Victoria pulled a packet of cigarettes from a kitchen drawer and lit one. Shook the packet at Logan.
‘Given up.’
Shrug. ‘Suit yourself.’ She sent a plume of smoke crashing against the extractor hood. ‘Course, we used to be real tight…
Best friends. Used to tell me everything. We were something special back then; sixteen years old, sexy as hell, men throwing themselves at us.’ A smile oozed across Victoria’s face, then disappeared. ‘Now look at me.’
The kettle rumbled to a boil. Logan filled a mug. Fished the teabag out with the handle of a fork. ‘So what happened?’
A long smoky sigh. ‘Doddy McGregor happened. She thought he was just this big stupid lump of muscle, but he knew a good thing when he saw it.’ Victoria rubbed two fingers up and down the side of her face, pushing the skin into folds. ‘Walked in and caught us at it, didn’t she? Doddy says he’s just getting it out of his system, before the wedding. Invites her to join in, says it’d be hot. And she’s standing there: six months pregnant. Fuck, I thought she was going to kill him.’ Victoria laughed. ‘Thought she was going to kill me too. Never spoke after that.’
Logan poured the last dribble of semi-skimmed into his mug. ‘So you haven’t seen them recently?’
‘Course I have.’ She curled back her top lip, exposing little brown teeth. ‘They’re fucking everywhere: on the telly, in the papers, can’t turn on the radio and they’re playing that bloody song. She gets a tribute show with Robbie Williams, what do I get? Fucking diabetes.’
Quarter to three. Forty-five minutes to go. Logan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. One sex offender due diligence interview down, two to go. Should really go visit the vet’s Frank Baker volunteered at, make sure DI Steel had followed it up properly. Be a good little boy.
He rode the clutch down to the roundabout, joining the queue waiting to get over the King George VI Bridge.
Superintendent Napier… Why did it have to be him? At least with Chief Inspector Young you got a decent chance to explain your side of things.
Forward another couple of car-lengths. A huge eighteen-wheeler with the Baxters’ logo down the side hissed and juddered around onto Great Southern Road. A taxi blared its horn at a massive four-by-four, then it was Logan’s turn on the roundabout.
He accelerated out, turned right… and kept on going, right around the roundabout and back the way he’d come. Sod Superintendent Sodding Green and his sodding due diligence.
Five minutes later Logan was standing outside the house where they’d dropped off Trisha Brown’s wee boy so he could spend the night with his drug addict granny. It was worth a try.
The front door was scuffed, the wood dented, as if it’d been given a bit of a kicking. It wasn’t a bad neighbourhood, just a bunch of bland granite houses a few streets over from where Alison and Jenny McGregor lived. Logan tried the doorbell. No answer. Then he tried the handle, and the door swung open.
The Browns’ hallway was a minefield of broken furniture. A ratty purple sofa was twisted onto its side, half in and half out of the living room door. A glass-topped coffee table made glittering mosaic shards on the carpet.
When Shuggie said his Yardie mates had trashed the place, he wasn’t kidding…
‘Hello?’ Logan pressed the bell again, and a dull clunking buzz sounded somewhere down the hall. ‘Anyone home?’
Glass scrunched under his shoes. ‘Anyone?’
He peered into the lounge. More damage: TV smashed, armchairs broken, the floor littered with CDs. Fleetwood Mac lying by the door, the cover cracked.
Shattered jars and bottles littered the kitchen floor, covering the dirty linoleum with glass and sticky liquid. Pickled onions amongst a shattered jar of beetroot, like tiny eyes swimming in a sea of blood. Cupboard doors ripped from the units, the fridge dented and buckled.
It wasn’t random destruction, it was systematic. The stairs creaked as he climbed.
Bathroom: toilet smashed, grey-pink pedestal mat soaking wet. Sink cracked. The bath’s front panel kicked in, the mixer shower ripped from the wall.
Bedroom one: mattress gutted, its innards burst across the bare chipboard floor. Ripped clothes. A chest of drawers turned into a Picasso sculpture. A wardrobe lurching drunk-enly against the headboard. Curtains torn down.
