Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8

by Stuart MacBride

Sim hunkered down in front of the unit and pulled the black plastic games console from the shelf. It was about the size of two shoeboxes, with a big plastic ‘X’ on the top. ‘Isn’t even plugged into anything.’ She dumped it on the computer desk and pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. ‘Should be easy enough to … There we go.’ A click and the whole top came off.

  Inside were two clear plastic bags of weed, half a dozen packs of Rizla papers, a few small metal tins, a little rolling machine, and a box of filters. No wires, no electronics.

  Sim lifted one of the bags out and gave it a shoogle. The marijuana inside rustled. ‘Wow, that’s a poop-load of weed. Maybe he was dealing?’

  ‘Anything else in there? Diary? Address book? Anything like that?’

  Sim went back to the hollowed out Xbox and rummaged about. ‘Nope. Couple of tins of resin, some pills, but nothing old-fashioned like a diary. Kids these days are all electronic.’

  Too much to hope for. ‘Right, confiscate the drugs, the laptop, and any phones you can find.’

  She clicked the top back on the Xbox. ‘Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky?’

  There was always a first time.

  32

  The mortuary was quiet: no shrieking bone-saw, no music playing in the cutting room, no roar of the extractor fans whisking away the stench of death. Just the sound of Mrs Chung breathing – jagged, gasping, as if she was about to pass out – clutching onto her husband’s arm like a life raft. Adrift in a sea of fear and pain.

  Logan cleared his throat. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  She nodded, setting a couple of tears free to sparkle against her cheeks in the dimmed lighting.

  ‘Because you don’t have to. Remember the photos I showed you: he’s been very badly—’

  ‘No.’ The words came out strangled and choked: ‘I need to see my baby …’

  ‘OK.’ Deep breath.

  He gave the nod and Rennie pressed the button. The curtains slid open, revealing Anthony Chung’s remains.

  They’d done the best they could – covered up everything below his chin with white ruffled fabric – but there was nothing they could do about his face.

  Anthony’s mother paled. Her whole body shuddered. Then her eyes bugged and she slapped both hands over her mouth, turned and scrambled out of the room. Rennie hurried after her.

  ‘He’s …’ Raymond Chung swallowed, staring down at the ruined features. ‘What did they do to his eyes?’

  ‘It’s just the decomposition. Remember, we went over this in the family room? It’s natural: they’re one of the first things to go.’

  ‘Right … Decomposition …’ He blinked a couple of times, sweat glistening on his forehead.

  ‘Mr Chung?’

  He licked his lips, then his Adam’s apple bobbed, as if he was forcing something down. ‘There’s something sticking out. On his neck.’ Raymond Chung’s finger traced a circle on the glass. ‘There. The tattoo?’

  It was barely visible through the blackened discolouration of the skin, but three jagged spikes poked out from the edge of the sheet drawn up under the body’s chin.

  Raymond Chung bit his lip. ‘Can you … Can you ask them to lower the sheet?’

  Logan pressed the button on the intercom. ‘Can we get the sheet lowered a bit on the left?’

  On the other side of the viewing window, Miss Dalrymple stepped from the shadows, dressed in a clean set of surgical scrubs, and gently pulled the fabric down exposing the ghost of a tribal tattoo, broken up by tiny cuts.

  Raymond Chung closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the glass. ‘It’s him. It’s Anthony.’

  ‘Are you sure, because there’s no tattoo on the photos we’ve—’

  ‘I know my own son!’ His shoulders quivered. ‘He got the tattoo the day before he went missing. He said it would impress Agnes …’ Raymond Chung wrapped his arms around himself. ‘Please, just …’ A shuddering breath. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

  Rennie backed into the room, balancing two coffees on the lid from a box of copier paper with one hand, and holding a blue folder in the other, a glossy magazine trapped in his armpit. He placed the makeshift tray on the corner of Logan’s desk and sank into the visitor’s chair. ‘Poor woman nearly turned herself inside out.’ He dipped into his jacket and produced a couple of chunky Kit Kats.

  ‘Can’t really blame her.’

