‘Well they better not ask me to give the old cow’s going away speech. You’ve heard her “opinions” on gay rights. Honestly, that woman can—’
‘Joe …’ Una swallowed and tried again, but her voice still sounded like she was sitting on a washing machine approaching the spin cycle. ‘Call the police, Joe. Call the police now!’
3
Bloody stairs.
Logan lumbered his way up them, peaked cap tucked under one arm, his cardboard-box-full-of-stuff in the other – a spider plant sticking its green fronds out of the open flaps.
They hadn’t updated the official Police Scotland motivational posters on the landing while he was away. Oh, they’d mixed things up a bit with a handful of new memos; regulations; guidelines; and ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?’ posters; but there was no getting away from ‘OUR VALUES’; ‘RESPECT’; and that beardy bloke in his high-viz and his hat, standing in front of the Forth Bridge, looking about as comfortable as a cucumber in a pervert’s sandwich shop: ‘INTEGRITY’.
Two doors led off the landing, one on either side.
Logan stopped in front of the one marked ‘PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS’, straightened his epaulettes, took a deep breath and—
The door banged open and a chunky bloke with sergeant’s stripes burst out, lurching to a halt about six inches from a collision. He flashed a wide grin, showing off a golden tooth, then stuck out a signet-ringed hand for shaking, the other signet-ringed hand holding the door open behind him. ‘The prodigal inspector returns! How’s the …’ He mimed stabbing someone. ‘You know?’
Logan shook the hand and did his best to smile. ‘Leonard. Your kids well?’
‘Rabid weasels would make less mess.’ A sniff. ‘Need a hand with that?’ He reached out and took Logan’s box off him, gesturing with it towards the open door. ‘Looking forward to your first day back at the Fun Factory?’
Not even vaguely.
‘Yeah … Something like that.’
Another grin. ‘Deep breath.’
Logan did just that, then stepped through into the main office. Sunlight flooded the open-plan room. Meeting rooms and cupboards took up one side, with cubicled workstations filling the remaining space. A squealing laser printer, more of those motivational posters, only this lot were ‘personalised’ with sarcastic speech balloons cut from Post-it notes.
Every desk was populated, more officers bustling about, the muted sound of telephone conversations.
Wow. ‘OK …’
Ballantine’s mouth pulled wide and down, keeping his voice low. ‘I know, right? We’re helping our beloved Police Investigations and Review Commissioner look into a couple of Strathclyde’s more recent high-profile cock-ups. And on top of that we’ve got a home-grown botched raid in Ellon that ended up with a geography teacher having a heart attack; and a fatal RTC in Tillydrone last night.’ A grimace. ‘High-speed pursuit between an unmarked car and a drug dealer on a moped. Wasn’t wearing a helmet, so you can guess what’s left of his head.’ Then Ballantine boomed it out to the whole room: ‘Guys, look who it is!’
They all turned and stared. Smiling broke out in the ranks, accompanied by shouted greetings, ‘Guv!’, ‘Logan!’, ‘Heeeero! Heeeero!’, ‘McRae!’, ‘Welcome back!’, and ‘You owe me a fiver!’
Logan gave them a small wave. ‘Morning.’
A matronly woman marched out of a side office, her superintendent’s pips shining in the sunlight. Her chin-length grey bob wasn’t quite long enough to hide the handcuff earrings dangling from her lobes. A warm smile. Twinkly eyes, lurking behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. She popped her fists onto her hips. ‘All right!’ Her full-strength Kiwi accent cut through the chatter like a chainsaw. ‘That’s enough rowdiness for one day. Back to work, you lot.’
Her smile widened as she raised a hand. ‘Inspector McRae, can I see you in my office please?’
Great. Didn’t even get to unpack his box.
Logan followed her inside, past the little brass sign on the door with ‘SUPT. JULIE BEVAN’ on it.
The room was surprisingly homey, with framed pictures of an orange stripy cat; photos of Bevan and what were probably her children, going by the resemblance, in front of London and Sydney landmarks. But pride of place was given to a big frame containing a faded photo of an ancient green-and-white car and what looked like a speeding ticket. The usual assortment of beige filing cabinets played home to a variety of pot plants and a grubby crocheted elephant with its button eyes hanging off.
