Birthdays for the Dead (39 page)

Footsteps on the stairs: Drummond taking them two at a time.

She stared. ‘Ash, is that… Well, of course it is.’ Alice shrank back against the wardrobe. ‘Is that what happened to your foot, you accidentally shot yourself with your own—’

‘I did
not
shoot myself.’ I blinked. ‘It’s complicated. And it wasn’t this gun.’ I tucked it into my belt, at the side on the left, where my borrowed jacket would cover it. ‘And it wasn’t an accident.’

‘You did it on
purpose
?’

My gloves squeaked on the door handle. ‘Are you coming or not?’

Through in the study, ACC Drummond was on his knees in front of the desk, hauling CDs out of a black zip-up case and dumping them into a carrier-bag while the computers powered up.

I knocked on the doorframe. ‘Problem?’

He jumped, spun around, eyes and mouth wide. His lips twitched, then he scrambled to his feet. ‘You have no right coming in here! This is private property.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m… I’m placing you under arrest.’

‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He squinted over my shoulder. ‘Dr McDonald? I… I want you to phone the police: Constable Henderson has become a danger to himself and others.’

The walking stick was a good sturdy model. I jerked it up into the air, caught it by the bottom and swung it like a crowbar, smashing the head into one of Drummond’s pictures. The glass shattered – the ACC and some bloke off the television crashed into the carpet. ‘WHERE IS SHE?’

He flinched. Opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. Then put on his sergeant major’s voice: ‘Officer Henderson, I insist—’

Another picture exploded off the wall.

‘Where is she, Drummond?’

Alice squeezed past me into the room. ‘You should really tell him, Assistant Chief Constable, he’s been under a lot of stress recently, and I don’t think Ash is too worried about the consequences of battering your brains out right now.’ She settled into the office chair. ‘Where’s Katie?’

‘I don’t know anything about—’

The cane’s head battered into his cheek, hard enough to make my arm shake. He staggered against a shelf, sending law books thumping to the ground. Stood there with a hand pressed against his face, groaning.

‘Where – is – she?’

‘I don’t—’

I went for the side of his knee this time and he yelled, then doubled over – clutching at the joint. So I cracked the lying fuck on the back of the head too. Blood and hair stuck to the handle.

Drummond screamed and curled into a ball, arms wrapped around his head. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’

Alice shoogled the office chair closer to the desk. ‘It’s my professional opinion that Officer Henderson is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of what’s happened, he’s not responsible for his actions, it’d certainly count as temporary insanity if he beats you to death.’

‘I don’t know where your daughter is!’

I held the gun in front of his face, hauled the slide back and racked a round into the chamber. Then stuck the gun against his forehead. ‘Give me one reason, you sick little shite.’

‘You’re crazy, you’ve lost your bloody mind!’

Alice nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I think it was all your child pornography that finally pushed him over the edge.’

‘It… It’s evidence in a case, I was only
holding
it until—’

The gun made a dull thunk when I slammed it into his head.

‘Aaaagh…’ Blood seeped out of the gash in his scalp.

‘You made everyone at the station do PNC searches.’

‘It’s not my fault!’ He covered his head with his arms again, scarlet soaking into the sleeves of his white shirt. ‘He found out about everything… What was I supposed to do, let him tell the world? It’d ruin my family – my wife, my children, my friends…’

‘
Who
found out?’ I forced Drummond’s head back. Jammed the gun barrel into his cheek. ‘WHO FOUND OUT? WHO DID YOU TELL?’

‘It wasn’t—’

‘I’LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF, YOU PIECE OF SHITE!’

The words came out high-pitched and fast: ‘A journalist, I give them to a journalist! Every year, three weeks before each girl’s birthday, I have to give him the family’s address.’

