Birthdays for the Dead. Stuart MacBride

surface. ‘And it only took you two and a half hours. Dr McDonald did it in thirty-five seconds.’

      Pink bloomed on her cheeks. ‘Well, the position of the head was a bit of a giveaway, I mean there might be other victims he’s decapitated that we don’t know about. We don’t have a complete collection of birthday cards, and most haven’t got to the bit where he kills them yet …’ She cleared her throat, shuffled her feet. ‘It was an educated guess.’

      Twining brushed a hand through his floppy hair. ‘Unfortunately, I have to make my identification stand up in a court of law.’ He took his tea across to the two flip charts with Lauren Burges’s details on them, and pointed at the second-last photo in the series of birthday cards. ‘She was almost certainly dead by the time this one was taken. Difficult to tell with no internal organs left to examine, but working from the photographs I’d say heart failure triggered by blood loss and shock.’

      Maybe she was lucky – maybe she was dead when he hacked her open and pulled out her insides. Maybe Rebecca was lucky too …

      That fizzing sensation burned at the base of my throat again.

      Twining tapped the first card. ‘Given the size and colour variation of the bruises between this picture and when she was killed – I’d say Lauren was probably tortured over a period of six or seven hours. Nine at most.’

      Dr McDonald looked up at me. ‘She went missing four days before her birthday.’

      ‘Yes …’ Twining squinted at the first card again. ‘That would be consistent with her appearance in this photograph. As if she’s been living in those clothes for a couple of days.’

      Eight or nine hours screaming into a duct-tape gag while he carved names into Rebecca’s skin, burned her head with bleach, ripped out her teeth with pliers …

      I put my tea down, worked hard to keep my voice level. ‘So …’ Try again. ‘So he doesn’t kill them till it’s their actual birthday. He grabs them, he ties them to a chair and leaves them sitting there till it’s time. Waiting.’

      Dr McDonald crossed to the dissecting table, with its collection of red-brown bones. ‘Can I hold Lauren’s skull?’

      Twining shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t see why not. As long as you don’t drop it.’

      I stepped out into the corridor and let the mortuary door swing shut behind me. ‘Are you OK?’

      Dr McDonald sniffed, then rubbed a hand across her eyes. She did the same with the shiny trails beneath her nose. ‘Felt like some fresh air …’

      In a subterranean corridor, in the bowels of a hospital.

      She turned, so I couldn’t see her face. ‘Perhaps I’m allergic to formaldehyde or something.’

      Yes. That was it. ‘We’re breaking for lunch. The food’s pretty dreadful, but there’s a private canteen for senior staff Twining can sneak us into.’

      ‘Right. Great.’

      ‘That was your first post mortem, wasn’t it?’ I moved around so I could look at her … And stopped. A pair of eyes glittered in the shadow of a missing bulb about thirty feet away. The Rat Catcher was back: just standing there, watching Dr McDonald.

      ‘Poor Lauren … He makes you sit there till it’s your birthday, three days tied to a chair, waiting for the pain to begin, can you imagine how lonely, how terrified you’d be, and she was only twelve …’ A sniff, and another wipe. ‘Well, thirteen, at the end.’

      Of course I could. Every bloody day.

      The Rat Catcher was like a statue. Standing. Watching. Staring. Not moving.

      I took a couple of steps towards her, put a bit of gravel into my voice. ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’

      Dr McDonald flinched, then turned to see who I was shouting at.

      The Rat Catcher didn’t even flinch.

      ‘Go on, fuck off!’

      Nothing.

      And then, finally, she turned and walked away, no rush, her trolley squeaking and groaning in the darkness. A sudden flare of light as she passed beneath a working bulb, her greying hair glowed around her head like a grubby halo. And then she was gone.

      ‘Freak.’ I put a hand on Dr McDonald’s shoulder. ‘You sure you’re OK?’

      A small nod. ‘Sorry.’ She wiped her eyes again. ‘Just being stupid.’

      ‘If we’re going to make the ferry we have to be out of here by about … half four? Five at the latest.’

      ‘I mean I’ve been to post mortems before, but it’s always the same: I spend so much time trying to empathize with killers … I have to stand there and pretend I’m him, imagining what it’d be like, how good it would feel to do all those horrible things.’ Another sniff. ‘And then it’s over and I can’t help …’ She stared at the ground.

      ‘You don’t have to be here for the rest of this. Go back to your aunt’s house, put your feet up. Crack open a bottle of wine. I’ll catch you up when we’re done.’

      Dr McDonald shook her head, dark brown curls bouncing around her puffy face. ‘I’m not abandoning them.’

      ‘Far as we can tell anyway.’ I sat back in the creaky plastic chair.

      Dickie’s image nodded on the laptop’s screen. ‘Fair enough. We’re packing up here tomorrow, so we should be in town mid-afternoon-ish.’

      DCI Weber drummed his fingertips on the desk. ‘You’re going to march in and take over my investigation?’

      Weber’s office was one of the nicer ones in the building – a proper corner job with big windows looking out on the boarded-up cinema opposite.

      Dr McDonald’s laptop was perched on Weber’s desk, where everyone could see the screen, and the webcam could see us. But she was gazing out of the window, one arm wrapped around her chest, the other hand fiddling with her hair.

      Dickie sighed. ‘Don’t be like that Gregor, you know how this works. I’m carrying the can for everything the Birthday Boy does, whether I like it or not.’ He frowned. ‘Did I tell you about my ulcer?’

      ‘I don’t care about your ulcer, I’ve got—’

      ‘How about this: if we get anything, you sit next to me at the press conference. We both make the announcement: you get half the credit, twelve-year-old girls get to grow up without some sick bastard torturing them to death, and I get to retire and put the whole bloody mess behind me.