McRae 2 - Dying Light

by Stuart MacBride

  Eric remembered he had a message for Logan. 'DI Steel says get your arse up to her office, soon as you get in.' Just like Inspector Napier's lair, DI Steel's office reflected its owner: cramped, untidy and stinking of stale cigarettes. She was sat behind her desk, feet up, cup of coffee in one hand, mobile phone in the other, fag dangling out the corner of her mouth. She waved Logan to take a seat as she pinned the phone between her ear and shoulder, before rummaging about in a desk drawer, coming out with a little black notebook and a pen. 'Course I love you,' she said, the end of the cigarette bobbing up and down, letting loose a half-inch avalanche of ash. 'Yes . . . You know I do ... No, I'd never do that. . .' She scribbled something awkwardly on the pad and threw it across the desk to Logan. 'You know I do ... Susan, you're the most important thing in my life . . . Yes . . . Yes Logan peered at the spidery scrawl. You identified that tart yet? He gave the inspector a puzzled look and she rolled her eyes, waving a hand at him, asking for the pad back. 'Yes, Susan, you know I do ...' She scribbled another note. Last night - the one who saw McKinnon? Logan shook his head and Steel said, 'Damn... What? Oh, no, not you, Susan, I dropped something . . . yes . . . uhuh . . .' She demanded the pad back and left Logan a final message: Fuck

  OFF TO THE CANTEEN. I'LL BE UP IN A BIT. He was on his second mug of milky tea and halfway through a bacon buttie when DI Steel finally slouched into the canteen. 'Christ, I'm fucking starving,' she said slumping down on the other side of the table and sighing. 'Right, first things first.' She dragged out a copy of that morning's Press and Journal and placed it on the tabletop. 'Care to explain this?' She pointed at the headline: Dry Run For Suitcase Torso Murderer. Colin Miller had worked his usual magic, weaving Logan's suspicions into a pretty good story. Not surprising he was the newspaper's golden boy.

  'I spoke to him last night,' said Logan as he read, groaning at every mention of 'Police Hero Logan "Lazarus" McRae'. Whenever Miller put him in the bloody paper, Angus Robertson - the Mastrick Monster - was always wheeled out to justify Logan's 'hero' status. 'And the reason you screwed over my investigation?' Steel's voice was level, cold. Dangerous. But Logan didn't notice. 'Whoever it is, they're counting on the dog being a full, proper, dry run, OK?' he said with a smile. 'So the fact we found the body and released details to the press, means our killer-to-be knows we're on to them. It's one thing to kill a dog and dump it, but it's a hell of a lot more difficult to do it to a human being, especially when you know the police are wise to you.' 'Well,' she said, settling back in her seat, giving Logan the benefit of a hyena smile. 'Sounds like you've got it all figured out, doesn't it?' He nodded and she let the smile grow colder. 'Let's get one thing crystal, Mr Police Hero: this is not a fucking democracy I'm running here. You do what I tell you - when I tell you, not whatever you fucking feel like!' Logan flinched as the inspector hammered on: 'And you know what? This time I actually agree with you, but that does not excuse going to the press behind my fucking back to get your name all over the papers!' Logan dropped his half-eaten buttie back onto his plate. 'I... I'm sorry, I didn't think you'd--' 'No you didn't, did you? But I fucking well do!' She snatched up the fallen buttie and ripped a huge bite out of it. 'I'm getting fucked over enough already,' she mumbled round a mouthful of bacon and bread, 'I don't need you adding to my bloody problems.' Logan sat quietly in his seat, thinking this was a great way to start a working day: yet another bollocking. 'Sorry,' he said at last. 'Just don't do it again, OK?' DI Steel popped the last of

  Logan's buttie in her gob and chewed unhappily in silence. 'Right she said when she'd finished. 'On a lighter note: I read your report on last night. Result. Or it would have been if you hadn't lost the tart.' She saw the look on Logan's face. 'I know: you did your best. Keep an eye out for her tonight. You can take DC Rennie with you; I've shifted him onto nights as well. Keep him out of trouble.' She stood and ferreted about in her pockets for a packet of rumpled cigarettes. 'Oh, and before I forget: I want to interview McKinnon again tomorrow. See what the bleach-blond, spiky-haired, murdering wee shite has to say for himself after a night in Craiginches.' 'I'm supposed to be off tomorrow! Jackie's got plans, I--' 'For God's sake! A woman's been murdered and all you can think about is getting your leg over?' Logan blushed. 'Look,' said the inspector, 'it's not going to take all day to re-interview Jamie McKinnon. You can see your tasty WPC after, OK?' That, on top of his recent bollocking, just made Logan feel even more guilty. 'Yes ma'am.' 'Good boy. And while you're about tonight, go see if they've done a post mortem on that bloody dog yet. And don't spend all night in the arms of some prozzie down the docks. I'm not signing off any expense form with "blowjobs" on it.'

