncan? Duncan! I demand you tell me what’s happened this instant!’

  The bushes.

  A woman.

  Blood.

  Duncan swallowed. Then inched his way forward, one hand on the back of Lucy’s head, keeping her face snuggled in against his neck so she couldn’t see anything. He peered in through the leaves.

  Oh Christ. Oh dear, bloody Christ.

  The woman lay on the dirt, between the rhododendron branches and roots, twisted, crying. Most of her clothes were gone, bits, like the cuffs of her shirt, still attached – the fabric tattered and frayed where the rest had been torn off. Blood oozed down her arms and legs, deep red gashes carved into pale skin.

  She looked up, right at him. Reached out with a filthy hand. ‘Help … help me …’

  Duncan screamed.

  Dirty, rotten, useless, halfwit bastards.

  Roberta stormed down the corridor, uniforms flattening themselves against the walls, getting the hell out of her way. Good. Tufty scuffled along behind her, trying to play the voice of reason. Aye, good luck with that.

  Time for reason was past.

  ‘Come on, Sarge. Maybe if you had a cuppa or something? Calmed down a bit before you …’

  She barged through the door to DCI Rutherford’s office, letting go of the handle so the thing banged off one of the filing cabinets. The git himself was behind his ‘look how important I am’ desk, DI Vine taking up one of the visitors’ chairs, one of Vine’s sidekicks over by the whiteboard. Case notes and photos spread out across the desk.

  Everyone stared at her.

  Tufty grabbed her arm, hissing in her ear. ‘Really don’t think this is a good—’

  She shook him off. ‘It’s Wallace, isn’t it? He attacked that woman.’

  Vine looked down his nose at her. ‘We’re in a meeting, Sergeant.’

  ‘Victoria Park, same place he attacked Claudia Boroditsky—’

  ‘You’ve got a bloody cheek bursting in here!’

  ‘—in the bushes with a sodding knife. Do I have to draw you a diagram before you’ll get it through your thick skulls?’

  Vine stood. ‘That is ENOUGH!’

  He was right, it was. Time to rearrange some teeth.

  She stepped forwards, fists curling, but Tufty grabbed her again with a little eeking noise.

  From the safety of his desk, DCI Rutherford held up a hand. ‘Now, now, let’s all just take a deep calming breath before we do or say something we can’t take back.’

  No one moved.

  ‘Good.’ Rutherford pointed at the chairs. ‘Sit down, John. And Roberta, I know you mean well, but you need to walk away from this one.’

  ‘He raped that—’

  ‘We don’t know that yet. We can’t prove it.’ He lowered his hand. ‘But I can assure you DI Vine will liaise with the Divisional Rape Investigation Unit and we will find the man responsible.’

  Oh yes, that was such a comfort. ‘Jack Wallace is a vicious, raping, scheming little—’

  ‘And given your history with the man, I would hope you’re bright enough to never get involved with him again!’ Rutherford screwed his face up for a moment. Took a deep breath. Spread his hands out on his desk. ‘Look, Roberta, it almost cost you your career last time. Leave this one to DI Vine. Walk away. That’s an order.’

  It was like swallowing broken glass.

  But she bared her teeth and did it anyway. ‘Yes, Boss.’

  The hospital room had that throat-catching disinfectant stink: slightly smoky, laced with iodine and Jeyes Fluid. They had the blinds down, shutting out the harsh morning sun, leaving the place cloaked in gloom. The only light, other than what seeped through the blinds, came from the array of machinery hooked up to every one of the four patients in here.

  The starchy sheets crackled as Roberta shifted her bum along the edge of the
bed. A little whiteboard was fixed to the metal frame at the head end, just big enough to have ‘BEATRICE EDWARDSAB RHD –’ on it, a laminated sheet of paper Blu-Tacked up beneath with: ‘NIL BY MOUTH’ in thick laser-printed letters.

  Roberta squeezed Beatrice’s hand, the skin cool and clammy like the recently deceased. Bandages wrapped around Beatrice’s wrists, reaching all the way up to her elbows – yellow and red stains leached out into the fabric. Defensive wounds. She’d fought back.

  They’d taped a wad of gauze across the gash in her face and the dressing stood out bright white against the bruises. Her eyes, hooded and heavy, the pupils dilated like shiny black buttons.

  Roberta cleared her throat. Swallowed. Tried again: ‘Are you sure, Beatrice?’

  It took a while for her to respond and when she did the words were thick and slurred. ‘Was dark … So dark … Knife.’

