Logan McRae 09 - The Missing and the Dead

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘One removal van, one four-by-four, one boosted cash machine, and four guys in boiler suits.’

  Ugly pinged the butt of his cigarette away into the drizzle. ‘Yeah, we’re going to take it from here.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Logan swept an arm towards the cellblock door. ‘Mind you, there’s not far to take it. The other thing we got was four confessions. Job’s done.’ He climbed into the passenger seat. ‘You have fun though.’

  Nicholson started the engine, drowning out whatever Brogan’s reply was.

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she steered the Big Car out onto the street. ‘Curlytop didn’t look too happy.’

  ‘Poor wee soul probably thought he could swoop down at the last minute and take all the credit. Only to find the bunnets had got there first. Boo hoo. Nobody loves him. Etcetera.’

  ‘My heart bleeds.’ She took them out past the fish-processing plants, slowing down to peer into the car parks. ‘Shout if you see an old red BMW Z4. Driver’s disqualified.’

  Grey hatchbacks and saloons: all sitting in ordered little rows, waiting for their fishy owners to do the five o’clock dash.

  No BMW.

  Logan adjusted his equipment belt, so the extendable baton wasn’t poking into his leg. ‘Fancy a green shift? Big Paul’s got court in the morning.’

  ‘Thought we were hitting the town for beer and chips.’

  ‘Can’t. Got to fill in for Davey Muir again.’

  ‘Yeah, well my mates are heading off to Ellon to see that new Johnny Depp where everyone’s zombies except him and Bill Bailey. If there’s no beer and chips, I’m joining them.’

  Just have to ask Deano then.

  Logan pointed through the windscreen at the glowering sky beyond. ‘Home, Calamity, and don’t spare the horses.’

  — Monday Backshift —

  Broken Bones.

  52

  ‘… absolutely dinging it down.’

  Logan pressed the talk button. ‘Well, don’t hang about too long then, Joe. Don’t want you and Penny catching pneumonia.’

  Heat wafted through the Sergeants’ Office, making spider-webs of steam on the mullioned window. A clatter of rain against the glass made it shiver.

  ‘Definitely. We’ll finish up the last interview and be back in time for eightses. Penny’s got chocolate éclairs.’

  Logan put his Airwave back on the desk and bashed in comments against two or three actions that needed following up. Shockingly, none of them belonged to Tufty. And speaking of Constable Quirrel …

  His thin face appeared at the door. Cheeks shiny and red, with nose and ears to match. ‘Ooh, it’s perishing out there. Fancy a cuppa?’

  Logan held out his mug. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Hospital say it wasn’t as bad as it looked. A broken leg and a couple of ribs. Not bad for getting knocked down by a bus.’ He pulled off his hat and a dribble of rainwater pattered against the carpet tiles.

  Logan dug into his pocket and came out with a small paper bag. Tossed it on the desk. ‘Before I forget, that’s for you.’

  ‘Is it cola bottles?’ Tufty picked up the bag and peered inside. ‘It’s a badge.’

  ‘For your help yesterday with the CCTV.’ A smile. ‘Put it on then.’

  Tufty unzipped his high-vis jacket and pinned the badge to his stabproof. Round and red, with ‘GENIOUS’ on it in little white letters. He beamed. ‘Thanks, Sarge!’

  ‘No problem. You earned it.’

  ‘You’ve got a visitor, by the way. Outside.’

  ‘In this?’ Logan grabbed his waterproof high-vis gear. ‘Not supposed to leave members of the public out in the rain, Constable. Sends a bad message.’

  ‘Yeah … Didn’t want to let him into the building. Not after what he did to the Big Car. It’s Stinky Sammy Wilson and, going by the smell, I think he’s here to report his own death.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind: you’re an idiot.’ Logan hauled on the vest, the jacket, and fastened his equipment belt over the top on his way to the tradesmen’s exit. Instantly a stone heavier. ‘Go make the tea – Penny and Joe are on their way back for eightses.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  He let himself out the door, pulling his peaked cap on, high-vis collar up.

  Joe and Tufty were right, it was a foul evening. Not far off eight o’clock and it didn’t look as if the sun would ever shine again. The sky was a slab of grey marble, mottled with black, and from it icy needles hurled themselves down to bounce off the houses, tarmac, and cars. Making dark lakes on the pavement that spread out across the roads from swollen gutters.