A journalist…

I let go and limped away. Stared out of the study window at the shining street. The clouds ate the sun, and everything went grey and gloomy again. All this, just so some tabloid scumbag could get at the story. So they could doorstep Lauren Burges’s mother and ask her what it felt like to know her only child’s bones had been dug up in a dilapidated park. Maybe stick a camera in her face: ‘G
RIEVING
M
OTHER
C
RIES
F
OR
P
OOR
L
AUREN
– E
XCLUSIVE!
’

I leaned on the windowsill. ‘Who was it?’

‘I didn’t have any choice, he was investigating the death of a … colleague in Inverness.’ The ACC coughed. ‘He found out about our little group.’

‘Drummond, I swear to God I will put a bullet in you.’

Alice nodded. ‘Temporary insanity.’

‘He’s…’ Deep breath. ‘He’s called Frank McKenzie; he’s a freelance journalist.’

‘No he isn’t, he’s a fucking photographer on the
Castle News and Post
…’ I frowned down at the front garden.

Outside Megan Taylor’s house – when Jennifer and her cameraman were waiting to ambush me – Shifty Dave taking the piss: ‘
If it’s no’ Wee Hairy Frank McKenzie. Two counts drink driving, and six months for phone hacking. Surprised any paper’ll touch you since you got kicked off the
News of the World
. Relegated to camera boy now, are we?’

Got kicked off a London-based paper. London: the only place other than Oldcastle where the Birthday Boy had taken more than one victim. Frank McKenzie: always there whenever we turned around. Every time there was a press conference, or an appeal from the parents, there he was with his camera, recording it all. Preserving it. Soaking up the grief.

I thrust the gun into Alice’s hands and lurched for the door. ‘If the bastard moves, shoot him.’

Down the stairs – my right heel thunking into every step – then out the front door, hirpling along, the cane thumping against the wet tarmac.

Shadows lengthened across the street, everything painted copper and gold. I unlocked the Renault and hauled the driver’s door open. It was in here somewhere… Not in the door-pocket. I knelt on the damp pavement and peered under the seat.

There it was – lying next to two empty water bottles, some scrunched-up receipts, an empty crisp packet, and the discarded syringe.

I reached in and plucked the SD card from the debris, blew the dust off it, and hobbled back to the house.

Alice slipped the SD card into the slot on Drummond’s laptop. ‘What are we looking for?’

‘You’re the psychologist, figure it out.’

She fiddled with the mouse for a bit, and a window appeared, full of thumbnail images. Alice scrolled through them: half a dozen pics of a grinning ginger kid holding an oversized cardboard cheque; another half-dozen of a car on Dundas Road with the front end caved in and a smear of what might have been blood on the dashboard; a series of random faces grinning at the camera; thirty or forty shots of the press conference in Dundee – DCS Dickie sitting up on the platform with Helen McMillan’s mum; a few arty shots of the Oldcastle skyline; and that was it.

I breathed out. Nothing there.

Alice opened up a web browser and started clicking away at things.

‘What are…’ Drummond cleared his throat. ‘I have money.’

I turned on him. ‘You want to buy your way out of it? Flash a few grand and we’ll forget all about your collection of kiddy porn?
Seriously
?’

‘I can… You want to be a DI again? I can make that happen. DCI even.’

‘Ash?’

‘I’m going to throw your arse to the wolves, Drummond.’

‘Come on, be reasonable.’

‘Ash!’

I grabbed the gun and ground it into his forehead. ‘You want reasonable?’

Alice tugged at my sleeve. ‘Ash, you need to look at this.’

She pointed at the laptop screen. A girl I didn’t recognize was tied to a chair in a filthy basement room, her bare skin covered in bruises, head shaved, three gouges across her chest leaking scarlet onto her pale skin. The next image was the same again, only worse. In the one after that, her throat hung open and dark.

Alice double-clicked on the first image, filling the screen with it. ‘I downloaded a program to find deleted files on the card…’

Little bastard. Little
fucking
bastard. I turned, stared down at Drummond, snivelling away on the study floor. ‘You piece of shite.’

‘I… I didn’t…’

‘Ash, I know her: she’s one of the missing girls the Party Crashers are looking for.’

