by JD Kirk
The PC leaned in a little closer and dropped his voice so only she would hear. “Saved again,” he muttered, then he stepped out of the room and passed Hamza with a nod as he headed along the hallway and made his way outside.
“Everything alright?” Hamza asked when he reached Fergus’s bedroom. “What was Uniform doing in here?”
“Nothing important,” Sinead said.
She glanced out of the bedroom window and watched Jason get into his car. Their eyes met for a moment, then he fired up the engine, switched on the blue lights, and pulled away.
Hamza pulled on a pair of disposable gloves that perfectly complemented Sinead’s, flexed the fingers, then checked the back of the door just like the DC had done.
“Find anything interesting?” he asked.
“Actually,” Sinead said, lifting the notebook from where she’d placed it on the bedside cabinet. She opened it to reveal a list of dates and a couple of longer numbers. “I think maybe I did.”
Chapter Thirteen
It was getting on for six o’clock when Logan made it back to Burnett Road. To his utter dismay, he found two seedy-looking bastards in cheap suits hovering around the front door of the station. To the untrained eye, they looked like the type that might try and pressure him into buying either a set of encyclopaedias or a new belief system.
Logan knew better, though. He knew precisely what they were.
“No comment,” he told them as he went sweeping past. He was inside the building before they could get their questions out.
It would’ve been sensible to leave it there, but some deep-rooted compulsion drove him to open the door again, poke his head out, and bark, “Now fuck off,” at them in the most commanding of his many authoritative tones.
He caught a couple of garbled queries about dead bodies and missing heads, but his brief outburst had been cathartic enough that he could comfortably walk away without feeling the need to engage any further.
By the time he’d plodded up the stairs and along the corridor to the Incident Room, though, his mood had shifted once again.
“Bastards,” he announced, as he shoved open the doors.
Ben, Tyler, and Dave Davidson briefly exchanged glances, all wondering which of them was in line for the high jump.
“Well, it can’t be me,” Ben said. “I’m not technically even back yet.”
Logan crossed to the window, brought his head close to the glass, and checked if he could see the men down at the front door. Fortunately for them, he couldn’t, otherwise he might have been tempted to drop something heavy on them, like a chair, or a monitor, or DC Neish.
“Not the press?” Ben guessed, recognising the way Logan’s nostrils flared and his fists clenched.
“Aye. Two of them so far, but that’ll only grow,” Logan sighed, turning away from the window.
“Headless body found in a place called the Well of the Seven Heads, boss,” Tyler said. “It was bound to get a sniff from the tabloids.”
“Aye. Aye, I suppose,” Logan conceded. “I was just hoping… We did well keeping the Iceman stuff quiet until it was mostly all over. I just hoped we’d make a bit of headway on this one before they got wind of it.”
“We have a bit,” Ben said. “Hamza phoned in some info he and Sinead got from the victim’s flatmate. Fergus Forsyth was a PE teacher at Lochaber High School. Also worked part-time at the hotel in Invergarry. Front of house.”
Logan slumped into his chair. “Right. What else?”
“Nothing.”
Logan rubbed his temples with the thumb and middle finger of one hand, then ran his hand down his face before responding. “Nothing? That’s all we’ve got?”
“The flatmate ran off before they could get anything else out of him,” the DI explained.
Logan frowned. “Ran off? What do you mean?”
“I mean, he told them he was going to get them the paperwork Fergus had signed when he first moved in, then he climbed out the window and did a runner.”
“Uniform’s searching for him now, boss,” Tyler added. “Doesn’t have a car, so they don’t think he’ll have made it very far. Ham’s pretty confident they’ll get hold of him in the next couple of hours. They’re going through the house in the meantime to see what they can find.”
“And who is he? The flatmate, I mean. What do we know about him?”
Tyler consulted the notepad on his desk. “Ross Lyndsay. Mild-mannered school lollipop man by day, kitchen porter by night.”
