Close to the Bone (62 page)

Authors: Stuart MacBride

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Thrillers, #Suspense

He slumped against the worktop and tried not to pass out. And tried—

It’s his birthday and he’ll cry if he wants to. Nineteen years old and his present is getting the crap beaten out of him by Colin McLeod over a small matter of an unpaid debt. Fifteen pounds. That’s all it takes for Colin McLeod to give him two weeks in hospital. Happy birthday.

The doctors come past and the councillors and the police too, but he doesn’t say anything. Just lies there and tries to move his toes again. They give him methadone and group therapy, but as soon as he gets out he’s back on heroin again. Borrowing money and—

BANG! And his head hit the linoleum floor. Milne lay flat on his back, staring up at McRitchie’s kitchen ceiling, wondering how he got there. He was in hospital and the next thing … He closed his eyes and shivered. Thirsty … Needed a drink.

There was a bottle of whisky on the kitchen table – illuminated by the faint green light from the clock on the microwave. He picked it up with trembling hands and fumbled the lid off, swallowing mouthful after mouthful, not caring that it burnt all the way down. Until it hit his stomach and bounced, spewing out through his mouth and nose, making a slick of alcohol on the kitchen floor.

Water, he needed
water
, not whisky. Lurch to the sink, turn on the tap and stick his mouth against it. Sucking it down. This time he was bright enough to stop after a couple of mouthfuls, feeling his stomach rebel after two days on ‘nil by mouth’. Two gulps, then a break, then another couple. Slowly building up until he wasn’t thirsty anymore. He was ravenous.

McRitchie’s fridge wasn’t exactly packed with tasty goodies, but Milne didn’t care. He grabbed things at random, stuffing them in his mouth, barely chewing. Eating by the cold-white glow of the fridge light, letting the packaging fall around his feet. Cheese, cold mince, raw bacon. For a moment he thought he was going to bring it all up again, but it stayed down. Now all he had to worry about was the—

Click
. The counter-top lights flickered on, then a hard voice boomed out into the messy kitchen: ‘What the FUCK?’

Milne span round, eyes wide, cold beans falling from his open mouth. It was McRitchie, looking
very
pissed off. He was easily as tall as Milne, but a hell of a lot broader. Muscled, not junky stick-thin. Someone who didn’t sample his own product.

Milne raised his hands, dropping the tin of beans. It bounced off the linoleum, exploding red sauce and pale beans everywhere, joining the whisky vomit. He tried to explain what he was doing there, but his throat wouldn’t work.

McRitchie yanked a drawer open and dragged out a long-bladed kitchen knife. ‘Break into
my
house? You stupid smack-head bastard!’ He charged forward. ‘I’ll fucking—’ and stepped right in the slick of spilled beans and whisky. His left leg shot out from underneath him and for a brief second everything went into slow motion: the knife sailing through the air, his head sweeping downward and catching the edge of the kitchen table. The loud
thunk
as it hit. The knife skittering away across the working surface, clattering into the sink. Another thump as McRitchie hit the floor hard. Eyes shut, mouth open wide. Not moving.

Milne grabbed the knife from the sink and crept forward. Trembling. McRitchie was still breathing. But it didn’t take long to fix that.

The guy’s car was in exactly the same place he and Josie had left it two days ago. It even started first time. Milne sat behind the wheel, shivering and shaking, coughing until the world slipped into shades of black and yellow then disappeared.

He came to with his head resting against the wheel and the car’s horn braying in his ear. Snatched himself back upright, felt everything whooooosh around him. And closed his eyes. Forcing it all back down. Turning the key in the ignition.

It had taken every last ounce of strength to drag McRitchie’s heavy arse round to the septic tank, tumbling him in with Josie and her killer. Then a considerable breather before levering the inspection hatch cover back into place. Good job McRitchie had a HUGE stash of speed hidden in his bedroom or there was no way Milne would have managed it. In fact all of McRitchie’s stash was now stuffed into the glove compartment, Milne’s pockets, and under the drivers’ seat. He had enough to last a couple of months, if he was careful and didn’t go mad in the first week.

