Logan let her scoop up a couple of pockets’ full of assorted funeral food, then steered her down to the car.
‘Yeah.’ Logan shifted his grip on the phone, fingers already going numb as snow whipped in through the bare trees’ branches. ‘Look, I’ve told them to leave the food out, and the function room’s paid for till five. So anyone who wants it, is welcome.’
On the other end of the phone, Napier’s weirdo IT guru made lip-smacking noises. ‘That’s very generous of you, my dear Sergeant McRae. The Magnificent Karl, and all associated officers of Bucksburn station, salute you! We’ll make sure it gets a good home. Oh my, yes.’
Which meant the locusts would descend and the hotel would be lucky if the function room still had its carpet by the time they finished.
‘Thanks, Karl.’ He hung up and slipped his phone back in his pocket, keeping his hand there. Shivered.
Ding-Dong hadn’t been kidding: there was almost nothing left of Samantha’s static caravan. The axles and some drooping bits of metal sat amidst piles of blackened stuff. Bits of wall, bits of floor. Something that used to be a washing machine, its plastic door melted to a vitrified amber. All dead. All slowly disappearing under a duvet of snow.
He nudged at a mound. A charred Dean Koontz novel emerged, followed by what was left of a thick paperback with a zombie on the cover.
Nothing but ashes and death.
But then, what else did a life leave behind?
He kicked the books into the wreckage.
The question now was: what to do till midnight?
No point going all the way back up to Banff, to come all the way back again. Might as well take Susan up on her offer. Hang out, drink some tea, maybe watch a film. Then slip out, kill Reuben, and feed him to the pigs. Do it right and no one would know he’d even left the house. No one except for John Urquhart.
Still have to figure out what to do with him.
Logan turned back to the car.
Steel sagged in the passenger seat, head lolling against the window, mouth wide open. Snoring hard enough to make the Punto’s roof vibrate.
Oh joy.
Logan pulled up outside Steel’s house, behind the patrol car. Climbed out into the snow.
The street was quiet, expensive, secluded – a cul-de-sac lined with old granite buildings and trees on both sides. Their canopy of naked branches blocked about half of the flakes that spiralled down from the darkening sky, but let plenty through to pile up on the roofs and bonnets of fancy four-by-fours and family saloons.
Snow crunched beneath his feet as Logan picked his way along the road to the patrol car and rapped on the driver’s window.
It buzzed down, exposing a square face with thick eyebrows. ‘Help you?’
Logan showed her his warrant card. ‘Sergeant McRae. Anything happening?’
‘Nah. Kids came home from school about twenty minutes ago, Tesco van dropped off shopping at number twelve, other than that: quiet as the grave.’ A sniff. ‘Freezing our backsides off here.’
‘It’s OK, you can Foxtrot Oscar. I’ll stay over and keep an eye on the place. Just make sure someone’s back here for nine-ish tomorrow.’
She curled her lip and raised one of those family-sized eyebrows. ‘Yeah…’ Then reached for her Airwave. ‘Think I’ll check with my guvnor first, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘Be my guest.’ Logan hooked a thumb back towards his manky rusting Punto. ‘But before you go, you can give me a hand getting DCI Steel inside.’
‘Ummmph…’ Logan dumped Steel on her bed, then stood back panting. ‘She’s heavier than she looks.’
‘Why do you think we’re all on diets?’ Susan hauled one of Steel’s legs up and undid the boot on the end.
The bedroom looked like something out of a catalogue: the bedding toned with the carpet and the curtains, the wallpaper went with the two chairs, and the wooden bed frame, wardrobe, vanity unit, and ottoman all had exactly the same twiddly bits.
He stepped over to the window as Susan got to work on the socks. ‘Hour and a half it took to get here. Traffic’s appalling.’ The front garden was almost swallowed by snow, the shrubs and bushes fading into soft outlines. Thick plumes of white purred from the patrol car’s exhaust, then it pulled away from the kerb. Off to fight crime. Logan smiled and turned his back on the scene. ‘And the snoring. Dear God, it was like being battered over the head with a chainsaw.’
