Darren McInnes (52) – Exposing Children to Harm/Danger or Neglect, Possessing Indecent Images of Children, Theft by Housebreaking, Serious Assault
‘No, that’s not what I’m saying.’ McInnes brushed his long, greasy yellow-grey hair from his face and tied it in a loose ponytail. He pursed his lips, the folds around his grey eyes deepening behind thick glasses. ‘I’m saying I had nothing to do with them.’
At least he looked like a paedophile. Baker could have passed for a swimming pool attendant, but there was no mistaking Darren McInnes.
McInnes shifted in his seat, Rennie copying his every move. ‘Can I smoke?’ He pulled out a tin of tobacco.
Logan shook his head. ‘There’s a hundred and fifty pound fine for smoking in the hotel, Mr McInnes. Where were you last week: Wednesday night, Thursday morning?’
‘Bloody government. I should be able to smoke if I want to, they’re my bloody lungs.’
Logan banged on the arm of his chair, making the lanky man flinch.
‘Where – were – you?’
‘I don’t know. I was at home. Probably. Watching TV. Maybe I had a couple of beers, it’s not illegal is it?’
‘How well do you know Alison and Jenny McGregor?’
We’ve been over this. I don’t, OK? Yes, I was aware of them, but I don’t follow all that reality television shite. Whatever happened to the good old days, eh? When they used to make decent drama and comedy and documentaries? Now it’s all about sticking a bunch of nobodies on the box and raking the cash in with dodgy telephone scams. Makes you sick.’ He produced the tobacco tin again, popped it open and pulled out a packet of Rizla papers.
‘I said no smoking.’
McInnes looked up at Logan. ‘I’m not smoking, I’m rolling, OK? That still allowed in Nazi Britain?’
Rennie pulled a pen from his pocket and fiddled with it. ‘And you never watched Alison and Jenny on the TV, at all?’
‘Oh, I heard them on the radio. Everywhere you go, they’re on the radio, singing that bloody awful song. They didn’t even write it. Cover versions, that’s all people can do these days.’
Logan stood and walked around until he was standing directly behind McInnes. Looming. Up close he smelled of unwashed hair and stale cigarettes. ‘Do you know anyone who’s selling a little girl?’
‘Ah.’ The lanky man pulled a sheet of translucent paper from the little packet, then dug into a pouch of tobacco. ‘Well, sometimes one hears certain … rumours. Internet chat rooms, news groups, that kind of thing.’
‘Anyone talking about Jenny McGregor?’
He fiddled a line of thin brown curls down the middle of the paper, then ran a pale yellow tongue along one edge. ‘Celebrity child like that … Hmm … It would give things an extra kick, wouldn’t it? Knowing everyone’s out there, looking for her, but she’s all yours. And you can do anything you want …’ McInnes rolled the cigarette into a tight cylinder and pinched the excess tobacco from the ends. ‘Can you imagine what she’d be worth on the open market?’ He cleared his throat. ‘If she wasn’t dead.’
Logan stared at him. ‘You tell me.’
McInnes popped the newly formed cigarette in the tin and produced another rolling paper. ‘I really wouldn’t know. And before you ask: Jenny isn’t my type.’ He smiled, showing off a set of uneven brown teeth. ‘Far too old.’
Sarah Cooper (35) – Lewd and Libidinous Practices and Behaviour, Abduction, Attempted Murder
‘Such an awful thing to happen.’ Sarah Cooper leaned forward in her seat, exposing a cavernous expanse of freckled cleavage, blue silk blouse stretched tight across her swollen belly and massive breasts. Her pork-sausage fingers traced a circle on her short black skirt, the nails as scarlet as her lips. ‘I can only imagine what poor Alison must be going through …’
Rennie did his mirror thing again. ‘Can you tell us where you were last Wednesday night, Thursday morning?’
She blushed, looked away. Pink cheeks clashing with her Irn-Bru-orange hair. ‘To lose a child like that …’
Logan checked his watch. Half-eleven already and they’d only seen four people on the list. If the other teams were going at this rate it was going to take at least another three days to get through everyone on the Sex Offenders’ Register. Assuming DI Ingram and the Diddymen could track them all down. And it was getting hot in here, making his arm itch beneath the wadding. ‘You didn’t answer Constable Rennie’s question, Ms Cooper. Where were you the night Alison and Jenny were snatched?’
