by JD Kirk
They’d had a two-for-one on sausage rolls, too. That had been a nice bonus, although he’d be hoovering flakes of pastry out of the Beamer for weeks.
Bending, he shoved the flowers, packaging and all, into the holder in the base of the headstone. “There you go, you old bugger,” he said. “Don’t say I never bring you anything.”
“Are you no’ supposed to take them out of the plastic first?”
Logan turned from the headstone to find Ben Forde hobbling across the grass, carefully weaving his way between the other graves, so as not to walk over anyone buried below. Realising he was standing directly over where Alice Forde herself would be resting, Logan took a judicious sideways step before Ben could give him any grief.
“Are you?” Logan asked. He looked down at the flowers. The holder wasn’t a deep one, and they toppled sideways out of it before his eyes, landing on the grass with a crackling of the cellophane wrapping. “You think she’ll mind?”
Ben arrived at the graveside, kissed his fingers, then tapped the top of the headstone. “Come on, it’s Alice,” he said. “Of course she’ll bloody mind.”
Muttering, Logan picked up the flowers and set to work removing them from the plastic.
“You got daffodils,” Ben said, watching him at work.
“Aye.”
“She hated daffodils.”
Logan looked up from the tangle of tape, cellophane, and flower stems. Ben eyed him solemnly for a moment, then failed to hold back his grin.
“Just kidding. She’ll love them.”
Logan resumed the unwrapping process. “All this time off hasn’t improved your sense of humour then, Benjamin.”
“No. Far from it. I’ve been bored out of my bloody mind,” Ben said. “And it’s only got worse since you moved out.”
Logan felt another twinge of guilt over that. It had been a mutual decision, though. They’d both agreed he needed his own place, and while Ben would never say as much, Logan knew he’d started to resent the DCI heading out to work every day, while he was stuck recuperating at home.
“You should make the most of it. I wish I had time to be bored,” Logan said. “Body turned up this morning.”
“Homicide?”
“Headless and shoved down a hole.”
“Jammy bastard,” Ben said, positively green with envy. “You, I mean. Not him. Or her. Is it a him?”
“Aye, it’s a him. And how do you make me out as a jammy bastard?”
“Getting your teeth stuck into something like that. What I wouldn’t have given for a headless corpse to pass the time these past few months,” Ben said. “It got so bad, I even tried my hand at painting a few weeks back.”
“Landscapes?”
“By numbers. Downloaded a nice one of Elgin Cathedral off the internet,” Ben explained. “But I didn’t have half the colours, so it’s mostly just brown.” He wrinkled his nose at the thought of the finished picture. “Sort of looks like someone’s made a dirty protest.”
Logan finished unwrapping the flowers and shoved them back in the holder. Both men watched as they fell out again.
“Fuck’s sake,” Logan grumbled, bending to retrieve them once more.
“You need to trim the bottom of the stems off,” Ben told him. “Did you bring scissors?”
“Of course I didn’t bring scissors. Who in their right mind brings scissors to a graveyard?”
Ben produced a pair of scissors from his jacket pocket and handed them over. Logan took them without a word, and set about snipping three inches off the bottom of each stem.
He was really beginning to wish he hadn’t bothered buying the things in the first place.
“Anyway, daubing the walls of Elgin Cathedral in shite was the final straw,” Ben said, getting back to the conversation. “I’m ready to come back.”
Logan paused, mid-snip. “You sure you’re fit enough?”
“I’m fitter than I’ve been in ten years,” Ben said, then he saw the cynicism on Logan’s face and begrudgingly amended it to five years. “With the medication I’m on, the new diet, the exercise I’ve been getting, I’m fighting fit, Jack. I’m raring to go.”
Logan finished cutting the flowers. He knew better than to argue with Ben Forde when he’d set his mind to something, but it had been mid-January before he’d been released from hospital, and there had been a few scary moments before then when it had looked like his heart was ready to pack in completely.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, it would be great to have you back, but I just think maybe you should—”
“I’ve already spoken to Detective Superintendent Mitchell,” Ben said, rocking back on his heels. “Technically, I start back tomorrow, but all this talk of headless fellas down holes has got me all pumped up and ready to go!”
