‘Erm, no offence, Sarge, but maybe we should take a pool car instead?’
Logan glowered at him. ‘Oh … shut up.’
A patrol car sat outside Ravendale’s main door, sideways, taking up four parking spaces. Logan pulled up next to it in his groaning growling squeal-and-rattle Audi. Switching off the engine was a bit like a mercy killing.
Soon as he hauled on the handbrake, Tufty was out, scurrying around to the boot, phone clamped to his ear. ‘I know, but according to the Many-Worlds theory, you were already awake in a parallel universe, so it’s not that bad is it?’
He held the phone away from his ear, grimacing as Logan walked around to the boot and popped the lid. Tufty helped himself to one of the stabproof vests – scrrretching a Velcro side panel open. ‘No, Sarge … Yes, Sarge … Sorry, Sarge. But Inspector McRae says—’ His eyes widened and pink rushed up his cheeks as he wriggled into his vest. ‘I’m not telling him that, Sarge!’
Tufty grabbed a utility belt and Logan thunked the boot shut again – headed for reception.
‘No, Sarge …’ Phone pinned between his ear and his epaulettes as he followed, hooking himself into the belt. ‘Yes … OK … It’s not my fault! I’m only—’
Logan grabbed Tufty’s mobile, talking into it as he pushed through the main doors. ‘Listen up: I want a nationwide manhunt organised. Alert every station in the country, ports, airports, bus stations, motorway service stations, and everything in between. Now get your hairy backside out of bed and into DHQ, you useless sack of cat jobbies!’ He handed the phone back. ‘Don’t let Rennie bully you.’
All the colour vanished from Tufty’s cheeks. ‘Yeah … That’s not Sergeant Rennie on the phone, it’s DS Steel.’
Oh sod.
Still, too late now. ‘Tell her to get her arse in gear, then.’
It wasn’t the usual bland grey-and-beige man behind the reception desk – he’d been replaced by an older lady in a brown cardigan and oversized spectacles, fussing over a big lump of a man in a nurse’s uniform. Holding an ice pack to his forehead as he squirmed.
His right arm was in a sling, the fingers poking out the end like mouldy sausages, all purple and swollen. He was working on a pretty stunning pair of black eyes too.
No sign of whoever turned up in the badly parked patrol car.
Logan marched over to the desk and nodded at Nurse Black Eyes. ‘Are you the one who called it in?’
Black Eyes had barely got his mouth open before Granny Cardigan jumped in. ‘Naw, that was me. Heard crying and banging coming from the linen cupboard and thought one of our residents had got a bit lost.’
‘I wasn’t crying, I was calling for—’
‘Key was snapped off in the lock. Had to kick the door in.’ She didn’t look capable of kicking the skin off a bowl of custard, so God alone knew how she’d managed that. ‘And there he was.’
‘I wasn’t crying!’
Logan took out his notebook. ‘Did you see who took Gary Lochhead?’
The black eyes narrowed. ‘Oh I saw her all right. She—’
‘It was that Mary Sievewright. Can you believe it?’
The nurse turned a squinty glower at her. ‘Can I tell—’
‘She was such a nice wee thing when she worked here. Never said boo to a duck.’
Wait a minute: ‘Mary Sievewright? Who’s Mary—’
‘She hit me!’ Black Eyes slapped Granny Cardigan’s hand away and she lowered the ice pack, revealing a round circle of red, about the size of a golf ball, bruised into the skin between his bloodshot eyes. ‘Could’ve fractured my skull!’
Tufty wandered over, stuffing his phone into his pocket. ‘DS Steel’s on her way, Sarge. So’s Sergeant Rennie.’
Logan nodded at him. ‘Have you heard of a Mary Sievewright?’
‘Sievewright?’ Tufty pulled his phone out again and poked at it. ‘Sievewright, Sievewright … Yup. Mary Sievewright’s one of her social media aliases.’ He handed it to Logan.
A Facebook page filled the screen. The username might have been ‘MARY SIEVEWRIGHT’ but the profile pic was definitely Mhari Powell, only blonde and wearing glasses.
Tufty pointed at his phone. ‘Alt-Brit-Nat account. Very sweary.’
‘Sweary?’ Granny Cardigan pulled her chin in. ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound like our Mary at all. She made a lovely sticky toffee pudding.’
A harrumph from Nurse Black Eyes. ‘Bet I’ve got concussion now.’
