21
The flat was warm when he got home, the TV competing with the kitchen stereo for who could make the walls shake more. Jackie was through in the bedroom, pulling a pair of old black jeans on over a thick pair of tights. She didn’t hear him the first time, so he had to shout it again: ‘YOU GOING DEAF IN YOUR OLD AGE?’
‘What?’ she looked puzzled for a moment, then zipped up her jeans. ‘It’s that moron downstairs, he’s been on a Whitney Houston binge since I got home.’ She stopped, and ran a hand across Logan’s battered cheek. ‘That’s some wallop you got. . . Big Gary said they didn’t fire you.’
‘Napier wasn’t happy about it.’
‘Napier’s never bloody happy.’ Jackie pulled on her thick, padded, black jacket, then dug a woolly hat out of the top drawer. It was black too.
‘Going somewhere?’
She nodded, stuffing her curly hair into the hat. ‘Rennie’s been shooting his mouth off about this Mikado thing all day. I bet him twenty quid he’d be dreadful, so I’m going to the rehearsal to heckle.’ Jackie paused, hunting through her coat pockets till she found a pair of black padded gloves.
‘You look like a cat burglar.’
‘Thanks a heap.’ She pulled on her gloves, then frowned at him, head on one side. ‘You want to come?’
‘No: I’ve seen them. Your twenty quid’s safe.’
‘Thought so. Don’t wait up, OK? I’m going to the pub afterwards, and you know what Rennie’s like when he gets a drink inside him.’ And then she was gone.
Monday morning was cold and clear, the sky tainted pale blue with pre-dawn light as Logan walked Jackie up the hill to the Castlegate, making for FHQ and a seven o’clock start. Her nose and ears were bright red by the time they reached King Street, breath streaming out behind them, frost sparkling on the pavements. She stifled another yawn – breaking the scowl that had been creasing her face since the alarm went off at six.
‘So what time did you get in then?’ he asked, trying not to think about the story in that morning’s P&J. The one titled, POLICEMAN ATTACKED MY CHILD!
Jackie buried her hands deeper into her coat pockets. ‘No idea. Late. And you were right – they were bloody awful. Easiest twenty quid I ever made.’ She didn’t even crack a smile.
‘You want to talk about it?’ Logan asked.
‘What, the rehearsal?’ Shrug. ‘Bloody disastrous—’
‘You’ve had a face on all morning.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ They stopped, waiting for a break in the traffic so they could hurry across the road and down the little alleyway at the side of the Tollbooth and the side entrance to FHQ. ‘It’s Macintyre, OK? We let the raping bastard get away with it and now he’s attacking women in Dundee.’
‘Might not be him.’
‘Are you kidding? Of course it’s him, dirty little fuck.’ She stepped out onto the road as the lights changed. ‘And where is he? In prison? No, he’s sodding about in his expensive house and expensive cars with that pregnant bitch fiancée of his. How the hell can she give him an alibi? She’s got to know he’s guilty!’
They kissed goodbye in the shadow of the morgue, then Jackie stomped off, still cursing Rob Macintyre under her breath, while Logan made his way up to the Jason Fettes incident room.
DI Insch’s morning briefing had a triumphant feel to it, even if it did start nearly an hour late. The inspector perched on a desk at the front of the room, telling everyone about Frank Garvie: the ex-porn star was due to appear in court at half eleven, where the Procurator Fiscal would ask for him to be held for trial without bail. But it wasn’t likely to happen. ‘Officially, this isn’t a murder investigation,’ said Insch, his voice booming in the small room, ‘but we’re going to treat it like one. It might look like an accident, like a sex game gone wrong, but Garvie’s got guilty written all over him. He strapped Jason Fettes down and rammed something so far inside him he ruptured the intestinal wall. Fettes broke his own teeth biting down from the pain. He died in agony. We need to know where Garvie took his victim.’
The trouble with asking bed and breakfast establishments if they rented out rooms by the hour for illicit sexual liaisons was that they all said ‘No.’ Accommodation in the city was at a premium anyway – most places made quite enough exploiting the oil and service companies, without having to cater for that kind of thing as well. So Logan was given the task of trolling round the carpet warehouses, looking to see if any of the hundreds of Aberdeen B&Bs had replaced carpets recently, trying to get rid of suspicious bloodstains.