The second bedroom wasn’t so bad. It actually looked as if someone had tidied up in here. A small pile of clothes sat in the corner: other than that, the floor was relatively clean. OK, so the wardrobe was living testimony to the miraculous powers of silver duct tape, and the mattress lay on the floor instead of a bed, but it had sheets and an almost-clean duvet cover… About four drawers were stacked, one on top of the other, by the window, overflowing with bras, socks, and pants.
Logan walked over to the room’s cracked window and looked out across the road at the houses on the other side. The neighbours must love it here. You save hard, buy your very own council house, and then Helen Brown moves in. Next thing you know you’ve got three generations of drug users living next door. Breaking into your house, shed, garage, car, anywhere they can nick something to sell and feed their habit.
And then a pair of Yardies turn up and wreck the place. Do a bloody good job of it too.
Ah well…
It’d been a long shot. Shuggie Webster wasn’t lying low at his girlfriend’s mum’s house. He was probably off licking his wounds in a squat somewhere. If the Yardies hadn’t killed him.
Logan checked his watch again. Twenty-five minutes to get back to the station in time for his bollocking. He turned and … stopped. Frowned.
The wardrobe — a cheap-looking flatpack job, all veneer-covered chipboard, papered with tatty photos cuts from the pages of Hello! and Heat and Bella — was creaking. It was moving too. Not much, just a little trembling back and forth motion, but it was definitely moving.
A smile crawled across Logan’s face. Shuggie Webster, you predictable little shite…
Time to come out of the closet.
Chapter 27
Logan pulled out his pepper-spray, and popped the top off. He crept over to the rocking wardrobe. Grabbed the wooden handle. Threw it wide open. ‘You enjoying Narnia then, Shug-’
Something slammed into Logan’s stomach and he went staggering backwards. Then over, the room flipping through ninety degrees, and then thump. Flat on his back. Cold, sharp pain, as if six-inch metal screws were being twisted into his guts.
A small bare foot flashed past Logan’s nose. A hand, a blue sleeve. The rancid piddly smell of stale clothes, left too long in the washing machine. Scrabbling, swearing, then the slapping sound of naked feet on floorboards.
Logan shot a hand out, groping… Not finding anything. He rolled over onto his side, forced himself upright and lurched to the bedroom door. It sounded as if there were snakes in the hallway below — hissing and writhing. He stood at the top of the stairs, one hand on the wallpaper for support.
There was a little boy sitting on the bottom step, wearing grubby Ben 10 pyjamas, clutching his feet in both hands.
‘Ricky?’
The kid stood, limped, collapsed against the battered sofa poking out from the lounge door. A set of bloody footprints followed him across the glass-strewn carpet.
‘There you go.’ Logan clunked a tin of Irn-Bru down on the bare floorboards at the side of the mattress.
Ricky Brown wrapped his arms around his knees, face set in a line much harder than the two crusted streaks beneath his nose. He turned his head away.
‘How’s the feet?’
The response was too mumbled to make out.
Logan pulled up his tatty left trouser leg, showing off three parallel lines of scabs. ‘See, you’re not the only one.’
Ricky picked at a loose thread on the ribbons of towel Logan had wrapped around the little boy’s feet. The soles slowly soaking through in shiny red patches.
‘Where’s your mum, Ricky?’
A shrug. ‘Went out.’
Aha, so he could speak after all. ‘You know where she went?’
He shook his head, little more than a twitch. ‘Said someone killed Dad’s dog.’
‘Shuggie Webster’s your dad?’
‘This week.’ Another thread unravelled from the improvised bandage.
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Mum went to get food and that.’ Pause. ‘You going to arrest me?’
Logan forced a laugh. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Gran says it’s what you pig bastards do. You arrest people what haven’t done nothing wrong.’
‘No, Ricky, I’m not going to arrest you.’ He held out the Irn-Bru. ‘Did your mum say when she’s going to be back?’
‘Gran says you arrest people and you shag them up the arse. ’Cos you’re all paedos and poofs.’
‘Yeah, your granny sounds like a bundle of laughs.’ Logan cracked the ringpull off the tin, and helped himself to a swig. ‘Your mum and dad are messed up with some very bad people, Ricky. Now, I can help, but I need to know where they are.’
Silence. ‘Don’t you want your mum and dad to be safe?’