Logan showed him the profile pic. ‘This her?’
‘Bitch. She snuck up on me! Otherwise …’ He mimed strangling someone.
Yeah, he looked the type.
Logan turned the phone’s screen so Granny Cardigan could see it. ‘I need her employment records.’
46
PC Guthrie leaned against the wall of Gary Lochhead’s room, hands tucked into the armholes of his stabproof vest. Smiling like a cheerful potato, with a number two haircut and a big sex-offender moustache in various shades of grey. ‘She got in through the fire door down the corridor.’
‘Hmm …’ Logan flipped through Mary Sievewright’s file again. No disciplinary notes, always on time for work, excellent rating for her six-month appraisal.
‘The duty nurse keeps the alarm turned off so he can sneak out for a,’ Guthrie gave Logan a knowing wink, ‘“cigarette” whenever he fancies. She nicks a wheelchair and bashes Mr Nursey on the forehead with the heel of her knife.’
Top marks on the internal training courses. Commendation for saving a resident’s life by administering CPR.
Guthrie sniffed. ‘He’s lucky she didn’t use the stabby end.’
Logan stared at him and he shrugged.
‘No offence, Guv.’
‘Mhari’s face has been on every news broadcast and front page for days. How come Nurse Black Eyes didn’t recognise her?’
‘Nurse …? Ah, OK, you mean the dick with the broken arm. There’s a very good reason for that: he works nights and is a bit thick.’
Tufty appeared in the doorway and gave Guthrie a wee wave. ‘Hey, Al.’ Then slouched over. ‘I did a search for “Mary Sievewright”: no criminal record and the address she gave the care home is a rental bedsit in Stoneywood.’ He pulled a face. ‘The current tenant was not chuffed with me phoning at ten past five in the morning.’
‘Current tenant?’
‘Been there two months.’
Logan closed the file. ‘So about the same time Mhari stopped working here.’
‘Yup. It’s like she adopts a new persona every time she needs something, then ditches it and moves on to the next. Well, except online. She collects those.’
Hmmm …
On the other side of Gary Lochhead’s window, through the chain-link fence, Aberdeen Airport was winding up for its first flight of the day. Wee trucks bumbling about, people in high-viz doing their best to look busy. Logan watched a couple of them manoeuvre what had to be a fuel tanker alongside a 747. ‘Why would Mhari abduct her own father?’
Guthrie held up a finger. ‘Ah, but maybe she doesn’t know he’s her dad.’
‘Bit of a coincidence if she doesn’t.’
‘Ooh!’ Tufty’s turn. ‘Maybe it’s an escape attempt?’
Behind them, someone cleared their throat. Everyone turned to face the door.
Nurse Black Eyes stood there, with his ice pack, sling, and scowl. ‘Janice wants to know if you want tea or coffee. Like I’m a sodding tea boy.’ He tucked the ice pack under his arm and fingered the lump growing between his eyes. ‘And it can’t have been an escape, cos there’s nothing to escape from. Gary Lochhead’s free to go at any point – he’s not being detained here, it’s palliative care. At the taxpayer’s expense, by the way.’
Interesting. ‘How palliative is palliative?’
‘If he’s not snuggled down in his coffin by next week, it’ll be the week after. I’ve seen enough OAPs kick the bin to know “end-stage” when I see it.’
Heartless little sod.
Logan gave him a cold smile. ‘In that case, we’ll have two teas and a coffee. Milk in all three, two sugars in the coffee. And see if you can rustle up a packet of biscuits, eh? Constable Guthrie is partial to Jaffa Cakes.’
The scowl deepened, then Black Eyes turned and stomped off. ‘Like I’m a sodding tea boy; I’m badly injured here …’
Tufty puffed out his cheeks. ‘Nice to see compassion is alive and well in the private healthcare sector.’
A nod from Guthrie. ‘Told you the man’s a dick.’
Logan waved a finger around the room. ‘You searched all this yet?’
‘Not so much as a porn mag under the mattress, Guv. That’s the problem with the internet, it’s killed the joy of discovering unexpected boobs, willies, and exciting combinations thereof.’
Damn.
Logan did a slow three-sixty: door, en suite shower room, bedside locker, hospital bed, visitors’ chairs, wheelie-table thing, window, and last, but not least, Gary Lochhead’s painting of that recumbent stone circle. ‘What about this? Did you search it?’