It was a complete waste of time: if the owners had woken up to find one of their rooms drenched in blood they would have called the police. Stood to reason. But DI Insch was adamant, and Logan didn’t see any point in arguing – it would just get him shouted at.
He grabbed Rickards and signed for a leprous Vauxhall, making the constable drive. The morning sky was crystal blue, one side of the street bathed in sunshine, the other shivering in frigid shadow. Rickards took them up Schoolhill, stopping at the lights to let a troop of schoolchildren swarm across the road, dressed up in their Robert Gordon uniforms: the boys in charcoal-grey trousers, the girls in kilted, tartan skirts, dark blazers marking the cut-off line for untucked shirts and squint ties. Nearly all of them had mobile phones clamped to their ears.
The lights changed to green, a couple of stragglers meandering past without a care in the world. Finally Rickards pulled away, drifting past the crowds of identically dressed kids milling about outside the Robert Gordon’s gates – determined not to go through until the very last minute. Enjoying their freedom. Logan turned to watch them. ‘Stop the car.’
‘What?’
‘Pull up over there.’ Pointing at the grey slab of Aberdeen Art Gallery.
Rickards did as he was told.
They marched through the crowds, making for a small knot of children by the statue of the school’s eighteenth-century founder. There were five of them, laughing and pushing a small ginger-haired girl around. Logan grabbed the ringleader by the scruff of the neck – a boy, seven or eight years old, in expensive sunglasses. The laughter stopped dead. ‘Still not learned your lesson?’
‘Getoffme! Getthefuckoffme!’ Flailing his arms around.
Logan pushed him towards Rickards, before he could do any damage. The constable got a good double handful of jacket, stopping the kid from doing a runner. No longer the centre of attention, the little girl slipped away.
‘Peter, isn’t it?’ asked Logan as the kid struggled. ‘You carrying a knife, like your mate Sean?’
The child’s face was every bit as ugly and petulant as it had been in the interview room on Friday – one of Sean’s little posse. ‘My dad says I don’t have to tell you fuckers nothing!’
‘Good, you can keep your mouth shut while we search you.’
The struggling got more violent and Rickards tightened his grip as the boy screamed, ‘POLICE BRUTALITY!’ at the top of his lungs. ‘You can’t search me! I’ve not done nothing!’
‘I have reason to believe you may be carrying a concealed weapon. That means I have the power to search you. We can—’
‘He touched my arse!’ Wriggling, looking back at PC Rickards. ‘He’s a pervert! CHILD ABUSE!’
‘Shut up and empty your pockets.’
‘Think you’re so fucking hard, don’t you? Sean kicked your arse! Soon as this fucking paedo lets go I’m gonna kick it too!’
‘Your mum and dad must be so proud. Hold him.’ Logan started with the jacket: an iPod, a portable game station, a bag of crisps, and a mobile phone. ‘What have we here?’ Logan flicked it open and clicked it on, the screen lighting up with a picture of a naked woman. The keypad wasn’t locked. ‘You got a receipt for this, Peter? Not stolen is it?’
‘Fuck you!’
Logan called up the built-in phone book and scrolled through it till he found what he was looking for: SEAN – MOBILE. The phone his parents had sworn b
lind he didn’t have. He punched ‘call’ and held the thing to his ear, listening as it rang, and rang, and rang, and—
‘Pete?’
‘No. You remember me, Sean?’
The kid in Rickards’ hands squirmed and writhed, shouting, ‘It’s the pigs! Sean, it’s the fucking police!’
Silence from the other end. Not the sound of a dead line, but of someone very scared, trying to breathe softly.
‘Sean, the policewoman’s going to be OK. You can come home.’
‘Don’t fucking listen to him, Sean! Don’t—’ Rickards clamped a hand over the kid’s mouth.
More silent breathing.
‘Your mum and dad are worried about you, Sean.’
‘I. . .’
Logan waited for him to say something else, but that was all he got. ‘Come on, Sean, tell me where you are and we’ll come get you. It’ll be OK.’ He left a long pause. Still nothing. Time to try something else. ‘You’ve kept it inside for a long time, haven’t you, Sean? What happened six months ago?’ A sharp intake of breath on the other end. ‘Don’t you want to talk to someone about it?’
