Birthdays for the Dead (42 page)

Chapter 50

The front door wasn’t even locked. I lumbered down the hall. ‘ETHAN FUCKING BAXTER!’

The silver Mercedes sat outside – rescued from K&B Motors.

‘WHERE ARE YOU, YOU LITTLE SHITE?’

The kitchen door was open. I barged in.

Ethan was sitting at the table, sobbing away to himself. The fibreglass cast on his left arm was cracked and filthy, smeared with dark-red stains. A half-empty litre of Belvedere lay on its side in front of him, next to a small white plastic tub – the kind that came with a child-proof cap and doctor’s directions printed on a sticker. Like Henry.

He looked up at me, eyes red and watery. ‘I didn’t mean to…’

‘Where is she?’

‘I’m so sorry…’

I leaned on the table, looming over the little bastard. ‘WHERE IS SHE?’ Flecking his face with spittle.

‘Oh no, not
again
.’ Alice picked up the plastic container. ‘Triazolam – sleeping pills.’ She put a hand on Ethan’s forehead and levered one of his eyes wide open with her thumb. ‘How many did you take?’

He squealed when I grabbed him by the throat and hauled him out of the chair. ‘WHERE IS SHE?’

‘I didn’t mean to!’

‘I will break every fucking bone in your body, you—’

‘Downstairs, she’s downstairs… I’m sorry.’

‘You will be.’

He staggered along the hall to a door, opened it, and flicked a switch. A flight of stairs led down into the basement. ‘I didn’t mean to… I didn’t.’

He’d built a mock-up of the Birthday Boy’s torture room. Not all of it – just three walls, identical to the ones in the cards. Enough to fake up a photo. Katie was sitting in the middle, on a wooden chair, her ankles fixed to the legs with cable-ties, her hands behind her back. Slumped forwards in her seat, long black hair hanging over her face.

Not moving.

‘I didn’t… I didn’t mean to hurt her, it was an accident.’ Ethan leaned back against the wall, breathing hard. ‘She wouldn’t stop screaming…’

Alice brushed Katie’s hair away from her face.

Her eyes were open above a rectangle of silver duct tape, throat covered in bruises. The left side of her forehead was torn and bloody, distorted, as if the bone underneath had caved in.

Oh God…

The walking stick fell to the basement floor, sending up a little puff of dust.

Katie…

‘Didn’t… Didn’t mean… Only meant to get my own back… Make you … make you…’ Ethan slumped against the wall, clutching the cast on his shattered left hand. ‘Never hold a pencil again…’

No…

He sank down until he was sitting on the ground, eyes half shut, breath heaving in his chest like an aqualung.

Not again…

I lurched forwards, fell to my knees, and put two fingers against Katie’s throat. Pulse – there had to be a pulse.
Something
. Her skin was cold. ‘No. Katie, no, no, no, no, no…
Please
!’

‘Didn’t mean to…’

‘Oh, Ash, I’m so sorry.’ Alice knelt beside me, wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I don’t know when Alice let go, but one minute she was there, and the next I was on my own looking up into Katie’s blue eyes.

Retching noises echoed around the room from somewhere behind me. I turned.

Alice had Ethan bent over her knee, sticking her fingers down his throat. His back heaved and stinking yellow splashed against the basement floor. And again. And again. ‘Come on, get it all up.’

Bitter-smelling vomit flecked with little white pills.

I stood. ‘Leave him alone.’

‘He’s going to die if I don’t—’

‘LEAVE HIM ALONE!’

She stared at me, then dropped him, backed away from the little fuck who killed my daughter.

The gun sang in my hands. One loud,
deafening
note that echoed around the room, back and forth, and back and forth, slowly fading to nothing.

Ethan lay on his side with a tiny black hole in his face, half an inch below his cheekbone. The back of his head was wide open, the contents making a scarlet peacock’s tail up the wall.

Alice eased the gun from my fingers. ‘Shh… it’s OK. It’s OK.’

She wiped it clean on her stripy red-and-black T-shirt, then placed it in Ethan’s hand, pointed it away from herself and pulled the trigger. Another echoing bang.

She let go and Ethan’s arm flopped across his chest. Alice stared at him for a bit. Then nodded. ‘He’s got a hole in his head, gunshot residue on his hand, and a bloodstream full of sleeping pills.’ She straightened her top. ‘He was ranting and raving when we came in. He threatened us, then he shot himself.’

I cradled Katie’s head against my chest.

‘Ash, this is important: if anyone asks we have to be on the same page – he threatened us with the gun, then he shot himself.’

Katie…

Tuesday 22nd November

The curtain slid back.

Katie was lying on her back, on the other side of the viewing room window, eyes closed, hair brushed, a sheet pulled up to her chin – covering the bruises on her throat – hair arranged over her battered forehead. Hiding the damage. It looked as if she was sleeping. As if she’d wake up at any moment.

Michelle stepped forwards and put a hand on the glass, lips trembling.

The uniformed constable cleared his throat. ‘Is this your daughter?’

A nod. Eyes shining and wet. ‘Yes…’

Alice put an arm around Michelle’s shoulders. ‘I’m sorry.’

I stayed where I was. Not breathing until the curtain slid shut again.

