‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah, if anyone asks …’ What? How the hell was he going to explain this one? Stolen car; dead dog; probable abduction: possible murder. ‘… if anyone asks, tell them I’ve been acting all concussed since you picked me up.’
Rennie nodded. ‘Thank God for that: thought you were going to ask me to lie for a minute …’
26
‘Yes, yes, I know that …’ Logan slumped sideways until his head clunked against the driver’s window.
Finnie’s voice boomed out of the Airwave handset. ‘Then what exactly were you thinking, Sergeant? That the magic La-La fairies would turn up and hand your pool car back to you?’
‘I didn’t … It … I was being attacked by a dog at the time. Then you said—’
‘You’ll be lucky if that’s the only savaging you get today. Professional Standards: half-three.’
He thumped his head against the glass again. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where are you?’
Logan peered out through the rain-ribboned windscreen at a grubby house with a boarded-up window, ‘GELLOUS BITCH!!!’ scrawled in dripping purple spray-paint across the wall and front door.
A bashed and battered Ford Fiesta sat at the kerb, the windows shattered or empty, the bodywork a collection of huge dents and scratches.
‘Outside Victoria Murray’s house.’
‘I see …’ A pause. ‘Tell me, Sergeant, do you actually think “Vicious Vikki” is going to give you information that’ll have you scurrying off to solve the case? Meaning you can get out of your meeting with Professional Standards? Because if you do, I’ve got some bad news for you: you will be back at headquarters by half-three. And after you’ve spoken to Superintendent Napier, you and I are going to have a little chat.’
Oh joy. Logan closed his eyes. Superintendent Napier, the Ginger Ninja.
‘Because I think we’ve got a bit of a communication problem, don’t you, Sergeant? You see, I thought I said, “Don’t piss off the man from SOCA.” And yet, for some unfathomable reason, you seem to have heard, “Insult Superintendent Green and call him a moron.” Isn’t that strange?’
Something smelled of shit. Logan checked the soles of his shoes: they were clean. He sniffed again. The stink got worse the closer he got to Victoria Murray’s front door. There was no way he was touching the bell.
He knocked on the wood instead, next to the purple letter ‘B’ in ‘BITCH!!!’
Waited for a minute.
Did it again.
Maybe she wasn’t in? Maybe she’d had enough of all the vandalism and hate mail, and gone into hiding?
One more, then he was heading back to the car.
A voice on the other side of the door: ‘Fuck off, I’m not in.’
‘Mrs Murray?’
‘If you don’t fuck off, I’m calling the police! I know my rights.’
Logan pulled out his warrant card and lifted the flap on the letterbox. ‘Detective Sergeant – What the …?’ There was something sticky on his fingers. He let the flap clack back into place.
Brown.
There was sticky brown muck all over his fingertips. ‘Oh … Jesus …’
Filthy bastards.
He wiped them on the door, leaving a chocolate-coloured rainbow. ‘I am the bloody police!’
There was a clunk. Then the door opened a crack, and a bloodshot eye peered out through the gap. ‘Prove it.’
Logan shoved his warrant card at her. ‘There’s shite in your letterbox.’
She nodded. ‘Stopped the bastards from peering in, trying to take photos of me in my bloody pants, didn’t it?’ The door thumped shut, then what sounded like a chain being removed, and it opened again. ‘Serves them right.’
Victoria Murray folded her arms underneath the sagging parcel shelf of her bosom. According to the article in last week’s Aberdeen Examiner, ‘ex-exotic dancer and call girl “Vicious” Vikki (22) had a threesome with two city councillors’.
God, they must have been desperate. A cigarette smouldered in the corner of her mouth, curling smoke around her narrowed eyes. Her chin disappeared into her neck, the pale skin speckled with spots around her nose and mouth. Making her head look like a used condom full of milk.
She hoicked her boobs up. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to wash my hands.’
‘That it?’
‘You’re lucky I’m not arresting you. Putting shite in your letter box is—’
‘Aw, like they never did it. What the hell do you think happened to my carpet?’ She nodded at the floor.
