Dying light lm-2

by Stuart MacBride

  Union Grove looked a lot more posh than it actually was: a long avenue of granite tenements branching off Holburn Street in the city's west end, lined with parked cars and the occasional tree. Brooding in the rain. The address they had for Graham Kennedy was a top-floor flat in one of the grubbier buildings, the communal front door caked with layers of blue and green blistered paint. The street was empty, except for a trio of small kids standing in a doorway across the road eating crisps, watching the police with interest. A patrol car, Alpha Four Six, was already sitting out front as PC Steve parked Insch's Range Rover half a mile from the kerb, getting an earful from the inspector for his efforts. Blushing furiously he shoogled the car forwards and backwards until the pavement was within walking distance. He was told to stay behind and watch the spaniel.

  On the inspector's orders Alpha Four Six had brought a family liaison officer, a nervous young man with a permanently runny nose and two left feet. After a damp handshake he hurried after Insch and Logan into the building, out of the rain, confessing on the way that this was his first case. Insch took pity on the man and gave him a fruit pastille, for which he was obscenely grateful. The stairs up to the top floor were covered in a shabby, threadbare carpet, the walls in peeling flock wallpaper. Everything had that unmistakable, stinging reek of cat piss. Flat number five: brown door, fading brass number screwed to the wood and a plaque bearing the legend 'Mr amp; Mrs Kennedy'.

  'Right,' said Insch, offering round the fruit pastilles again, 'this is how it works: we go in, I announce the death.' He pointed the packet of sweets at Logan. 'DS McRae has a bit of a poke about while the family are still in shock.' The pastilles came round to point at Mr Runny Nose. 'You make the tea.' The young man looked as if he was about to complain at being relegated to tea-boy, but Insch cut him off at the pass. 'You'll get to use all that touchy-feely crap they taught you once we've gone. Till then: I take milk, two sugars and DS McRae's just milk. OK?'

  The family liaison officer mumbled 'OK' as Logan rang the bell. And then they waited. And waited. And waited…

  Finally a light blossomed in the fanlight above the door.

  Sounds of shuffling and an old lady's voice saying, 'Who is it?'

  'Mrs Kennedy?' Insch held his warrant card up in front of the spy hole. 'Can we come in please?' The chain rattled and the door opened a crack, revealing a weather-beaten face with big glasses and a grey perm. She eyed the policemen on her doorstep with concern. There had been a lot of break ins in the street over the last couple of years – one old lady had ended up in hospital. The inspector handed her his warrant card and she held it at arm's length, peering at it over the top of her spectacles. The inspector's voice was soft: 'Please, it's important.'

  The door closed, there was some rattling and then it opened all the way, exposing a grubby hallway that ran right to le t, peppered with seventies-style plywood doors. She led them into a large lounge done up in faded-yellow wallpaper with orange and red roses on it. A pair of rickety couches sat in the middle of a swirly-patterned carpet, wood and fabric groaning alarmingly as Insch sat down and the old lady fussed over a large orange tabby cat the size of a beach ball.

  'Mrs Kennedy,' said Insch as the huge cat hopped up onto the coffee table and started licking its bum. 'I'm afraid I have some bad news for you: it's your grandson, Graham. He was one of the people who died in the fire on Monday night.

  I'm sorry.'

  'Oh my God…' She clutched at the cat, dragging it away from its ablutions. It sagged into her lap, legs stuck out at right angles, like an over-inflated set of ginger bagpipes.

  'Mrs Kennedy, do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt your grandson?'

  She shook her head, her eyes filling up with tears. 'Oh God, Graham… You shouldn't have to bury your grandchildren!'

  The family liaison officer was dispatched to make the tea while Logan surreptitiously excused himself and had a quick look round the flat. It was a big place, shabby, but nothing a couple of coats of paint wouldn't fix. He poked from room to room, peering under beds, into wardrobes and drawers. All the time the muted tones of DI Insch and the sobbing woman leaked through the closed lounge door.

  Kitchen, bathroom, spare room, Mrs Kennedy's bedroom with its certificates of merit and group photographs of school children… Only one of the doors leading off the hallway was locked: from the look of things the stairs up to the attic, but Graham's room was open, the bed made, the clothes all neatly folded and put away, all the socks paired off, not so much as a porn mag under the bed. It didn't fit the image Logan had of Graham Kennedy from reading his criminal record. Minor assault, breaking and entering, possession with intent… Small stuff mostly, but it all added up. He got back to the living room just in time to hear DI Insch say, 'We'll let ourselves out.' Leaving the family liaison officer behind.

