The PC raised an eyebrow. ‘On your own? Sod all, Guv. Orders from the Chief Super, in triplicate: Dewar goes to trial, dirty wee child-murdering bastard that he is.’
‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’ After all, we needed him to get all better so he could enjoy his daily torture. I opened the door and stepped into the familiar disinfectant-and-misery-scented air.
They’d hooked him up to a drip and a heart monitor, but other than that, he was machinery-free. Lying there, on his back, with his mouth hanging open, chest rising and falling in time to a deep rumbling snore.
Probably loud enough to disturb the other patients. That wasn’t fair, was it? Someone should do something about that.
So I pinched his nose shut, the palm of my hand covering his mouth.
‘Guv!’
Dewar spluttered his way into consciousness, a small scream muffled by my hand.
I let go and gave the PC a smile. ‘Oh look, he’s awake.’
Dewar blinked at me, then around at the room — as if taking it in for the first time. ‘How...?’
The chair’s rubber feet squealed across the green-terrazzo floor as I pulled it closer to the bed. Thumped down in it. ‘Not going to kid you, Kenny, I’m tired, I’m sore, and I’ve had a bastard of a day.’ Pointing at the PC. ‘She’s here to make sure I don’t strangle you, like you strangled Andrew Brennan, Oscar Harris, Lewis Talbot, and Toby Macmillan.’
He closed his eyes and nodded, mouth a tight squirming line as tears squeezed out. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you keep saying.’ I leaned forward. ‘You thought you’d fooled everyone, didn’t you? But you didn’t fool Alice.’
‘She... she’d been so nice to me... and then... then she called and said... and said she wanted to talk to me again.’ Big fat tears plopped onto the sheet, turning the fabric the colour of spoiled milk. ‘And I knew she’d... she’d worked it out.’
‘So you tried to kill her.’
‘I didn’t want... I need you to understand... understand why—’
‘Kenny, Kenny, Kenny: I don’t care.’ I tilted my head back and winked at our uniformed friend. ‘You might want to cover your ears for this part: plausible deniability.’
She shifted her feet, hands opening and closing. ‘You’re not going to hurt him, are you?’
‘Me? Hurt him? Why on earth would I do that? Now Simon says: cover your ears.’
She did.
‘Remember when you said I should find the bastard who killed all those little boys, and make him pay?’ I leaned in. ‘This is for Andrew, Oscar, Lewis, and Toby. But it’s especially for what you did to Alice.’ Had to be quick, before the PC could stop me — standing and slamming my right fist into his face. Putting some weight behind it. Driving his head back into the pillows.
‘GUV!’ She lunged, but I backed away from the bed, hand up.
‘All finished.’ Arthritis howled its way through my knuckles, but it was worth it.
‘What the hell have you done?’ Staring at Dewar as scarlet gushed out of his newly squint nose.
‘I didn’t do anything, Constable. Kenneth Dewar became distressed — probably the guilt of strangling four wee boys — and tried to injure himself. I saw you rush to his aid and save the day. You should get some sort of commendation for that.’
She licked her lips. Looked from Dewar’s sobbing, blood-dripping face, to me, then back again. ‘I saved the day?’
‘Like a pro. Very proud of you.’
A nod. ‘Cool.’
Kenneth Dewar: welcome to the rest of your life.
Shifty threw back his blankets and sat bolt upright in his hospital bed. ‘Come on, time to go home.’
I put a hand against his chest and pushed him back into the crinkled sheets. ‘You’ve got concussion, you silly bugger.’ Pulled the blankets over him again. ‘You’re going nowhere.’
Someone had removed his eyepatch, so instead of a jaunty-big-fat-bald-pirate, he looked more like a confused hairless middle-aged man with a weight problem and a clenched fist of scar tissue where his right eye should have been. He squinted the other one at me. ‘What happened in the basement?’
A voice behind me: ‘Yes, Ash, what did happen in that basement?’
Ah...
‘Mother, I hear you’ve been looking for me?’
When I turned, she was standing in the doorway, a bit on the rumpled side, heavy bags under her eyes, thick brown overcoat flapped open to reveal a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt with a grinning cat on it. Not quite ‘I got dressed in the dark’, but close enough.
Mind you, it wasn’t as if I was going to win any prizes for sartorial elegance — done up in the same clothes I’d gone to work in yesterday morning. All covered in dried blood and dirt and dust.
She looked me up and down, drinking it all in. ‘You smell like a fight in an abattoir.’
I pointed at Shifty. ‘DI Morrow got a tipoff that Gordon Smith had been seen in Oldcastle. We thought he might go back to Clachmara, so we headed over there. Turned out we were right.’
‘And?’
‘He resisted arrest. DI Morrow and I barely managed to get out before the house fell into the sea. Gordon Smith didn’t.’ Not sure if it was worth complicating things, but if the bodies washed up somewhere any half-decent pathologist might just notice someone had blown both of Smith’s kneecaps off: ‘When we got there he was fighting with Leah MacNeil, she managed to wrestle the gun off him.’
‘There was a gun?’
I shrugged. ‘She didn’t get out either. Shifty and I tried, but...’ A long weary sigh. ‘She kept screaming about how he’d killed her mother and she was going to make him pay.’
That should cover it. And with any luck, by the time Leah’s body turned up — if it ever did — it would’ve been battered about enough by the storm, collapsing headland, and waves to obscure any signs she’d been tortured. Wouldn’t hurt if the fish and crabs ate most of the evidence, either.
‘Oh Christ.’ Mother covered her face with her hands. ‘Helen MacNeil will go berserk when she finds out we let her granddaughter die.’
‘Maybe not. Leah did avenge her mother, after all. Old-school gangsters like Helen would’ve appreciated that.’ Sod it: wrong tense. Should’ve been, will appreciate that. But hopefully Mother wouldn’t notice.
She lowered her hands and narrowed her eyes. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything?’
‘No idea. But you should be putting Shifty forward for a Queen’s Medal.’ I patted him on the arm. ‘He was a brave little soldier and a credit to the force. I couldn’t have got out of there, without him.’ Which had the benefit of not actually being a lie — there was no way I’d leave Shifty in a collapsing building.
The sounds of a busy hospital, chuntering away in the wee small hours, throbbed through the floor and air conditioning.
Eventually Mother nodded. ‘I can’t remember, were you always this much of a pain in the backside?’
‘Probably.’
‘Ow...’ I creaked and groaned my way into the high-backed chair beside Alice’s bed. ‘What a sodding day.’ Wasn’t a single inch of me that didn’t ache. And that was after taking a double dose of Dr Fotheringham’s painkillers.
Alice hadn’t moved since I’d last seen her — still lying there, hooked up to her bank of machinery, one arm in a cast from shoulder to fingertips, one leg from hip to toes, bandages and cannulas and drips and wires and a bag dangling from the bedframe.
I struggled out of my jacket and draped it over my chest.