Rennie slumped over, face turned down at the edges, phone still clutched in his hand. ‘Guv? That was Control. The hospital say DI King passed away half an hour ago.’
Mhari looked up at Logan again. ‘Told you: you should be thanking me.’ She bared her teeth at Steel. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll save my voice for my lawyer.’
Logan pulled into the kerb, the Audi coughing and spluttering like a sixty-a-day man. Half the dashboard was dark, and the bitter smell of roasting plastic oozed out through the blowers. When he turned the key, the engine kept going for a couple of seconds, before finally grinding to a halt.
He sat there, both hands on the wheel.
The road was one long line of granite tenements, broken up by modern flats. Some sort of builder’s merchant on the other side, its yard full of bricks and racks of timber.
Black wires were draped across the front of King’s building, like an unconvincing combover, trying to hide the dirt-streaked stone and failing.
King’s flat was up there – second floor right – the windows ablaze with sunlight.
Deep breath.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Steel sighed and put a hand on his knee. ‘You want me to go in and tell her?’
Yes.
‘No. I should do it.’ He tried for a smile. ‘You stay here and look after the loon.’ Hooking a thumb over his shoulder.
‘Hmmm?’ Tufty didn’t look up from this phone, completely absorbed in whatever he was fiddling with.
Logan reached for his peaked cap, turning it in his hands. ‘It all went so horribly wrong.’
‘Aye. But look on the bright side: we caught Mhari Powell, or whoever the hell she really is, we saved—’
‘Ooh! Ooh!’ Tufty bounced in his seat. ‘I does has a result!’
Steel glowered over her shoulder. ‘Shut yer yap, Spongebob Crappants, the grown-ups are talking.’ She frowned at Logan. ‘Where was I? Oh, aye: we saved—’
‘No look, look!’ He poked his phone between the front seats, screen angled so they could see it. ‘Sergeant Wartynose, from Northumbria Police, has been to see the real Mhari Powell. He showed her fake Mhari’s photo and she recognised her!’
Steel snatched the phone from his hand and squinted at the screen. ‘Why have you got the font so small, how’s anyone supposed to read this?’
Tufty rolled his eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘Turns out our Mhari shared a flat with the real one years ago, when they were both training to be psychiatric nurses. Called herself “Margaret Lochleat” in those days. Apparently she was kinda obsessive and, I quote, “a bit of a weirdo”. Which is putting it mildly, given what we caught her doing.’ A grin. ‘See? I said that, didn’t I? I said she’d probably been—’
‘Blah, blah, blah.’ Steel tossed the phone over her shoulder – Tufty scrambling to catch it before it landed.
‘Hey!’
She turned to Logan again. ‘As I was saying, before I was so moronically interrupted: we caught her, we saved Gary Lochhead, and we recovered about …’ She pursed her lips. ‘About four hundred grand’s worth of stolen gold bullion? And you didn’t get stabbed this time. So I’m going to call it a win.’
Logan stared up at King’s flat again. ‘Then why does it feel like I’ve let everyone down?’
She gave his leg another squeeze. ‘Come on, we’ll get this done then head down The Questionable Gentleman for a huge fry-up and all the Stella you can drink.’
‘Can’t. The paperwork alone is—’
‘The paperwork can wait. You’ve been on since seven yesterday morning, Laz. Twenty-six and a bit hours. You did your best. Don’t make me be nice to you.’
He nodded and climbed into the morning sun.
Its heat wrapped itself around him, squeezing the air out of his lungs, pushing down on his shoulders like a heavy weight. Someone had propped the tenement’s door open with a bicycle, so he didn’t have to buzz. Instead he stepped inside and trudged up the stairs to the second floor. Stopped on the landing and straightened his uniform. Tucked his peaked cap under his arm. Shoulders back, chest out, like a police officer. Raised a hand to knock on the door, then stopped …
Voices inside. Too muffled to make out what they were saying, but one of them definitely sounded familiar. A man. His tone cheerful, even happy.
