‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning—’
‘Anyway,’ she pointed at his arm, ‘that means a hell of a lot more to me than some cheesy moon-in-June bollocks.’
She unfastened the thick leather belt from her jeans, popped the top button, unzipped the zip, then pulled her T-shirt up. ‘So …’ There was a little patch of wadding, not much bigger than a beer mat, stuck to her stomach, just beside her bellybutton. She peeled the sticky tape off. ‘What do you think?’
It was the number twenty-three, reversed out of a circle made up of squiggles. The ink was black, the skin slightly swollen, angry red fading to pasty-Scottish-white. It sat not far from the topmost spines of the tribal spider thing that reached all the way down to her knee; equidistant from a teddy bear with an axe in its chest, and a sort of bramble-twined rose.
‘Twenty-three?’
‘Yup. Call it a reply to the love note on your arm. See,’ she pointed at the squiggles, ‘now I’ve got twenty-three little scars. Just like you.’
Logan put a hand against his own stomach. Squinched up one side of his face. ‘Thanks … I think.’
She pulled her T-shirt back down again. ‘You don’t like it.’
‘No, it’s not that … I …’ He frowned. ‘I just … can’t decide if it’s a really sweet gesture, or a little creepy.’
Samantha grinned. ‘Can’t a girl be both?’
‘Dunno, she’s no’ looking that good.’
‘Course she’s not – she’s got a fever, you idiot.’
Hot. Far too hot. Jenny forces her eyes open. Cold. And Hot. And the light stabs her head like a sharpened pencil. The room starts to twirl. Dirty ceiling, scribbled-on walls, a bare light bulb that swims across a dirty sky …
So thirsty.
‘Well? What the hell are we supposed to do?’
The monsters are in the corner, all crinkly and white. Like ghosts made of paper.
‘So, do we call a doctor, or what?’
Her lips crack and burn. ‘Mummy …’
‘Don’t be a dick, Tom.’
Who’re you calling a dick, Sylvester?’
‘Mummy …?’ Her head thumps and whumps.
‘It’s OK, darling, Mummy’s here. Shhh …’
A cool hand strokes Jenny’s forehead. ‘Thirsty.’
‘Use your heads.’ This monster isn’t like the other ones. He has pointy horns and a red swishy tail. And when he steps on the floorboards little circles of fire sprout into life. ‘How the fuck are we supposed to explain this to a doctor? “Oh, you know those two off the telly who’ve been kidnapped? Well, guess what we found …”’
‘Where’s bloody Colin when you need him?’
Mummy raises her voice. ‘She needs water.’
The monsters stop arguing. ‘Yeah, right. Sylvester, get her a bottle or something …’
‘He’s not answering his phone. Why isn’t he answering his bloody phone? I said he was fucking unreliable, didn’t I, David? Didn’t I say he was a big fat fucking liability?’
‘Here, it’s pretty cold. You maybe shouldn’t let her drink it all at once, or she’ll puke.’
Mummy’s face ripples into view. Her eyes are pink, so is her nose. She sniffs, wipes a drip away with the back of her hand. ‘Here, sweetie, try and take little sips …’
The hard plastic shape presses against Jenny’s lips and she gulps. Cold, wet, soothing – spreading out inside her. A frozen octopus reaching all the way from her elbows to her knees.
‘We got to do something, what if she dies?’
‘She’s not going to fucking die.’ DAVID leaves a trail of fiery feet across the floor. ‘Here: the useless tosser’s left his medical bag. She just needs more antibiotics or something.’
The water goes away. Jenny reaches for it, but her hands wobble and flap. Two balloons filled with sausages …
‘Shhh … It’ll be OK, sweetie, it’ll be OK. Mummy promises.’
‘Found some Fluc … Fluc-lox-acillin,’ sounding it out, ‘that’s right, isn’t it?’
‘How much do we give her?’
‘I dunno. Can you overdose on antibiotics?’
‘God’s sake, Tom.’ DAVID sighs, his shoulders hunching. ‘You’ve got an iPhone, Google it.’
‘Right … OK. Yeah. Here we go – got it. Flucloxacillin … How much does she weigh?’
‘The fuck does that matter?’