And the line went dead.
Logan closed the phone and told Rickards to un-gag Sean’s mate. ‘Where is he?’
A furious scowl. ‘I’m telling my dad! I’m telling the teachers! You’re fucked! They’ll fire you and—’
‘He’s gone, hasn’t he: London? Edinburgh?’
Something cunning passed across the kid’s features, then he said, ‘Yeah. Yeah, he’s gone. London. You’ll never find him.’
The first peal of bells from St Nicholas Kirk rang through the cold morning air, sounding nine am and the kids began to drift away to class. Logan took a note of Sean’s number and tossed the phone back to the sour-faced child, telling Rickards to let him go. The eight-year-old scrambled for the mobile, catching it just before it hit the pavement.
Back in the car, Logan settled into the passenger seat and told Rickards to do a quick one-eighty at the roundabout, keeping his eye on Sean’s friends. Expecting one of them to make a break for it, bunk off and go see the eight-year-old murderer. But one by one they shuffled in through the gates and were gone.
‘Damn.’ Logan frowned, watching the school go slowly by. Insch or Steel? Insch or Steel. . .’ Right,’ he said, not really liking either alternative, ‘back to the station.’
Constable Rickards looked appalled. ‘But the inspector—’
‘I know. He’ll blow a gasket. You drop me off, then go round the carpet places. Not like you can’t handle it on your own, is it?’
‘Well, no. . .’
‘And you can check out Macintyre’s alibi too.’ Logan dug out the notes he’d made at the footballer’s house yesterday – the pub and the takeaway – and handed them over. ‘But if you find anything, you call me first!’ And with any luck Insch would never know Logan had dumped him for DI Steel.
22
‘What do you mean, you spoke to him?’ Steel looked as if someone had tried to comb her hair with a ferret. She sat behind her desk, feet up, cigarette dangling out of the side of her mouth, a small drift of ash falling from the tip down the front of her blouse, like dandruff.
Logan smiled. ‘Searched one of his little friends – he had Sean’s number programmed into his mobile.’
Steel scowled. ‘His bloody parents swore blind he didn’t have one!’
‘And he’s still in Aberdeen too. The kid claimed Sean had run off to London, but he’s not as good a liar as he thinks.’ He pulled out the hastily scribbled note with Sean Morrison’s mobile number on it, and passed it over.
‘Ya wee beauty. . .’ She picked up her phone and started to dial. Listening in silence as it rang, then hung up. ‘Voicemail.’
‘My guess is he’s only going to take calls from numbers he knows. But now we can—’
Steel was already dialling again – getting on to Control to set up a GSM trace on Sean’s phone. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. ‘Get on to the incident room, I want all search teams converging on. . .’ Silence for a moment, as she waited for the information. ‘Cragiebuckler. . .’ A small area on the west of the city, between Rubislaw and Mannofield. ‘Hazledene Road!’ She slammed the phone down. ‘We’ve got him!’
Tracking someone through their mobile phone wasn’t one hundred per cent accurate, but at least they had Sean Morrison pinned down to within fifty metres. A patrol car sat at either end of the quiet road, and more blocked off the surrounding streets, just in case Sean tried to leg it through the back gardens, while a team of twenty uniforms went door to door. He wasn’t going to get away this time.
Steel marched up and down the pavement, scratching away nervously at her shoulder as the search teams reported in. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing— ‘Inspector!’ A PC, waving from the open front door of a house just up the road.
She hurried over, looking hopeful. ‘You found the little bastard?’
He shook his head, holding up a clear evidence pouch with a mobile phone in it. ‘He’s not here.’
Inside, the house was a mess: crisp packets, comics, unwashed plates and mugs, half-empty tins of beans, the discarded shells of microwave ready meals, the drained contents of the drinks cupboard stacked up under the window . . . and no Sean Morrison. They turned the place upside down, searching every cupboard and wardrobe, under the beds, the attic, then did the same thing to the large garden shed.
Steel stood in the middle of the garden and swore. ‘Where the hell is he?’