  ‘How about his voice, did he threaten you? Did he say anything?’

  A slow-motion blink. ‘Tired … Sleep …’

  ‘Did he have an accent? Anything?’

  The word, ‘There!’ hissed out from somewhere over by the door, followed by, ‘There she is.’

  Roberta glanced up from Beatrice’s bandaged wrist. A fat nurse in pale blue scrubs stood in the doorway, nearly filling it, fists on her hips. Nose in the air. She dwarfed her companion – a weedy uniformed PC with greasy hair Brylcreemed into a hard side parting as if he’d just fallen out of the 1950s.

  The wee sod jabbed a finger at Roberta, then at his feet. He adopted the same hissing rasp. ‘You: get over here! What do you think you’re doing?’

  She took out one of her Police Scotland business cards and put it in Beatrice’s hand. Closed the cold fingers around it. ‘If you remember anything, anything at all. You call me, OK?’

  The weedy PC bustled up. ‘You can’t be in here! This woman’s been attacked!’

  His lardy sidekick was right behind him. ‘It’s not even visiting hours! You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  Roberta gave Beatrice’s hand another gentle squeeze. ‘It gets better. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it does. There comes a time when you won’t flinch if someone touches you. When your heart doesn’t feel like you’re going to die if you hear footsteps coming up behind you. When the darkness doesn’t make you want to scream.’ She stood, leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Trust me. I know.’

  The nurse folded her arms, chin up. ‘I demand you leave this ward at once!’

  Roberta stuck two fingers up, blew a very wet raspberry, then sauntered from the room, pausing to grab the PC by the ear on the way, taking him with her.

  He squealed like a wee piggy. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’

  A disdaining sniff as his sidekick turned to watch them leave. ‘Horrible woman. How anyone could—’

  The ward doors clunked shut behind them, cutting her off.

  Roberta dragged the weedy PC across the corridor to the vending machines, keeping a plier-like grip on his lug. ‘You know who I am?’

  His face contorted for a moment or two, then it must have dawned, because his eyes bugged. ‘DCI … I mean Detective Sergeant Steel. You— Ow!’

  She gave his ear another twist for luck.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Let’s try that again. Do – you – know – who – I – am?’

  His face creased, little hands twitching at his sides. Then finally he got it. ‘No?’

  There we go.

  ‘Good boy. Keep it that way.’ She released his ear and patted him on the cheek. ‘Now buy me a KitKat.’

  Tufty stood in front of the pool car, scuffling from foot to foot. Face all creased and fidgety.

  Roberta polished off the last of her pilfered KitKat. ‘You look like a dog with worms. Been calling you for ages!’

  ‘Nice people switch their phones off in Hospitals, you wormy wee spud.’ She crumpled up the KitKat wrapper and lobbed it in through the open passenger window. ‘Come on then: out with it.’

  ‘Mrs Galloway’s next-door neighbour: she says there’s two big thugs round there right now hammering away on the old dear’s door, yelling at her to open up!’

  Roberta stared at him. ‘So get some sodding backup sorted!’

  ‘We’re closest. Going to be at least fifteen minutes till anyone else is free.’

  Thugs.

  Mrs Galloway. A grin spread across Roberta’s face, hard and sharp. ‘Get down with your bad self!’

  Tufty backed away, chin pulled in. ‘Sarge? Why are you smiling?’

  Because the dirty wee sods that beat up an old lady and microwaved her dog were about to come down with a serious dose of police brutality. ‘In the car, now!’

  III

  The lift juddered to a halt on the twelfth floor. Soon as the doors creaked open, shouting boomed in from the corridor outside.

  ‘Open up, you old bitch!’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Agnes, you’re only making it worse on yourself!’

  Roberta cranked her smile up a notch and charged out of the lift, Tufty right beside her.

  Two massive bruisers, dressed all in black, battered on Mrs Galloway’s door. Boxers’ noses and rugby players’ ears. They could’ve been twins, except one was boiled-egg bald while the other had a stringy blond mullet and sunglasses. Both with Seventies’ porn star moustaches.

  The bald one thumped on the door again. ‘I’m not kidding around here!’

  His mate kicked it. ‘Open the bloody door!’

  Roberta dug into her jacket and removed the extendable baton lurking there. Clacked it out to full length. ‘HOY, CHUCKLE BROTHERS!’

  Tufty did the same with his baton, a wee canister of pepper spray in his other hand. ‘POLICE! NOBODY MOVE!’

  Chuckle Brother Number One turned and peered at them over the top of his sunglasses. ‘Here to back us up, are you?’

