There were nods all round the room.
‘Next team: door-to-door all over Rosemount. Who was she? How did Chalmers get hold of her?’ A hand was raised and Logan pointed at its owner. ‘Yes?’
‘How come the kid’s no’ been reported missing yet?’
Logan nodded. ‘Good question. A four-year-old girl, missing for at least twenty-four hours, and no one bothers to call the police? That’s not right. This,’ he said, handing around the last set of photocopied sheets, ‘is a list from Social Services of all families on the register in Aberdeen, with a child matching the age and sex of our victim. Team three: this is your job. I want each and every family on this list questioned. Make sure you see the kid. We’re not taking anyone’s word for anything. OK?’
Silence.
‘OK. Teams.’ Logan set up three four-man teams and sent them off to get started. The rest of the room shifted in their seats, chatting as the ‘volunteers’ shuffled out.
‘Listen up,’ said Insch. He didn’t have to raise his voice: as soon as he opened his mouth everyone shut up. ‘We’ve had a sighting of a child matching Richard’s description getting into a dark red hatchback. Other witnesses claim to have seen a similar car hanging about the neighbourhood over the last few months. Chances are our pervert was staking out the area.’ He stopped to look round the room, making sure he made eye contact with every person there. ‘Richard Erskine has now been missing for twenty-two hours. Even if some scumbag hasn’t grabbed him, it was pissing down and close to freezing last night. His chances aren’t good. That means we have to look harder and faster. We will turn this whole bloody city upside down if we need to, but we will find him.’
You could almost smell the determination in the room, just under the cloying funk of hungover constables.
Insch read out the search team rosters and settled back on the desk as they exited the room. As Logan hung back for his instructions he saw the inspector call Steve the Naked Drunkard over, holding him back until everyone else was gone. Then he began to talk in a voice so low Logan couldn’t hear a word of it, but he could guess what was being said. The young constable’s face started out flushed and swiftly turned a frightened shade of grey.
‘Right,’ said Insch at last, nodding his large, bald head at the trembling constable. ‘You go wait outside.’
Steve the Stripper trudged out, head down, looking as if he’d been slapped.
When the door closed, Insch beckoned Logan over. ‘I’ve got a Noddy job for you this morning,’ he said, pulling a family-sized bag of chocolate-covered raisins out of his suit pocket. He fumbled about trying to open it before giving up and using his teeth. ‘Bloody glue these things shut. . .’ Insch spat out a corner of plastic and poked a finger into the hole he’d made. ‘We’ve been asked to provide police support for the council’s environmental health team.’
Logan tried not to groan. ‘You’re kidding me?’
‘Nope. They need to serve notice and the bloke doing it is a nervous wee shite. He’s convinced he’s going to get murdered if we’re not there to hold his hand. The Chief Constable wants us to be accessible. That means we have to be seen to be giving the council all the support it needs.’ He pointed the hole in the top of the chocolate raisins in Logan’s direction.
‘But, sir,’ said Logan, politely refusing – the things looked too much like huge rat droppings for his hungover stomach, ‘couldn’t uniform do this?’
Insch nodded and Logan could have sworn he saw an evil glint in the older man’s eye. ‘Yes indeed. In fact a uniform is going to do this. You’re going along to supervise.’ He shook a mound of droppings into the palm of his hand and tossed them back. ‘That’s one of the privileges of rank: you supervise those further down the tree.’
There was a meaningful pause that completely passed Logan by.
‘Well,’ said Insch, shooing him towards the door. ‘Off you go.’
Still wondering what that had been about, Logan left the briefing room. DI Insch sat on the desk, grinning like a maniac. It wouldn’t take long before the penny dropped.
A worried-looking Constable Steve was waiting in the corridor. His face had regained a little bit of its colour and was now an unhealthy reddish-green rather than pale grey; but he still looked dreadful. His eyes were pink with bloodshot veins, his breath reeked of extra strong mints, but it wasn’t enough to disguise the alcohol oozing out of his pores.