  Rennie unwrapped one of the biscuits, bit into it, took a slurp of his coffee, then slumped back with his magazine: Heat, with yet another photo of Nichole Fyfe and Morgan Mitchell on the cover. The pair of them posing in their leather Fingermen getup with shiny swords and handguns. ‘CLOSER THAN SISTERS ~ NICHOLE AND MORGAN SPILL THE BEANS ON GUYS, GUNS, AND GETTING THE PERFECT MOVIE-STAR BODY!’

  Logan creaked the top off his coffee. ‘Comfortable?’

  ‘Not bad, thanks.’ He flipped through the pages, little bits of Kit Kat sticking to his chin as he chewed. Then stopped, mouth hanging open. ‘Ooh, Matron!’ Rennie held up the centre spread – Nichole and Morgan in bikinis, posing on Balmedie Beach. ‘See if I wasn’t married …’

  ‘She’d still have nothing to do with you.’ Logan fired up his email. No sign of any threatening or weird fan mail from William Hunter’s web person yet.

  ‘Nah, I’d be a good influence on her.’ He turned the magazine the right way round again and smiled down at the photo. ‘Keep her on the straight and narrow.’

  There were half a dozen or so memos from Steel, a reminder from the ACC about not talking to the press, and four warnings from Internal Services about what would happen if they caught whoever it was who kept jamming up the third-floor toilets with packing peanuts.

  Delete.

  Rennie took another bite of Kit Kat. ‘Guthrie bet me twenty quid she’d knifed someone when she was thirteen. Silly sod.’

  Logan looked up from his email. ‘She knifed someone?’

  ‘Course she didn’t. Her boyfriend battered the crap out of someone with a cricket bat when he was fifteen, but worst she ever did was a spot of unlawful removal and some shoplifting from WHSmiths. Nicking cars and Bounty Bars. Not exactly Moriarty, is it?’

  Hmph. He went back to deleting things. ‘You’re not supposed to do PNC searches on people to settle bets. Lucky I don’t report you.’

  ‘Ah … Well, it wasn’t really a—’ Rennie’s phone rang somewhere deep in his pocket. ‘Saved by the bell.’ He dragged it out, pressed a button, then stuck it to his ear. ‘Yeah … Uh-huh … Right … OK, I’ll tell him.’ Then he hung up and polished off the last of his Kit Kat.

  ‘Tell me what?’

  Rennie grinned, smears of chocolate sticking to his teeth. ‘They’ve found a hole …’

  Logan peered over the edge of the hole at the dark, damp earth down below. ‘And they didn’t see anyone?’

  Rennie settled his backside against a lichen-covered tombstone and yawned. ‘Groundskeeper says it could’ve happened anytime in the last four weeks. Since the cutbacks, he only comes in once a month.’

  The graveyard mouldered away behind a six-foot-high stone wall, circling a crumbling granite church – its walls streaked green with moss beneath the rusting gutters. Brambles ran rampant around the outskirts, tumbling barbed-wire tendrils reaching out to engulf the nearest graves. Silver-haired dandelions nodded their heads, going bald in the breeze. A butterfly bobbing above the long damp grass.

  One and a half walls were all that was left of the church, a corner of thick granite blocks, the mortar crumbling away. Give it another hundred years and there’d be nothing left but a pile of rubble overgrown with weeds.

  The hole was about three feet long, and four deep, surrounded by docken spears and violent-fuchsia rosebay willowherb. Soil made a sprawling heap along one side.

  ‘And there was definitely a body in here?’

  ‘Difficult to tell, apparently. When the church burned down in fifty-two it took most of the local
records with it. Half the headstones in this section are knackered or missing.’

  Logan crouched down; a cascade of dirt spiralled down into the earth. The smell of mouldy bread greeted him. ‘Looks like we’ve got spade-marks on the hole. Should be able to match them if we can find the shovel.’

  Another yawn. ‘You think it’s really her? Agnes Garfield?’

  ‘Mentally unstable woman stops taking her medication, kills abusive boyfriend.’

  ‘Yeah, but digs up bodies in a cemetery?’ Rennie ran a hand through his spiky blond hair. ‘I mean, I’ve had some mental girlfriends in my time, but not grave robbing mental.’

  ‘Might not even be her.’ Logan stood, brushed the dirt from his hands. ‘Get the SEB down here: I want to know when this was dug. Is this the skeleton we’ve already got, or something new?’

