Birthdays for the Dead. Stuart MacBride

right, as if looking for somewhere safe to hide from the tsunami of crazy advancing across the beige-coloured carpet.

      His back bumped into a door. Nowhere left to run. No option but to drown … He turned and wrenched it open.

      The living room was full of shelves and units, all covered with vases, postcards, decorative glassware, stacks of envelopes, bits of polished rock … The furniture looked as if it came from Ikea, but the clutter was car-boot-sale chic. Three people: one man, two women.

      It wasn’t difficult to tell which one was the journalist – she was the middle-aged go-getter in the moderately priced suit, eyebrows furrowed, mouth set in a grim line. I feel your pain, it’s all so terrible, a tragedy … But the corners of her lips twitched, as if she was trying really hard not to grin. An exclusive like this wouldn’t come along every day.

      The sergeant stepped into the lounge and cleared his throat. ‘Ian, Jane, this is Dr McDonald, she’s a … psychologist. She wants to talk to you about … er …’ He looked back at her.

      She walked right in. ‘I’m so sorry about Helen. I know this is difficult, but I need to ask you a few questions about her – try to get a feeling for what she’s like.’

      What happened to the rambling?

      The father, Ian, scowled at Dr McDonald, his thick eyebrows drawing together like the doors on a battleship. Trackie-bottoms in Dundee United orange, a Mr Men T-shirt, close-cropped hair, arms folded across his chest.

      His wife was … huge. Not just wide, but tall: a floral-print behemoth with long brown hair and puffy pink eyes. She cleared her throat. ‘I was about to make some tea, would you—’

      ‘They’re no’ staying.’ Ian plonked down on the sofa and stared at Dr McDonald. ‘You want to know what Helen’s like? Helen’s dead. That’s what she’s like.’

      Jane tugged at a handkerchief in her lap. ‘Ian, please, we don’t know for—’

      ‘Of course she’s bloody deid.’ He jerked his chin in our direction. ‘Ask them. Go on, ask them what happened to the other poor cows.’

      She licked her lips. ‘I … I’m sorry, he’s upset, it’s been a horrible shock. And—’

      ‘They’re dead. He grabs them, he tortures them, he kills them.’ Ian twisted his hands together so tightly the fingertips turned pale. ‘End of story.’

      Dr McDonald looked at the carpet for a moment. ‘Ian, I won’t lie to you, it’s—’

      ‘Actually …’ I squeezed into the room, keeping my eyes fixed on the reporter. ‘Perhaps we could talk about this in private?’

      Ian shook his head. ‘Anything you say to us we’re gonnae tell her anyway. She’s gonnae tell the world what it’s really like, no’ that press-release pish you dole out. The truth.’

      The reporter stood, held out her hand. ‘Jean Buchanan, freelance. I want you to know that I’ve got the utmost respect for the police in this difficult—’

      ‘Mr McMillan, this is an ongoing investigation and if we’re going to catch the person responsible for abducting—’

      ‘—in the public interest to report—’

      ‘—stop this happening again; and we can’t do that if these parasites are reporting everything we—’

      ‘Parasites?’ The professional voice slipped. She jabbed a finger at me. ‘Listen up, Sunshine: Jane and Ian are entitled to compensation for their stories, you can’t censor—’

      ‘—surely want to stop other families having to go through this!’

      Ian glowered at me. ‘Fuck them. Fuck the lot of them, it’s not gonnae bring Helen back, is it? She’s dead; he killed her a year ago. There’s bugger all we can do to change that.’ He bit his lip, stared at the window blinds. ‘Doesn’t matter what we want: papers are gonnae write about it anyway. Least this way we get … Why should we give our pain away for free?’

      His wife sat down next to him, reached out and held his hand. They stayed like that, in silence.

      Maybe he was right: why should he let the jackals pick over his daughter’s life for nothing? Money wasn’t going to bring Helen back, but at least it would be something. Show they weren’t powerless. Stop them wrenching awake in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat, shivering … But I doubted it.

      The reporter cleared her throat, jerked her chin in the air, then settled back into her seat and scribbled in a notebook.

      Dr McDonald hunkered down in front of the couch, then placed a hand on Ian’s knee. ‘It’s OK. Everyone deals with things in their own way. If this is what’s best for you … well, we’ll do what we can to help. Now, tell me about Helen …’

      I backed out of the room.

       5

      Helen McMillan had the same kind of posters on the wall as Katie. OK, so the bands were from the insipid-plastic-X-Factor school of music instead of the pretentious-angsty-emo-rock Katie liked, but other than that the sentiment was the same. These are the things that I like, this defines who I am.

      With Rebecca it was Nickelback and the Pussycat Dolls … She always was a strange kid.

      ‘Find anything?’

      ‘Hmm?’ I looked up from the cluttered desk in the corner of the bedroom.

      Dr McDonald was standing in the doorway. ‘Did you find anything?’

      ‘Still looking …’

      A big pink fuzzy unicorn sat in the middle of the single bed, surrounded by brightly coloured teddy bears, all neatly arranged. The duvet cover and pillow slips were smooth and crisp, as if they were still changed regularly – probably no point searching under the mattress for hidden secrets, if they were still making Helen’s bed a year after she went missing anything would have been uncovered ages ago. But I checked anyway. Just wooden slats, and the plastic under-bed storage boxes I’d already been through.

      ‘Ash, are you OK?’

      The mattress thumped back down on its wooden frame. ‘They say anything useful?’

      ‘You don’t mind if I call you Ash, do you, because we’re going to be working together and calling you Detective Constable Henderson seems awfully formal and you look worried, or maybe concerned, and a bit depressed actually, was it the argument with the journalist, because I think she came on too strong, don’t you, it’s really not—’

      ‘That’ll be a “no” then.’ I tucked the sheet back in and straightened the duvet. So it would look a little less like I’d violated their daughter’s bedroom. ‘The first card’s the worst … Well, they’re all fucking horrible, but that first card – that’s when you know your daughter hasn’t run away, that what’s happening is …’ I cleared my throat. ‘It must be horrible.’

      ‘They said Helen was a quiet girl who liked her books and her gerbils and going to see her nan on a Sunday for lunch. She wasn’t a wild child, she wasn’t into drinking or drugs or boys, don’t you think it’s sad that we live in a time when people have to ask if a twelve-year-old is getting hammered and doing drugs, and you said, “That’s when you know your daughter—”’

      ‘Figure of speech.’ I scanned the room again. No sign of a cage. ‘What happened to the gerbils?’

      ‘They died. Ian’s body language got very defensive when he talked about it … He probably looked after them for three or four months after she went missing, starts off as a duty, turns into a bargain – if I keep the gerbils alive she’ll come back to us – and the longer it goes on the more