Stuart MacBride: Ash Henderson 2-book Crime Thriller Collection. Stuart MacBride
phone up. A photo of Detective Chief Superintendent Dickie flashed on the screen.
I went to press the green button, but the music stopped before I got there. He’d rung off.
Then my phone started ringing: ‘DCS Dickie’. I answered it. ‘What: I’m not your first choice?’
‘Hello? Hello, I can barely hear you …’ A siren blared in the background, nearly drowning out everything Dickie said, even though he was almost shouting. ‘Look, I can’t get through to Dr McDonald – can you tell her Sabir’s discovered an encrypted file on Helen McMillan’s computer. It’s a diary: we know where the signed first editions came from.’
‘Where?’
‘Hello? … Ash? We’re hot-footing it down to Dundee now: speciality bookshop on Forrest Park Road, near the university … Hello? … Hello? … Can’t hear a bloody—’
And that was it: the connection was gone.
I tipped the sausage rolls out of the bag and onto a plate, stuck it in the microwave for a couple of minutes on full. Then passed on Dickie’s message while the thing groaned and buzzed.
Ding.
I clunked the plate down in front of Dr McDonald. ‘Eat.’
She hauled her head off the worktop. ‘Don’t suppose Henry’s got any brown sauce, does he?’
‘You think our bookseller could be the Birthday Boy?’ I nudged the plate. ‘Eat: before the pastry turns to linoleum.’
‘I wouldn’t have put running a specialist bookshop at the top of my list for Birthday Boy occupations. I mean how’s he going to track the families so he can deliver the card every year?’ She took a bite, then huffed and puffed with her mouth wide open. ‘Ooh: hot, hot, hot.’
‘Sabir says he could be using the internet to find them. Or maybe they all bought books from him?’
Another bite. No puffing this time. ‘Did Hannah Kelly collect rare signed first editions?’
‘No.’ And neither did Rebecca.
‘Exactly.’ Bite, chew, munch.
I put the kettle on again, gritting my teeth as the joints of my fingers grated together. Always was worse when the weather changed. The bruises across the knuckles were starting to fade to yellows and greens. I rinsed out a mug for her. ‘You said you knew I wasn’t a vegetarian because of my face and hands – when we were on the boat, you ordered that steak. And the lamb last night.’
‘The Birthday Boy doesn’t sell books, don’t get me wrong: I’ve known a few people who work in bookshops and they can be really weird, but not torture-porn weird, and that seems to be what he’s making, only not for himself to enjoy – he’s making it for someone else.’
‘What’s wrong with my hands and face?’
‘I think he’s making it for the parents. I think that’s why he’s so squeamish about the girls screaming, why he just dumps the bodies afterwards, why it takes him three days to work up the courage to torture his victims: he’s not really interested in them, he’s interested in their mums and dads.’
I poured hot water into the mugs. ‘“Who’s he really torturing.”’
‘Exactly.’ She crunched into the other sausage roll. ‘I know you’re not a vegetarian, because you’ve got bruises on your fists and your face, then there’s the way you talk to people – the alpha male strut – and I have the deepest respect for you as a police officer, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a man of violence, it … oozes out of your pores. That doesn’t really go with being a vegetarian.’
‘I strut?’ A small laugh broke free and I smiled. ‘Ever seen a G-Twenty anti-capitalist riot? Half those buggers are vegetablists. You wouldn’t think they’d have the energy.’
She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, well … sometimes men of violence are what’s needed.’
Twenty past ten and Henry still hadn’t surfaced, but Dr McDonald had figured out how to work the central heating and now the kitchen was positively balmy. She’d perked up a bit too – three mugs of coffee, a pair of sausage rolls, and all was right with the world.
She hunched over the laptop she’d taken out of her leather satchel. ‘He’s signing in …’
The speakers gave a jangly ringing noise, a hiss, a click, and then Sabir’s huge grey face filled the screen. He squinted, and leaned forwards. ‘Mornin’ everyone … Bleedin’ heck: you look like crap, Doc.’
I shifted around behind Dr McDonald, until I could see myself in the little window inset into Sabir’s video feed. ‘Any news on the bookseller?’
‘They’ve got him in an interview room, acting all indignant and “I’ve never done nothin’ to no one”. Dozy get.’
I leaned in. ‘What about my searches?’
‘Ah, right …’ He grimaced. ‘I might owe you a bit of an apology on that one. Went and did a search on all twelve families and four of them didn’t come up with nothin’ recent enough to find out where they were. Nowhere Joey Public gets access to. Not without some serious IT skills, anyway.’ Sabir’s fingers clacked over the keyboard. ‘Even then: there was bugger all on Hannah Kelly’s ma and da. So I went and did a bit of a hack on the Police National Computer – told it to gizza list of everyone who’s entered search criteria for any Birthday Boy families for the last four years.’
A dialogue box popped up on Dr McDonald’s screen: ‘SABIR4TEHPOOL WANTS TO SEND YOU A FILE. ACCEPT – DECLINE.’
She clicked accept and a spreadsheet opened up in another window. A long list of names and dates.
‘I’ve sorted it by family, year, who’s done the search, and from where.’
I frowned at the names. ‘And?’
‘If youse were hoping for one person who’d done the lot, you’re stuffed. We got about sixty-two searches spread out over forty individuals, no one’s searched for all twelve families. Well, ’cept for me trying it out, and that. Otherwise the record’s eight.’
‘So no Birthday Boy.’
‘Not unless he’s about ten different people, no.’
I got Dr McDonald to scroll through the list. Most of them were from Oldcastle – Rhona’s name was on there, so was Weber, Shifty Dave, along with a chunk of CID and nearly every uniform in the place. And of the lot, Rhona was the one who’d done the most searches: a whole three. Sod.
‘Sorry, Sabir: wasted your time.’
‘Nah, don’t worry about it. We did the same thing four, five years ago when we thought the Birthday Boy might be a bizzie. Even thought we had him once – this sergeant up in Inverness – but turned out he was just a dirty paedo got his rocks off on the Birthday Boy photos. Was worth checking again.’
Henry knocked on the doorframe. ‘Ah, Alice, you’re up. Good.’ He’d changed out of his funeral suit, into a pair of flannels and a beige cardigan going bald at the elbows. He placed a litre bottle of Bells whisky on the breakfast bar. ‘Ready to get back to it?’
Dr McDonald swallowed. Pulled on a smile. ‘Super …’
‘Sabir?’ I turned the laptop around so the screen was pointing at Henry. ‘You remember Dr Forrester?’
Sabir’s face broke into a grin. ‘Doc, how you been? You’re looking—’
Henry reached forwards and closed the laptop lid, shutting him off. ‘I told you, I’m not getting involved: I’m simply helping you and Alice out. If you do that again, I’m out.’
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