Broken Skin

by Stuart MacBride

  He wonders what she’ll look like.

  39

  Aberdeen had done its usual bipolar trick – after the weekend’s freezing temperatures, snow, sleet and wind, Monday morning was surprisingly warm. Lulling everyone into a false sense of security with its blue skies, wispy clouds and snowdrops. It would have been pleasant, standing in a little suntrap in Cults, shielded from the wind by a row of granite shops, if it wasn’t for the blaring alarm bolted to the off-licence wall. ‘I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT WE’RE DOING HERE!’

  ‘WHAT?’ Steel cupped a hand over her ear and Logan repeated himself. ‘OH,’ she yelled, ‘I’VE GOT A SOCIAL WORK REVIEW FOR THAT BLOODY SEAN MORRISON CASE AND I CAN’T BE ARSED—’ the alarm fell silent, ‘—LISTENING TO ALL THAT SHITE ABOUT … Oh. Right.’ The small crowd of onlookers were staring at her as if she was some sort of dancing monkey. ‘Ahem, yes, well, as I said, carry on, Sergeant.’

  The key-holder bolted from the off-licence door, hands over his head, screaming for help as an empty bottle of whisky soared past his ear and shattered against the pavement. ‘He tried to kill me!’ He was closely followed by PC Rickards and a volley of gin bottles. They screeched to a halt behind the patrol car parked at the kerb.

  ‘Well, Spanky?’ asked Steel, sauntering over with her hands in her pockets. ‘You talk him down like I asked you to?’

  A full bottle of brandy spun end over end from the doorway, exploding in a shower of sparkling glass and amber liquid. The key-holder looked as if he was about to faint. ‘That stuff’s ninety quid a bottle!’

  Rickards pulled on a sickly smile and shrugged. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

  She shook her head. ‘Never send a bondage freak to do a lesbian’s job.’ Steel hooked a finger in Logan’s direction. ‘Come on Lazarus, you go first: he might get frisky.’

  Logan edged along the wall and peered through the shop window. The place was a mess, bottles littering the wooden floorboards, some full, some empty, some smashed. No sign of the intruder. He— A bottle crashed into the window by his head, turning the safety glass into a cracked spider’s web as advocaat oozed down the inside. Logan stared at Steel who shrugged back at him.

  ‘Soon as you’re ready.’

  Logan poked his head round the open door and shouted, ‘We only want to talk!’ That got him four tins of Tennants and a bottle of Merlot. The wine smashed, but the cans just dented, then fizzed out spumes of lager all over the place. Taking a deep breath he dashed inside. The shop was a long rectangle, stretching away from the front window – shelves on all walls, counter and glass-fronted fridges on the right, display stands of wine on the left – and a limp leg being dragged behind a stack of Australian sparkling. Logan charged for the counter, vaulting it as a Drambuie hand grenade exploded on the shelves beside him. He dived to the floor, scrabbling forwards on his hands and knees as more glass burst above, showering him in gin, whisky and vodka.

  DI Steel shouted in from outside: ‘You got him yet?’

  Swearing quietly, Logan eased himself to the edge of the counter and peeked round. The intruder was slumped back against a stack of Italian wine, swigging from a bottle of Talisker, his left leg bent back at a very funny angle. He pulled the bottle from his mouth and belched, and that was when Logan recognised him. ‘Tony?’ The man turned a bleary, bloodshot eye in his direction, the other squinted shut, presumably to help him focus. ‘Jesus, Tony, what the hell have you done to yourself?’

  ‘Fffff …’ He waved the bottle at Logan. ‘Fffffuckin’ fell, did … didn’t I?’ He pointed at the unnaturally bent leg and Logan realized what the lump sticking out of the side of Tony’s calf was.

  ‘We need to get you an ambulance Tony, OK? You’ve fractured your leg.’

  The man wobbled a bit. ‘Does … doesn’t hurt … at all!’ And took another swig. ‘Fffffukin’ skylight bastards!’ He grabbed a bottle of rioja and sent it flying out the front door. Even drunk on his arse the man’s aim was impressive.

  ‘Come on, Tony, let me help you. I’m drowning in booze here …’

  ‘Iss, isss …’ He belched, winced, and rubbed at his chest. ‘Iss too late. Only wannnned some money. Couple of hunnerd, tops. Juss … juss enough. Eh?’ More Talisker disappeared. ‘Passssport. Gonnae take mother on … on … Florida! See Mickey Mouse! Big … big fuckin’ mouse.’