  She thwacked her baton off the corridor wall, adding to the scuffs and dents. ‘Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.’

  Number Two held up his hands. ‘Nah, you got the wrong end, like.’

  ‘You battered an old lady. You wrecked her flat. YOU KILLED HER DOG!’

  They both backed away at that, chins pulled in where their necks should’ve been.

  Number Two frowned at Number One. ‘Dog?’

  A shake of the head sent lanky blond wisps floating at the back of Number One’s head. ‘Nah, we’re totally not that.’ He pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘Bailiffs. Got a court order to seize goods worth two thousand pound, don’t we?’

  ‘We never killed no dog!’ Number Two’s face contracted around his broken nose. ‘What kinda people you think we are?’

  Roberta stared at them. ‘You’re bailiffs?’

  ‘I got two cocker spaniels!’

  The bailiffs stood in the middle of the living room, heads bowed, feet shuffling, hands clasped in front of them – a pair of schoolboys waiting for a thrashing from the headmaster. Only bigger. And more muscly. With the occasional tattoo poking out from the necks of their black T-shirts.

  Mrs Galloway sat in her wonky armchair, somehow even thinner and older and frailer than she’d been this morning, a fibreglass cast on her arm. Trying no’ to make eye contact with anyone. Especially the massive pair of thugs who’d been battering on her door two minutes ago.

  Roberta poked Bailiff Number One. ‘Go on then.’

  He cleared his throat. Looked at his mate. Then back at the poor battered auld wifie sitting there like a broken sparrow. ‘Erm … Mrs Galloway? Rick and me got this warrant and …’ He swivelled his head from side to side, taking in the shabby wee room. ‘And I’m really sorry to hear about your wee dog.’

  Bailiff Number Two, AKA: Rick, nodded. ‘That’s a shitty thing to do. See if I ever get my hands on the bastard what did that, I’ll—’

  ‘Anyway, we can see you got nothing worth two grand. So I’m gonna go back to the office and see what we can do about a payment plan, or something, right? Spread the costs?’

 
Rick tightened his fists. ‘A wee dog …’

  The pair of them were waiting for the lift as Steel and Tufty stepped out of Mrs Galloway’s flat.

  Tufty closed the door, pulling on the handle till the Yale lock clicked into place. ‘Think she’ll be OK?’

  Steel marched over to the lifts.

  Baldy shook his head, jaw tight and clenched. ‘I mean, what did a wee dog ever do to anyone? I tell you, Marty, I’m seriously gonna end that scummer.’

  Mullet nodded. ‘Bastard.’

  Ping: the lift doors slid open and Steel stepped inside, a small pause, then the bailiffs joined her. Tufty squeaking in just as the doors started to shut.

  Steel stared at Baldy and Mullet. Cracked her knuckles. ‘You’re getting one chance to answer this, then I’m kicking both your arses for you: who are you working for?’

  ‘Landlord.’ Mullet nodded his head at the lift doors. ‘Owns about half the flats in the block. The old lady’s not paid her rent in, like, four months.’

  Baldy shrugged. ‘Sent her dozens of letters, hasn’t he? But these auld biddies?’ A grimace. ‘Wishful thinking, innit? You don’t open the post, it don’t count. Maybe the Denial Fairy makes all that back rent you owe disappear. Then me and Marty got to pay them a visit.’

  She poked him in the chest. ‘Someone’s loansharking down here. I want to know who.’

  Baldy growled. Bared his teeth. ‘He the one microwaved that poor dog? Cos if it is …’

  Mullet folded his massive arms across his chest, like a big red-neck genie. ‘Can do you better than a name. I’ll show you where you can find him.’

  ‘Here youse go.’ Chuckle Brother Number One, AKA: Marty, opened the door, revealing the lounge bar in all its retro glory. Red vinyl on the seats, a sticky lino floor, dark wooden tables and bar. A line of optics for Bell’s and Grouse and own-brand vodka. The pub’s name spelled out in red-and-blue on the mirror behind the bar: ‘THE BROKEN SPIDER’.

  Roberta stepped inside, Tufty tagging along like an idiot puppy.

  Jimmy Shand’s accordion diddledy-twiddled out of the jukebox, competing against the bings, squeaks, and electronic sirens coming from the puggy machine at the end of the bar. A knot of wee loons were poking away at it in their mismatched tracksuit tops, bottoms, hoodies, and baseball caps – most of which were on the wrong way around. All ten of them looking as if they’d failed the audition for Crimewatch.