by JD Kirk
Hamza shook his head. “Not that I know of, no. Why?”
“If he deleted them as he went along, that’s one thing. If he deleted them all right before he died, that’s either one hell of a coincidence, or it tells us something.”
“Tells us what, sir?”
“I’ve got no bloody idea,” Logan admitted. “But it definitely tells us something.”
“Maybe Bennet deleted them?” Hamza suggested.
“Then why leave him with the phone in the first place?” Ben wondered. “It’s going to take time to delete all traces of yourself from someone’s phone, especially when contact was that frequent.”
“Ben’s right. Much easier just to take the phone and dump it somewhere. Makes no sense to leave it on the body.” Logan stood up again, and checked his watch. “The school will be shut, but get onto someone there. Track them down. See if they have a record of phone numbers for the kids. That other number on the list that’s missing from Fergus’s phone…”
“You think he’s been at it with another pupil?” Hamza asked.
“Possibly, aye. Worth checking, anyway. Where’s Bennet now?”
“Holding cell downstairs,” Ben said. “We’re keeping an eye on him. He’s had quite a shock.”
“Aye, well, he’s about to get another one,” Logan said. “Prep an interview room, and we’ll have a crack at him when I get back.” He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, like he was bracing himself for some oncoming storm. “I’m off to look for a head.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Logan stood back from the action and watched two Uniforms batter the living shit out of the door to Clyde Lennon’s workshop.
He wasn’t the only one watching. Half a dozen journalists had assembled at the front of the building, before a cordon had been put up, forcing them back far enough that Logan could pretend they weren’t there.
The door was solid and managed to withstand quite a few strikes from the battering ram, before the lock finally realised it was on to a loser, and relented with a crack.
The Uniforms, their job done, shuffled sideways out of the way, leaving the path clear for Logan to enter the workshop.
The cold was the first thing he noticed. It rolled out of the gloom to meet him as he stepped through the open doorway and into a room that felt needlessly large.
The workshop part—four workbenches with an assortment of power saws and other attachments—took up less than a quarter of the space. A couple of tables, chairs, and various other pieces of furniture took up maybe the same again. They were all at various stages of completion, some barely skeletons, others awaiting just a final sanding or a polish.
The rest of the room was empty. Bare. Wasted space. The light from the high windows fell there, painting vaguely rectangular shapes onto the otherwise featureless floor.
The smell of the place was rich and, unsurprisingly, woody. Pine, and oak, and oils, and stains, with just a hint of something smoky and burnt around the edges. It made him think, not of somewhere industrial, but of smoking rooms in rich men’s clubs. Of academics in cluttered libraries. Of old canal boats, or hunting lodges hidden deep in the woods.
His feet squeaked on the rubbery tiles as he pushed further into the room. The floor was clean. Impeccably so, in fact. He’d have expected sawdust—he knew from experience that the stuff got everywhere—but the floor had been swept, so not a hint of it remained.
The same could not be said for the workbenches. Wood shavings and sawdust were piled up on those, spread unevenly across the flat parts, and heaped in every corner on every bench.
Every bench but one. Logan was drawn to it, and to the jagged teeth of the circular saw that stuck up through a slot in the surface. There was no sawdust anywhere on this bench. There was no mess of any kind, in fact. Were it not for the scrapes and scoring on the wood, and a few flecks of rust on the saw blade, the workbench could’ve been brand new.
As it was, someone had evidently gone to a lot of effort to clean it up. Kneeling, Logan shone his torch into the narrow gap between the bottom of the bench and the floor. A small scattering of sawdust under there had escaped the brush or the vacuum cleaner. Not much, but some.
Standing again, he tried to shift the bench, but it was a heavy bugger of a thing, and it went precisely nowhere.
“Give us a hand in here, will you?” he called, beckoning in a couple of Uniforms.
He supplied them both with gloves, ordered them to join him at one end, and—with a lot of heaving and shuffling—they managed to swing one end of the bench almost a full foot to the right.
