A Song for the Dying. Stuart MacBride

push it, Bernard, you’re still in my bad books after this morning.’

      ‘Oh …’ He dropped his arms.

      ‘Any pizza left?’ Jacobson crossed to the bar, opening and closing the grease-speckled boxes. ‘Crusts, crusts, crusts …’

      Sheila pointed to the stack of chairs and tables in the corner. ‘I hid yours over there, so the human waste-disposal-unit couldn’t find it. It’ll be cold though.’

      He pulled out the box, opened it, scooped out a slice and shoved one end in his mouth. Closed his eyes and chewed. ‘Ahh … That’s better. They never put on anything decent at press conferences any more. It’s all bottled water and horrible coffee. What’s wrong with a plate of sandwiches?’

      Huntly poured red wine into a tie-polished glass. ‘Speaking of the press conference …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Was Donald there?’

      Sitting back in her seat, Sheila groaned. ‘Not this again.’

      He stiffened. ‘There’s no need to be like that.’

      She put on a posh plummy accent. ‘Was Donald there? Did he ask about me? Did he look like he’d been crying? Has he put on weight? Is he seeing someone?’

      ‘There’s no need to be homophobic.’

      ‘I’m not homophobic, I’m grown-men-acting-like-jilted-teenage-girls-ophobic. And you still owe me seventeen pounds sixty-three.’

      Jacobson took the glass of red and wolfed half of it down in one go. ‘Donald wasn’t there. Superintendent Knight’s put him in charge of finding out which of Ash’s ex-colleagues tipped off the press about the Inside Man killing Claire Young.’

      Bet that went down well. Some tosser, from another division, investigating Oldcastle CID for misconduct? They’d have closed ranks so fast you could hear the sonic boom in Dundee.

      The rest of Jacobson’s wine disappeared down his throat. He held the glass out for Huntly to refill. ‘I had a chat with a couple of guys from uniform. Seems Claire set off for work at seven fifteen on Thursday night, and never turned up. Her flatmates reported her missing Friday afternoon when she didn’t come home. The geniuses at Oldcastle Division only took it seriously when Claire’s body turned up yesterday morning.’ He took a sip, swooshing the red back and forth through his teeth, then nodded in my direction. ‘That’s going to look great when the papers find out.’

      I crossed my arms, staring at him. ‘Why me?’

      ‘Why you, what?’

      ‘If Oldcastle CID’s full of corrupt morons, why am I here?’

      He smiled. ‘Now that’s an excellent question.’

      But he didn’t bloody answer it.

       7

      We stopped off at the twenty-four hour Tesco in Logansferry, Alice scurrying away into the aisles to buy breakfast supplies while I headed for the electronics bit. One dirt-cheap mobile handset and three pay-as-you-go sim cards. All paid for out of the hundred-quid sub I’d got from Jacobson.

      On the other side of the checkouts I dumped the phone’s packaging in the bin and tore open the cardboard and plastic entombing one of the sim cards. Popped it in. Clicked the cover back on. Powered it up and punched in Shifty’s number.

      Listened to it ring as I limped out into the car park.

      The snow hadn’t come to anything more than a thin crust of ice on the windscreens and a sheen of water on the salted tarmac.

      A suspicious-sounding voice came on the line. ‘Hello? Who is this?’

      ‘How you getting on with that gun?’

      ‘God’s sake, Ash, I’m on it, OK? Give us a chance – not like I can just waltz down to the nearest ASDA and pick one up, is it?’

      ‘We’re going to need a car too. Something flammable.’

      Silence.

      ‘Shifty? Hello?’ Only just bought the damn phone and already it was—

      ‘What do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been sodding about with your new mates? Got us a Mondeo. One careful owner, who’s got no idea it’s missing.’

      Ah … ‘Sorry. It’s …’ I rubbed a hand across my chin, making the stubble scratch. ‘Been a while, you know?’

      ‘This isn’t my first rodeo, Ash. We’ll be fine. Trust me.’

      Alice struggled half a dozen carrier-bags from the back seat of the tiny red Suzuki four-by-four. The thing had a big dent in the passenger-side door and looked more like a kid’s drawing of a car than an actual real-life vehicle. Drove much the same way too. She’d parked it beneath one of the three working streetlights, between a rusty white transit and a sagging Volvo. ‘Mmmnnnffffnngh?’ She nodded at the Suzuki, the keys dangling from the leather fob gripped in her teeth.

      ‘Yeah, no problem.’ I got the last of the shopping, and the bin-bag they’d given me when I left prison, then took the keys from between her teeth and plipped the locks.

      ‘Thanks.’ Her breath streamed out in a thin line of mist. ‘We’re just there.’ She nodded towards a front door two-thirds of the way down the terrace.

      I shifted the bags from one hand to the other. Leaned on my cane.

      Ladburn Street had probably been attractive once – a cobbled road lined with tall trees and cast-iron railings. A sweeping row of proud sandstone homes with porticoes and bay windows …

      Now the trees were blackened stumps, surrounded by litter and vitrified dog shit. The houses all converted into flats.

      Three buildings on this side were boarded up; four on the other, their gardens thick with weeds. Rock music belted out of somewhere down the row, a screaming argument a few doors up. Sandstone turned the colour of old blood. Railings blistered with rust.

      Alice shifted from foot to foot. ‘I know it’s disappointing, I mean let’s be honest it’s not far off being a slum, but it was cheap and it’s pretty anonymous and we can’t stay with Aunty Jan because they’re having all the wiring ripped out and—’

      ‘It’s fine.’

      Her nose was going red. ‘I’m sorry, I know Kingsmeath’s not great, but it’s only temporary and I didn’t think you’d want to stay in the hotel with Professor Huntly, and Bear, and Dr Constantine, and Dr Docherty, and—’

      ‘Seriously, it’s OK.’ Something scrunched beneath my shoes as I limped up the path towards the house. Broken glass, children’s teeth, small animal bones … Around here, anything was possible.

      ‘Right. Yes.’ She lumbered along beside me, the bags banging against her legs. ‘You see, a lot of people think Kingsmeath was thrown up in the seventies, that it’s one big council estate, but there’s bits of it go back to the eighteen-hundreds, actually, until the cholera outbreak in 1826, this would have been all sugar barons, of course the whole industry ran on slave labour plantations in the Caribbean, and can you get the lock, it’s the Yale key.’

      I leaned my cane against the wall, picked my way through the keys. ‘This one?’

      ‘No, the one with the red plastic bit. That’s it. We’re on the top floor.’

      I pushed through into a dim hallway that had the eye-nipping reek of a pub urinal. A small drift of leaflets, charity letters and takeaway menus spread across the cracked tiles from behind the door. ‘CAMMYS A WANKA!!!’ scrawled in magic marker on the peeling mildewed walls.

      Not far off being a slum?

      The