Dying light lm-2

by Stuart MacBride

  Steel inched forward in her seat, bathing Jamie in a cloud of cigarette smoke. 'She said no though, didn't she? She said no and you hit her. You hit her and you kept hitting her 'cos she wouldn't take a slimy wee shite like you back. You killed her, 'cos it was that or pay for it your whole life. Pay to screw her in alleyways, just like hundreds of other desperate wee fucks.'

  'NO! She said she'd think about it! She was going to come back to me! We were going to be a family!' The tears were falling freely now, running down his chubby cheeks, his scarlet nose streaming as sobs shook his body. 'God, she's dead! She's dead!' He crumpled to the tabletop, shoulders heaving.

  Logan's voice was soft. 'Did you hit her again, Jamie? Did you kill her?'

  He could barely make out the reply. 'I loved her

  10

  The ride back from Craiginches was spent with DI Steel smoking and swearing furiously. Now that Jamie McKinnon had admitted to paying for sex with Rosie the night she died, Logan's disappearing Lithuanian witness was worthless. And so was any DNA evidence they got from the hundreds of discarded condoms. Things had been a lot simpler when McKinnon was just denying everything. She pulled up outside Logan's flat and demanded the tapes of the interview. He handed them over and asked if she didn't want him to do the paperwork: taking them into evidence, releasing one copy to Jamie McKinnon's defence lawyer. 'Do I buggery,' was her response. 'Bloody things screw up my investigation.' She took the recordings, turned them upside down and picked a loop of tape free with a nicotine-stained fingernail. Then did 'Flags Of All Nations' with it, sending reels of shiny brown ribbon spooling out into the interior of the car. 'Far as anyone's concerned there was something wrong with the machine OK?

  No tape was ever made. We forget anything that was said and go back to proving Jamie McKinnon did it.' Logan tried to protest but the inspector was having none of it. 'What?' she demanded. 'We both know he did it! It's our job to make sure he doesn't get away with it.'

  'What if he didn't do it?'

  'Of course he did it! He's got form for beating her up 'cos she was on the game. He goes and pledges his undying love and she makes him fork out for a knee-trembler in an alleyway. Then goes off to shag someone else. He's overcome with rage and kills her. The end.' She shook her head. 'Now get your arse out of my car. I've got things to do.'

  Logan spent the rest of the afternoon pottering about the flat. Sulking. So much for the Rosie Williams murder being his ticket out of the Screw-Up Squad. The way DI Steel was going they'd end up with no admissible evidence and a fully compromised case. The woman was a bloody menace. By seven thirty there was still no sign of Jackie, so he went out to the pub and to hell with everyone else. Archibald Simpson's wasn't an option: being just around the corner from Force Headquarters and full of cheap beer, the bar was a regular haunt for off-duty police, and he'd had enough dirty looks about getting PC Maitland shot to last him for one week, thank you very much. So instead he wandered up Union Street to the Howff, sitting on a creaky beige sofa in the farthest corner of the basement-level bar, nursing a pint of Directors and a packet of dry-roasted. Brooding over Jackie and her foul temper. And then another pint. And another. And a burger – smothered in chilli so hot it made his eyes water – and then another pint, getting maudlin. PC Maitland – Logan couldn't even remember his first name.

  Until the screwed-up raid he'd never worked with the guy, only knew him as the bloke with the moustache who shaved his head for Children In Need one year. Poor bastard. Two pints later and it was time to lurch Wearily home, via a chip shop for jumbo-haddock supper; most of which he abandoned, uneaten, in the lounge, before staggering off to bed alone.

  Saturday morning started with a hangover. The bathroom cabinet was devoid of massive blue-and-yellow painkillers the ones Logan had been given after Angus Robertson had performed un-elective surgery on his innards with a six-inch hunting knife – so he had to make do with a handful of aspirin and a mug of strong instant coffee, taking it into the lounge to see what kind of cartoons were on. There was a shape on the couch and his heart sank. Jackie, all wrapped up in the spare duvet, blinking blearily as he froze in the doorway. He hadn't even heard her come in last night. She took one look at him, mumbled, 'Don't want any coffee and pulled the duvet over her head, shutting him, and the rest of the world, out.

