Shatter the Bones

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘Leave it, Tracy, she’s not worth it…’

  Logan paused halfway across Union Street, waiting for a battered Toyota with a taxi sign bolted to the roof to grumble past. There were two blokes just inside the entrance to Lodge Walk: the usual short-cut to the back of FHQ. One was keeping himself upright with a hand against the wall, peeing on his own shoes, the other making retching noises.

  He took the scenic route instead, round the council buildings and down Queen Street.

  Stopped outside the Sheriff and JP Court.

  The crowd gathered on the forecourt outside Force Headquarters was a lot smaller – just forty, fifty people? All linking arms and swaying back and forth. They had makeshift lanterns: tea lights in old jam and pickle jars, the captive flames flickering a warm waxy glow that made shadows writhe as they sang.

  It took a while for Logan to recognize the tune: Wind Beneath My Wings. Of course it was. Only someone had changed the lyrics so it was all about Jenny and Alison McGregor. Christ that was quick.

  And touching…? Or creepy. It was hard to decide.

  A few uniformed officers hovered on the periphery, some watching the crowd, the rest watching the small knot of drunken idiots lurching about and trying to sing along.

  Logan wandered over to the nearest officer – a wee man with thick hairy eyebrows and a baggy face. ‘What’s this?’

  Constable Baggy sniffed, then nodded towards the crowd. ‘Candle-lit vigil, Guv. Don’t know what possible bloody good they think it’ll do. Outside the house, or the church where they’re doing that memorial thing, maybe, but here?’ He sucked on his teeth for a moment. ‘Whole city’s gone fuckin’ mental.’

  The Police Custody and Security Officer puffed out her cheeks and scowled at Logan. A red mark covered half of her chin, slowly purpling itself into a bruise. She pointed along the corridor, mouth barely moving, teeth clamped together. ‘Down there.’

  DI Bell was limping up and down outside the little row of cells reserved for female prisoners. He walked like a bear that hadn’t quite got the hang of it yet, thick rounded shoulders rocking from side to side. He stopped, gave Logan his second scowl of the night, then waved him over with a big hairy paw. ‘Where have you been?’ Voice not much louder than a whisper.

  ‘Thought you were meant to be on back shift? How’d you get on with Steel’s sex offenders, anything—’

  ‘Want to explain this?’ Bell pointed at the cell in front of him.

  Logan checked the name scrawled on the little board beside the door: name, alleged offence, and last time checked. ‘TRISHA BROWN ∼ O.A.M.H.O. ∼ 02:30’ Which meant she’d probably been done for taking a swing at some poor PC.

  ‘So?’

  DI Bell hauled open the hatch, and Logan peered into the little cell.

  Trisha Brown was lying on the blue plastic mattress, with her knees drawn up against her hollow ribs. She was wearing a skimpy halter-neck top, exposing a swathe of sickly-pale skin that almost glowed in the harsh strip-lighting, a couple of bruises, and a tattoo. Bare feet with long toes, like an extra set of fingers.

  Logan shrugged. ‘She working tonight?’

  The inspector closed the hatch again. ‘Says you raped her.’

  ‘She…?’ Logan backed off a step. ‘Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t touch her with fucking Bob’s never mind mine! She’s lying!’

  Bell grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him away to the stairwell. ‘She better be… But soon as she makes the complaint official, you know what happens: Professional Standards explore your colon with a searchlight. Something like this, you’re probably looking at gardening leave while they investigate.’

  ‘But it’s— ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s a load of old shite or not – it goes down on your record.’

  ‘No. Fuck this.’ Logan turned and marched back to the cell, slammed the flat of his hand against the metal door. Bang, bang, bang. He hauled the hatch open. ‘Trisha Brown! WAKEY WAKEY!’

  The figure on the mattress stirred, rolled over onto her back, one arm flopping across her eyes. Her hip bones stood proud beneath her sallow skin, sores on her forearms, ribs on show. How the hell could anyone think he’d get naked with her?

  Bang, bang, bang. ‘TRISHA!’

  A muffled voice came from the next cell. ‘Fuckin’ shut it! Some of us trying to sleep here…’

  Bang, bang, bang. ‘TRISHA BROWN!’

  Another disembodied voice. ‘Christ’s sake, don’t wake her up – daft bitch only just stopped screaming.’

