*
It was the perfect day for drying towels: sun shining, light breeze and no midges. Ailsa smiled, taking pleasure from the simple domesticity of it all. Gavin had promised to come home from work on time for a change. So tonight was going to be special: she was still ovulating after all.
She pulled the last towel from the basket and pegged it up on the line. All done. And then she caught the tell-tale, clinging stench of cigarette smoke, drifting through the fence from next door’s garden. It was the pointy-faced boyfriend, his features bruised and battered. Again. Why he stayed with that horrible, drunken, abusive, violent woman Ailsa just couldn’t understand. Surely any sane man would have left her the first time she broke his nose. Or the second. Or third…
The boyfriend was smoking with his head back against the metal whirly washing thing. Wincing as he breathed out, one hand flinching over his ribs, unaware that Ailsa was watching him. He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt out into the knee-deep grass where it disappeared among the weeds.
A loud shout from inside the house and the boyfriend jumped. In that moment his eyes caught Ailsa’s and she knew he was every bit as trapped by this horrible harridan as she and Gavin were. She was like a mincing machine for the soul, grinding them up until nothing was left but a bloody pulp. Shoulders slumped in defeat, the boyfriend turned and limped into the house.
Ailsa watched him go with a shudder. There, but for the grace of God…
While the inspector was off on yet another extended fag break, Logan trolled through Michelle Wood’s post mortem report. The killer had managed to snap one of her legs, both arms, and almost all of her ribs. Internal organs ruptured, probably caused by her attacker stamping on her stomach. Head battered repeatedly with fists, feet, a rock… Someone had really gone to town on her. Logan sighed, looking at a crime scene photograph: a big, full-colour eight-by-ten glossy of Michelle’s plastic-bag-smothered head. There was no doubt about it: their boy was getting better at it. Every attack worse than the last, until…
Logan swore. How the hell could he have missed it? He shouted for DC Rennie. ‘Grab your notebook: I want you to find out who patrols the docks, someone who knows the layout and the girls, we—’
‘Excuse me, sir?’ It was PC Steve. He hung his head round the door and smiled uncertainly in Logan’s direction. ‘DI Insch wants to see you.’
Logan groaned, wondering what he’d done wrong now. ‘OK,’ he told Rennie, ‘you go: get me a name. I want to speak to them.’ Then he remembered the Aberdonian pimp and the Lithuanian teenager. ‘And show those identikit pictures round again – someone must know who they are.’
There was a new corkboard on the wall of DI Insch’s incident room, divided up into six sections – each square taken up by a name, a face and a post mortem photograph. The small head in the bottom right corner was connected to the blackened face above it with a thin red ribbon. The inspector stood in front of the board with his skeletal admin officer, pointing at things while she took notes in longhand. Insch glanced up, saw Logan and called him over, dismissing the woman with a couple of fizzy cola bottles.
‘What can I do for you, sir?’
‘This lot.’ Insch tapped a photograph of a human head that looked like a side of barbecued pork. ‘Remember we got that list of Graham Kennedy’s school chums?’ He stuffed a handful of the sweets into his mouth, mumbling as he chewed. ‘Graham you know, but this is Ewan, Mark, Janette and Lucy.’ Poking the post mortem photos one by one, leaving behind little sparkling fingerprints. ‘All identified by their dental records. According to the hospital the wee girl,’ he didn’t poke her picture, ‘belonged to Lucy. Gemma… poor wee sod.’ Sigh. ‘Anyway, we got five names from Graham’s granny: one, two three, four. One missing.’
‘So, who wasn’t on the menu that night?’
‘Karl Pearson. Twenty-four. Lives with his mum and dad in Kingswells, or he did until about three weeks ago. They got a call from him looking for some money Wednesday before last, but that was it. Haven’t heard from him since.’ He pulled a holiday snap from his inside pocket showing a lumpy young man with a broken nose and a single eyebrow stretched across his face. He looked like the kind of person who would quite happily start a fight at a football match, just for the hell of it.
Logan studied the picture for a minute. ‘You think he’s the torch?’
Insch nodded. ‘Been in trouble a couple of times for burning things that weren’t his. Neighbours’ sheds, an abandoned caravan, that pitch-and-putt hut down at the beach.’
‘That was him?’
‘The very man. I’ve put out a lookout request, but I also have a couple of addresses.’ An evil smile split the inspector’s huge, bald head. ‘Thought you might fancy the exercise.’
‘What about your DS, you know, the bearded one?’
‘What, Beattie?’ DI Insch stuck his hands in his pockets, making the already groaning material bulge alarmingly. ‘Bugger that. Lazy sod couldn’t catch clap in a Dundee whorehouse, let alone crooks.’
‘I’m supposed to be helping DI Steel, she—’
‘Already OK’d it with me. You’re not needed till the operation tonight. Grab your coat.’
