Broken Skin

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘No, you’re safe.’

  ‘Thank God for that …’ She pulled out a packet of cigarettes with trembling fingers and stuck one in her mouth, lighting it and puffing frantically, shuddering with pleasure, then coughing violently. ‘Ohhhhhh, I needed that! Whose bloody idea was it to give people points for clypin’ on folk?’

  Logan just shrugged. So far he’d made twenty quid by telling the DCS running the ‘Fit Like’ programme when Steel was smoking. ‘Watch out – incoming.’ He pointed at a uniformed constable labouring her way up the hill. The park was a wedge of yellowed grass, snow and frost-bitten trees, sweeping downhill from Bonaccord Crescent to Willowbank Road. It wasn’t huge, but it was the closest patch of open ground to where Rob Macintyre was last spotted, and there were plenty of places to hide a body.

  Steel took one last puff and hid the cigarette behind her back, waving a hand in front of her face as if that would actually get rid of the smell. ‘Well?’

  The PC clambered up the last bit of slippery path and shook her head. ‘Nothing. Any chance of a fag? I’m gasping.’

  Steel handed one over. ‘Bugger all here and bugger all in any of the gardens. The little sod’s probably coked up in the arms of some daft tart, but I suppose we’d better widen the search area. Who knows, we might … Oh bugger.’ She squinted off into the distance at a large grey van with a satellite dish on top of it, pulling up on the other side of the park. ‘The bloody media’s here. Tell everyone to look busy!’ She started down the hill, dragging the constable with her, shouting back to Logan, ‘Chase up that useless bugger Rennie!’

  Langstane Place and Justice Mill Lane were one long parade of trendy nightclubs and bars. Just the sort of places a local ‘celebrity’ like Macintyre would want to be seen. The sort of place he could pick up some impressionable, star-struck girlie, go back to her place and practise the offside rule.

  Please, dear God, let Macintyre have gone home with someone! The alternative was too worrying to think about.

  Logan found Rennie in a huge, fancy-looking nightclub, the drone of vacuum cleaners fighting with a portable radio tuned to Northsound Two. The constable was sitting at the bar, drinking cappuccino and making eyes at the manageress. At least he had the decency to look guilty when he saw Logan. ‘Er … thank you, Miss,’ he said, putting his cup down next to a half-eaten muffin, ‘you’ve been very helpful.’ Then marched over to report in. ‘Bingo.’ He flipped through his notebook. ‘Taxi drops Macintyre here at half-eleven after some charity bash. He’s a bit pished, but they let him in anyway because he’s famous. Security cameras show him leaving with a group of people – mostly fit birds, lucky bastard – at one twenty-three, but he didn’t go to any of the other clubs on the street.’

  Logan breathed a sigh of relief: so it probably was just a late night of booze, boobs and bonking. Thank God for that. ‘Get onto the Media Office, we want anyone who remembers leaving the club with Macintyre, etc. etc.’

  ‘Already done it, sir.’

  ‘Then there’s hope for you yet. We—’

  A crash as the front door was thrown open; DI Steel stood silhouetted against the last rays of the dying sun. ‘Don’t just stand there! They’ve found a body!’

  Cromwell Road: the ambulance slithered its way in through the chainlink gates, digging muddy trenches into the playing-field grass as Rennie made a dog’s ear of parking outside on the street. Two patrol cars had got there first, their lights spinning lazily in the growing gloom, while their occupants cordoned off the area with blue-and-white POLICE tape. With all the media interest it wouldn’t be long before someone got down here and started taking photos or shooting video, demanding soundbite comments, or just making shite up.

  Logan hurried under the fresh cordon of tape, following Steel and the twin trails of churned-up grass. The ambulance slid to a halt and the crew jumped out, dragging equipment from the back before hurrying over to where a uniformed officer was waving her arms about as if she was drowning, shouting, ‘Over here!’

  Logan ran after them, fingers crossed. ‘Please don’t let him be dead, please don’t let him be dead!’

  The lead paramedic took one look at whatever the female PC was standing over, turned on his heel and sprinted back the way he’d come.