  Logan pulled out his phone and called for an ambulance.

  ‘Cannnn go see Mickey Mouse withow … withow passport.’

  ‘Ambulance is on it’s way Tony. You’ll be OK. You going to come outside with me? Sit in the sun? Much nicer out there.’

  ‘Fffffff … no – can’t get passsssport back. Have … have to … you like horses?’ Tony giggled and helped himself to more whisky. ‘I like horses! But … but money … too much money …’ He leant forward, tapping his nose conspiratorially, his voice a wet, loud whisper as he keeled over onto his face, ‘Ma woan … woan let me …’ THUD! ‘Passssssport. Big fuckin’ mouse …’ He was snoring long before the ambulance got there.

  *

  ‘You smell like a brewery.’ Steel was sitting on a low granite wall, rewarding herself for her inspirational leadership with a cigarette.

  ‘Thanks for your help.’ Logan peeled off his coat and tried wringing the alcohol from the sodden sleeves, already starting to feel a little light-headed from the fumes. ‘He breaks in about three in the morning, bypasses the alarm with a set of crocodile clips, only the rope he’s using to lower himself in through the skylight breaks. He falls about eighteen feet, smashes his mobile phone, breaks his leg and lies there in agony. Then realizes he’s surrounded by bottles of DIY anaesthetic—’

  Steel laughed, bellowing out a cloud of secondhand smoke that ended in a coughing fit. ‘Christ,’ she said when it had all settled down again, ‘think I weed myself a little bit …’

  ‘Owner turns up at half eight to open up and do a stock take, only before he can enter the alarm code he’s being pelted with pinot grigio and sweet sherry.’

  The inspector doubled up, slapping her thigh and hooting with laughter as Logan told her how Tony Burnett had only done it to get back his passport – security against a loan from Ma Stewart to cover his losses on the Hennessy Gold Cup.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she said, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘Silly bugger could have just gone got himself a replacement passport, but he goes and does a Mission Impossible in Oddbins instead!’ And she was off again.

  It didn’t look like much from the outside, which just went to show: sometimes you could judge a bookies by its cover. J Stewart & Son – Bookmakers est. 1974 – was the sort of place that gave old men and their phlegm somewhere to hang out drinking tins of special till the last race was run and it was time to go home for their tea. The betting shop’s name was purely ornamental: J Stewart Snr was long dead, and the ‘& Son’ had run off to London with a marine biologist called Marcus. So now it was just Donna ‘Ma’ Stewart: sole proprietor, widow, and one of Logan’s first-ever arrests.

  The place wasn’t quite empty: there was a handful of auld mannies in bunnets and anoraks, fidgeting uncomfortably under the NO SMOKING signs as the horses for the Sparrows Offshore Handicap Hurdle from Ayr jerked and pirouetted to the starting line on half a dozen widescreen televisions bolted to the wall.

  Ma Stewart was behind the counter, draped over some shiny celebrity gossip magazine, one fat cheek supported by a beringed hand as she flicked through the pages, giving Logan and Rickards a perfect view of pasty, wobbling cleavage. Ma’s ratty grey hair was swept up on top in a bun, the chain for her glasses glittering against a violently colourful blouse. She didn’t look up till they were standing at the counter. ‘Afternoon, what …’ and then she recognized Logan and beamed at him. ‘Sergeant McRae! How lovely! You don’t come round nearly often enough! Have you eaten?’ Turning to bellow through the back, ‘Denise! Get the kettle on, and see if we’ve still got any pizza left.’

  A muffled, ‘A’m busy!’ came from the open doorway behin
d the desk.

  ‘Get the bloody kettle on, or I’ll make your Michael look like a bloody pacifist!’

  ‘A’ right, a’ right …’

  And the matronly smile was unleashed on Logan again. ‘There we go. What can we do for you? You’re looking lovely by the way; you got some sun, didn’t you? Hasn’t the weather been dreadful!’

  Logan knew Ma Stewart wasn’t a day over sixty, but she looked anything between fifty and a hundred and three in that strange, ambiguous way fat old ladies have. The wrinkles smoothed out from the inside by layers of subcutaneous lard. He tried not to cringe as she lent across the desk and pinched his cheek. ‘Honestly,’ she tutted, ‘you’re nothing but skin and bone. That woman of yours isn’t feeding you properly! Marcus is just the same with our Norman, it’s all tai chi and no tatties.’

