A Song for the Dying. Stuart MacBride

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      A ribbon of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape twisted in the wind, growling like a finger dragged across the teeth of a comb. Scrubland surrounded the deposition site on three sides, a patch of wood reaching up like a dark green wall behind it. The sky was a solid swathe of granite. The long grass whipping in a frigid wind.

      I turned my back on the gusts and jammed a finger in my ear. ‘No, not… Look, all I want is access to the Inside Man letters. How hard can it be?’

      A loud sigh came down the phone. ‘Seriously? Come down here and take a look; it’s like a bring-and-buy sale for cardboard boxes down here. You know that bit at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark? That.’ Another sigh. ‘Did you check with the Major Investigation Teams?’

      ‘Come off it, Williamson, who do you think put me on to you? They haven’t seen them.’

      One of Oldcastle’s collection of dented and scarred patrol cars blocked the path down to the scene, a pair of uniforms guarding the place by sitting on their backsides inside, out of the wind.

      ‘Well, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m not Santa. I can’t just magic up a set of letters if I’ve no clue where the damn things are.’

      ‘So go ask Simpson. He’ll know.’

      ‘Look, I’m telling you there’s—’

      ‘Hold on.’ I pressed the phone against my chest and rapped on the driver’s window.

      The guy behind the wheel puffed out his cheeks, then buzzed the window down. He didn’t look old enough to vote, never mind arrest anyone – with a threadbare moustache and a scabby pluke on his forehead. Bored eyes and a droopy mouth. Crumbs and flakes of pastry all down the front of his stab-proof vest. He took another bite out of whatever was wrapped in the paper bag from Greggs, talking with his mouth full. ‘Sorry, mate, this bit’s shut. Gotta go walk somewhere else.’

      I leaned on the roof. Stared down at him. ‘First off, Constable, I am not your “mate”.’

      He obviously recognized the tone of voice from previous bollockings, because he sat bolt upright in his seat and dropped the paper bag into the footwell. A blush erupted across his face, flushing his cheeks, making the tips of his ears glow. ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean—’

      ‘Name?’

      ‘Hill, sir, erm … Ronald. I didn’t—’

      ‘Second: I don’t care how long you’ve been sitting here, you’re a bloody police officer, so try to look like one. You’re a disgrace. Third,’ I pointed at Alice and Huntly, ‘get your arse out of this car and show these people the deposition scene. Now, Constable.’

      ‘Yes, sir, sorry, sir.’ He scrambled out of the car, ramming his peaked cap down on his head. ‘This way, and—’

      ‘Check their bloody identification first!’

      Alice looked over her shoulder. ‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’

      I turned. Constable Hill was standing to attention with his back to us, guarding the path down to the deposition scene as if his life depended on it.

      ‘Might have done.’ I might not have been a police officer any more, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have fun putting the fear of God into lazy PCs.

      The Scenes Examination Branch had laid out a common access path, marked off with more blue-and-white tape, the jaundiced grass crisp with frost and trampled flat. The path curled around the scene, looping back on itself towards an inner cordon of yellow-and-black tape: ‘CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS’. A handful of triangular yellow flags punctuated the undergrowth, all of them marked with a letter and number.

      Huntly stood, chest out, shoulders back, nose swinging left to right as if he was scenting the place. ‘I see…’ And then he was off, working his way along the trampled path. Sniffing as he went.

      I stuck my hands in my pockets. ‘They’re having difficulty locating the original Inside Man letters. Apparently the archives are a mess. No one knows what’s in what box. Sure you can’t make do with the photocopies Jacobson gave you?’

      She curled her top lip. ‘They’ve been copied so many times they’re barely legible. I need to see the originals. I want to feel the ink on the page, see the weight he’s put behind the words, the scratch of the pen, I want to touch something he has. Something that didn’t end up dead or damaged.’ She turned, her eyes following Huntly as he ducked under the inner cordon. ‘Did you get anything off them eight years ago?’

      ‘We ran every test we could on the letters and the envelopes, but there was nothing. All six were postmarked Oldcastle. The only fingerprints we could lift belonged to the journalist he sent them to. All that’s left is the words.’

      For a moment, it looked as if she was about to say something. But she dug into her leather satchel instead and came out with a manila folder and a carrier-bag. She jiggled the folder. ‘Photos.’ Then held up the bag. ‘And this is your investigation kit. Dr Constantine made one for everyone.’

      I took the bag. Rummaged through the contents. A decent-looking camera – small but high-res, large memory card. Five or six pairs of blue nitrile gloves in individual sterile packages. A handful of evidence bags. A ruler. A notepad. A sheet of instructions. And a smartphone. I pulled it out, turned it over in my hands. ‘Let me guess: it’s all monitored and GPS tracked so they know where I am and what I’m up to?’

      Alice just looked at me. Then, ‘No, it’s a phone. It’s for making calls and uploading stuff to the LIRU server, see there’s a slot in the side that’ll take the camera’s memory card? They’ve got the ankle monitor if they need to find you.’

      Good point. I distributed the investigation kit between my pockets.

      Huntly’s voice brayed out from the other side of the crime-scene tape. ‘I do love a good deposition scene. But this isn’t one of them. I mean look at this, honestly.’ He swept his arms up and out. ‘Everyone and their rancid mother’s picked the place clean, leaving dirty big footprints everywhere. And why, oh why, oh why, didn’t they put down a walkway? It’s all compromised. How am I supposed to work like this?’ He turned around, doing a slow one-eighty, left the cordoned-off area, then stomped and crackled away into the woodland.

      So much for Jacobson’s hand-picked, decades of experience, top of their game, experts.

      I ducked under the tape marking off the access path and scrunched through the knee-high grass towards the inner cordon. Stopped. Looked back to where Alice was standing with her arms wrapped around herself. ‘You coming?’

      ‘Aren’t we supposed to stick to the authorized path?’

      ‘You heard Huntly. Operation Tigerbalm have tromped all over it with their size elevens. There’s nothing left to compromise.’ I went back to wading through the frosty grass. Paused at the line of tape. Opened the folder and pulled out the photos.

      They were the same ones Jacobson had given me in the Range Rover, the colours a lot more vibrant in the daylight.

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