‘Welcome to my world. Give me a hand with her jacket?’
They ate in the kitchen.
‘Nothing fancy, I’m afraid.’ Susan put a big bowl of pasta down in front of him, studded with mushrooms and flecks of bacon. Then she sat and watched him eat, her own plate untouched. ‘Are you feeling all right, Logan? Only you seem a bit … you know.’
‘This is lovely, thanks.’ He shovelled in another mouthful and tried for a smile. ‘I’m OK. You know: been a tough week.’
‘Well, if you need someone to talk to.’ She reached across the breakfast bar and took his hand.
‘Thanks.’ But two people in an illegal conspiracy was probably enough.
‘Come on, Monkeybum, time for bed.’
Jasmine stuck her bottom lip out and pulled on a kicked-puppy expression. ‘But I’m watching Adventure Cat with Dad.’
On the TV, a round fuzzy cat in a weird hat leapt off a space jukebox and ninja-kicked an oversized rat dressed as the King of Transylbumvania.
If Police Scotland really wanted to make inroads into the drugs trade, arresting everyone involved in children’s television would probably be a good start.
‘You heard your mum.’ Logan switched off the telly, then plonked a palm down on top of Jasmine’s head and ruffled her hair. ‘Teeth, then bed. And if you’re good I’ll read you some of your favourite book.’
‘But, Da-ad…’ Head on one side, making her eyes as big as they possibly could be – eyelashes fluttering.
Yeah, she was going to cause fights in pubs when she was older.
‘No Skeleton Bob and the Very Naughty Pirates for you then.’
‘Oh … poo.’ Then she hopped down from the table and went to do her teeth.
Logan checked his watch: eight o’clock.
Four hours to go.
Logan settled on the edge of the Peppa Pig duvet – covering Daddy Pig’s genitalia-shaped head – and picked the book up from the windowsill. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’
It was strange, but after working with Detective Superintendent Harper, the family resemblance was actually pretty clear. OK, so the hair colour was different – Jasmine’s dark brown versus Harper’s off-blonde – but they both had the same strong jaw, the same lopsided smile. The same big ears.
Jasmine frowned at him. ‘Why do you always say that, before you read a story?’
‘Because I’m old.’ His hand drifted up, feeling the outline of his own ear. It wasn’t really that big, was it? Oh, sodding hell: it was. God, they were a family of elephant people.
He opened the book to a lurid illustration of a wee skeletal boy in a knitted pink suit and feathery pirate hat, on a boat, sword-fighting against what looked like octopus tentacles. ‘Ahem.’ He put on a cod West Country accent.
‘“The following tale, Dear Reader, I fear,
Is probably not for your sensitive ears,
The old and the wobbly, the scared and the sick,
Had better read something else pretty darn quick,
For this is a tale that’s both scary and true,
Of how Skeleton Bob joined a most scurvy crew…”’
Rasping snores thundered through the wall, making the paintings on this side vibrate. Logan lay flat on his back, on the bed, fully dressed except for his shoes, with the evidence bag resting on his chest. Heavy. Pushing down on his heart.
A faint yellow glow oozed in through the curtains, picking out the edges of more catalogue furniture.
He pulled out his phone and checked the ti
me: quarter past eleven. Give it another five minutes.
Surely Susan would be asleep by now? Then again, how anyone could sleep next to that racket was anyone’s guess. They said love was blind, but apparently it was deaf as well.
Four minutes.
Shadows made patterns on the ceiling, barely visible in the gloom. There an open grave, here a severed hand. Was that a claw hammer encrusted with blood and hair?
Where the hell was Samantha when you needed her? Someone to hold his hand and tell him he was doing the right thing.
He was, wasn’t he?
OK, not the right right thing, but it was this or … what?
Couldn’t even go to the Procurator Fiscal and get Reuben done for battering Tony Evans to death. No body, no witnesses. And even if he could get Reuben sent down for eighteen years, Logan would be off to a cell of his own. Where Reuben could have him shanked in the laundry room. Raped and strangled in the showers. Stabbed in the exercise yard.
Two minutes.
