Close to the Bone lm-8

by Stuart MacBride

  Rennie whistled. ‘Oooh, someone’s in trouble.’

  ‘Don’t be a dick.’

  That just got him a grin.

  The number seventeen hissed to a halt, indicator blinking as a couple of middle-aged ladies dressed like oversexed teenagers clambered onboard.

  A nasal Doric accent crackled out of the pool car’s radio. ‘Charlie Six, from Control, over? ’

  Rennie flipped the switch. ‘Morning, Jimmy.’

  ‘Aye-aye, loon, you got DI McRae with you? ’

  He looked across the car and mouthed the words, ‘Are you here? ’

  Idiot.

  Logan stuck his phone back in his pocket. ‘What do you want, Jimmy? ’

  ‘We’ve had a wee call from someone says they know who your clay-head thingy is.’

  He grabbed his notebook. ‘You got an address? ’

  Rennie sniffed, wrinkled his nose, then did a slow three-sixty. ‘Smells like someone’s burning old nappies.’

  The house was on the end of a row of three terraced cottages, all huddled together at the edge of a patch of woodland on the Kemnay Road. Bennachie was just visible through jagged pine-tree branches, the shadows beneath them dark and deep. Throw in a gingerbread house and Hansel and Gretel would have flashbacks.

  Cottages one and two bore satellite dishes and maintenance-free swathes of gravel where front gardens should have been, but number three was a riot of colour — flowers and shrubs and herbs laid out in intricate patterns around a winding bark path.

  Logan opened the heavy wooden gate and stepped onto scrunchy chips of brown, surrounded by tall spiky leaves. Should’ve brought some breadcrumbs to scatter behind him. .

  Rennie stuck his hands in his pockets and meandered after him, stopping to sniff the flowers along the way.

  The doorbell sounded deep inside the house, a faint diiiiiing-donnnnnng just audible through the wooden front door.

  A bee bumbled from one purple foxglove to the next. A pigeon cooed. Rennie rocked on his heels.

  Logan tried the bell again. ‘You sure they know we’re coming? ’

  ‘Yup.’

  Two minutes later, the door creaked open and a pale lined face peered up at them, eyes squinted almost shut. She couldn’t have been an inch over four foot five, grey hair up in a lopsided bun, neck like a deformed sock puppet. She smiled, showing off perfect rectangular white teeth. You could’ve stood on her Teuchter accent, it was that thick: ‘Can I help you? ’

  Logan checked his notes. ‘Miss Mary Gray?’

  The squint got even more pronounced. ‘Are you the man from the council? ’

  ‘Police. You called about a facial reconstruction? ’

  ‘Oh, the head! Yes, yes, of course, you’ll have to come in, I’m a little deaf when I don’t have my glasses on.’

  Sweat prickled across the back of Logan’s neck. A three-bar fire glowed malevolently in the fireplace, turning the small room into a furnace. Sunlight streamed through the lounge window, two massive spotty cats curled up on the sill, ears fixed in his direction.

  Three more cats slumbered in front of the electric fire; a pair of Siamese on the sofa; one on top of a bookcase full of ancient leather-bound volumes, their titles picked out in crumbling gold leaf. A bronze urn gleamed on the mantelpiece, between black-and-white photographs of unsmiling women in heavy black frames.

  The sound of tea things clattered through the open door.

  Another little old lady snored away in a chair by the fire, mouth hanging open like a damp pink cave, a tartan blanket draped over her knees. A stripy ginger cat sat on her lap, glowering at Logan with emerald eyes when it took a pause from washing its bum.

  Mary Gray shuffled back into the room. Rennie was right behind her, carrying a silver tray covered in cups and saucers and a plate of cakes and a big china teapot. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked around him. ‘Erm, where. .? ’

  Mary waved a hand at a black-and-brown tortoiseshell curled up on the coffee table. ‘Shipman! Come on, you naughty monkey, move for the nice man.’ She shooed him away and Rennie lowered the tray in the cat’s place.

  ‘Miss Gray, you said-’

  ‘Please, sit, sit.’ A wide grin. ‘Don’t mind Sutcliffe and Chikatilo, their bark’s worse than their bite.’

  Logan nudged one of the Siamese out of the way and sat. It stuck its tail in the air then hopped down to lurk under the coffee table. Rennie perched on the other end of the sofa, right at the edge so as not to disturb the other cat.

