Free Donor, The by Helen FitzGerald Page A

was finished, distracting himself with a few bimbos along the way.
    And now he was back. The little poofter. Back for more.
    Oh, he’d get more all right.
    *
     
    Heath pointed his torch at the photograph of Cynthia that he’d pinned to the underside of the top bunk. He knew why Cynthia had left eleven months earlier. He’d promised her he’d get out back then and he was sure he would – if it wasn’t for that fucking yap-yap social worker, the greasy little prick. He understood that she didn’t want the days to drag like they did for him. But he never doubted she’d be there for him when he got out. She knew better than to cross him like that.

16
     
     
    Preston MacMillan wasn’t calling Will’s mobile from his office. There were two good reasons for this. Firstly, he was in Egypt. And secondly, he didn’t have an office. The Hunters and Collectors Private Detective Agency was actually the cupboard off the living room of his West End tenement flat. For his birthday, Preston’s mum had paid Fred, her seventy-year-old neighbour, to decorate the cupboard in preparation for his advanced higher exams. Under her not-very-close supervision , Fred put shelves all the way to the ceiling at one end, a brand-spanking-new Ikea desk at the other and a big swivelly chair betwixt. ‘Thanks, Mum!’ Preston had said. ‘This is really amazing.’
    ‘Nothing is too good for my boy, you know that, don’t you, Preston? You know I love you?’ his mother replied. ‘Now come and blow out the candles.’
    Preston was seventeen years old.
    *
     
    The detective agency idea had come to Preston one Sunday afternoon two years earlier. He was watching Dexter , an American television show featuring a serial killer. The thing about this killer was that he turned his problem into something positive by only murdering really badass people. Ka-ching! Preston sat up straight. It was perfect. He liked to follow people, women mainly. And he’d been in trouble for it once – oh, but Briony was worth the referral to the Children’s Panel he got for standing over her bed that time. But he also followed males – James Marshall, for instance, who had a better train set than him aged seven. He’d followed him since the train set: as he rode his bike to the secret hideout aged nine, as he played rugby down Giffnock aged eleven, as he kissed Rebecca Gordon behind the scout hall aged fourteen, as he set fire to wheelie bins aged sixteen. He always kept mementos, too. In an old computer box on the top shelf of his new office, a growing collection reminded him of his subjects . James Marshall’s water bottle. Susie Davidson’s locker key. Maria McDowall’s glove. Pauline Bryce’s nail polish remover.
    The idea was genius – why not follow people who needed to be followed?
    The name – The Hunters and Collectors – came to him one night when he was rifling through his mother’s bedroom cupboard (not for any reason, just because he liked to rifle). In a small shoe box, his mother also kept keepsakes, but only of her electrocuted husband. One was a CD of an Australian band, The Hunters and Collectors. Preston didn’t even listen to it, but the name was perfect.
    The agency brought together all the skills he’d honed over his teenage years – he was a capable and thorough researcher, an able computer hacker, excellent at sifting through people’s rubbish, genius at hiding behind trees, shrubs or fences while looking through windows with or without binoculars, and he was accomplished at breaking into houses. Mostly, though, he was dedicated . Once he set his sights on someone, he did not give up.
    So far, he had successfully found a missing teenager and brought her home to her worried-to-the-point-of-pissed-out-of-her-mind mother (he kept one of her fake eyelashes); he had captured photographic evidence of a gay love affair for a distraught wife (kept a used condom); and exonerated a man who was not having an affair but watching his choice of