‘Do you think I’ll judge you, or think less of you if you admit you’re having problems?’
‘I’m not having problems!’
‘She shot you down and it hurt, didn’t it? You wanted revenge.’ Clayton leant forward. ‘You don’t do a lot of interviewing, do you?’
‘Logan, if you don’t talk about it, how’s it ever going to get better?’
‘I mean, you haven’t even tried to establish a rapport with me,
just straight in with the cod psychology. Now your colleague here,’ he pointed at Steel, ‘she’s doing much better.’
‘We talked about it — we spent half an hour talking about it. Now will you just do your bloody job!’
Goulding smiled. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’ He picked up the little microphone and pressed the red ‘TALK’ button. ‘Ask him about his parents — how does he think they’ll react when they find out he’s been arrested?’
Steel had a wee scratch below the table. ‘What’s your mum and dad going to think about you being dragged in here? Steve?’
Green scowled at her. Probably thought he should be the one asking the questions.
Clayton shrugged. ‘You see, Superintendent, you’re either an alpha male, or you’re not. The inspector here: she is, but you…’ He made a side-to-side see-saw motion with one hand.
‘If it was me: if someone had set fire to my flat while I was sleeping, if my girlfriend had ended up in a coma, I’d want to kill someone.’
Logan stared at Goulding. ‘Leave it.’
‘My mother and father were loving and supportive. They’re proud of everything I’ve achieved.’
‘If I’d stood there and watched her fall-’
‘Fine, you really want to know? I thought Shuggie Webster did it, OK? So I tracked him down and I beat the crap out of him.’ Logan turned away. ‘Could’ve killed him…’
‘That’s a perfectly natural feeling. We all-’
‘I don’t mean figuratively: I had the option. I could have killed him, got rid of the body, no one would have known.’
‘Ah… Now that’s more like it.’ Goulding picked up the microphone. ‘If his parents are so wonderful, why has been rebelling against them all his life?’
On the little screen, Superintendent Green blurted out the question, desperate to get there before Steel.
‘So, for a brief moment you held the power of life and death.’ The psychologist scribbled something in his notepad.
‘And you chose to be merciful.’ He tilted his head to the side. ‘How did that make you feel?’
Logan looked away. ‘Sick.’
‘Really? Interesting… Interesting…’
On the little screen, Clayton ran a hand through his long brown hair. ‘Tell me, Inspector, when did you discover you were a lesbian? Was it sudden, a gradual process, or have you always known?’
Goulding smiled. ‘You know, I’m beginning to think your friend Mr Clayton might be a bit too much of a challenge for the inspector and DSI Green. He’s playing with them, like he’s got all the time in the world. He’s in no rush to give us the McGregors.’
Steel shook her head. ‘Nice try, sunshine, but you’re no’ even in the same league as Hannibal Lecter. Now unless you’re looking for a size-nine hand-stitched leather enema, tell us what you did with Alison and Jenny?’’
‘How you doing kiddo?’ SYLVESTER lifts Jenny’s chin till her eyes are level with the narrow slits where his eyes should be.
She looks away. ‘Want my mummy.’
‘Yeah, well…’ He pats her on the head, like she’s a doggie. ‘Soon be over; then you can go home. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’
The room’s hot. Sunlight makes streaks across the bare floorboards, stopping at the foot of the bed. Stopping short of her sore feet. Jenny bites her lip as he strokes her hair with his rubbery fingers.
‘Will you leave that bloody kid alone?’ TOM’s sitting on the windowsill, reading a newspaper with a photo of Mummy on the front. ‘Look like a paedophile: pawing at her the whole time.’
‘Screw you.’ SYLVESTER’s robot voice turns into a metal whisper. ‘I’m really sorry about … well,’ his eyes drift down, towards her bandaged feet, ‘everything. You know?’ He shrugs and his white paper suit rustles.
She doesn’t say anything, just sits quietly as the door opens and the monster with the ‘PATRICK’ sticker comes in, the big camera slung over her shoulder. Jenny can hear Mummy crying in the other room, and then PATRICK closes the door, shutting it out. ‘He’s not answering his phone.’
SYLVESTER’s still stroking Jenny’s hair. ‘You try email?’
