Jaggy Splinters by Christopher Brookmyre Read Free Book Online Page A

What’s bred in the bone, will not out of the flesh. Or maybe you don’t believe my story?
    Aye, that’s a fair shout. I didnae tell the whole truth. The story’s nae lie, but I changed the perspective a wee bit, for dramatic effect. You see, if you werenae so blissfully oblivious of whose hoose you happen tae be screwin’on any given night, you might have noticed fae the doorplate that my name’s no Rab. I wasnae wan ay the burglars.
    I was the Sergeant.
    I’m retired noo, obviously, but I still perform certain services in the village. We’re a close-knit community, ye could say. So I ought to let you know, when you heard me on the phone earlier, sayin’ I’d caught a burglar and tae come roon soon as, it wasnae 999 I dialled. Mair like 666, if you catch my drift. ’Cause, let’s face it, naebody knows you’re here, dae they?
    Are you a virgin, by the way?
    Aye, right.
    Doesnae matter really. Either way, you’re well fucked noo.
    * * *
    Aye, good evening officer, thanks for coming. He’s through there. Sorry aboot the whiff. I think you could call that the smell of restorative justice.
    Go easy on him. I’ve a strong feelin’ he’s aboot tae change his ways. A magical transformation, you could cry it.
    How do I know? Personal experience, officer. Personal experience.

The Resurrection
    (i)
    He ignored the knocking at first, deceiving himself that it was merely the spiteful hand of the wind dashing another palmful of raindrops against the door barring its entry to light and warmth. Donald looked back down at the ledger, the sole text in the shop by his own hand; unfinished but already a tale more dismaying than was to be found in any of the volumes clinging so stubbornly to his shelves. He’d admit the scrawlings might not appear so dreadful to a stranger’s eye, but then the stranger would not have read the tome’s companion pieces, to be found in the respective libraries of a publican on Cowgate and a Musselburgh gentleman who dealt in an altogether different manner of book.
    The panes rattled once more, this time with a rhythm undeniably human. It was time. Inexorably it was time. He closed the ledger with a beaten sigh and sloughed towards the door, where outside a cowled figure waited in the rain. Behind him the black shape of the court building rose in silent admonition.
    Donald opened the door and stepped to one side, unable to look his brother in the eye as he entered. Rainwater immediately pooled beneath Andrew’s absurdly portentous cloak, and the sack he’d been carrying hit the floorboards with all the thumping weight of a gallows trapdoor.
    ‘You know, there was no need to dress quite so… appropriately,’ Donald muttered, fingering the ghoulish garment. ‘You look like you’ve been raiding warlock’s wardrobe.’
    ‘There
is
the slightest drop of rain outside, Donald,’ he replied, discarding the maligned mantle. ‘Though you may not have noticed from the recess of your snug wee sanctuary. Now then, are we ready?’
    Donald looked down at the sack, the lumpen head of a hammer jutting from the rude cloth. He swallowed, looking around the room for counsel. From his desk the ledger stared back insistently.
    ‘And Dr Knox definitely told you he…’
    ‘Yes,’ Andrew interrupted. ‘Are we ready?’ he repeated.
    Donald bit his lip and nodded.
    Andrew loosed the first stone after a candle-dancing age of worrying at its edges with his chisel. He passed it to Donald, who placed it delicately behind him on the basement’s flags. Soon enough the stones were coming loose with greater ease. Donald was building a pile of them upon the floor, feeling as though he was burying his condemned soul beneath the rude cairn.
    It had been his incorrigible brother who’d mentioned that the bookshop’s storeroom abutted the Infirmary Street morgue, and oh how Donald had piled his rancour upon the rogue and his unspeakable suggestion. But that was back when he’d had money enough for pints,