Logan blinked. There was a snip as he cut the stem off the final flower. Ben coughed quietly.
“That sounded a wee bittie more sexual than it was meant to,” he mumbled. “I just meant—”
“How about the two of us just agree never to speak of it again?” Logan suggested.
“Aye, that’s maybe for the best,” Ben agreed.
Logan shoved the flowers in the holder for the third time. This time, to his considerable relief, they remained upright. Turning to Ben, he drew himself up to his full height.
“Right, then. Since it seems your mind’s made up, are you ready to get back to work, Detective Inspector?”
Ben stood to attention and snapped off a crisp salute. “Reporting for duty, sir,” he said, then his hand wavered and fell to his side. “Assuming we’ve got time to pick up lunch on the way. I could eat a scabby horse…”
Chapter Seven
Lana Lennon stood by the kettle in the staff room, waiting for it to come to the boil. The big tank thing on the wall that was supposed to give out instant hot water had been on the blink for months, and the ridiculous Highland Council procurement system meant someone had to come down from Inverness to supply and fit a new one.
The appointment had been arranged four times now, before being cancelled each time on the day. As a result, over forty members of staff now relied on one kettle at breaktime. That didn’t include all the teachers who’d snuck their own kettles into class.
Or, for that matter, those who’d found alternative ways of satisfying their between-class thirst. She was thinking particularly of Mr Newport from the Biology department, whose lessons were said to become increasingly incoherent as the day went on.
Lana had reached the staff room late and found the kettle empty. It was widely expected that anyone finding it empty should refill it to the top before clicking the switch, but if she had to wait for the full kettle to boil, the bell would have already rung for the next block of lessons. Better to take the dirty looks than a breaktime without a brew.
She deposited a teabag in her mug, and got the English milk ready in anticipation of the kettle finally reaching the boil.
The milk was only English in that it had been marked with a sticker as being the property of the English department. Each department had its own supply, which they guarded with a level of ferocity that might someday start another world war.
Lana looked around the staff room while she waited. Most of the other teachers were sitting on the big square of sad-looking foam-cushioned chairs, cups of tea and biscuits in hand, legs crossed and eyes ablaze as they listened to the latest gossip about who’d said or done what to whom in their classes.
There was always some scandal or another going on. Such was the way when you spent your day surrounded by several hundred teenagers and the hot, heaving morass of hormones that comprised them.
Lana picked up on a couple of mildly juicy tidbits, but didn’t tune into any one particular conversation. Instead, she cast her gaze from one end of the room to the other, searching for the one face she didn’t find.
“Ah. Mrs Lennon. You finally made it in, then?”
Lana felt her face screwing up at the sound of Cops and Robertso
n’s voice. The depute head’s first name was Joan, but she’d been PT of Science when half the teaching staff were pupils at the school themselves, so nobody ever addressed her by it.
Likewise, she never called any of the other teachers by their first names, either, always crediting them with their full title. Rumour had it that, if the old bat ever addressed you by your first name, you were getting the boot. Lana had no idea how true that was, and she didn’t ever want to end up in a position where she’d find out.
“Yes. Sorry, Mrs Robertson,” Lana said, raising her voice a touch to be heard over the sound of the kettle approaching the boil. “I was just a few minutes late.”
“You were a few minutes after the bell, Mrs Lennon,” Copsand replied. She sounded almost helpful, like she was doing Lana a favour by clarifying the details of her tardiness. “You were over twenty minutes late for your supposed start time. I say ‘supposed’ because that’s when you’re ‘supposed’ to turn up for duties. I thought that had been made clear?”
“It had. It has,” Lana said. She glanced around the staff room and saw half-a-dozen teachers watching the conversation from the corners of their eyes. “Sorry. Won’t happen again.”