  A fist of wind rocked Logan back on his heels.

  Yeah, tonight was going to be one for staying indoors and doing paperwork. No villain with half a brain would be out and about in this.

  He narrowed his eyes against the rain, and there was Sammy Wilson, huddled in the lee of the portico over the station’s front door. Not that it gave much protection from the horizontal weather. Sammy’s trademark filthy tracksuit hung baggy and shiny, soaked through. But in a fit of inspiration he’d fashioned a balaclava from a Tesco carrier bag – the handles tied beneath his chin.

  Tufty had been right about the stench as well. Even from here the reek of rotting onions and spoiled meat was enough to catch the back of the throat.

  Logan blinked, working the sting out of his eyes. ‘Sammy?’

  He looked up, eyes dark pits in the bony hole of his face. The blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ sign above his head gave his skin a sickly pallor, making him look as dead as he smelled. ‘Sergeant, Sergeant, yeah, right, hi.’ Those grimy twig fingers knotted themselves in front of his chest. ‘Yeah, been looking into it, you know? Doing some James Bond on the down and out. Like you asked.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter – you can stop looking.’

  A cough, then a sniff. ‘You got my ten quid, right? Ten quid for Samuel Ewan Wilson, half now, half earlier, cause I asked questions. Questions, questions. Who is the Candleman?’

  ‘Sammy: it’s over. It’s not my case any more.’ Besides, DCI McInnes was hacked off enough already. He’d go thermonuclear if he found out Sammy Wilson was sniffing around Operation Troposphere on Logan’s behalf. Didn’t matter if the Chief Constable had called Logan personally to say what a good little boy he was – the explosion would be horrendous and the fall-out? It’d last for years.

  ‘I asked them high, and I asked them low, and they never suspected I was James Bond and they were all stupid and I was slicker than a monkey, I was. Yeah. Questions. You got my ten quid?’ His fingers disengaged and one hand reached for Logan, palm up, eyes glittering. ‘Ten quid for a cuppa tea and that?’

  ‘Here.’ Logan dug in his pocket and came out with five pound coins and some smush. ‘It’s all I’ve got.’ He tipped it into Sammy’s open palm and it got snatched back against the sodden, dirty tracksuit.

  ‘Tenner, we said, ten quid for questions, right? Ten quid, not …’ His lips moved as he counted. ‘Six pound twenty-three.’

  ‘I’ve nothing else. That’s it. I’m skint till the end of the month. Now give it up. No more asking questions. It’s over.’

  The eyebrows went up. ‘No more James Bond? I’ve been asking and asking for ten quid, only we’re three pound seventy-seven short. Can’t give any of the questions back, sale is final: no receipt, no returns.’

  ‘Let it go, Sammy. Thanks for the help, and I’ll get you the other three quid when I’ve got it.’

  ‘Three seventy-seven.’ Another cough – this one longer and deeper – had his back heaving. His knees bent until he was almost in two. Hacking and wheezing to a stop. Then a deep gasp hauled him upright again. ‘Sammy’s dying …’

  A car ploughed its way along the road in front of the sea wall, sending up plumes of water.

  Wind rattled the station windows.

  Logan cleared his throat. ‘Have you got somewhere to stay tonight? A bed at the shelter, a friend
’s couch?’

  Samuel Ewan Wilson stepped in close enough for the heat radiating off him to seep into Logan’s skin. ‘If I find out his name, I get my three pounds seventy-seven, right?’

  ‘No!’ Rain dripped from the brim of Logan’s hat. ‘It’s over, understand, Sammy? It’s over. Stay away from the whole thing. Take the cash and go get some chips or something. A kebab. I don’t want you asking any more questions.’

  The skeletal face tilted to the left, eyebrows pinched together. Breath like a ruptured bin-bag. ‘You don’t want to know who he is? Why don’t you want to know? Police always want to know, right? Why don’t you want to know?’

  ‘Drop it. And find somewhere warm and dry to sleep. Don’t spend the night out in this. You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘I still get my three pound seventy-seven though, right? Ten quid for asking questions. We had a deal, that was the deal, ten quid.’

  ‘Sarge?’ The word came from the rain behind Logan. He turned and there were Penny and Joe. ‘You OK there, Sarge?’

  ‘I’m fine. See you inside.’