Well that was about to change. Delivering a death message tended to spoil the mood.
Logan knocked.
Took another deep breath. Rehearsing it: I’m very sorry, Mrs King, but I’m afraid I have some bad news. Can I come in?
Didn’t matter how often he did it, it always felt like ripping someone’s heart out.
Mrs King? My name’s Logan McRae, I work with your husband. I’m afraid I have some bad—
The door swung open and there was Detective Chief Inspector Hardie. A bit pink in the cheeks. Smile fading on his face as he stared at Logan. He cleared his throat. ‘Inspector McRae.’
Logan blinked. ‘I … came to deliver the death message.’
‘Yes, well, I’ve already done that, so you can—’
‘Stephen?’ An English accent from somewhere inside the flat. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s all right, Gwen, I’m dealing with it.’ Hardie pulled his chin up, looking down his nose at Logan. ‘I think you’d better go now.’
A woman appeared behind him, drying her hands on a tea towel. Short and petite, with long black hair and full red lips. Strange – would’ve thought she’d be crying her eyes out in grief for her murdered husband, but hers weren’t even bloodshot. As if it didn’t matter. As if it might even have come as a bit of a relief. As if Frank King’s death wasn’t important enough to get upset about.
Logan looked from her to Hardie. The Detective Chief Inspector’s blush deepened.
She’s sleeping with someone at work. And not someone at her work, someone at mine.
So that’s how it was.
He nodded at Mrs King. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Then turned on his heel and marched away downstairs again.
The bloody pair of them deserved each other.
— one year later —
49
A massive metal manta ray broke through the clouds, topped with ringed exhaust ports – glinting in the setting sun. Huge, imposing, and opulent. Its attending school of biplanes circled it like cleaner fish, the sky around them laced with vivid pinks and darkening blues. A caption faded up on the screen: ‘THE ARGONAUT ~ MÒR-CLASS PASSENGER LINER ~ ESTIMATED VALUE 4,000,000,000 CREDITS’. Stirring music swelled.
Logan helped himself to another Malteser, sooking the chocolate off before crunching the malty interior.
The screening room was probably big enough for forty people, but it wasn’t even half full. Zander, his FX guru Hoshiko, and a handful of her team, took up most of the back row. Steel and Susan had commandeered the middle seats in the middle row, with Rennie sitting on one side of them, and Logan on the other. And, in the front row, all on his own, with a huge tub of popcorn: Tufty.
The wee lad pretty much fizzed with excitement.
The screen took up the entire wall in front of them, glowing with colour as the Argonaut passed, then darkening as the scene switched to the inside of another ship. Its wheelhouse was a strange mix of new-fangled electronics and Heath Robinson levers, cogs, and dials. Moving bits turning other bits. More bits going in and out. The Argonaut clearly visible through the windscreen – below and unsuspecting.
An older woman stalked into the middle of the shot. Handsome and imposing, with a cascade of curling flame-red hair and a clockwork corset. She took off her top hat and tossed it to a stitched-together part-man-part-dinosaur creature, who caught it with a mechanical arm.
A half-naked Conan type lumbered on, complete with loincloth and furry boots. Only instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head at the top, a cat sat inside the stump of Conan’s neck – wearing goggles and a silk scarf – operating levers to make him move.
‘Excuse me.’ Tara a
ppeared at the end of the row, one hand on her swollen belly as she squeezed past Rennie. ‘Sorry. Coming through. Thanks.’ Smiling as Susan, Steel, and Logan stood to let her past. She thumped down into the empty seat next to him and groaned.
Logan took her hand and squeezed it.
She leaned closer, voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Did I miss anything?’
Tufty bounced up and down in his seat. ‘Any minute now!’
The handsome woman in the corset snapped her fingers. ‘Poltron, Scartbreak, release the grappling spears!’
