DI Steel wrapped an arm around the sobbing man’s shoulders and steered him to one of the chairs at the kitchen table. ‘Here, why don’t you let me feed the wee lad, eh? You sit there, and afterwards I’ll get us a nice cup of tea.’ She threw a glance in Logan’s direction, silently mouthing the words ‘go have a poke about’.
Jason’s room was easy enough to find: a double bedroom on the second floor with a computer desk in the corner and an Ikea bookshelf full of science fiction and fantasy novels. No posters on the walls, but a lot of framed photographs – Jason with friends, Jason at the beach, Jason in America with a pretty dark-haired girl. . . There wasn’t a single photo in here that didn’t feature his face. Posing for posterity. Logan slipped on a pair of latex gloves and eased the wardrobe door open. The clothes looked as if they might have been expensive once, now becoming slightly tatty with wear.
There was nothing much in the pockets: a few receipts from Burger King, a handful of nearly illegible notes scribbled on the back of napkins, some lint and three ribbed condoms. He tried the bedside cabinets: socks, underpants, handkerchiefs, more socks, a small silver key, a collection of cheap-looking pornographic magazines, and a handful of Crocodildo DVDs. Logan stuck them on top of the computer desk and peered under the bed. A small set of free weights, a plastic storage thing full of T-shirts, and a long metal chest. Padlocked. The key from the bedside cabinet fit perfectly.
Logan took one look inside. Whistled softly. Then locked it up again.
The computer desk was a mess of CDs and bits of paper. There were a couple of letters from Equity, the actors’ union, regretfully informing Jason that his application for membership was being declined as he’d not been employed for his ‘adult films’ on a suitable contract. A handful of pages ripped from the Stage with auditions circled in red ink. And right at the bottom of the pile: a parking ticket. Logan gave it a cursory glance, about to stick it back where he’d found it when he saw the number plate. It was far too old to be the red Citroën parked in the driveway, and he knew it wasn’t in the garage. He called Control, asking for a lookout report to be put on the vehicle. There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, complete with the clickity clack of a keyboard being pounded, and then, ‘OK, so that’s a lookout request for a blue Volvo estate, registration number—’
‘What?’
‘The number plate, it belongs to a blue Volvo estate.’
Logan sighed. Of course it did.
He found DI Steel standing outside the back door, having a fag and staring out at the lowering clouds, her breath indistinguishable from the cigarette smoke in the cold morning air. She looked tired and old. ‘Sorry, Laz,’ she said, as he stepped out into the cold, ‘I just couldn’t face telling someone else their kid’s dead. Some DI, eh?’ She sighed, then took another deep drag on her cigarette. ‘One hundred and sixty-seven. That’s how many times I’ve broken the news. I was working it out just now. A hundred and sixty-seven people.’ Another sigh. ‘What a bloody job. We must be mad. . .’
‘I found something in Jason’s room. The car he was dropped off in – looks like it was his.’
‘Shite.’
‘Yup. There’s a computer as well. I’ve told Mr Fettes we’re going to need to take it and a couple of other things down to the lab for analysis.’
‘The poor sod had no idea his wee boy was making porn films. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’
‘You want Rickards to stay here with them?’
‘What?’ She frowned, dragged back from a thoughtful pause. ‘Better no’. He’s no’ been trained, so Christ knows what he’d come out with. Get a Family Liaison officer out here. We’ll nip back to the station soon as they arrive.’
They drove back to FHQ with Jason’s computer, the long metal chest from under his bed and his collection of pornography all stuffed in the boot of the car. Mr Fettes sat in the back with DI Steel – coming in to formally identify his son’s body. Down in the morgue viewing room, he took one look at Jason, said, ‘He looks so small. . .’ and asked to be taken home. All in a voice that was little more than a whisper. Steel got Alpha Six Nine to give him a lift.
