Must have been air shifting in his lungs when she moved the body.
This was all so much more difficult and worrying and horrible than she’d thought...
‘Come on, Lucy, you can do this.’ The Bloodsmith parked himself on the toilet lid again. ‘Think of Dr Lockerby as a Christmas present no one really wants.’ Miming wrapping a parcel.
OK.
When you looked at it that way, it only took ten minutes to get Lockerby rolled up in the tarp, the ends folded in, halfway through, to keep everything inside, like a burrito. She secured the bundle with bands of duct tape, going through nearly a whole roll, just in case.
‘Oh, and you probably don’t want to leave this lying around, Kiddo.’ A finger came down to point at a small rectangular black object wedged between the toilet brush holder and the wall.
The thing Dr Lockerby had been trying to pull out of his pocket, just before she caved his skull in.
It was a digital camera, the old-fashioned kind that didn’t come attached to a mobile phone. Turning it on made a little screen on the back light up, displaying the last picture taken: a middle-aged woman, lying pale and still in a hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and wires. Her hospital gown had been pulled up around her middle, showing off her genitals.
Lucy pressed the button to bring up the next photo and it was a different woman, only this time the gown was up around her neck. And the photo after that—
‘Urgh...’ Lucy turned the camera off again.
Now she didn’t feel anywhere near as bad about bashing his brains out.
The full moon hung low on the horizon, swollen and yellow, wearing a hazy shroud of mist as Lucy hauled the tarpaulin-wrapped bundle into the back of her Bedford Rascal. It was amazing how much heavier a dead body was than a live one. Suppose all the layers of tarp and duct tape didn’t help, but there was no point letting anything leak out inside the van. Trace evidence was a sod to get rid of, and it wasn’t as if she could afford to torch her only form of transport.
Mind you, if you thought about it, she didn’t have to use her own vehicle, did she?
Lucy went back into the house and rummaged through Meldrum’s clothes till they gave up a BMW fob, with a couple of keys attached. Then marched out onto the road, held the fob up high, and pressed the button.
A set of hazard lights flashed down the road, not far past where the ‘WELCOME TO BALLROCHIE’ sign lurked — as if four houses counted as an actual place.
She limped over there and climbed into a new-looking mid-range shiny-black Beamer. Leather seats. Swanky. The engine purred into life and she drove it back to the house, reversing up the drive, past the Bedford Rascal, and up to the garage door.
Just gone nine and there wasn’t a light on in the houses opposite. She hadn’t been kidding about Horlicks and hearing aids. So there was no one to watch her wrestle the body out of the van and into the BMW’s boot. Took a bit of effort to get Dr Lockerby in there, and it left no space for the jerrycans, so they’d have to go in the rear footwell.
Lucy headed back inside.
House was a bloody mess — all that soapy water had soaked into the upstairs-landing carpet, probably ruining it. The hall was a tip. A huge, splintered crack ran across the spare room’s door. There were scuff marks all the way down the stairs. And the bathroom looked as if a bomb had gone off in it.
Pfff...
She grabbed her overcoat from the rack, locked the front door from the inside, picked up the bulging bag-for-life from the kitchen, and headed through the linked door to the garage. Where ‘Dr’ Meldrum was still tied to her chair, shivering in the gloom, her breath steaming out through the cloth gag in wispy tendrils of white.
Lucy squatted down in front of her. ‘We’re going for a little drive.’ Resting her hand on that bandaged knee. ‘You’re going to be well behaved, aren’t you?’
Meldrum closed her eyes and nodded. ‘Mmmmfff!’
‘Good.’ Lucy produced a pair of cuffs. It didn’t take much to get Meldrum, bound and gagged, in the back of the car, lying there covered with the plastic dustsheet.
The garage door rattled down again, and when Lucy turned, Charlie was standing by the car, watching her. No sign of the Bloodsmith.
‘You coming?’
He dug a toe into the gravel driveway. ‘You don’t seem to want a Jiminy Cricket any more.’
Lucy tilted her head, then pointed. ‘In the car.’
There was some feet-dragging, but eventually he climbed into the passenger seat with the bag-for-life in the footwell — along with a rucksack stuffed with a few choice items from Dad’s toolkit. There wasn’t any point asking him to fasten his seatbelt, so she started the BMW up and pulled out onto the road. Clicked on the radio and fiddled with the buttons till it latched onto the local radio station and a jaunty ballad filled the car.
Charlie frowned at her in the dashboard light. ‘You seem to be taking all this remarkably well.’ He shook his head. ‘Lucy, this isn’t you, OK? You don’t have to be like... this. I’m begging you: go to the hospital. You’re not well; they’ll help you get better.’
The song jollied along to itself.
‘Lucy? I said—’
‘I don’t have any choice, OK? The tide’s way up above my head and there’s nothing I can do to change that. Either I swim with it, or I drown.’
Lucy stuck to the speed limit, all the way from Ballrochie to Woronieck Road, because it probably wouldn’t look too good if she got pulled over driving a vehicle without the owner’s permission, an abducted woman in the back seat, and a corpse in the boot. Traffic Division tended to take a dim view of that kind of thing, even in Oldcastle.
She parked in front of the chandler’s warehouse, strapped on a headtorch, opened the back door, and pulled Dr Meldrum out onto the pavement. ‘If you struggle or make any sort of noise, it’s not going to end well, understand?’
A wide-eyed nod.
Took a while to haul her down the alley, in through the door, along the corridor, and down the stairs — every thump and jolt eliciting a moan, sob, or whimper — but eventually Lucy got her new guest into the long, low, stinking room.
‘Is this really such a good idea?’ Charlie followed her in, arms folded tight as Lucy dragged Meldrum across the stained concrete to the filthy grate where Dr Christianson was shackled.
Christianson barely moved, just lay there and groaned as Lucy handcuffed Meldrum’s wrists to the thick length of chain.
You’d think she’d resist, or complain, or kick off, but Meldrum just sat there, staring, shrinking back from what was left of the psychologist. ‘What did you do to him?’
Good question.
Lucy left them to get acquainted while she levered Lockerby out of the boot and dragged his body down into the room. Dumping him on the couch in the faux therapist’s office. The next round trip brought the bag-for-life and one of the jerrycans, and a final visit fetched the last two cans of petrol. Setting all three in a line by the door.
‘You don’t have to do this, Lucy.’ Charlie stepped out of the shadows. ‘You could hand them both over to the authorities and tell Tudor what’s happened. He’ll understand. Hell, show him Lockerby’s camera and they’ll probably throw a parade in your honour. But the important thing is: they could help you get better.’