  DC Rennie looked so much like a plainclothes policeman it was scary. Even in jeans and a leather jacket something about him just screamed 'LOOK AT ME: I'M A POLICEMAN!' Not surprisingly they didn't have a lot of luck speaking to the ladies plying their trade around Aberdeen harbour that night. And their punters weren't stopping either, not with DC Conspicuous hanging around. So all Logan and Rennie got for their night's work was several filthy mouthfuls of abuse.

  Come half past twelve they'd been around the neighbourhood half a dozen times. There was still no sign of the fourteen-year-old Lithuanian, or her minder. 'Sod this for a game of soldiers.' DC Rennie slumped back against the railing that separated Regent Quay from the docks proper. 'How many times are we going to go round and round in circles, getting shouted and spat at?' He flinched, and slowly looked up into the sky. Thin raindrops were beginning to fall, making little needle streaks in the streetlights. 'Shite, that's all we bloody need.' Logan had to agree. 'Come on, let's get back to the station.' There wasn't a single tart out tonight he hadn't spoken to yesterday, and he still had an identikit picture to put together and a canine post mortem to chase up. They were getting nowhere here.

  She smiles at him as he pulls up in his car. Smiles at him, but stays in the doorway. Keeping dry. Lovely fuckin' day this was turning out to be: first Jason won't eat his Ready Brek, then he's late for school and she's got such a sodding hangover! How's she supposed to deal with Jason's dickhead teacher with a dirty vodka hangover? And then PC Plod and his mate scare off the first nibble she's had all fuckin' night! Should be out there catching fuckin' crooks, not hassling women trying to make a living! The window buzzes down and he has to lean across the passenger seat to say hello. She always stands on the passenger side. Some dirty bastard drove up, wound down his window and grabbed her tits once. Didn't ask, didn't pay. Just grabbed her nipples like a fuckin' vice, and drove off laughing. There's a lot of sick bastards out there. He asks her how much and she gives him the list. Jacking the prices up a bit, 'cos the car looks new and he's obviously not short of cash. He thinks about it as the rain really starts hammering down . . . Maybe she's hiked the price up too much? Shit.

  Not like she doesn't need the fuckin' money; Jason goes through shoes like the things were free. She opens her raincoat a little, letting him see the red lace bra she's almost wearing - two sizes too small and uncomfortable as hell, but it always gets the bastards going - and he smiles. Sort of. She keeps herself in good shape, and it shows. So what if her complexion's not the best: she makes up for it where it counts. 'You want to get in?' he asks her. And it's her turn to think about it. After all, that old tart got herself beaten to death a couple of nights ago. But it's a nice car, and it's pissing with rain. And she really, really needs the cash . . . She jumps in. The car has that lovely new, leathery-plastic smell to it, the upholstery clean, the interior spotless, not like that piece of shit she has to drive. This thing must have cost a fortune. She pulls the seatbelt over her breasts, giving him another flash of red lace, and he smiles. He has a nice smile. For a moment the Julia-Roberts-Pretty-Woman Fantasy flashes through her brain. Just like it does every time she meets a client who's good to her. Doesn't want it too rough, or anything disgusting. He'll look after her and she won't have to fuck strangers for money any more. He tells a joke and she laughs as he puts the car in gear and drives th
em out into the rainy night. He's really nice, she can tell. She has a sixth sense about that kind of thing.

  9

  Nearly one in the morning and the morgue was, appropriately, deathly quiet. The only sounds were Logan's shoes squeaking on the tiles and the hum of the overhead lights. The cutting tables sparkled in the middle of the floor, the huge extractor fan set into the ceiling, waiting to whisk away the smell of death. Good job it worked better than the one in Logan's kitchen: that wouldn't whisk away the smell of frying onions, let alone decaying Labrador. 'Hello?' The morgue was supposed to be manned twenty-four hours a day, but as he wandered past the loading bay, the fridges, the cutting room and the viewing suite there wasn't a living soul to be seen. 'Hello?' He finally found someone in the pathologist's office, sitting with her back to the door, feet up on the desk, headphones on, reading a huge Stephen King novel and drinking Lucozade. Logan reached out and tapped the woman on the shoulder. There was a loud shriek; Stephen King and Lucozade went flying as she scrambled to her feet and whirled round. 'FOR FUCK'S SAKE! YOU NEARLY GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK!' Logan winced and she peeled off her headphones. 'Christ!' she said, the metallic tssshk-tssshk tssshk of something loud hissing out of the earpieces. 'I thought you were . . .' then she stopped, clearly not wanting 79 I