Upstairs, the incident room was nearly empty, just a couple of PCs answering the phones while everyone else was off to the canteen for lunch. Logan had signed everything they’d taken from Jason’s room into evidence, then out again, so they could go through it on one of the desks by the window. Steel went straight for the porn, examining the DVDs and reading out choice quotes from the cover blurbs in her best theatrical voice. Then came the magazines. They weren’t exactly high class, but they were explicit. And they all featured Jason Fettes.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Steel, holding up a two-page spread of their victim, two unidentified women and a man in a rubber mask, ‘he’s got a porn collection full of his own face. Narcissistic little onanist, isn’t he?’ She stuck the magazine back on the pile. ‘What’s in the box?’
Logan unlocked it and showed them.
‘Fuck me!’ The inspector reached in and pulled out a full-length rubber suit with built-in arms, legs, gloves, and booties, all in matt black. She poked a latex-gloved finger through a little hole in the crotch. There was an identical one round the back. ‘Think he got this at Marks & Spencer?’ There was a matching moulded, black rubber hood with tiny little holes for the nose and eyes in the box as well as a collection of bats, paddles, gags, and strange pink things: most of which were battery-operated.
Logan peered at a weird, mushroom-shaped object. ‘What the hell’s this?’
‘Butt plug,’ said Steel and Rickards, both at the same time. Then the constable went bright red.
‘OK, Sherlock,’ the inspector grinned at him and pulled a small black plastic case out of the box, ‘seeing as your specialist subject is sexual deviancy: what’s this?’ She clicked it open, exposing a jumble of wires, pads and a controller.
Rickards went from red to deep scarlet. ‘It’s an electrostim set.’
‘Yeah?’ she looked genuinely surprised.
‘You . . . it gives you . . . the electricity . . . for heightening. . . ahem.’
‘Good is it?’ She pulled the controller out and started poking at the buttons.
‘It . . . well, it depends . . . I . . .’
Logan came to the constable’s rescue. ‘At least this explains the strap marks we found on Jason’s body.’
‘Hmm?’ Steel put the controller back in its case and snapped the thing shut again.
‘Well, he’s obviously heavily into the bondage scene. Someone picks him up, takes him home and ties him up, only it goes too far – the guy panics and dumps him outside A&E. It was an accident.’
‘An accident? How do you accidentally bugger someone to death?’
‘You know what these bondage lot are like,’ said Logan, pointing at the contents of Jason’s hope chest, ‘one minute it’s tying each other up for a bit of light spanking, and the next it’s whips, chains, nipple-clamps and butt plugs.’ He might have been imagining it, but he got the feeling Rickards was scowling at him. ‘And let’s face it: if you’re going to kill someone, there are better ways of doing it. You’ve already got the guy tied up and gagged, why not just strangle him? Or put a plastic bag over his head. And why rush him to the hospital afterwards?’
Steel scowled, obviously trying to come up with an alternative scenario. ‘Oh bloody hell,’ she said at last, ‘so much for my nice juicy murder.’ And then she stomped off to tell the ACC.
PC Rickards waited till she was gone before he spoke. ‘You know, just because Jason was different it doesn’t make him a pervert!’
Logan stared at him. ‘Oh – my – God, you’re one of them aren’t you? You’re into all this bondage stuff!’
‘I. . .’ The constable’s face blossomed with beetroot-coloured embarrassment and then he stormed off, leaving a grinning Logan to pack Jason Fettes’ collection away.
‘Right, settle down you lot!’ DI Stee
l stood at the front of the briefing room while Aberdeen’s finest made themselves comfortable. ‘We now have an ID for our victim.’ She nodded to Logan and he hit the button. Behind the inspector the screen filled with a smiling face, snapped on a beach somewhere a damn sight warmer than the north-east of Scotland. ‘Jason Fettes, AKA: Dick Longlay.’ That got a laugh and the inspector let it die down before continuing. ‘He made dirty movies for Crocodildo Films, which is how our very own PC Rickards was able to identify him.’
A sudden barrage of wolf whistles and off-colour comments were thrown in Rickards’ direction – the constable looked mortified. He went even redder when Steel started talking about Jason Fettes’ bondage set. ‘So,’ she said, as Logan clicked the screen onto a picture of the rubber romper suit, laid out on the incident room floor, ‘we need to start asking around the sex shops and wherever else it is the bondage crowd hang. Like Ellon. And Westhill.’
