Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8

by Stuart MacBride

  McInnes went down, covering his face and head, bleating as Logan smashed the book into his ribs. He curled one leg up against his chest, the other sticking out an awkward angle.

  Logan dropped the book, breathing hard. He spat; a glob of red-flecked foam trickled down the wall. He wiped a hand across his mouth and chin: it came away dripping with blood.

  DC Leggett groaned.

  Logan lurched over. ‘Paul?’ He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the dusty carpet next to him. ‘You OK?’

  ‘No …’ Leggett reached up and touched the gash in his forehead. Flinched. ‘Ayabastard …’

  ‘You’ll live.’ The avalanche of boxes had almost cleared the space in front of the hidden door. Logan crawled over and hauled the last box out of the way, leaving a bloody hand print on the cardboard. He glanced back at McInnes – curled up on the floor, crying, clutching his knee – then turned the door handle.

  Locked.

  It flew open on the second kick, the boom reverberating around the house.

  Logan stepped into an L-shaped room with bare breeze-block walls, loops of grey electrical cable protruding from metal ducting, one corner done up with plasterboard nailed to raw wooden struts. Modular metal shelves lined several of the walls, a washing machine and tumble dryer sitting beside a big chest freezer, sheets of water-bloated chipboard nailed up where windows should have been.

  He picked his way across the bare concrete floor to the corner, glanced back at McInnes again – still crying, still trying to hold his ruptured knee together – then stepped into the long leg of the L-shaped room.

  Trisha Brown was crumpled against a storage radiator, naked, one arm handcuffed to the supports. Her wrist was a solid ring of raw flesh, blood smeared from her fingertips halfway to her elbow. Her other arm … Logan looked away. Human limbs weren’t meant to bend like that. Her legs were worse: twisted and broken and covered in scabs and weals, pale thighs dotted with little red burns and bite marks.

  The sharp smell of urine and pine disinfectant, overlaid with BO and shit.

  ‘Trisha?’ He swallowed. ‘Trisha, can you hear me?’ He knelt beside her, felt for a pulse. Strong, pounding. Trisha, it’s going to be OK.’ He put a hand under her chin and raised her head. Fuck …’ Her nose was buckled to the left, both eyes swollen shut, her chin lopsided, her lips cracked and bleeding, her cheek misshapen – probably broken – every inch of skin covered in a violent rainbow of bruises. ‘Are you—’

  Her head snapped forward, mouth wide, jagged stumps of teeth flashing in bloody gums.

  Logan flinched back, snatching his hand out of the way. She wobbled, shoulders twitching, then slumped back against the battered radiator. A cross between a growl and a hiss escaped her battered lips.

  Jesus.

  Logan turned away, marched around the corner and back into the hall. ‘YOU!’ He took a handful of McInnes’s long greasy grey hair. ‘Where’s the key?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  Logan hauled. ‘Where’s the fucking key?’

  The old man screamed, let go of his knee and grabbed at Logan’s hand, trying to keep it from hauling the scalp off his head. ‘In the box! In the box!’

  Logan dragged him across the hall to the little wooden box mounted on the wall – the one the garage door key had come from – McInnes screaming and crying, his good leg scrabbling at the carpet, the other one dragging through the debris.

  It wasn’t difficult to spot the handcuff key – Logan snatched it from its hook and hauled McInnes through the door with him, into the unfinished room.

  46

  ‘What was I supposed to do?’ Darren McInnes sat in the back of the patrol car, hands cuffed behind his back, a medical cool-pack strapped to his swollen knee.

  The front door opened and someone in a green jumpsuit backed out onto the garden path, holding up one end of a metal-framed stretcher.

  McInnes gave a little laugh, then winced, watching as Trisha was carried over to the waiting ambulance. ‘She was my first, did you know that? My first real life little girl.’

  Logan looked at him. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Before her it was just pictures, but then I got out of prison and they gave me a council flat just round the corner from her house … She was so small and so pretty and I remember she fell off her bike and broke her arm, and I just wanted to make her feel loved, so I—’

  ‘If you don’t start exercising your right to remain silent, I swear to God …’

  A sigh. ‘Her mother was out of her face most of the time, or desperate for a fix, or down the docks renting her arse out so she could pay for the next high. Busy single mother like that needs a babysitter.’