‘Of course I tried bloody email.’ PATRICK stops and stares. ‘What are you doing?’
TOM looks over the top of his newspaper. ‘Kiddie-fiddling.’
‘I’m not a bloody paedo!’ SYLVESTER stands. ‘You try to be nice, show a wee kid some compassion, and-’
‘I know what you want to show her. You want to show her your-’
‘Enough!’ PATRICK stomps her foot. ‘Shut up, the pair of you!’
TOM shrugs. ‘What if the cops picked him up? I mean, they were all over the place today-’
‘They speak to you too?’
‘Was out. Did my flatmates though; asking all kinds of stuff about Alison and Jenny.’
PATRICK waves a hand. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘But what if-’
‘As long as you keep your mouths shut, they can’t prove anything. They’ve got nothing: no witnesses, no motive, no DNA, no fingerprints, nothing. If we torch this place before we go Sherlock Holmes couldn’t catch us.’
‘Yeah, but suppose-’
‘Are you retarded?’ She walks over to the bed, picks up Teddy Gordon and turns him upside down so his horrible fuzzy bottom is sticking in the air, the white washing tag poking out like a worm. ‘We’re talking about over eight million pounds, Sylvester.’
‘Yeah, no: it’ll be fine, I’m working on it. No one’ll see a thing.’
‘Make sure they don’t.’ PATRICK shoves the teddy bear at Jenny, those dead black eyes glittering at her. ‘After all, you don’t want to end up like Colin, do you?’
SYLVESTER doesn’t say anything, he just stands there staring at PATRICK. Even TOM is silent.
Chapter 47
‘He’s in there laughing at us!’ Superintendent Green thumped his fist against the boardroom table’s polished mahogany surface. ‘I told you we should have followed him — he would’ve led us straight to Alison and Jenny McGregor. Bringing him in like this was wilfully reckless.’
Logan checked his watch. Two minutes into the catch-up session and Green was already throwing blame around.
Steel narrowed her eyes. ‘At least we’re doing something. You’d still be sitting in here with your thumb up your-’
‘Inspector!’ Finnie slumped back in his seat. ‘We appreciate your passion, but now’s not the time. Perhaps we could focus on finding solutions instead of pointing fingers?’
‘Well,’ Acting DI Mark MacDonald fidgeted with his pen, ‘what if we let Clayton go? Pretend it was just a mistake, and we’re dropping all the charges? Then we could keep him under surveillance and he would think he was in the clear? You know, best of both worlds?’
Finnie stared at him until Mark’s ears went bright pink. ‘Don’t be stupid. What do the IB say?’
Logan checked the file he’d grabbed on the way to the boardroom. ‘They’re still going through his laptop — Clayton’s got about two gig of encrypted files that could be anything. Unless he gives us the key, it’s going to take months, maybe years.’
‘That’s not an option. Door-to-doors?’
Steel had a dig at her bra. ‘Ongoing. Halls of residence are huge; has to be hundreds of students living at Hillhead.’
‘I see…’ Finnie buried his face in his hands for a moment. Then surfaced again. ‘Options?’
‘We’re no’ letting Clayton go — the media would skin us alive.’
‘Superintendent Green?’
The man from SOCA crossed his arms. ‘I think I’ve said my piece.’
Finnie turned back to Logan. ‘What about the psychologist, Goulding?’
‘He wants some off-the-record time with Clayton. Thinks it might help to build a rapport and-’
Green’s chin came up. ‘It’s out of the question. You can’t leave a civilian alone with the only suspect you’ve managed to produce: nothing Clayton says will be admissible. I won’t allow you to compromise the whole investigation. The Independent Police Complaints Commission-’
‘Blah, blah, blah.’ Steel gave her left boob an extra hard jiggle. ‘You know what, Superintendent? You’re about as welcome round here as a blow job off your own granddad.’
His eyes went wide. ‘How dare-’
‘All right, all right.’ Finnie rubbed at his face. ‘Just for a moment, could we all pretend that we’re on the same side?’
Green made a big show of taking a deep breath, then aligning the cuffs of his shirt sleeves. ‘You need to find Frank Baker. You need to come up with a strategy for recovering Alison and Jenny. You need to come up with a strategy for following the money when it’s handed over. You need to sort this out now. Not tomorrow, not next week: now.’
