A Song for the Dying. Stuart MacBride

their crappy car so they can go back to their crappy flat after a crappy day at their crappy job.

      The violins get darker, joined by a minor chord on the piano.

      She roots through her handbag, then pulls out a jangling mass of keys more suited to a prison officer than a nurse. They fumble through her fingers and tumble to the damp concrete. Cling-clatter their way under the car.

      The footsteps are louder now.

      She thumps her handbag on the bonnet and squats down, reaching into the oily blackness beneath the patchwork Clio, searching, searching …

      The footsteps stop, right behind her.

      Dramatic chord on the piano.

      She freezes, car keys just out of reach.

      Whoever it is clears his throat.

      She lunges for the keys, grabs them, holds them jagged between her fingers like a knuckle duster, then spins around, back against the driver’s door …

      A man frowns down at her, with his big rectangular face and designer stubble. ‘Are you all right?’ He’s wearing a set of pale-blue nurses’ scrubs, his top pocket full of pens. Castle Hill Infirmary ID tag hanging at a jaunty angle. Broad-shouldered. His blond hair, gelled into spikes, glints in the buzzing strip-light. Like something off Baywatch.

      The grimace dies on her face, replaced by a small smile. She rolls her eyes, then sticks out her hand so he can help her up. ‘Steve, you frightened the life out of me.’

      ‘Sorry about that.’ He looks away, deeper into the fusty gloom, eyebrows knitting. ‘Listen, about this meeting tomorrow: Audit Scotland.’

      ‘My mind’s made up.’ Laura picks through her keys, then unlocks the car door.

      Seems like a waste of time, when she could reach in through the broken passenger window and open the thing, but there you go.

      ‘I want you to know that we’re all behind you, one hundred percent.’ He doesn’t just look like something off Baywatch, he sounds like it too.

      ‘Thanks, Steve, I appreciate that.’ She brushes broken glass from the driver’s seat, and climbs in.

      Steve pulls his shoulders back, chest out. ‘If there’s anything you need: I’m here for you, Laura.’

      For God’s sake, who actually talks like that?

      ‘They’ll have to give us more staff. Decent equipment. Cleaners that actually clean things instead of moving the filth around. And I’m not going to give up until they do.’

      He nods. Poses for a second more. ‘I’d better get back. These sick people aren’t going to heal themselves.’ He turns and struts away into the shadows, shoulders swinging like John Travolta.

      Brilliant. Oscar-winning stuff.

      Laura jiggles the keys in the ignition and cranks the Renault’s engine into life. Then she pulls on her seatbelt, checks the rear-view mirror and—

      She screams.

      A pair of dark eyes glitter back at her from the rear seat, staring.

      It’s a big blue teddy bear, wearing a red bow around its neck, cradling an oversized card with ‘HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY!’ on it.

      The air hisses out of her as she slumps back in her seat, arms loose in her lap.

      Jumping like a frightened schoolgirl; it’s a sodding teddy bear, not Jack the Ripper.

      Idiot.

      Then someone knocks on the car roof and the pale blue of a nurse’s scrubs fills the driver’s side window. Probably Steve, back to mangle some more dialogue.

      She presses the button and lowers her window. ‘Can I help—’

      A fist slams into the camera and the screen goes dark.

      Alice hit pause. ‘I’m going to make another pot of tea, do you want some, or there’s juice, and I got biscuits too, do you like custard creams or jammie dodgers, stupid question really, who doesn’t love jammie—’

      ‘Surprise me.’

      She nodded, collected the teapot and headed off to the kitchen.

      The DVD case lay on the makeshift coffee table, beside her laptop: ‘WRAPPED IN DARKNESS ~ ONE WOMAN’S JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK!’ The subtitle was about as melodramatic as the reconstruction.

      Obviously the director really wanted to make a feature film of the story, but didn’t have the budget, or talent, to pull it off.

      OK, so he’d got the idea more or less right, but the details? If Laura Strachan and her mate Steve had actually talked like that the day she went missing I’d eat my chair.

      I fast-forwarded through some beardy type talking in front of a whiteboard while the kettle rumbled in the kitchen. Never trust a man with a beard – sinister devious bastards the lot of them.

      Army ants marched in a line around the top of my left sock.

      Bloody thing. I pulled my trouser leg up and raked my nails back and forward along the lip of the ankle monitor, scrabbling at the plastic edge. Blessed relief.

      Alice emerged from the kitchen with the teapot and a plate of assorted biscuits. ‘You shouldn’t scratch it, I mean what if you break the skin and it gets all infected and then—’

      ‘It’s itchy.’ I pressed play again.

      Laura Strachan – the real one, not the actress playing her in the reconstruction – has her hands dug deep into her pockets, the wind whipping her curly auburn hair out behind her, ruffling the ankle-length coat as she picks her way along the battlements of the castle. She pauses, looking down the cliff, across Kings River towards Montgomery Park and Blackwall Hill beyond. Sunlight glints on the broad curve of water, turns the firework trees into explosions of amber and scarlet.

      Her voice comes in over the background music, even though her lips don’t move.

      ‘From the moment I was attacked, to the moment I woke up in Intensive Care, everything was a blur. Some fragments are clearer than others, some just … it was like peering into the bottom of a well, with something sharp glinting at the bottom. Sharp and dangerous.’

      She leans on the battlement peering down. Then the camera switches so it’s looking back up at her.

      The scene jumps to a bright white room, lined with what looks like clear plastic sheeting. It’s hard to tell – they’ve sodded about with the picture, making the highlights stretch vertically across the screen, as if everything’s in the process of being beamed up. The room throbs in and out, then lurches to one side until a large stainless-steel trolley sits in the middle of the shot, with the younger, prettier, actress version of Laura lying on it. Her hands and feet are tied to the trolley’s legs, two more bands of rope – one across her chest, under her armpits, the other across her thighs – hold her tight. Naked, except for a pair of strategically placed towels.

      ‘I remember the smell, more than anything else. It was like detergent and bleach, and something … a bit like hot plastic? And there was classical music playing.’

      Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata fades up.

      ‘And he …’ Her voice breaks. A pause. ‘He was wearing a white apron, on over … Over … It might have been surgical scrubs. I can’t … It was all so blurred.’

      A man walks into shot, dressed exactly like Laura described him. His mouth is hidden behind a surgical mask, the rest of his face blurred – reduced to an unrecognizable mess by the video effect.

      Then a close-up of a syringe, the needle huge as it moves towards the camera. Fade to black. Then we’re in what looks like a private hospital room.

      ‘The