  They stopped at the communal front door, looking out at the rain drumming on the car roofs. 'Well?' asked Insch.

  'Nothing. Place is clean as a whistle. If he kept any gear, he wasn't doing it at granny's house.'

  Insch nodded and pulled out the last of the fruit pastilles, munching sadly. 'Poor cow: she raised him pretty much single-handed. Graham's parents died when he was three, then her husband snuffs it a year later.' He sighed. 'That's her whole family gone now.'

  'She say anything about what Graham was up to?'

  The inspector shook his head. Tar as she was concerned he was a perfect little angel. Said he only got into trouble because of his friends – who she never approved of. Been leading him astray ever since secondary school.'

  'Don't suppose she happens to know their-'

  DI Insch held up a notebook with five names scribbled on it. 'Now why didn't I think of that?' He stuffed the notebook back in his pocket. 'Right, back to the station. You're supposed to be off and I've got an investigation to run.'

  When Logan finally got back to the flat Jackie wasn't there, just a note pinned to the fridge: Got Extended Night Shift – Back Tomorrow. No 'Love Jackie', or even 'Fond Regards'. So he'd had to fend for himself, which involved a fourteen-inch pizza and two bottles of wine.

  Sunday didn't exactly get off to an auspicious start: he woke up alone, mooched about the flat feeling like crap, then microwaved the last two slices of pizza for breakfast. Standing naked in the kitchen, munching on a reheated spicy beef with extra cheese and staring morosely out at the intermittent rain, he had to admit the diet wasn't going too well. His scar crossed stomach wasn't so much washboard-flat as mangle bulgy. And feeling more than a little unsettled.

  Jackie still wasn't back by half ten, so Logan took off. She didn't want to speak to him? Sod her. He had better things to do with his time than mope about the flat like a bloody lovesick teenager. He just didn't know what those things were. So he went looking for them on the streets of Aberdeen.

  There was an Alfred Hitchcock retrospective playing at the Belmont theatre. That would do. A whole day watching Cary Grant getting chased by aeroplanes, Norman Bates peeping on guests in the shower, James Stewart almost falling off rooftops… North by North West was just reaching its climax when Logan's mobile went off, the bleeping and pinging cutting across the fight on Mount Rushmore. Angry muttering filled the small theatre as Logan cursed and dragged the phone out of his pocket. His finger was going for the off button when he recognized the number: Detective Inspector Steel. 'Damn.' Apologizing, he hurried down the aisle and out into the corridor, closing the doors behind him before taking the call.

  DI Steel brought him up to speed with eight words: Jamie McKinnon. Attempted suicide. Accident and Emergency.

  Now!

  Aberdeen Royal Infirmary was the biggest hospital in the North-east of Scotland, but you wouldn't know that to look at its A amp;E waiting room. The floor had that nasty, sticky thing going for it, a faint reek of vomit easily discernible through pine disinfectant. A short Asian nurse escorted them through the building to a large public ward, most of which was taken up with elderly men and the smell of boiled
cabbage. Jamie McKinnon had been in surgery for a little over an hour, but now he was sitting up in bed, looking groggy, with a big, purple bruise covering one side of his face, the eye swollen almost shut, his top lip split and raw. He flinched as DI Steel plonked herself down on his bed.

  'Jamie, Jamie, Jamie,' she said, patting his hand. If you missed me, you just had to say. You didn't need to do all this just to get my attention.'

  He pulled his hand away and scowled at her with his good eye.

  'I'm no' speaking to you. Bugger off.'

  Steel smiled at him. 'Prison's done nothing to dull your razor-sharp wit, has it, Jamie my boy?'

  Jamie just stared at the far wall.

  'So.' Steel bounced up and down on the bed, making the springs squeak. 'Why'd you do it, Jamie? Racked with guilt about killing your woman? Looking for the quick way out?

  Much better you just talk to me. A lot less painful.' She kept it up for a full ten minutes, teasing him, poking fun, being bitchy about Rosie Williams, the love of his life. Not surprisingly Jamie didn't tell her anything.