So grow a pair of man-sized testicles and do what needs to be done.
Easy as that.
God…
How could people like Reuben just kill people and not worry about it? Why didn’t it keep them awake, staring at the horror-film shadows on the ceiling?
One minute.
OK that was long enough.
Logan slipped off the bed and picked up his shoes. Eased out into the corridor. Closed the door, slow and gentle.
The snoring didn’t miss a beat.
He crept downstairs and out into the night.
42
‘You know what this is, don’t you?’
The Fiat Punto rattled its way along a narrow country road, windscreen wipers moaning their way back and forth across the glass, smearing the snow as it melted.
Logan glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror. ‘Stupid?’
‘What if it’s a trap? What if Urquhart’s set you up?’
‘Could be.’
A tiny row of houses crawled past on the left. Two or three lights were on, but other than that they were dark. Nearly midnight, and with luck nobody would be wandering about, taking down number plates.
Mounds of grimy white lined the tarmac. The road hadn’t been gritted, but it had been ploughed which made it slightly easier to drive on. Logan’s Punto rattled through the troughs, doing no more than twenty, heater up full, blowers at maximum.
‘Not too late to turn around and go home.’
He didn’t dignify that with an answer.
‘Is this doing-both-sides-of-a-conversation thing more or less healthy than talking to a hallucination of a woman who’s in a coma? Because I’m guessing less.’
Mirror Logan shrugged. ‘What about Urquhart? I mean, assuming he isn’t actually on Reuben’s side – he’s going to hold this over you for the rest of your life. He’d have you on murder.’
‘He already has – Eddy Knowles, remember?’
‘That wasn’t our fault.’
‘We killed him.’
A thick black line emerged through the snow ahead. That would be Gairnhill Wood.
‘OK, you have to stop talking to yourself in the plural. Bad enough as it is.’
‘All right: you killed him, doesn’t matter if you meant to or not. No one’s going to buy self-defence if you conspired to get shot of the body.’
‘Which I didn’t.’
‘Yeah, but who’s going to believe that?’
‘True.’
The woods swallowed the Punto. Its headlights made a tiny smear of life in the darkness.
Not far to go now.
‘So how does Urquhart turn me in without implicating himself? He’s the one who got rid of the body.’
‘Allegedly.’
‘Hmmm… There is that.’
‘Here we go.’
A sign hung on chains by the side of the road: the silhouette of a pig with ‘ç WEST GAIRNHILL FARM’ printed above it in faded letters.
Logan touched the brakes and the Punto slithered a bit, then slowed. He took the turning at a crawl.
‘Are you sure you’re sure?’
‘No. Now shut up.’
Trees lined both sides of the farm road like long-dead sentries. The Punto rocked and thumped through potholes hidden by the snow, following the tracks of at least two other cars.
‘They’re already here.’ He bashed the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. ‘Damn it. Should’ve got here an hour ago. Scoped the place out. Been waiting for them.’
‘Don’t be an idiot: it’s Reuben’s farm, his people live here. If you’d turned up early they’d have clyped on you. Or taken you in and given you a cup of tea. Either way, you were never getting the element of surprise. Now shut your porridge-hole and let me concentrate.’
The road bumped and lurched through the woods to a clearing where the land fell away downhill, overlooking rolling fields and jagged clumps of forest – all smothered beneath a layer of dirty white.
An old-fashioned farmhouse with gable ends and a slate roof loomed beside a cluster of agricultural buildings. Somewhere for keeping a tractor; another piled high with hay; and three long low buildings, ugly and naked, pinned to the ground by rows of blazing halogen lights. The pigsties.
Urquhart’s Audi sat next to a big red Land Rover that looked showroom clean under a thin dusting of snow.
Everyone was here.
Logan parked on the other side of the Audi.
Right.
He pulled on his stabproof vest. Might not help against a bullet, but at least it was something. A brand-new cagoule went over the top, hiding it, then he snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and opened the evidence bag. Slipped the second freezer bag off – leaving the gun one layer of protection. Then took a biro and poked it through the plastic, wriggling the pen about until the hole was big enough to get his finger around the trigger. The slide hauled back with a clack. Safety off. Logan eased the semiautomatic into the cagoule’s pocket.