‘You gave him their addresses!’

‘It… McKenzie was… Blackmail. I didn’t have any choice! I didn’t know!’

‘YOU HELPED THE FUCKING BIRTHDAY BOY!’ I grabbed Drummond by the hair again, banged his head against the desk. ‘Open your mouth.’ He stared up at me, eyes wide and full of tears. ‘OPEN YOUR MOUTH!’

He did. I jammed the gun barrel inside.

‘Gllllk…’ Hands up, palms facing out, whole body trembling.

‘We could’ve caught him. We could’ve caught the bastard years ago! HE’S GOT MY DAUGHTER!’

Chapter 47

‘
One second, I’ll check for you.
’ Hold music warbled out of my phone.

The back end of Drummond’s BMW crept into his garage, reversing light glowing. I held up a hand and the car rocked to a halt.

Alice clambered out from behind the wheel and popped the boot lid. ‘Anything?’

‘They’re looking.’

‘
Hello, Assistant Chief Constable? Yes, Mr McKenzie isn’t in today, he’s putting his mother’s house in storage – poor dear has to go into a home. Dementia. I can take a message if you like?
’

I didn’t. I called Rhona instead and asked her to do a PNC check on Frank McKenzie and his parents.

‘
Is… Is everything OK, Guv? Only… Well, you didn’t come home last night and I made curry and—
’

‘Please, Rhona. I need those details soon as you can.’

‘
Oh… OK.
’

‘Call me back.’ I hung up, stuck the phone in my pocket. ‘You ready, Alice?’

A nod.

Together we heaved ACC Drummond into the boot of his BMW: arms cuffed behind his back, face a mass of bruises and seeping red cuts. A knotted shirt acting as a gag. Alice dumped the laptop and tower unit in beside him, then went back through the door to the house for the CDs.

I reached in and slapped the filthy little bastard.

He blinked up at me with puffy, bloodshot eyes.

‘Listen up, Drummond – if anything happens to Katie, I’m parking this car in the middle of Moncuir Woods and setting fire to it. With you in the boot.’ The lid made a satisfying clunk when I slammed it shut.

And then Rhona phoned back. She read me Frank McKenzie’s criminal record – it was pretty much identical to the version Shifty Dave had reeled off outside Megan Taylor’s house the other night – then gave me an address in Cowskillin.

‘What about the mother?’

‘
Couple of complaints from the neighbours a few years ago: playing loud music in the wee small hours, standing in the back garden in her nightie screaming at the seagulls, that kind of thing. You want the address?
’

Christ’s sake… ‘Please.’

‘
Mrs Dorothy McKenzie, thirty-two McDermid Avenue, OC15 3JQ.
’

I waved Alice towards the car. ‘Rhona, I owe you a big one.’

‘
What’s this all about, Guv? Do—
’

I hung up and clambered into the passenger side of Drummond’s BMW, jammed the walking stick into the footwell. ‘Drive.’

The clouds were fringed with violent pink and orange as the light faded. Twenty past four on a Monday afternoon and McDermid Avenue was virtually empty. No sign of a removal lorry.

I climbed out, stuck the gun in my waistband, and hobbled across the road. Alice scurried along behind me. Number thirty-two looked like all the other buildings on the sandstone terrace – three storeys high, bay window on one side of the panelled door.

No wonder the little bastard was always lurking about when we were here.

I leaned on the bell, but nothing happened – it was dead. So I pounded on the door instead. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.

The room with the bay window was stripped bare, nothing left but dusty rectangles where pictures once hung.

Alice stood so close she was pressed against me. ‘Shouldn’t we call Dickie and the team? I mean we know it’s him, we should get a SWAT team down here or something…’

‘You any idea how long it’ll take to get a firearms team authorized and organized?’ I hammered on the door again. ‘He’s been in there all day, with Katie…’

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.

