A Song for the Dying. Stuart MacBride

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 stairs creaked beneath my feet all the way up to the third floor, walking cane thudding on the mangy carpet.

      Alice dumped her carrier-bags on the floor and took the keys back, working them through her fingers like a string of rosary beads. Then undid each of the door’s four security locks – their brass casings all shiny and un-scratched. Newly fitted.

      She tried on a smile. ‘Like I said, it’s not exactly great …’

      ‘It’s got to be better than where I’ve been for the last two years.’

      Then she opened the door and flicked on the light.

      Bare floorboards stretched away down a short corridor, lined with gripper rod, little tufts of blue nylon marking where the carpet had been, exposing a dark brown stain that was about eight pints wide. A single bare lightbulb hung from a flex in the ceiling – surrounded by coffee-coloured blotches. It smelled meaty, like a butcher’s shop.

      Alice ushered me inside, then closed the door behind us, locking and snibbing each of the deadbolts. ‘Right, time for the tour …’

      There wasn’t enough room for both of us in the kitchen, so I stood on the threshold while Alice clattered and clinked her way through making a pot of tea for two. Cardboard boxes formed a wobbly pile next to the bin – one for the toaster, one for the kettle, another for the teapot, cutlery …

      She unpacked two mugs from a box and rinsed them under the tap. ‘So, is there anything you want to do tonight, I mean we could go to the pub or the pictures, only it’s a bit late for the pictures, unless they’re doing a late-night showing of something, or there’s some DVDs I could put in the laptop, or we could just read books?’

      After two years of being stuck inside, in a little concrete room with the occasional accident-prone cellmate, there should’ve been no contest. ‘Actually … I’d rather stay in. If that’s OK?’

      The living room wasn’t exactly huge, but it was clean. Two folding chairs – the kind sold in camping shops – sat on either side of a packing crate in front of the fireplace. She hadn’t taken the price-tag off the rug, leaving it to flutter like an injured bird in the draught of a small blow heater.

      The curtains were a washed-out blue colour that still wore the chequerboard creases from when they were in the packet. I pulled one side back.

      Kingsmeath. Again. As if last time hadn’t been bad enough.

      Mind you, it didn’t look quite as awful in the dark, just a sweeping ribbon of streetlights and glowing windows stretching down to the Kings River – the train station on the other side of the water shining like a vast glass slug. Even the industrial estate in Logansferry had a sort of fairy-tale mystery to it. Security lights and illuminated signs. Chain-link fences and guard dogs.

      To be honest, most of Oldcastle looked better at night.

      And then a trail of gold streaked into the sky. One … Two … Three … BANG – a glowing sphere of red embers punctured the night sky, throwing a pair of gravestone tower blocks into sharp relief, washing them with blood.

      It slowly drained away until everything was in darkness again.

      Alice appeared at my shoulder. ‘They’ve been letting them off for a fortnight. I mean don’t get me wrong I love fireworks as much as the next person, but it’s nearly a whole week after bonfire night and soon as the sun goes down it’s like Beirut out there.’

      Another firework burst in a shower of blue and green. The change of colour didn’t improve anything.

      She handed me a cup of tea. ‘You know, it might help to talk about what happened to Katie and Parker, now you’re not inside, because you’re safe here and you don’t have to worry about being recorded or people—’

      ‘Tell me about Claire Young.’

      Alice closed her mouth. Bit her lips together. Then sank into one of the folding chairs. ‘Her mother blames herself. We’re not making it public, but she’s on suicide watch. Tried it twice before, apparently and—’

      ‘No, not her mother: Claire.’

      ‘OK. Claire.’ Alice crossed her legs. ‘Well, she’s definitely in the target range of the previous Inside Man victims – nurse, mid-twenties, very … fertile looking.’

      The tea was hot and sweet, as if Alice thought I was suffering from shock. ‘So if it is him he’s still hunting at the hospital. Security tapes?’

      ‘Claire didn’t go missing from work. As far as we can tell, she never made it further than Horton Road. With any luck they’ll let us have the security camera footage from the area tomorrow.’

      I turned back to the window. Another baleful red eye exploded over the tower blocks. ‘Is it him?’

      ‘Ah …’ Pause. ‘Well, that really depends on what happens tomorrow. Detective Superintendent Ness thinks it isn’t. Superintendent Knight thinks it is. Bear’s sitting on the fence till we’ve had a chance to examine the body and the physical evidence.’

      ‘That why we’re here: to decide if he’s back or not?’

      ‘No, we’re here because Detective Superintendent Jacobson is empire-building. He wants the Lateral Investigative and Review Unit to be a full-time thing. This is his test case.’

      I pulled the curtains closed. Turned my back on the world.

      ‘So … What DVDs have you got?’

      ‘No, you listen to me: we’re going to fight this!’ She stops, shifts her grip on the holdall, and stares up at the dark-grey ceiling. Her hair’s like burnished copper, a dusting of freckles a cross her cheeks and nose. Pretty.

      A fluorescent tube clicks and pings above her head, never quite getting going, making strobe-light shadows that jitter around the underground car park.

      No place for a woman to be walking alone in the middle of the night. Who knows what kind of monsters might be lurking in the shadows?

      Her breath plumes around her head. ‘We won’t let them compromise patient care to save a few grubby pounds.’

      Yeah, right. Because that’s how it works.

      Whoever’s on the other end of the phone says something, and she stops for a moment, surrounded by manky vehicles, parked in miserable rows of dents and chipped paint. Raises her chin. ‘No, that’s completely unacceptable.’

      That’s when the music starts – violins, low and slow, marking time with her footsteps as she walks towards her car: an ancient Renault Clio with one wing a different colour to the others. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll make them rue the day they decided people didn’t deserve their dignity. We’ll …’

      A crease puckers the gap between her neatly plucked brows. Her eyes are bright sapphire, set in a ring of ocean-blue.

      There’s something wrong with the passenger window of her car. Instead of being opaque with dried road spray, it’s a gaping black hole, ringed with little cubes of broken safety glass.

      She peers inside. All that’s left of the stereo is a handful of multi-coloured wires, poking out of the hole where it used to be.

      ‘For goodness’ sake!’ The phone gets clacked shut and stuffed back into her pocket. Then she stomps round to the Renault’s boot and hurls her holdall