“Thanks. Wait outside, will you? I’ll shout if I need you again,” Logan said, then he brought up a hand and blocked the path of a constable who almost went traipsing through the sawdust that had just been unveiled on the floor. “That way. Go around. Pay attention.”
“Eh, sorry, sir,” the officer squeaked, then he and his mate scurried off to wait out front.
Logan knelt on the floor, picked up some of the sawdust, and ran it through his fingers. It was, for all intents and purposes, sawdust. Nothing special. No reddish stains or bloody marks. No scraps of flesh, or chunks of bone. It was sawdust, nothing more.
“Bollocks,” he muttered, letting it fall back to the floor.
The lad who’d called to report Bennet’s confession—Lachlan—had said Bennet had told him the head was somewhere in the workshop, but he hadn’t been able to give them anything more to go on than that.
There were a few cupboards and drawers in the workbenches. Logan checked through them, finding nothing but drill bits, chisels, and other accessories in the drawers, and various hand tools in the cupboards.
One cupboard, in the largest of the benches, refused to open. He tried the handle a few times, tugging hard, just in case the door was merely stuck, then concluded that, no, it was definitely locked.
He spent about three seconds looking around for a key, another two seconds considering his options, and then grabbed a drill from one of the other cupboards, and bored a hole right through the locking mechanism.
A strong smell came wafting out as he opened the door, and he buried his mouth and nose into the crook of his arm before he had a chance to process what it was.
Inside, wood stain leaked from a freshly-drilled hole in a tin, and pooled in a puddle on the cupboard floor. Logan rummaged around, but found only half a dozen or so containers of stains, oils, and other fluids. There was no head, though. Not unless it had been liquidised.
He tried the furniture next. Only one piece—a bedside cabinet—was a potential hiding place, and even then it would make for a tight fit. He braced himself for a moment, before pulling the cabinet door open.
Empty.
“Shite.”
He was rapidly running out of places where a human head might feasibly be stuffed. The ceiling was high and solid, with no liftable tiles or air vents that might offer somewhere to hide body parts.
There was a neatly stacked pile of wood leaning up against one wall. Logan dismantled part of the stack, hoping that it might reveal a hidden hollow in the middle with a head inside, but no such bloody luck.
Where, then? It wasn’t in the workshop, so where was it? Had it already been moved? Had it already been taken?
Logan turned slowly on the spot, waiting for inspiration to strike. It did, a moment later, in the form of a toilet door.
“Well now,” he said, the words carrying across the empty space. “I wonder...”
The bathroom was notably less clean than the rest of the place. It was ridiculously small, given the size of the rest of the building, with a wall-mounted sink the DCI wouldn’t be able to fit both hands in at the same time, and an ancient-looking toilet connected to a large cistern mounted high up on the wall.
There were two air fresheners hanging in the room, one on the back of the door, the other in the bowl of the toilet. They made the air taste cloyingly sweet, and Logan held his breath as he checked in the plastic
bin behind the door, and peeked into the gap between the toilet and the wall.
Nothing.
He stood up then, looked down into the chipped, skid-marked bowl, and reached for the chain that hung from the cistern.
A quick pull led to an impressive flush. Logan watched the water foaming as it swirled around, reddish-pink bubbles popping as they hurtled around the U-bend. He raised his gaze to the cistern on the wall.
“Shitting blood, my arse.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Bennet had declined a solicitor, but given his age, and the seriousness of the charges they may well be bringing against him, Logan had insisted one be brought in.
She was a new face to Logan’s team—mid-forties, once-dark hair now flecked with grey, and a look of bemused horror on her face that suggested she had no idea how she’d ended up with this gig, and that she would be writing a stern letter to HR about it at the earliest possible opportunity.
She had tried to discuss things with Bennet, but the boy had remained tight-lipped and was busily pretending that she didn’t exist.
