Birthdays for the Dead (8 page)

I checked my watch – half ten. Susanna would do her last set soon, then we could get the hell out of here. Before Joseph and Francis came back.

Time for some fresh air.

The fire exit had one of those, ‘T
HIS
D
OOR
I
S
A
LARMED
’, signs on it, but it was open anyway – a brick stuck in the gap to keep it that way, so the staff could nip out for a sneaky cigarette. I pushed through into a gloomy alley. The security light bolted to the wall above the loading bay didn’t come on, just fizzed and crackled, never quite getting there.

A siren wailed in the distance, the rumble of a late-night bus, a singing drunk, two women fighting, the thump-thump-thump bassline of whatever song was playing inside. The fumbling moans of a couple going at it, hidden in the shadows of a recessed doorway on the other side of the alley.

I took a deep breath, hauling in cold air, letting out a cloud of white.

Should have kept on driving to Newcastle.

More moaning from the snoggers.

Still could. Car was parked outside the club: get in and bugger off before they dump my mangled body in a shallow grave somewhere. Like Rebecca.

‘Fuck…’ I scrubbed a hand over my face.

I wasn’t going anywhere. What was the point of struggling through the last four years, only to give up and run away before we’d caught the bastard?

I pulled out my phone and called Rhona. She picked up on the third ring. A diesel generator rumbled somewhere in the background. ‘
Guv?
’

‘Any news?’

A yawn drowned out everything else. ‘
Yeah, sorry… I was about to call you: ground-penetrating radar think they’ve got a fourth burial site. No way he’s getting away this time, right? Four bodies down, seven to go.
’

Eight. But the only people who knew that were: Henry Forrester, me, Rebecca, and the bastard who killed her.

‘Any ID on the other girl?’

‘
Hold on, I’ll check…
’

From the doorway opposite came the sound of a zip being undone. A knee-trembler in the alley behind a lap-dancing bar. Talk about romantic.

I stuck the phone against my chest. ‘Hoy, you two: get a room.’

‘Fuck!’ Frantic scrabbling, and one of the figures lurched out of the shadows. Andrew: the Silver Lady’s head doorman, hauling up his flies. ‘I was… We…’ He cleared his throat. Flexed his shoulders. Chin jutting out like a slab of freshly shaved granite. ‘You tell anyone about this and I’ll snap your bloody neck. Understand?’

He grabbed a bottle from one of the recycling bins. A sharp tap against the wall turned it into a multi-bladed weapon. ‘I’m no’ kidding, you hear me? One
fucking
word!’ Jabbing the broken bottle in my direction. Trembling.

I backed off a couple of steps, palms out. ‘OK, Andrew, I hear you. Our little secret.’

He licked his lips, glanced across at the shadowy doorway, then dropped the bottle and charged through the door, back into the club.

What the hell was that all about? Doormen got hand jobs from star-struck women every evening. Friend of mine once told me it’s the bow tie that does it: reminds the ladies of James Bond. But then he always was a bit of a prick.

Back to the phone. ‘Rhona?’

‘
I was about to give up on you.’
She sniffed. ‘
It’s not confirmed or anything, but we think number two might be Sophie Elphinstone, went missing from Inverness four years ago.
’

‘They doing a dental chart match?’

A small pause. ‘
Can’t. He tore all her teeth out.
’ Another yawn.

‘Go home and get some rest. You’re no good to anyone knackered.’

I hung up, scrolled through my contacts list, and picked the number Dickie had texted me for Dr McDonald. Listened to it ring and ring…

On the other side of the alley, Andrew’s bit of stuff was getting restless. Feet shuffling in the darkness. Waiting for me to bugger off so she could slip back into the club unnoticed.

Tough. She could wait.

I let the phone ring through to voicemail, then tried again.

‘
Mmmph? Lo?
’ Not quite words, mumbled and fuzzy.

‘Dr McDonald, sorry to wake you, but—’

‘
Ash… No it’s fine, I’m awake.
’ A yawn. ‘
Urgh… What time is it?
’

‘We’ve found another body. Might be Sophie Elphinstone. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Sorry to bother—’

‘
Sophie Elphinstone?
’ Dr McDonald sounded a lot more awake. ‘
Is she… Did he decapitate her?
’

More shuffling from the doorway opposite.

‘He ripped all her teeth out instead.’