  Logan – who'd spent the interview cringing with embarrassment at the inspector's crass technique – waited until she'd stomped off for a cigarette, leaving him alone with Jamie McKinnon, before saying anything. 'You know, you don't have to go through this on your own, Jamie. The prison has counsellors. You could-'

  'Who the fuck does she think she is?'

  'What?'

  'Wrinkly old hag, coming in here, treating me like dirt!

  I'm no' dirt! I'm a fucking human being!'

  'I know you are, Jamie.' Logan settled himself down in the spot Steel had vacated. 'Who did the number on your face?'

  Jamie raised a hand to his swollen eye, touching the puffy flesh with tender fingers. 'Don't want to talk about it.'

  'You sure? Some bastard takes his bad day out on you and you're OK with that?'

  A big, shuddering sigh escaped Jamie McKinnon. He slumped further into the pillows. 'Don't know his name. John something or other. He wanted some… stuff.' He shrugged.

  'You know, but I didn't have any! I'm in prison, for fuck's sake. Where the hell am I going to get smack from? Only he says he knows I've got it and why won't I sell it to him?'

  'So he beat you up?'

  McKinnon forced a brave smile. 'Didn't beat me up. I fucked him over good…' Logan recognized a bare-faced lie when he heard one.

  'How come he thought you were holding?'

  A shrug, and the forced smile disappeared. 'Don't know.'

  Logan settled back and gave him a blank stare, letting the silence grow. Jamie shifted uncomfortably, making the starchy white sheets crackle. 'Look, I know… I used to know people, OK? I could get hold of things.'

  'What kind of things?'

  McKinnon looked at him as if he was stupid. 'You bloody well know what kind of things.'

  'So this violent scrotum thought your friends would supply you some stuff, even if you were inside?'

  A small, humourless laugh and Jamie bit his lip, not hard, but enough to open up the split in it, fresh red oozing up through the yellow-scarlet crust. 'Won't be getting nothing for no one any more 'No?' Logan had a shrewd idea who Jamie's suppliers had been, and where they were now: filling a collection of body bags in Isobel's morgue. 'Where you going to get your stuff from now?'

  There was a long pause, and then: 'I didn't kill her.'

  'I know you say that, Jamie, but there's forensic evidence and witnesses and you've battered her before-'

  Jamie sniffed, tears starting. 'I loved her.'

  Logan frowned. No matter what Steel said, he was beginning to get the nasty feeling that Jamie might actually be telling the truth. 'Tell me about what happened that night.

  Right from the start.'

  Out in the corridor DI Steel was waiting for him, hands in her pockets, slouching in front of a large oil painting in shades of blue and orange. 'You got any idea what this is supposed to be?' she asked him.

  'It's a post-modern representation of the birth of man.'

  Logan knew all the paintings in the hospital by heart. He'd spent enough time with them, wandering the corridors after dark, IV drip in one hand, walking stick in the other. 'Looks a lot better on morphine.'

  Steel shook her head. 'Takes all bloody sorts.' She cast Logan a sly glance. 'So did McKinnon spill his guts then?

  Come clean to the nice cop?'

  'Still maintains he didn't kill her. But from the sound of things he was a reseller for the kids who got burnt up in that fire Monday night.'

  Steel nodded. 'That figures.' She held up McKinnon's hospital chart. Logan hadn't even seen her swipe it.

  'Attempted suicide my arse: he swallowed a plastic fork.

  Every fucker in Craiginches tries it at one time or another.

  It's not fatal, you get transferred out to hospital for a nice wee low-security holiday. Come visiting time you can get your hands on any substance your loved ones care to bring in. McKinnon's a dealer: he'll be looking for someone to slip him a bundle of something before he goes back inside. Maybe sell some, use the rest himself.' She tossed Jamie's chart into the nearest bin and started for the exit. 'We'll have someone keep an eye on him. See what comes in.'

  Logan took one last look at The Birth of Man and followed.

  The rest of the day was spent getting authorization for a low key surveillance on Jamie McKinnon, and as usual Logan did all the work. The inspector smoked lots of cigarettes and offered 'helpful suggestions', but it was Logan who had to fight his way through the forest of paperwork. The only bit she' l actually done herself was present the request to the head of CID, who wasn't best pleased. His men were stretched thin enough as it was. The best he could do was get a plainclothes officer to drop by during visiting hours. Provided nothing more important was going on at the time.