  Logan’s heart sank. He was dead. Macintyre was dead. And Jackie had come home last night and thrown every scrap of clothing she had on into the washing machine to boil …

  ‘Out the bloody way!’ It was the paramedic, running back from the ambulance with a neck brace in one hand, a silvery blanket under his arm, and a bottle of oxygen over his shoulder. He crashed into the bushes and disappeared from sight.

  Logan crept forwards.

  Macintyre was lying on his side, arms and legs splayed out like a broken swastika on the cold, damp, blood-soaked ground. His face was swollen almost beyond recognition, eyes closed, mouth open, a trail of spittle and dark red trailing across the ambulance men’s gloved hands as they strapped the neck brace into position and slipped the oxygen mask over his smashed nose and mouth. ‘Oh Jesus …’ Logan’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Jackie, what the hell did you do?’

  She’d been thorough: every visible inch of flesh was speckled with livid, purple bruises, the skin in between pale and waxy. Rob Macintyre had been beaten to death. He just hadn’t got around to dying yet.

  44

  Logan stood at the back of the room feeling sick as the Chief Constable read out the prepared statement, cameras flashing away as he told the world the official version of events. Rob Macintyre had been the victim of a particularly violent robbery. The podium was crowded – DI Steel, Macintyre’s fiancée and mother, Hissing Sid, someone from Aberdeen Football Club, and the woman from the press office, all there to appeal for any information on Rob Macintyre’s movements last night. Wanting whoever had attacked him to come forward and hand themselves in.

  Logan almost laughed. There wasn’t a chance in hell Jackie was going to stick her hand up for what she’d done to Macintyre. Unless someone had seen her, or they found some forensic evidence, this was one case that was going to go unsolved because Logan wasn’t going to say a word. Keep his head down. Pretend it never happened. Be an accessory after the fact and pervert the course of justice. Even though the guilt was killing him. But what else was he supposed to do?

  Colin Miller sidled up as the Media Officer unveiled replicas of the items believed to be missing from Macintyre’s body when he was discovered: a thick leather wallet; a Rolex watch; three gold rings; a thick gold chain-bracelet; and the footballer’s trademark ruby earstud. Anyone offered any of these items was to contact the police immediately.

  ‘Course,’ said Miller, nodding at the display, ‘this is all shite, isn’t it? No way this wiz a muggin’.’ He waited for Logan to reply, got nothing, then said, ‘Come on – I been up the hospital. Fractured legs, broken arms, ribs … it wiz professional. Doctor I spoke to said eighty per cent chance of extensive brain damage. Aye, and that’s if he ever wakes up! Between you an’ me,’ Colin lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘both his nuts wiz ruptured. No’ just battered either, totally crushed. If it wasnae for the hypothermia he’d be deid by now.’

  When the CC threw the conference open to questions it took all of three seconds before someone else made the same connection that Miller had. It was difficult not to, with Hissing Sid sitting up there covered in bruises. And as soon as the lawyer let slip that protective surveillance had been withdrawn from Macintyre the night before last, the knives came out. The guy from AFC insisted that the police could, and should have done more, Hissing Sid claimed that a number of significant errors of judgment had been made, Macintyre’s fiancée sat there and cried asking how she could bring up a baby without its father, while his mother stared out at the cameras demanding justice. Someone had to pay for her wee boy being in a coma.

  It didn’t take long before the Chief Constable brought the whole thing to an unceremonious halt.

  Logan wa
tched Moir-Farquharson limp from the room, handing out soundbites to anyone who’d listen, demanding an official enquiry.

  ‘Two-faced slimy bastard!’

  ‘Mmm?’ Miller had switched his mobile back on and was peering at it, holding the thing at various bizarre angles in his black-gloved hands. ‘Come on ya wee …’ A sudden smile, and Miller punched a button then held the phone to his ear, listening in silence for a moment, before hanging up. He gave Logan a nervous smile. ‘Izzy wiz gettin’ twinges this mornin’. Reception here’s shite byraway. What if the contractions start?’ He poked his phone again. ‘Think I’m runnin’ low on battery …’

  ‘How’d you like an exclusive?’

  ‘I mean it’s no’ an exact science is it? They say forty-two weeks, but it could be more or less. And how do they know it’s been forty-two weeks? It’s no’ like—’

  ‘An exclusive, Colin.’

