‘And, Suzie, thanks for your help,’ said Steel with a wink. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you.’
6
Jamie was booked in at FHQ, given a once-over by the duty doctor and stuck in interview room number three. Where he announced, ‘Jesus, it’s like a fuckin’ oven in here!’ He wasn’t kidding. Even with the sun cracking the cobbles outside, the radiator was belching out heat. But all the other interview rooms were taken, so they were stuck with it.
Grumbling and sweating, Logan set up the interview tapes: audio and video, then did the introductions: date, time and attendees, and settled back to let DI Steel conduct the interview.
Silence.
Logan cast a glance in Steel’s direction. She was looking at him with a puzzled expression. ‘Well,’ she told him at last, ‘get on with it. It’s too hot for buggering about.’ Bloody typical. Once again he was going to have to do all the work.
With a sigh, Logan pulled out a handful of Rosie’s post mortem photographs. ‘Tell us about Rosie Williams.’
Jamie scowled at them. ‘I’m no’ sayin’ anything till I’ve seen a lawyer.’
Steel groaned. ‘No’ again! How many times do I have to say this? Under Scottish law you have no right to legal counsel until we’ve finished with you. No lawyers. Interview first, lawyer later. Comprende?’
The scowl on Jamie’s face didn’t shift. ‘You’re lyin’, I’ve seen the telly. I get a lawyer.’
‘No you don’t.’ Steel peeled off her charcoal-grey jacket, exposing large patches of sweat beneath the arms of her red blouse. ‘The telly lies to you. It shows you the English legal system. Not the same. Up here we do not fuck about waiting for some slimy bastard to help you with your lies. Now get your finger out and tell us why you killed Rosie Williams, so we can all get out of this bastard hothouse.’
‘I didn’t kill no one!’
‘Stop fucking about, Jamie – I’m not in the mood.’
He slumped back in his seat, chewing things over. ‘I really don’t get a lawyer?’
‘No! Now tell us about Rosie Bloody Williams before I pull that stupid-looking chin-warmer off your face, one hair at a time!’
Jamie held up his hands in self-defence. ‘OK, OK! We’re… you know… I stayed with her for a bit…’
‘You were her pimp.’
‘We’re having fun, you know…’
‘Fun? Rosie was old enough to be your granny! She’s out there shaggin’ for cash, every night, while you’re what? Staying home looking after the kids?’
Jamie stared down at his hands. ‘Isn’t that old.’
‘Yes she fucking was! Ugly as hell too!’
‘She is not!’ Jamie’s voice was getting louder with every word. ‘She isn’t ugly!’
A sly smile blossomed on Steel’s face. ‘You loved her didn’t you?’
Jamie blushed and looked away.
‘You did, didn’t you? You loved her and she was out there every night, some stranger’s dick in her mouth. Screwing them in doorways. Your precious Rosie, out there with—’
‘Shut up! Fuckin’ shut up!’
‘That’s why you killed her, isn’t it? You were jealous she wasn’t all yours. Anyone could have her for the price of a burger.’
‘Shut up…’
Steel settled back in her chair, scratching vaguely at the damp patch under her left arm. She nodded in Logan’s direction and he asked Jamie where he was between eleven o’clock Monday night and two o’clock Tuesday morning.
‘I was at home. Asleep.’ But there was something in his eyes. ‘Suzie’ll tell you. She was there.’
DI Steel raised an eyebrow. ‘No’ in the same bed, I hope.’ Jamie just scowled at her. ‘We’ve got Forensics turning your flat upside down: they’re going to find her blood, aren’t they? You beat her so bad, you must’ve been clarted in it.’ She leaned forwards in her seat, tapping the table with a nicotine-stained finger. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time you beat her up either, would it? She kicked you out ’cos of it.’
‘I didn’t mean to hurt her!’ The tears were starting.
Steel’s smile turned into one of triumph. ‘But you did, didn’t you? You didn’t mean to, but you hurt her really bad. Was it an accident? Come on, Jamie, you’ll feel better if you tell us.’