  ‘McInnes—’

  ‘I’m dying.’ He turned and smiled at Logan. The skin around his right eye was already an angry dark blue and purple, the lids swollen and puffy the white stained with red. ‘Cancer – all through my liver and kidneys. Doctor gave me three months, that was four weeks ago. Funny, isn’t it? Smoked like a chimney all my life; everyone always said it’d be lung cancer that did it.’

  ‘That supposed to make me feel sorry for you?’

  ‘I don’t care what you think.’ McInnes’s smile turned into a grin. ‘Oh, I knew you’d find me eventually – but I’ll be dead long before it gets anywhere near court. Can’t blame me for going out in style.’

  ‘You think this is funny?’

  ‘Took me two weeks to track Trisha down, and in the end there she was: not two hundred yards from her mum’s house. Staggering along, begging for money.’ He sighed as they shut the ambulance doors. ‘Thought it would be rather fitting – to end my life the way it started, with her. But …’ McInnes shook his head. ‘She was a lot more fun when she was five.’

  Logan climbed out into the warm morning sun and slammed the door shut before McInnes had another accident.

  One of the paramedics walked around the side of the ambulance, spotted Logan, and headed over. He nodded towards the patrol car, with its greasy-haired black-eyed occupant. ‘You the one buggered his knee?’

  Logan could feel the heat rushing up his cheeks. ‘It was self defence. He—’

  ‘Bastard should be taken out and shot.’ The paramedic scowled through the windscreen. ‘She’ll be lucky if they can save her legs, forget walking again. Had to give her three times as much morphine to get her settled.’

  Logan didn’t tell him that probably had as much to do with Trisha’s tolerance for opiates as the amount of pain she was in.

  The Danse macabre sounded in Logan’s pocket as the ambulance pulled away, lights flashing.

  ‘McRae?’

  DI Steel’s gravelly voice hissed in his ear: ‘Where the sodding hell are you?’

  ‘We found Trisha Brown.’

  A pause. ‘Alive?’

  ‘Only just.’

  ‘Hold on …’ There was an echoey hiss – probably Steel holding a hand over the mouthpiece of her phone – then the muffled sound of people talking.

  Logan watched a uniformed PC help DC Leggett limp out of McInnes’s house. There was a patch of gauze on Leggett’s forehead, held in place with bright-white sticking tape. For some unfathomable reason, his symptoms seemed to get a lot worse as soon as the pretty constable turned up.

  ‘You still there?’

  ‘The suspect’s coughed for abduction, rape, and breaking pretty much every bone in her arm and legs. Thinks the cancer’s going to get him before the courts do.’

  Logan could hear someone talking to her in the background.

  ‘Couldn’t agree more, Guv.’ Then she was back. ‘Getv yourself over here, we’ve got the president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society in an interview room, and your mate the Liverpudlian nut-wrangler’s being a dick. Says he’s no’ doing bugger all till he’s talked to you.’

  Logan stared up at the crystal blue sky and swore.

  ‘Tell Goulding I’ll be right there.’

&nb
sp; Logan shifted in his creaking plastic chair. The Observation Suite was gloomy, the only light coming from the TV screen: interview room number two; Superintendent Green and DI Steel sitting across the table from Stephen Clayton.

  The student flicked his head to the side, getting the long dark hair out of his eyes. ‘One more time, for the hard of thinking: I didn’t do anything to Alison and Jenny McGregor. I asked Alison out, she said no. End of story.’

  Goulding rested the fingertips of his left hand against the screen, pinning Clayton to the cathode ray tube. ‘Look at the body language – arms open, legs spread, leaning back in his seat, keeping eye contact. “I’m confident and comfortable. You do not threaten me.’”

  ‘Yes, well …’ Logan shifted again, trying to stop his leg from going to sleep. ‘He’s a psychology student, isn’t he? Don’t they teach you lot how to do this kind of thing?’

  ‘What,’ Goulding threw a glance in Logan’s direction, ‘you mean: how to lie?’

  Logan crossed his arms, then unfolded them again. If Clayton could do it, so could he. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be prompting them with questions?’

  ‘How long have we known each other, Logan?’