‘
Isn’t that interesting: he decapitates his third victim, Lauren Burges, but he doesn’t decapitate his second or his sixth. Hannah Kelly and Sophie Elphinstone get to keep their heads…
’

‘Maybe he goes through phases, and—’

‘
It’s almost as if he’s experimenting. The normal pattern is to keep doing the same thing over and over, getting better at it every time, refining it, building up the fantasy, but it’s…
’ A pause. ‘
It’s as if he doesn’t really
like
what he does – he cuts Lauren Burges’s head off, but he can’t bring himself to do it again.
’ A strange clicking sound came from the earpiece, as if she was banging the phone off her teeth. ‘
When they examine the remains tomorrow, we need to get them to look for patterns of wounding – map the correlation points, see what else he’s tried and discarded.
’

‘Yeah … OK.’ I hung up, slipped the phone back into my pocket and stood there watching a rat rip a hole in a bin-bag.
He doesn’t really like what he does.
Bollocks – if he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t keep doing it.

More shuffling from the other side of the alley.

‘Oh, grow up.’ I turned my back on them and hauled the door open. ‘I don’t care, OK? Shag who you want, where you want.’

Whoever it was cleared their throat behind me. ‘How long have you known?’

I stopped, one hand on the door, the music from inside getting louder. Licked my lips. Didn’t say anything.

‘Ash?’ Footsteps on the tarmac. ‘How long have you known?’

I glanced over my shoulder and there he was: DI Shifty Dave Morrow, sausage fingers fidgeting with his jacket buttons.

Tuesday 15th November

Chapter 10

‘What? No, I can’t hear you…’ I peered into the gap between the bread and the glowing orange elements – the toaster hadn’t burnt it yet – my mobile pinned between my shoulder and ear, while I dumped teabags into mugs with my other hand. The kettle rumbled and rattled on the working surface.

Cold this morning. The window was a fogged-up slab of dark grey.

On the other end of the phone, Rhona yawned again. ‘
I said, there’s been a complaint down the station.
’

‘What time did you clock off yesterday?’

‘
Didn’t pass my sergeant’s exams so I could be DC my whole life. Got to put in the hours or you don’t get the promotion. You told me that.
’

True, on both counts. The kettle clicked, then went silent. ‘Yeah, but if you fall asleep on the job, or screw something up because you’re knackered, you can kiss three stripes goodbye.’

Boiling water into the mugs. Two slices of slightly overdone toast on a plate.

‘
It was that cow Jennifer Prentice: said you beat up her photographer yesterday.
’

‘Surprised she waited that long.’ A scrape of butter, followed by raspberry jam.

‘
I told Dougie I’d take a look. You know, do some prelim before Professional Standards get hold of it?
’

Two sugars in one of the mugs, then a good splosh of milk in both.

‘
Where does she get off making accusations like that? So what if you thumped some paparazzi dickhead, sure you had a good reason, right?
’

‘Something like that.’ Out in the hall, the sound of muffled snoring rattled the living room door. So much for Parker making himself scarce. The steps creaked under my socks as I climbed upstairs.

‘
Yeah, well don’t worry: I’ll have a word with him. Make sure he has another go remembering what happened.
’

The bedroom was dark, the smell of musk and spice with a faint tinge of bleach. I put breakfast on the chest of drawers, then hauled the curtains open. Condensation made dewy spider webs in the corners of the window. Pale blue fringed the horizon, but Oldcastle was a mass of darkness sprinkled with pinpricks of yellow and white.

‘
Guv?
’

Susanne’s policewoman costume hung on the back of the wardrobe door. Not the utilitarian workaday UK bobby’s uniform, but a sort of fantasy New York Police Department job, with ra-ra-style skirt and leather corset; a hat, handcuffs, and knee-high black PVC kinky boots finishing off the look.

‘
Guv? You there?
’

‘Do me a favour: tell Weber you’re off following-up on the door-to-doors this morning, park the car somewhere quiet, and grab a couple hours’ sleep. Don’t let that prick Smith saddle you with anything.’

I could hear the smile in her voice. ‘
Thanks, Guv. And don’t worry about Photography Boy, I’ll sort it.
’ She hung up.

The mattress groaned as I sat on the edge. ‘Susanne?’

‘Nnnnnngh…’ She was flat on her back with one arm draped over her eyes, bleached blonde curls draped across the pillows – tumbling over the side of the bed. A small bruise on the fake-tan flesh of her wrist.

‘Susanne!’

The arm twitched, then she peered out at me, one side of her face scrunched up. ‘Time is it?’

‘You getting up?’

One hand fumbled about on the bedside cabinet, grabbed her iPhone and took it back for a good squinting at. ‘Urgh… It’s seven in the
morning
!’

‘Tea and toast?’

The phone went back on the cabinet and she burrowed under the duvet until nothing was visible but that mass of golden curls. ‘Fuck tea. Fuck toast. Seven in the morning…’

‘Raspberry jam, your favourite?’

‘Fuck raspberries. Come back to bed.’ She curled up, on her side, back turned towards me. ‘Bad enough I had to spend the night in this craphole.’