Eventually, because it was getting late, and she had a home to go to, the solicitor had relented and given the nod for the interview to go ahead.
Ben had done the introductions and recited the spiel for the recording, then had assumed the role of ‘Good Cop,’ by letting Bennet know that his mum was in a stable condition in hospital, and promising to keep him updated of any developments.
“Must’ve been a shock for you,” Logan cut-in. “Seeing her lying there like that.”
Bennet nodded furtively, his hands clasped in front of him so they hid the lower half of his face.
“What do you think happened?” the DCI pressed.
“Dunno.”
“No idea?”
Bennet rubbed his hands back and forth across his top lip, before mumbling, “My dad.”
“What about him?”
“Well, he did it, didn’t he?”
Logan shrugged. “Did he? What makes you say that?”
More rubbing. A nervous tic. He was going to wear his lip away, at this rate. “His hammer was there.”
“A hammer’s a hammer, Bennet.”
“It was his.”
“How do you know?”
“I just… I just know.”
“But how do you just know?” Logan asked. “We’ve looked it over. It’s no’ like he put a sticker with his name on it. It’s just a hammer. There’s no way of knowing who it belonged to. Not that I could see, anyway. How about you, Detective Inspector?”
“Just looked like any old hammer to me,” Ben confirmed. “We could maybe have got prints off it, but, well, Bennet went and grabbed it on us, so that’s out the window.”
Logan nodded sadly. “Aye. Shame, that. A more cynical man might think you did that on purpose,” he said to the teenager across the table. “Same with getting your mother’s blood on you. What better way to hide traces of it than by covering yourself in the stuff?”
Bennet screwed his eyes shut, and spoke in a whisper. “I didn’t do it! I came in and found her there! That policewoman, she’ll tell you.”
“She did, aye,” Logan confirmed. “She said you came in while she was tending to your mum.”
“See! See, I told you!”
“She couldn’t say where you came from, though,” Logan continued. “Or even say for sure that you weren’t in the house the whole time. You appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her by the hair.”
“I thought she was attacking her. I thought she’d hurt Mum.”
“No you didn’t, Bennet. Be honest,” Logan urged. “You knew she didn’t attack your mum, because you did. You tried to kill her. Just like you killed Fergus.”
Bennet’s eyes opened wide. He shook his head, smearing a shiny slick of snot across his clasped fingers. “What? No. No, I wouldn’t. I didn’t. He was… Why would I? Why would I do that?”
“We spoke to Lachlan, son,” Ben said. “He told us everything. Everything you said.”
“What? No,” the boy said, snorting out a laugh like it might counteract the look of betrayal on his face. “No, he… I don’t…”
“And we found the footage. The photos and videos,” Logan said. “The two of you. You and Fergus. Together.”
Bennet’s head snapped down. His hands came up to shield his eyes, and to block their judgemental gazes.
“To clarify for your sake,” Logan said, turning to the solicitor, “since you don’t seem to be asking any questions, the footage is of a sexual nature.”
“Oh!” the solicitor ejected. She was visibly shocked by this, like it was some Sixth Sense style twist to the tale she hadn’t seen coming. “Right. I see. I mean, I haven’t seen, obviously. I don’t really want to…”
She glanced down at her notepad, and Logan imagined she might have the words, ‘Be a good lawyer,’ written there to remind herself.
“And it’s definitely him? Them, I mean?” she asked, once she’d looked back up again.
“It is,” Ben confirmed. “From what we can tell from the time… thingies in the video data, it dates back to shortly after Bennet’s sixteenth birthday. Although, given Fergus’s role as a teacher…”
“Of course,” the solicitor said.
“It wasn’t like that,” Bennet protested. “He wasn’t taking advantage. It just… It just happened.”
“He just happened to give you oral sex in the school changing room?” Logan asked, and Bennet’s cheeks burned until they were almost purple. The DCI leaned forward, his tone becoming softer and less confrontational. “You were barely sixteen years old, son. He was an adult. He was your teacher. He’s meant to look out for you.”