  ‘I mean, that was the whole point of getting you in here, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t you think you can trust me?’

  ‘She rejected you, didn’t she?’ On the little screen, Superintendent Green tapped his knuckles against the tabletop. ‘You loved her, and she shot you down in flames.’

  ‘I didn’t love her. I thought she’d be a decent shag. You know what these single mothers are like: gagging for it.’

  Steel nodded. ‘He’s got a point.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll judge you, or think less of you if you admit you’re having problems?’

  ‘I’m not having problems!’

  ‘She shot you down and it hurt, didn’t it? You wanted revenge.’

  Clayton leant forward. ‘You don’t do a lot of interviewing, do you?’

  ‘Logan, if you don’t talk about it, how’s it ever going to get better?’

  ‘I mean, you haven’t even tried to establish a rapport with me, just straight in with the cod psychology. Now your colleague here,’ he pointed at Steel, ‘she’s doing much better.’

  ‘We talked about it – we spent half an hour talking about it. Now will you just do your bloody job!’

  Goulding smiled. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’ He picked up the little microphone and pressed the red ‘TALK’ button. ‘Ask him about his parents – how does he think they’ll react when they find out he’s been arrested?’

  Steel had a wee scratch below the table. ‘What’s your mum and dad going to think about you being dragged in here? Steve?’

  Green scowled at her. Probably thought he should be the one asking the questions.

  Clayton shrugged. ‘You see, Superintendent, you’re either an alpha male, or you’re not. The inspector here: she is, but you …’ He made a side-to-side see-saw motion with one hand.

  ‘If it was me: if someone had set fire to my flat while I was sleeping, if my girlfriend had ended up in a coma, I’d want to kill someone.’

  Logan stared at Goulding. ‘Leave it.’

  ‘My mother and father were loving and supportive. They’re proud of everything I’ve achieved.’

  ‘If I’d stood there and watched her fall—’

  ‘Fine, you really want to know? I thought Shuggie Webster did it, OK? So I tracked him down and I beat the crap out of him.’ Logan turned away. ‘Could’ve killed him …’

  ‘That’s a perfectly natural feeling. We all—’

  ‘I don’t mean figuratively: I had the option. I could have killed him got rid of the body, no one would have known.’

  ‘Ah … Now that’s more like it.’ Goulding picked up the microphone. ‘If his parents are so wonderful, why has been rebelling against them all his life?’

  On the little screen, Superintendent Green blurted out the question, desperate to get there before Steel.

  ‘So, for a brief moment you held the power of life and death.’ The psychologist scribbled something in his notepad ‘And you chose to be merciful.’ He tilted his head to the side. ‘How did that make you feel?’

  Logan looked away. ‘Sick.’

  ‘Really? Interesting … Interesting …’

  On the little screen, Clayton ran a hand through his long brown hair. ‘Tell me, Inspector, when did you discover you were a lesbian? Was it sudden, a gradual process, or have you always known?’

  Goulding smiled. ‘You know, I’m beginning to think your friend Mr Clayton might be a bit too much of a challenge for the inspector and DSI Green. He’s playing with them, like he’s got all the time in the world. He’s in no rush to give us the McGregors.’

  Steel shook her head. ‘Nice try, sunshine, but you’re no’ even in the same league as Hannibal Lecter Now unless you‘re looking for a size-nine hand-stitched leather enema, tell us what you did with Alison and Jenny?”

  ‘How you doing kiddo?’ SYLVESTER lifts Jenny’s chin till her eyes are level with the narrow slits where his eyes should be.

  She looks away. ‘Want my mummy.’

  Yeah, well …’ He pats her on the head, like she’s a doggie. ‘Soon be over; then you can go home. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’

  The room’s hot. Sunlight makes streaks across the bare floorboards, stopping at the foot of the bed. Stopping short of her sore feet. Jenny bites her lip as he strokes her hair with his rubbery fingers.

  ‘Will you leave that bloody kid alone?’ TOM’s sitting on the windowsill, reading a newspaper with a photo of Mummy on the front. ‘Look like a paedophile: pawing at her the whole time.’

  ‘Screw you.’ SYLVESTER’s robot voice turns into a metal whisper. ‘I’m really sorry about … well,’ his eyes drift down, towards her bandaged feet, ‘everything. You know?’ He shrugs and his white paper suit rustles.