With the silencer attached a quick draw was out of the question, but it was a pig farm, not the OK Corral.
‘Right.’
Deep breath. It wasn’t easy with the stabproof vest hugging his ribs.
‘Come on. You can do this.’
Out.
The air crawled with the brown sickly-bitter stench of pig shit, bolstered by the sharp tang of fermenting urine. Steam rose from the three long buildings, caught in the glare of the lights. Grunts and squeals rang out from inside.
It was a bit like walking into an episode of The X-Files.
Logan tightened his grip on the gun and followed the footprints in the snow to the sty furthest from the house.
Not too late to turn around.
Not too late to run.
And then it was.
The big metal door clattered back and John Urquhart smiled out at him. ‘Mr McRae, cool, glad you could make it.’ He’d dressed for the occasion: suit, shirt, tie, heavy black overcoat. Not exactly the best outfit for killing someone and disposing of the body. ‘Come in, come in.’
Logan was going to die here, wasn’t he? Die and be eaten.
Come on. Not dead yet.
Logan nodded, put his other hand in his pocket – hiding the blue glove – then followed Urquhart inside.
Out there, the cold had obviously dampened the smell, because in here the stench of pig was so thick it coated the inside of his mouth with a greasy sour film. It was warm too, condensation trickling down the corrugated iron. Rows and rows of naked pink backs filled the sties on either side, three or four to a bay. Metal gates bolted into breezeblock walls.
Reuben stood at the far end, arms crossed over his massive chest. He’d ditched the expensive suit for scabby green overalls, the shiny leather shoes for a pair of manky rig boots. A black holdall sat at his feet. He jerked his head up, setting those scarred chins wobbling. ‘You’re late.’
Wrong �
� bang on time. ‘Nice to see you too, Reuben.’ Kind of surprising – how calm his voice sounded. As if this was any other meeting, in a pig sty, with a killer and his right-hand-man.
Logan turned and leaned back against the nearest sty, where he could see Reuben and Urquhart at the same time. Kept his hands in his pockets.
‘Rightiehoo.’ Urquhart beamed. ‘So, Stevie Fowler, yeah? What to do?’
‘Kill him. You steal from me, you die. That’s how it works.’
‘Yeah, OK, one vote for death. Mr McRae?’
‘We—’
‘NO!’ Reuben kicked a sty gate with his steel toecaps, setting the metal ringing and the pigs squealing. ‘This isn’t a bloody democracy. I say Fowler dies, you make it happen. End of.’
Urquhart’s smile slipped a bit. ‘Right. OK. Got you. Fowler gets an accident in prison, and—’
‘Not an accident.’
‘Come on, Reuben, let’s be sensible about—’
‘NO BLOODY ACCIDENTS!’ His face flushed, teeth bared, flecks of spittle flashed in the harsh light. ‘He suffers and everyone gets to see what’s left, and they talk in frightened whispers about the moron who thought he could screw with me!’
Urquhart licked his lips. ‘OK, OK, you want him messy dead? We’ll get him messy dead. But the cops are going to know it was us, Reuben. They’re going to come after us.’
‘So what?’ He pointed a thick finger at Logan. ‘We got someone to make it all go away.’
Logan turned a bit to the left, so the semiautomatic in his pocket was more or less in line with Reuben’s stomach. ‘No, you don’t.’
He bared his teeth. ‘Don’t think you heard me properly, McRae.’
‘I’m not one of your minions, Reuben. I’m not going to make things go away. I can’t make things go away.’
‘You bloody well—’
‘It doesn’t work like that any more!’ Logan jabbed a finger back at him. ‘This isn’t The Godfather, police officers can’t just make investigations vanish. People notice, the media notice, the Procurator Fiscal notices.’
Reuben frowned at Logan’s hand. ‘What’s with the gloves?’
Why draw this out? Get it over and done with.
Kill him.
‘Scared of getting your hands dirty, McRae?’
Take the gun out and shoot him.
In the Cold Dark Ground Page 38