Partners in Crime

by Stuart MacBride

  Steel took another slug of Grouse. ‘I was nineteen, only been on the beat for a couple of weeks… Was doing door-to-doors for this abduction case — woman, mother of two, snatched outside the bookies she worked at.’ Steel screwed the top back on the bottle, one eye half-shut, like it wouldn’t stay in focus. ‘And then I chapped on Desperate Doug MacDuff’s door…’

  Silence.

  ‘Guv? You want me to come in with you?’

  ‘Going to go in there and tell the truth. Let everyone know what he was really like. Give that manky old git a piece of my mind. Who needs his filthy money?’ She climbed out into the snow, breath streaming around her head. Slipped the half bottle of whisky into her pocket. ‘You wait here. Might need to make a quick getaway.’

  December 31st — Hogmanay

  ‘Guv?’ Allan peered around the edge of the door into DI Steel’s office.

  She was slouched in her seat, feet up on the desk, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. The smoke curled out through the open window, letting in the constant drip-drip-drip of melting snow. A cup of coffee was growing a wrinkly skin, sitting next to a cardboard box with ‘FRAGILE — THIS WAY UP’ stencilled on the side.

  ‘Guv?’

  Steel blinked, then swung around. ‘What?’

  ‘Just got a call from Mrs Griffith’s next-door neighbour. Think we’ve found the missing husband.’

  Steel turned and stared back towards the road. ‘You sure you locked the car?’

  ‘Yes, I locked the car.’ Snow crunched and squelched under Allan’s boots as he picked his way along the edge of the next-door neighbour’s garden. It was horrible out here, cold and wet and soggy as the thaw ate its way through the drifts.

  The neighbour was standing by a six-foot wooden fence, clutching an umbrella, melt-water from the roof drumming on the black and white fabric. She bounced a little on her feet as they got nearer, green eyes shining, big smile on her face, Irn-Bru hair curling out from the fringes of a woolly hat. ‘He’s over there.’ She pointed through a gap in the fence. ‘Saw him when I was trying to defrost the garden hose, and I was certain it was a body, and then I thought I can’t leave it, what if it disappears like in North by Northwest and nobody believes me? Or was that Ten Little Indians? I don’t suppose it matters really, but it was something like that, so I ran inside and grabbed my mobile and came back out and it was still there, which is great.’ All delivered machine gun style in one big breath.

  Allan peered between two of the boards that made up the fence. There was a pair of legs sticking out of a drift of glistening snow: black boots; red trousers trimmed with white fur. An electrical cable was wrapped around one leg, studded with large multicoloured light bulbs. ‘Ouch. You think he’s…?’

  Steel hit him. ‘Course he’s dead. Been lying upside down in a snowdrift for a week. It’s no’ like he’s hibernating in there, is it?’

  The end of a ladder was just visible on the other side of the mound. ‘On the bright side, at least he’s not missing any more.’

  Steel sat in the passenger seat, clutching that fragile cardboard box to her chest. Allan turned up the heater, then peered through the windscreen up at the house. Mrs Griffith was standing in the bay window of the lounge, staring as the duty undertakers wrestled her husband’s remains into the back of their unmarked grey van. It wasn’t easy — he’d frozen in a pretty awkward shape, like a Santa-Claus-themed swastika… Wee Free McFee had his arms wrapped nearly all the way around her shoulders, holding her tight as she sobbed.

  Allan sniffed. ‘Still think they did it?’

  ‘The lovebirds? Nah. Silly sod was clambering about on the roof practicing his Father Christmas in the snow. Deserved all he got.’

  The funeral directors finally forced the last bit of Charles Griffith into the van, then slammed the doors shut and slithered off into the defrosting afternoon.

  Allan put the pool car in gear. ‘Back to the ranch?’

  ‘Nope. You can drop me off at home, I’m copping a sicky.’ Steel opened the top of the cardboard box and hauled out a brass urn that looked like a cross between a cocktail shaker and a thermos flask. A plaque was stuck to the dark wooden base: ‘DOUGLAS KENNEDY MACDUFF — IN LOVING MEMORY’. She opened the top and peered inside. ‘Hello again, Doug, you rancid wee scumbag. Your mate the solicitor says I’ve got to give you a dignified farewell. Something befitting your standing in the community.’