  ‘You said you can identify our reconstruction.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She gave the sleeping woman a poke in the shoulder. ‘Effie? Effie, do you want some tea and a slice of Battenberg? ’

  The snoring stopped. ‘Eh? Who’s that? ’ Her voice was wet and shapeless, slurred by a lack of teeth.

  ‘Do you want tea and cake, Effie? ’

  ‘Oh. . Is it Thursday? ’

  Logan pulled out the media department’s poster and held it out. ‘We haven’t even got these up yet.’

  Mary poured five cups of tea with the delicate precision of a neurosurgeon. ‘Now, you help yourself to milk and sugar.’ Then she turned, took a deep breath, and bellowed out a cry that would have shattered concrete. ‘INA! INA, THE TEA’S MADE!’ Mary picked up the plate and squinted at it. Then handed it to Logan, swapping it for the poster.

  Battenberg and scones and shortbread. Always a sucker for homemade shortbread.

  Crumbs tumbled down his front as he bit into it. ‘You know her? ’

  The squinting got so fierce it looked as if her whole face was going to implode. ‘Can’t see a thing without my glasses.’ Another deep breath. ‘INA!’

  A large grey cat with dark markings hopped up onto Logan’s lap, stared at him, then plonked itself down. A throaty burring noise, and the whole thing started vibrating.

  Mary beamed. ‘My, my: Lopez doesn’t usually like men, you’re honoured.’

  ‘Yeah. .’ The large furry body leached heat into his trousers, like a hairy hot-water bottle.

  ‘Just don’t touch his tummy, or he’ll have your hand in shreds.’ One more huge breath. ‘INA! FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE!’

  Another little old lady shambled into the room, tugging a pastel-blue cardigan around her shoulders. She had to be at least ten years older than her sister, liver-spotted scalp clearly visible through her thinning hair. A milk-bottle-bottomed pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose, the legs attached to a gold chain around her neck. ‘All right, all right, I’m not deaf.’

  ‘Do you want some tea? ’

  She peered at Logan through her glasses; they made her eyes huge. ‘You don’t look like the police.’

  He hauled out his warrant card and she took it with a trembling clawed hand, the fingers arthritic and twisted.

  ‘Ah. You’ll be here about that clay-head thing.’

  Finally. ‘You know who it is? ’

  ‘Oh aye.’ She took off the glasses and handed them to Mary. ‘See? ’

  Mary slipped them on and blinked at the poster she was holding. ‘Oh, that’s much better, I can hear everything now.’ Then she passed the glasses and the picture of Dr Graham’s facial reconstruction to the old lady in the corner. ‘Look, Effie, isn’t that something? ’

  ‘I had another vision.’ In the magnifying lenses Effie’s left eye was a sea of red, the iris pale and watery.

  ‘Put your teeth in, Effie. No one can understand a word you’re saying.’

  Ina hobbled over to the bookcase and pulled out a photo album. She opened it, smiled, then ran a hand across the pages. ‘I need the glasses.’

  They were passed back along the line. ‘Right. .’ She flipped forward a couple of pages, then placed the album on the coffee table, next to the tea things. ‘There you go.’

  A woman stared out of the album, with seventies hair and sixties glasses, the colours faded to pale yellows, orange and brown. She was the spitting image of the clay head. Dr Graham was good.


  Under the stern, lined face, were the words, ‘A HAPPY HOLIDAY IN LOSSIEMOUTH, JUNE 1978’.

  And now the family resemblance was clear: Ina, Effie, and Mary were sisters.

  ‘She’s your mother.’

  ‘Oh aye, Agnes Gray: scourge of the parish. She was a firebrand, that one.’

  Agnes. Same name as their missing teenager.

  Effie rattled her cup in her saucer. ‘Does anyone want to hear my vision or not? ’

  Ina settled onto the couch next to Logan. ‘Effie’s visions are remarkably accurate.’

  ‘How did you know it was her? The picture’s not even been on the news yet.’

  ‘Oh, Mary heard about it on the radio and I looked it up on the internet. We do most of our business online these days.’

  Effie cleared her throat. ‘I walked across a field of gold, towards a huge dog with knives for teeth. Five leaves I counted in the glaring light and five doors too. I fought with a ghost for the price of my soul, but they beat me. Bound me. And drowned me in the pale white deep.’