‘Dose depends on how much she weights: thirty milligrams per kilo. She’s about, what – nineteen, twenty kilos?’ He fiddles with a needle and a little glass bottle, then squirts a little arc into the air, just like on the television. ‘Right … who’s going to do it?’
SYLVESTER backs away. ‘Nah, that’s Colin’s job.’
‘Yeah, but Colin’s no’ here, is he?’
‘Give me the bloody thing.’ DAVID holds out hand. ‘Does it go into a vein or muscle?’
‘Erm …’ He looks at the shiny flat thing again. ‘Either.’
Mummy’s voice wobbles. ‘Please don’t hurt her …’
‘You want another fucking lesson?’
She flinches back.
‘Didn’t think so. Hold the kid’s arm still.’
Jenny watches the shiny needle. It glints and sparkles in the sunshine. Out on the beach. A picnic with egg sandwiches, sausage rolls and Daddy. He lifts her up onto his shoulders and charges into the sea, laughing. Mummy waves from the sand.
The scratchy bee stings.
30
The bear crinkled its top lip. ‘What? Do I look like your fuckin’ mother?’ Its lace was hall fur, half scar tissue, the skin twisted into a permanent sneer.
Logan sneaked a look at the fridge. ‘I don’t know where it is.’
A smile. Not a nice smile, an I’m-going-to-bite-your-fucking-face-off smile … ‘You better hope that’s—’
The bear’s tummy started singing. ‘Shite …’
‘Jenny’s toe has to go back in the fridge.’ Logan blinked. Darkness. Blink. The pale green glow of the alarm-clock-radio turned the bedroom monochrome. The room had a funky, spice-garlic-and-bleach post-coital smell, socks and pants thrown about the place like a Roman orgy.
‘Urgh …’ Did the Romans wear pants under their togas?
His mobile was ringing.
‘Bloody …’ It took two goes to grab the thing.
Samantha grumbled and shifted in her sleep, mouth open just enough to expose the tip of her tongue and her top teeth. A snort. Smack, smack. Mumble.
Logan stabbed the button. ‘What?’
Yawn. He ground his right fist into his eye socket.
Silence.
Typical – that’s what he got for handing out his CID business card to every smack-head junkie tosspot in the north-east of Scotland.
‘I’m not running a sex line for mimes here. You either say something, or I’m hanging up in: five, four, three, two—’
‘Fuckin’ gave you the chance …’
Logan held the phone out and squinted at the little screen. ‘UNKNOWN NUMBER’.
‘Who is this?’
‘Consequences … You know? Everything has fuckin’ consequences.’
‘Yeah, very funny. Now who the hell is …’ He frowned. ‘Shuggie Webster. It’s you, isn’t it? Next time I—’
The line went dead.
‘Please …’ Trisha Brown slumps back against the radiator. ‘Please …’
Just that little movement sends sharp flashes of pain racing up her left leg, like some fucker’s twisting screws into the broken bone.
Don’t look at it.
But it’s like a car crash, you know? Gotta look. Gotta see the blood and that.
Oh Jesus … The bit between her knee and her ankle is one huge fuck-off bruise, a lump, big as a scotch egg, sticking out the side. She wants to reach out and touch it, or pick at the scabbed bite marks on her ghost-white thighs. But she can’t, not with both hands cuffed above h
er head. Naked and shackled, on display like meat in a butcher’s shop.
She looks away.
It’s a basement, or a garage, something like that. Boiler for the central heating, big chest freezer. Washing machine. Shelves with tins and shit on them. No windows, just that fucking buzzing strip-light that he never turns off.
Her whole body aches and stings and burns. Cold and hot at the same time. Something deep inside her, torn and bleeding. Dirty.
She blinks back a tear. All that time down Shore Lane, making a bit of cash to keep herself in gear – and her little boy in them wee frozen pizzas he likes so much – and she never felt dirty before. Not like this.
How’s Ricky supposed to manage now? Stuck with his bloody smack-head grandmother. Trisha thumps her head back against the radiator. The cool metal sounds like a muffled bell or something. She does it again. Harder. Grits her teeth. Slamming her head into the thing – at least if she knocks herself out it won’t hurt any more.
It doesn’t work.
‘Maybe I should go off on the sick?’ DS Doreen Taylor stared into her coffee, spreading out the red-and-silver foil wrapper from her Tunnock’s Teacake on the canteen table, smoothing it to a shine with the back of her finger.