  She doesn’t say anything, just sits quietly as the door opens and the monster with the ‘PATRICK’ sticker comes in, the big camera slung over her shoulder. Jenny can hear Mummy crying in the other room, and then PATRICK closes the door, shutting it out. ‘He’s not answering his phone.’

  SYLVESTER’s still stroking Jenny’s hair. ‘You try email?’

  ‘Of course I tried bloody email.’ PATRICK stops and stares. ‘What are you doing?’

  TOM looks over the top of his newspaper. ‘Kiddie-fiddling.’

  ‘I’m not a bloody paedo!’ SYLVESTER stands. ‘You try to be nice, show a wee kid some compassion, and—’

  ‘I know what you want to show her. You want to show her your—’

  ‘Enough!’ PATRICK stomps her foot. ‘Shut up, the pair of you!’

  TOM shrugs. ‘What if the cops picked him up? I mean, they were all over the place today—’

  ‘They speak to you too?’

  Was out. Did my flatmates though; asking all kinds of stuff about Alison and Jenny.’

  PATRICK waves a hand. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But what if—’

  ‘As long as you keep your mouths shut, they can’t prove anything. They’ve got nothing: no witnesses, no motive, no DNA, no fingerprints, nothing. If we torch this place before we go Sherlock Holmes couldn’t catch us.’

  ‘Yeah, but suppose—’

  ‘Are you retarded?’ She walks over to the bed, picks up Teddy Gordon and turns him upside down so his horrible fuzzy bottom is sticking in the air, the white washing tag poking out like a worm. ‘We’re talking about over eight million pounds, Sylvester.’

  ‘Yeah, no: it’ll be fine, I’m working on it. No one’ll see a thing.’

  ‘Make sure they don’t.’ PATRICK shoves the teddy bear at Jenny, those dead black eyes glittering at her. ‘After all, you don’t want to end up like Colin, do you?’

  SYLVESTER doesn’t say anything, he just stands there staring at PATRICK. Even TOM
is silent.

  47

  ‘He’s in there laughing at us!’ Superintendent Green thumped his fist against the boardroom table’s polished mahogany surface. ‘I told you we should have followed him – he would’ve led us straight to Alison and Jenny McGregor. Bringing him in like this was wilfully reckless.’

  Logan checked his watch. Two minutes into the catch-up session and Green was already throwing blame around.

  Steel narrowed her eyes. ‘At least we’re doing something. You’d still be sitting in here with your thumb up your—’

  ‘Inspector!’ Finnie slumped back in his seat. ‘We appreciate your passion, but now’s not the time. Perhaps we could focus on finding solutions instead of pointing fingers?’

  ‘Well,’ Acting DI Mark MacDonald fidgeted with his pen, ‘what if we let Clayton go? Pretend it was just a mistake, and we’re dropping all the charges? Then we could keep him under surveillance and he would think he was in the clear? You know, best of both worlds?’

  Finnie stared at him until Mark’s ears went bright pink. ‘Don’t be stupid. What do the IB say?’

  Logan checked the file he’d grabbed on the way to the boardroom. ‘They’re still going through his laptop – Clayton’s got about two gig of encrypted files that could be anything. Unless he gives us the key, it’s going to take months, maybe years.’

  That’s not an option. Door-to-doors?’

  Steel had a dig at her bra. ‘Ongoing. Halls of residence are huge; has to be hundreds of students living at Hillhead.’

  ‘I see …’ Finnie buried his face in his hands for a moment. Then surfaced again. ‘Options?’

  ‘We’re no’ letting Clayton go – the media would skin us alive.’

  ‘Superintendent Green?’

  The man from SOCA crossed his arms. ‘I think I’ve said my piece.’

  Finnie turned back to Logan. ‘What about the psychologist, Goulding?’

  ‘He wants some off-the-record time with Clayton. Thinks it might help to build a rapport and—’

  Green’s chin came up. ‘It’s out of the question. You can’t leave a civilian alone with the only suspect you’ve managed to produce: nothing Clayton says will be admissible. I won’t allow you to compromise the whole investigation. The Independent Police Complaints Commission—’