us with the puzzle of Amber O’Neil, victim number one, she was grabbed in May, does that not seem odd to you, that she’s the only one grabbed in the summer, when everyone else is taken September to December?’
‘Maybe.’
Chew, munch, shovel, mumble. ‘When we finish with the post mortems today I want to go through everything they’ve got on Amber O’Neil’s disappearance, actually I’d like everything they’ve got on everyone, do you think Detective Chief Superintendent Dickie would let me take it to Shetland, could he burn it all onto a disk or something?’
I looked at her, bean juice dribbling down her chin, and fought the impulse to spit into a napkin and wipe it off. ‘Do you have any idea how much paper there is on a single Birthday Boy victim? We’ve got three boxes on Hannah Kelly alone. We’d need to head up the road in a Transit van.’
‘Oh …’ A shrug, then back to the sausages.
‘What about the locations? Five in Scotland, five not. Might be a local lad?’
‘Mmmm …’ More chewing. ‘Do you really visit Hannah’s parents every year, so they won’t have to deal with the birthday card on their own?’
I mopped up the last of my egg with the final chunk of toast. ‘You’ve got bean juice on your chin.’
Silence from the other side of the table.
Outside the window, the Number 14 rumbled past, ferrying bleary-eyed suits-and-ties to work.
Dr McDonald wiped a hand across her chin, then licked the palm. ‘In case you’re wondering, this is the bit where we share things about ourselves and bond over communal experiences.’
No thanks.
More silence.
She sliced a circle of black pudding in two, then stuffed it in. ‘I’ll go first. My name isn’t really Alice, it’s Charlotte, but I hate it because it’s the same as that spider in the book about the pig; I came top of my class at Edinburgh University, my thesis was in aberrant psycho-sexual behaviour in repeat offenders; I’ve helped catch three rapists, a paedophile ring, and a woman who killed her four children and two in-laws; I like raspberries, but I’m allergic to them; I have a fiancé who’s a systems analyst, but I’m pretty sure he’s having an affair, I mean that cow Nigella from his office was all over him at the last Christmas party like I wasn’t even there; I was born in Peebles; and I’ve never been to France.’
OK …
She piled beans onto toast into mouth. ‘Your turn.’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘I’ll do it for you, if you like?’ She actually put her knife and fork down. Then wrapped an arm around herself, the other hand twiddling with her hair. ‘Let’s see … You were married, but the job got in the way, your wife resented always having to come second; you tried to fix it by having children, and it almost worked, but then your first daughter ran away from home and the marriage fell apart, and you didn’t get custody of the other girl and now she’s growing away from you; you’re living in a crummy house in a crummy neighbourhood and you drive a crummy car, so you’ve got money worries … Gambling?’
‘Do we really have to—’
‘You’re obviously used to people doing what you say, which is pretty unusual for a detective constable, so you used to have a much higher rank, but something happened and they demoted you, and you wanted to quit, but you need the money; life hasn’t turned out anything like you’d hoped, so you’re trying to recapture your lost youth by sleeping your way through a string of younger women, because you can’t afford a sports car or a motorbike.’ She paused for breath. ‘How did I do?’
I kept my eyes on the window. ‘You must be a big hit at parties.’
‘Top of my class, remember?’
‘A: I can see my daughter, Katie, whenever I like – and for your information we get on fine. B: I kicked the living shit out of a detective inspector called Cunningham. And C: I’m not “sleeping my way through a string of younger women”, it’s one woman and her name’s Susanne.’
Dr McDonald nodded, picked up her cutlery again and went back to work. ‘There we go, we’re bonding, isn’t it nice?’
Fruitloop.
Mushrooms, egg, chips. ‘So … this Susanne: is she old enough to vote?’
‘OK, this bonding session is now officially over.’
She just grinned and chewed.
The corridors under Castle Hill Infirmary stretch for miles, a tangled maze lined with pipes and cables. It smelled of damp, disinfectant, and something floral and cloying. When I was wee, Jane Moir’s dad worked maintenance for the council and he swore blind the tunnels went all the way out to the river, so medical students could buy dead bodies from smugglers to dissect. But then he was done for fiddling with girl guides eight years later, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in it.
‘It’s creepy down here, what happens if we get lost and end up wandering the corridors for days in the dark?’ Dr McDonald inched closer until she bumped against me with every other step. Sticking close.
The hospital throbbed above us, distant clanks and bangs echoing back from the concrete walls.
She slipped her arm through mine. ‘Lost forever in the dark …’
The corridor split up ahead. On the right, the black line disappeared under a set of dark-green doors marked ‘MORTUARY’, the metal bumper plates scuffed and dented by the passage of the dead. But Dr McDonald was staring the other way.
Her grip on my arm tightened.
The corridor on the left stretched away into patchy gloom – half the bulbs were blown, plunging sections into thick shadow, others were stuck in the process of warming up, never getting beyond the blinking stage.
Someone stood in one of the dark spots, about fifteen feet away. That cloying floral air-freshener smell was even stronger.
Whoever it was stared at us, eyes glinting in the shadows. Big, hunched shoulders, a wheeled cart … The light directly above them flickered and buzzed. It was a woman in a slate-grey boilersuit and scabby trainers. Face like a slab of meat, deep creases around her mouth and eyes. Her cart looked like a hostess trolley. Only instead of the box to keep food in, there was a large metal cage. Something furry moved inside: pointed noses, long pink tails. Rats. The bottom of the cart was piled with traps and a big bag with ‘Bait’ written on it.
Another buzz, and the light died again.
Singing echoed down the corridor from somewhere behind us. A man’s voice, getting louder, accompanied by the grinding squeak-squeak-squeak of a dodgy wheel.
‘Ooh, baby, swear you love me,
doo-dee-doo, oooh-ooh,
something
