‘This morning, in a box on the top step.’
‘Then it’s no’ Reuben, is it? He’s been banged up in here since six last night.’
‘So he got someone else to deliver it for him. It’s a threat. He wants …’ A frown. What? What on earth would Reuben get out of it? ‘OK, I haven’t got a clue what he wants, but you don’t send someone finger bones for fun.’
‘See if you’re right, and this is some OAP drug dealer from Manchester, or Birmingham, or Christ knows where, I’m going to sodding kill you. How are we supposed to solve that?’
Logan pocketed his phone and his keys. ‘Chalmers – when you’re done with the CCTV, go dig up a list of Agnes Garfield and Anthony Chung’s friends so we can start interviewing them.’
‘Yes, Guv.’
‘And get me someone in uniform with their head screwed on the right way round: search trained. I’m going out.’
Even with her police-issue boots on, PC Sim barely made it past Logan’s shoulder. Her dark-brown hair was swept back and imprisoned in a tight bun, just under the rim of her bowler. That and the glasses made it look as if she was trying to get her head to go faster. She wrinkled her nose. ‘You live here?’
Logan hefted a roll of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape out of the pool car’s boot. ‘What’s wrong with here?’
She turned around on the spot, then pointed at the sewage treatment plant on the opposite side of the river. Then the dirty big supermarket. Then the graveyard. Then up past that to the dual carriageway where the eighteen-wheelers thundered. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘Hmph.’ Logan dumped the tape in her arms. ‘String this up between the trees. I want a twelve-foot cordon around the caravan.’
‘Just saying.’ She unravelled the end of the tape and tied it around the trunk of a big beech.
‘And you should have seen it when the chicken factory was right behind us.’
A pair of magpies swooped down, landing on the pool car, hopping on the bonnet, heads cocked to one side, watching as Sim picked her way through the trees that ran behind the caravan, twisting the tape around trunks and branches. Then out around a bush, then another tree, then the caravan next door, until she had a wobbly-sided rhomboid. ‘Should we not have a whole team or something?’
‘Don’t want this splashed all over the Aberdeen Examiner tomorrow morning. Low-key.’
‘Smart thinking.’ She smiled at him. ‘And the cordon of blue-and-white, with the word “Police” written all over it, isn’t going to be a giveaway at all.’
The magpie cackled from the bonnet of the pool car.
‘Just … Shut up and put your suit on.’
‘Yes, Guv.’
Logan stood, hands in the small of his back, trying to stretch the knots out. The white Tyvek SOC suit let a little puff of broiling-hot air out of the elasticated hood, sweat trickling down his sides. Should’ve stripped off before putting the damn thing on.
PC Sim was on her knees in the bushes behind the caravan, picking her way slowly through the twigs and leaves. Singing a medley of show tunes to herself, the words all muffled by her facemask. Then she sat back, mid-song, and stared at something in her hand.
Logan slouched his way over, blue plastic bootees scuffing on the tarmac. ‘Find one?’
‘This them?’ She held up a small knot of bones, but didn’t hand it over. It was held together with a blue ribbon: that would be the one he’d chucked away on Saturday evening.
‘That’s them.’
Sim pulled an evidence bag from the box beside her, dropped the bones inside, then sealed it up and scribbled the details down on the form printed into the plastic. ‘So there’s this one, the broken bits from the ivy, and the ones from the kitchen bin. That it?’
Logan shrugged. ‘Should be another couple around here … There were more, but I chucked them out. The scaffies did the rubbish collection last week.’
‘That’s a shame, I’d have loved to go rummaging through a communal wheely-bin full of other people’s mouldy poop.’
‘Poop?’
‘Poop.’
Sim rocked from side to side, as if she was on some sort of dodgy exercise video. Sweat your way thin in a Tyvek SOC suit. ‘I give up.’
Logan sank down onto the top step, back resting against the caravan door. Cool sweat made a clammy hand of his shirt, gripping his spine. ‘There were at least three more sets.’
‘And you chucked them all in the bushes?’
‘I think so. Maybe …’
The magpies were back, perching on the roof of the caravan opposite. Heads bobbing and weaving as they stared down at him. Waiting for him to do something exciting. Well, they were in for a long wait. Cheeky wee buggers.