I stared at the ceiling for a couple of breaths. Susanne was Page Three pretty, with …
phenomenal
breasts, thighs of steel, and an arse you could crack walnuts with. Energetic and flexible. Insatiable and pneumatic. Doesn’t understand what I’m talking about half the time. Because she’s twenty-one and I’m forty-five – more than halfway to a single room with satin lining and a screw-down lid.

By now I should be living in a nice house in Blackwall Hill, with a lovely lawyer wife and two gorgeous daughters who worship me, not having to sweet-talk my stripper girlfriend into staying the night in the tiny mouldering council house I get for free because it’s not fit to rent out.

I put a hand on the shape beneath the duvet. ‘I’ve got to go. Work.’ Trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘See you tonight?’

‘Mmmph…’ A twitch, then nothing.

I grabbed my jacket, checked that Rebecca’s cigar box was safely tucked away, then stomped back down the stairs.

My phone rang as I got to the front door. The display read ‘D
R
M
C
F
RUIT
L
OOP
’. ‘Hello?’

‘
I think we should meet up before the post mortems this morning, it’s going to be really odd, isn’t it, I mean normally it’s all about finding out how the victim died, but we’ve already got photos of it happening, don’t you think that’s odd?
’

I closed my eyes. Rested my forehead against the cool front door. ‘Actually, I’ve got a couple of things on this morning.’ Also known as visiting some dodgy bastards and squeezing as much cash out of them as possible to pay off Mrs Kerrigan before she breaks my legs at lunchtime.

‘
It’s all right, I cleared it with DCI Weber, we’re a team now, isn’t that great? I thought we should maybe get some breakfast or something first, because I’m guessing it’s going to be a pretty long day, I mean with three bodies to post mortem, though I suppose it might be a bit quicker as they’re all just bones.
’

A team… Oh joy. ‘You start the day with a double espresso, don’t you.’ I unsnibbed the heavy Yale lock. ‘Going to take me at least an hour, hour and a half to get to you, so why don’t we meet up at the hospital?’ That should be enough time for a little light extortion. ‘PMs don’t start till nine anyway, so…’ I hauled the door open.

There was a patrol car sitting outside my house, headlights gleaming in the dark. Dr McDonald stood in front of it, bundled up in a duffle coat, a woolly hat pulled down over her ears with an explosion of brown curls sticking out from underneath. She waved, still holding the mobile phone to her ear. ‘I got a lift.’

The smell of sizzling bacon and hot chip fat filled the air.

‘
…warn that the following report contains disturbing images and flash photography.’
The TV mounted above the counter glowed through a thin film of fluff and grease. The picture jumped to a press conference: DCS Dickie shared the stage with Helen McMillan’s parents and a senior officer in full dress uniform.

Jane McMillan clasped her husband’s hand, blinking in the media strobelight. She was wearing the same floral frock she’d had on yesterday, her eyes red, nose shiny, bottom lip wobbling. She looked as if someone had taken away her innards and replaced them with broken glass. ‘
I … I want you to know that our Helen was a special girl. If anyone knows who took her: you have to go to the police. You
have
to.
’

I clunked two huge mugs of tea down on the red Formica tabletop.

The Tartan Bunnet wasn’t that busy for a Tuesday morning – normally the little café would be full of nightshift CID and uniform, but everyone was on overtime: searching Cameron Park, or going door-to-door, or trying to track down whoever lived in the area nine years ago.

Dr McDonald took a sip of tea, made smacking noises with her lips. She had the café’s copy of the
Daily Mail
laid out on the table: ‘H
ELEN
’
S
B
IRTHDAY
H
ORROR
’ was stretched across the front page, above a close-up of the birthday card. Helen McMillan, tied to a chair, cheeks streaked with tears.

‘
Please, we just want our Helen back…
’

‘I know they have to put out an appeal and they have to believe it’s going to make a difference, but it really isn’t, Helen’s father was right: she’s already dead, she’s been dead for a year.’

‘What else can they do?’ I settled into the seat opposite, facing the window. The sun was crawling over the horizon making the rooftops glisten. A pair of white chimneys poked up above the surrounding streets – Castle Hill Infirmary’s incinerator, twin trails of steam glowing against the heavy purple clouds.

‘And it’s not like someone’s going to come forward and say, “Hey, I know who the Birthday Boy is,” because
no one
knows who he is, he’s clever and he’s careful and he’s been doing this for at least nine years, he’s good at blending in with the normal people, that’s why he’s got away with it for so long.’

