Birthdays for the Dead. Stuart MacBride

      ‘The old git doesn’t want anything to do with the case. We need his help. You’re his friend. Go up there and talk him round.’

      Dickie sighed. ‘Come on, Ash, you know what Henry’s like: once he digs his heels in …’

      I scowled at them. ‘Shetland?’

      Gillis squinted back. ‘You don’t want to help us catch the bastard? Really? What kind of cop are you?’

      ‘It’s only a couple of days, Ash: three or four tops. I’ll square it with your boss.’

      Dr McDonald wasn’t the only mental one. ‘I’m not going to Shetland! We just turned up two bodies and—’

      ‘It’s going to be nothing but hanging around waiting for lab reports in Oldcastle now anyway. That and processing three hundred door-to-doors.’ Dickie nodded towards the meeting room, where Dr McDonald was gazing up at the birthday cards. ‘When we catch the Birthday Boy we’ll need her up to speed for the interviews. I want a full confession, in stone, not something he can wriggle out of in court six months later thanks to some slimy defence lawyer.’

      ‘I’m not your bloody childminder! Get someone else to—’

      ‘Ash, please.’

      I stared out into the rain … Four days about as far away from Oldcastle as it was possible to get and still be in the UK. Four days where Mrs Kerrigan’s thugs couldn’t find me. And maybe, once Henry had seen how much of a disaster Dickie’s new criminal psychologist was, he’d drag his wrinkly arse out of retirement and help me catch the bastard who’d murdered Rebecca. Four days to convince the old sod that four years in Shetland was penance enough for what happened to Philip Skinner. It was time to get back to work.

      I nodded. ‘OK. Flying from Aberdeen or Edinburgh?’

      Gillis’s smile grew wider. ‘Funny you should ask that …’

       4

      ‘Can you slow down, please?’ Dr McDonald tightened her grip on the grab handle above the passenger door, knuckles white. Eyes screwed tightly shut.

      I changed down, burying the accelerator pedal into the Renault’s carpet. Yes, it was childish, but she’d started it. Outside the car windows, a residential road blurred past, skeletal trees raking the grey sky. Drizzle misted the glass. ‘Thought you were supposed to be a psychologist.’

      ‘I am, and it’s not my fault air travel terrifies me, I know it might seem illogical, statistically you’re more likely to be killed by an electric toaster than die in a plane crash in the UK – that’s why I never make toast – but I can’t …’ She gave a little squeal as I swung the car around onto Strathmore Avenue. ‘Please! Can you slow—’

      ‘You’ve no idea how fast we’re going: you’ve got your eyes closed.’

      ‘I can feel it!’

      My phone rang. ‘Hold on …’ I pulled the thing from my pocket and thumbed the green button. ‘What?’

      A man’s voice: ‘We’ve got another one—’

      Dr McDonald snatched the phone out of my hand. ‘No, no, no!’ She held it to her ear, listening for a moment. ‘No, I will not put him on: he’s driving, are you trying to cause an accident, I don’t want to die, why do you want me to die, are you some sort of psychopath that you want random passengers to die in car crashes, is that your idea of fun?’

      I stuck my hand out. ‘Give me the phone back.’

      She switched the thing to her other ear, out of reach. ‘No, I told you: he’s driving.’

      ‘Give me the bloody phone!’

      She slapped my hand away. ‘Uh-huh … Hold on.’ She looked across from the passenger seat. ‘It’s someone called Matt, he says to tell you you’re a “rotten bastard”.’ Back to the phone again. ‘Yes, I told him … Uh-huh … Uh-huh … I don’t know.’

      ‘Matt who?’

      ‘When are we going to be back in Oldcastle?’

      ‘Who the hell is Matt?’

      ‘He says, while you’ve been “poofing about” in Dundee, the ground-penetrating radar’s turned up what looks like a third set of remains …’ She tilted her head to one side, frowning as she listened. ‘No, I’m not telling Constable Henderson that … Because it’s unnecessarily rude, that’s why.’

      Well, at least that explained who Matt was: the head of Oldcastle’s Scenes Examination Branch always did have a mouth like a sewer.

      Another body.

      Don’t let it be Rebecca. Let her lie quiet and safe in the ground until I get my hands on the bastard who tortured her to death. Please.

      I threw the car into a right. ‘Ask him if they’ve ID’d the second body yet.’

      ‘Constable Henderson wants to know if you’ve ID’d … Uh-huh … No … I’ll tell him.’ She looked at me. ‘He says you owe him twenty pounds, and—’

      ‘For God’s sake: did they get a bloody ID or not?’

      Left onto another street of prison-block tenements.

      ‘He says they’re still excavating the remains.’ She held a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Apparently the Procurator Fiscal insisted on putting some forensic archaeologist in charge of the dig, and he’s turning everything into a big production.’

      I took the next left, then left again into a cul-de-sac with three-storey blocks of flats on one side and grey bungalows on the other. Just after ten on a wintery Monday morning and most of the homes were in darkness. Here and there the occasional window glowed in the drizzly gloom.

      Sodding hell. ‘We’ve got company.’

      A grey Transit van, with the SKY News Logo emblazoned down the side, sat at the kerb, its roof bristling with antennae and a satellite dish. It was the only outside broadcast unit in sight, the other vehicles were the usual crappy assortment of Fiats, Vauxhalls, and Fords beloved of tabloid and broadsheet reporters.

      I parked in front of the L-shaped block at the end of the road – the one with a uniformed PC standing outside in the rain, crossed arms resting on her swollen belly. A light above the main door made her fluorescent-yellow jacket glisten.

      I hauled on the handbrake, then killed the engine. Stuck out my hand. ‘Phone.’

      Dr McDonald dropped the mobile into my palm, as if she didn’t want to risk her fingers actually touching me.

      ‘Matt: tell Archaeology Boy to get his finger out. This is a murder investigation, not a fucking slumber party.’

      ‘But—’

      I hung up and slipped the phone back in my pocket. ‘How can you be afraid of flying?’

      ‘It’s not natural. And I’m not afraid of flying.’ She undid her seatbelt and followed me out into the drizzle. ‘I’m afraid of crashing. Which is completely logical, when you think about it, it’s a survival mechanism, perfectly rational, everyone should be afraid of crashing, what’s strange is not being afraid, you: you’re the one who’s strange.’

      I stared at her. ‘Yeah, I’m the one who’s strange.’

      We had to show our IDs to the rain-soaked lump standing guard outside the small block of flats. A dark fringe poked out from underneath her bowler, plastered to her forehead by the drizzle, her chubby face stretched into a permafrost frown.

      I nodded back