  Logan went back to the kitchen, closing the door behind him.

  Saturday, their only full day off together, and Jackie still wasn't speaking to him. Obviously she'd rather sleep on the couch thai share his bed. What a great bloody weekend this was turning out to be. He checked the clock on the microwave. Half past nine. Outside the kitchen window the rain was just coming on again, not the sunshine-and rainbows rain of yesterday, but the heavy-grey-skies-and freezing-wind kind of rain. It leached the warmth out of everything, making the city grey and miserable all over again. Matching Logan's mood. He dressed and headed out, meandering up Union Street, taking perverse pleasure in getting cold and wet. 'Playing the martyr' as his mum used to say. And she should know, she was a bloody dab hand at it.

  He moped about the shops for a bit: bought a CD by some band he'd heard on the radio last week, two newish crime novels and a couple of DVDs. Trying to take his mind off everything that was wrong and failing miserably. Jackie hated him, Steel was a pain in the arse, PC Maitland was dyifig… He gave up on the shopping and wandered across Union Terrace, down School Hill and onto Broad Street.

  Drifting inexorably back towards the flat through the rain.

  At the corner of Marischal College, where the pale grey spines of its elaborate Victorian-Gothic frontage raised their claws to the clay-coloured skies, he stopped. Straight ahead and it was back to the flat. Turn left and it was a stone's throw to Force Headquarters. It wasn't a tough choice, even if he was supposed to be off. He could always kill some time poking his nose into someone else's investigation. DI Insch was usually good for a… Logan screwed up his face and swore; the dead squatter – he still hadn't told Insch about Graham Kennedy. Bloody idiot. Miller had given him the name days ago! Sodding DI Steel and her malfunctioning tape recorder act.

  The desk sergeant barely spoke to Logan as he squelched in through the front doors and dripped his way across the patterned linoleum of reception.

  DI Insch's incident room was carefully orchestrated chaos – phones being manned, information being collated and entered into HOLMES, so the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System could automatically churn out reams and reams of pointless actions at the press of a button. Now and then it came out with something that made all the difference to an investigation, but most of the time: crap. Maps of Aberdeen were stuck up on the walls, coloured pins marking the locations of significant events. The inspector was sitting on a desk at the front of the room, resting one large buttock on the groaning wood while he read through a pile of reports and chewed on a Curly Wurly.

  'Afternoon, sir,' said Logan, squelching in, hands in his pockets, damp underwear beginning to make its presence felt.

  Insch looked up from his paperwork, the chocolate-toffee lattice sticking out of his large, pink face like a DNA-shaped cigar. 'Sergeant.' He nodded and went back to his reports.

  Two minutes later he handed them to a harassed-looking, cadaverous WPC and told her she was doing a great job, no matter what anyone else said. The admin officer didn't bother to thank him. As she stormed off back to the collating, Insch turned and beckoned Logan over. 'Bit overdressed for bath time aren't you?'

  Logan didn't rise to the bait. 'I was wondering how you were getting on with your fatal arson attack.'

  Insch frowned, the strip lighting gleaming off his bald, pink head. Suspicious. 'Why?'

  'Got a possible ID for one of your victims: Graham Kennedy. Supposed to have been a minor dealer.' That made a smile blossom on the inspector's face.

  'Well, well, well. There's a name I've not heard in a while.

  You-' Insch picked a PC at random and sent him off to phone round the dental practices in Aberdeen.
Insch wanted to know who treated Graham Kennedy: dental records, X-rays the whole lot. It was the only way they were going to identify his charred corpse in the morgue. For once luck was actually on their side; the fourth dental practice the PC tried had done a whole heap of fillings on one Graham Kennedy less than eight months ago.

  They couriered the X-rays straight over to the morgue and ten minutes later Doc Fraser confirmed the identification:

  Graham Kennedy was now officially dead. The enquiry finally had somewhere to start.

  Insch grabbed PC Steve and told him to go get everything Records had on Graham Kennedy and meet them in the car park, then bellowed for a DS Beattie to get his backside in gear: they were going to break the news to Graham Kennedy's next of kin. And have a bit of a rummage through his things.

  'Er, sir,' said Logan following in the inspector's wake, 'I kinda hoped I could come with you on the shout?'