Steel let go of her bra. ‘I say we give Goulding fifteen minutes with Clayton. Not like we’ve got anything to lose, is it?’
Finnie nodded. ‘Agreed. Do it in an interview room, with the cameras running. And make sure Clayton knows he’s being filmed so his defence can’t moan about it afterwards. Any objections, Superintendent?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Good. McRae, set it up. Acting DI MacDonald: I want that risk assessment on my desk by three. Steel: find out where we are with Frank Baker. I’ll see what we can do about tracking the ransom payment.’
Dr Dave Goulding sat in Finnie’s office, a mug of tea in one hand, a Jaffa Cake in the other. ‘I’d say it’s … possibly not as clean-cut as that.’
The head of CID closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘This might come as a bit of a shock, but I just want to know “yes” or “no”.’
Logan rested his back against the bank of filing cabinets, the metal cool through the white cotton of his shirt. Steel stifled a yawn.
‘It’s not as simple as that.’ Goulding turned his Jaffa Cake into a crescent moon. ‘Stephen Clayton feels comfortable playing with us because he’s not worried about slipping up. That means he’s either incredibly arrogant, or he had nothing to do with Alison and Jenny’s abduction.’ The rest of the Jaffa Cake disappeared. ‘I just don’t think he’s the right personality type. Oh, he’s bright enough, but he couldn’t keep it secret. He’d want to shout it from the top of Marischal College: “Look at me! Look how clever I am!”’
Finnie pursed his rubbery lips. ‘He’s defi nitely not involved?’
‘It’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely.’
‘Then we’re back to square one. And we’ve wasted a whole morning, and hundreds of man-hours on a bloody student.’ Finnie massaged his nose again. ‘Inspector McRae, can you tell that I’m slightly disappointed?’
‘He was a Doctor Who fan, he had history with Alison McGregor-’
‘That doesn’t matter if he didn’t have anything to do with their abduction!’
No, it didn’t.
Steel puffed out her cheeks. ‘Well, look on the bright side, at least Green’s got something new to whinge about.’
‘…join us next week for more Britain’s Next Big Star!’ Canned applause filtered through the house, echoing up the stairwell from the television in the lounge.
Logan sat on Alison McGregor’s bed and stared at the photos he’d found in a shoebox at the back of the cupboard: Alison in a bikini, Alison in T-shirt and jeans, Alison at the beach… He held up one of her in a school uniform. She was sitting on a low brick wall, a tin of extra-strong cider in one hand, a cigarette in the other, her school blouse unbuttoned so far her bra was on display, school tie disappearing into cleavage.
Everything was completely fucked up. Stephen Clayton had to be involved. If he wasn’t … what else did they have?
Logan turned the photo over, ‘MY BIRTHDAY? 14 TODAY!!!’ was picked out in blue biro on the back. She didn’t look fourteen.
‘Welcome to Britain’s Next Big Star!’ Cheering. ‘We’ve got a terrifi c show for you this week, but remember: only four of tonight’s contestants can go through to the next round, so make sure you vote for your favourites!’
Alison’s DVD recorder was full of the stuff — Britain’s Next Big Star, the X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing, three different things with ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber’ in the title…
Logan laid the photograph on the bed, next to the others, and pulled another one from the box: Alison in the pub with another girl and a pair of gormless-looking blokes. The other girl … looked a bit like Vicious Vikki, only a lot thinner. One of the blokes was definitely Doddy McGregor.
Logan placed it next to the schoolgirl shot. Then frowned. Alison McGregor looked identical in every single picture. Her clothes changed, her hair changed, her make-up changed, but her face didn’t. It was exactly the same smile in every picture — mouth, teeth, eyes, eyebrows all exactly the same.
It wasn’t a bad smile: it was open, warm, wholesome, and a little bit sexy all at the same time… It suited her. But seen like this, all these photos spread out on the duvet cover, it just looked as if she was wearing a mask. As if whenever a camera came out, the real Alison McGregor disappeared.
Sitting on his own, in an empty house, Logan knew how she felt.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ TOM stands in the middle of the room, with his hands on his hips.
Jenny looks up from the bed as DAVID walks in, swinging his legs like he’s a cowboy in a movie.