  A pause. Then, ‘OK.’ And they let themselves in the tradesmen’s entrance.

  And when Logan turned back, Sammy Wilson was lumbering off into the gloom, rain sparking off his plastic-bag hat.

  ‘All units be aware: we’ve got a lorry fire on the B9093, between New Pitsligo and Strichen …’

  Tufty tapped his fingers along the top of the steering wheel. ‘You know what I don’t understand?’

  Logan scrolled through the text messages on his phone. ‘Here we go.’

  Outside, the day had given up. Wind rocked the lampposts, the rain making shimmering golden orbs around their sodium bulbs. The windscreen wipers thunked back and forth across the glass, engine barely ticking over. They’d parked facing the road to Macduff, lurking beside a council bin, overflowing with newspapers and plastic bags. Someone’s broken umbrella poked out of the side, its black-ribbed skin making it look like something with bat wings was trying to escape from within.

  ‘No. Look, everyone who’s like of northern European decent has got a chunk of Neanderthal DNA in them, right? Because somewhere back in the dawn of time our ancestors fancied a bit of caveman. So they can’t have been a different species, can they? Whole point of speciation is you can’t breed with the rest of them any more.’

  ‘Are you finished?’

  ‘Well, makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ Logan settled back into his seat.

  A shrug. Then he launched into whistling the theme tune to Bonanza.

  ‘Tufty!’

  ‘Sorry.’ Back to tapping his fingers along the steering wheel. ‘Can’t believe I wasted all that time digging up info on Brian Menendez Guerra.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Brian Menendez Guerra – Helen Edwards’s ex-husband. Snatched their daughter? Spent ages on that.’

  Logan checked his phone for text messages. Nothing. ‘Why wasted?’

  ‘Well, no one cares now, do they? The wee girl we found at Tarlair wasn’t Natasha Edwards, so no one cares her dad’s dead.’

  ‘Brian Edwards is dead?’

  ‘Hit-and-run in Middlesbrough two years ago.’

  Couldn’t have happened to a nicer scumbag.

  Mind you, it showed how rubbish Helen’s private investigator was. Tufty had dug up the fact that Edwards was dead in a couple of hours, while all Sam Spade ever managed was ‘he disappeared’. Yeah, he was definitely worth whatever Helen had been paying him all these years.

  Idiot.

  ‘What about the daughter?’

  ‘No record. Probably still at home with Ex-Wife Number Two in Spain. She got shot of him for battering her and the kids.’

  Why the hell would Helen marry someone like that?

  ‘Do me a favour, Tufty, text me the address in Spain. Might be worth following up.’

  ‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

  Logan talked into his shoulder. ‘Bang away.’

  ‘We’ve had another three sightings of David and Catherine Bisset: Inverness, Carlisle, and Ellon. Local forces are investigating.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He let go of the button.

  Tufty was looking at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If it was your dad, if you were David Bisset, what would you do? Would you kill Graham Stirling?’

  ‘It wasn’t, and I’m not, so I wouldn’t.’

  A nod. ‘Don’t know if I could kill someone, not even if they’d done horrible things to my dad. Well, maybe. I mean, if they’d done something to my mum, then yeah. I’d crack them open like a pistachio nut.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be a police officer, Constable Quirrel. We don’t “crack people open”, we arrest them and we prosecute them.’

  ‘Yeah, but if it was your mum …’

  A rust-flecked Transit growled past on the way to Macduff, towing a plume of oily black smoke from its exhaust. The driver had his elbow on the windowsill, mobile phone clamped to his ear. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt either.

  Logan pointed. ‘We’re on.’

  Tufty clicked on the headlights and pulled out onto the road.

  ‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

  ‘We’re in hot pursuit at the moment.’ The speedo had barely nudged thirty and they were already catching up with the Transit’s greasy cloud. ‘Well, lukewarm pursuit.’

  ‘Got an assault victim up at Elgin A-and-E with your business card in her pocket.’

  ‘Elgin? You got a name?’ Logan reached out a finger and hit the button marked ‘BLUES’. The lights on top of the Big Car flickered to life.

  ‘Yeah, one Kirstin Rattray. IC-One female, thin, twenty-four but looks forty-five. Well, she looks like she’s been run over by a tractor, but you know what I mean.’

  Kirstin Rattray?