  ‘What? Oh, right, aye, that’d be grand.’ He swung his phone about a bit more. ‘Can we do it somewhere I can get a signal, but?’

  Steel was in her office, pacing back and forth in front of the window, looking down at the knot of journalists outside. ‘Bloody hell – it’s a disaster! Why could they no’ give this one to Insch? What did I do to deserve it?’

  Logan let her moan as he pretended to read the interview notes. Since they’d found Rob Macintyre’s battered body all the women he was supposed to have raped had been questioned, along with their partners and families. Not surprisingly none of them expressed any sympathy for the footballer’s condition. And they all had alibis. Tayside police had been asked to do the same thing with their victims, but Logan knew it was pointless. How the hell was he supposed to investigate Macintyre’s getting beaten half to death, when he lived with the person who’d done it? And there was no way he was going to fit anyone else up.

  He joined Steel at the window, watching as the television camera lights winked off one by one, and the crews dispersed, leaving three figures standing together in the car park: the familiar brassy blonde of Macintyre’s fiancée, his horrible, blue-rinsed mother, and his battered lawyer. ‘Doesn’t matter what we do,’ said Steel, as Sandy Moir-Farquharson shook the women’s hands and limped off towards his Jaguar, ‘we’re going to get screwed on this one.’

  Logan watched the two women march across to a small red hatchback, climb in and reverse out of their parking space. Steel was right – this whole thing was a complete and utter disaster.

  45

  He was poring over the preliminary forensic report on Rob Macintyre’s clothes, praying they hadn’t found anything, when the PC collared him. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you!’ she said, pointing at the collection of seized DVDs in the corner of the CID office. ‘That bloody film – put it in expecting to see some Disney pish with my six-year-old niece and what do we get? Hardcore homemade bondage! What was I supposed to say when her mum got back?’

  ‘Not my fault, you knew Ma Stewart was peddling porn when you borrowed it.’

  ‘Shagging I could have coped with, but this was fucking foul!’ And just to prove it, she marched over to the box of pirated films, rummaged around, pulled out the offending DVD and handed it to him. ‘Go on, try it!’

  Sighing, Logan dragged himself away from his desk and slipped the disk into the player set up by the fridge. It was hooked up to an old twelve-inch TV set and the picture fizzed and crackled into a low-definition image of a man strapped face-down on a table with his legs open wide as someone hammered the living hell out of his thighs, back and arse with what looked like a leather ping-pong paddle.

  ‘Look, you borrow stuff from the evidence box, you get what you …’ Logan trailed off into silence, standing with his head on one side, watching the people on the screen. There was a full-length, gilt-edged mirror on the wall at the end of the spanking table, showing the whole scene from the opposite angle. The figure strapped to the table was blond, wearing a gag. And he looked a hell of a lot like Jason Fettes.

  ‘See? You imagine trying to explain that to a six-year-old? I tell you, I was—’

  ‘Get Insch. Get him here now!’ Logan sank down into the seat, watching the last dirty movie Jason Fettes ever made. ‘Move it!’

  The image stuttered then froze into place: Fettes lying flat on his face, the person in the black bondage suit and strap-on fully visible in the mirror. Logan tapped the screen. ‘You see? Garvie was a big man, overweight, large belly. Look at the shape of the thighs and upper torso – yes the chest’s squashed flat, but I’m pretty sure this is a woman.’

  Insch harrumphed. ‘But these suits distort—’

  ‘And Garvie’s suit is dark red, this one’s black. He didn’t have a spare.’

  The inspector stared at the screen. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

  Logan nodded. ‘We pretty much hounded an innocent man till he killed himself.’

  ‘The Chief Constable’s going to have my balls.’

  The street was dark and silent, just the sound of the windscreen wipers to keep them company as Logan pulled up outside Ma Stewart’s house. All the lights were out. ‘Bloody hell.’ DI Insch closed his mobile phone and stuffed it back in his pocket. ‘I miss one sodding rehearsal and it all goes to hell in a handbasket.’

  Logan knew better than to ask. Instead he picked the case file off the back seat, and climbed out of the car. It was cold: that penetrating, drizzly kind of rain Aberdeen did so well melting away the last remnants of snow, leaving the city grey and bleak. Insch had been in a foul mood ever since Logan dragged him in to watch the video – he never liked being proved wrong.

