Birthdays for the Dead. Stuart MacBride

Be surprised how quickly little things like that can break somebody.’

      She shrugged. ‘Seems a bit cruel …’

      ‘Serves him right: he’s a prick.’

      We walked along in silence for a while, enjoying the twin reeks of disinfectant and stewed cauliflower.

      Dr McDonald stopped. ‘There’s something significant about the deposition site – not only where it is but the nature of the burials themselves. I mean did you see Lauren Burges’s body? He didn’t even bother to put her head back in the right place, just wrapped the whole lot up, dragged it out to the middle of the park and dumped it in a shallow grave.’

      A voice behind us: ‘Beep, beep!’

      We flattened to the wall, and a hospital bed trundled past, pushed by a balding porter with a squint smile. A pair of chunky nurses brought up the rear, gossiping about some doctor caught taking a female patient’s temperature the naughty way. The guy in the bed looked as if he’d been hollowed out, leaving waxy skin draped over a framework of brittle bones, wheezing into an oxygen mask.

      ‘Don’t you think that’s strange?’ As soon as they were past, Dr McDonald hopped back onto the black line. ‘I’d expect someone like the Birthday Boy would want to keep them as trophies, Fred and Rosemary West only started burying their victims in the garden when they ran out of room in the house, they wanted to keep them near, but the Birthday Boy dumps them like a wheelbarrow full of lawn clippings.’

      ‘Well, maybe he’s—’ My phone rang. I dug the thing out and checked the display: ‘MICHELLE’. Arseholes … I grimaced at Dr McDonald. ‘I’ll catch up.’

      She shrugged and wobbled away, through a set of double doors, still following the black line.

      I hit the button. ‘Michelle.’

      Twice in one day.

      Lucky me.

      ‘I saw you on the news.’ Her voice was even more clipped than usual. ‘I thought Susanne was a blonde, have you traded her in for someone younger already? Is this one a stripper too?’

      ‘I told you: Susanne isn’t a stripper, she’s a dancer.’

      ‘She dances round a pole: it’s the same thing.’

      ‘Bye, Michelle.’

      But before I could hang up: ‘We need to talk about Katie.’

      Oh God. ‘What’s she done now?’

      ‘Why do you always have to think the worst?’

      ‘Because you only ever call when you want someone to read her the riot act.’

      A grey-haired woman in a flowery nightie shuffled down the corridor, wheeling a drip-on-a-stand along beside her.

      ‘That’s not …’ A pause – about long enough for someone to count to ten – and when Michelle came back, her voice was groaning with forced cheer. ‘So, how are you settling in?’

      The old dear scuffed past, glowering at me. ‘You’re no’ allowed on your mobile phone!’

      ‘Police business.’

      She flipped me the Vs, then wandered off. ‘No’ supposed to be on your phone in a hospital …’

      ‘Ash? I said how—’

      ‘It’s been three years, Michelle: think it’s maybe time to stop asking?’

      ‘I was only—’

      ‘It’s a shitty little council house in Kingsmeath: the drains stink; someone keeps flicking dog shit into my back garden, which is a jungle, by the way; and that useless bastard Parker is still crashing on my couch. I’m settling in just great.’

      Silence from the other end of the phone.

      Typical. She started it, but I was the one who ended up in trouble. ‘Sorry, it’s … Didn’t mean to snap.’ I cleared my throat. ‘How’s your dad?’

      ‘I thought we weren’t going to do this any more.’

      ‘I said, I’m sorry, OK?’ Every damn time. ‘So, Katie: can I speak to her?’

      ‘It’s twenty to four on a Monday afternoon: what do you think?’

      ‘Don’t tell me she’s—’

      ‘Yes, she’s at school.’

      ‘Who died?’

      ‘She wants to go to France for a month.’

      Frown. ‘What?’

      ‘I said she wants—’

      ‘How can she go to France for a month?’ I took two steps across the corridor, turned, and paced back the other way, the phone clenched in my fist. ‘What about school? She’s barely there as it is! For God’s sake, Michelle, why do I always have to be the bad cop? Why can’t—’

      ‘It’s the school doing it: an exchange thing – staying with a French family in Toulouse. They think it’ll be good for her. Help her focus.’ And the clipped voice was back. ‘I thought you’d be more supportive.’

      ‘They want to pack her off for a month, where we can’t keep an eye on her, and you’re OK with this?’

      ‘I …’ A sigh. ‘We’ve tried everything else, Ash. You know what she’s like.’

      I ground my fingertips into gritty eyes. It didn’t really help. ‘She’s not a bad kid, Michelle.’

      ‘Oh for God’s sake: grow up, Ash. She’s not your sweet little girl any more. Not since Rebecca abandoned us.’

      Because that’s when everything went wrong.

      I pushed through a set of double doors, into a quiet corridor. Dr McDonald stood at the far end, leaning on a radiator and staring out of the window. Outside, two wings of Castle Hill Infirmary formed a six-storey canyon of dirty concrete. The sky was a violent splash of blood and fire, low clouds catching the light of the dying sun. But Dr McDonald wasn’t looking up, she was looking down, into the darkness.

      She pressed the fingertips of her left hand against the wadding on her face. ‘Did you know that Oldcastle has one of the highest instances of mental health problems in the whole UK, even more than London … well, on a percentage basis. Fifteen confirmed serial killers in the last thirty years. Fifteen, and that’s just the ones we’ve heard of. A lot of people blame inbreeding, but it’s probably because of the chlorine factories, I mean inbreeding isn’t rampant here, is it?’

      She’d obviously never been to Kingsmeath. ‘I’ll introduce you to Shifty Dave Morrow, if you like. He’s got webbed toes.’

      ‘Do you remember anything odd about the books Helen McMillan had in her bedroom?’

      ‘Harry Potter, vampire love stories, stuff like that? Katie’s got Stephen King and Dean Koontz and Clive Barker, so my idea of what’s normal for a twelve-year-old might be a bit off.’

      ‘Kind of ironic, don’t you think, I mean there’s Oldcastle churning out all that chlorine gas to help with the war effort: everyone thinks they’re helping win World War One and all the time the factories are dumping tons of mercury into the environment, guaranteeing generations and generations of mental illness …’ She stood on her tiptoes, cupped her hands against the glass, and stuck her head in the makeshift porthole.

      I joined her, peering down into the depths.

      A pair of headlights swept the road at the bottom of the concrete canyon, followed by a silver Mercedes van. The words, ‘MCCRAE AND MCCRAE, FUNERAL SERVICES’ were printed along the side. It slowed to a crawl below