‘Ah …’ Bob nodded. ‘Women’s problems, eh?’
She didn’t look up. ‘No. I just don’t know if I can take another day with that sanctimonious git-bag Superintendent Green.’ She sat up straight. ‘There, I said it.’
Logan smiled. ‘“Git-bag”?’
‘Well, he is.’ The foil square was perfectly mirror smooth. She scrumpled it up into ball. ‘You know that Finnie and Bain are worried SOCA are going to take over the McGregor investigation?’
Bob nodded. ‘They’ll be all over us like Gary Glitter in an orphanage.’
‘Don’t be disgusting.’ She dropped the foil ball in his empty mug. ‘And they’ve no intention of taking over. I heard Green talking on his mobile last night – they won’t touch this case with a bargepole. We’ve got nothing to go on: no leads, no witnesses, no forensics. If they move in they’ll be just as stuck as we are.’
‘Ah …’ Logan stuck his mug back on the table. Winced slightly. His right arm ached – one huge mess of blue and purple and green where Shuggie Webster had pounded his fist into it. ‘So when the deadline comes round on Thursday morning, and we’ve got no choice but to hand over the ransom money, they don’t want to be the ones in charge.’
Doreen slumped over her coffee. ‘Exactly: they point the finger at us for messing everything up, we get the blame, and they take over as soon as we get Alison and Jenny back.’
‘Dirty bastards.’ Bob stabbed the table with a finger. ‘We do all the sodding about, and they swoop in and interview the only witnesses we’re likely to get.’ He raised one cheek off his seat, squinted an eye shut, then sighed. ‘Right, I’m off.’
Bob disappeared, giggling.
The smell, when it hit, was like being battered around the head with a mouldy colostomy bag.
Rennie was waiting for Logan in the little makeshift office, sitting at the borrowed desk peering at the laptop’s screen, his fingers rattling across the keys.
‘You better not be messing about on some porn chat site.’ Logan placed a wax-paper cup next to the mouse. ‘Coffee. For not dumping me in it with Professional Standards.’
‘Ooh, thanks, Sarge.’ He creaked the plastic lid off and nodded at a small stack of paper. ‘Been looking up kidnappings – got seven years’ worth so far.’
Logan picked up the PNC printouts and leafed through them. ‘Anything?’
‘Nothing even vaguely like the McGregors. There’s not as many legit kidnappings as you’d think – with proper ransom notes and stuff – most are drug dealers getting nabbed by rivals, a couple of silly sods kidnapping themselves for the attention, and about a dozen tigers.’ He raised an eyebrow. Probably waiting to be asked what a ‘tiger’ was.
Tough.
Logan dumped the pile on the desk. ‘What about older cases?’
‘You know: when you abduct someone’s family, ’cos you want them to help you rob their bank or something?’
‘You want me to take that coffee back?’
‘Just trying to—’
‘Rennie!’
A sigh. ‘I’ve got an appointment with the force historian at ten. She’s got a bunch of stuff booked out for an exhibition she’s putting on.’
‘Good. While you’re there, see if you can’t go back another ten years, just to be on the safe side.’ Whatever shite-storm Napier was whipping up with SOCA, no one was going to accuse Logan of not being thorough.
The constable groaned. ‘Can we not stick this stuff on the back burner for a bit? I mean, I could help you interview Alison’s student mates instead? Maybe we can crack the case: get Alison and Jenny back before Superintendent Soapy-Tit-Wank takes it off us?’ He struck a pose, one hand on his chest, the other reaching out towards the manky ceiling tiles. ‘Rennie and McRae save the day!’ A grin. ‘Hey, that rhymes.’
Logan chewed on the inside of his lip. ‘You want to help interview everyone on Alison McGregor’s course?’
Nod.
‘OK, you can.’
‘Woot!’ Rennnie punched the air. ‘Thanks, Sarge!’
‘Just as soon as you’ve finished digging stuff out of the archives.’
‘Nope.’ Sergeant Eric Mitchell looked up from his computer screen, then ran a finger through his oversized moustache, sunlight glinting off his bald head. ‘Everything’s booked out.’
‘How can everything be booked out?’ Logan tried to peer at the screen, but Eric twisted it away.
