Birthdays for the Dead. Stuart MacBride

shoulders slumped a little. ‘Oh …’

      Not quite so easy.

      I zoomed out, until McDermid Avenue was joined on the screen by another cluster of streets: Jordan Place, Hill Terrace, and Gordon Street, all of them backing onto the park.

      The woman with the bowl haircut whistled. ‘Got be, what, sixty … eighty houses there?’

      I shook my head. ‘A lot of these places got subdivided up into flats in the seventies, you’re looking at about three hundred households with access to the park.’

      ‘Shite.’

      A small pause, then Byron jerked his chin up. ‘Yes, but we’ve got somewhere to start now, don’t we? We’ve got three hundred possible leads instead of none at all. This is still a result.’

      I rolled the lump of Blu-Tack in my palms until it was sticky, then tore it into four bits and stuck the sheet of paper on the wall, completing the set. Eight homemade birthday cards, blown up to A3 on the hotel photocopier. I’d laid them out in two rows of four, the oldest top left, the latest one bottom right. All the Polaroids had a number scratched into the top-left corner of the picture: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. One every year, for eight years.

      The first card showed Hannah Kelly strapped to a chair in a filthy room, eyes wide, tears shining on her cheeks, a rectangle of silver duct tape covering her mouth. She was fully dressed in this one, wearing the same clothes she’d had on the day she’d gone missing: tan-leather cropped jacket, strappy pink top with some sort of logo on it, a pink tartan miniskirt, black tights, and biker boots. Cable-ties were just visible against the dark leather around her ankles, both hands behind her back.

      She still had all her hair – long, midnight black, poker straight.

      She’d been missing for twelve months and four days by the time the card arrived in the post.

      Hannah wasn’t naked until number five. Not fully anyway. And by then she was a mass of cuts and bruises, little circular burns angry-red on her pale skin.

      That familiar cold weight settled in my chest.

      Eight cards. This was what the future was going to look like: Rebecca’s photo, year after year, getting worse. Making sure I knew what he’d done to her. Making sure I saw every—

      ‘Ash, are you OK?’ Dickie was staring at me.

      I cleared my throat. ‘Yeah, just … long night last night, waiting for those dental results.’ I went and helped myself to the stewed coffee in the conference-room percolator, leaving everyone else to stare at the time-lapse torture session. Then one by one they drifted away, until there was no one left but DCS Dickie and the only member of the team I didn’t recognize. The other woman – the one who’d sat quietly, taking notes while everyone else had celebrated the discovery of Hannah Kelly’s body. The only one who didn’t look like a police officer.

      She was peering up at the cards through a pair of heavy-framed glasses, one hand fidgeting with a long strand of curly brown hair. Her other arm was wrapped around herself, as if she was trying to hold something in. Stripy grey top, blue jeans, and red Converse Hi-tops, a tan leather satchel slung over one shoulder. Standing next to Dickie, she made it look like bring-your-daughter-to-work-day.

      Maybe granddaughter – she couldn’t have been a day over twenty-two.

      I joined them. Heat leached out of the coffee mug and into my fingers, soothing grating joints. ‘Hannah’s parents don’t know yet.’

      Dickie stared at the last photograph in the set, the one that arrived two months ago on Hannah’s birthday. She was slumped in the chair, her long black hair shaved off, her scalp a mess of cuts and bruises, the word ‘Bitch’ carved into her forehead, eyes screwed shut, tears making glistening trails through the blood on her cheeks. Dickie sniffed. ‘Do you want me to tell them?’

      I sighed. Shook my head. ‘I’ll do it when I get back to Oldcastle. They know me.’

      ‘Hmm …’ A pause. ‘Speaking of which …’ Dickie nodded at the young woman in the stripy top. ‘You two met?’

      ‘Hi.’ She stopped playing with her hair. ‘Dr McDonald. Well, Alice really. I mean you can call me Alice if you like, or Dr McDonald, I suppose, or sometimes people call me “Doc”, but I don’t really like that very much, Alice is OK though …’

      ‘Ash.’ I held my hand out for shaking. She just looked at it.

      ‘Right, great, thanks for the offer, but I don’t really do physical contact with people I barely know. I mean there’s all sorts of bacterial and hygiene issues involved – are you the sort of person who washes his hands when he goes to the toilet, do you pick your nose, are you one of those men who scratch and sniff – not to mention the whole personal space thing.’

      Complete. And utter. Freakshow.

      She cleared her throat. ‘Sorry. I get a little flustered with unfamiliar social interactions, but I’m working on it, I mean I’m fine with Detective Chief Superintendent Dickie, aren’t I, Chief Superintendent, I don’t gabble with you at all, do I, tell him I don’t gabble.’

      Dickie smiled. ‘As of yesterday, Dr McDonald’s our new forensic psychologist.’

      ‘Ah.’ Set a freak to catch a freak … ‘What happened to the last one?’

      She wrapped her arm tighter around herself. ‘I really think we need to visit the burial site. The Birthday Boy didn’t pick this spot at random, he must have known it was going to be safe, that they wouldn’t be discovered for years, and if it was me killing girls and burying them I’d want to keep them close so I knew they were safe. Wouldn’t you? I mean it’s all about power and possession, isn’t it?’ Dr McDonald stared at the white toes of her red Converse Hi-tops.

      I glanced over her head at Dickie. ‘And she doesn’t talk like this when it’s just the two of you?’

      ‘Hardly ever.’ He raised his hand, as if he was about to pat her on the shoulder.

      She flinched. Backed up a step.

      Dickie sighed. ‘I’ll … em … leave you to it then.’ He put his hand in his pocket, out of harm’s way. ‘Ash? You hurrying back to Oldcastle, or have you got a minute?’

      Hurrying back? Still hadn’t decided if I was pointing the Rustmobile towards Newcastle and putting my foot down. ‘Long as you need.’

      ‘So,’ I slid the glass door shut, and leaned on the safety rail, ‘does she provide her own straitjacket, or does that come out of your budget?’

      The view from the balcony outside the meeting room was every bit as dismal as Sabir had promised: overlooking the dual carriageway and the Kingsway Retail Park. Huge glass and metal sheds bordering a lopsided triangle of parking spaces. Up above, the sky was solid grey, the light cold and thin through the pouring rain. At least it was relatively dry here – the balcony for the room above kept the worst of the weather off.

      Cigarette butts made soggy drifts in the corners, little orange cylinders swelling on the damp tiles. DS Gillis was down the other end, puffing away – the smoke clinging to his beard as if it was smouldering – grumbling into a mobile phone, pacing back and forth.

      DCS Dickie sparked up a cigarette, took a long, deep drag, then rested his elbows on the safety rail, one hand rubbing at the bags under his eyes. ‘How’s the arthritis?’

      I flexed my hands, the joints ached. ‘Been worse. How’s the ulcer?’

      ‘You know, when I took on this bloody investigation, I was untouchable. Top of my game, going places … Remember the Pearson murders?’ Another puff. ‘Now look at me.’

      ‘So what did happen to your last profiler?’

      Dickie made a gun of his thumb and forefingers, stuck it to his temple, and pulled the trigger. ‘All over a hotel bedroom in Bristol,