  ‘I need to speak to you about Tony Burnett, Ma.’

  ‘And who’s your little friend?’ She turned the smile on Rickards who stammered and stuttered.

  ‘Oh, a shy one! We like him! Denise! Where’s that bloody tea?’

  ‘Coming! Fuck’s sake …’

  ‘Anyway, I was just saying the other day that we don’t get enough policemen in these day. Oh it’s not like it was when my Jamesy was alive, we—’

  ‘We’ve asked you not to confiscate passports as collateral, Ma.’

  ‘Especially with the Cheltenham Gold Cup coming up; you could have a sweepstake down the station!’

  ‘The passports, Ma …’

  A short woman with a black eye pushed through from the back room, carrying a tray with four teas on it and what looked like reheated pizza slices. ‘I’ve no milk, so it’s that evaporated stuff from a tin or nothin’.’

  They took their tea and microwaved spicy American in Ma’s office: a small room out back, the walls and ceiling lined with varnished tongueand-groove wooden floorboards like a homemade sauna. Ma Stewart had a thing for little porcelain figurines of Scottie dogs, and photos of her grandchildren: the whole place was festooned with them. A little old-fashioned transistor radio sat on a high shelf, dribbling music into the potpourri-scented room as they ate. ‘Have you been watching that Celebrity Pop Idol?’ said Ma, taking a big bite of reheated pizza. ‘I never would have thought that coloured man off the news had such a lovely voice.’

  Logan tuned her out. She was always a nightmare to deal with. Not obstreperous, just … nice. And completely bloody oblivious. And how on earth did she find enough time to dust all these nasty wee china dogs? He looked around the room. Maybe they should just … There was a plain brown box sitting the floor by Ma Stewart’s desk, right next to Logan’s feet; the top open just far enough for him to make out the words Lesbo Nurses. He picked it up, and emptied it out onto the desk. It was a pick-and-mix of hardcore porn, and right at the bottom a copy of In Deep Sheep: Five and other ‘animal husbandry’ titles.

  ‘Oh Ma, not again!’

  ‘What?’ She dabbed at her scarlet lips with a pristine hanky. Logan settled back in his seat and stared at her, his bit of pizza solidifying on its paper plate. ‘Oh, all right!’ she said at last. ‘So sometimes I sell a few naughty movies to people who can’t get out on their own. Where’s the harm in that? Half these poor old dears can’t even get it up, never mind do anything else!’ She leaned forward, exposing her cleavage again, tapping on the desk with a bright-red nail. ‘If I can help spark the flames of their wrinkly ardour, I will. It’s my public duty. Not like it’s illegal or anything.’

  Logan groaned. ‘Yes it is! You have to be a licensed sex shop to sell R-eighteen movies! And this stuff …’ he poked the cover of Farmyard Frolics, ‘isn’t legal anywhere.’

  ‘You’re not eating your pizza … You want some cake? We’ve got some Battenburg – Denise’s other half works in a baker’s and we get all sorts in here—’

  ‘Ma: the DVDs. Where did you get them?’

  An exasperated breath sent the pale cleavage heaving. ‘Can we not come to some sort of arrangement? I mean, I didn’t know it was against the law! I would never—’

  ‘Where!’

  She pouted. ‘You used to be such a nice young man … Are you sure you don’t want some cake?’

  The search team Logan had called in from FHQ made bulls in china shops look like ballet dancers, much to the distress of Ma Stewart, who stood at the epicentre of destruction shouting, ‘Be careful with that! It’s a family heirloom!’

  ‘Everything’s a family bloody heirloom,’ muttered a PC, sticking one of the millions of china dogs in a cardboard box.

  Ma turned pleading eyes on Logan. ‘Oh, do make them be careful!’

  ‘Find anything yet?’

  Rickards pointed at a pair of cardboard boxes sitting on top of a cleared desk. ‘Movies. Nothing too filthy, just the latest blockbusters, all stuff still in the cinema.’

  Logan gave Ma Stewart a chance to explain herself and she puffed up like a prize pigeon. ‘It’s for my old folks,’ she said with her nose in the air. ‘They can’t get out to the pictures, so I bring the magic of Hollywood to them. There’s nothing wrong with that!’

