‘And now you’ve got four minutes.’
Steel glanced up at the lump of concrete and glass. ‘Go and do the meeting for us, eh?’
‘No chance. I’ve got a forensic anthropologist to chase up.’
‘Be good for you: character building. You can—’
‘What’s more important: you sloping out of the meeting, or us catching whoever necklaced that poor bugger?’
‘Well …’ A scowl made the wrinkles gang up on Steel’s narrow lips. ‘While we’re on the subject, I told you to tell your bloody mother to sod off and stop whining on about spending more time with Jasmine. She’s your mother. Fix her!’ Then Steel wheeled around and stomped off through the back doors to FHQ.
Logan waited until they’d clunked shut behind her, before sticking two fingers up.
The steps down to the mortuary entrance were a shadowy graveyard for discarded crisp packets and cigarette butts, blown in off the rear podium. He picked his way down the stairs, rang the bell, waved at the security camera, waited for the bzzzzzz … Then stepped through the door and into the land of the dead.
Today, the land of the dead smelled like bleach and rehydrated curry.
He stuck his head into the staff room.
Miss Dalrymple had her feet up on the coffee table, a Pot Noodle in one hand and a fork in the other. A gossip magazine was spread out on her lap, ‘NICHOLE FYFE: MY SECRET TEENAGE SUICIDE SHAME’. Which explained the scars on her wrist.
Dalrymple shovelled a dangly forkful of noodles into her mouth. The words came out muffled as she chewed: ‘Not here.’
‘Who’s not?’
‘Dr MacAllister. She’s interviewing candidates to replace our dearly departed Dr Forsyth. He’s not having a leaving do, so there’s no whip-round.’
‘I’m after Dr Graham.’
‘Ah yes, the bone lady.’ Dalrymple popped the fork into the plastic container, then made spidery gestures with her free hand, as if the fingers were sniffing the air for something. ‘She’s managed to break three beakers, two mugs, and knock over a brain bucket since this morning. How anyone so congenitally clumsy can survive day-to-day life is beyond me.’
‘Is she here or not?’
The fingers formed a knot, then spread out to point towards the cutting room. ‘If she ever offers you a lift, I’d seriously recommend running in the opposite direction.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ The grey terrazzo floor was damp, as if it had been mopped not long ago and hadn’t dried yet. Logan left bleach and detergent footprints all the way down the corridor to the cutting-room doors. Then pushed inside.
The sound of gentle snoring came from the corner. Someone had dragged four chairs through from the staff room, lining them up against the stainless-steel working surface with the backs facing out into the room. Whoever it was lay on their side, cocooned by the two sides, an open newspaper draped across their head and shoulders. Like a tramp on a park bench, but in a mortuary cutting room. The only thing missing was an empty bottle of supermarket vodka.
Dr Graham was almost exactly where Logan had left her – hunched over the necklacing victim’s skull. There wasn’t a lot of the resin cast still visible, instead bands of dark-red clay speckled with tissue depth markers made it look like something out of Hellraiser. Dire Straits burbled out of the mortuary stereo.
Logan switched it off. ‘How we getting on?’
She looked up, smiled. Then held a finger to her lips. ‘Shh …’ Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Dr Ramsey just got off to sleep. Rough night.’
‘Under supervision again?’
She nodded her head towards the third cutting table, where a partial skeleton was laid out on a blue plastic sheet. ‘Not that I’m complaining. It’s difficult enough to get one job, but to have a second fall right in my lap: how lucky is that?’
She peeled off her gloves and dumped them in the bin, then crept over to the other bones. The skull sat at the head of the table, missing the top set of teeth. The vertebrae were arranged in a line underneath, with gaps marking the ones that hadn’t turned up on Logan’s roof, but nearly all the rib bones were there, laid out in a disjointed fan down either side. Then the pelvis. And then the two femurs. Dr Graham pointed at the hands: thin cylinders of bone arranged on two sheets of paper, each bit fitting inside the wobbly biro outlines. ‘As far as I can tell, the fingers you found came from the same body. We’re missing the carpals and a couple of metacarpals. And there’s no distal phalanges at all, but fingertips are really small and fiddly so it’s possible they just blew off the roof. Or they were so mangled after being boiled in bleach they just fell apart.’