  ‘Fifty-four grand… Knew you’d see sense.’ Allan eased the car out onto the road. ‘So where you going to scatter him: Pittodrie? North Sea? Maybe out Tyrebagger or something?’

  ‘Litter tray.’ Steel grinned and screwed the top back on. ‘If we just use a little bit at a time, he should last for months.’

  Stramash

  stramash / noun

  an uproar; a disturbance; a row; a brawl: Strong drink having been taken, the police were called to break up the stramash outside the pub.

  ‘Sodding hell.’ Logan peered out through the rain-slicked glass of what passed for a passenger lounge — a bus-stop-style shelter squeezed in at the side of the car deck. Just big enough for Logan, his wheelie case, and a stack of vegetables in wooden boxes — their paper labels bloated and peeling off in the downpour.

  The dock looked as if it’d been hacked out of a quarry: a bowl of slate-grey rock with a couple of dented pick-up trucks huddling together for warmth. No sign of an MX-5.

  Typical.

  The tiny ferry shook and rattled, lurched … then clanged against the concrete slipway. Another gust of frigid water rattled the glass.

  She was late.

  ‘You bloody promised.’

  The ramp groaned down and a dripping wee man in a high-viz jacket waved at the rust-flecked blue Transit van taking up most of the car deck. It spluttered into life and inched forwards.

  Logan stuck out his thumb and smiled at the driver… He looked familiar. That was good right? Made him more likely to give Logan a lift? But the rotten sod didn’t even glance at him, just drove off the Port Askaig ferry and away onto Jura.

  Logan yanked out the wheelie case’s handle. ‘Thanks, mate. Thanks a bloody heap!’ And stomped off into the rain.

  The minibus bounced through yet another minefield of potholes, then purred to a halt on the grass at the side of the track.

  ‘Here we go: Inverlussa.’ The driver coughed, peering out through the windscreen as the wipers squealed across the glass. ‘Are you sure?’

  No. Not even vaguely.

  The sea was a heaving mass of granite-coloured water, white spray sparking like fireworks in the wind. A thin curve of yellow-brown sand separated the crashing waves from the land. A wee house squatted on the other side of a bridge over a river, the hills rising behind it, dark and glistening.

  The minibus rocked and whistled with each gale-force blast.

  A small table sat on the sliver of grass overhanging the beach, with a couple of chairs facing out to sea. Someone was sitting in one of them, bundled up in a heavy red padded jacket, a blue bobble hat pulled down low over their ears, a yellow Rupert-the-Bear scarf whipping out behind them.

  Logan hauled his case out into the storm, dragging the thing through the wet grass towards the table. The rain had faded to a stinging drizzle and the air had that salt-and-iron smell of the sea, the dirty-iodine whiff of churned seaweed.

  Christ it was cold, leaching through his damp trousers, making his legs ache.

  He stopped at the table. Loomed over the sod responsible.

  DI Steel sniffed. ‘About time you got here.’ She was only visible from the nose up — the bottom half of her face wrapped in the scarf, wrinkles making eagle’s feet around her narrow eyes, grey hair poking out from beneath her woolly hat. ‘Park your arse.’

  Logan stared down at her, put on a throaty cigarette-growl. ‘“Don’t worry Laz, I’ll pick you up at the ferry terminal.”’

  She shrugged. ‘Someone got out the bed on the wrong side.’

  ‘Wrong sid
e of the…? I had to sleep in the bloody car last night!’

  A figure in bright-orange waterproofs lurched along the path towards them, carrying a tray of tea things, struggling to keep it level in the wind.

  Logan dumped his case under the table. ‘Took me six bastarding hours to drive to Tarbert yesterday: all the hotels and B amp;Bs were full. You got any idea what it’s like sleeping in a car in the middle of a bloody hurricane? Bloody freezing, that’s what it’s like.’

  ‘Oh don’t be so wet.’

  The figure in the waterproofs leaned into a gust of wind, took two steps to the side, then made a final dash for the table. She smiled at them from beneath the dripping brim of her sou-wester. She couldn’t have been much over eighteen. ‘Right, that’s a pot of tea for two, one lemon drizzle cake…’ She placed them on the tabletop. ‘And a toffee brownie. If you want a refill,’ she pointed at a little walkie-talkie in a clear Tupperware box, ‘just give me a buzz.’

  ‘Ta.’ Steel poured herself a china mug of tea from the stainless steel teapot as the girl headed back towards the house and sanity.