‘Sir,’ he said, giving a sickly, nervous smile. ‘I don’t think I should drive, sir.’ He hung his head. ‘Sorry, sir.’
Logan raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth. Then shut it again. This must be the uniform he was supposed to supervise.
They were riding the lift down to the ground floor when Constable Steve disintegrated. ‘How the hell did he know?’ he asked, slumping in the corner with his head in his hands. ‘Everything. He knew bloody everything!’
Logan could feel dread stomping down his spine. ‘Everything?’ Did the inspector know he’d got pissed and slept with WPC Watson?
Constable Steve moaned.
‘He knew we’d been thrown out of the pub, he knew all about the getting naked. . .’ he looked up at Logan with pitiful pink eyes: like a vivisectioned rabbit. ‘He says I’m lucky he didn’t just fire me! Oh God. . .’
For a moment it looked as if he was going to burst into tears. Then the lift went: ‘ping’ and the doors slid open onto the car park where a couple of uniformed officers were wrestling a hairy bloke in jeans and a T-shirt out of the back of a patrol car. The man’s T-shirt bore a lovely upside-down Christmas tree of blood. His nose was flattened and smeared.
‘Buncha fuckin’ bastards!’ He lunged towards Logan, but the PC holding him wasn’t about to let go. ‘Fuckin’ bastards wis askin’ fer it!’ Some of his teeth were missing too.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said the PC, holding him back.
Logan told him it was OK and led PC Steve away through the car park. They could have gone out through reception, but he didn’t want anyone else seeing the pink-eyed constable in his current state. And anyway, the council buildings weren’t that far away: a walk in the open air would do Steve the world of good.
Outside, the drizzle was refreshing after the oppressive heat of police headquarters. They both stood on the ramp that wound from the rear of the building down to the street with their faces to the rain and stayed that way until a car horn made them jump.
The patrol car flashed its lights. Logan and the hungover PC waved an apology and walked around the side of Force HQ. Outside the Sheriff Court the protesters were already gathering, clutching their banners and placards, desperate for a glimpse of Gerald Cleaver. And an opportunity to string him up from the nearest lamppost.
The Nervous Wee Shite was waiting for them at the main council buildings, shifting from foot to foot, peering at his watch the whole time as if it was going to run off if left unsupervised for more than thirty seconds at a time. He gave PC Steve a worried look and then extended a hand for Logan to shake. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he said, even though he’d been standing there long before they arrived.
They exchanged introductions, but Logan had forgotten the man’s name within thirty seconds of hearing it.
‘Shall we get going?’ The forgettable man stopped, fussed with a large leather folder, checked his watch again, and led them off towards a Ford Fiesta that looked in need of the last rites.
Logan sat in the passenger seat next to Mr Nervous, making PC Steve sit in the back, behind the driver. One: he didn’t want the council’s environmental health ‘Danger Man’ getting a good look at the bloody state the constable was in; and two: if PC Steve decided to throw up again, it wouldn’t be all over the back of Logan’s head.
All the way across town their driver kept up a running commentary on what a terrible thing it was to work for the council, but how he couldn’t escape to another job because he’d lose all his benefits. Logan tuned him out, just popping back up t
o the surface with the odd ‘Sounds terrible,’ and ‘I know how you feel,’ to keep the man happy. Instead he sat looking out of the window at the grey streets drifting slowly past.
Rush hour was getting to the point at which everyone who should have left for work half an hour ago suddenly realized they were going to be late. Here and there some daft soul sat behind the wheel, cigarette clenched between their teeth, with the window wound down. Letting the smoke out and the drizzle in. Logan watched them with envy.
He was beginning to get the feeling DI Insch had been telling him something with that whole ‘Privilege of Rank’ speech. Something unpleasant. He ran a slow hand over his forehead, feeling the swollen lump of his brain through the skin.