Bevan settled behind her desk. She was probably aiming for encouraging, but there was no disguising the note of disappointment in her voice: ‘Inspector McRae, I appreciate that it must be a shock to the system, having to get up in the morning after a year recuperating at home, but I really need all my officers to be here at the start of the working day.
Yeah …
Logan eased himself into one of the two visitors’ chairs. ‘You emailed me yesterday and told me not to come in till twelve. It’s eleven fifteen, so I’m actually forty-five minutes early.’
Bevan raised her eyebrows. ‘Did I? Oh …’ Another smile, then she set her grey bob wobbling with a shake of her head. ‘Right, well, let’s say no more about it, then.’ She sat back, watching him. ‘I know we’ve not worked together before, Logan, but I’m sure we’ll get along famously. Superintendent Doig spoke very highly of you in his handover notes.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘Lovely man.’ She pursed her lips and did a bit more Logan watching. ‘As you can see, this is a very busy time for us. I’ve had to draft in support from N Division, so I’m afraid your desk is currently unavailable. Sorry.’
It wasn’t easy not to sigh at that.
Her smile reappeared. ‘But not to worry! I have something nice and straightforward to ease you back into the swing of things.’ Bevan reached for her Pending tray and pulled out a file. ‘I believe Sergeant Rennie used to be your assistant before you were … injured?’
‘Only if I didn’t move fast enough to—’
‘A fine officer. Credit to the team. I can’t spare Rennie from his ongoing cases at the moment, so you’ll be flying solo on this one.’ She slid the file across the table towards him. ‘I’m sure you’ll be fine. After all, you didn’t win a Queen’s Medal for being the station cat, did you?’
Nope, he got it for being an idiot.
Logan accepted the folder with a nod. ‘Thank you, … Boss?’
‘Julie. Please.’
Oh, great: she was one of those.
‘Right.’
‘One more thing.’ Bevan dipped into her Pending tray again, only this time it produced a biro and a birthday card with a teddy bear on it. ‘It’s Shona’s birthday tomorrow, so if you can write something nice in there and don’t forget to bring a plate.’
Logan opened the card. The inside was liberally scrawled with various ball-point wishes and indecipherable signatures. ‘A plate?’
‘I’m making my famous lemon drizzle cake; Karl’s doing his Thai fishcakes, which are super yummy; Rennie’s bringing doughnuts; I think Marlon’s doing devilled eggs. What’s your speciality?’
‘Erm …’ Phoning for takeaway probably didn’t count. ‘I burn a lot of sausages on the barbecue?’
‘Excellent. Then you can bring a plate of those.’
‘OK …’ The pen had ‘BOFFA MISKELL’ printed on it, which sounded like some obscene sexual practice. He clicked out the end, wrote ‘ONE DAY, YOU’LL BEAT THAT PRINTER INTO SUBMISSION!’ and signed it.
‘Thanks.’ Bevan took the card and pen back and consigned them to ‘Pending’ again. ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got review boards to organise.’ She pulled her keyboard over and poked at it, frowning at the screen.
‘Right.’ Logan stood. Picked up the file. ‘I’ll go and …’ He pointed over his shoulder, but she didn’t look up. ‘OK.’
You are dismissed.
Bloody stairs. Again.
Logan limped down them, phone pressed to
his ear, trying not to be too overwhelmed with the view out the stairwell windows. It would take a hardy soul not to be moved by the arse-end of Bucksburn station and the car park hiding behind it. A faint heat haze lifting off the vehicles as they slowly roasted in the sun.
Ringing, and ringing, and finally someone picked up: ‘Operation Overcharge?’
Overcharge? Whoever was running the random word generator for naming investigations needed a kick up the bumhole.
‘Hi, I need to speak to DI King.’
There was a pause, then, ‘Can I ask who’s calling?’ The voice was sort of familiar: a Yorkshire burr, starting to warp under the strain of talking to Aberdonians all day.
‘Logan McRae.’
‘Oh.’ Another pause. Then a touch of panic joined the accent blender. ‘Erm … Inspector, didn’t know y’ were back. Feeling better?’
‘Detective Constable Way?’ Logan kept lumbering downwards.
‘We was all worried about you, you know, after the stabbing.’