A mat of newspaper was laid out across the bare floorboards. ‘Piss, shite, rotting vegetables, fucking … roadkill. I’ve had the lot. So don’t tell me I’m not allowed to get my own back, OK?’ She jerked her head to the left. ‘Toilet’s down there, first door on the left.’
He squeezed past and she thumped the door shut, rattled the chain back in place, turned the key in the lock. There was a plastic bag taped over the inside of the letter box, bulging with something dark.
She was waiting for him in the kitchen when he’d finished. His fingers didn’t smell of shite any more, they reeked of lavender, washed again and again under the hot tap until his hands were pink and swollen. Victoria Murray had a Chunky Kit Kat in one hand and a mug in the other. ‘If you want tea you can make it yourself.’
‘I need to talk to you about Alison and Jenny McGregor.’
Her face curdled. ‘Of course you do. Christ forbid you’re here to tell me you’ve caught the bastards who wrecked my car. Or the ones who smashed my window. Or painted lies all over my house!’ She slammed her mug down on the working surface, black coffee slopping over the edge. ‘I was spat at yesterday. Spat at. Some OAP cow howched up a mouthful of snot and spat it right in my face! Fucking papers.’
Logan filled the kettle from the cold tap. ‘They’ve not been very nice—’
‘Didn’t even tell them half of what that snooty bitch got up to when we were kids. But no: how dare I suggest the sainted Alison McGregor used to get pissed and stoned after school. Aye, and that was primary seven – she was giving blowjobs for cigarettes when she was eleven!’
The last chunk of Kit Kat disappeared, washed down with a gulp of coffee. ‘There was this family moved in down the street, and they had this mongol kid. You know, Down’s Syndrome and that, and Alison would rip the piss out of the poor bastard every – fucking – day. One night, right, we sank this bottle of vodka she nicked from the Paki shop on the corner, and she went round and panned in all their windows.’ A sniff. ‘Course, I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen, would she? And I’m the one they call “Vicious Fucking Vikki”?’
Victoria pulled a packet of cigarettes from a kitchen drawer and lit one. Shook the packet at Logan.
‘Given up.’
Shrug. ‘Suit yourself.’ She sent a plume of smoke crashing against the extractor hood. ‘Course, we used to be real tight … Best friends. Used to tell me everything. We were something special back then; sixteen years old, sexy as hell, men throwing themselves at us.’ A smile oozed across Victoria’s face, then disappeared. ‘Now look at me.’
The kettle rumbled to a boil. Logan filled a mug. Fished the teabag out with the handle of a fork. ‘So what happened?’
A long smoky sigh. ‘Doddy McGregor happened. She thought he was just this big stupid lump of muscle, but he knew a good thing when he saw it.’ Victoria rubbed two fingers up and down the side of her face, pushing the skin into folds. ‘Walked in and caught us at it, didn’t she? Doddy says he’s just getting it out of his system, before the wedding. Invites her to join in, says it’d be hot. And she’s standing there: six months pregnant. Fuck, I thought she was going to kill him.’ Victoria laughed. ‘Thought she was going to kill me too. Never spoke after that.’
Logan poured the last dribble of semi-skimmed into his mug. ‘So you haven’t seen them recently?’
&
nbsp; ‘Course I have.’ She curled back her top lip, exposing little brown teeth. ‘They’re fucking everywhere: on the telly, in the papers, can’t turn on the radio and they’re playing that bloody song. She gets a tribute show with Robbie Williams, what do I get? Fucking diabetes.’
Quarter to three. Forty-five minutes to go. Logan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. One sex offender due diligence interview down, two to go. Should really go visit the vet’s Frank Baker volunteered at, make sure DI Steel had followed it up properly. Be a good little boy.
He rode the clutch down to the roundabout, joining the queue waiting to get over the King George VI Bridge.
Superintendent Napier … Why did it have to be him? At least with Chief Inspector Young you got a decent chance to explain your side of things.
Forward another couple of car-lengths. A huge eighteen-wheeler with the Baxters’ logo down the side hissed and juddered around onto Great Southern Road. A taxi blared its horn at a massive four-by-four, then it was Logan’s turn on the roundabout.
