Birthdays for the Dead. Stuart MacBride

The professional voice slipped. She jabbed a finger at me. ‘Listen up, Sunshine: Jane and Ian are entitled to compensation for their stories, you can’t censor—’

      ‘—surely want to stop other families having to go through this!’

      Ian glowered at me. ‘Fuck them. Fuck the lot of them, it’s not gonnae bring Helen back, is it? She’s dead; he killed her a year ago. There’s bugger all we can do to change that.’ He bit his lip, stared at the window blinds. ‘Doesn’t matter what we want: papers are gonnae write about it anyway. Least this way we get … Why should we give our pain away for free?’

      His wife sat down next to him, reached out and held his hand. They stayed like that, in silence.

      Maybe he was right: why should he let the jackals pick over his daughter’s life for nothing? Money wasn’t going to bring Helen back, but at least it would be something. Show they weren’t powerless. Stop them wrenching awake in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat, shivering … But I doubted it.

      The reporter cleared her throat, jerked her chin in the air, then settled back into her seat and scribbled in a notebook.

      Dr McDonald hunkered down in front of the couch, then placed a hand on Ian’s knee. ‘It’s OK. Everyone deals with things in their own way. If this is what’s best for you … well, we’ll do what we can to help. Now, tell me about Helen …’

      I backed out of the room.

       5

      Helen McMillan had the same kind of posters on the wall as Katie. OK, so the bands were from the insipid-plastic-X-Factor school of music instead of the pretentious-angsty-emo-rock Katie liked, but other than that the sentiment was the same. These are the things that I like, this defines who I am.

      With Rebecca it was Nickelback and the Pussycat Dolls … She always was a strange kid.

      ‘Find anything?’

      ‘Hmm?’ I looked up from the cluttered desk in the corner of the bedroom.

      Dr McDonald was standing in the doorway. ‘Did you find anything?’

      ‘Still looking …’

      A big pink fuzzy unicorn sat in the middle of the single bed, surrounded by brightly coloured teddy bears, all neatly arranged. The duvet cover and pillow slips were smooth and crisp, as if they were still changed regularly – probably no point searching under the mattress for hidden secrets, if they were still making Helen’s bed a year after she went missing anything would have been uncovered ages ago. But I checked anyway. Just wooden slats, and the plastic under-bed storage boxes I’d already been through.

      ‘Ash, are you OK?’

      The mattress thumped back down on its wooden frame. ‘They say anything useful?’

      ‘You don’t mind if I call you Ash, do you, because we’re going to be working together and calling you Detective Constable Henderson seems awfully formal and you look worried, or maybe concerned, and a bit depressed actually, was it the argument with the journalist, because I think she came on too strong, don’t you, it’s really not—’

      ‘That’ll be a “no” then.’ I tucked the sheet back in and straightened the duvet. So it would look a little less like I’d violated their daughter’s bedroom. ‘The first card’s the worst … Well, they’re all fucking horrible, but that first card – that’s when you know your daughter hasn’t run away, that what’s happening is …’ I cleared my throat. ‘It must be horrible.’

      ‘They said Helen was a quiet girl who liked her books and her gerbils and going to see her nan on a Sunday for lunch. She wasn’t a wild child, she wasn’t into drinking or drugs or boys, don’t you think it’s sad that we live in a time when people have to ask if a twelve-year-old is getting hammered and doing drugs, and you said, “That’s when you know your daughter—”’

      ‘Figure of speech.’ I scanned the room again. No sign of a cage. ‘What happened to the gerbils?’

      ‘They died. Ian’s body language got very defensive when he talked about it … He probably looked after them for three or four months after she went missing, starts off as a duty, turns into a bargain – if I keep the gerbils alive she’ll come back to us – and the longer it goes on the more desperate they get, the gerbils become symbolic of Helen’s disappearance, then they become responsible for it, and gradually Ian stops feeding them and they die.’

      ‘What a lovely—’

      ‘Or perhaps one night he got drunk and battered them all to death with a hammer …’ She fiddled with her glasses. ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Dickie tells me you’re still in touch with Hannah Kelly’s parents?’

      ‘Hannah didn’t have any gerbils.’

      ‘Is her house like this, have they kept it like a shrine to her memory, do they expect her to just turn up one day like nothing ever happened?’

      The pink unicorn had fallen on the floor while I’d been shifting the mattress. I picked it up. Fuzzy. Soft. Warm. ‘Her parents don’t live there any more. Must’ve moved about five times in the last eight years, and he still finds them. Every sixteenth of September: another card.’

      Dr McDonald wrapped an arm around herself, head on one side, frowning at the bookshelves on the wall above the desk. They were full of hardbacks: a couple with leather bindings – Dickens, C. S. Lewis – others in faded dust jackets – Ian Fleming, Jilly Cooper, Harper Lee – some that looked as if they’d been wrapped in clear plastic sheeting – Anthony Horowitz, Gabriel King, a couple of Harry Potters, some vampire bollocks. She pulled Moonraker from the shelf and flicked through it, the creases between her eyebrows getting deeper. Then she did the same with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, chewing on her bottom lip.

      ‘I’ve been through them, no hidden messages tucked in between the pages.’ I checked my watch. ‘Time to make a move.’

      Nothing. She was still squinting at the book.

      ‘Hello? You in?’

      A blink. ‘Yes, right, time …’ Dr McDonald slid the book back onto the shelf, then picked up a framed photograph from the chest of drawers. It was a little girl in a pink princess party dress complete with tiara, magic wand, and a pair of fairy wings. Big grin. Two missing teeth. Bright ginger hair swept up in a sort of bun. She was holding a turnip lantern, a candle glowing inside its jagged mouth. ‘When I was eight Aunty Jan made me this all-in-one suit for Halloween: black, with a white tummy and paws, a swishy tail, and a three-foot-tall stripy red-and-white hat. All my friends wanted to be Disney princesses.’

      ‘Rebecca was a zombie. Katie went as Hannibal Lecter. We got her an orange jumpsuit and Michelle made this little straitjacket from an old blanket.’ A smile broke free. ‘I got her a restraint mask, and we pushed her about on one of those two-wheeled trolley things, Rebecca shambling along behind us, growling “Brainssssss” at everyone … Tell you, they ate so many Sherbet Fountains and little Mars Bars they were sick for days.’ I ran a hand through the unicorn’s soft pink fur. ‘Was the best Halloween we ever had.’ And the last. Before the bastard took Rebecca and everything went to shit. I put the fuzzy unicorn back on the bed and arranged the Multicoloured Bear Gang around it, then dug my hands into my pockets. Shrugged. ‘Anyway …’

      Dr McDonald put the photo frame back on the chest of drawers.

      Silence.

      I cleared my throat. ‘We’d better get going.’

      The windscreen wipers sounded like someone rubbing a balloon along a window, back and forth, leaving one greasy arc across the glass where the rain refused to shift. Squeak, squeal, squeak, squeal.

      Dr