  Silence settled into the baking hot room.

  What a load of old bollocks.

  Logan finished his shortbread. ‘Can you tell me where your mother was buried? ’

  Ina patted him on the knee. ‘She was a very influential witch, you know. Agnes Gray was a power in this land.’

  Mary nodded. ‘People came from as far away as Rhynie and Oldmeldrum seeking her help.’

  ‘Of course, things are different now.’ Ina peeled the marzipan from a slice of Battenberg. ‘The internet’s a wonderful thing — we do spells for people in Australia and California and Moscow.’

  Logan put his tea down. ‘Spells. .’

  Mary held up her hand as her sister, Effie, drifted off to sleep again. ‘Don’t worry, we always use our powers for good. And we only ever curse people who deserve it, don’t we, Ina? ’

  ‘Oh yes, we’re very responsible that way. Saddam Hussein, was one of Effie’s.’

  Nuttier than a bag of squirrels.

  ‘Do you remember where your mother was buried? ’

  The strip of marzipan was rolled up into a ball, then popped in whole. ‘She dug Mother up, didn’t she: the Garfield girl? ’

  ‘You know her? ’

  Ina laughed, setting the loose skin under her chin wobbling. ‘Oh, our wee Agnes is something, isn’t she? ’

  Mary sighed. ‘So much talent for someone so young. She’d read all about Mother in the library. Well, ever since that dreadful Witchfire book came out, everyone wants to know about our family. . Agnes was convinced she and Mother were spiritually linked, because they had the same first name. So we took her under our wings.’

  ‘Taught her the importance of herbs, the secrets of consecrated ground, and the power of bones.’

  ‘You see, that’s why you haven’t found her. When a witch digs up bones from a graveyard they contain power. And if a normal person’s bones have power, imagine how much the bones of a witch contain.’

  ‘And Mother was a very powerful witch.’

  Make that two bags of squirrels.

  But it did explain why Agnes Garfield had dug up Nicholas Balfour. If you couldn’t find a dead witch to exhume, a Victorian spiritualist was probably better than nothing.

  ‘Do you know where Agnes is now? ’

  Ina disassembled her slice of cake into its four coloured squares. ‘And she was such a quick study. The bones, the earth, the herbs, she understood. And she was always so good about doing little chores about the house, and fetching. . medicine for Effie’s glaucoma.’

  For God’s sake. . Logan dumped his plate back on the table. ‘You know what? That’s great, but she stabbed a friend of mine today, so if you don’t mind: answer the sodding question. Where is she? ’

  Ina put her hand on Logan’s leg again. Gave it a squeeze. ‘We’re sorry for your loss. But we’ve not seen Agnes Garfield for months. Not since we fell out over that horrible young man of hers.’

  Mary brought her chin up. ‘We tried to warn her. Effie had a vision where he hurt her and made her do terrible things, and she’s a good girl. But Agnes wouldn’t listen.’

  A sigh, then Ina’s eyes drifted to the urn on the mantelpiece. ‘The heart wants what it wants. And when we tried to point out how bad he was for her, she left us.’

  ‘And now we have to make do with the bones of our babies.’ Mary picked a grey tabby from the carpet and hugged it to her chest. ‘Isn’t that right, Lopez? ’ She glanced up at Rennie. ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s all natural causes. We’d never hurt our little fuzzkins, would we, Lopez? No, we wouldn’t.’

  Ina stood and shuffled over to the urn on the fireplace. Stroked it with a twisted finger. ‘How are we supposed to get more consecrated soil, now? Taxi drivers always look at you so strangely when you get in with a shovel and say, “Take me to the nearest graveyard. .”’

  OK, time to come back from Happy La-La Land. ‘Where was your mother buried? ’

  Mary took the photo album back and shut it. ‘The family plot, out by Kemnay. The church is deserted now, probably all overgrown. We don’t get out as often as we should.’

  Ina licked her lips, tongue snaking in and out of her mouth as if it was scenting the air. ‘And you will give us Mother’s bones back, won’t you? So she can be with us where she belongs? ’

  Yeah. . Where she’d probably end up ground to a powder and sold to gullible idiots on the internet.

  ‘Found the hole!’ Rennie stood up to his waist in nettles, elbows out at ninety degrees to his shoulders, hands curled into paws. ‘There’s a coffin at the bottom and everything. Looks like something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.’