Sim peeled off her safety goggles; the glasses underneath were all steamed up. She pulled the facemask out and let it dangle on its elastic around her neck. Her whole face glistened. ‘I’ve been through them a dozen times. If they were there, they’ve gone now.’ Then the hood came off. Her bun had disintegrated into a frizzy clump. ‘Jeepers, it’s hot in here.’
Jeepers?
‘You’re a weirdo, you know that, don’t you, Sim?’
‘Maybe …’ She frowned, then unzipped the front of her suit and cleaned her glasses on the black police-issue T-shirt underneath. Popped them back on. ‘Anyone round here got a dog?’
‘The Dawsons in three have got a border terrier, and the McNeils in seven have a yorkie. Not exactly the place for Alsatians and St Bernards.’
‘Well, dogs might have eaten …’
A raucous cackle sounded from the caravan roof. Then one of the magpies hopped off the edge and swooped up onto the tree behind her. More laughter.
Sim stared up into the tree. ‘Is that a nest?’
Logan peeled off his own hood. ‘Little sods sit up there and giggle at each other from about five in the morning. Like Waldorf and Statler.’
She walked over to it, jumped a couple of times for the lower branch, then stomped her foot. The perils of being short. ‘Oh … poop.’ She waved at him. ‘Give us a leg-up.’
‘Seriously, you think the magpies nicked them?’
‘Well, if the ribbons are shiny, why not?’ She peeled off the blue plastic bootees. Looked at him.
Why not. He linked his hands together and gave her a boost.
She clambered up him like a drunken chimpanzee, until she was standing on the lowest branch. Then up onto the next one. And the one above that.
Logan stepped back. ‘When you fall and break your neck I’m going to tell everyone I told you not to do this.’
‘If you like, we can go back to the station, have a threat-assessment meeting, come up with a health-and-safety plan, hire some scaffolding, get someone qualified to erect it, someone else to inspect it, and then—’
‘Just don’t fall off.’
She reached up and grabbed the branch with the nest on it.
The magpie bounced up and down, hurling abuse as Sim pulled herself up and peered into the nest.
‘Anything?’
‘Some bottle tops, a set of car keys, bit of tinsel, and an earring.’
‘Bones?’
‘Sorry, Guv.’ She turned and looked down at him. ‘Looks as if …’ Her eyes went wide. ‘Jeepers!’
There she went again: jeepers, like something out of Scooby-Doo. ‘What?’
Sim wrapped one arm around the branch, and pointed with the other one at the roof of Logan’s caravan. ‘You better see this.’
He frowned up at her. ‘If you’re—’
‘Seriously, Guv: you need to see this.’
Fine. Whatever.
Logan fetched the wheely-bin from the side of the caravan and dragged it over to the front door, climbed onto the top step, then clambered up onto the bin until he was kneeling there. The black plastic wobbled beneath him. Fall off a wheely-bin and kill himself, how great would that be? Bloody stupid idea …
He grabbed the lip that ran around the caravan roof and pulled himself up to his feet. Then stared down at what was spread out across the gritty roofing felt, mouth hanging open.
Jeepers was right.
14
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ DCI Steel threw her hands into the air. ‘How could you no’ know?’
The whole caravan park was cordoned off. Old Mrs Foster and her cockatoo stared out of the kitchen window of number four, mouth a wobbly scarlet slash as a line of SEB techs in white oversuits shuffled slowly past searching the ground for any more bits.
‘Well …’ Logan waved a hand at his home. Two techs were wriggling their way underneath it with tweezers and evidence bags. ‘It’s a residential caravan, it’s got a flat roof, you can’t see it from the ground.’
‘You’re supposed to be a detective, for God’s sake!’
‘It wasn’t—’
‘How could you live under that and no’ know?’
Someone tugged on Logan’s sleeve. ‘Guv?’ PC Sim looked up at him. ‘They say they need to know when your roof was fixed last.’
He stared at her. ‘If you’re suggesting it’s the last guy who fixed it, I think I might have noticed him dying up there and rotting away!’
Steel snorted. ‘Going on recent evidence, I sodding doubt it.’
‘No, Guv, they need to get up there to examine the remains and … you know … don’t want to go through the ceiling.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my roof.’