While the inspector spoke, Logan kept an eye on Rickards: it seemed as if he was about to say something, but thought better of it.
‘Current theory: this was a sex game gone wrong, so Fettes probably went home with this person of his own free will. There’s no blood at the victim’s house, so they must have gone to Mr Moustache’s bondage bachelor pad.’ Click and the e-fit appeared.
‘We’re pretty sure the victim was contacted through this site. . .’ Steel paused, waiting for Logan to catch up – the image behind her changing to a pink and black website called ‘BONDAGEOPOLIS!’. ‘Fettes had an advert on there, the IT guys found a copy on his hard drive. . .’ She paused and dug out a printout from the briefing pack, reading aloud: ‘Real life porn star seeks switch for no-holds-barred action.’
It was DC Rennie who stuck his hand up. ‘What’s a switch?’
‘Well,’ said Steel, ‘let’s ask our resident sexpert.’ She stared at PC Rickards, until he came out with, ‘It’s a BDSM term: someone who can be either dominant or submissive. Top or a bottom.’ Blushing furiously as most of the room started making ‘bottom’ jokes.
‘OK,’ the inspector tipped the embarrassed constable a wink, ‘that’s enough out of—’ Rennie’s hand was up again. ‘What now?’
‘BDSM?’
‘Bondage, Domination and Sadomasochism. Pay attention, for God’s sake. See Constable Rickards afterwards if you want a demonstration.’ More laughter. Gradually a sense of order returned, but the rest of the briefing was marked by giggles and sniggering. Now that this was ‘death by misadventure’ rather than murder, it didn’t seem quite so . . . serious. When Steel called the meeting to a close, Rickards was the first one out the door.
‘You should go easy on him,’ said Logan as the last few people wandered off, ‘I get the feeling he’s not exactly seeing the funny side.’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ She rolled her eyes and dug out a packet of cigarettes, shaking them, then peering inside. ‘What is it with bloody prima donnas in this place? OK, OK, I’ll talk to him. Can I at least have a fag first?’
While the inspector was off sacrificing a lung to the gods of nicotine, Logan went looking for Jackie, finding her in the same place as yesterday: covered in dust, down in the basement archives.
‘How’s it going?’
She looked up and shrugged. ‘Same shite, different day. You?’
‘I got to tell someone their son had been killed.’
‘Shite too, then.’ She scribbled something in her notebook then slid a set of case files back on the shelf. ‘You hear about Macintyre? Hissing Sid’s got him an interim hearing. Says he has “new evidence”. We’ve got to present tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow.’ Jackie slammed another box down on the concrete floor. ‘Unbe-fucking-lievable isn’t it? Things you can get away with if you’re famous.’ She yanked the lid off and dropped it at her feet. ‘I tell you, if that slimy lawyer bastard gets Macintyre off I’m going to make his life a living hell. Him and Macintyre both.’
Logan believed her. ‘You want to go get something to eat tonight? We could try that tapas bar on Union Street? Get a bit squiffy? Go home and fool around?’
‘“Squiffy”? What the hell is this, Five Go Mad in Mastrick? I don’t get “squiffy”; I get paralytic, shit-faced, drunk. Maybe tipsy at a push.’ She grinned at him. ‘But the rest of it sounds fine.’
Only Logan never got that far.
Half past seven and the rain was coming down like icy nails, bouncing off the rutted car park floor, misting in the headlights as Logan pulled up and killed the engine. The sun had set long ago, leaving behind a cold, bleak night; Brimmond Hill was a dark mass looming above them, only the winking red lights on the transmitter at the summit giving any indication of where the top was. And even then it was lost in the downpour most of the time. Alpha Two Zero was parked at the far end, blue and white lights rotating lazily, made fuzzy by the rain.
DI Steel sat in the passenger seat, listening to it drumming on the car roof. ‘Buggering arse-monkeys. We’re going to get soaked. . .’ She pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes, automatically offering one to Logan, before remembering he didn’t any more and lighting one up herself. She pointed her lighter at the burnt-out hulk sitting between the two cars. ‘They sure it’s his?’