‘Finnie’s got everyone off interviewing doctors and vets again, that’s why. Take a bus like normal people. Or get a taxi.’
‘Right. A taxi. You ever tried to claim one of those back on expenses?’
‘So walk.’
‘To Hillhead?’
‘Ahem …’ The voice came from just over Logan’s shoulder. ‘Perchance I can be of assistance, young Logie? I happen to be going that way myself.’
Logan closed his eyes. ‘I’m not sharing a car with you, Bob.’
‘I’ll let you drive?’ Bob jangled a set of keys at him. ‘Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?’
Logan climbed out into the cool morning and slammed the pool car’s door shut. Hauled in a lungful of clean air.
Bob got out of the other side. ‘What? I opened the window, didn’t I?’
‘You need medical help. Or a bloody cork.’
‘Better out than in, as my granny always said.’ He stood and stared up at the soulless collection of Stalin-style concrete apartment blocks, then bit at his top lip. ‘Don’t fancy coming in with me, do you? I fucking hate suicides.’
‘Thought you took the body in yesterday?’
‘Yeah, but …’ He shuffled his shoulders beneath his shiny grey suit jacket. ‘Murder’s different: something horrible happened and we catch whatever sick bastard did it. Make sure the victim gets justice. With suicide, they’re the same person.’ He sniffed. ‘Don’t tell me it’s not creepy. Bloody depressing too.’
The room wasn’t huge, just enough space for a single bed, a built-in wardrobe, a little table and one chair. A pair of bookshelves sat above the desk, full of dog-eared medical textbooks. The obligatory Monet, Klimt, and Star Wars posters. A copy of FHM lay on the floor by the bed. ‘KAREN GETS THEM OUT! IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?’
The little window looked out onto yet another block of student accommodation. Pale and drab and lifeless.
‘Bruce Sangster, twenty-one. Got pissed on Highland Park, then shot himself full of morphine, tied a plastic bag over his head, never woke up again.’ Bob tucked his hands into his armpits. ‘Twenty-one and you go do that to yourself. What a fucking waste.’
Whisky, opiates, and suffocation. It wasn’t a cry for help: whatever Bruce Sangster was running away fro
m he’d made bloody sure it wasn’t going to catch him. How could anyone’s life be so bad they’d just throw it all away?
Bob shuddered. ‘Was going to be a doctor …’
Medical textbooks and lads’ mags weren’t the only reading material in the place. There was a little pile of Heat, Hello!, Now and OK!:‘ALISON’S SECRET SCHOOLGIRL SHAME: ”I WAS A TEENAGE TEARAWAY”, ADMITS BNBS SEMI-FINALIST.’
DI Steel had got it word perfect. Which was worrying.
Logan picked the magazine up and skimmed through all the cheesy smiles, fake tan, flock wallpaper and chandeliers, until he got to Alison McGregor’s photo. She was sitting in her living room, looking off into the middle distance, holding that framed portrait of Doddy in his uniform. Hair: immaculate, make-up: perfect, dressed in a silky top that managed to be respectable and revealing at the same time.
No doubt about it, she was a very attractive woman. Very, very attractive.
The article seemed to be about her admitting she’d done everything Vicious Vikki accused her of. And more. Acting out because her foster parents couldn’t relate to her on an emotional level, whatever the hell that meant. Then she’d met Doddy and discovered she wasn’t a horrible person after all and there was more to life than drinking, smoking, and vandalizing bus shelters. Along came the little miracle that was Jenny growing inside her, then the tragedy of losing Doddy’s parents, a fairytale wedding, the birth …
Tearaway turns her life around, becomes a loving wife and a devoted mum, Doddy dies in Iraq, Alison gets on Britain’s Next Big Star to honour his memory, and the rest is history.
More shots of Alison and Jenny at home, then … Logan frowned. The next two pages were stuck together. They came apart with a ripping sound, and there was a photo of Alison at the beach, wearing a yellow bikini, smiling at the camera, one hand behind her head, Jenny building a sandcastle at her feet. There were bits of the opposite page stuck to Alison’s stomach chest and face.
Bob appeared at his shoulder. ‘Someone got a bit excited …’
Logan dumped the magazine in the bin. ‘What the hell’s wrong with people?’
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8 Page 21