‘Aye, except for the poor dead sod on it.’
He closed his eyes. Counted to ten. Only made it as far as six. ‘Don’t you have something more productive to do?’
Steel shook her head. ‘Surprisingly enough, the skeleton lying on top of your sodding caravan roof is pretty high on my to-do list. Why can it never be straightforward with you? Why’s it always—’
‘I didn’t bloody put it there, OK?’ He jabbed a finger at the roof. ‘That wasn’t me.’
‘Guv?’ PC Sim again. ‘Council’s turned up.’
A scuffed flatbed truck was beeping its way backwards off of Mugiemoss Road into the caravan park. One side of the thing was all dented, rusting scratches clawed their way through the city council logo. A small yellow cherry-picker was tied to the back.
Cheaper and quicker than sodding about with scaffolding.
Five minutes later, the cherry-picker was trundling along the tarmac, driven by a pug-faced man in a set of council overalls and a high-vis vest. A massive black moustache covered his upper lip, drooping down on either side in a permanent hairy scowl.
Steel held up her hand. ‘All right, Sunshine, that’s far enough. We’ll take it from here.’
He stopped the cherry-picker, but didn’t get out. His voice was a hard-core Teuchter drawl. ‘You certified to drive one of these, quine? ’Cos if you’re not, you’re not driving it. Health and safety.’
‘Who’re you calling “quine”?’ She stuck her chest out. ‘I’m a detective chief bloody inspector, and—’
‘I dinna care if you’re the Queen’s proctologist, no one’s driving this thing without a cert from the council.’ A nod. ‘Health and Safety’d have my arse in a buttie.’
She scowled at him, pulled the fake cigarette from her pocket, clicked it on, stuck it in her mouth, and sooked on it a couple of times. A puff of steam dissipated in the warm summer air. ‘Right, someone get Burt Reynolds here an SOC suit. He’s our new chauffeur.’
‘Aye, aye …’ Burt Reynolds and his amazing moustache leaned out over the edge of the cherry-picker’s railing, gazing down at the roof of Logan’s caravan. ‘There’s a sight you don’t see every day.’
The cherry-picker’s basket was at least eighteen feet off the ground, high enough to give a good view of the whole roof. It rocked slightly as Steel and Logan moved over to get a better look.
Steel grabbed the handrail. ‘This thing safe?’
‘Once found a skull when we were digging up a road outside Rhynie. Fat Doug wanted to take it home for an ashtray. He was aye a bit strange.’
The yellow-grey bones were laid out on the flat roof like some sort of art installation: a toothless skull resting above crossed femurs, the bottom jaw on the other side, then the pelvis and sternum, all held within a rough circle made up of ribs and vertebrae. Little piles of soil dotted the roof around it.
Logan pointed. ‘Can’t have been there for long. There’s no moss or anything growing on them.’
‘Ah.’ Burt Reynolds from the council nodded. ‘Maybe it’s Keith Richards?’
Steel shrugged. ‘If it is, he’s lost weight.’ Then she hit Logan on the arm. ‘Told you it wasn’t Reuben.’
‘How can you possibly—’
‘This is way too frou-frou.’ A sniff. ‘Besides, the lardy sod would’ve gone through the roof like Ann Widdecombe in a brothel.’
The downstream monitoring suite had been given a fresh coat of magnolia since last time, so now it was miserable, pokey, and stank of paint fumes. Logan wedged the door open with one of the plastic chairs. ‘Better?’
‘What do you think.’ Steel banged the flat of her hand down on top of the small TV screen mounted above the length of grey working surface. ‘Go on, you wee bugger …’
The picture fizzed and crackled. Then interview room three appeared on screen, slightly distorted by the angle of the camera.
Reuben was sitting on the other side of the table, facing the camera, massive shoulders slumped, his hair all flat on one side and sticking up on the other. Could almost smell the second-hand booze oozing out of every pore, even from here.
If it bothered the man sitting next to him, it didn’t show. Sandy Moir-Farquharson’s suit probably cost more than Logan made in a month. Maybe two. The white shirt immaculate and crisp, the tie perfectly centred. He had a little less hair, and it was almost entirely grey now, but he still had exactly the same patronizing air. ‘And tell me, Inspector, when was my client supposed to have conducted this alleged assault?’