“And he owns the house?”
“Yeah, boss. Dave poked around in the Land Registry stuff. Looks like he used to live there with his mum until she died, then he inherited the place.”
“Has he got a record?” Logan asked.
“Nothing showing up, boss, no. Squeaky clean, by the looks of things.”
“Clearly got something to hide, though,” Logan remarked. “You don’t tend to leg it through a window for no good reason.”
“Aye, well, we should have him soon enough,” Ben said. “We can haul him in for questioning and see what he has to say for himself.”
Logan nodded slowly, then looked over to where the DI sat behind his desk. It was probably the DCI’s imagination, but Ben seemed a little smaller in his chair now. A little more shrunken. Age had been creeping up on him for a while, but it had picked up its pace in recent months.
“You up for sitting in on the interview?” Logan asked.
“Try and bloody stop me!”
“Heart’s not going to explode out of your chest?”
Ben shook his head. “I’ve got my tight vest on. I’ll be fine.”
After her speech earlier, Logan didn’t think that Detective Superintendent Mitchell would approve of Ben being involved in the interview of a potential murder suspect, but there was a very elegant solution to that.
They wouldn’t tell her.
“Anything interesting turn up in the post-mortem?” Ben asked.
“Bits and bobs,” Logan replied. “Nothing definitive. You’ll be sorry to hear, though, Tyler, that decapitation wasn’t the cause of death. Killed first, beheaded a few hours later.”
“Probably best all-round,” Tyler remarked.
“Aye. Certainly from his perspective, I’d have thought. He had a couple of love bites on him.”
“Love bites? Do people still do that?” asked Ben.
“That’s what I wondered. I didn’t think it was still a thing,” Logan said. He and Ben both turned to Tyler.
“What?” the DC asked, when the weight of their eyes on him became too much.
“Do young folk still give each other nookie badges?” Logan asked.
“I mean… I don’t know. Maybe,” Tyler said. “I think I had one once when I was, like, fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” Ben exclaimed. “What the hell were you doing getting nookie badges when you were fifteen? At fifteen, I was still playing with toy cars.”
Logan shot the DI a sideways look. “I think that says more about you than it does him, Benjamin.”
“It still goes on,” Dave chipped in from the sidelines. “There’s a lassie I know who’s right into giving them. Like, obsessed.” He tried to pull down the collar of his shirt to show his neck, but couldn't quite manage the big reveal. “There’s one there, anyway. Big bastard of a thing.”
Logan stared at him for several seconds, unblinking. “I see,” he eventually said. “And how old is she?”
Dave puffed out his cheeks and raised his eyes to the ceiling, possibly doing some sort of mental calculation. “I don’t know. Like… sixty?”
“Right,” Logan said. He scrabbled around for more to say, but came back empty-handed.
Tyler, unfortunately, had no such problem.
“Sixty? Fucking hell. You’re only, what, mid-thirties?”
“What can I say? I enjoy the company of an older woman.”
“Aye, but…” They all watched Tyler tapping the tip of his thumb against his fingers as he silently did the math
s. “She could be your granny!”
“I bloody hope not,” Dave said. “The things that woman’s had me do.” His face took on a wistful look for a few moments, then he dismissed the thoughts with a shake of his head. “Anyway, like I say, she’s right into giving love bites.”
“Interesting. Thanks,” said Logan.
“Having no teeth helps a lot,” Dave added, turning back to his desk. “A lot.”
The others all tried very hard to keep that image out of their head, with only moderate success. Logan and Ben managed to shrug off the effects quite quickly, but Tyler spent the next fifteen seconds staring into the middle distance, like a veteran who had seen one too many of the horrors of war.
“There was something else unusual at the PM,” Logan said.
“Oh, Jesus, what now?” Tyler muttered.
“Nothing that’ll haunt you like that last conversation, don’t worry,” Logan assured him. He set the plastic-bagged key down on his desk with a click that rang out in the momentary silence. “This was in his stomach.”