  The figure on the bed, moved her legs, sat up. Blinked. Then twisted sideways and sprayed yellow vomit all over the dark-red terrazzo floor, chunks of orange and pink splattering everywhere. She heaved a couple more times, then wiped a trembling hand across her chapped lips. ‘Thirsty…’

  Logan banged his hand on the door again. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  She squinted at him. ‘Fuck off.’ Then collapsed back on the mattress. ‘Not well…’

  Bang. ‘Who the fuck am I?’

  ‘Leave us alone!’

  Logan turned to DI Bell. ‘See? She hasn’t got a bloody clue.’ The inspector pushed Logan out of the way and shouted through the hatch. ‘Trisha? Remember when we brought you in? What were you saying?’

  A loud sigh. Then she dragged herself up off the thin mattress, bare feet splatching through the puddle of sick as she made for the door. The bitter, eye-tightening stench of vomit wafted out of the hatch. ‘I was raped. RAPED!’ A dull thunk, as she rested her head on the metal. ‘I was raped.’

  Logan banged his hand on the door again and she flinched back. ‘Who?’

  Trisha pulled her halter top up, exposing tiny wrinkled breasts covered in penny-sized bruises. ‘DS LOGAN MCRAE’ was written on the bony expanse of chest below her clavicles in black ink block capitals. Trisha frowned at it, a drip of spittle dangling from the tip of her chin.

  ‘Him. He raped me…’

  Logan stared at his own name. Lying cow. He slammed the hatch closed again, then turned on DI Bell. ‘She hasn’t got a bloody clue. Did you do a rape kit?’

  ‘I told you, it doesn’t matter if—’

  ‘Did you or didn’t you?’

  Bell threw his hands in the air. ‘We couldn’t, OK? She was tearing the place up. Nearly ripped my balls off!’

  ‘Get her in an interview room and we’ll get her to retract the—’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no. That’s not the way it works, and you know it. No way in hell you can be in on an interview of a rape victim you’re supposed to have raped!’

  Logan paced down to the end of the little cell block and back again. ‘Fine, you do it.’

  Bell ran a furry hand through his hair. Looked away. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes you bloody can. Stick her in number three and find out who put her up to it.’

  ‘Why would anyone—’

  ‘She’s got my name written on her! What, did the graffiti fairies break into her house and have a go with a black marker pen?’

  Bell shrugged. ‘Maybe she wrote it herself?’

  Moron. ‘If she wrote it herself it’d be upside down, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Well, maybe… I dunno, a mirror?’ He must have caught the expression on Logan’s face, because he took a sudden interest in examining his own hands. ‘OK, OK, someone else wrote it on her. Fuck.’ The inspector worried at a hangnail. ‘I’ll speak to her. But you know, if Professional Standards find out I did a sneak-around, I’m blaming you, understand?’

  Chapter 16

  On the little screen, DI Bell pushed a sheet of paper across the scarred interview room table. ‘I’m showing Ms Brown a selection of photographs reference: one fi ve zero fi ve zero one. Can you identify the man you say raped you?’

  ‘No she bloody can’t.’ Logan took another swig of coffee. Bitter and dark, which was pretty sodding appropriate. The caffeine fizzed through his arteries, making his eyeballs itch.

  Sitting on the other side of the table, Trisha Brow
n rocked back and forth, then chewed on the side of her thumb. They’d chucked the ID sheet together using a bunch of random faces from the database – local criminals: a couple of rapists, some burglars, a paedophile – Logan, George Clooney, and the current head of the BNP. Nine faces for Trisha Brown to pick from.

  ‘Trisha? Can you pick him out?’

  Logan leaned forward until his nose was just inches from the TV screen. It was mounted on a rickety old table in what was laughingly referred to as the Downstream Observation Suite. It’d been a broom closet before the last refit, and still had that pine and bleach smell.

  ‘Trisha?’

  She took her thumb out of her mouth, held it above the ID sheet, then turned it down, like a Roman emperor, and jabbed it into one of the faces.

  DI Bell scratched his hairy head. ‘OK… I see. Are you sure?’

  A nod.

  ‘You have to say it out loud for the tape.’

  ‘Aye, it was him. Number Five.’

  A silent pause. Then the inspector scraped his chair back from the table. ‘Right, well, interview terminated at…’ He checked his watch. ‘Three thirty nine AM. Constable Gray will take you downstairs to the duty doctor for a wee examination, OK?’