A man’s voice replaced Jane McMillan’s, not Dickie or the father so it had to be the guy in the dress uniform. ‘
I want to assure the public that Tayside Police are following several lines of enquiry. But we need your help: if you saw Helen the day she disappeared…’

Dr McDonald produced a black Sharpie and sketched a map of Britain on the newspaper, adding two squares roughly where Oldcastle would be, one over Dundee, Inverness, Bristol, Newcastle, Cardiff, and Glasgow, and two for London. ‘Five girls taken from Scotland, four from England, one from Wales. All mainland UK.’

Almost right.

‘
Meanwhile, in Oldcastle, police continue to excavate Cameron Park…
’

She scrawled a rough approximation of the motorway network on her map, joining the squares. Then looked up at me. ‘You don’t have a red pen or something, do you, only if I keep adding stuff in black it’s going to get a bit confusing.’

There was a clatter from the counter behind us, then a gravelly voice. ‘One poached egg on toast. One coronary classic.’

I turned and put a hand up. A baggy-faced woman in a chequered apron shuffled over, carrying two plates. She stood over the table, thin grey hair plastered to her shiny forehead. ‘Who’s gettin’ the coronary?’

Dr McDonald bounced up and down in her seat. ‘Ooh, that’s me, thanks.’

The plate was about the size of a hubcap, heaped with toast, sausages, grilled tomato, streaky bacon, mushrooms, two fried eggs, two slices of black pudding floating on a sea of baked beans, and a mound of golden chips.

I took the other plate. ‘Thanks, Effie.’

‘Sure you don’t want me to do you some chips, son?’

‘Honestly, I’m fine.’

‘Hmmph.’ She hoisted up her bosoms. ‘Well, don’t blame me when you waste away.’ She shuffled off.

Dr McDonald hacked off a chunk of sausage, dipped it in yolk, then stuffed it into her mouth. Talking as she chewed. ‘The interesting thing is when you overlay the abduction dates on the map – I did it last night with noodles and prawns – he’s taking most of them in the latter third of the year: both Oldcastle ones are in September, the London ones in October, so there’s probably an external stressor operating around then, maybe job-related.’

‘A four-month seasonal stressor?’ I popped my egg yolk with my knife; golden yellow oozed out onto the toast.

She grabbed the tomato sauce from the garrison of condiments at the end of the table and liberally decorated her plate with it. ‘I’d say he definitely has to travel for work, and maybe spends pretty big chunks of time away from home, so it’s worth looking at lorry drivers, perhaps long-distance bus drivers too.’ She wolfed down bacon. Mushroom. Toast. Beans. It was like watching bin men hurling black bags into a skip. ‘And that leaves us with the puzzle of Amber O’Neil, victim number one, she was grabbed in May, does that not seem odd to you, that she’s the only one grabbed in the summer, when everyone else is taken September to December?’

‘Maybe.’

Chew, munch, shovel, mumble. ‘When we finish with the post mortems today I want to go through everything they’ve got on Amber O’Neil’s disappearance, actually I’d like everything they’ve got on everyone, do you think Detective Chief Superintendent Dickie would let me take it to Shetland, could he burn it all onto a disk or something?’

I looked at her, bean juice dribbling down her chin, and fought the impulse to spit into a napkin and wipe it off. ‘Do you have any idea how much paper there is on a single Birthday Boy victim? We’ve got three boxes on Hannah Kelly alone. We’d need to head up the road in a Transit van.’

‘Oh…’ A shrug, then back to the sausages.

‘What about the locations? Five in Scotland, five not. Might be a local lad?’

‘Mmmm…’ More chewing. ‘Do you really visit Hannah’s parents every year, so they won’t have to deal with the birthday card on their own?’

I mopped up the last of my egg with the final chunk of toast. ‘You’ve got bean juice on your chin.’

Silence from the other side of the table.

Outside the window, the Number 14 rumbled past, ferrying bleary-eyed suits-and-ties to work.

Dr McDonald wiped a hand across her chin, then licked the palm. ‘In case you’re wondering, this is the bit where we share things about ourselves and bond over communal experiences.’

No thanks.

More silence.

She sliced a circle of black pudding in two, then stuffed it in. ‘I’ll go first. My name isn’t really Alice, it’s Charlotte, but I hate it because it’s the same as that spider in the book about the pig; I came top of my class at Edinburgh University, my thesis was in aberrant psycho-sexual behaviour in repeat offenders; I’ve helped catch three rapists, a paedophile ring, and a woman who killed her four children and two in-laws; I like raspberries, but I’m allergic to them; I have a fiancé who’s a systems analyst, but I’m pretty sure he’s having an affair, I mean that cow Nigella from his office was all over him at the last Christmas party like I wasn’t even there; I was born in Peebles; and I’ve never been to France.’