“I trust you have a good explanation?” the depute head asked.
“Uh, yes. Had some… personal issues at home to deal with.”
Copsand’s lips pursed. “That’s not an explanation, Mrs Lennon, it’s an excuse.”
Lana frowned. “What’s the difference?”
This drew a long, drawn-out sigh from the depute head, like a slow puncture in a bike tyre. “Is it any wonder English pass marks are down?” she asked, although Lana got the impression it was a rhetorical question, so she chose not to answer.
The kettle clicked off at her back. Lana mustered her best apologetic smile and reached for it. “Sorry. Like I say, it won’t happen again, Mrs Robertson.”
“Yes, well, see that it doesn’t. I’ve already had to have words with your son about the situation at PE this morning.”
Lana looked up from where she was pouring water into her mug. “You were taking PE? Is Fergus not in? Mr Forsyth, I mean.”
“He is not,” Copsand confirmed.
“Where is he? Is he alright?”
“I am neither his mother nor his nanny, Mrs Lennon,” Copsand replied. She gave Lana a fleeting up-and-down look, but managed to pack hours of carefully considered judgement and scorn into that brief half-second. “Besides, I’m quite confident that you’d know more about his comings and goings than I would.”
She clicked her bony fingers and pointed to where water was now overflowing from Lana’s mug.
“And clean that up,” she instructed. “It’s high time people treated this place less like a clubhouse, and more like a place of employment.”
Lana chose not to respond to that, and instead set to work mopping up the spilled water.
By the time she’d finished, Copsand had wandered off to moan at some other poor bugger, and all eyes were now on them.
Lana took the opportunity to take out her phone and opened up the most recently dialled numbers. The top entry read: Coleen (Work phone). Coleen was her sister, based just outside Liverpool. She didn’t have a work phone. She didn’t currently have a job, for that matter, and it had been months since they’d so much as texted, let alone held an actual conversation.
Lana hated using her own sister as a cover story, but what choice did she have? Clyde was always so suspicious.
She tapped Coleen’s name, listened to the phone ringing, then felt a little flutter of excitement at the voice of the man who answered.
The excitement curled up and died again when she heard the voicemail greeting. She hung up before getting to the part about leaving a message, then sent a text asking if everything was alright, agonised for a few second about whether to finish with one ‘x’ or two, then added both and hit send.
The bell rang just as she removed her teabag from the full-to-the-brim mug. She poured the tea down the sink, eyes fixed on her phone screen as she waited for the reply.
She was still waiting when the rest of the teachers started filing out of the staff room.
Julie, one of the other English teachers, caught her eye as she passed. “Once more unto the breach,” she said. “You coming? I’ll walk you up?”
“Oh, uh, yes,” said Lana. She tore her eyes away from the blank screen of her phone, checked again, then returned the mobile to her bag. “No rest for the wicked, I suppose.”
Sinead had already started on the Big Board when Logan threw open the doors to the Incident Room and announced that he’d picked up a stray on the way in.
The fuss was immediate, all thoughts of headless dead fellas forgotten as the younger detectives all rushed over to meet DI Forde at the door.
“Alright, sir? You’re looking well,” said DS Khaled, his Aberdonian accent more pronounced than usual, thanks to a five-day training course in the Granite City he’d just come back from.
“You’re looking years younger, sir,” agreed Sinead, giving Ben a hug.
“She’s right. You don’t look a day over seventy, boss,” said Tyler, flashing a grin that earned him a roll of the eyes and a tut from the DI.
“He’s still a pain in the arse, then?” Ben asked.
Logan confirmed this with a nod. “Oh, aye. Worse than he used to be, if anything.”
“I find that very hard to believe,” Ben remarked, then he looked Tyler over and shrugged. “No, actually I do believe it. You can tell by the look on his face.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to ignoring him again, soon enough,” Logan said, clapping the older man on the back. “And he’s finally learned to make a good cup of tea.”