Not that she could have had anything to do with it. Her backside was far too large to fit in an SOC suit. Hell, it barely fitted in her seat: if she got up too quickly, she’d be wearing the thing as a bum warmer.
‘I was … with a friend.’ She shifted her buttocks, making the chair creak.
Logan smiled at her. ‘Whom?’
‘I don’t see how that’s any business of—’
‘It’s OK, Sarah,’ Rennie shifted in his seat, arranging himself in a perfect reflection, ‘we just need to eliminate you from our enquiries. You want to help us catch whoever hurt Jenny, don’t you?’
The blush deepened. ‘I … I read all about them, you know. When OK! did that big spread on them: Alison and Jenny at home. Such a cramped little house for such a huge talent.’
‘We need a name, Ms Cooper. And an address.’
‘I don’t …’ She ran a hand across her neck, sweat glistened in the crevasse between her breasts.
‘Where were you?’
‘Come on Sarah, you can tell us.’
Another wipe of cleavage. ‘Can I have a glass of water or something, it’s very hot in here.’
‘Might as well get it off your chest.’
Her eyes flickered across the room. The door, the window, the bathroom. ‘I … I was babysitting.’ Both hands clenched in her lap. ‘A friend of a friend asked it I could watch her little boys. I didn’t touch them, it that’s what you’re thinking. I didn’t do anything. I just watched them. Nothing happened.’
Lee Hamilton (32) – Rape, Possession of an Offensive Weapon
‘What the fuck would I want with a wee girl? The mother, maybe, but luck’s sake, the kid was only six!’
Duncan McLean (46) – Indecent Assault, Attempted Rape, Possession with Intent to Supply
‘… would never touch someone like that. I mean, they’re … female. How disgusting would that be?’
Logan hung his jacket on the hook in the bathroom, took off his tie, then unbuttoned his shirt. The wadding taped to the top of his left arm almost glowed, it was so white. He peeled back a corner and grimaced. Skin was still all red and inflamed – so much for ‘it won’t hurt a bit’.
He dug a little tube of antibacterial gel from his jacket pocket, squeezed some into his palm and smoothed it on. Trying not to wince. At least it didn’t look—
A knock at the door.
‘Sarge?’ It was Rennie. ‘Next one’s here.’
Alastair McMillan (42) – Indecent Assault, Possession of Indecent Images, Theft
‘“I want to dedicate this to my husband John; you’ll always be our hero …” I mean, who was she trying to kid? Like rainbows and puppies come out of her arse instead of shite like the rest of us.’ Sniff.
Alastair McMillan leant forward, and tapped a dirty, chewed fingernail against Logan’s knee. ‘She fucking deserves everything she’s got coming to her, know what I mean?’
Ross Kelley (19) – Indecent Assault
‘You have very pretty eyes, Constable …’
Shona Wallace (26) – Taking and Distributing Illegal Images of Children, Lewd and Libidinous Practices and Behaviour, Attempt to Pervert the Course of Justice
‘… shouldn’t really be surprised, should we? There are some very sick people out there.’ Shona Wallace flicked a strand of bleached blonde hair out of her eyes. She shrugged, bony shoulders rising and falling beneath her LITTLE MISS NAUGHTY T-shirt. ‘I mean, it�
�s like, you know, you stand up and do anything in this country and the weirdoes just latch onto you, don’t they?’
She smiled, her weak chin disappearing into the pale skin of her neck. The kind of girl-next-door you didn’t want living anywhere near you. ‘Oh: do you remember that woman? What was her name, you know, like, she was this big ugly heifer and she was saying all these horrible things about Alison? In the papers and that?’
Rennie nodded. ‘Vicious Vikki?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. God, what a cow. Jealousy, that’s all it is. Me I thought Alison and Jenny were the best thing on Britain’s Next Big Star. I mean, like, they really were, you know: stars. The series is going to be totally crap without them.’
She scooted forward in her seat, until her knees were nearly touching Rennie’s, blue eyes wide, a heavy layer of mascara making them look even bigger. ‘What’s her house really like inside? Is it cool? I bet it’s cool. Bet they hid away all the really cool stuff when they got the cameramen round, you know, for the OK! magazine shoot, yeah? She’s like on the radio all the time, she’s got to have, I don’t know, a Jacuzzi and diamonds and champagne and that?’