It was no surprise that Insch had read Steve the riot act. The drunken PC could have caused the whole force a lot of embarrassment. Logan could see the headlines now: ‘NAKED COPPER SHOWED ME HIS TRUNCHEON!’ If he were Steve’s superior officer he’d have given him a bollocking too.
And that was when the penny dropped. Insch had said it right to his face: ‘That’s one of the privileges of rank: you supervise those further down the tree.’ He was a detective sergeant, Steve a constable. They’d all gone out and got pissed and Logan hadn’t done a bloody thing to stop the PC getting blootered and bollock-naked.
Logan groaned.
This assignment was as much a punishment for him as it was for Steve.
Twenty-five minutes later they were climbing out of the Nervous Wee Shite’s car in front of a dilapidated farm steading, the first outlying arm of a rambling croft on the outskirts of Cults. What little road there was disappeared into the undergrowth. A rundown farmhouse sulked at the end of the track, its grey stone weeping in the neverending rain. Derelict farm buildings sprawled around it, set in a wasteland of hip-deep grass and weeds. Ragwort and docken stuck up through the vegetation, their stems and leaves rust-brown beneath the winter sky. Two windows poked out of the building’s slate roof like an empty, hostile stare. Below, a faded red door bore a big painted number six. Each of the rambling steadings had a number scrawled on them in white paint. Every surface was slick with the misty rain, reflecting back the flat, grey daylight.
‘Homely,’ said Logan, in an attempt to break the ice. And then he smelled it. ‘Oh Jesus!’ He slapped a hand over his mouth and nose.
It was the cloying, reeking stink of corruption. Of meat left for too long in the sun.
The smell of death.
11
PC Steve lurched once, twice, and charged into the bushes to be noisily and copiously sick.
‘You see?’ said the nervous man from the council. ‘Didn’t I tell you it was terrible? Didn’t I?’
Logan nodded and agreed, even though he hadn’t paid attention to a single word on the way out.
‘The neighbours have been complaining about the smell since last Christmas. We’ve written letter after letter, but we never get anything back,’ said the man, clutching his leather folder to his chest. ‘The postman refuses to deliver here any more you know.’
‘Really,’ said Logan. That explained why they never got a bloody reply. Turning his back on the retching constable, he started wading his way through the jungle. ‘Let’s go see if there’s anyone in.’
Not surprisingly, the man from the council let him go first.
The main farm building had once been well cared for. There were little flecks of white paint on the crumbling stone, twisted rusting brackets where hanging baskets would have been. But those days were long gone. Grass was growing in the gutters, blocking the downpipe, and water dripped over the edge. The door hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint for years. Weather and wasps had stripped the last coat away, leaving bare, bleached wood and a small iron number was screwed in the middle, rendered illegible by rust and dirt. The handle didn’t look much better. And over the lot was that big, white, hand-painted number six.
Logan knocked. They stood back and waited. And waited. And waited. And. . .
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Logan abandoned the door and stomped off through the undergrowth, peering into every window on the way.
Inside, the house was shrouded in darkness. He could just make out mounds of furniture in the gloom: shapeless blobs obscured by the filthy glass.
He finally made it back to the front. A perfectly trampled path in the long grass marked the route he’d taken. Closing his eyes, Logan tried not to swear. ‘There’s no one here,’ he said. ‘There hasn’t been for months.’ If someone was still living here, the grass would have been tramped flat between the road and the door.
The council man looked at the house, then back at Logan, then at his watch and then fumbled his way into his leather folder and pulled out a clipboard.
‘No,’ he said, reading off the top sheet of paper, ‘this property is the residence of one Mr Bernard Philips.’ He stopped and fiddled with the buttons on his coat and checked his watch again. ‘He, er . . . he works for the council.’
Logan opened his mouth to say something very, very rude, but shut it again.
‘What do you mean “he works for the council”?’ he asked, slowly and deliberately. ‘If he works for the council, why didn’t you just serve notice when he turned up for work this morning?’
The man examined his clipboard again. Doing his best not to meet Logan’s eyes. Keeping his mouth shut.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Logan. In the end it didn’t really matter. They were here now. They might as well get it over with. ‘And is Mr Philips at work right now?’ he asked, trying to sound calm.