  Insch raised an eyebrow and mashed the lift button with a fat finger. 'Oh aye? And what about DI Steel?

  You're supposed to be working for her. "More immediate supervision", remember?'

  Logan opened and closed his mouth. 'Come on, sir! I didn't ask to be transferred! And anyway, it's my day off.

  I've-'

  'You've got a day off and you want to go on a shout?'

  Insch looked at him suspiciously. 'You gone mental or something?'

  'Please, sir. I need to get out of Steel's team. It's driving me mad! Nothing gets done by the book: even if we do get a result, it's going to be so tainted any defence lawyer worth half a fart will tear it to shreds! If I don't get some sort of success under my belt, I'm going to be stuck there till they fire me, or I go completely off my head.'

  Insch shook his head, a small smile on his face. 'I hate to see a grown man beg.' A puffing, bearded detective sergeant appeared at the end of the corridor, dragging on a huge, multicoloured weatherproof jacket. DI Insch waited until he'd run the length of the corridor and come to a screeching halt in front of them, before telling him he wasn't needed after all. He'd be taking DS McRae along instead.

  Swearing quietly, the bearded bloke slouched back the way he'd come.

  The inspector grinned. 'Just like to see the fat wee bugger run for his money,' he said happily. Logan knew better than to say anything about pots and kettles.

  As they marched downstairs to the car park, Insch quizzed him on DI Steel's cases, wanting to know everything about the battered prostitute and the Labrador in the suitcase. And by the time they were through all that, a red faced PC Steve Jacobs was waiting for them by the back door, clutching a small stack of A4 printouts: Graham Kennedy's rap sheet. Insch pointed his key fob at a muck encrusted Range Rover and plipped open the locks. 'Right,' he said, striding out into the rain, 'PC Jacobs, you can do the honours. DS McRae, in the back, and don't stand on the dog food.'

  The inside of Insch's car smelled as if something wet and shaggy had set up residence. There was a big metal grille separating the back seat from the boot and a soggy, black nose was pressed against it as soon as Logan clambered into place, trying not to tread on the jumbo-sized bag of Senior Dog Mix in the foot well. Lucy – the inspector's ancient Springer Spaniel – was pretty, in a manipulative, big-brown eyed kind of way, but every time it rained she stank like a tramp on a bad day.

  'Where to, sir?' asked PC Steve as they cruised slowly up Queen Street.

  'Hmm?' The inspector was already immersed in Graham Kennedy's file. 'Oh, Kettlebray Crescent: let's get our esteemed colleague's opinion on the scene of the crime before we go tell Kennedy's granny her wee boy's dead… And the car does come with an accelerator, Constable: pedal on the floor, next to the big rectangular one. Try and use it, or we'll be here till bloody Christmas.'

  Fourteen Kettlebray Crescent was a mess. Vacant windows stared out at the street, surrounded by dark streaks of soot.

  The roof was gone, collapsed in on itself as the flames raged through the building. Now faint, rainy daylight filtered into the house's shabby interior. The buildings on either side hadn't fared too badly; the fire brigade had arrived quickly enough to save them. But not the six people who'd been in number fourteen. Insch grabbed an umbrella from the boot and marched off into the fire-ravaged house, leaving Logan and PC Steve to scurry along behind getting wet. A mobile incident room was abandoned outside the building: a cross between a Portacabin and a caravan, only without the windows. The standard black-and-white checked ribbon ran around the outside, with the Semper Vigilo thistle logo in the middle. Like a bow on a grubby, unwanted Christmas present.

  They ducked under the blue-and-white Police tape stretched across the the burnt-out building's garden gate and walked up the path to the front door. It was hanging off its hinges, battered in by the fire brigade as soon as they realized someone was actually in there, but by then it was too late. Logan stopped at the doorframe: there were about two dozen three-inch screws poking through the wood, their shiny steel points grabbing the space where the door should have been. Inside it was like something out of Better Homes and Infernos. The walls in the hallway were stripped back to the plaster and lathe, black and covered in soot. 'Er… sir?' asked PC Steve, hanging back, peering into the gutted building from the outside. 'Are you sure this is safe?'