Ben and Tyler both rose from their seats so they could look more closely at the evidence Logan had presented.
“How? Stabbed in, or swallowed?” Ben asked.
“Swallowed.”
“What does it open?” Tyler asked.
“That’s the big question. Or one of them,” Logan said. He leaned forward and slid the key closer to Tyler. “I want you and Dave working on it. Find out what it’s for. If we can figure that out, it might tell us why he felt compelled to eat the bloody thing.”
“He must’ve been hiding something,” Ben commented.
“Aye. Can only assume so,” Logan agreed. “If we find out what and why, I’ve a feeling we’ll know who our killer is.”
Tyler picked up the bag and turned the key over. In an ideal world, it would’ve had something etched onto it. A serial number, maybe. Or, if the universe was feeling particularly generous, a manufacturer’s name and a small but intricate diagram of what the key unlocked.
As the world kept reminding him, though, it was far from an ideal place.
“It’s blank,” Tyler groaned, studying both perfectly smooth sides of the metal. “It’s completely blank.”
“Aye,” said Logan. “I never said it was going to be easy.”
Clyde Lennon was in a foul mood when he returned home. Lana could tell from the way his van pulled into the driveway a little too quickly and braked a little too hard, that her husband’s form would not be good.
The way he jumped out of the van, shot daggers at the kitchen window, then slammed the door behind him let her know that she should probably brace herself.
God. What had set him off now?
She clicked the kettle on and took a can of lager from the fridge, and was ready to present him with both options just as he came thundering through the front door.
She heard him hang up his jacket with exaggerated force, listened to him muttering as he thumped his way along the hall, then plastered on a smile as he arrived in the kitchen.
“Hi,” she chirped, presenting the chilled lager as a pre-emptive peace offering. “How was your—”
“The fuck’s this order from Very on the bank account?” he demanded, snatching the can from her hand.
Lana came very close to laughing with relief.
“Oh. That. Well, we needed that new coffee table we’ve been talking about, and—”
“I told you, I’ll make the fucking coffee table,” Clyde snapped, cutting her off again. He cracked open the ring-pull of his can with a sudden violent jerk. “Didn’t I tell you that? We don’t need to buy one, I’ll make one. Didn’t I say that to you a dozen bloody times already?”
Part of Lana wanted to point out that the fact he’d said it a dozen times already, but had not actually done it yet, was the reason she’d had to order one.
Another more sensible part of her knew better, though.
“You’ve got so much on, I didn’t want to keep bothering you,” she said. “And it’s the catalogue, so we can pay it in instalments.”
Clyde almost choked on his Tennent’s. “What? That’s just an instalment? Fucking hell, Lana. Do you think we’re made of money? How much is it?”
Lana tried to laugh the question off.
Big mistake.
“Don’t fucking roll your eyes at me,” he warned, stepping in closer so the musky scent of sweat and sawdust filled the air around her. “How much of our money did you piss away on a stupid bloody coffee table that we don’t even need, Lana?”
She didn’t want to tell him. Didn’t want to say. Even if she downplayed it—halved it—he’d be fuming.
But she’d been waiting over a year now. In a moment of reckless abandon, she’d had enough.
“Three-hundred,” she said.
She felt the sting of the slap out of nowhere. It made the whole world flash white for one brief, blinding moment, then the stinging heat began to bite, burning quickly across her cheek and down her jaw.
“Three-hundred quid? For a cheap shite catalogue coffee table?” Clyde spat. “No fucking way. No fucking way! Get on the phone and cancel it.”
“It’ll come out of my money,” Lana promised, a hand laid gingerly across the side of her face where he’d hit her. “I’ve been putting money aside for it.”
His movement was sudden. Erratic. Violent. He thrust a hand into the pocket of her jeans, pulled out her phone, then practically punched her in the chest with it.
“I told you to fucking cancel it. Now!”
