‘Sodding hell.’ The Dunk pulled up a good dozen feet away and killed the engine. ‘I’ll call it in.’ Digging out his phone as Lucy grabbed her umbrella and winced her way out into the downpour.
She popped the brolly up, holding it tight in her aching gloved fist, and limped over there.
The driver’s charred remains were slumped behind the wheel. Not that there was a lot left of it, or him. His torso was more or less intact, if scorched to a cinder, but there was no sign of his head, or his arms — just a few blackened lumps.
Lucy peered inside.
A second body lay curled up in what would’ve been the boot. It was just as bad as the driver.
‘Lucy?’ Charlie waved at her from the gate. ‘Over here!’
On the other side of the five-bar metal gate, someone had set up a row of large glass jars. Each one held a human heart, suspended in a pink-tinged liquid, a drift of brown making a layer at the bottom of the jar.
There’d only been six, back at the chandler’s warehouse, but now there were eight. One for each of the Bloodsmith’s real victims. And she’d put good money on the other two belonging to Dr Meldrum and Dr Lockerby.
Yes, but if that was the case, they were short a body, because the one in the driver’s seat had to be Dr John Christianson, didn’t it? Why would the headmaster set all this up and leave that thread messy and unfinished? And Lockerby was already dead, so you’d be daft not to stick him in the boot. Which left...
Malcolm Louden.
‘Old Nick’s is cleaning house, isn’t it?’ Charlie squatted down in front of the jars. ‘No one’s going to look for who really killed Malcolm Louden. If it’s all solved, why would you bother?’
And of course they’d have his heart, just lying around at the school, ready to add to the real Bloodsmith’s collection. It would be the physical evidence tying Allegra Dean-Edwards and her academic brother, Hugo, to Malcolm Louden’s murder.
All they’d had to do was write ‘HELP ME!’ on the wall in his blood, after they gutted him, and everyone blamed the Bloodsmith. The one secret Operation Maypole had managed to keep was the thing that let Allegra and Hugo get away with murder. Because nothing was ever really secret when you had the kind of reach St Nicholas College did. Especially with ex-pupils like Assistant Chief Constable Cormac-Fordyce in charge of Police Scotland.
Which raised the question: what did St Nick’s do with Dr Meldrum?
Charlie leaned back against the gate. ‘Maybe they made her “discreetly” disappear, like Argyll?’
The Dunk came scurrying over from the car, pink-and-green brolly trembling in the downpour. ‘They’re on their way, Sarge. What have you...? Holy crap! Are they what I think they are?’ He stared at the jars. ‘We did it. We solved the whole sodding thing! Hoooo-rah!’ Doing a little victory dance in the rain.
At least someone was happy.
50
‘All I’m saying is it wouldn’t hurt us to have the patter of tiny feet about the place, would it?’ Charlie scuffed along the pavement, hands in his pockets, dirty-blond hair caught in the glow of a streetlight like a small fuzzy halo.
Brokemere Street was quiet for a Wednesday night, the kerb lined with parked cars and wheelie bins. Tenements ran the length of the road, the ground-floor shops dark and shuttered, lights glowing in the flats above. Only two businesses were still open: Angus MacBargain’s Family Store — its blue-and-white signage shining like a beacon, while its window promised ‘40 % OFF MCEWAN’S EXPORT!’, ‘ALL TAMPONS ~ 2 FOR 1!’, and ‘GUARANTEED £6M JACKPOT THIS FRIDAY!!!’; and the sex shop that had replaced the tailor’s, on the other side of the little alleyway where Liam Hay had been stabbed eighty-nine times.
Its windows were blacked out, an LED sign pulsing red in the gloom: ‘XXX!’, ‘ADULTS ONLY!’, ‘FETISH!’, ‘BONDAGE!’, ‘TOYS!’, ‘LUBE!’, then back to ‘XXX!’ again.
The Bloodsmith lingered on the corner, washed in the scarlet glow. ‘I’m not sure we’re quite ready for that level of commitment, yet.’
Lucy limped into the alleyway. If her arms were another three inches longer — and she could extend the things without grimacing in pain — she could probably touch both sides of it at the same time.
It was cleaner than you’d think, for a narrow lane running between a convenience store and a sex shop. No piles of garbage, or old cardboard boxes. No stacks of plastic wrapping.
She stopped outside the loading door to Angus MacBargain’s.
A rectangle of concrete was raised out of the tarmac, just big enough for a dead body. There was something on the other side of the plinth, tucked in beside the wall, nestling up to the bricks.
She wrestled a pair of blue nitrile gloves over her black leather ones, and clicked on the little torch from her pocket. Played its soft white beam over whatever was hidden there.
The Bloodsmith appeared at her shoulder. ‘Told you.’
It was a bunch of flowers. Nothing big and flashy, just the kind of thing you could pick up from a supermarket for a couple of quid. Or steal from a graveyard for free. Her ribs screeched, bruising and scar tissue growling, as she bent over and retrieved it. Turning it in her squeaky blue fingers.
There was a card, tucked into the foliage. Two words, in wobbly, smudged letters: ‘I’M SORRY.’ But then writing wasn’t easy, with your dominant hand in a cast.
Charlie was waiting for them, out on the pavement. ‘Was he right?’
‘Of course I was.’ Swaggering past, puffing on his cigar. ‘For who knows better the secrets of the human heart than one who’s carved six of them from his victims’ chests?’
Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘He’s going to be impossible all night now, isn’t he?’
‘Probably.’
She hobbled after the pair of them, up to the end of the street, then around the corner, and onto Campbellmags Way — enveloped in the seductive scents of garlic, vinegar, and hot grease wafting over from the takeaways on Harvest Lane.
Sixteen years after that grainy CCTV footage had been taken, and Hallelujah Bingo was still there. It hadn’t aged well, though. The canopy over the main entrance was propped up by scaffolding that didn’t quite manage to stop it sagging on one side. A barrier of weather-bloated chipboard ran around the outside of the poles, projecting out onto the pavement and blocking off the old doors. Fliers and posters lay in thick layers on the barricade, advertising festivals and concerts and bands and DJ rave parties that had happened ages ago, overlaid with badly spelled graffiti tags and half-arsed attempts at sub-Banksy stencilling.
The lights that had once bordered the canopy were cracked and darkened, the red plastic letters on the sign set forever at ‘TO LET / MAY SELL’.
The Bloodsmith rubbed his hands together. ‘Now, who’d like to place a small wager that I’m right about this next bit, too? Charlie? No? How about you, Kiddo?’
‘No one likes a show-off.’ She dug out her phone and scrolled through the contacts as she crossed to the opposite side of the street, stopping under the CCTV camera that still watched the derelict bingo hall. OK, so it was a bit late to be calling a senior officer, but DCI Ross did say he wanted to be kept up to date.
‘Hello?’ The sound of some sort of sitcom chortled away to itself in the background.
‘Boss? DS McVeigh. Just wondered if there was any update on your surveillance op: Ian Strachan’s Audi?’