  That done, DI Steel went off in search of a bottle of wine and a half-dozen red roses. It looked like she was in for a much better night than Logan was.

  Half eight Sunday evening: Jackie would be up and getting ready for the night shift. The sound of someone murdering the theme tune to The Flintstones echoed out of the shower as he let himself in. The singing trailed off into 'da-da, dum de da-da…', the shower juddered to a halt and The Flintstones started up again, this time the X-rated version Jackie liked to perform at parties after one too many vodkas.

  Logan set the table, complete with tablecloth and candles.

  Then it was out with the funny-shaped balti dishes his mother had given him for Christmas the year he got out of hospital, and a bottle of white from the fridge. He was just plonking a small bunch of carnations in a dusty vase when someone said, 'What's all this in aid of?' He turned to see Jackie standing in the doorway, wrapped in a Barbiepink bathrobe, her hair turbaned up in a towel, her broken arm wrapped in a black plastic bag to stop the cast getting soggy.

  'This,' he said making a sweeping gesture to take in the table, 'is a peace offering.' He dug into a plastic bag from the local curry house. 'Chicken jalfrezi, chicken korma, nan bread, poppadums, lime pickle, raita and that red, raw oniony stuff you like.'

  She actually smiled at him. 'Thought you weren't speaking to me… You know, after Friday…' Pause. 'You were out all day yesterday.'

  'Thought you'd want to be alone. You spent the night on the couch 'I… I was out on the piss till one in the morning. Didn't want to wake you.'

  'Oh…'

  Silence.

  Jackie bit her lip and took a deep breath. 'Look, I'm sorry for storming off, OK? It wasn't you, it was me… Well, it wasn't all me, I mean you should've never let that manipulative old bitch talk you into working on your day off, but I suppose it wasn't all your fault.' She unpeeled the sticky tape wrapped around the bin-bag, pulling it off to expose the cast on her left forearm. The once pristine-white plaster was now a dirty yellow-grey. 'Ever since I did it, I've been bored out of my head. Filing! Can you believe it? I'm a bloody good police officer, but I'm stuck doing the crappy,
shitty, boring, fucking filing.' She picked a fork off the perfectly set table and used it to scratch inside the cast.

  'Going out of my bloody mind…' Grimace, scratchscratchscratch.

  Logan picked a fresh fork out of the drawer. 'I was beginning to think you were fed up with me,' he said.

  She stopped scratching for a moment and looked at him.

  'Trust me: right now I'm fed up with pretty much everything.

  But this sodding thing comes off in a couple of weeks, I get to go back to normal duties, everything's fine.'

  Logan hoped so. Christ knew he didn't want a repeat of this weekend. Not wanting to spoil the mood he kept his thoughts to himself and dished out the curry.

  There wasn't time for a quickie afterwards.

  The Monday morning edition of the Press and Journal was waiting on Logan's doormat when he finally surfaced sometime after nine. He carried the paper through to the kitchen so he could cover it in toast-crumbs and coffee-circles, getting as far as bite one before glancing at the front page. 'Dirty bastard…' The headline explained Colin Miller's private little meeting in the pub on Friday. Edinburgh Developer Delivers Jobs Windfall! Much of the front page was devoted to Miller's gushing praise of the new development: three hundred homes on green belt between Aberdeen and Kingswells. 'McLennan Homes are proud to announce a new development on the outskirts of the small commuter town, bringing jobs and improved amenities to the people of Kingswells!' Logan snorted: they'd heard that one before. Miller went on to wax rhapsodic about the great things McLennan Homes in general – and its founder in particular – had done in Edinburgh, where the developer had been building 'quality family homes for over a decade!' Surprisingly enough there was no mention of Malcolm McLennan, AKA Malk the Knife's other business ventures: drugs, prostitution, protection rackets, loan sharking, gun running, and every other variety of criminal enterprise he could get his grubby little paws on.

  Logan settled back in his seat and read the article again. No wonder Colin Miller had been so jumpy when he'd seen him in the pub. The reporter had been thrown off the Scottish Sun for refusing to complete a series of exposes on Malk the Knife's drug smuggling activities, because two of Malkie's boys had made it quite clear that if he didn't drop the story like the proverbial radioactive tattie, they'd hack off his fingers. And just last Christmas, Malk the Knife had tried, and failed, to bribe his way through the planning regulations and into a lucrative property development deal. Looked like his luck was better second time around.