Logan pulled a photograph from his pocket and placed it on the table beside the skeletal hand. ‘Is this our necklacing victim?’
‘Ah.’ She frowned at the picture of Anthony Chung. ‘Actually, if everything goes to plan I’ll get the epidermis on the reconstruction tomorrow. It would’ve been quicker, but I had to make the mould, and cast the skull, and examine the new skeleton …’
‘But it could be him, right? Isobel said the victim had liver damage – and this guy was a serious drinker. Bottle of vodka a day serious. Two: his girlfriend’s obsessed with a book where witch-finders execute people by necklacing them. And three: she suffers from psychotic episodes, and she’s been off her medication for weeks.’
‘Well …’ Her eyebrows and cheeks twitched, as if there was something wriggling around under the skin. ‘No. It’s not him.’
‘Are you sure?’
Beneath his tabloid blanket, Dr Ramsey snorted and twitched, making the chairs creak.
‘Shhh …’ Dr Graham froze, staring at the duty doctor until he rolled over onto his back and the snoring started again. ‘Trust me: this isn’t our victim.’
‘But—’
‘If it was, I’d have expected rounder eye sockets and a flatter front to the skull as well. Plus there should be a rounded palate and the incisors would be shovel-shaped, but our victim’s teeth are spatulate. I know the body would have looked a bit – and I’m not meaning to be racially insensitive here – yellowy during post mortem, but that’s because the blood settles in the areas closest to the ground.’ She picked up the photo and handed it back to Logan. ‘He wasn’t from the Far East. And he wasn’t in his late teens, early twenties, either.’
‘Oh …’ So much for that theory. It wasn’t Agnes Garfield’s boyfriend. She wasn’t on a psychotic rampage.
Dr Graham patted the clay-covered skull. ‘Our friend here was male, Caucasian, and about forty years old. The remains on your roof, on the other fingertip-less hand, are definitely female, mid sixties, five foot three, and her second and third lumbar vertebrae were surgically fused at some point: that might be worth chasing up?’
Logan glanced back at the pale-grey bones. ‘How did she die?’
‘My life coach says I should always turn a negative into a positive. So: there are excellent opportunities there for further discovery.’
‘You have no idea, do you?’
She scrunched up one side of her face. ‘Well, there’s no knife marks on the bones, or signs of blunt-force trauma, or bullet holes … To be honest, it’s impossible to tell, especially without the rest of the remains. We’ve got nothing below the knees and we’re missing both arms too – he could have hacked them off and she bled to death. Maybe he drowned her? Suffocated her. There’s no hyoid, so she could’ve been strangled. Or he stabbed her in the stomach. Or made her drink bleach. Or—’
‘Enough, OK. I get the picture.’
Dr Graham shrugged. ‘If you want, I can send a sample off to that friend of mine in Dundee?’
‘Do it.’
She picked the left femur from the plastic sheet and hefted it like a club, tapping the hip joint on the palm of her hand. ‘I’ll just need you to sign a couple of release forms …’
‘Yeah, sorry.’ Logan sat on the edge of Dr Forsyth’s old desk, mobile phone pi
nned between his shoulder and his ear, hunting through his jacket pockets for a pen. Bloody things must be hiding. He pulled out his notebook, his car keys, his warrant card, laying them on the desk beside him. Then a handful of business cards, two packs of individually sealed blue nitrile gloves. Then that white DL envelope Hissing Sid gave him, and then the brown one …
They sat on the Formica desktop like tombstones.
A female voice dribbled into his ear. ‘… there yet?’
Blink. ‘Erm … I think so.’ The pen was lying sideways in the bottom of the pocket. He pulled it out and got her to repeat the authorization number and scrawled it down in his notebook, along with the Fiscal Depute’s name and the time and date. Covering his arse, just in case. ‘Thanks.’
‘And this isn’t going to take a chunk out of budget?’
‘Pro bono, apparently.’ He stared down at the tombstones. Puffed out his cheeks. Then picked up the white envelope and tore it open.
‘Really? Is this a regular thing, or a special favour, because the PF would definitely use this stable isotope thingy a lot more often if it’s free.’
