Yeah, I definitely didn’t want the cold meat any more.
‘You never told me about Chuck Reich.’
Alice shrugged at me. ‘He swore, if he ever got out, he’d come after me and I didn’t want you to worry.’ She stared down at the photos again. ‘Anyway, it was years ago, I’m sure he’s a lot less angry now, and it’s not like they’re ever going to release him, is it? Not after what he did to his lawyer...’ She glanced up at me. ‘It’s OK, you can start eating, I won’t mind.’
Nope. Pushed my plate away.
Eleven murder pictures on one side of the shackles, eleven on the other. Which meant twenty-two victims over fifty-six years, the last of which had to be quite a while ago, going by the mould staining those Polaroids.
‘So, why did Gordon Smith stop killing?’
‘Oh, Ash,’ her smile was small and sad, ‘what makes you think he’s stopped?’
I left the engine running, heaters and blowers on full, as Alice escorted Shifty to his front door. The pair of them wobbly as newborn foals, keeping each other upright. Honestly, they were about as much—
A muffled rendition of the Buffy theme burst into life in my pocket and I dragged out my phone. Took the call. ‘Rhona?’
‘Not too late is it, Guv? Only I got some info for you on Leah MacNeil.’
Outside, Alice was helping Shifty find the keys to his tiny house: a two-up two-down at the end of a curling cul-de-sac in Blackwall Hill. The kind of place that must’ve looked quite stylish when it was thrown up thirty years ago, on the wrong side of the railway tracks, and left to rot ever since.
‘Let me guess — no one’s bothered their arse?’
‘Bingo. I’ve rattled some cages and jammed my boot up some bumholes, so at least they’ll start looking. Oh, and I managed to dig a bunch of stuff up on the mother, Sophie MacNeil, too. Suicide, sixteen years ago. Poor cow was only twenty.’ A slurping noise came down the phone. ‘Granny Helen was in HMP Oldcastle at the time, for battering some drug dealer to death, so two-year-old Leah goes to live with the next-door neighbours. Temporary custody, by the look of it.’
Interesting...
‘And Child Protection were happy with that? The Smiths weren’t related to her, why didn’t she get put into care?’
‘No idea. Can find out, if you like, but you’ll have to wait till Social Services get in, Monday morning.’ More slurping, the words after it mumbled around whatever Rhona was eating. ‘Anyway, I say “poor cow”, but Sophie wasn’t exactly a choirgirl. We’ve got three arrests for possession with intent, two warnings for fighting, one six-month stretch for assault. Chip off her good old mum’s block, that one.’
Alice and Shifty finally got the door open, and he stumbled inside, leaving Alice to wobble on the top step all alone.
‘And Leah’s been a chip off her granny’s, too. Mostly assault, some petty theft, possession — didn’t have enough blow on her to count as dealing, so the arresting officer let her off with a caution — and one theft from a lock-fast place. Guess your mum throwing herself off Clachmara Cliffs screws you up.’
That was a relief, to be honest. At least now we knew Sophie MacNeil hadn’t ended up in Gordon Smith’s private graveyard.
‘They know why she did it?’
‘Oh yeah. She left this reeeeeeealy long, rambling suicide note. There’s a copy in the file. You want me to read it out to you?’
‘Not particularly.’
Alice did an about-face, nearly crashed into the jagged crown of an un-pruned rose tree, and staggered back towards the car. Moving like she was on the deck of a rolling ship.
‘It’s all boy trouble, and not wanting to be pregnant again, and not being able to cope, and everything being so hard. Six pages of it.’ Slurp. ‘Looks like it’s been written by a drunken spider too.’
It took Alice three goes to get the door open and collapse into the passenger seat. She pulled her chin in, grinned, then let free with a diaphragm-rattling burp. ‘Par... Pardon... me.’
‘Thanks, Rhona.’
‘Nah, no trouble. I was twiddling my thumbs here anyway. The joys of nightshift.’
There was some fumbling with the seatbelt.
‘Ooh, you hear about the post mortem? Your physical evidence guru, AKA: the Pinstriped Prick, says Lewis Talbot was strangled with some sort of silk rope. Maybe a curtain tie, or something from a soft-porn bondage starter set. Don’t know about you, but that sounds like an evolving pattern, to me. He’s getting more sophisticated.’ Slurp, slurp, slurp.
‘What on earth are you eating?’
‘Bombay Bad Boy, Pot Noodle, nightshift lunch of champions.’ An extra-long slurp for effect.
‘You’re disgusting.’
A laugh, then she hung up, and I slipped the phone back into my pocket.
Turned to look at the wobbly wreck in the passenger seat, still fighting with the seatbelt.
I took the end off her and clicked it home in the buckle. ‘You planning on throwing up at some point?’
Alice stuck two thumbs up.
‘Wonderful.’
My life just kept getting better and better and better...
7
Rasping snores perfumed the air with garlic, wine and the sour taint of vomit, as I placed the washing-up bowl on the floor beside Alice’s bed and tucked her in. Then ruffled the fur between Henry’s ears. ‘You look after our stinky drunkard, OK?’
He stared back at me with his shiny button eyes, then lowered his head onto her ankles again, curled up on the floral-print duvet.
I clicked the light off. Took one last look.
OK, so she probably wasn’t going to throw up again. Because, let’s face it, there couldn’t be much left to throw up. Two bottles of wine, plus the large glass of red she’d had while we were waiting for our starters, plus the three brandies she’d downed instead of dessert, and half of Shifty’s rum-and-Coke when he wasn’t looking. No wonder she’d spent the last half hour evicting everything she’d eaten since breakfast.
Silly sod.
Could it really be nine years? Nine years of trying to keep her safe, while we went after murdering arseholes. Nine years of watching her drink herself to death, and clearing up after her. Nine years of violence and killers and pain and horror...
Great. Well done, Ash. That wasn’t depressing at all, was it?
Alice wasn’t the only silly sod in the place.
I closed the door to her room. Took my mug of tea back through to the lounge.
Had to hand it to Jacobson, he’d actually got us a nice place to stay, instead of the usual manky B-and-Bs. And on Shand Street — very swanky. High up, too: a fourth-floor, self-catering, two-bedroom flat in a new six-storey development, perched on the blade of granite that pierced the heart of Castle Hill. The panoramic windows looked out over the jagged remains of the Old Castle, its tumbledown walls and stone stumps lit up in shades of yellow and red, and beyond that the land dipped away in a tangled ribbon of streetlights. The wide black expanse of Kings River separated them from the regimented roads and houses of Blackwall Hill on the right and Castleview on the left — with the Wynd rising up behind it.