“He did! He always did! He loved me. He told me! He told me he loved me!”
“Whatever he felt about you, Bennet…” Logan shook his head. “It wasn’t love. Not even close. He was a predator. He preyed on you, and God knows who else.”
“Nobody else! There wasn’t anyone else! It was just me and him.”
“And your mum,” Logan said.
Bennet’s forehead became a series of raised ridges. His eyes flitted between both detectives, never settling on one for more than a second.
“What?” he croaked. “What are you talking about?”
“You telling me you don’t know?” Logan asked.
“About what? What about my mum? What are you saying?” the boy demanded, each word shriller than the last.
“Fergus and your mum were having a relationship.”
“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed the solicitor. Clearly, she hadn’t seen that one coming, either. She shrunk beneath the glares of the men across the table, said, “Sorry,” then leaned sideways when Bennet jumped to his feet.
“No. No, that’s bullshit. That’s not true,” Bennet spat. “You’re lying. He wouldn’t do that. You’re lying. You’re all lying!”
“It’s true, son,” Ben said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Detective Inspector. He knows full bloody well,” Logan barked. “Don’t you, Bennet? That’s why you attacked her, isn’t it? That’s why you tried to kill her with that hammer.”
“No! No, it wasn’t me! I told you, it wasn’t me! It was my dad!”
“Oh, aye, because you know for sure it was his hammer,” Logan said. “How can you possibly know that, Bennet? What’s the difference between that and any other bloody hammer out there?”
“I just know!”
“You can’t. How can you possibly know?”
“Because I got it from his toolbox!”
As the sentence faded, the only sound in the room was the faint creak of Logan’s chair as he leaned back in it.
“You got it from his toolbox,” the DCI said. It wasn’t a question, just a reiteration of what the boy had screamed, in case the microphone had peaked and the statement had been lost.
Bennet was breathing heavily, but the emotions that had driven him onto his feet were being swiftly replaced by the s
ense that he’d said the wrong thing. Logan could see it on his face, the realisation that he’d made a serious error of judgement. Any moment now, the backtracking would begin.
“Not… I didn’t mean then. Not today. I didn’t mean I got it from the toolbox today,” he said.
“Take a seat, son,” Ben urged. “Nobody’s going anywhere for a while yet. Might as well get comfy.”
Bennet danced his weight from foot to foot, looked at the solicitor, then at the door, then at his own reflection in the big mirror on the wall.
Then, he wrapped an arm around himself, pulled his chair back into place, and flopped down onto the unforgiving plastic.
“I didn’t kill her,” he insisted.
“But you did kill Fergus?”
“No! No, I…” He wheeled round to face his solicitor. “Can you say something? Or do something? Please?”
The woman beside him squirmed, like a reluctant audience member who’d just been singled out by a performer on the stage. “Like what?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know, do I? But don’t just sit there!” Bennet yelped. “Tell them I didn’t do it!”
“That’s not really my role,” the solicitor explained.
“Jesus fucking Christ! I didn’t kill anyone! I took the hammer from the toolbox ages ago. I kept it under my bed, just in case.”
“Just in case what?” Logan asked.
There was a silence. A lengthy one. Bennet looked up at the ceiling, one leg bouncing so hard it made the whole table vibrate.
“In case he ever tried to use it on us,” he said, in a low, guttural whisper. “Or… Or in case I ever had to use it on him.”
“Your dad, you mean?” asked Ben.
“Yeah. My dad.”
“How did it get from under your bed to the living room?” Logan asked.
Bennet shrugged. “I don’t know. He must’ve taken it.”
“So, he knew it was there? Kind of defeats the point of you hiding it, doesn’t it?”
“No. He… I mean, maybe. I don’t know. He must have. Yeah. He must have.”
There was a knock at the door. The solicitor’s gaze went to it immediately, like she was excited for some new, unexpected twist.