He accelerated out, turned right … and kept on going, right around the roundabout and back the way he’d come. Sod Superintendent Sodding Green and his sodding due diligence.
Five minutes later Logan was standing outside the house where they’d dropped off Trisha Brown’s wee boy so he could spend the night with his drug addict granny. It was worth a try.
The front door was scuffed, the wood dented, as if it’d been given a bit of a kicking. It wasn’t a bad neighbourhood, just a bunch of bland granite houses a few streets over from where Alison and Jenny McGregor lived. Logan tried the doorbell. No answer. Then he tried the handle, and the door swung open.
The Browns’ hallway was a minefield of broken furniture. A ratty purple sofa was twisted onto its side, half in and half out of the living room door. A glass-topped coffee table made glittering mosaic shards on the carpet.
When Shuggie said his Yardie mates had trashed the place, he wasn’t kidding …
‘Hello?’ Logan pressed the bell again, and a dull clunking buzz sounded somewhere down the hall. ‘Anyone home?’
Glass scrunched under his shoes. ‘Anyone?’
He peered into the lounge. More damage: TV smashed, armchairs broken, the floor littered with CDs. Fleetwood Mac lying by the door, the cover cracked.
Shattered jars and bottles littered the kitchen floor, covering the dirty linoleum with glass and sticky liquid. Pickled onions amongst a shattered jar of beetroot, like tiny eyes swimming in a sea of blood. Cupboard doors ripped from the units, the fridge dented and buckled.
It wasn’t random destruction, it was systematic.
The stairs creaked as he climbed.
Bathroom: toilet smashed, grey-pink pedestal mat soaking wet. Sink cracked. The bath’s front panel kicked in, the mixer shower ripped from the wall.
Bedroom one: mattress gutted, its innards burst across the bare chipboard floor. Ripped clothes. A chest of drawers turned into a Picasso sculpture. A wardrobe lurching drunkenly against the headboard. Curtains torn down.
The second bedroom wasn’t so bad. It actually looked as if someone had tidied up in here. A small pile of clothes sat in the corner: other than that, the floor was relatively clean. OK, so the wardrobe was living testimony to the miraculous powers of silver duct tape, and the mattress lay on the floor instead of a bed, but it had sheets and an almost-clean duvet cover … About four drawers were stacked, one on top of the other, by the window, overflowing with bras, socks, and pants.
Logan walked over to the room’s cracked window and looked out across the road at the houses on the other side. The neighbours must love it here. You save hard, buy your very own council house, and then Helen Brown moves in. Next thing you know you’ve got three generations of drug users living next door. Breaking into your house, shed, garage, car, anywhere they can nick something to sell and feed their habit.
And then a pair of Yardies turn up and wreck the place. Do a bloody good job of it too.
Ah well …
It’d been a long shot. Shuggie Webster wasn’t lying low at his girlfriend’s mum’s house. He was probably off licking his wounds in a squat somewhere. If the Yardies hadn’t killed him.
Logan checked his watch again. Twenty-five minutes to get back to the station in time for his bollocking. He turned and … stopped. Frowned.
The wardrobe – a cheap-looking flatpack job, all veneer-covered chipboard, papered with tatty photos cuts from the pages of Hello! and Heat and Bella – was creaking. It was moving too. Not much, just a little trembling back and forth motion, but it was definitely moving.
A smile crawled across Logan’s face. Shuggie Webster, you predictable little shite …
Time to come out of the closet.
27
Logan pulled out his pepper-spray, and popped the top off. He crept over to the rocking wardrobe. Grabbed the wooden handle. Threw it wide open. ‘You enjoying Narnia then, Shug—’
Something slammed into Logan’s stomach and he went staggering backwards. Then over, the room flipping through ninety degrees, and then thump. Flat on his back. Cold, sharp pain, as if six-inch metal screws were being twisted into his guts.
A small bare foot flashed past Logan’s nose. A hand, a blue sleeve. The rancid piddly smell of stale clothes, left too long in the washing machine. Scrabbling, swearing, then the slapping sound of naked feet on floorboards.