We stepped out into the car park. A knot of journalists jockeyed for position outside the hospital’s main entrance, waiting for the photogenic moment when Megan Taylor was reunited with her parents.

Michelle stared as Andrea Taylor walked out through the doors and waved. ‘It’s all her fault, isn’t it? She made those two bastards what they were…’

Alice shook her head. ‘Their father made them, she was just the catalyst.’

‘She gets her daughter back and I get Katie’s body.’

‘I know,’ Alice gave Michelle a hug, ‘it’s horrible and it’s not fair.’

Two figures broke away from the pack and marched towards us: DCI Weber and DS Smith, both dressed in funereal black.

My phone rang. I dragged it out, answered without really looking. Operating on automatic.

A nasal Irish accent blared in my ear. ‘
Two times ye had the chance, an ye bottled it.
’ Mrs Kerrigan.

‘Fuck off, I’m not in the mood.’

‘
Wanted to let yez know – no hard feelin’s. In fact, I’ve gone and got you a present. Hope ye like it.
’ A little laugh, and then she hung up.

Weber stopped six foot away, cleared his throat, licked his lips, looked down at his feet. Smith’s mouth twitched, struggling to contain a smile. Triumphant little shite.

I straightened my shoulders. ‘Michelle, why don’t you go wait in the car? I’ll only be a minute.’

Michelle walked away, head down, chewing at her fingernails. ‘She gets her daughter back.’

‘Ash…’ Weber cleared his throat again. ‘I’m going to need you to come down to the station with me.’

‘Why?’

Smith stuck his chest out. ‘We’ve found your brother, Parker. He was shot twice in the head.’

I stared. Pins and needles spread out across my chest. ‘He can’t …’

‘We found a gun at the scene: a Bul Cherokee, nine mill – very popular with the Israeli security forces.’

Cold followed the pins and needles, freezing the breath in my lungs. Bul Cherokee: it was the gun from Bath, the one Terri rented out to me so Mrs Kerrigan could have her revenge. ‘They killed Parker…?’

‘Your fingerprints are on the gun, and the bullet casings.’

I’ve gone and got you a present. Hope ye like it.

Oh God. ‘You can’t believe I—’

‘Ash.’ Weber couldn’t even look at me. ‘Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is…’

Alice grabbed my hand and squeezed.

Wednesday 23rd November

The MV
Hrossey
eased itself into dock with one last growling roar. Then clanks and clangs reverberated around the harbour. Half past seven in the morning and the sky was a deep, dirty orange, fat flakes of snow drifting down over Holmsgarth Terminal, the lights of Lerwick twinkling in the darkness.

Arnold Burges tucked his hands into his coat pockets.

Seemed to be taking them forever to get the thing tied down and the bow open. But it was OK. He’d waited seven years, another ten minutes wasn’t going to kill him.

The gangway shuddered and groaned as the last section swung into place against the ferry’s hull. Didn’t take long before bleary-eyed passengers were shivering out into the cold morning. Some would get the bus into town, some would get lifts home, some would catch a taxi, and everyone else would head down to the car deck to collect their vehicles.

Finally: the bow creaked up in a barrage of klaxons and warning lights.

One by one the cars and lorries grumbled out into the snow, trailing plumes of exhaust fumes behind them, until the only thing left was a blue BMW.

Arnold walked into the hold, sticking to the yellow-hatched path.

He had a quick check to make sure no one was watching, then ran his fingers along the rough underside of the front wheel arch on the driver’s side. A little metal rectangle – about the size of a matchbox – was stuck to the surface. Magnetic. He pulled it free and slid it open. There was a BMW key inside, like the text message promised.

Plip
. The indicators flashed and the doors unlocked.

Took a bit of doing to get the seat adjusted so he could fit behind the wheel – like a little girl had driven it last – but it started with a refined purr. Nice motor, shame it’d end up as a burned-out wreck, dumped in the sea off the west coast of Shetland.

The BMW slid out of the hold and onto the quay.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled into a lay-by, flanked by mountains on both sides, a grey sea loch reaching away into the distance, the faint wash of twilight just beginning to creep above the horizon. Arnold popped the boot.

Stank of shit and piss in there.

A man lay curled up on his side in the boot, hands cuffed behind his back, surrounded by shiny CDs, a laptop, and a desktop computer. Shivering.

Arnold nodded. ‘You Drummond?’

The man hissed at him from behind a duct-tape gag.

‘You helped the bastard who killed my Lauren. You told him where we lived…’ A smile cracked across Arnold’s face for what felt like the first time in years. ‘I’m going to enjoy this.’

By Stuart MacBride

The Logan McRae Novels

Cold Granite

Dying Light

Broken Skin

Flesh House

Blind Eye

Dark Blood

Shatter the Bones

Other Works

Sawbones

12 Days of Winter

Writing as Stuart B. MacBride

Halfhead

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental. The only exception to this are the characters Royce Clark, Andy Inglis, Janice Russell, Julie Wilson, and Sheila Caldwell, who have given their express permission to be fictionalized in this volume. All behaviour, history, and character traits assigned to these individuals have been designed to serve the needs of the narrative and do not necessarily bear any resemblance to the real people.

Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2012

Stuart MacBride asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978 0 00 734417 8

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Epub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007344192