An hour later they still hadn’t managed to get anything else out of him. And as Steel said, it was too hot in the interview room to bugger about any longer. So down to the cells went Jamie McKinnon and down to the canteen went Logan and DI Steel. Chilled tins of Irn-Bru all round. ‘Christ, that’s better,’ she said, standing outside on the rear podium two minutes later, surrounded by the patrol and pool cars, drink in one hand, cigarette smouldering away in the other. ‘We’ll get the PF in to look at the tape. “I never meant to hurt her,” my arse, all we need is a couple of witnesses and we’re laughing.’ She smiled and knocked back a mouthful of Irn-Bru. ‘Knew it was about time my luck changed.’
Unfortunately Logan’s hadn’t. When DI Steel said, ‘All we need is a couple of witnesses,’ what she actually meant was that Logan had to change shifts and spend the next couple of nights wandering around the docks chatting up prostitutes. The first time in ages that his shift pattern was the same as Jackie’s, and the inspector wanted it all changed again. Jackie was going to kill him.
‘You’re young,’ Steel told him when he complained, ‘you’ll get over it. Better bugger off home after lunch. Get some kip. In the meantime, let’s get the PF down here…’
The Procurator Fiscal and her new deputy sat through the recording of Jamie McKinnon’s interview in silence. The tape was a good start, but it wasn’t enough to secure a conviction, for that they’d need some real, hard forensic evidence. ‘Speaking of which,’ said Rachael Tulloch, deputy PF to the stars, ‘how did you get on with those contraceptives?’ The Fiscal looked momentarily flustered as Logan explained about the two hundred and thirteen second-hand prophylactics sitting in the morgue’s specimen freezers; it looked like this was the first she’d heard of her deputy’s spectacular plan. At least Rachael had the decency to blush and admit it was a lot more condoms than she’d been anticipating, but now that they had a suspect under arrest, couldn’t they match his DNA to them? Prove he was there? The Fiscal went quiet for a minute, considering it, and then agreed it probably couldn’t hurt. Logan tried not to groan. Isobel was bound to blame him for all the work she was about to get. He consoled himself with the thought that she didn’t like him much anyway.
When he went down to the morgue to break the bad news, Isobel was hunched over her brain-in-a-bucket again. Her reaction to Logan’s request for DNA testing was pretty much what he’d been expecting. Only with more swearing.
‘Don’t look at me,’ he said when she paused for breath. ‘I told you: it’s that new PF. She’s mad for used condoms. Could you not just blood test the semen and only DNA match the ones with the same blood group as Jamie McKinnon?’
Reluctantly Isobel agreed that it would be a lot less work. But she still wasn’t happy. Grumbling, she dug the condoms out of the freezer, where they’d had just enough time to go hard. For the second time in their lives.
Logan checked his watch and left her to it. If he hurried he could grab lunch with Jackie in the canteen before heading back to the flat to try and get some sleep. Not that he held out much hope: he always had trouble adjusting to the night shift, and usually he had a couple of days off in between to get used to the idea. Sod the diet. He was having chips with his lasagne today. And a pudding.
Though on second thoughts, tapioca probably wasn’t the wisest of choices. Looking at it, congealing in the bowl, all white with translucent lumps, all he could think of was Isobel slowly defrosting her condoms down in the morgue. Shuddering he pushed the bowl away.
‘Interfering old bitch.’ Jackie stabbed her jam sponge with an angry spoon. ‘Why did she have to go buggering about with your shifts? If you have to go onto nights today and tomorrow…’ She did the arithme
tic on her fingers. ‘That puts you six days ahead of my bloody shift pattern! It took bloody ages to get the damn things in line!’
‘I know, I know. I’ll just have to get mine shifted again. Though Christ knows when.’
‘And I had plans.’
Logan looked up. ‘Oh? We going away somewhere?’
‘Not any more we’re not, you’ll be asleep all bloody Friday.’ Stab, stab, stab. ‘Tell you I could kill her!’
‘Oh-ho, speak of the devil…’ DI Steel was standing in the doorway to the canteen, craning her neck. Looking for someone. And Logan had a nasty idea who. He was just about to duck down under the table, pretend he’d dropped his fork or something, when she spotted him.
‘Oi! Lazarus,’ she shouted and Logan winced. Every eye in the place turned to stare. ‘You finished?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘Well, come on then: we’ve got a shout to go to.’
Jackie leaned over the table and hissed at him, ‘I thought you were supposed to be going home to get some sleep!’
