Twelve Days of Winter: Crime at Christmas

was . . . it was a spiritual love. I never laid a hand on her.’

‘So how come she’s carrying your kid then? Second coming is it? Immaculate conception?’

‘I. . .’ He picked at the skin around a fingernail until it bled. ‘I was going through a bout of depression, the anniversary of Molly’s death, I’d been drinking.’

‘And you thought you’d just help yourself to some hot twelve-year-old-schoolgirl action?’

‘No!’ Kirkhill shook his head, tears sparkling in the overhead lights. ‘Danielle turned up unannounced. I was about halfway through a bottle of Bowmore. Just going to drink the day away, get it over with. Try not to think about those last six months in the hospital, watching her die. . .’ He sniffed, wiped his face with a wrinkled hand. ‘Danielle said she wanted to make it all better, kept pouring whisky into me. I was drunk, I didn’t know what I was doing! She set the whole thing up. . . The next day at school she’s telling me we’re meant to be together.’ He blinked up at George, eyes glistening. ‘She made the whole thing happen.’

George placed the DNA report back in the file. ‘And did she make it happen again?’

Kirkhill’s mouth fell open. ‘No! Never! She wanted to, but I wouldn’t let her!’

‘So how come her diary’s full of the pair of you shagging?’

He grabbed George’s hands. ‘Please, you’ve got to believe me: she’s making it all up! She wasn’t like other girls her age, she was . . . so focussed on what she wanted. It’s why she was such a great swimmer, and-’

‘Not that great a swimmer: she drowned.’

‘I swear to you, I never laid a hand on her. Not since that first time when she got me drunk. Never.’

George took his hands back, tilted his head to one side, and gave Kirkhill a good hard stare.

Poor old git was probably telling the truth. There was something about girls that age that always made George’s flesh crawl. Like you could hear the Machiavellian wheels spinning inside them. People thought young men were the aggressive ones, but young women were fucking vicious. And Kirkhill was obviously wracked with shame and guilt. A grown man outmanoeuvred by a twelve-year-old girl.

George was about to suspend the interview when DS Raith barged through door and waved a manila folder at him. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Guv, but you might want to take a look at these.’ She stood against the wall, face impassive as George flicked through the report and attached pictures.

‘You. . .’ He cleared his throat and stared at Kirkhill. ‘You say that it only happened the one time, and that Danielle was responsible?’

The teacher nodded.

‘Well, want to have a go at explaining how these got onto your home computer then?’ He slapped the pictures down on the tabletop, one after the other. A series of explicit, hard-core pornography, all featuring Danielle and her school swimming coach – James Kirkhill.

Then another set: a different girl this time, with ginger hair and a bone-pale complexion. And another one.

Kirkhill flinched. ‘They. . . They’re not mine. Someone else must have put them on my computer . . . to discredit me! It was-’

‘You’re in the bloody photos! And according to this you’ve got about two and a half gig of assorted kiddie porn on there too!’

Kirkhill stammered, fidgeted, eyes flicking from George to the door and back again. ‘I never . . . it . . . no . . . you see-’

‘You know what they do with paedophiles in Oldcastle nick? Sometimes they get stabbed, sometimes they get the shit kicked out of them, and there was this one bloke got raped with a broom handle. Died a week later: internal bleeding.’

It was like watching a building collapse, one minute James Kirkhill was there, the next there was nothing left but tears and snot and trembling, pale skin.

His hand swirls through the icy water, nothing, nothing, nothing . . . hair. He grabs at it, holding firm. Pull her to safety and everything will be all right. Everything will be-

She comes to him, in his little suntrap, smiling that smile she knows he loves. The one that makes his trousers bulge. Danielle grabs his hands and spins him around. Laughing. ‘I’ve got some news for you. Great news.’ She stops twirling and places one of his hands on her belly. ‘Our love has caused a little miracle.’

No, no, no. . .

‘You have to get rid of it! You’re too young, your career. . .’ Sweat sticks his shirt to his back. ‘Think about the championships, the team!’

‘James?’ She backs off a couple of steps and stares at him, mouth a thin hard line. ‘We are keeping this baby, and you’re going to be the father, understand?’ A smile lights her face like a burning building. ‘We’ll be the perfect family. And if not, I’ll tell my mother. And she’ll tell the police.’

– holding her head beneath the water as she struggles and struggles . . . and then she’s gone, hanging lifeless beneath his fingers as that stupid bitch Sarah screams.

He lets Danielle go.

There will always be more where she came from.

8: Maids a Milking

Filling telephone boxes with soft-core pornography wasn’t a bad job in the height of summer, but on a freezing Tuesday night in December it was an absolute bastard. Brian reached into his armpit and dragged out the Blu-Tack – the only way to keep the damn stuff warm enough to stick ? tore off a blob, pressed it onto the back of a postcard and fixed it above the phone. ‘SEXY SADIE, THE NAUGHTY LADY’ with a photo of an attractive, big- boobed blonde in thigh-high leather boots, matching basque, and whip. Whoever the girl in the picture was, she was nothing like the old dear who actually answered the accompanying phone number. The real Sexy Sadie looked like Brian’s nan.

The phone box was already pretty crowded. There was Mr Aziz’s finest – Sexy Sadie, Busty Becky, and Naughty Nikki – and the usual collection of doms, subs, trannies, tarts and rent boys. Some had photos, others just the promise of personal visits and ‘unique services’. Brian tore them all down, leaving the box clean except for Mr Aziz’s doddery bunch of kinky pensioners, and Dillon Black’s girls.

Brian might be failing geography, but that didn’t mean he was stupid.

Hands jammed deep into his pockets, he nipped across the road, taking his chances with the traffic. The burger joint was busy: hordes of kids eating processed meat and fries, passing around cans of super-strength lager when the staff weren’t looking.

A couple of them nodded hello as he walked in.

Cameron Williams glanced up from his double cheeseburger, mouth hanging open – full of half-chewed mystery meat. ‘Oy, Wanker!’ Doing the hand gesture as well.

Brian ignored him. Cammy was a dick. But he was a big dick and answering back would just get Brian’s head kicked in.

So he joined the queue for till number three instead.

He shuffled forwards, staring at the menu like he didn’t already know it off by heart. Cheeseburger with onion rings, fries, and a large Irn-Bru – same as always. And, as it was bloody freezing outside, one of them deep-fried apple pie things as well.

Bob – his mum’s new bloke – slipped him a tenner to get something to eat while they went down the pub. Which was cool. Meant he’d have enough left over for a packet of fags and a couple bottles of extra strong cider. That’d round off the evening nicely.

He ordered his burger, then settled back against the counter to wait. Checking his pockets: still twenty or thirty postcards to go. That would take him all the way down to the railway station, where there was a nice little corner shop that didn’t mind selling booze and fags to thirteen-year-olds. The free market economy in action: that’s what his English teacher, Mr Kirkhill called stuff like this.