‘Don’t be so fucking gay.’ DAVID dumps a plastic bag from the supermarket on the floor. ‘Got stuck with our friendly neighbourhood plod this afternoon. Took forever to get rid of the bastards.’ He pulls a newspaper from the bag and throws it to TOM. ‘Front page.’
TOM fumbles, then unfolds the paper and stares at it. ‘Holy shit.’
‘I know. Where’s Sylvester?’
‘Lecture.’
‘Cool. Cool.’ DAVID nods at the bed. ‘End game, Alison. You ready?’
He pulls a bottle out of the bag — a big bottle with a big cork. ‘I think celebrations are in order. Tom?’
‘Spectacular!’ TOM turns the newspaper around until they can all see it. There’s a picture of Jenny and Mummy on the cover. ‘Nine point four million. Ca-fucking-ching!’
Mummy sits up and the chain around her ankle rattles. ‘We just want to go home.’
‘Well, here’s the problem,’ DAVID holds the bottle in his hand like it’s a doll, ‘we’ve had a change of plan. Tom?’
‘What?’
‘You got the duct tape?’
‘Bingo.’ TOM holds up a thick grey hoop. ‘Cool.’ DAVID snaps his fingers. ‘Let’s see it.’
‘Nine point four million.’ TOM skips across the room. ‘Shit that is a load of-’
THUNK. DAVID swings the bottle like a hammer, right into the back of TOM’s head.
Don’t bottles break when you hit them on things? Like when the Queen launches a ship and she has to thump the bottle on the ship and it breaks and there’s all this foam everywhere and the ship slides away into the sea.
‘Nnnnng…’ TOM wobbles. The silvery tape falls from his hand, hits the floorboards and rolls away.
DAVID hits him with the bottle again. Thunk.
TOM’s legs stop working and he falls to the floor. His left foot twitches, the fingers of one purple-gloved hand shaking. Something dark seeps down inside his mask, making the clear plastic go red.
Jenny scrambles backwards until she bashes into the bedpost, not caring about the burny pain in her feet.
DAVID puts the bottle on the floor.
He goes back to his shopping and pulls out a big black bin-bag. Shakes it so it’s all puffy. Then puts it over TOM’s head. ‘Don’t want to get blood on our nice clean floor, do we?’
He holds it tight around TOM’s neck for ages and ages, till TOM stops moving. Then he stands and turns to them. ‘And then … there were four.’
Mummy shakes her head. ‘I just want this to be over with.’
‘About that…’ DAVID grabs her hair and drags her off the bed. Mummy screams, hands clawing at him.
‘NO!’ Jenny can’t back away any further, the metal bedpost digs into her back. Teddy Gordon smiles up at her with his dead crow eyes. Laughing. She grabs him by the throat and throws him with all her might. ‘DON’T HURT MY MUMMY!’
Teddy Gordon bounces off DAVID’s chest.
He looks down at the bear lying on the floor beside TOM. ‘Yeah, cute.’
DAVID hauls Mummy over onto her stomach, and kneels on her back. Then catches her hands, holding them in one big purple-gloved fist as he wraps her wrists in shiny silver tape.
‘GET OFF ME! GET THE FUCK OFF ME!’
He tears off another bit of tape, and now Mummy only mumbles and hisses.
Jenny jumps onto the floor and runs at him, her feet stabby and aching and sore. Brave Little Girl… She snatches the bottle off the floor. I name this ship DAVID. She swings it with all her might.
It bounces off his shoulder.
He turns to look at her, his head on one side, like next door’s cat watching a bird with a broken wing. ‘Mistake.’ His hand snaps out, thumping down on Jenny’s left foot.
Something sharp bursts inside her, tearing up her leg, she opens her mouth to scream, but there’s no breath left. She falls, clutching her ankle in both hands, staring as a poppy blooms on the white bandage. The broken thing catches fire. And now she can scream, over and over again. So loud it makes her throat rattle.
‘Fuck’s sake. Shut up.’ He grabs her face — stinky rubber fingers clamping her jaw shut — then forces the sticky tape over her mouth. ‘There we go, much better.’
Mummy wriggles on the floor, eyes small and sparkly, making noises that don’t count as words.
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