  Logan watched them filter out of the interview room, then clicked off the set.

  A minute later DI Bell clunked open the door and slumped back against the wall. He folded his arms, tufts of hair sticking out from the ends of his shirt cuffs. He wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Bad news.’

  Oh … fuck. She’d picked him out. Nine faces to chose from, and Trisha Brown had chosen his. She only recognized him because he was the idiot shouting in through the hatch of her cell. Stupid. Stupid. Fucking. Idiot.

  ‘Come on, Ding-Dong, you know it’s not—‘ ‘We’ve got to go arrest George Clooney. His fans are going to be gutted.’

  ‘Sarge? Sarge, you awake?’

  Logan jolted upright in his seat, grabbing the desk for support. He sat there, staring at the blurry screensaver on his computer monitor for a moment. ‘What time is it?’

  A lanky young lad with a streaky-bacon complexion, watery eyes, and a PC’s uniform fidgeted with the Airwave handset clipped to his stab-proof vest. The numbers on his epaulettes marked him out as one of the year’s new recruits. God knew how he’d ended up on nights, he looked as if a strong fart would blow him over. ‘DI Bell says that’s the duty doc done with your junkie. Says you can sod off home if you like?’

  Logan yawned, stretched out in the seat, shuddered, then slumped. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Had to go out on a shout – some tadger’s taken a scaffold ing pole to Vicious Vikki’s Ford Fiesta.’

  ‘He say what the result was?’

  The constable nodded. ‘Car’s completely buggered.’

  ‘Not the window, you idiot, the rape kit.’

  ‘Don’t know, Sarge.’

  Logan creaked his way out of his swivel chair, stuck his palms against the small of his back and tried to straighten the knots out of his spine. Then let out a big hissing breath.

  Constable Streaky-Bacon was still standing there. ‘Anything else?’

  Shrug. ‘Get back to sodding work then.’

  Dr Donna Delaney looked up from the copy of the Aberdeen Examiner open on the desk in front of her, covering the key board of a battered laptop. ‘LOCAL PSYCHIC’S PLEA TO POLICE’. A white porcelain teapot – with matching cup and saucer – trailed the lemon-washing-up-liquid smell of Earl Grey into the tiny office set aside for the on-call duty doctor.

  She peered at Logan over the top of her trendy glasses, then smiled. ‘How’s the stomach?’

  ‘You did a rape kit on Trisha Brown?’

  ‘Yes… Lovely young lady. Apparently I tried to, now how did she put it, “Lez her up”. Let me see your hands.’

  He held them both out, and she scooted her chair closer on squeaky castors, took hold of his left hand and peered at it. Two little scars marked the middle of the palm, about half an inch apart, the skin all pink and shiny. She turned it over and peered at the back. Two more scars.

  ‘Still giving you gyp?’

  Shrug. ‘Depends on the weather.’

  ‘Well, let me know if they start to throb, or you get swelling, or stiffness moving your fingers. Don’t want to end up with cysts.’

  ‘Rape kit?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes. Well, there’s vaginal bruising consistent with forced intercourse, some tearing to the anus as well, more bruising on the breasts and inner thighs.’

  ‘Semen?’

  Dr Delaney bit her top lip. ‘Some.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Well, you see, someone like Trisha, with her habit, has to get money somewhere. So while it does look like she’s been raped, it wasn’t today, and the semen I’ve got to send off to the labs is probably going to be from her last bunch of punters. She’s not big on using protection.’

  ‘She say anything?’

  ‘Other than, “get your hands off me you dirty lesbian bitch”? Not really, no.’ The duty doc scooted her chair back to the desk. ‘It’d be nice to think that she’ll get herself some help – kick the drugs, settle down somewhere nice with her wee boy. But I get the feeling we all know where she’s going to end up.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sooner or later, Trisha Brown would go from being Dr Delaney’s patient to Doc Fraser’s corpse.

  ‘Shh… It’s going to be OK, sweetheart. It’s going to be OK…’

  Mummy’s voice sounds like something sticky, caught on broken glass. Arms wrapped around her Good Little Girl, rocking her from side to side in her lap. Sometimes, when you’re scared, Mummy is the warmest place you can be…

  Sometimes.

  She sniffs and wipes her sleeve across her eyes. Then only just stops herself from sucking her thumb. Sucking your thumb is naughty, it makes your teeth all squint like a nasty rat.