  ‘If it is, she’s a total nutcase.’ Rennie wrapped his arms around himself, yawning and shuddering. ‘Anyone capable of doing that to poor old Fusty Forman needs locking up. And I’m talking: straitjacket, padded wallpaper, and throw away the key. Not like he was cheating on her, was it?’

  Just a random act of violence? Not likely. ‘He must’ve done something.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Rennie nodded at the hole, ‘who’s to say she was digging someone up? Maybe she was burying something and someone disturbed her?’

  Idiot.

  Logan pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts till he came to the number for the council historian.

  ‘No, think about it, witches are always burying things in graveyards by the light of the full moon, aren’t they?’

  ‘She’s not a witch, she’s a teenager.’ He hit the button. Dialling.

  ‘Yeah, but maybe she thinks she’s a witch? That’s why she did that big magic circle on the kitchen floor when she killed Anthony Chung: witchcraft.’

  ‘She drew it because it was in the book. She necklaced Roy Forman because it was in the book.’ Logan headed back towards the car, damp grass tugging at his legs. ‘That’s what she does.’

  Rennie slouched along after him, kicking through the weeds. ‘Anyway, it can’t be the skeleton from your caravan roof, can it? Don’t think there’s a single headstone in here more recent than eighteen ninety. Your body only died, what: thirty years ago?’

  Sodding hell. The idiot was right.

  ‘In that case it’s—’

  The line clicked. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Hay? It’s DI McRae.’

  ‘Ah …’ A breath. ‘It’s not another dead body, is it? Only after last time—’

  ‘Someone’s been digging up graves.’

  ‘… OK. That’s not really my area of—’

  ‘From about the eighteen hundreds. I need you to find out who was buried where in …’ He stuck a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Sign out front says Kingleath Parish Church.’

  ‘Kingleath Parish Church, about five miles east of Inverurie. Place is a ruin.’

  ‘Hold on …’ There was the sound of fingers hammering away at a keyboard. ‘We’ve had students from RGU in computerizing a load of the parish records … Ah, you’re in luck – they’ve done Kingleath. Right, where was your grave?’

  Logan peered back towards the hole. ‘About fifteen feet from the west wall of the cemetery and a dozen from the north.’

  ‘OK … Any nearby graves you can give me names from?’

  ‘Hold on.’ Logan slapped his hand over the mouthpiece and told Rennie to go look.

  Two minutes later he was back, shaking one hand, clenching it into a fist then out again, blowing on the angry pink rash dotted with little pale spots. ‘Sodding nettles.’

  ‘Graves?’

  ‘Nearest one I could read is a Mrs Katie Cook, snuffed it in 1892. About two plots to the left.’

  Logan passed the info on and there were more clattering keystrokes.

  ‘Well, in that case we can narrow it down to one of two people: Miss Polly McGrath, spinster of the parish, born 1862, died 1885; or a Mr Nicholas Alexander Balfour, born 1835, died 1890 …’ Pause. ‘Nicholas Balfour. Nicholas Balfour. Why does that …? Give me a second.’

  More typing. Then a little swearing. Then some rustling. And finally Hay came back on the line. ‘I knew it sounded familiar: Nicholas Alexander Balfour was a Victorian spiritualist and medium. He performed séances all over the UK, even did one for Victor Hugo on Jersey in 1853. Balfour was strangled in Inverurie by a widower called Sandy Hugh. Hugh thought his dead wife was going to appear to Balfour and reveal that he’d poisoned her.’

  And then, over a hundred and twenty years later, Agnes Garfield came along and dug up Balfour’s bones. Which made sense – after all, she’d arranged nearly all of her last skeleton on Logan’s roof, she’d need to get another one from somewhere.

  ‘Thanks.’ Logan hung up, and almost got his phone back in his pocket before it started ringing again. ‘Oh … bugger off.’ He answered it anyway. ‘Hello?’

  A wet gravelly voice, half Aberdonian, half public school. Wee Hamish Mowat. ‘Ah, Logan, I have a favour to ask.’

  Crap …

  He held the phone against his chest. ‘Rennie: call Control and see if they’ve got anything out of Dr Marks yet.’

  ‘Yes, Guv.’ Rennie wandered off towards the car, poking away at his mobile phone, spiky blond hair glowing in a sliver of sunlight.