‘Funny you should say that, Guv,’ all innocent, ‘but I was just about to when you came in.’
‘I’ll bet you were.’ He reached up and unhooked the painting from the wall.
Nothing hidden behind it. So he turned it the other way around. Nothing tucked into the frame either. ‘LOUDON WOOD STONE CIRCLE’ was printed on the bare canvas in black Sharpie, above Gary Lochhead’s signature, a Saint Andrew’s cross, the word ‘BARLINNIE’, and ‘4TH MAY 2016’ – presumably the date it was painted. So no sodding use at all.
Worth a try.
Logan hung it on the wall again.
Guthrie raised an eyebrow. ‘No porn?’
‘If you’re Mhari Powell, and you’ve abducted your terminally ill father, where do you take him?’
‘Ah, now you’re asking.’ A big happy potato smile. ‘I’ve always fancied going back to Padova.’ Sigh. ‘There’s this wee restaurant, Corte dei Leoni, does a gnocchi in salsa di formaggio that’s—’
Tufty hit him. ‘Meanwhile, in the real world: Gary Lochhead’s dying, right? Maybe he wants to do it somewhere special? Maybe that’s why Mhari got him out of here? I mean, most people want to die at home, right? Only he can’t, because he doesn’t have one any more, but maybe …’
There was something about the painting. Not just the colours, or the light. Something special.
‘Sarge?’
Otherwise why would Gary Lochhead keep it there all these years?
Tufty tugged on his arm. ‘If you like it, don’t think anyone would mind if we took it in as evidence.’
A nod from Guthrie. ‘It’s pretty good, really. Not Gustav Klimt good, but as paintings go?’
‘Ooh, it’d look great in the incident room! DHQ could do with a bit of brightening up.’
All these months, lying there looking up at a painting he’d done years ago in a Glasgow prison.
‘Sarge? Earth to Planet Sarge? Come in, Planet Sarge.’
Logan turned and grabbed Tufty by the shoulders. ‘You, my geeky little friend, are a genius!’
Tufty stuck his arms in the air. ‘Yay!’ Then lowered them as Logan barged out through the door. ‘Wait, what did I do this time?’
Logan’s Audi roared and spluttered its way across Dyce, the siren sounding as if it was trapped underwater. Only one of the blues worked, flickering off and on like a demented Christmas tree as they made for the nearest on-ramp to join the ring road.
Tufty fiddled with his phone, tongue poking out the side of his mouth as he clicked and scrolled. At least it kept him quiet, which was more than you could say about Steel.
Her voice groaned through the hands-free kit. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘I know it’s a stretch, but—’
‘I only got into the sodding office two minutes ago – after about an hour’s sleep, by the way, thank you very much – and you want me to go out again? I’m organising a major buggering womanhunt here!’
He threw the Audi around the roundabout. Accelerating out of it in the gravelly growl of a broken exhaust pipe. ‘It’s not—’
‘And Rennie’s getting me a coffee. Can I at least drink my coffee?’
‘Mhari’s been building up to something and she needs a big finale. Her “Wallace”.’
The dual carriageway lay empty in front of them as the speedometer crept up to seventy, the engine sounding like a slow-motion explosion in a tuba factory. The steering wheel juddering in Logan’s hands.
‘Aye, and what about backup? You remember what happened last time? Assuming this isn’t all some huge spud-funting waste of time.’
She’d walked right into that one.
‘Well, since you’re volunteering: sort out a firearms team, dog unit, OSU, and everything else you can get out to Loudon Wood Stone Circle. And do it quick: we’re on our way there now.’
‘Oh, in the name of God’s sharny—’
He poked the ‘END CALL’ button before she could get going.
‘Err, Sarge?’ Tufty waved at him from the passenger seat. ‘Shouldn’t we get King’s team involved too? They’ve kinda got a vested interest.’
True.
‘Go on then.’
Tufty took out his phone and dialled. ‘Sergeant Gallacher? It’s Tufty.’ A pause as he smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I do know what time it is, thanks.’
The needle nudged eighty and the noise got worse. With any luck the car would make it as far as Loudon Wood before the engine managed to eat itself …
The sky shone a brilliant blue as they hammered up the A90.
‘Sarge?’ Tufty poked away at his phone, face all scrunched up. ‘I has a worry that this stone circle is going to be an absolute bumhole to find. All the websites say it’s buried away in the woods.’