Ricky shifted his feet, leaving a red smear on the duvet cover.
‘OK, well, if you’re sure.’ Logan knocked back another gulp, then set the tin down back on the floor. ‘Right, I know a nice doctor who’ll fix you up, then we’ll see if we can find someone to look after you.’
‘She’s coming back for me.’
‘Never said she wasn’t.’
‘She told me last night.’
‘Yeah, well we’ll…’ Frown. ‘Last night? You’ve been on your own since last night? In the wardrobe?’
‘Said she’d come back soon as it was safe.’
And the nominees for ‘Mother of the Year’ are…
Logan stood. ‘You think you can walk, or do you want me to give you a piggy back?’
Ricky looked up at him, then away again. He gripped a handful of duvet cover. ‘Are you going to shag me up the arse?’
‘Wasn’t top of my agenda, no.’
A nod. ‘Can you carry me then?’
Logan knocked on the doorframe. The paintwork was chipped and peeling, a thick grey line halfway up marking where countless trolleys had bashed their way through. ‘Shop?’
The mortuary was nearly twice the size of the one in the basement of FHQ, done in sparkling white-and-blue tiles, like a swimming pool. A little speaker system sat on a shelf by the refrigerated drawers, Dr Hook’s Sexy Eyes echoing slightly in the antiseptic space.
‘Hello?’ A head appeared from a door at the back of the room — ginger curls bobbing as she wheeled a mop and bucket into the cutting room, white mortuary clogs squeaking on the floor. She smiled. ‘Sergeant McRae, we’ve not had you here for a while. Picking up, or dropping off?’
‘They got you mopping up now? You not a bit overqualified for that?’
‘Fred’s off sick, so we’re all chipping in.’ The Anatomical Pathology Technician hauled the mop out of the bucket and slopped it across the tiles, making little streams rush along the grout. ‘How’s Sheila? She still channelling Vincent Price?’
‘Three weeks to go.’ He limped into the room. ‘Wanted to ask you a question.’
‘What happened to your leg?’
‘Rottweiler. Look, I’ve only got a minute — have you had any dead children in recently? Girls. Between four and eight years old?’
‘I had a neighbour with a Rottweiler, lovely big lump it was. Broke her heart when it got cancer.’ The APT dumped the mop back in the mangle bit of the bucket and hauled the handle down, squeezing out the dirty water. ‘Hop up on the table and I’ll take a look.’
Logan looked at the stainless-steel table, the one with guttering around the edges, and a water supply to rinse away the blood. ‘I’m… Nah, it’s OK. I’m fine.’
‘Oh come on.’ She smiled. ‘Never lost a patient yet.’
‘Ever saved one?’
A sigh. ‘That’s a good point.’ She leant the mop against the wall, then crossed to a laptop sitting on its own on an expanse of shining worktop. ‘Little girls between four and eight…’ Her fingers clicked across the keys. ‘Am I allowed to ask why?’
There’s no need to sound so dramatic, Sergeant. Where do you think the kidnappers got the thing from, Toes R Us?
‘Was sitting upstairs, waiting for them to put a dozen stitches in a wee boy’s feet, and I thought — where would you get a dead little girl’s toe from?’
‘Lovely.’ She shook her head, Irn-Bru curls swaying. ‘So when you think of dead little girls: I’m the one who springs to mind?’
‘Have you had any? Over the last two or three weeks? They’d have been given morphine and thiopental sodium.’
She leant her head closer to the laptop’s screen. ‘That narrows it down a bit… Here we go: female, five-year-old, brought in suffering from abdominal pains. Died on the operating table.’ A sigh. ‘Poor wee soul.’
The song on the stereo changed to All the Time in the World. Logan limped over. ‘Could we do a DNA test? See if the toe they sent us was hers?’
‘I remember her now. Such a pretty little girl. When we opened her up she was riddled with cysts and cancer… Five years old.’
‘You’d have tissue samples though, right? We could-’
‘It’s not her.’
‘But if we check-’
‘It’s not her.’ The APT stepped back and pointed at the screen.
A photograph filled the right-hand side next to a list of post mortem notes: a little girl, lying on the cutting table, eyes taped closed, the breathing tube still in her mouth. Her skin was the colour of dusty slate, all the blood and life leached out of it.