Frankenstein’s Tyrannosaur nodded. ‘Yes, Baroness.’
A jump cut and the picture switched to outside again, sweeping down from the wheelhouse windows, past the ship’s mascot and ‘THE BURNING FOX’, looking up past the ship’s hull to the elliptical balloon it hung from, its propellers a blurred whurrrrrrrr.
Hatches popped open all along the ship’s length and harpoons with grappling heads levered out, before roaring away like guided missiles, trailing ropes and chains behind them.
The screen filled with the Argonaut again as the grappling spears thunked into her hull. One cracked into a biplane on the way in, pinning it to the ship like a lepidopterist’s butterfly.
Tara shifted in her seat. ‘My bladder’s got the attention span of a sodding goldfish these days.’
Tufty turned and scowled, one finger up to his lips. ‘Shhh!’ He gazed up at the screen again. ‘Here it comes!’
The baroness snapped her fingers again. ‘Arachnox!’
Apparently, Arachnox was a human head in a jar full of blue liquid, mounted on a mechanical body that looked like the unholy love child of a silverback gorilla and a tarantula as it unfolded itself from the ceiling and clicked down onto the wheelhouse floor.
The head in the jar looked an awful lot like Tufty’s.
Arachnox’s voice was a grating electronic rasp. Wet and sibilant. ‘Yesssss, Baronessssss?’
‘It’s time for your children to come out and play.’
‘Of courssssssse.’
Doors and levers sprung open all over the solid parts of Arachnox’s body and sharp red eyes glowed in the darkness. ‘Sssssssscurry, my little onessssss. Sssssssscurry and feasssssst!’
A whole heap of mechanical spider-rat-things fell from his body – twisting to land on their metal feet – and scampered out through small holes in the bridge’s skirting boards.
The camera followed the biggest spider-rat as it scuttled through the gloom and out onto one of the chains stretched between The Burning Fox and the Argonaut. Following its brothers and sisters as they swarmed across to the bigger ship, drill-head teeth spinning.
Tufty let out a little squeal of delight, bouncing up and down in his seat.
Yes, he was an idiot and a pain in the hoop, but you had to admit he made a pretty good mechanical-gorilla-spider-sidekick for an evil genius.
Logan turned and smiled at Tara. Leaned in, closed his eyes and kissed her. Her lips tasted of warm cherries and vanilla ice cream.
The kind of taste you’d never get tired of.
The kind of taste you could spend the rest of your life with.
On the screen, people started screaming.
If you enjoyed All That’s Dead, try the latest standalone thriller from Stuart MacBride!
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About the Author
Stuart MacBride is the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Logan McRae and Ash Henderson novels. He’s also published standalones, novellas and short stories, as well as a children’s picture book.
Stuart lives in the northeast of Scotland with his wife Fiona, cats Grendel, Gherkin, Onion, and Beetroot, some hens, horses, and a vast collection of assorted weeds.
For more information visit StuartMacBride.com
Facebook.com/StuartMacBrideBooks
@StuartMacBride
By Stuart MacBride
The Logan McRae Novels
Cold Granite
Dying Light
Broken Skin
Flesh House
Blind Eye
Dark Blood
Shatter the Bones
Close to the Bone
22 Dead Little Bodies
The Missing and the Dead
In the Cold Dark Ground
Now We Are Dead
The Blood Road
All That’s Dead
The Oldcastle Novels
Birthdays for the Dead
A Song for the Dying
A Dark so Deadly
Other Works
Sawbones (a novella)
12 Days of Winter (short stories)
Partners in Crime (two Logan and Steel short stories)
The 45% Hangover (a Logan and Steel novella)
The Completely Wholesome Adventures of Skeleton Bob (a picture book)
Writing as Stuart B. MacBride
Halfhead
About the Publisher
Australia
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Canada
HarperCollins Canada
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India
HarperCollins India
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http://www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
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Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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London, SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
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