‘Looks like he broke in through the upstairs bathroom window.’ Logan pointed to where the woodwork was scuffed, the paint scratched around the catch. ‘Been living on duty-free booze, microwave pizzas, and anything else he could find in the freezer.’
‘FUCK!’ Steel kicked a plastic tipper truck the length of the lawn, sending it crashing into the fence. ‘If you’d just taken the bloody number instead of calling him this morning, he’d still bloody be here!’
‘I didn’t know he’d run!’ Logan backed away towards the house but she followed him, ranting and swearing all the way.
‘Course he’d bloody run! What the fuck’s wrong with you?’
Logan had got as far as the kitchen door. ‘If it wasn’t for me we wouldn’t even know he’d been here!’
‘Don’t you dare try and twist this round!’ she followed him into the house – the fully fitted kitchen smeared with spilled food and empty cartons.
A granite worktop stopped Logan’s retreat. ‘Look, it’s not like I did it on. . .’ He stopped, looking down at a full, partially congealed Seedy Sanchez Pot Noodle, sitting next to the toaster. He picked up the plastic container. It was still warm.
‘Four bloody days we’ve been looking for this wee shite, and you—’
‘He’s only just gone.’ Logan pressed the Pot Noodle on Steel, then upended the kettle into the sink. The hot water steamed as it hit the piles of unwashed dishes. ‘When you called he didn’t recognize the number. He dumped the phone and legged it.’
Steel looked down at the container of noodles in her hand and all the wind seemed to go out of her sails. There was an embarrassed silence. ‘Aye . . . well. . .’ She dumped the carton into the filthy sink and slumped back against the fridge. ‘Sorry,’ rubbing her forehead, ‘shite. . . I really thought we were going to get him this time. . .’ Sigh. ‘Tell you Laz, every case I’ve got is going nowhere. I am the queen of crap.’ She groaned. ‘How the hell am I going to explain this to the CC?’
As the PCs trooped out of the house, Logan took one last look at the lounge. Sean Morrison had been living like a feral animal, breaking into someone’s home and making himself a nest. Whoever’s house it was, they were going to be in for a nasty shock when they got back. There was a large framed photo over the fireplace, husband, wife, two point four children and a golden retriever. The kids were wearing the familiar dark blazers and grey flannel trousers of Robert Gordon’s – the sa
me school Sean went to. ‘How did he know?’
‘You still in here?’ DI Steel, standing in the hallway, looking depressed and fiddling with her shoulder again, muttering, ‘Sodding nicotine patches . . . don’t work for shite. . .’
‘How did Sean know he’d be safe? Look at this place: he’s been living here for days. What if the family came home?’
‘What?’
Logan grinned. ‘I think I know how we can find him again.’
They stood outside in the sunshine, Steel fidgeting impatiently while Logan listened to Big Gary listing off names and addresses on the other end of the phone. Logan thanked him and hung up, telling the inspector ‘Mr and Mrs Struther.’ He pointed at the house they’d just left. ‘They’ve taken the kids to Alicante for a fortnight. Their eldest is in Sean’s class. According to the school there’s three other families on holiday during term time: MacKenzie, Duncan and Burnett. Sean’s breaking into places he knows are empty, where he can raid the booze cabinet and the freezer.’
Steel closed her eyes, raised her face to the high, blue sky, and said, ‘Oh, thank God.’
Logan checked his watch. ‘We’ve got one address in Rosemount, one in Cults and one in Kingswells. Kingswells is too far without transport, and all the buses have his picture up anyway. Cults is possible, but it’s a hell of a hike. Rosemount’s only a fifteen-minute walk.’
‘Aye, unless he’s nicked a bike.’ Steel pulled out her phone and called Control, telling them to get a couple of unmarked cars to each of the addresses. ‘Laz,’ she said, when it was all organized, ‘if I ever turn straight, you’re getting a freebie!’
Two hours later and DI Steel’s stomach was growling from the passenger seat. ‘Where the hell is he?’ She rummaged through her pockets, swore, and slumped back in her seat. ‘Nip out and get us some fags, will you?’
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 1-3: Cold Granite, Dying Light, Broken Skin (Logan McRae) Page 92