  to tell Logan she'd thought the dead had risen up to claim her. Carole Shaw: Deputy Anatomical Pathology Technician, slightly chubby, shortish, early thirties with long curly blonde hair, little round spectacles and a Morticians Do It With Dead Bodies! T-shirt on under an open white lab coat. The latter now stained sticky-orange with ejected Lucozade.

  'Good book?' asked Logan innocently. 'Bastard. Nearly sodding wet myself. . .' She bent down and grabbed her book off the floor, cursing as the neon orange fizzy drink soaked into the pages. 'What the hell do you want?' 'Labrador's torso, brought in for post mortem Wednesday afternoon. Got the results back yet?' She shuddered. 'Christ, I remember that one. Bloody hell, how come when a rotting, suppurating carcass gets dragged in here for some poor bugger to cut up, it's always yours?' Logan didn't smile. Last year it had been a little boy and a little girl, neither of them much over four years old. Both of them dead a long time. 'Just lucky I guess,' he said at last. 'Here.' She rummaged through a filing cabinet, emerging with a slim Manila folder. 'Fido was dismembered with a boning knife: seven-inch single-sided blade - scooped near the handle, straight for most of its length and curved at the tip. They come in most kitchen sets, so nothing distinctive. Find the knife and we'll probably be able to match it, but the carcass is pretty far gone . . . can't guarantee anything.' She flipped through the pages, her lips moving as she skimmed the text. 'Here we go ... one thing might help: Fido was drugged before he was killed. Amitriptyline: prescription antidepressant. Works a bit like a sedative, so they give it to people who're wound up, anxious, calms them down. We got what looks like minced beef and about half a bottle of the things from the stomach contents. And you do not want to know what that smelled like.' Logan agreed. He didn't. 'What about the suitcase?'

  Carole shrugged. 'Pretty standard fare. ASDA in Dyce, Bridge of Don, Garthdee and Portlethen all had them on special a couple of months ago. Sold hundreds of the things.' Logan swore and she nodded. 'Also, fingerprints: bugger all. Same for fibre: clean as a whistle. Whoever did this wasn't keen on getting caught.' The rest of Logan's night was spent getting together e-fit identikit pictures of the Lithuanian fourteen-year-old and her pimp, then shoving them under the noses of everyone in the station; putting the pictures up on the intranet and briefing pages; emailing them to all the other stations in the area - hoping someone could ID them. By the time he got back to the flat, the rain had formed an uneasy truce with the early morning sunlight; purple grey clouds scudding across the sky at a great rate of knots. Jackie was still asleep, curled up under the duvet like an unexploded bomb. She blew up when Logan told her he'd have to go back into work at half eleven to help DI Steel interview Jamie McKinnon. 'What the hell do you mean you've got to go back in? You've just got off night shift! She's already screwed up our whole weekend and now you're going back into work? I had plans! We were going to do things today!' 'I'm sorry, but it's--' 'Don't you bloody "sorry" me, Logan McRae! Why can't you just stand up to the woman and tell her no? You're supposed to have time off! It's only a job for Christ's sake!' 'But Rosie Williams--' 'Rosie Williams is dead! She's not going to get any less dead, just because you work more bloody overtime! Is she?' She stormed off to the shower, leaving a deluge of foul language in her wake. Fifteen minutes later she was fighting with the hairdryer, trying to work a comb through her wet hair with the fingers of her broken arm. Swearing and mustering at her reflection in the mirror.

  Logan stood in the doorway, watching her angry back, not knowing what to say. Ever since she'd moved in - three months ago - they'd rubbed along fine. It was only recently that he'd started to piss her off. And he couldn't seem to do anything about it. 'Jackie, I'm sorry. There's always tomorrow She gave one last tug of the comb, losing it in the long curls of her dark hair, swore, dragged it out and hurled it onto the dressing table, sending jars and tubes of moisturizer clattering. 'Fucking thing!' She stood staring down at the mess. I'm going out.' Jacket, keys and gone. Logan stood alone in the kitchen. Swearing.

