She dipped a chip into the lurid-green mush. I spoke to Dickie, he s got the whole church wired with cameras, if the Birthday Boy turns up at St Jasper s we ll get him on film, then Sabir s going to run facial-pattern analysis on all the CCTV footage from the shopping centre when Megan went missing, if he shows up we ll get him.
Hmm. My fish tasted of cobwebs and cardboard. as police continue to hunt for Katie Nicol, daughter of Detective Constable Ash Henderson of Oldcastle CID
Even the Irn-Bru was tasteless.
We ll find her, Ash, we re closer than we ve ever been.
Katie Nicol is the Birthday Boy s thirteenth victim, and only the second one to receive a card the day after she was kidnapped
Fucking moron. I switched off the radio. It s not a kidnap unless there s a ransom demand. She was abducted I stared at my chips, then closed the blue-and-white cardboard container and shoved it back in the plastic bag it d come from.
Are you sure you don t want to go to the vigil?
A gust of wind raked the Renault s bonnet with rain, the droplets sparking off the dirty paintwork, caught in the headlights of a hatchback as it pulled into the car park. Stopped as far away from us as possible.
Ash, I
Katie used to like it when I told her bedtime stories.
OK
Once upon a time there was a paedophile called Philip Skinner. Philip had two kids, and a wife that loved him very much, because she didn t know what he was up to. At that time, a dark plague fell upon the kingdom and three little boys were found in black-plastic bin-bags all over the city. They d been raped and stabbed, then cut into fifteen pieces. Then he wrapped each individual bit in clingfilm, like he was trying to keep them fresh.
The other car s lights went out its driver and passenger turned into silhouettes by the glow reflected back from the castle. They moved closer until their heads were touching.
The police called in a brave knight called Dr Henry Forrester, and the knight examined the chopped-up little boys and drew up a profile of the monster responsible. The police hunted high and low for someone who fit: they found Philip Skinner. Turned out Skinner had done time in a Belgian prison for aggravated assault and child porn in the Nineties. So they dragged him in for questioning.
The napkin disintegrated as I wiped the chip grease from my hands.
But Philip Skinner had a good lawyer who got him out on a technicality. The brave knight was convinced Skinner was guilty and one of the policemen, a big bruiser called Detective Superintendent Len Murray, believed him.
The other car started rocking on its springs.
So they recruited a young DI called Henderson, and they watched Skinner whenever they could, taking turns to keep the dirty wee bugger under surveillance. Only they couldn t watch him all the time, and then another little boy turned up, cut into bits and wrapped in clingfilm. So they decided Philip Skinner had to be stopped
I took a scoof of Irn-Bru, rolling the fizzy orange chemicals around my mouth. Turns out it wasn t Skinner who d raped and killed and dismembered the little boys, it was a young man called Denis Chakrabarti. Worked as a butcher s assistant at the big Gardner s supermarket in Blackwall Hill. The profile was wrong. He killed two more boys before we finally caught him.
Dr McDonald tore off another bit of fish. What happened to Philip Skinner?
You were right about me: I am a man of violence. I m good at it. I flexed my hands into fists. The knuckles grated swollen and aching. Even with the arthritis. I ve beaten the truth out of people, intimidated, lied, stolen, taken money to look the other way, cheated on my wife More Irn-Bru. When Rebecca. When she went away we did what parents do we tramped the streets, we put up posters everywhere from Thurso to Portsmouth, posted a reward, hired private investigators, did radio appeals. Cost a fortune, more than we had, I got into debt A lot of debt.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, watched the rain make ribbons on the windscreen. Things weren t going so well any more. I spent too much time with this journalist called Jennifer: to begin with it was about keeping Rebecca s name in the papers, stop people forgetting, but Someone told Michelle, and she caught us, kicked me out, got herself a live-in boyfriend who turned the house into a minefield. And that s when they asked me to help keep an eye on Philip Skinner.
I swigged back the last mouthful of Irn-Bru then crumpled the tin in my hand, knuckles like hot gravel. Still think Katie s lucky to have me as a dad?
The blower grumbled, the rain thrummed on the roof.
Dr McDonald fiddled with her chips. Aunty Jan isn t really my aunt, before she was a vet she was a social worker, she looked after me when I got fostered out to this family in Dumfries. I told you my mum wasn t the same after she got back from the hospital She waited three weeks, then she climbed into a hot bath and slit her wrists, right the way up to the elbows.
I m sorry.