All he had to do now was get back to the squat and he’d be fine. Sell the car, get some spare cash and live on drugs and delivery pizza until April. Every junky’s dream.

The A90 was quiet as he pulled onto it, face screwed up in concentration, keeping the car at a steady thirty, trying to stay between the white lines. And doing a pretty good job of it too. Three tablets of speed and he was back on form. No more shakes and shivers. No, he was feeling— Oh shite.

A flash of blue light in the rear-view mirror. SHITE!

Eyes front. Maybe it wasn’t for him? Maybe the police wanted to pull someone else over and they were just … No. It was him. And he was too wasted to make a run for it. He pulled over.

The traffic policeman was a woman. She rapped on the driver’s window and Milne fumbled with the electric button thing until it slid down. She recoiled back, one hand covering her mouth, gagging. ‘Holy Christ!’ Her whole face curdled. ‘What the hell is that
stink
?’

Milne shrugged. After two days in the tank he couldn’t smell himself anymore. ‘I fell in some shite.’ Sit perfectly still. Don’t twitch, or shiver, or sound like a junky tosspot off of his face on stolen drugs.

‘You OK sir?’ She shone her torch into the car, spotlighting him in all his manky glory. ‘You look ill.’

Milne nodded. She had him there, he could see himself in the rear-view mirror: pale grey, sweaty, dark purple bags under his eyes, threads of fiery red spreading through his skin. ‘I fell in some shite.’

She turned and waved at the traffic car: ‘Norm! Get an ambulance up here sharpish!’ then knelt down, breathing through her mouth, like she didn’t want to smell him anymore. ‘You’re going to be OK, we’re going to get you to the hospital.’

He opened his mouth to tell her he just wanted to go home, but couldn’t. All that came out was, ‘I fell in some shite …’ Sitting there, watching the policewoman fading away until there was nothing left but darkness and—

Headache. Killer, bastard headache. Like a chisel driven between the ears. Milne cracked open an eye to see a pretty nurse hovering over him with a syringe.

‘Where am I?’ was what he
tried
to say, but all that came out was a dry croaking sound. The nurse didn’t smile at him, just held a squeezy bottle to his lips and let him take a small sip. ‘Thank you …’ weak, but almost sounding human again.

The nurse nodded. Brisk, matter of fact. Nose creased like he still stank of shite. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’ She beckoned over a uniformed constable and a big, fat bald bloke with a tight suit and a constipated expression.

‘Mr Milne.’ The fat bloke loomed over the bed. ‘We’d like to talk to you about the car you were driving when you were brought here.’

Milne frowned. ‘I …’ Shite – they’d found the drugs. All of McRichie’s lovely drugs and he’d barely had a chance to sample any of them.

‘Specifically, we’d like to talk to you about the car’s original owner. And how his dead body wound up in the boot covered in your fingerprints.’

And that was it: Duncan ‘Manky’ Milne was up to his neck in shite again.

By Stuart MacBride

The Logan McRae Novels

Cold Granite

Dying Light

Broken Skin

Flesh House

Blind Eye

Dark Blood

Shatter the Bones

Other Works

Birthdays for the Dead

Sawbones – a novella

12 Days of Winter (short stories)

Writing as Stuart B. MacBride

Halfhead

About the Author

Stuart MacBride is the No.1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae series and
Birthdays for the Dead
. The McRae novels have won him the CWA’s Dagger in the Library, the Barry Award for Best Debut Novel, and Best Breakthrough Author at the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards. In 2012 Stuart was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Hall of Fame.

Stuart’s other works include
Halfhead
, a near-future thriller,
Sawbones
, a novella aimed at adult emergent readers, and several short stories.

He lives in the north-east of Scotland with his wife, Fiona and cat, Grendel.

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 exceptions to this are the characters Alex (Zander) Clark, Ian Falconer, April Logan/Graham, and Emma Sim, 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.

HarperCollins
Publishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollins
Publishers
2012

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

The Ballad of Manky Milne by
Stuart MacBride © 2009. First appeared in
Uncage Me
, edited by Jen Jordan, Bleak House Books. Reproduced by permission of the author.

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

Source ISBN: 9780007344260

EPub Edition © January 2013 ISBN: 9780007344284

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

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