Tyler’s chest puffed out a little at the compliment. “Cheers, boss,” he said.
Logan and Ben stared back at him in silence, until the penny finally dropped.
“Oh. You want me to go make some now?”
Ben let out a low whistle, like he was genuinely impressed. “God. He’s catching on quick these days, right enough. Two sweeteners. Wee splash of milk. There’s a good lad. You make yourself one, while you’re at it.”
“Um… cheers. I’m alright for now, though, boss.”
Ben shrugged. “Well, don’t say I never offer,” he said. “Now come on, chop-chop.”
Tyler replied with a grin and a raised thumb, and rushed for the door. He wasn’t even halfway there when the other orders started coming through.
“Make us a coffee while you’re there, will you?” Hamza asked.
“I’ll have tea, if it’s going,” Sinead added.
“Aye. A brew-up’s in order all round, I think,” Logan agreed. “Maybe nip across the road and get some of the good stuff. They’ll probably have cakes on the go, too.”
“No cakes for me, Jack,” Ben said with a firm tone and a curt shake of the head. He lowered himself into his old chair, rocked it back and forth, then looked over to where Tyler was dejectedly pulling on his jacket. “Unless they’ve got a wee fruit scone, or an Empire Biscuit, in which case get me one of them. Nothing chocolatey, though. Unless it’s a brownie. But otherwise, I’m fine.”
Tyler adjusted the collar of his jacket and nodded. “Right you are, boss.”
“Unless there’s something else nice that you see,” Ben added. “If so, get me that. But don’t go overboard. I’m going canny on what I eat.”
“Aye, sounds like it, right enough,” Logan remarked. “Now, don’t you go getting too comfortable, Benjamin.”
Ben looked up from his chair. He’d sunk into it like it was a favourite pair of old shoes, moulded to a perfect fit by the years and the mileage.
“No’ kicking me out already, are you?” he asked.
“You’ll maybe wish I was,” Logan said. “Because you can bet your backside that Mitchell’s going to want to see you before you get too settled in.”
Chapter Eight
Detective Superintendent Mitchell made
a very deliberate show of checking the date on her calendar when Logan led Ben into her office. Unlike her predecessor, who would’ve addressed the situation with a string of bellowed obscenities, Mitchell waited for Ben to take the lead.
“Aye. I thought, since I was at a loose end, and what with a new case popping up today, I might as well report in early,” he explained.
“So I see,” the DSup said, and the way she did so implied there was much more discussion to be had on the subject. Fortunately, she chose not to do it now. “It’s very good to see you, Ben. You’re looking well.”
“So everyone keeps telling me. Thank you,” Ben replied. “Just itching to get stuck in again, ma’am, if I’m honest. Been climbing the walls at home.”
“He took up painting by numbers,” Logan said.
Mitchell smiled grimly. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said. “Hopefully, we can find something for you to be getting on with.”
Logan frowned. There was something not right about that sentence. Some other meaning.
“Wait… What are you saying?” he asked. “What do you mean we can find him something to be getting on with? There’s plenty for him to be getting on with.”
Mitchell leaned back in her chair. “In the MIT?”
“Of course! Where else would he be going?”
Ben looked from Logan to Mitchell and back again. “Hang on, what’s happening?”
“That’s a high-stress position,” Mitchell said, her eyes still locked on the towering DCI. “Stress poses a considerable risk to those with heart problems.”
“It’s under control. I’m on medication for it. Loads of the stuff. If I jump up and down, I’ll rattle. And I’m being very careful with my diet,” Ben said, electing not to mention the cake or cakes that may or may not be on their way over from across the road with his name on them.
Mitchell interlinked her fingers on the desk and offered up a smile that was as patronising as it was apologetic. “I get that you’ve got your heart set on the MIT, Ben. I do. You’ve been in it in one form or another for… Well, I’m sure none of us would care to count the years. So, you know better than most just how relentless it can be. Demanding. I’m not sure that, given your condition—”