She took the phone right away. She couldn’t risk him looking at the screen, just in case there were any messages there. He was this furious over a coffee table.
She didn’t want to think about how he’d react to her affair.
“Right. OK, Clyde. I’ll cancel it. You’re right,” she said.
“Aye. Hindsight’s a wonderful fucking thing, eh?” he seethed. “Three-hundred quid for a coffee table. I said I’d make one, didn’t I?”
“When?”
The question came from the kitchen door. Lana gave a frantic shake of her head, warning Bennet not to do this. Pleading with him.
Clyde turned slowly. Deliberately. Gave his son time to dwell on what may or may not be about to happen. A classic bully’s tactic.
“What was that?”
Bennet stood framed in the doorway. The empty space around him made him look smaller than he actually was.
“Go to your room, Bennet,” Lana began, but Clyde silenced her with a look.
“The boy said something. I want to know what it was.”
Bennet swallowed. There was a shake to his voice when he spoke. “I asked when you were going to do it. Build the table, I mean. Mum’s been asking for ages.”
“Oh, has she? Been asking for ages, has she?” Clyde mimicked. He took a swig of his lager, set the half-empty can on the table, then swaggered closer to where his son was trying hard to stand his ground. “Well, maybe if I didn’t have to work morning, noon, and night to take care of an ungrateful wee bastard like you, I’d have more time to do everything that’s asked of me.”
“You were out at the pub all last night,” Bennet said, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
Clyde took two big steps, his hand already drawing back.
“Evening, Mr Lennon.”
Clyde quickly aborted the attack when Lachlan appeared out of nowhere and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Bennet in the hall. He was the only person in the house who was currently smiling—a big, friendly grin that didn’t fit with the atmosphere in the kitchen at all.
The sight of the young man threw Clyde off his stride. There were things he could say to Lana and Bennet—things he could do—that he knew they’d never speak about to anyone else. They were too scared, too ashamed, too worn down by their own inaction to speak up outside.
But Lachlan was an unknown quantity. A fox in the henhouse. It was a small village, and if he started blabbing his mouth, it could
complicate matters.
“How was work today?” Lachlan asked, still all smiles. “Must be hard, running your own business. Bennet was telling me all about what you do. Everything.”
Clyde’s eyes narrowed, trying to work out the meaning behind the words. “Aye,” he said with a grunt, then he turned to his wife, told her they’d continue the conversation later, and announced that he was going for a drive.
Bennet and Lachlan both shuffled aside as he came storming past. They joined Lana in the kitchen, and then all flinched at the force with which the front door was slammed.
“Right, then,” Lana chirped, in the uncomfortable silence that followed. “Who’s on for pizza and chips?”
Chapter Fourteen
Tyler jammed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, rubbed vigorously, then let out his frustration as a long, protracted sigh.
“How long is that we’ve been looking at pictures of keys now?” he asked.
At the desk beside him, Constable Dave Davidson checked his watch. “Eleven minutes.”
“Fuck! Seriously? It can’t be!” Tyler groaned and gestured to the page of pictures on his screen. “There must be a better way to do this than just typing ‘key’ into Google Images.”
Dave clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then shrugged. “We could try ‘small key,’ maybe?”
Tyler sat up a little straighter, nodded, then typed ‘small key’ into the search box, and clicked the button to go.
They waited for the pictures to load. Thirty or more of them popped up after just a moment or two. Judging by the scroll bar at the side of the page, there were an infinite number of results lurking below those already visible.
Tyler glanced down at the key in the plastic bag, then checked it against each of the images on-screen in turn.
“No, no, no, no. No, no, nope, no, that one’s not even a key, no, no, no…”
He rolled the mouse wheel, scrolling down the page. There were more keys—so very many keys—but none of them matched the one that had been in Fergus Forsyth’s stomach.
None of the first couple of hundred, at least. That left only infinity small keys left to check.