God, when did Henry last give you a bath?’
She sighed.
I unpacked the folder Burges had given me. It was full of reports from private investigators; interview transcripts; Freedom of Information requests; statements from Lauren’s friends and family trying to piece together the last time they’d seen her alive; photos of Lauren at the beach, parties, playing in the back garden. It painted a very different picture from the official file. That one was all about facts and evidence, this one was all about Lauren Burges.
She was like Rebecca in so many ways: a nice girl, from a nice home, who got snatched from her family and tortured to death.
‘Urgh …’ A voice from the doorway.
I turned, and there was Dr McDonald: shuffling, swollen-eyed, brown curls hanging lank and greasy around her pale face.
‘You look awful.’
She winced, held up a finger. ‘Shhhh …’
‘Hungover?’
‘If you make too much noise you’ll wake him, and then I’ll have to start drinking again, and I really don’t want to start drinking again, can we not just sit in silence for a bit and then maybe it’ll all be OK and I won’t feel like throwing myself under a bus or something?’ She lowered herself onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar, then folded over until her head rested on the working surface. ‘Urgh …’
‘Hungry?’
‘Urgh …’
‘Trust me: get something in your stomach now, before Henry wakes up and cracks open that litre of Bells.’
‘Do I have to?’ She peered at me, head still resting on the countertop. ‘OK. I’ll have eggs and toast and bacon and sausages and tomato and mushrooms and chips and black pudding, and—’
‘Then you should’ve stayed at the hotel last night, instead of staggering back here with Henry to polish off the Isle of Jura, shouldn’t you?’ I stood and pulled a greasy paper bag out of the bread bin. ‘Bought a couple of sausage rolls on the way over this morning. You want them warmed in the microwave, or the oven?’
‘I want to go home.’ Music blared out of her jeans. ‘Noooo …’ She pulled a smartphone from a pocket and jabbed a finger at the display. It kept on singing. Jab, jab, jab. Dr McDonald dumped the thing on the breakfast bar and wrapped her arms around her head. ‘Make it stop …’
I picked the 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.