Logan nodded, coughed, then rolled down his window, letting the smoke out. The steady hiss and clacker of rain hitting the gorse bushes, heather and potholes oozed in. ‘The silly sods found the thing on Tuesday, didn’t put two and two together because it wasn’t blue.’ Which was fair enough, the burnt-out hulk was an off-grey-brown colour, mottled with black. ‘They only ran the chassis number this afternoon so they could issue a fixed-penalty notice to the owner for dumping it here. Someone recognized Fettes’s name.’
Steel swore. ‘We could have had an ID two bloody days ago!’
Logan just shrugged.
Someone clambered out of the patrol car opposite, turning up his collar and hurrying towards them, the rain drumming on his peaked cap as a dirty, battered-looking white Transit van bumped its way into the car park. The constable bent down and stuck his head through Logan’s open window. ‘You want us to cordon off the scene before the IB get started?’ he asked, dripping.
Steel squinted at him through the smoke. ‘No bloody point now, is there? Everything’ll be washed away! Why the hell didn’t you call it in when you found the sodding thing?’
The constable shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me: I was off sick!’
‘Fine, yes, go. Cordon to your heart’s content.’ She scowled as he scurried off. ‘Fat lot of bloody good this’ll do us: damn thing looks like a charcoal briquette. You imagine any forensic evidence lasting through that, and all this?’ indicating the torrential rain.
‘Not really, no. But at least now we know that whoever did it is local.’
Steel nearly choked on her fag. ‘Come on then, Miss Marple, astound me.’
‘They spotted the Volvo on Tuesday night, yes? That means it was dumped and burned on Monday night/early Tuesday morning. Whoever did it was able to get home from here without a car.’
Grudgingly, Steel admitted he had a point – Brimmond Hill wasn’t exactly the middle of nowhere, but it was close – anyone setting fire to the car they drove up here would be facing a long, slow trek into town. ‘Kingswells?’ It was on the other side of the hill.
‘Maybe, but you’d break your neck in the dark if you didn’t know where you were going.’
‘Aye, well,’ she said, as three IB technicians swore their way out of the dirty white van and started fighting with the blue plastic scene-of-crime tent, trying to get it up over the scorched wreck, ‘there’s no need to look so damn pleased with yourself – it doesn’t get us any closer to catching him, does it?’ She rolled down her window and pinged the last tiny nub of her cigarette out into the rain. ‘Beginning to wonder if this whole case isn’t a waste of time. Isn’t like Fettes was battered to death, is it? He was into kinky sex. It wen
t wrong. He died.’ She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose, and sighed. ‘The poor sod on the other end didn’t do it on purpose, did they? Can you imagine having to live with that on your conscience?’
There was silence as they watched the IB getting drenched trying to protect trace evidence that probably wasn’t there any more.
‘This is such a bloody waste of time,’ said Steel at last. ‘Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. If they find anything they’ll call us.’
They didn’t.
11
Quarter to nine in the morning was far too early to be hanging about outside a licensed sex shop on Crown Street, waiting for it to open. But Logan didn’t have any choice – this was where DI Steel wanted to be. She was sitting in the passenger seat, munching her way through a packet of Bacon Frazzles, a tin of Irn-Bru sitting on the dashboard in front of her. A thin drizzle misted the windscreen, slowly turning the granite tenements a darker grey to match the sky. Logan yawned, covering his mouth with the back of his hand, then settled down into his seat, wondering if it’d be OK to have a quick nap. Steel poked him in the shoulder. ‘Heads up,’ she said, pointing through the windscreen at a small bald man with glasses, all bundled up against the cold, carrying a big bunch of keys.
The shop was discreet, just a frosted window with the words SECRET TIMES etched on it in powder pink. The little bald bloke hunted through his keys, then squatted down and took the padlock off the roller grille covering the entrance. They waited until he’d unlocked the front door before climbing out of the car and into the cold drizzle.
Inside, Secret Times was lined with videos, DVDs and moulded latex. Mr Bald was in the process of peeling off his coat. ‘We’re no’ open till ten,’ he said, without a smile.
‘Now is that any way to greet a valued customer, Frank?’
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 1-3: Cold Granite, Dying Light, Broken Skin (Logan McRae) Page 84