  The inspector gave the nod and Logan leaned on Ma’s bell: a metallic prringgg sounded from somewhere inside. They waited and waited, but nothing happened, so Logan tried again – prrrrrringgggggggggg – keeping his finger on the button until a light blossomed on in the hall. But still no one came to answer the door.

  ‘Mrs Stewart!’ Insch hammered on the door with the palm of his hand, making the whole thing boom and rattle. ‘We know you’re in there!’ BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

  A light came on next door. The curtains twitched as Insch did it again. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! ‘Police! Open up!’

  ‘Hoy! Keep it down!’ An irate-looking man in his late sixties, complete with walking stick.

  ‘Police, Mrs Stewart: Open up!’ BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

  ‘You leave her alone!’

  Logan tried for the nice-cop approach. ‘Please go back inside, sir.’

  ‘Don’t you bloody tell me what to do! I pay your wages!’

  BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! ‘Come on, Mrs Stewart!’

  ‘Bugger off out of it: she’s done nothing wrong!’

  ‘We know you’re in there!’ BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

  Logan tapped the inspector on the shoulder. ‘That’s probably not helping, sir.’

  ‘Did I ask for your opinion?’ BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! ‘Open up!’

  By the time a rumpled Ma Stewart appeared at the front door, half the street was up: auld mannies and wifies in their dressing gowns and corduroys telling Logan and Insch they should be ashamed of themselves for hounding an old lady! Ma stood on the top step, blinking as if she was having difficulty getting them into focus. She looked terrible: heavy bags under her eyes, the folds of fat pulling her face out of shape. She just wasn’t the same without all the make-up and permanent beatific smile. She was old.

  ‘Mmmmph …’ she said, rearranging her features with a podgy hand. ‘Tea. I’ll make tea …’ A stifled yawn, then, ‘And cake. Everyone likes cake …’

  They convened in the kitchen.

  ‘Tea, tea, tea, tea …’ Ma bumbled around, opening cupboards and closing them again. Logan steered her into one of the kitchen chairs and told her not to worry about it: he’d do the honours.

  ‘Do you know why we’re here?’ said Insch, while Logan was playing hunt the teabag. ‘One of the DVDs we seized from your shop turned out to be some sort of home-video footage.’ He paused, leaving a gap for her t
o jump in and fill. She just yawned. ‘It shows someone being strapped to a table and killed. It’s a snuff film.’ Which wasn’t strictly speaking true: Jason Fettes didn’t actually die on camera, but going by the date/time stamp in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, he was dead less than an hour later.

  ‘Cake …’ she lurched to her feet, and squatted down in front of one of the kitchen cabinets, struggling with the cupboard door, and then a collection of Tupperware boxes, peering into each, then stacking them on the floor, one by one, like building bricks.

  ‘Mrs Stewart, the video?’

  ‘Can’t have our brave boys in blue starving to death now, can we?’

  Insch slammed a fat hand on the worktop – it sounded like a gunshot. ‘Where did you get the video?’ He was already starting to turn scarlet.

  ‘You know,’ she said, taking hold of the inspector’s hand, ‘my Jamesy, God bless him, took a stroke when he was about your age; fell down stone dead. Just like that. You should try relaxing a bit more.’

  And that was when DI Insch went off the deep end.

  ‘I think she’ll be OK now,’ said Logan, slouching back through to the lounge. The room was tidy, covered in flock wallpaper, china dogs, plates and photos of smiling grandchildren – just like the betting shop. A collection of crude watercolours depicting Benachie had been framed and given pride of place above the fireplace. The only thing that didn’t look like it belonged in an old lady’s house was DI Insch, sitting on the settee practising his breathing technique, eyes screwed shut, two fingers pressed against the side of his neck. Logan closed the door quietly and sank down into one of the armchairs, keeping his mouth shut until the fat man had finished. He was beginning to wonder how long it would take before something inside the inspector burst. There was no way this was healthy for a man that size.

  ‘We might be better off appealing to her sense of decency,’ said Logan, when Insch had returned to a more normal, human colour. ‘We could—’

  ‘Decency? You’ve got to be kidding me: she sells porn to schoolchildren!’