‘Well, I could phone anyway and they can back us up and—’

The door opened a crack and a single eye peered out. Frank McKenzie, face shiny with sweat, breathless as if he’d been running. ‘Go away. Go away, or I’ll call the police.’

‘Open the door.’

‘I’ve got nothing to say to you. This is harassment.’

‘OK, OK.’ I held my hand up, backed away a step… And lunged. My shoulder slammed into the wood and the door crashed open. I couldn’t stop: my right foot wouldn’t take my weight, bloody thing gave way and I thumped full-length on the hall carpet, sending up a cloud of dust. It was empty – like the front room – the only light coming from the open front door, making everything dark and grey.

McKenzie was flat on his back, hairy arms covering his head, legs flailing.

I hauled myself up. ‘It wasn’t Mrs Kerrigan, was it?
You
wrecked my house looking for this…’

He stared at the SD card in my hand. ‘It… I…’ Scrambled to his feet. And he was off, running down the hall.

I limped after him, the cane thumping against the dusty carpet, the gun cold and heavy in my hand.

Alice barged past, going at full tilt, black hair streaming out behind her, red Hi-tops flashing in the gloom. ‘Come back here!’

McKenzie battered through the door at the end of the hall – a glimpse of an old-fashioned kitchen – and then out the back into the garden with Alice closing the gap.

Halfway down the hall I froze…

Muffled screams came from behind one of the doors.

Katie.

It opened on a windowless corridor, the bare floorboards disappearing into darkness. A cord, hung from the ceiling – I pulled it and an overhead strip-light blinked and flickered into life. The corridor took a right turn about four or five feet in, heading towards the back of the house. I limped up to the corner: another short length of corridor with a door at the far end.

Locked.

More screaming.

I braced myself against the wall, taking as much weight as I could on the walking stick, and kicked out with my left. Twice. Three times. On the fourth go the lock ripped its way free of the surround, and the door jerked open. The stench of rancid meat slithered out into the corridor.

Six stone steps led down to a large dirt-floored room, the walls covered with pink rockwool insulation. Not a basement at all, some sort of outbuilding. It was divided into small rooms by plasterboard-and-stud partitions that didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling – like the set of some twisted horror film. It was colder in here than outside; my breath fogged in front of my face.

I shoved my way into the middle room: where the screaming was coming from.

Megan Taylor froze. She was strapped into a wooden chair, legs fastened at the ankle with cable-ties, arms behind her back. Her eyes went wide, then the screaming got even louder.

‘It’s OK: police. I’m the police.’ I stuck the gun back in my waistband and limped over. Then stopped, turned, and looked back towards the door I’d just come through. ‘Oh shite…’

Megan wasn’t the only one in here. A digital camera sat on a tripod, but behind that was another girl, tied to another chair. Blood covered every inch of skin … where there
was
skin. Naked, head shaved, throat open in a thick dark slash.

My stomach churned.

It wasn’t Katie. It was the girl in the photographs – the ones on the SD card. What looked like an old kitchen table was against the other wall, its wooden surface laid out with knives and hammers and chunks of flesh.

‘Jesus…’

I backed up, knocked over the tripod. The camera crashed to the ground.

She’d been here at least a week.

Behind me, Megan kept on screaming.

‘Alice.’ Shit – Alice was chasing him on her own. I turned and yanked at the cable-ties holding Megan to the chair. Solid. I took one of the serrated knives from the table and hacked through the plastic. Dropped the knife at my feet. ‘You’re OK, it’s over.’

Megan tipped out of the chair and fell to the dirt floor, grabbed the knife, and scrambled back into the corner, holding the blade in both trembling hands, pointing it at my face.

‘I’m not going to… For fuck’s sake, I don’t have time for this shite!’ I backed out of the room, tried the one next door – empty, except for the stains on the floor. The third one was the same.

‘Listen to me, Megan: I have to go. Someone’s going to come for you, OK?’ I backed up the stairs and into the corridor. ‘Try not to kill them.’