  ‘You know how long you can get for pirating movies? Kill someone you’d be out sooner. The Federation for Copyright Protection are like the Gestapo, only without the winning sense of humour.’

  ‘I didn’t pirate anything. I’m providing a service to the community—’

  ‘Have you checked the computers?’

  Rickards nodded. ‘Nothing,’

  ‘What about the basement?’

  ‘Isn’t one: I checked. But we …’ Rickards trailed off, following the invisible line between Logan’s pointing finger and one of the desks: a scuffed Formica-and-chipboard job, the sort of thing you could pick up cheap from B&Q or Argos. It sat on a big red, brown and pink rug with elephants round the edge. The constable stared at it for a minute, then admitted he didn’t have a clue what Logan was on about.

  ‘Desk’s been moved. Look at the rug: you see the dark red bit with the dimples round it? That’s where it normally sits. And the wall behind it: you can’t see half the calendar – it’s hidden behind the edge of the desk.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ma, ‘we had a book on feng shui and they said—’

  Rickards grabbed a policewoman and got her to help shift the desk off to one side.

  ‘—bad luck to move it! It destroys the energy flow of the whole room! It—’

  The edge of the rug was rolled back, exposing the dark border between trapdoor and floorboard. ‘Of course,’ said Logan, as an embarrassed Rickards apologized, ‘it probably helps that I’ve raided this place before.’

  The basement didn’t quite stretch the length of Ma’s office. It was a claustrophobic space in white-painted concrete blocks, one end stacked floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes – cigarettes, whisky, wine, and for some unfathomable reason, nappies. The other side had been given over to a mini pirating empire – four PCs and a stack of DVD burners. It wasn’t even automatic: someone would have to manually change the disks. A small colour laser printer sat in the corner, a stack of labels sitting next to it, and a couple of boxes of blank DVDs.

  ‘I’m really just storing these things for someone else,’ said Ma with her best harmless-little-oldlady smile. ‘Now, would anyone like a nice cup of tea? We’ve got Eccles cakes.’

  Logan arrested her.

  40

  ‘You know,’ said Rickards when Ma had been processed and stuck in a cell, ‘I thought she’d be more … upset.’

  Logan snorted. ‘She’s used to it. We’ve been doing her for peddling porn for years. We arrest her, she won’t tell us who her suppliers are because, “naebody likes a clype”, goes up before the Sheriff and does her, “I’m just a confused old woman” routine, he takes pity on her, she gets a small fine, some community service – which she actually enjoys – and about a year later we’ll catch her doing the same thing, and it all goes round again.’ He shook his head. ‘The circle of porn.’

  ‘Do we—’


  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ DC Rennie, looking flustered and out of breath, ‘but DI Insch wants to see you in his office.’

  ‘Can it wait?’

  Rennie shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, you see … there’s been another rape …’

  Logan closed his eyes. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘That’s not the worst part.’

  By the time Logan pushed through into the inspector’s office most of the shouting seemed to be over, but the air still crackled with pent-up fury. Insch’s face was a furious shade of purple, glowering at Jackie as she stood with her hands behind her back in front of his desk, flexing her fingers. The room’s other occupant was a uniformed PC, slumped in one of the visitor chairs, holding a big wodge of toilet paper to his nose and making groaning noises.

  ‘I was just—’ was as far as Jackie got, before Insch held up a fat finger.

  ‘Not another word!’ There was some mumbling from Mr Blood and Toilet Paper, but Insch wasn’t in the mood. ‘That goes for you too!’ Silence.

  Logan’s heart sank. It didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

  ‘About bloody time. Take this,’ pointing at Jackie, ‘and have a word with it. Tell it that it’s this bloody close to getting suspended and if it doesn’t pull its bloody socks up I WILL KICK ITS ARSE FROM HERE TO BALMORAL!’ Flashes of spittle arced through the stuffy office. He turned a baleful eye on Jackie. ‘Get out of my bloody sight!’

  She stood there, staring furiously at the carpet for a moment, then turned on her heel and pushed past Logan and out into the hall. Logan froze, looking from the inspector’s thunderous expression to PC Nosebleed, thought better of asking, and hurried out after Jackie, closing the door behind him as another tirade of abuse began.

  She was almost at the stairs by the time he caught up with her. ‘You want to fill me in?’