Inside were two sheets of paper tagged with little yellow Post-its marked ‘SIGN HERE’ with an arrow pointing to the relevant part of the form. Logan’s pulse thumped in his ears, pins and needles sparking along his forearms. ‘Holy mother of crap …’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I …’ He licked his lips. ‘Got to go, something’s … Bye.’ He hung up. Put the phone down with all the other rubbish from his jacket pockets. Cleared his throat. Blinked at the sheet of paper in his hand. The words were still there:
I HAMISH ALEXANDER SELKIRK MOWAT (Mains of Clerkhill, Grandhome, Aberdeen, AB22 8AV), being of sound mind, do hereby nominate and appoint LOGAN MCRAE (23 Persley Park Caravan Park, Aberdeen, AB21 9NS) as sole executor for my last will and testament, and further grant him CONTINUING and WELFARE POWER of ATTORNEY …
Oh dear Jesus. No. No chance. No chance in hell.
Logan tore the brown envelope open and tipped the contents into his hand. It was a cheque for thirty thousand pounds.
‘Little shite …’
‘ … cheeky bastard gave me a cheque for thirty thousand pounds! Can you believe it? The sodding nerve of—’
‘Oh boo hoo.’ Samantha yawned at him down the phone. ‘Are you seriously moaning because someone gave you thirty grand? I mean, really?’
Union Street sparkled in the sunshine, mica chips in the granite making it look like someone had sneezed glitter all over the place. Traffic thundered across the junction to Rosemount Place, buses and taxis played chicken in the middle of the box junction.
Probably better waiting for the green man.
‘I can’t take—’
‘You could finally get the flat finished – move out of the caravan and back into an actual house.’
‘Thought you loved that caravan.’
The pedestrian crossing bleeped and Logan marched across, dodging his way through a gaggle of middle-aged men in suits bragging about how much they were going to drink tonight.
‘I do. But you’ve made it smell all fusty.’
‘Of course, you know what’ll happen if I’m an executor for his will, don’t you? I’ll be a target for anyone who thinks they deserve a slice of the Wee Hamish empire: drug dealers, thugs, loan sharks, protection racketeers, people traffickers, smugglers, pimps …’
‘When was the last time you opened the curtains and let a bit of air in?’
‘Reuben’s going to love that. He …’ Logan screwed his face shut for a heartbeat. Bloody hell: that explained the random punch on the nose that morning. Reuben knew about the will. Brilliant. Thirty grand and a death sentence.
Right onto the cobbles of Diamond Street down the side of KFC, past the sandwich bar and the hairdresser’s.
‘Logan?’
‘All right, all right, I’ll open the windows.’
‘And it wouldn’t hurt you to give the place a scrub as well. There’s a mouldy patch in the bathroom that’s beginning to look a bit like Shakespeare. I don’t want Shakespeare watching me in the shower, it’s perverse.’
‘He’s giving me power of attorney too. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?’
‘Do I need to boo-hoo you again?’
Left onto Lindsay Street, leaving the cobbles for a Frankenstein’s patchwork of tarmac and potholes.
‘You’re getting as bad as Steel.’
A pause. ‘You take that back, Logan McRae, or there’ll be no kinky bedtime fun for you ever again!’
Then right onto Golden Square. Tall granite buildings faced out onto what was the bastard child of a roundabout and a car park. Rows of cars ringed a wrought-iron fence with more of them on the inside, facing out. Then another row behind that, circling the statue in the middle. The handful of trees dotted around the place looked in need of a decent drink.
‘Logan, I’m warning you.’
‘All right, I take it back.’ Sigh. ‘And I’ll do something about the shower.’
‘That’s better. Now run along and see your lawyer, it’s nearly teatime here, and they’ve been boiling the cauliflower since last Thursday in my honour. Don’t want to miss that.’ Then she hung up on him.
The receptionist scowled up at him from behind her mahogany fortifications. The glasses balanced on the end of her nose had little wings on the top corners. They went with her purple cardigan. ‘Our office hours are nine to five. If you wish to make an appointment to see Mr Moir-Farquharson, I can—’
‘Is he in or not?’
