A Song for the Dying. Stuart MacBride

excused.’ He held up a sheet of paper with ‘HAVE YOU SEEN CHARLIE?’ in big letters above a photo of a wee dark-haired kid – sticky-out ears, a squint smile, and a face full of freckles. ‘Pick up one of these, then get your backsides out there and catch some villains.’

      Half the room shuffled out, Uniform and CID moaning about being told to sod off, bragging about their weekends, or muttering dark curses about having to support Aberdeen or Dundee now the Warriors were gone. The duty sergeant marched after them, arms full of paperwork.

      Detective Superintendent Ness took the floor. ‘Someone get the lights.’

      A couple of clicks and gloom settled into the room. Then Ness pointed a remote at the projector mounted on the ceiling, and two photos appeared on the screen behind her. The one on the left was a painfully pale woman on the beach at Aberdeen, grinning away in a green bikini and goose pimples. The other was the same woman, curled on her side in a thicket of brambles. Her white nightgown had got caught up on their barbed-wire coils – riding up to show off the purple slash across her belly. The wound’s sides held together with crude black stitches over the distended skin.

      ‘Doreen Appleton, twenty-two, the Inside Man’s first victim. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary.’

      Ness jabbed the remote again. Doreen Appleton was replaced by a happy brunette in a wedding dress, and the same woman lying flat on her back in a lay-by. She was dressed in a similar white nightdress to the first victim, the fabric stained with blood all across her swollen abdomen. ‘Tara McNab, twenty-four. Victim number two. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary. Someone called nine-nine-nine from a public phonebox a mile from where she was found …’

      Click, then a hissing old-fashioned audio-tape noise, and a man’s voice filled the room, clipped and professional. ‘Emergency Services, which service do you require?’

      The woman who answered sounded as if she’d been caught in the middle of a two-day bender, the words thick and slurred. Distorted. ‘A woman’s been … been dumped in a lay-by, one … one point three miles south of Shortstaine Garden Centre on the Brechin Road. She’s …’ A small catch in her voice, as if she was holding back a sob. ‘She’s not moving. If you … hurry, you can save her. She’s, very weak, possible internal bleeding … Oh God … Blood type: B-positive. Hurry, please …’

      ‘Hello? Can you tell me your name? Hello?’

      Silence.

      ‘Sodding hell.’ A scrunching noise, as if the controller had put a hand over the microphone on the headset, muffling his voice. ‘Garry? You won’t believe what I’ve just—’

      Ness held the remote up. ‘Ambulance crew arrived fifteen minutes later, but she was dead when they got there. Audio analysis showed that the voice on the nine-nine-nine call was hers.’

      One of the Specialist Crime Division team stuck his hand up. ‘She made the call herself?’

      There was a pause, then Ness pulled her brows down, bit her lips together. Closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Does anyone want to take that?’

      Professor Huntly laughed. ‘How, exactly, do you imagine a woman with extensive blood loss and internal trauma managed to make a call from a public phone box, then walk a mile to the bus stop where she was found? It was obviously taped prior to her being dumped there. He drugs them, then makes them record their own SOS before he cuts them open.’

      The guy from SCD put his hand down. Cleared his throat. Fidgeted. ‘Perfectly valid question …’

      Ness pointed at the photo of Tara’s body. ‘Original investigation tracked down the nightdresses: all from a stall down at Heading Hollows Market. Three for a fiver. The stallholder had no idea who he’d sold them to or when.’

      She pressed the remote and victim number two was replaced by a sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad. Blue ink scrawled along the lines, the handwriting barely legible. ‘Two days after Tara McNab’s body turned up, this letter was delivered to Michael Slosser at the Castle News and Post. In it the writer complains about the papers calling him “the Caledonian Ripper”, says there’ll be more bodies to come, claims the police are powerless to stop him, and signs off as “the Inside Man”.’ She raised the remote again. ‘Next.’

      Victim three appeared. Her caramel skin was thick with bruises across one side, her slack face staring up from a ditch, both arms up above her head, one leg twisted to the side. She’d been dressed in another white nightdress, torn on one side and drenched almost black with blood. In the other photo she was frozen at what looked like a birthday party, laughing, her red silk dress swung out as she danced. ‘Holly Drummond, twenty-six. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary. Emergency Services got the pre-recorded nine-nine-nine call at half-two in the morning. Voice was the victim’s. She was pronounced dead at the scene.’

      Holly Drummond was replaced on the screen by another sheet from a legal pad. ‘This arrived at the paper the day we found her body. He’s getting into his stride now: telling us all about how powerful and clever he is, and how we’ll never catch him. From here on, all the letters are much the same.’

      Victim four was a large woman in a strapless dress and mortarboard. Then face down at the bottom of a railway culvert, her nightdress scrunched up around her waist, pale buttocks on show. Skin flecked with green and black. ‘Natalie May, twenty-two. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary. No call this time. She was found by a railway maintenance team who were out replacing a section of cabling.’

      Click, and another letter filled the screen. ‘It complains that she was, and I quote, “not pure enough to receive his bounty”.’

      Pause.

      The screen went black. ‘And then we got lucky.’

      Laura Strachan’s broad smiling face appeared, freckles glowing on her nose and cheeks, a Ferris wheel in the background. The other photo was her being lifted into the back of an ambulance, face slack and waxy, freckles partially obscured by an oxygen mask.

      Ness pointed at the picture. ‘Our first survivor. Call was made from a public phone in Blackwall Hill. They had to start her heart twice on the way to the hospital and she came this close,’ Ness pinched two fingers together, ‘to bleeding out, but they saved her.’

      Ness clicked the remote again and Marie Jordan’s face filled half of the screen. On the other side she lay in a hospital bed, wires and tubes connecting her to about half-a-dozen bits of machinery. ‘Marie Jordan, twenty-three, nurse. Another pre-recorded call. Found wrapped in a sheet just off the road in Moncuir Wood. There was a bit of brain damage caused by hypoxia and blood-loss, but she lived. The letter compliments her on being a “good girl”.’

      Pause.

      ‘Final victim.’ Click. And there was Ruth Laughlin, sitting on a stationary bicycle in her shorts and sweaty T-shirt, both hands up as if she was crossing the finishing line. A circle of people cheered in the background, beneath a ‘TURNING MILES INTO SMILES!!!’ banner. Must have been taken the day she took care of me.

      The day I let the Inside Man get away.

      ‘Ruth Laughlin, twenty-five, paediatric nurse. No call this time because he didn’t make it past the initial incisions. Far as we can tell he was disturbed during the operation, ran off and left her to die.’

      All because she stopped to help me.

       11

      ‘Settle down.’ Ness pointed off to the side. ‘Dr Docherty?’

      ‘Thank you, Detective Superintendent.’ Fred Docherty had changed his look a bit since the initial investigation. The concrete-coloured suit was gone, as was the curly hair. Now he sported a sharp black Armani-looking number with a red shirt and white tie, his hair short and straight, swept back from his forehead. The boyish looks and nervous voice