  The Transit’s driver clearly wasn’t looking in his mirrors. So Logan gave the ‘SIREN’ button a go too. Its wail cut through the downpour. But the Transit kept on trundling up onto the bridge across the Deveron.

  Right: Kirstin Rattray. Shoplifter extraordinaire and drug addict. The woman who’d tipped them off about Klingon and Gerbil in the first place.

  ‘Someone attacked her?’

  ‘Doctor thinks they used a crowbar. Broke her jaw, her cheekbone, and her nose. Fractured skull, one leg, and both arms. Seven cracked ribs, three cracked vertebrae, and a shattered right kneecap. She’s waiting for a scan to see if they’ve ruptured her spleen too.’

  Logan sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Oooh …’ That didn’t sound like an assault, that sounded like attempted murder. He poked Tufty in the shoulder. ‘Are you planning on pulling this guy over any time soon, or are we going to follow him all the way to Fraserburgh?’

  ‘Sorry, Sarge.’ Tufty drifted out into the other lane and overtook the Transit. Slowed in front of it, all lights blazing.

  Back to the Airwave. ‘She conscious?’

  ‘Nope. According to the doctors, she’s lucky whoever it was didn’t kill her.’

  Finally, the Transit’s driver seemed to get it through his thick skull. He pulled in to the side of the road with his load of burnt-oil smog.

  Logan stared at it in the wing mirror. The Transit’s driver still hadn’t put down his mobile phone. Or pulled his seatbelt on. Had to admire stupidity that thick. ‘Why Elgin? Why did she turn up there?’

  ‘What’s wrong with Elgin?’

  ‘She lives in Banff, why did she end up thirty-five miles away? Not as if she could’ve walked it with a broken leg and shattered kneecap.’ He held the Airwave against his chest, then poked Tufty again. ‘You sitting there for a reason, Constable?’

  Tufty curled his top lip. ‘But it’s bucketing down.’

  Another poke. ‘You’re not going to sodding melt. Now get out there and see how many things you can do him for. And if you come back with less than three, I’m sending you out to
try again.’

  His face drooped with his shoulders. ‘Yes, Sarge.’ Then he stuffed the peaked cap on his head, grabbed his high-vis jacket, and scrambled out into the rain.

  ‘You still there?’

  ‘Had to motivate my constable.’ Logan pulled out his notebook and scribbled down Kirstin’s name, the date and the time. ‘How did she get to the hospital?’

  ‘Ambulance. Pair of caravanners found her in a lay-by, east of Fochabers. Thought she’d been in a hit-and-run; called it in.’

  Logan tapped his pen against the notebook for a bit. ‘OK, thanks for letting me know. If something happens – if she wakes up, or anything like that – give me a shout, OK?’

  ‘Will do.’

  He hooked his Airwave back into place, frowned at the windscreen as the wipers thumped and groaned their curves against the glass.

  OK, so Kirstin was a drug addict, and sometimes drug addicts made poor choices and plenty of enemies. But still …

  She was the one who dobbed Klingon and Gerbil in. Cost their supplier a hundred grand’s worth of heroin.

  What if the Candy Man found out?

  Maybe Jack Simpson wasn’t the only one who’d be serving as an object lesson.

  Which meant it was Logan’s fault.

  Wonderful.

  Wasn’t as if he’d had any choice, was it? Couldn’t turn a blind eye to drug dealing, just in case someone got hurt.

  A long slow breath hissed out between his teeth, leaving his shoulders slumped.

  Poor Kirstin.

  Should probably hand it over to Operation Troposphere. Assuming they didn’t already know about it.

  Mind you, what if it wasn’t the Candy Man? What if someone else decided she needed her skeleton rearranged with a crowbar?

  Wouldn’t hurt to ask about a bit first. See if anyone knew anything.

  The driver’s door clunked open and Tufty avalanched in behind the wheel, dripping on the upholstery. ‘Dear Lord, it’s wet …’ He cranked the blowers up to full, then dumped his damp hat in the back. Held out his notebook. ‘Driving without a seatbelt. Driving while using a mobile phone. Using a vehicle which has faulty lights. Using a vehicle which is in a dangerous condition. And two bald tyres in contravention of Section Twenty-Seven of the Road Vehicles, Construction and Use, Regulations 1986. Oh, and his road tax is three weeks out of date too.’