‘But—’
Insch dropped his voice, laying a huge ham-like hand on Logan’s shoulder. ‘Thought you wanted off the Screw-Up Squad: this is your chance.’ He turned and lumbered out of the room, grabbing PC Steve by the collar on his way past. Logan hesitated, looking from the inspector to the photo gallery of death. Bloody DI Steel, trading him off to Insch without even consulting him! Muttering obscenities, Logan followed on behind.
The first address for Karl Pearson was no use, neither were numbers two, three or four. No one had seen him in ages. Four down, two to go. Address number five was halfway up a block of flats in Seaton – down where the River Don meets the sea – one of a set of four seventeen-storey buildings with spectacular views out over the water. Lovely on a clear summer’s day and bloody freezing in the dead of winter, when the wind roared in off the North Sea, fresh from the Norwegian fjords. Logan and Insch headed inside, leaving PC Steve downstairs to watch the front door.
Sixth floor, corner apartment. Insch marched straight up to Karl Pearson’s alleged flat and did his policeman’s knock, putting his weight behind it. Making the door boom and rattle as if God himself had come to announce judgment day.
No response.
Insch launched into his wrath-of-God routine again and a door cracked open down the hall. The occupant took one look at the huge man pounding on the corner flat’s door and hurried back inside.
‘Think they’ll call the police?’ asked Logan.
‘Doubt it, but just in case…’ Insch dragged out his mobile phone and called Headquarters, letting them know that the thug trying to break into the corner flat was him, so not to bother sending out a squad car. While he was doing that, Logan squatted down and peered in through the letterbox. A small hallway decorated with Aberdeen Football Club posters and pages torn from FHM magazine – half-naked women and footballers: an adolescent boy’s dream – coats hanging on a set of hooks, mirror on the other side, scabby-looking golf clubs leaning in the corner, a little mudslide of junk mail on the mat. There was a door at the far end, slightly ajar, leading into what looked like a kitchen. Four more doors led off the little corridor, but only one of them was open and Logan couldn’t really see into the room. He was about to give up when suddenly he got the feeling someone was staring at him… And then his eyes drifted to the hall mirror again. Someone was staring at him through the reflected lounge door, only Logan was pretty sure they couldn’t actually see him. They couldn’t see anything, not with their throat lying wide open like that, dark brown blood covering everything.
He sat back on his heels and let the letterbox flap snap shut.
‘You still on the phone to HQ?’ he asked Insch.
‘Aye.’
‘Better tell them to call off the search: we’ve found Karl Pearson.’
16
The Identification Bureau were delighted to have an indoor corpse for a change, it meant they didn’t have to fight with that bloody SOC tent. Karl Pearson’s lounge was decorated in much the same way as the hall, with posters and magazine pages, only the naked ladies in here were a lot more hard-core. The IB team had put down their little metal walkway and then proceeded to cover the whole place in black fingerprint powder; empty the flat’s vacuum cleaner into an evidence bag; take samples of blood – not difficult, considering how much of it there was in the lounge; argue about whether or not one of the naked women – pictured playing with a variety of battery-operated devices – was Detective Sergeant Beattie’s wife; photographed everything and stood quietly by as Doc Wilson pronounced the naked man tied to a dining-room chair with his throat cut dead. ‘Amazing the things these doctors can diagnose nowadays,’ said Insch, leaning against the far wall. He was wearing the biggest set of white paper coveralls the IB boys had, but it was fighting a losing battle against the inspector’s huge frame. ‘Care to hazard a guess at time of death?’
Doc Wilson favoured Insch with a withering glance. ‘No,’ he said, snapping his medical bag shut. ‘What is it with you people? You always want a bloody time of death off the poor bloody GP! You know what? I haven’t got a bloody clue. OK? Satisfied? You want a time of death? Ask a fucking pathologist.’ He straightened up and made for the door, pausing on the threshold to run an appraising eye over the inspector’s straining SOC suit. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a time of death, free of charge. Eighteen months if you don’t do something about your bloody weight.’ And he was out of there before Insch could do much more than go beetroot red and splutter.
Logan groaned; that was all they needed, Doc Bloody Wilson lighting the blue touch paper and running like buggery. Leaving the rest of them to deal with the explosion. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ he tried. ‘Wilson’s had a weasel up his arse all week. He’s just being a wanker for the sake of it.’
Insch turned a baleful eye on Logan. ‘You tell that bastard, if I ever see him at one of my crime scenes again, I will personally make sure he ends up in the FUCKING MORGUE!’ Everyone else in the room went very quiet. ‘I WILL FUCKING WELL DECLARE DEATH ON HIM!’ Spittle flew from Insch’s mouth. Logan had seen him angry plenty of times, but never anything like this. Trembling with the effort, Insch walked quietly into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him so hard every loose object in the flat rattled. From the apartment upstairs came the sound of a television being turned up.