‘If Mhari can find it, we can find it.’
Traffic was getting heavier, as the morning commute from Ellon to Aberdeen kicked off. All those lucky sods who didn’t have to be at work till six, when Logan was still there from seven o’clock the previous sodding morning.
‘Yeah, but what if we get lost in the woods, Hansel and Gretel style?’
‘You’ve got GPS on your phone, you idiot.’
‘I know that. But it’s the woods. And it’s dark. And in the middle of nowhere. And there’s probably Druids lurking with sickles waiting to sacrifice nubile young police officers to the ancient bloodthirsty gods.’
Logan overtook a bread van. ‘Thought you said it was two minutes outside Mintlaw?’
‘That just means the Druids have a shorter commute.’
Mind you, the proximity to Mintlaw wasn’t a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all. ‘Traffic Unit’s based there – give them a call and see if they’ll lend us some officers. They’ve got to have someone on nightshift.’
‘Okeydoke.’ He pressed the button on his Airwave. ‘Control? Can you put me through to whoever’s in charge of the Divisional Road Policing Unit nightshift?’
A bored voice crackled out of the handset’s speaker. ‘Connecting you now.’
It was replaced by a wailing siren overlaid on the sound of a racing engine and a woman shouting over their combined racket. ‘THAT YOU, TUFTY?’
‘Sergeant North? Dude! Well, Lady-Dude. Er … I mean: safe to talk?’
‘NOT HUGELY, CHASING A BMW ON THE A947 NORTH OF FYVIE. MAN’S DOING NINETY!’
‘Have you got anyone we could borrow? We need to chase down a murder suspect in the woods outside Mintlaw.’
‘GOT ONE CAR IN PETERHEAD, AND THE OTHER’S IN PORTSOY. WHICH WOODS?’
‘Loudon.’
The racing engine noises got louder. ‘LEAVE IT WITH ME. GOTTA GO!’
‘Thanks, Sarge.’
But she’d already hung up.
Tufty let go of his Airwave and grimaced at Logan. ‘No way they’re going to get to us in time. Not from Peterhead, Portsoy, and Fyvie.’
Logan tightened his grip on the shuddering wheel. ‘The
n it’s you and me, isn’t it?’
‘In the woods. With the Druids.’
47
The Audi made a gurgling, grinding noise as Logan wrestled it along the twisting road, west out of Mintlaw. Sheep and barley – caught in the early morning sunshine – no longer streaked past the car windows, because no matter how hard he tried, the damn thing wouldn’t go faster than forty any more.
Tufty hunched over his phone, staring at the map. ‘Soon …’
Great chunks of Forestry Commission pines marched across the landscape, curling over the hilltops or standing in gloomy regiments – breaking up the patchwork blanket of fields.
Heather’s voice fizzed and crackled out of the car’s speakers. ‘About a mile south of Ellon, blues-and-twos all the way.’
‘Thanks, H.’
Tufty pointed through the windscreen at a road sign not-so-rapidly approaching on the left-hand side of the road. ‘SKILLYMARNO’, ‘STRICHEN’, ‘WHITE COW WOOD FOREST WALKS’, ‘WHITE COW WOOD CAIRN’, and most importantly: ‘LOUDEN WOOD STONE CIRCLE 2 ½’.
The wee lad bounced in the passenger seat. ‘There! Take a right.’
Logan stamped on the brakes and threw the Audi around the turn. Tyres squealing. Something clanging ominously under the bonnet as if it was in the process of falling off.
‘Guv? DI King, is he …?’
Good question. ‘They’re doing everything they can.’
‘OK. Well, then, it’s up to us, isn’t it?’ One of the chunks of forestry pines loomed up on the right. ‘Guv? If you see her – don’t let her get away this time. Run her over if you have to. But she spends the rest of her life in jail.’ There was a pause. ‘And take a care, OK?’
‘We’ll do our best.’ He ended the call.
Tufty looked up from his phone. ‘Not far now.’
The road twisted and turned, skirting the edge of the woods.
‘OK, Sarge, should be a right coming up … there!’
Logan slammed on the brakes again and the Audi slithered past the entrance to a dirt-and-gravel track down the side of a converted bungalow. He stuck it in reverse, getting a horrible grinding noise for his trouble before the gears finally meshed. Front nose dipping as he wheeched backwards. Then into first again to ease around onto the track. Killing the gurgling siren and what was left of the lights.
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