The nervous man shook his head. ‘He’s got a day off.’
Logan tried to massage away the headache pulsing behind his eyes. At least that was something. ‘OK. So if he does live here—’
‘He does!’
‘If he does live here, he’s not staying in the farmhouse.’ Logan turned his back on the dark, neglected building. The rest of the farm buildings were arranged with almost casual abandon, and all had numbers painted on the front.
‘Let’s try over there,’ he said at last, pointing at the ramshackle structure with the number one painted on it. It was as good a place to start as any.
A shaking, white-faced Constable Steve joined them outside the steading, looking even worse than he had first thing this morning. You had to give it to DI Insch: when he punished someone he did it properly.
The door to steading number one had been clarted in cheap green paint. There was paint on the wood, up the walls on either side, on the grass beneath their feet. . . Logan gestured to the shivering constable, but PC Steve just stared back at him in mute horror. The smell here was even worse than before.
‘Open the door, Constable,’ said Logan, determined not to do it himself. Not when he had some poor sod to do it for him.
It took a while, but in the end PC Steve said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and took a good hold of the handle. It was a heavy sliding door, the runners buckled and flaky with rust. The constable gritted his teeth and yanked. It creaked open, letting out the most godawful smell Logan had ever encountered in his life.
Everyone staggered back.
A small avalanche of dead bluebottles tumbled out of the open door to lie in the misty drizzle.
Constable Steve hurried off to be sick again.
The building had been a cattle shed at some point: a long, low, traditionally-built farm steading, with bare granite walls and a slate roof. An elevated walkway ran down the centre of the building, bordered by knee-high wooden rails. It was the only empty area in the place. Everything else was filled with the rotting carcases of small animals.
The stiff and twisted bodies were covered with a carpet of wriggling white.
Logan took three steps back and bolted for a corner to be sick in. It was like being punched in the guts all over again, each heave sending ripples of pain through his scarred stomach.
Steadings number one, two and three were full of dead animals. Number thr
ee wasn’t quite packed yet: there was still a good ten or twelve feet of exposed concrete, free of corpses, but covered with a thick yellow ooze. The bodies of flies were crispy under foot.
Somewhere around steading number two Logan had changed his mind: DI Insch wasn’t someone who punished drunken PCs properly. He was an utter bastard.
They opened and checked each of the buildings, and Logan’s stomach lurched every time PC Steve dragged open a door. After what seemed like a week of retching and swearing they sat outside on a crumbling wall. Upwind. Clutching their knees and breathing through their mouths.
The farm buildings were full of dead cats and dogs and hedgehogs and seagulls and even a couple of red deer. If it had ever walked, flown or crawled it was here. It was like some sort of necromancer’s ark. Only there was a hell of a lot more than two of every animal.
‘What are you going to do with them all?’ asked Logan, still tasting the bile after half a packet of PC Steve’s extra strong mints.
The council man looked up at him, his eyes bright pink from repeated vomiting. ‘We’ll have to remove them all and incinerate the lot,’ he said, running a hand over his wet face. He shuddered. ‘It’ll take days.’
‘Rather you than. . .’ Logan stopped: something was moving at the end of the long drive.
It was a man in faded jeans and a bright orange anorak. He tramped along the tarmacked portion of the road with his head down, seeing nothing more than his feet beneath him.
‘Shhhhhhhhh!’ hissed Logan, grabbing the council man and the bilious PC. ‘You go round the back there,’ he whispered, pointing PC Steve at the building with the number two scrawled on the front.
He watched the PC scurry off through the sodden undergrowth. When he was in place Logan grabbed a handful of the council man’s jacket. ‘Time to serve your papers,’ he said, and stepped out onto the flattened grass.
The man in the orange anorak was less than six foot away when he finally looked up.
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 1-3: Cold Granite, Dying Light, Broken Skin (Logan McRae) Page 10