Logan shot a hand out, groping … Not finding anything. He rolled over onto his side, forced himself upright and lurched to the bedroom door. It sounded as if there were snakes in the hallway below – hissing and writhing. He stood at the top of the stairs, one hand on the wallpaper for support.
There was a little boy sitting on the bottom step, wearing grubby Ben 10 pyjamas, clutching his feet in both hands.
‘Ricky?’
The kid stood, limped, collapsed against the battered sofa poking out from the lounge door. A set of bloody footprints followed him across the glass-strewn carpet.
‘There you go.’ Logan clunked a tin of Irn-Bru down on the bare floorboards at the side of the mattress.
Ricky Brown wrapped his arms around his knees, face set in a line much harder than the two crusted streaks beneath his nose. He turned his head away.
‘How’s the feet?’
The response was too mumbled to make out.
Logan pulled up his tatty left trouser leg, showing off three parallel lines of scabs. ‘See, you’re not the only one.’
Ricky picked at a loose thread on the ribbons of towel Logan had wrapped around the little boy’s feet. The soles slowly soaking through in shiny red patches.
‘Where’s your mum, Ricky?’
A shrug. ‘Went out.’
Aha, so he could speak after all. ‘You know where she went?’
He shook his head, little more than a twitch. ‘Said someone killed Dad’s dog.’
‘Shuggie Webster’s your dad?’
‘This week.’ Another thread unravelled from the improvised bandage.
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Mum went to get food and that.’ Pause. ‘You going to arrest me?’
Logan forced a laugh. Why would I do that?’
‘Gran says it’s what you pig bastards do. You arrest people what haven’t done nothing wrong.’
‘No, Ricky, I’m not going to arrest you.’ He held out the Irn-Bru. ‘Did your mum say when she’s going to be back?’
‘Gran says you arrest people and you shag them up the arse. ‘Cos you’re all paedos and poofs.’
‘Yeah, your granny sounds like a bundle of laughs.’ Logan cracked the ringpull off the tin, and helped himself to a swig. ‘Your mum and dad are messed up with some very bad people, Ricky. Now, I can help, but I need to know where they are.’
Silence.
‘Don’t you want your mum and dad to be safe?’
Ricky shifted his feet, leaving a red smear on the duve
t cover.
‘OK, well, if you’re sure.’ Logan knocked back another gulp, then set the tin down back on the floor. ‘Right, I know a nice doctor who’ll fix you up, then we’ll see if we can find someone to look after you.’
‘She’s coming back for me.’
‘Never said she wasn’t.’
‘She told me last night.’
‘Yeah, well we’ll …’ Frown. ‘Last night? You’ve been on your own since last night? In the wardrobe?’
‘Said she’d come back soon as it was safe.’
And the nominees for ‘Mother of the Year’ are …
Logan stood. ‘You think you can walk, or do you want me to give you a piggy back?’
Ricky looked up at him, then away again. He gripped a handful of duvet cover. ‘Are you going to shag me up the arse?’
‘Wasn’t top of my agenda, no.’
A nod. ‘Can you carry me then?’
Logan knocked on the doorframe. The paintwork was chipped and peeling, a thick grey line halfway up marking where countless trolleys had bashed their way through. ‘Shop?’
The mortuary was nearly twice the size of the one in the basement of FHQ, done in sparkling white-and-blue tiles, like a swimming pool. A little speaker system sat on a shelf by the refrigerated drawers, Dr Hook’s Sexy Eyes echoing slightly in the antiseptic space.
‘Hello?’ A head appeared from a door at the back of the room – ginger curls bobbing as she wheeled a mop and bucket into the cutting room, white mortuary clogs squeaking on the floor. She smiled. ‘Sergeant McRae, we’ve not had you here for a while. Picking up, or dropping off?’
‘They got you mopping up now? You not a bit overqualified for that?’
‘Fred’s off sick, so we’re all chipping in.’ The Anatomical Pathology Technician hauled the mop out of the bucket and slopped it across the tiles, making little streams rush along the grout. ‘How’s Sheila? She still channelling Vincent Price?’
‘Three weeks to go.’ He limped into the room. ‘Wanted to ask you a question.’
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8 Page 18