  Logan looked out at the bay — the howling wind, the breakers, the heaving dark sea, the heavy clouds. ‘You’ve gone mental, that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve finally gone stark-’

  ‘Just park your arse and have some cake.’

  He lowered himself into the folding wooden chair. Clenched his knees together. Hunched his shoulders up around his ears, stuck his dead-fish hands into his armpits. ‘Bloody freezing…’

  Steel clunked a mug down in front of him, steam whipping off the beige surface. ‘You bring that fancy fingerprint stuff?’

  ‘Catch my death. And then what? Sitting out here in the wind and the rain like a pair of idiots.’

  ‘Moan, moan, bloody moan.’ She sipped her tea; had a bite of cake, crumbs going the same way as the steam. ‘Now: where’s my fingerprint stuff?’

  ‘Not till you tell me why I drove all the way across the bloody country, slept in a car, took two ferries, tromped half a mile in the hammering rain, then sat in a bus for half an hour to watch you stuff your face with tea and cake.’ He grabbed the brownie and ripped a bite out of it, chewing and scowling. ‘I’m cold, I’m wet, and I’m pissed off.’

  ‘Jasmine doesn’t moan this much, and she’s no’ even two yet.’ Another bite of lemon drizzle. ‘We’re sitting here in a howling gale, because we’re watching someone.’ She pointed out into the storm, where a small white fishing boat with a red wheelhouse roller-coastered up-and-down and side-to-side on the angry water.

  ‘Wouldn’t have been so bad if I could’ve got the car on the Islay ferry, but every idiot in the whole-’

  ‘Can you no’ give it a rest for five minutes? Look.’

  Logan wrapped his hands around the mug, leaching the heat. ‘At what?’

  Sigh. Her voice took on the kind of high-pitched sing-song tone usually reserved for small children. ‘At the wee fishing boat, bobbity-bobbing on the ocean blue.’

  ‘I was right: you are mental. It’s a fishing boat, that’s what they do. Can we go inside now before I catch bloody pneumonia?’

  She hit him on the arm. ‘Don’t be a dick.’ Then passed him a pair of heavy black binoculars. ‘Less whinging, more looking.’

  The eyepieces were cold against his skin, the focussing knob rough beneath his fingertips as he unblurred the little boat. The wheelhouse was just big enough for a grown man to stand up in, but whoever was in charge of the boat was hunched over, wearing one of those waistcoat-style life jackets, holding a Spar carrier-bag to their mouth, shoulders heaving in time with the sea.

  Finally the man straightened and wiped a hand across his purple slash of a mouth. His skin was pale, tinged with yellow and green. Sticky-out ears, woolly hat, pug nose, puffed out cheeks… And he was vomiting again.

  ‘Not exactly the best sailor in the world.’

  ‘If you spent more time reading our beloved leader’s inter-force memos and less time moaning about everything, you’d know that was Jimmy Weasdale.’

  Logan squinted through the binoculars again. ‘Jimmy the Weasel? Thought he retired to the Costa Del Sol. Did a runner when Strathclyde CID fingered him for cutting Barney McGlashin into bite-sized chunks…’ More squinting. ‘You sure it’s him?’

  ‘What do you think the fingerprint stuff’s for? Saw him in the hotel bar last night drinking with this hairy wee bastard wearing a number seven Dundee United football shirt…’

  Logan lowered the binoculars, leaving Jimmy to puke in peace. ‘Not Badger McLean?’

  ‘The very man. Jimmy the Weasel and Badger the Tadger: together again. No’ exactly Mother Nature’s finest hour.’

  ‘So where’s Badger?’

  ‘Squeezed himself into a rubber drysuit half an hour ago. Thought he was going to get his kinky on, but nope — scuba gear. He’s down there now.’

  Logan went back to the binoculars. ‘What are they after?’

  A gust of wind rattled the stainless steel teapot on the little table.

  Steel made slurping noises. ‘Tell you what, I’ll activate my X-ray vision and take a peek below the waves, shall I? Then we can all sod off down the pub for a game of Twister and some chocolate cake.’ She hit him again. ‘How the hell am I supposed to know? That’s why we’re here — watching.’

  Fifteen minutes later an ungainly deformed seal surfaced next to the fishing boat. It thrashed its arms for a moment, before a hump of charcoal-coloured water slammed it into the hull. More thrashing.