It was a Mrs Margaret Hendry who’d found it, out walking her dog, Jack, in Garlogie Woods. Well, technically it had been Jack who’d found it, leaping away into the undergrowth, barking and yipping. Not coming back, no matter how much Margaret shouted. In the end she’d ducked in under the trees after him. It was just off a small clearing, wedged into the roots of a fallen tree: a red suitcase, big enough to take a week’s worth of clothes. The smell was appalling: stinking, rotten meat. Jack of course had gone straight to it, and was hanging off the handle, all four little legs off the ground as he tried to scrabble inside. Well, what with the smell and the suitcase, it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together. Margaret pulled out her mobile phone and called the police.
The Identification Bureau’s dirty white Transit Van was abandoned in the lay-by, just behind a marked patrol car, so Logan had to park their rusty Vauxhall half on the grass verge and hope no one would run into the back of it. DC Rennie spluttered his way out of the back seat, wiping ash from his hair and face – Steel had spent the whole ten-mile journey out from Aberdeen with the passenger window down, the ash from her cigarette spiralling through the car’s interior like a mini snowstorm – which was why Logan had elected to drive. He waited until the inspector had shooed Rennie up the path to go find the crime scene, before asking her if this meant he wasn’t swapping over onto the night shift.
‘Hmm?’ Steel looked at him, distracted as she picked three individually wrapped white SOC over suits from a box in the boot of the car. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Sorry, but I still need you to go looking for witnesses. We both know Jamie’s alibi’s a crock of shite. We just have to prove it.’
‘Then how come you dragged me out to this?’ It came out slightly whiny, but Logan was past caring.
Steel sighed. ‘What am I supposed to do? You know why they call it the Screw-Up Squad? The Pish Patrol? The Fuck-Up Factory?’ Cos every bastard that can’t find their backside with both hands gets dumped in it. Keep the useless tossers out of the way, where they can’t do any damage … We only got this call ’cos everyone half-decent was busy.’ She smiled, sadly. ‘It’s a body in a suitcase, Logan, who else am I going to trust to take with me? That bunch of fuckwits I’ve been lumbered with?’ She handed him the protective gear. ‘Never mind, you don’t have to do a whole shift tonight. Knock off about two. Look on it as a bonus.’ Then she patted him on the arm and stomped off up the rutted track into the forest, leaving him to swear quietly in her wake.
They found DC Rennie standing at the side of the track, about half a mile from the main road. There were broken branches and scuffmarks in the carpet of yellow-brown pine needles. ‘In there,’ he said pointing, obviously proud of himself. Logan gave him the protective gear to carry. As the inspector said: delegation. It was cooler in the woods, the sunlight dappling the ground at their feet, filtered through the canopy of sharp green needles.
It should have been dead quiet beneath the spiky branches, but it wasn’t. They could hear a barrage of swearing intermingled with helpful suggestions coming from up ahead. And not long after that, the smell started. It was a rancid, stomach-clenching stench. Gagging slightly, Logan tried breathing through his mouth. The taste was slightly better than the smell, but not by much.
They broke through into a small clearing, where an old pine tree had fallen like a massive wooden domino, taking a handful of smaller trees with it. Now it lay on its side, pointing back towards the track, its roots standing upright like a filthy sunburst, blocking the main attraction from view. The IB team were here, trying to manhandle a scene-of-crime tent over the bottom part of the tree, three of them heaving away at the uncooperative blue material, while another two struggled to get the remainder over the tree’s roots. Standing on the other side of the clearing was a middleaged woman dressed for the outdoors, an excitable Jack Russell terrier on a lead bouncing up and down at her feet. A young uniformed constable snapped to attention as DI Steel approached.
‘It’s OK,’ said Steel, digging out another cigarette, ‘you don’t have to curtsey.’
Grinning, the constable told them how Mrs Hendry had guided him to the spot and he’d called for the Identification Bureau as soon as he’d seen the case. A duty doctor and pathologist were on their way. As was the Procurator Fiscal.