The smile looked forced, making tiny wrinkles around her narrowed eyes. She glanced sideways at a door on the far side of the room. ‘Mr Moir-Farquharson is with a client and isn’t to be … Hey: you can’t go in there!’
Logan hauled the door open. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’
Sunlight gilded the wood-panelled room, glinting off the bald head of a shaven gorilla in an expensive suit with ‘HATE’ tattooed on one set of knuckles and ‘PAIN’ on the other. Scars knitted their way over the back of his scalp, like cracks in an eggshell. He didn’t look around as Logan barged in, just sat there, silent as a slab of meat.
Sitting behind the wide oak desk, Hissing Sid sighed and closed his eyes – pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Mrs Jefferies!’
Logan shook a fistful of brown envelope at him. ‘Attempted bribery of a police officer is an offence under the Criminal Justice, Scotland—’
‘How many times do I have to tell you: it’s not a bribe.’
‘Don’t give me that shite!’ He hurled the envelope across the desk. It hit the lawyer on the chest and fell to the floor. ‘Think I don’t know a bribe when I see one?’
The receptionist appeared at his elbow. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Moir-Farquharson, I told him you were with a client.’
The hulk of muscle in the suit sniffed, then hooked a thumb over his shoulder. His voice was a nasal Borders growl. ‘You want I should, you know, remove him from the premises, like?’
Another sigh. Then Hissing Sid pushed his chair back, bent down and picked the envelope from the ground. ‘Will you excuse me for a couple of minutes, Mr Harris? I’m afraid DI McRae requires things to be explained to him slowly and with pictures wherever possible.’ He stood. ‘Mrs Jefferies, will you fetch Mr Harris a pot of tea? I’ll be in the conference room with our uncivilized visitor.’
Sandy Moir-Farquharson settled into a chair at the end of the long table, sitting with his back to the window. Sunshine cast dappled shadows on the cars parked around Golden Square, rippling gently as wind brushed through the leaves of the parched trees.
The lawyer placed the brown envelope on the table in front of him and smoothed it out with careful fingers. ‘DI McRae, I don’t appreciate you coming in here and making a nuisance of yourself when I’m with a client. Or any other time, come to that. If you wish to see me, you
can make an appointment with Mrs Jefferies like everyone else.’
‘Thirty thousand pounds! And what the hell is this?’ Logan dug out the power of attorney forms and slapped them down on the table. ‘Get it through your pointy little head, I am not for sale. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?’
Hissing Sid pulled the cheque from the envelope. Held it up. ‘As you will see, the payee section has been left blank. Mr Mowat has no interest in bribing you, he merely wishes you to select a worthy cause you’d like to support.’ The lawyer went back into the envelope and pulled out a Post-it note covered in cramped handwriting. ‘As you would have known if you’d bothered to read my message. All you have to do is fill in the missing details.’
Logan stared at the note. Bloody thing must’ve been stuck to the inside of the envelope … Still, that wasn’t the point, was it? ‘So you’ll have my handwriting on a huge cheque from Wee Hamish Mowat? Do you think I’m stupid.’
Hissing Sid puckered his lips and raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m certainly coming to that conclusion.’ He laid the cheque on the table. ‘It’s really not that complicated. Name the cause you wish to support and I’ll have someone complete the relevant details for you.’
‘I’d … it’s thirty thousand pounds!’
‘With keen observational skills like that, it’s no wonder you made detective inspector. Now, is there anything else? Or can I get back to my client?’
‘It … What’s with this power of attorney bollocks?’
Hissing Sid did the sighing and nose-pinching thing again. ‘We could have discussed all this when I came to see you at the station, but instead you had to play your little power games and keep me waiting in that room without so much as a glass of water.’
Heat spread out across Logan’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t even know you were there.’ He sank down into the nearest chair. ‘Someone was playing silly buggers.’
‘Mr Mowat has recently updated his will, and has named you as sole executor. That means on the sad event of his demise you will be responsible for disposing of his assets and ensuring the distribution of behests according to his wishes. If, on the other hand, he becomes incapacitated due to illness he has granted you continuing and welfare power of attorney. That means you are authorized to look after his property and assets, and if necessary make end-of-life decisions.’
Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8 Page 56