The APT closed the laptop with a click. ‘There’s no way they could pass a toe from her off as coming from a little white girl.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ Deep breaths. Stay calm.
‘Then what did you mean, Sergeant?’ Superintendent Napier steepled his fingers, then rested his chin on the point. He smiled, dark eyes wide behind his glasses. His desk was arranged so that his back was to the window, meaning the chair reserved for visitors, supplicants, and sacrificial offerings, faced into the sun. The light made a fiery halo of Napier’s ginger hair, his black dress uniform a solid silhouette against the bright blue sky.
Logan squinted. ‘There just didn’t seem to be an opportunity to call it in. After I banged my head…’ He reached up and rubbed a spot behind his ear, just to sell the lie.
‘Ah yes. Of course. Detective Constable Rennie mentioned … where are we?’ The superintendent picked a sheet of paper from his in-tray and peered at it down his long pointy nose. ‘“He was acting all confused and had difficulty remembering the end of sentences, when I collected him. I believe he may have been concussed.”’ The paper went back in the tray. ‘A more cynical man might think you’d cooked that up between you to deflect the blame, don’t you think, Sergeant?’
‘When was the last time you were attacked by a Rottweiler?’ Or battered to death with your own office chair?
‘And I suppose it was this alleged “concussion” that made you twenty minutes late for our appointment?’ Napier swivelled from side to side, sunlight flaring in Logan’s eyes: shadow, bright, shadow, bright. ‘We’ve not had to deal with you for several months, Sergeant, but I see from Chief Inspector Young’s notes that you were in here only yesterday. Twice in two days. Are you embarking upon some kind of record attempt?’
‘They were trumped up charges by-’
‘Someone allegedly trying to extort drugs from you. Yes, I do actually read the case files of the officers I deal with, Sergeant. And a little birdie tells me that you’re having interpersonal difficulties with Chief Inspector Green from SOCA?’
Did the bastard hire a publicist? ‘We had a frank exchange of views, yes.’
‘Did you now?’ Napier swivelled again. ‘We disagreed about what was and wasn’t acceptable behaviour when interviewing
sex offenders. Green thinks it’s OK to put the fear of God in them and threaten to tell their colleagues.’
‘I see…’ He sat forward, blocking out the sun. ‘So, would you say that Superintendent Green was less than receptive to Grampian Police’s thorough and rigorous approach to offender management? That he disregarded best working practice? Was contemptuous of it?’ There was that smile again, the one that made him look like a shark, about to tear into a paddling pool full of orphans.
‘Er…’ Logan was getting set up for something. ‘It was … a non-standard situation that … may have caused some confusion on his part.’
Napier raised an eyebrow. ‘I shall, of course, attempt to smooth out any difficulties in understanding. It’s important that we all get on with our colleagues from the Serious Organized Crime Agency, don’t you think?’
‘…Yes?’
The superintendent picked a silver pen from his desktop, rolled it back and forth between his fingers as if it were a shiny joint. Then returned it to its rightful place, lining it up perfectly with the edge of a desk calendar. ‘Well,’ he stuck out a hand for Logan to shake, ‘thank you for coming in, Sergeant. It’s been most … informative.’
That’s it — he was screwed.
It would just take a while to find out why, and exactly how badly.
‘Well, if you’d hold still for two minutes I wouldn’t have to, would I?’ Dr Delaney shifted her grip on Logan’s ankle. She had fingers like pliers, digging into the skin and muscle, the purple nitrile gloves pulling out leg hairs every time she moved.
‘Ow!’
‘Oh don’t be such a baby.’ She wiped a disinfectant-soaked pad across the dark-red teeth-marks again, rubbing away the scabs. Setting them bleeding again. ‘When was your last tetanus shot?’
‘No idea.’
‘You’re a silly sod. Lucky we don’t get a lot of rabies in Scotland — the needles are massive.’
Sharp, stinging pain tore up his leg. He gritted his teeth, tried not to flinch.
‘If you don’t hold still, you’re going to get gangrene and your foot’ll fall off. Is that what you want?’ She rubbed more disinfectant into the wounds.
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