  The Black Friars was a real-ale pub at the top of Marischal Street, all dark wooden floorboards and beams, split over three levels, following the downward slope of the road. Weekday mornings were usually pretty quiet, just the occasional pensioner washing down the full Scottish breakfast eggs, sausage, bacon, beans, black pudding, tattie scones, clootie dumpling, mushrooms and toast, all slathered in tomato sauce - with a couple of beers. Logan perched at the end of the lower bar, eating his breakfast and drinking a pint of Dark Island. So what if it was half nine in the morning? He was supposed to be on holiday. With his girlfriend. Who wasn't speaking to him, thanks to DI Bloody Steel and her guilt trip. They could have still been in bed, with nothing to do but laze about playing doctors and nurses. Logan scowled, downed the last of his pint and ordered another. 'Bit early to be gettin' hammered isn't it?' Logan groaned, put down a forkful of beans, and turned to see Colin Miller, the Press and Journal's golden boy, leaning on the bar next to him. As usual the wee Glaswegian was dressed up to the nines: sharp black suit, silk shirt and tie. He was wide, in a broad-shouldered, muscular kind of way, with a face that took a little getting used to. At least Isobel

  had tamed down the man's taste for flashy gold jewellery: instead of the three and a half tons of cufflinks, rings, chains and bracelets he used to wear, Colin was restricted to a single silver band on his left pinkie. Like a misplaced wedding ring. But his watch was still big enough to cover the national debt of a small third-world country. He levered himself up on the next barstool and ordered himself a mochachino latte with extra cinnamon. 'What you doing here anyway?' Logan asked. 'Looking for me?' 'Nope, got an appointment: wanted to make sure it was on neutral territory. You know how it goes.' Miller scanned the bar before taking a drink. 'So then Laz, how've you been, eh? No' seen you for ages, man.' 'Not since you gave me duff information on that bloody warehouse, no.' Miller shrugged. 'Aye, well, can't be right all the time, eh? My source swore blind it was kosher, like.' Logan snorted and washed the last of his fried egg down with a mouthful of beer. 'And who was that, then? No, don't tell me: journalistic integrity, protecting your sources, none of my fucking business, etcetera.' 'Jesus, man, who rattled your fuckin' cage? Did I no' keep your name out the papers, eh? You see one story blamin' you for what happened?' When Logan didn't say anything, Miller just shrugged and took another sip of coffee. 'And I can tell you who my source was this time: Graham Kennedy. Remember him? One of the squatters got all burned up in the fire the other night? He was the one told me about that warehouse being' full of nicked gear, like. No point being anonymous if you're dead.' Logan groaned. He'd forgotten all about Graham Bloody Kennedy - he still hadn't told DI Insch about him. One more thing he'd screwed up. 'Why the hell didn
't you tell me all this on Wednesday?'

  'Didnae know you was holdin' a grudge.' He paused, coffee halfway to his lips. 'Oops, gotta dash, that's my half ten appointment turned up.' He pointed through the bar, up the stairs to the middle level, where a dangerous-looking man in an expensive charcoal-grey suit was scowling at an OAP in an Aberdeen Football Club bobble hat. 'Who's the thug?' asked Logan. 'He's no' a thug, Laz, he's a "corporate investment facilitator" and if he hears you callin' him a thug, he'll break your legs. Policeman or no'.' Miller forced a smile. 'If you don't hear from me tomorrow, start dredging the harbour.' He waved, gave a hearty hello, marched up and shook the 'facilitator's' hand, then led him off to a quiet corner. Logan watched them for a while, his breakfast congealing, forgotten on the plate. Miller was smiling a lot, laughing more than was probably necessary. As if he was doing his damnedest not to upset the man in the grey suit. The thug was easily six foot two, short blond hair, square-cut jaw, teeth straight out of a toothpaste commercial. Five minutes later the man handed over a large brown A4 envelope and Miller smiled ingratiatingly, but handled it like it was a dirty nappy. The conversation seemed to be winding to a close, so Logan got up from his seat and wandered over to the specials board, placing himself between their table and the exit, 'accidentally' bumping into the man as he finished shaking Miller's hand and made to leave. The reporter's eyes went wide with alarm as he watched Logan apologize profusely, call the facilitator 'mate' half a dozen times and offer to buy him a drink. The response was a curt: 'Fuck off.' Not shouted. Not emphasized, just quiet, cold and very, very clear. Logan backed away, hands up. Those two words were enough to tell him the guy wasn't from around here. An Edinburgh lad, up on a jolly. The man straightened out his suit, scowled in Logan's direction and left. Miller stood on tiptoes, watching the grey-suited figure