I shoved through the back door into the garden. The pale looping bones of a giant honeysuckle loomed in the growing darkness. The garden wall was eight feet tall, red brick, with a gate at the bottom. A private entrance into Cameron Park. It hung open.

The wet grass grabbed at the walking stick as I lurched through into the park. Everything was jagged shadows and indistinct shapes in the gloom. I stopped… No idea which way to go.

Shouts came from somewhere to the left. ‘Hoy, you: come back here!’

I limped past a copse of trees and there was one of the SOC marquees, glowing like a carnival, a cluster of white-suited techs standing around the entrance, a couple running off deeper into the park – bobbing white shapes against the dark.

By the time I reached the tent, the crowd had thinned a bit – Alice was sitting on the grass, holding a hand to her head, someone on their knees beside her, stroking her back.

‘Where is he?’

Alice looked up at me. One of her eyes was already starting to swell, the side of her mouth too – a line of blood trickling down from a split bottom lip. ‘I tried…’

The Scenes Examination Branch tech helped her to her feet, then ripped off his facemask revealing a huge moustache. ‘Who the hell was that?’

I pointed back the way I’d come. ‘House over there: gate’s open. Megan Taylor’s inside…’

The SEB tech stared at me.

‘Why are you still here? Go take care of her, you idiot! Call an ambulance, backup, preserve the scene. And watch out: she’s got a knife.’ I hauled Alice to her feet. ‘Come on.’

I turned to hobble after the two SEB techs chasing Frank McKenzie, but she wrenched her hand free and sprinted towards a mud-spattered SOC Transit van instead. Pulled open the driver’s door and climbed in behind the wheel. The headlights snapped on, then the engine roared into life, the front wheels spinning. Mud and grass spattered up the sides of the cab. The wheels caught and the van slithered forwards onto the path, pulled up beside me and stopped. The window buzzed open. ‘Get in.’

I clambered into the passenger seat and she put her foot down.

The Transit van surged forwards, then lurched off the path onto the grass again, bucking and slithering through the bumps.

Up ahead, one of the SEB tripped and went sprawling, but the other one kept going, his SOC suit glowing in the van’s headlights.

We crashed through a knot of brambles and out the other side.

The park’s boundary wall loomed into view. In the middle distance, the twin chimneys for Castle Hill Infirmary’s incinerator reached towards the heavy sky, warning lights twinkled at their tips turning the billowing steam to boiling blood.

The SEB figure slowed to a trot, then a walk, then stopped – bent double with his hands on his knees, back heaving as we roared past. The headlights caught someone up ahead, running, hairy arms pumping. Frank McKenzie.

He ducked through one of the park’s arched entrances, and Alice swung the van after him. Closer. Closer.

‘Oh, shite…’ We were never going to fit. Not in a Transit van. I clutched at the grab handle above the door.

She didn’t slow down. The brick arch exploded above my head as we smashed through. BANG, and the windscreen was an opaque mass of cracks. The van’s bodywork squealed, sparks flying in the gloom.

Alice stamped on the brakes and the Transit screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. ‘Bastard!’

I tore off my seatbelt, dragged my left leg up, and kicked. The shattered windscreen buckled. Another two kicks and it was clear, crashing down onto the road. Only one of the headlights was still working, peering myopically into the darkness.

Alice jabbed a finger through the hole where the windscreen used to be. ‘There!’

A screech of tyres and we jerked forwards. I fumbled my seatbelt back into its buckle.

McKenzie was heading for the hospital.

‘Run the bastard down!’

Alice almost had him, but he leapt over a short retaining wall and legged it across the grass towards the west wing of Castle Hill Infirmary. She swung the van around at the junction, taking the road marked ‘M
ATERNITY
W
ARD
, E
YE
H
OSPITAL
, O
UT
P
ATIENTS
, R
ADIOLOGY
’. Only halfway down she swung right, mounted the kerb and bounced onto the grass, making a straight line for McKenzie’s back as he shoulder-charged his way through an emergency exit into the building.