‘Where is he, Milky?’ Logan pushed through the doors at the bottom of the stairs, into a bland corridor lined with offices and yet more sodding motivational posters.
‘Where’s who?’
‘DI King!’
‘Oh, right. Yes. Erm … You know, it’s a funny thing, but he’s just this minute run out door on an urgent job.’
What a shock. ‘And when will he be back?’
Logan stepped outside. The car park smothered in the heat of a far too sunny day – its surface sticky beneath his boots, the air thick with the scent of hot tarmac and frying dust. He screwed his eyes half shut as the sun drove red-hot nails into them. God, it was more like Death Valley out here than Bucksburn. ‘Milky?
‘Erm …’
Typical: soon as Professional Standards started asking questions, everyone developed amnesia.
‘OK, where’s DI King going, then?’
‘Erm …’
‘And bear in mind I can just call Control and check. Then come pay you a visit.’
‘Oh that DI King! Yes, course, I’ve yon address right here. You got a pen?’
Gorse and broom lined the road, their yellow flowers boiling like flames above the reaching branches. Beyond the conflagration lay swathes of green, carved into an irregular patchwork by drystane dykes. The hills on either side thick with Scots pine, beech, and fir.
All of it slipping past the windows of Logan’s Audi.
A cheery voice brayed out of the radio, trampling all over the tail-end of a song. ‘How does that set you up for a sunny Tuesday? Great. We’ve got Saucy Suzy coming up at twelve, but before that here’s a quick traffic update for you: the B999 Pitmedden to Tarves road is closed following a fire at the Kipperie Burn Garden Centre. So look out for diversions.’
A burst of drums and the howl of guitars started up in the background.
‘Now, here’s Savage Season with their new one, “The Wrecker”. Take it away, boys!’
The road twisted around to the right, revealing a cluster of manky outbuildings in the process of being converted, and a manky farmhouse in the process of being managed as a crime scene.
A throaty voice growled over the music:
‘Darkness deep and thoughts so wild, it’s—’
Logan switched the radio off and pulled onto the wide gravel driveway.
The Scene Examiners’ grubby white Transit sat right outside the farmhouse, next to an unmarked grey Vauxhall pool car, a Volvo in shades of rust and gastroenteritis brown; and a perky little red Fiat.
He parked next to it, grabbed his hat, and climbed out into … Holy mother of fish.
The burning air caught in his throat, wrapped itself around his Police Scotland uniform, and tried to grind him into the ground.
Bees bumbled their way between the flowering weeds that lined the drive, hoverflies buzzing amongst the thunderheads, house martins reenacting the Battle of Britain – jinking and swooping and diving, while a clatter of jackdaws looked on from the farmhouse roof.
Logan pulled on his hat and limped for the front door.
It wasn’t locked. Or even guarded, come to that.
Which was a bit lax.
He stepped into a dusty hallway, the walls punctuated by dusty photos in dusty frames, between dusty bookshelves stuffed with dusty books. A half-dozen doors led off the hall, most of them open. A staircase leading up, with dusty piles of yet more books at the outside edge of every tread.
The clicker-flash of cameras burst out from one of the doorways, into the hall. Logan paused at the threshold and peered inside.
It was a kitchen, full of yet more books. Stacks and stacks of them. Newspapers too. And a manky bin-bag-left-in-the-sun kind of smell. Two figures, one short and pregnant, one tall and broad, both in full SOC get-up, busied themselves around the kitchen table, taking photos and swabs. Fingerprint powder greyed nearly every other surface.
They’d rigged up a half-hearted barricade by stretching a line of yellow-and-black ‘CRIME SCENE – DO NOT CROSS’ tape across the doorway.
Logan waved at them. ‘Hello?’
The pregnant one looked up from her DNA sampling, features obscured by a facemask and safety goggles. ‘You’re back at work then?’
‘Apparently. DI King about?’
The smile vanished from her voice. ‘His Majesty is swanning about somewhere. If you find him, tell him we’re out of here in twenty. Got other, more important crime scenes to deal with.’
‘Thanks, Shirley.’ Logan carried on down the corridor, past the stairs, past the bookshelves and their dust-furred books – ninety percent of which seemed to be Scottish history with the occasional Mills & Boon thrown in.