‘Bloody awful, that’s how it’s going.’ Logan slumped into one of the chairs arranged around the long meeting table. ‘What’s happening about lunch?’
Right on cue, PC Guthrie backed into the room, carrying a cardboard box. The smell of fresh baking oozed out to fill the room. ‘Get them while they’re hot.’
Steel sniffed. ‘You took your time.’
The box went on the table. ‘Fourteen steak, six mince, four macaroni, four cheese and onion pasties, and a dozen sausage rolls.’
‘Where’s my change?’
‘And about a million packets of tomato sauce.’ Guthrie dug a hand into his pocket and produced a mound of coins. They rattled on the tabletop.
The interview team swarmed around the box, pulling out grease-spotted paper bags, checking the contents, and passing on anything they didn’t fancy.
Logan rubbed his fingertips against his eyelids, trying to massage the grit away. ‘Lots of rumours about Jenny being available for a price, but no one knows who’s selling. Or they’re not saying.’
Rennie appeared with a pair of paper bags, the green-and-gold Chalmers of Bucksburn logo going slightly transparent. ‘Macaroni pie, or cheese and onion pasty?’
‘Cheese and onion.’ He took the proffered bag and scrunched it down around the golden flaky pastry like a makeshift napkin. ‘I mean, what are we supposed to do? No one’s going to stick their hand up and admit to kidnapping and murder, are they?’
Steel shrugged, then took a dainty bite out of her pie and chewed. ‘Early days, Laz. Got a lot more perverts to get through.’
‘Yeah, and at the rate we’re going it’ll take us three and a half days, minimum.’
‘Oh.’ She stared at the hole in her pie for a moment, then tore the top off a sachet of tomato sauce and squirted it inside.
Logan frowned. ‘Unless we get the back shift to do some?’
A nod. ‘Sort it out with Ding-Dong. Sooner we get a result the better.’
‘Have you been to the scene?’ The pasty was filled with savoury napalm, almost too hot to eat. He brushed pastry flakes from his fingertips as he chewed. ‘I was thinking of paying a visit later. Get a feel for the ground.’
A lump-faced constable stuck her head around the meeting room door. ‘Guv?’ She waved at DI Steel. ‘That’s the next bunch arrived downstairs, you want me to get them up to the rooms, or let them stew for a bit?’
‘Fuck ’em, we’re eating pies.’ Steel took another bite and the tomato sauce she’d so carefully squirted in squirted out in a blood-spatter, all over her hand. ‘Bastard …’ She licked at her wrist. ‘Where’s the napkins?’
‘I mean, they must’ve checked out the house before the abduction, they went straight to Jenny’s room and—’ Logan swore, his phone was ringing. He hauled it out with greasy fingers and checked the display: ‘UNKNOWN’.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello?’
‘Who’s—’
‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ Doc Fraser must have been fiddling with the buttons at his end, because a series of bleeps sounded in Logan’s ear. Followed by, ‘Logan? You there? I’ve just got the tox screen back from the lab. Thought you‘d want an update before I went and spilled the beans to Finnic and his fellow wankers.’
Logan opened his mouth, then shut it again. ‘Er, Doc, are you sure you should be—’
‘Now pay attention: we scraped every little vein in that toe for blood cells and found trace amounts of morphine. The fatty tissue contained a minuscule quantity of thiopental sodium. And I mean a tiny, tiny quantity. Damn lucky we detected anything at all.’
He dug his notebook out of his pocket, pinned the phone between his ear and his shoulder, and scribbled it all down … Taking a rough stab at the spelling, THIGH-O-PENTHAL (SP?)’. ‘Care to hazard a guess?’
‘You buggers never change, do you? At a guess – and this is just a guess – she was given the morphine to keep her quiet. Compliant. It would work pretty well as a sedative. Thiopental sodium, on the other hand, is a general anaesthetic. They probably planned to put her under before removing the toe, but something went wrong. An allergic reaction maybe, or she’d eaten too recently, threw up, and choked … Either way, it was quick – if that’s any consolation – otherwise there’d be more of the drug laid down in the fatty tissue.’
Logan closed his eyes. ‘When?’