  The graveyard was completely overrun with weeds: the headstones swallowed by jagged coils of brambles and sheaths of bracken, mixed in with nettles and spires of rosebay willowherb. Little parachutes of gossamer fluff drifted through the heavy air to shine against the thunderhead sky.

  Logan shuffled through the undergrowth, brushing cat hair from his trousers as he went, following Rennie’s flattened path. ‘Any signs of recent disturbance? ’

  ‘Nah. The grass is starting to grow back on the stuff she’s excavated. If she’s still digging up magic mojo compost, she’s doing it somewhere else.’ He hauled a rust-coloured spine of docken from the jungle of weeds and poked at the hole. ‘If she’s such a nice girl, how come she’s off killing people? ’

  ‘Nice? ’

  ‘You know, keeping the old dears in graveyard soil, bones, and cannabis. . Most kids these days wouldn’t bother their backsides.’

  Cannabis? How did. .

  Of course: the glaucoma ‘medicine’. So Agnes was dealing after all. And given the state of Nichole Fyfe and Morgan Mitchell, she was probably helping them out as well.

  Very public spirited. No wonder Zander kept giving her second chances.

  Logan turned and looked back at the crumbling remains of the church. Three walls, no roof, a handful of black bin-bags, an old fridge, and a soggy mattress. Nowhere to sleep. And even if she’d pitched a tent somewhere in the grounds, there would be trails leading through the waist-high weeds.

  She wasn’t here.

  So much for that idea.

  All that talk of consecrated earth and the power of bones. .

  Never listen to daft auld wifies, no matter how good their shortbread is.

  Logan headed back towards the patrol car, leaving Rennie to struggle with the weeds. ‘Get on the phone to the council. I want that grave filled in again before some idiot falls down it and breaks their neck.’

  There was a brief shout, a rustle and a crunch.

  Logan spun around, but there was no sign of Rennie. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Tell me you didn’t.’

  ‘Ow. . Help! It’s got me! Aaaaaaaargh! Run: save yourself!’ Then Rennie popped up in the middle of a stand of willowherb with a grin plastered across his stupid face and tufts of white all over his suit. ‘Got you.’

  No wonder Steel picked
on him.

  Rennie pulled the patrol car in to the side of the road, ignoring the zigzag lines for the pedestrian crossing. Causeway End was a lot busier than it had been just before seven that morning, the stream of traffic wheeching itself around Mounthooly roundabout’s bulk moving like a twisting snake of steel and glass.

  Logan popped off his seatbelt. ‘Tell Chalmers I want her in my office soon as I get back to the ranch.’

  Rennie picked another clump of willowherb from the front of his jacket and dropped it in the footwell. Where it promptly stuck to his trousers. ‘Bloody stuff’s like Velcro.’

  ‘And after that, you can check up on how Guthrie’s doing getting hold of Anthony Chung’s arrest record from San Francisco.’

  Another bit of fluff joined the others. ‘Does it really matter? He’s kinda dead, so-’

  ‘Because I say so, that’s why.’ He climbed out, then stuck his head back through the open door. ‘I want the names of everyone he was associated with, and if any of them have come into the country in the last six months.’

  Rennie’s frown turned into a smile. ‘Ah: you think Agnes didn’t kill him after all. It was one of his old gang mates come to settle a score.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot: of course Agnes killed him. I want to know who put her up to it. If Goulding’s profile is right, she needs a dominant personality to tell her what to do.’

  ‘Ah. . And it’s not like any of her friends had the stones to go up against Anthony Chung. Even Dan Fisher, with his unrequited crush, wouldn’t dare. And last time he tried, she scrambled his eggs with her knee.’ Rennie huffed a breath onto his fingernails then polished them on his fuzzy lapel. ‘Oh yeah: I do read the case notes, you know. It’s-’

  A horn blared out behind them: a dirty big articulated lorry hissed to a halt six foot from the back of the patrol car, its driver giving them the one-fingered salute.

  Logan slammed the door and stepped back onto the pavement.

  Rennie pulled away and the lorry grumbled after him.

  Chasing down Anthony Chung’s old associates was probably a waste of time, but at least they’d be doing something.

  Logan hurried down to the pedestrian crossing, then worked his way across both dual carriageways to the Kwik Fit garage on the corner overlooking Mounthooly.