  Teddy Gordon watches her from the foot of the bed, plastic eyes glittering and black.

  He has eyes like a rat.

  Like a crow tearing chunks out of a squished rabbit.

  Like the lens of a video camera.

  ‘Shhhhhhh… Shhhhhh…’ Mummy shudders.

  Something lands in her hair, then trickles down to her scalp – warm and wet. Mummy never cries. Not since they put Daddy in a box in the ground so he could be with the angels.

  Mummy strokes her hair. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry… It’ll only hurt for a little bit, I promise.’

  When the monsters come back to take her toes.

  Chapter 17

  Trisha Brown sniffed. Her eyes were Barbie-pink, her pupils two tiny black dots as she peered out through the hatch in her cell door. The shakes had come early, bringing a sheen of sweat with them. The hard-edged stench of BO and stale vomit radiated off her in waves.

  Logan tried again. ‘Who wrote “DS Logan McRae” on your chest?’

  ‘I’m not well…’

  ‘Trisha, it’s quarter to five in the morning, my shift starts in two and a bit hours, and I’ve been up all bastarding night because of you. Now who wrote my name on your bloody chest?’ Trying hard not to shout.

  She blinked. Then a frown made little wrinkles in her shiny forehead. ‘You’re him?’

  ‘Who wrote it?’

  She placed a bony hand against her chest, rubbing the halter-top where it hid Logan’s name. ‘You’re the one did that raid on Billy’s house, yeah? Took Ricky round to stay with mum?’

  ‘What about it?’

  She licked her pale, chapped lips. ‘You seized all that gear, right?’

  ‘We—’

  ‘You’ve still got it, right? You know, where you can get at it?’

  ‘Trisha – focus. Who wrote my name on you?’

  ‘’Cos you’ve got to give it all back to me. Everything you’ve got.’

  ‘No chance.’ Logan slammed the hatch shut. ‘No, you have to! The guys Shuggie got it off want paid – if we haven�
�t sold it we gotta give it back!’

  Logan opened the hatch again. ‘You got six bricks of heroin and a suitcase full of mephedrone on sale or return?’

  ‘They’re gonna fuck him over if we can’t get the money…’ She stepped closer to the hatch, sour breath washing over Logan. ‘What if they come after me and Ricky again? He’s only a wee kid.’

  ‘Here’s the deal: you give up your suppliers, Shuggie turns himself in and coughs to the drugs charges, and I’ll get you and your little boy into protective custody.’

  Trisha looked away for a moment. And when she came back she was pouting. She licked a finger, then stuck her hand up inside her halter-top and rubbed at shrunken breast. ‘How about you let us have the gear and you get anything you want. Yeah? I do it all. Rough as you like. You can bring your mates too, if you like?’

  Logan shrank back from the hatch. ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Bet a big guy like you could make me come and come and come. Mmmmmm… Oh yeah. I’d be a dirty bitch for—’

  Logan slammed the hatch shut, before Trisha wasn’t the only one smelling of sick.

  Davey ‘English’ Robertson, AKA: Daniel Roberts (69) – Rape, Indecent Assault, Attempted Murder

  ‘…so you see, it wasnae my fault, was it? Fucker came at me in the shower wi’ a fuckin’ hard-on, what was I supposed ta dae? Bend ower and spread ma arse cheeks? Fuck that.’

  Davey Robertson squared his shoulders inside the threadbare suit jacket. Grey-stubbled chin coming up. ‘Poof bastard was askin’ for it.’

  Logan stifled a yawn. God it was hot. Even with the window open, the hotel room was like a microwave. He rubbed at his eyes. ‘Can we just stick to the—’

  ‘And anither thing, fit wye do you think I’ve got nithin’ better ta dae than ponce about in here wi’ you lot? Saturday mornin’: should be gettin’ ready for the match.’

  ‘Alison and Jenny McGregor, Mr Robertson. Did you—’

  ‘I seen her man oan the telly, after that rag-head cock-pirate blew him up. Fuckin’ disgrace. IEDs… Every retard’s makin’ bombs out of washin’ up liquid and Blu-Tack these days. What’s the point of spendin’ millions on tanks when you can blow holes in the fuckers with crap you find under your sink? Should nuke all them Muslim bastards and have done with it.’