finally got bored and had me killed.
‘… more from the scene as we get it. Edinburgh now, and the family of missing six-year-old Stacey Gourdon have issued an appeal, asking her abductors to return her remains …’ The TV in the rec room was mounted in its own tiny cage, high up on the wall, as if the prison thought it was as likely to do a runner as all the other inmates.
Ex-Detective Superintendent Len Murray picked up a plastic chair and stuck it down next to mine. Settled into it, a smile distorting his Robin-Hood-style grey goatee. The strip-lights glinted off his bald head and little round glasses. A big man with a big rumbling voice. ‘You’re going to have to kill her. You know that, don’t you?’
In her private cell, the woman on the television gave a grim nod. ‘Stacey Gourdon’s bloodstained dress and trainers were found by officers searching woodland in Corstorphine …’
I stared at him. ‘Don’t you have something better to do?’
‘Ash, the bog-hopping bitch is going to keep you in here till you top yourself, or she sends someone in to do it for her. Time to be proactive.’
‘I mean, you’ve got what, four more years to serve? You should take up a hobby. Woodwork. Or learning Spanish.’
The picture changed to a run-down two-up two-down in a manky council estate, a scrum of reporters jostling for position as the front doors opened and a hollow woman stared out with dead eyes and trembling fingers. A fat bloke just visible over her shoulder: bloodshot and sniffing, biting his bottom lip.
The woman cleared her throat. Looked down at her shaking hands. ‘We …’ Another go. ‘We just want her back. We want to bury her. We want the chance to say goodbye …’
Len leaned back in his seat and slapped a hand down on my shoulder. Squeezed. ‘I know a couple of lads who’ll do the job for two grand.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘They’ll go up against Andy Inglis for a measly two thousand pounds? Are they mad?’
‘They’re not local. And they need to get out of the country anyway. Besides: who’d know?’
‘… please, she’s our little girl … Stacey was everything to her dad and me …’
‘I’d know.’
Palm it off to some pair of idiots? No chance. When Mrs Kerrigan died, it would be with my hands around her throat. Squeezing …
Assuming I ever got out of here.
I turned back to the screen, where Stacey’s mother was collapsing, every sob caught in the strobe of camera flashes.
Back to the studio. ‘… with any information can call the number at the bottom of the screen.’ The newsreader shuffled her papers. ‘Oldcastle Police have confirmed that the woman’s body, discovered on waste ground behind the city’s Blackwall Hill area in the early hours of yesterday morning, belonged to Claire Young, a paediatric nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary …’
Len shook his head. ‘The trouble with you is you think revenge has to be up-close to be personal. You never did learn to delegate properly.’
‘I’m not delegating that bitch’s—’
‘What does it matter who does it, as long as she’s dead?’ He shook his head. Sighed. ‘You can’t kill her yourself if you’re still stuck in here. And you can’t get out of here till she’s dead. Catch twenty-two. And for two grand, you can make it all go away.’ Len cocked an imaginary pump-action shotgun and shot the newsreader in the face. ‘Think about it.’
‘Yeah, because I’ve got two thousand pounds burning a hole in my pocket.’
‘… appeal to the media’s conscience to respect her family’s wish for privacy …’
Good luck with that.
‘Could always borrow it?’
‘That’s how I got into this mess in the first place.’
The door to the rec room thumped open and a hard voice cut across the TV. ‘Henderson!’
I turned, and there was Officer Babs. She jerked a thumb. ‘You got a visitor.’
A man in a brown leather jacket sauntered into the room, hands in his pockets. He was at least a head shorter than Babs, hairy, with thick sideburns.
He wandered over till he was standing between me and the television.
‘Here’s the sport now, with Bobby Thompson …’
Hairy Boy smiled. ‘Well, well, well, so you’re the ex-DC Henderson I’ve heard so much about?’ His accent was obviously Scottish, but indistinct, as if he didn’t really come from anywhere. ‘So … tell me about Graham Lumley and Jamie Smith.’
‘No comment.’
Officer Babs appeared at his shoulder, dwarfing him. ‘Detective Superintendent Jacobson is having a squint into what happened outside the laundry a fortnight ago. So don’t be a dick: cooperate.’
Yeah, right. ‘A full Detective Superintendent? Investigating a fight in a prison corridor? Are you not a bit overqualified?’
Jacobson tilted his head to one side, staring at me. Eyeing me up and down like he was about to ask me to dance. ‘Official report says you attacked the pair of them. Shouting and swearing and crying, like a … Hold on, let me get this right.’ He pulled out a small black police-issue notebook. Flipped it open. ‘“Like a big-Jessie escaped mental patient.” That Graham Lumley’s got a way with words, doesn’t he?’
Len crossed his arms across his big barrel chest. ‘Lumley and Smith are lying wankers.’
Jacobson turned a bright, shining smile in Len’s direction. ‘Lennox Murray, isn’t it? Ex head of Oldcastle CID. Eighteen years for the abduction, torture, and murder of one Philip Skinner. Thanks for playing along, but I’d like hear what Mr Henderson has to say. OK? Great.’
I copied Len, arms folded, legs crossed. ‘They’re lying wankers.’
Jacobson dragged a chair over, then sank into it. Scuffed it forwards a couple of feet till his knees were nearly touching mine. A chemical waft of Old Spice drifted out from him. ‘Ash … I can call you Ash, can’t I? Ash, the head psychologist here tells me you’ve got a self-destructive personality. That you sabotage yourself by picking a fight every time you come up for review.’
Give him nothing back but silence.
Jacobson shrugged. ‘Of course Dr Altringham strikes me as a bit of a tit, but there you go.’ He raised a finger, then pointed it over his shoulder in the general direction of the television. ‘Did you