A clipped voice came from a room off to one side, as if every word was being throttled to stop it screaming, emphasising the Highland burr. ‘No, Gwen, I didn’t. And you repeating it over and over doesn’t make it true.’
Logan stepped into the doorway of a cluttered study, lined with yet more overflowing bookshelves. One wall was devoted to a cluster of framed photos – proper full-size head-and-shoulder jobs – each one depicting a different grey-muzzled Jack Russell terrier. And crammed in, between everything else, were newspaper clippings, stuck to the wallpaper with thumbtacks. A desk sat in front of the room’s only window, piled high with papers, three monitors hovering above it on hydraulic arms. An ashtray as packed with dog-ends as the bookcases were with books.
And in the middle of all this stood a man in his shirtsleeves. A bit overweight, his swept-back blond hair a bit higher on his forehead, the dimple in his chin a bit more squished up by the fat that gathered along his jawline. Big arms, though, as if he used to be a prizefighter who’d let himself go after one too many blows to the head. His silk tie hung at half-mast and his bright-blue shirt came with dark patches under the arms.
His features creased, as if whoever he was on the phone with had just stabbed him in the ear. ‘No … Because I’m working, Gwen. You remember what that’s like? … Yes.’ Then a longer pause. ‘Yes.’ A from-the-bottom-of-your-socks sigh. ‘I don’t know: later. OK. Bye.’
He hung up and ran a hand over his face.
‘DI King?’ Logan knocked on the door frame. ‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’
King smoothed himself down, slipped his phone into his pocket, and forced a smile. ‘Inspector McRae. Thought you were still off on the sick?’
‘I get that a lot. So … Missing constitutional scholar?’
‘Can we skip the foreplay, please? You’re not here about Professor Wilson – the call only came in an hour ago, not enough time for anyone to have screwed something up.’ King popped an extra-strong mint in his mouth, crunching as he talked. ‘So come on, Mr Professional Standards, what am I supposed to have done wrong?’
Logan wandered in, hands behind his back as he frowned his way along the articles pinned to the wall. The headlines all followed the same theme: ‘SCOTLAND IS SETTING ITSELF UP TO FAIL.’, ‘RISE UP AND BE THE FAILURE AGA
IN.’, ‘WHY THE SCOTS NEED THE UK MORE THAN IT NEEDS THEM.’…
He nodded at them. ‘Looks like the Professor was a man of strong opinions.’
‘The man’s a Brit-Nat tosser. If he thinks Scotland’s so crap, why doesn’t he move back to Shropshire?’
‘Interesting you should say that …’
King stood there, being aftershavey.
Logan skimmed the nearest bookshelf. The whole thing was dedicated to volumes on economic theory and political science. ‘It’s a bit overkill, isn’t it? This is a simple missing person case, wouldn’t have thought it warranted a full-blown Detective Inspector. Especially not one as esteemed as yourself.’
King folded his arms. Chest out. ‘OK, what’s this all about?’
‘Just wondering why they sent you.’
‘When Professor Wilson’s colleague reported him missing at eleven-oh-two this morning, she told Control the kitchen was covered in blood. We thought it might be serious.’
‘Ah. That clears it up.’
A sigh. ‘And it’s politics. He’s been having a go in the media about our handling of these White-Settler arson attacks. Says we’re complacent. Says we don’t care about Alt-Nats burning out English businesses. The brass don’t want anyone saying we didn’t take his disappearance seriously.’ Another extra-strong mint disappeared between King’s crunching teeth. ‘And you still haven’t answered the question.’
‘Alt-Nats?’
‘You know how the Alt-Right is full of white supremacists, gun nuts, racists, and neo-Nazis? Well, Alt-Nats are our own home-grown version. Only without the guns and Nazis. And it’s the English they hate.’
Strange the things you missed being off on the sick for a year.
Logan shook his head. ‘Makes you proud to be Scottish, doesn’t it?’
‘You see “Alt” in front of anything these days, you know what you’re getting: Arrogant Lowbrow Tossers.’ All said without the slightest hint of a smile.
‘Teaching my granny to suck eggs, I know, but have you tried the hospitals? Maybe Professor Wilson cut himself and rushed off to accident and emergency?’
‘Don’t be daft, of course we checked. Besides, that’s his manky Volvo outside, how was he going to get there, fly?’
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