Logan poked the screen. ‘“Alleged” my arse.’
The man sitting with his back to the camera checked his notes. ‘Half six, yesterday morning.’ DI Bell was nearly as wide as Reuben, but half a head shorter. He’d taken his jacket off, rolling up his sleeves to reveal a hairy pair of arms that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a gorilla.
‘Come on, Ding-Dong, ask him about the bones.’
Steel sighed. ‘You’re bloody obsessed.’
‘Then your complainant is clearly mistaken in his identification.’ The lawyer pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase. ‘I have here a sworn statement from a Miss Chloe Slessor stating that my client was with her all night in a … romantic capacity.’
‘The lying cow!’
Steel whistled. ‘Romantic? Reuben? Jesus, can you imagine that humping away at you? Be like a warthog shagging a Fabergé egg.’
‘Does your complainant have any witnesses to corroborate his fictitious version of events?’
‘Ooh: think you’re the one who’s shagged now, Laz.’
‘As a police officer, DI McRae—’
‘I’m sorry, Inspector, are police officers above the law now?’ Hissing Sid’s smile was sharp and reptilian. ‘Don’t they have to comply with the same burden of proof as everyone else?’
‘He punched me on the bloody nose!’ Logan grabbed the little microphone wired into the wall and pressed the red button. ‘He punched me on the bloody nose!’
On screen, DI Bell flinched. Then dug a finger into his ear, wiggling the little wireless earpiece. ‘Ow …’
Logan pressed the button again. ‘Sorry. Ask him about the bones.’
‘Reuben,’ DI Bell leaned forward, ‘who do the bones belong to?’
A sniff, then a frown. ‘Eh?’
‘The ones you’ve been sending to DI McRae.’
He looked at his lawyer, then back at the inspector
. ‘Are you off your hairy wee head?’
‘Who was she? Who did you kill?’
Silence. Reuben sat back and folded his huge arms.
Steel snorted. Then grabbed the microphone from Logan’s hand. ‘Yeah, good one, Ding-Dong, really smooth. He’s bound to tell you now.’
‘My client hasn’t killed anyone, Inspector Bell. My client is a law-abiding citizen and resents the accusation.’ Hissing Sid clicked his briefcase closed again. ‘Might I just warn you that Grampian Police are already looking at one count of wrongful arrest: I really wouldn’t go throwing about accusations like that without some serious proof.’ He unfolded his long limbs and stood, towering over the table. ‘Now as you clearly have nothing relevant to discuss with us, and no evidence, I suggest you release my client immediately. This interview is over.’
15
CLANG – the wastepaper basket clattered against the wall and rebounded, spewing napkins, eviscerated crisp packets, chocolate-bar wrappers, and empty Pot Noodle cartons all over the stained carpet tiles of the viewing suite.
DS Chalmers flinched, spinning her chair around, eyes wide. She blinked a couple of times, then took off her headphones. ‘Frightened the living Jesus out of me … Good job I’ve got excellent bladder control, or it’d be like Niagara Falls in here.’
The viewing suite was even smaller than the downstream monitoring one – jammed into a space barely big enough to qualify as a cupboard with a huge grey security cabinet for police van CCTV hard drives against one wall, and a little wall-mounted work surface on the other. Two sets of AV equipment sat side-by-side on it, grainy footage of Aberdeen flickering away on a pair of tiny flat-screen TVs.
Chalmers sat in front of them, with a stack of ancient-looking VHS cassettes piled up on the work surface beside her.
Logan ran a hand across his eyes. ‘Sorry.’ Then he squatted down, picked up a dead packet of prawn cocktail and dumped it back in the dented bin. Followed it up with a chicken-and-mushroom Pot Noodle carton. ‘Been one of those days.’
‘I’ve been trying to find Agnes Garfield and Anthony Chung on the city-centre CCTV footage from this morning. Which is a complete nightmare. But …’ She pressed a button on the console, then spun what looked like a volume knob. On the screen, people rushed into rewind, backing rapidly across Union Street as the lights changed. ‘I did manage to track down that cash-machine transaction.’
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8 Page 51