  The upper floor was missing, leaving the building little more than a burnt-out shell, the ground floor covered in broken slates and charcoaled wooden beams. Rain fell steadily through the gaping hole where the roof used to be, drumming off the inspector's brolly. He stood in a relatively clear patch and pointed up at one of the windows on the upper floor. 'Main bedroom: that's where the petrol bombs came in.'

  Logan risked a clamber over the shifting, rain-slicked slates, to peer out into the street beyond. The mud was slowly washing off the inspector's filthy car, the expectant nose of a smelly spaniel pressed against the rear window, looking up at the building where six people had been burned to death. Screaming until their lungs filled with scalding smoke and flame, falling to the floor in agony as their eyes cooked and their flesh crackled… Logan shuddered. Did it actually smell of burning people in here, or was it just his imagination? 'You know,' he said, looking away from the window and back into the hollowed-out building, 'I heard it takes twenty minutes for the human brain to die once the flow of blood's stopped… all the electrical impulses, firing away to themselves, till there's no charge left…' The ruined face, staring up at him out of the body-bag in the morgue: eyes, nose and lips gone. 'Do you think it was like that for them? Already dead, but still feeling themselves burn and cook?'

  There was an uncomfortable silence. And then PC Steve said, 'Jesus, sir, morbid much?' Insch had to agree. They picked their way carefully through the debris and back outside; there was nothing else to see here anyway.

  Logan stood on the top step, looking up and down the deserted street. 'What did you find when you searched the other buildings?'

  'Not a bloody thing.'

  Logan nodded and wandered out into the road, slowly turning through three hundred and sixty degrees, taking in the boarded-up houses on both sides of the street. If he was the sick bastard who'd screwed the door shut so that three men, two women and a nine-month-old baby girl would be roasted alive, he'd want to hang about and watch them burn. That would be where the fun was. He crossed the road, trying the door handles, looking for one that wasn't locked… Two houses up, something caught his eye, something grey and squishy, trapped in the corner of the doorframe. It was nearly invisible: a disposable tissue, soaked transparent by the rain and slowly disintegrating.

  He pulled out a small, clear evidence baggie and turned it inside out, using it like a makeshift mitten to scoop up the tissue before flipping the baggie round the right way again, trapping the contents inside. A shadow fell across the doorway.

  'What is it?' DI Insch.

  Logan risked a sniff at the open evidence bag. 'Unless I'm verysmuch mistaken, it's a wankerchief. Your man probably stood here to watch the place burn, listen to them scre
am as they died, tossing himself off to the smell of roasting human flesh.'

  Insch wrinkled his nose. 'PC Jacobs was right: you are a morbid bastard.'

  11

  The woman next door was drunk again. Out in her back garden with the radio blaring Northsound One, staggering about in time to the music, swigging from a bottle of wine, not caring that it was pouring with rain. She just wasn't right in the head, that much had been clear from the moment they'd moved in: her and her strange, pointy-faced boyfriend and their huge black Labrador. He was a lovely dog, a great slobbery lump of affection, but there had been no sign of him for nearly two weeks. The woman said he'd probably run away. That he was an ungrateful bastard and didn't deserve a home.

  She said the same thing about her boyfriend.

  Shaking her head, Ailsa Cruickshank turned away from the window and finished making the bed. The woman next door didn't care that her dog was missing, so it had been up to Ailsa to make up little laminated posters and fix them to the lampposts and shop windows all over Westhill. Never let it be said that she didn't do her bit.

  Outside, the noise got even worse as the woman started singing along with some rap 'song' with the swearwords bleeped out. Only the woman next door wasn't censored like the,radio; she roared out the obscenities at the top of her voice. Shuddering, Ailsa went through to the lounge and turned her own television up loud. The woman wasn't right in the head: everyone knew it – she was on tablets. Abusive, drunken, violent; she was every neighbour's worst nightmare. How were Ailsa and Gavin supposed to start a family with that harpy screeching and yelling next door? Gavin and the woman were at loggerheads the whole time, arguing over the noise, the language, calling the police… Ailsa shook her head sadly, watching as her neighbour slipped on the rain soaked grass, clanged her head off the whirly washing line and lay there crying for a minute, before swearing and screaming, hurling her wine bottle to explode against the fence. Ailsa shivered: she was going to end up hurting someone; she just knew it.