‘Good boy,’ said Steel when he’d finished. ‘If I was DI Insch, you’d get a sweetie.’ Instead she offered him a fag, much to his horror. Surely it wasn’t right to smoke at a crime scene. What about contamination? ‘Aye, you’re probably right,’ said Steel, puffing away. They got Mrs Hendry to go through her version of events again. No she hadn’t touched anything; well you weren’t supposed to, were you? Not when you found a dead body in a suitcase.
Steel waited until Mrs Hendry and her little monster-dog were escorted from the premises before slouching into action.
‘Right.’ She grabbed a boiler suit from Rennie, leaning on Logan for support as she tucked her trousers into her socks and clambered into it. Once they were all suited up, only their faces showing, she stomped over to where the IB team had almost managed to get the tent erected. The air was thick with flies. ‘You lot going to be all bloody day?’ she demanded.
A thin man with a dirty-grey moustache scowled at her. ‘This isn’t easy, you know!’
‘Blah, blah, blah. You opened the suitcase yet?’ Not bloody likely was the loud reply. You never knew which pathologist you were going to get these days, and if it was that MacAlister woman you’d get your testicles in a jar for messing up her crime scene. So that suitcase was going to stay locked until she, or the duty doctor, got here. Steel stared at the red fabric case. ‘Just like Christmas Eve, isn’t it?’ she said to Logan. ‘The present’s right there under the tree, you know what’s in it, but you’re not allowed to open it till Santa’s been. Don’t suppose a small peek would hurt though, would it…’ She made for the tent’s open door, but Dirty Moustache stopped her on the threshold.
‘No,’ he told her. ‘Not till the pathologist gets here!’
‘Oh come on, it’s my crime scene! How the hell do you expect me to catch the bastard if you won’t let me have a poke about?’
‘You can poke about all you like when the pathologist says so. Until then this area will remain sealed. And anyway,’ he pointed at the cigarette bobbing away in the corner of the inspector’s mouth, ‘there’s no way you’re getting in there with that!’
‘Oh for God’s sake…’ And with that DI Steel scuffed off to smoke her fag and sulk in peace. Ten minutes, one and a half cigarettes, later there was a cry of ‘Hello?’ and the crunch and snap of someone pushing their way through the branches.
It was the new deputy PF, already done up in her scene-of-crime boiler suit, complete with matching blue shoe covers, even though the rest of her party was still in their regular clothes. The real PF followed her, deep in conversation with Dr Isobel MacAlister – the Ice Queen cometh – while Doc Wilson stomped along at the rear of t
he group, not talking to anyone and scowling at Isobel’s back.
The PF gave them a grim smile, asked to be brought up to speed, then suited up and disappeared into the SOC tent, taking Isobel and a reluctant Doc Wilson with her, leaving her deputy to fidget at the entrance to the stinking blue plastic grotto as Dirty Moustache refused to let her into the crime scene. ‘You’ve trailed every bit of grit and dirt and God knows what else in from wherever you got changed!’ he said, pointing at her protective suit and booties. ‘You’ll have to get on a new set.’ Blushing furiously she stripped off, revealing a sombre black suit and canary-yellow blouse. The outfit, combined with Rachael’s beetroot face and curly red hair, made her look like an angry bee. DI Steel left her to it, dragging Logan with her into the crime scene.
There were hundreds of flies in the SOC tent, buzzing and swooping in the foetid air, making Logan’s skin crawl. The sunlight, stronger in the clearing than it had been in the forest proper, made the plastic sheeting glow, tainting everything a sickly blue. Looking a bit like Smurfs in their white over suits, the IB technicians kept a respectful distance from Isobel. Just in case. The video operator went in for a couple of long panning shots before settling down behind her left shoulder so that he could get a good view of the case’s contents when it was opened. The photographer flashed away, the sudden clack and whine making everything jump into full colour, before fading back to shades of blue. There was a rustle of plastic and Rachael, dressed in a brand-new set of coveralls, poked her head into the stench then joined Logan and Steel at the back of the tent, looking on as Isobel examined the case.
‘It appears to be a mid-range suitcase. Relatively new,’ said Isobel, for the benefit of the tape recorder whirring away in her pocket. She tried the catch: it was locked so she made one of the IB team cut the thing out. Telling him, at least seven times, to be careful. At last the lock was sitting in an evidence pouch and Isobel grasped the lid of the suitcase. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got…’
Dying Light Page 5