‘Nearly impossible to tell. But from the look of it, I’d say it was severed at least six hours after death, then kept in a fridge. Maybe up to a week?’
So Bob was right – Jenny was dead before they’d even received the first ransom demand.
‘The amputation’s pretty good, certainly done by someone with medical training using a thin, fine blade. And thiopental sodium is used to knock people out before they go in for surgery – before they put you on the air and gas. So you‘re looking at hospitals: operating theatres, in-house pharmacy, neurology, the ITU … Or maybe a vet? I think they use it on animals too.’
‘What about doctors’ surgeries, GPs, people like that?’
‘They don’t get anything stronger than lidocaine. Same with dentists.’
‘Thanks, Doc.’ Deep breath. ‘Can you do me a favour?’
‘Depends.’
‘When you tell “the wankers”, don’t call them that, OK? Just because you’re retired doesn’t mean they won’t take it out on us.’ Logan pressed disconnect, then looked up to see Steel staring at him.
‘Well?’
He told her about the drugs and a smile broke across her face.
‘Right.’ She banged her hand against the table. ‘Listen up you shiftless bunch of jessies – when you’re interviewing your mongs and stots this afternoon, I want to know if anyone’s got connections up the hospital or at a vet’s, OK? Job, volunteer work, friend, family – the lot.’ She stuck two fingers up. ‘Hospitals, vets.’
Rennie frowned. ‘How come?’
‘Cos I say so. Laz, call Ingram – tell him we need everyone we’ve seen today back tomorrow morning.’ She beamed, then punched Logan in the arm. ‘We’ve finally—’
‘Ow!’ Bloody hell, that stung! He wrapped a hand around his deltoid, trying to squeeze the pain away. ‘What was that for?’ The skin underneath throbbed and burned.
‘Oh stop moaning, you big girl’s blouse. Barely touched you. We’re actually going to catch the bastards.’
‘That hurt!’
‘Jesus, and I thought Rennie was a wimp.’
The constable paused, halfway through a huge sausage roll. ‘Hey!’
Logan rubbed at his arm. ‘I don’t go around hitting you, do I?’
‘Inspector?’ The lumpy constable hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the corridor outside.
‘Aye, I know.’ Steel wiped her fingers down the front of
her red satin shirt, leaving little greasy smears. ‘Come on, Laz, carpe pervertum.’
13
Bruce Preston (46) – Possession of Indecent Images; Animal Cruelty; Obstructing, Assaulting, Molesting or Hindering an Officer in the Course of their Duty; Bestiality
‘Well, I suppose …’ Bruce Preston shifted in his seat, squiggling his bum left and right, as if he had worms, or an unreachable itch. He was slightly chubby, slightly balding; completely unremarkable in every way, except for the huge collection of photos of people having sex with dogs the IB had found on his computer. Apparently Bruce’s home-made snaps all featured next door’s Cairn terrier.
He gave a huge, overacting shrug, arms coming out to forty-five degrees. The bitter-oniony stench of stale armpits got even worse. ‘But it’s not really the same thing, is it? Besides, I don’t really watch the TV any more. Not since that cow on Channel Five did that “Britain’s Secret Sex Shame” show.’
‘And you’re sure you don’t know anyone at the hospital, or a vet’s?’
Preston rubbed his fingers along his thighs, cheeks flushing pink. ‘Told you – I’m not allowed within a hundred metres of a veterinary surgery or dog-walking park.’
Logan logged the end of the interview, thanked Bruce Preston for his time, then told him he could see himself out.
As soon as the door clunked shut, Logan sprawled in his chair, hanging over the edges; arms dangling, fingertips brushing the carpet. ‘That was fun.’
Rennie gagged. ‘Bloody hell … Mind if I open the window?’
‘Oh, God, please!’
Clunk. And the sound of traffic filtered in from the nearby dual carriageway, the rumble of a plane fading into the distance, the tweet and whitter of birds.
‘Do you think Steel’s right?’
Logan checked his watch – nearly twenty to four. He stretched, then flopped back again. ‘Been rumours doing the rounds about the “livestock” market for years. Kids, women, snatched to order, sold in secret auctions … All we need to do is catch one of these bastards and the whole thing falls apart.’ There was a creaking noise. He looked over to see Rennie slumped in the other seat, arms hanging over the edges, fingertips brushing the tartan carpet.
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8 Page 8