  Logan shifted his grip on the binoculars. ‘Silly sod’s going to get himself killed.’

  Jimmy the Weasel lurched out of the wheelhouse and threw a line to the diver. More thrashing. Then some hauling — and what looked through the binoculars like swearing — and finally the seal was dragged over the boat’s railing, bum in the air, little legs kicking out. Then gone: hidden from sight by the bulwark.

  Steel poked Logan in the shoulder. ‘What’s happening? He drowned?’

  ‘Almost.’

  A couple of minutes passed, then a cloud of exhaust fumes burst from the back end of the boat before being torn away by the wind. The tiny vessel swung around and puttered away into the heaving sea, leaving behind a bright-orange buoy bobbing in the angry water.

  Logan passed the binoculars back to Steel. ‘Before you ask: no. I am not going to swim out there and find out what they’ve been up to.’

  She puffed out her cheeks, then tipped the dregs of tea from her mug. ‘Fancy a wee walk down by the beach?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’ Steel stood, stuck her hands in her pockets and lurch-staggered through the storm along the edge of the grass verge.

  A quick shove and she probably wouldn’t wash ashore till she reached Ireland… Logan sighed, swallowed the last of his tea, and hurried after her, shivering as the gale snatched away the little body heat he had left. Hypothermia was bloody overrated.

  By the time he’d caught up she was standing beside a large rock, frowning down at a knot of liquorish-coloured seaweed — the kind that looked as if it had boils. Steel nudged it with her toe. ‘What’s that look like to you?’

  ‘Seaweed. Can we just…’ Something was tangled up in the glistening coils, something rectangular — about the size of a house brick, only wrapped in clear plastic and brown parcel tape. He squatted down, damp trousers clinging to his legs, and levered the package out of the seaweed. ‘About a kilo.’ There was another one, three or four feet further down the thin strip of sand, and another just past it. ‘Bloody hell.’

  She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’m gasping for a pint.’

  DI Steel froze in the doorway. Her eyes bugged, mouth pinched into a chicken’s-bum-pout as she stomped towards Logan. ‘I told you to wait outside!’

  The Jura Hotel’s bar was a sort of elongated bay-window-shape. A handful of people sat around small circular tables, eating crisps and drinking beer, while an old w
oman in a grey twinset hustled her grandson at pool.

  Logan paid for his pint of Eighty Shilling. ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘Go!’ She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him towards the exit. ‘Out: before Susan sees you.’

  ‘I’ve ordered food!’

  ‘I don’t care if you’ve ordered three strippers and a tub of cottage cheese — if Susan sees you she’ll chew me a new hole. Aye, and no’ in a good way. Supposed to be here on a jolly, no’ police business.’ She gave him a shove. ‘Out, out. Go sit in the car.’

  ‘I’m bloody freezing, and there’s-’

  ‘Laz: it’s her work’s team-building, OK? She thinks I’m off reading books and scratching my bumhole in quiet contemplation of nature’s island splendour. You want to upset her? That what you want? You want to ruin the only time we’ve had off together since Jasmine was born?’

  ‘You dragged me all the way across the bloody country! I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m hungry, and I’m having my bloody lunch inside in the warm, whether you like it or not.’

  DI Steel knocked on the steamed-up car window.

  Logan scowled at her from the passenger seat, then took a mouthful of Eighty from his half-empty glass. The MX-5’s cloth roof buckled and groaned, rain bouncing off the bonnet, making a noise like a thousand angry ants playing a thousand angry drums, fighting against the background drone of the engine and the roar of the blow heaters.

  Craighouse was a tiny village, strung out along a single-track road. A mini stone-walled harbour, a community hall, a restaurant, a wee Spar shop, and an old-fashioned red telephone box. A collection of whitewashed buildings loomed in the rain — opposite the hotel — ‘ISLE OF JURA’ painted in big black letters on the distillery wall. Steel’s MX-5 sat in a roped off car park marked ‘STAFF ONLY’.

  She clambered in behind the wheel and handed Logan a plate piled high with langoustines, some salad, and little curled red things that looked worryingly like oversized boiled woodlice.

  He poked one of them. ‘I ordered the steak pie.’

  ‘Seafood platter. Good for the brain. And don’t get fishy fingerprints all over my car.’ She turned off the engine and the heaters went quiet.