  Logan waited until he was out of earshot. ‘Hamish.’

  ‘You see, it’s a rather delicate matter involving a group of foreign businessmen and a team of local entrepreneurs.’

  ‘The cannabis farms?’

  ‘Have you ever read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species?’

  He rested back against one of the church’s remaining walls. ‘We found another Oriental victim this morning. Someone took a hammer to his knees.’

  ‘The theory of evolution is an extremely elegant thing, don’t you think? I’m all for survival of the fittest, but sometimes competition for resources can get out of hand and that’s not good for the ecosystem. Everything gets out of balance.’

  ‘It’s the McLeod brothers, isn’t it? They’re the ones crippling all these Oriental men. What are they, moving in on their territory?’

  ‘I don’t like to take sides in these things, Logan. It’s of no matter to me which species outcompetes the other as long as the ecosystem remains intact. And the longer this drags on for, the more damage is done.’ A pause. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving evolution a helping hand?’

  The sliver of sunlight that had made Rennie’s hair glow like a novelty light bulb gave one last flash, then the clouds swallowed it. A single drop of rain burst on Logan’s arm. Then another.

  A favour for Wee Hamish Mowat. It wasn’t as if he’d be doing anything wrong, would it? The McLeods and the farmers were breaking the law. Both sets needed taking off the streets. Just because it was in Wee Hamish’s best interests to see it all come to a sudden halt, it didn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.

  And besides, it would hardly be the first time.

  ‘Logan? Are you still there?’

  ‘I can’t do anything without evidence. I need photographs, locations of these cannabis farms, someone willing to testify in court. Proof.’

  ‘Of course you do. I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  Logan put the phone back in his pocket.

  Off in the distance came a soft crack, followed by the muted bellow of thunder. Getting colder. The skies lowered and the rain hammered down.

  33

  ‘I told you: I am not prepared to breach doctor—’

  ‘Patient confidentiality. Can you no’ change the record, Doc? This one’s like listening to paint dry.’ If DCI Steel slouched any further down in her chair, she’d disappear under the table.

  On the other side, sitting in the full glare of the camera mounted on the interview-room wall, Dr Marks stuck his nose in the air. The br
uise on his cheek was colouring in nicely, heading to a deep violet, giving a bit of life to his jumbo sausage features. ‘If you don’t like hearing it, stop asking.’

  Logan opened DI Leith’s folder of photographs and laid a glossy eight-by-ten of Roy Forman’s fire-ravaged skull on the table. Then another one. Then one where the tyre was still burning. ‘Agnes Garfield did this.’

  The psychologist shrank back in his chair. Looking anywhere but at the photos. ‘I don’t see what this is supposed to achieve. Did you really think I’d be prepared to abandon my professional ethics just because you show me these? Do you honestly believe I got where I am without recognizing blatant manipulation when I see it?’

  A sniff, then Steel jabbed a finger at him. ‘You’ll sodding well know the toe of my boot when you see it. Aye, and it’ll be coming out of your gob after I ram it up your arsehole.’

  Dr Marks took off his big gold-framed glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Genuinely: if you’re going to resort to threats, try to do it in a way that actually connects to the person you’re threatening. So far all you’ve done is reveal an anal fixation that borders on the manic.’

  ‘I’m no’—’

  ‘“Arse” this, and “arse” that. And you say I’m the one who needs to change the record. Then there’s all the “scrotum” threats: you’ll use it as a handbag; you’ll fill it with angry bees and sew it over my bumhole; you’ll make soup in it; you’ll make me wear it as a gimp mask …’

  ‘Laz, show the good doctor your photos of Anthony Chung.’

  Logan opened the other folder.

  Dr Marks sat forward, one hand curled around his barely existent chin. ‘You never really got on with your father, did you, Chief Inspector? You always felt that nothing you did was good enough for him. Did he have a problem accepting your sexuality? He did, didn’t he? Always hoped it’d just be a phase you were going through.’

  The first picture of Anthony Chung was of him lying on the kitchen floor, surrounded by Agnes Garfield’s Ring Knot, his skin coloured with mould and decay, his eyes rotted away to dark slits. Logan laid the photo on the table. ‘He would’ve bled to death, but she veerited him first. Wrapped a rope around his throat and twisted.’