‘Jesus,’ whispered the IB cameraman. ‘Touched a nerve, or what?’
DI Insch was still sulking in the kitchen when the duty pathologist arrived: Doc Fraser this time, rather than Isobel, much to Logan’s relief. Fraser agreed with the duty doctor’s diagnosis: Karl Pearson was indeed dead. Logan could go ahead and call the funeral directors to come pick up the body. The post mortem would be at three. And now that the formalities were out of the way, Logan was free to examine the victim without upsetting anyone. Just as long as he didn’t actually touch anything.
Karl Pearson: twenty-four, naked, tied to a chair and very, very dead. His throat was sliced nearly all the way through, his head hanging to one side; eyes wide open in surprise, staring vacantly out into the hall. The left ear was missing a large chunk, from the lobe right up to the tip, leaving a crescent moon of skin behind. Deep weals ran parallel along his cheeks from his open mouth round the back of his head. It looked as if he’d been wearing some sort of bondage gag, the little round buckle holes imprinted on the waxy flesh. Karl’s arms were secured behind his back, attached to the chair’s legs by a set of plastic cable ties. The hands were crusted in more blood, making detail difficult to pick out, but one thing was abundantly clear: several of Karl’s fingers were a lot shorter than they should have been. Some ended at the second joint, others had been taken off at the knuckle, some in between: bone and cartilage showing through the stumps like boiled fish eyes. The severed ends were lying underneath the chair, the nails ripped out. Karl’s chest – where it wasn’t covered with blood from the gaping neck wound – was speckled with cigarette burns and his right nipple was missing. Karl’s legs were splayed wide open, giving Logan an excellent view of his bollocks. Those were either pubic hairs, or staples, Logan couldn’t decide which, and he wasn’t going to get any closer to find out. The pale, hairy legs were also covered in little burns, the knees lumpen and misshapen. It looked like someone had taken a hammer to his feet.
‘What do you think?’
Logan turned to see the deputy PF standing on her own in the doorway, trying to look casual in the standard-issue boiler suit while completely avoiding eye contact with the blood-caked, naked body. There was no sign of the IB team, who were probably poking through the rest of the flat, giving the kitchen a wide berth until DI Insch calmed down a bit. ‘Well,’ said Logan, ‘if he knew anything, he’ll have talked.’
Rachael risked a glance at Karl Pearson’s body. ‘Tortured for information?’
‘Probably drugs-related. Karl had form for dealing and we know there’s a new crew in town. Looks like they play rough.’
Rachael worked her way around to the far side of the lounge, staring out of the window at the sun-kissed North Sea. Keeping well away from Karl Pearson. ‘How the hell do you torture someone in a block of flats and not get caught? Surely someone must have heard something! He’s in here getting… getting that done to him and no one called 999?’
‘Well, if it was me I’d gag him, tie him to the chair and then torture him. Stub out some cigarettes, rip out some fingernails, break some toes … Then, when he’s finished screaming behind the gag, pop it off and start asking questions. By now he knows you mean business. You put the gag back in and you go to work again. Slice off an ear, hack off a couple of fingers: really make him suffer. Ask your questions again. See if you get the same answers twice. Then do it all one last time, just to be safe.’ He sighed. ‘Long as you keep the gag in while you’re working, no one’s going to hear a thing… Except maybe the hammering.’ She was silent. ‘You OK?’
Rachael shuddered. ‘You know what it’s like: never really seen anything on this…’ she waved at Karl’s tortured body, ‘this scale before. Not in the flesh. I mean we get to see a lot of photographs when we’re doing the cases in court, but…’ She flapped her hands again.
‘But it’s not the same.’ Logan nodded. Outside the window a seagull swept past on the breeze, its white body caught in a beam of sunshine, fluorescing against the deep, clay-blue sea.
‘What the hell’s wrong with this place?’ she asked, staring out at the clouds scudding across the eggshell sky. ‘You’d think a quiet little city like Aberdeen would be safe… You ever look at the statistics? According to the Scottish Office, we murder more people here, per million head of population, than the whole of England and Wales combined. How about that?’ She leaned her head against the glass. ‘And if that’s not bad enough, we’ve got twenty-six times as many attempted murders as we have successful ones! Really makes you proud.’
Logan joined her at the window. ‘Really? Twenty-six times?’
Rachael nodded. ‘Twenty-six times.’
He shook his head. ‘Wow… We must be really crap! How could we miss so many times? I blame the parents.’
She actually cracked a smile.
‘Anyway.’ Logan wandered back to the tortured body in the middle of the room. ‘My guess is that our parochial wee drugs war has just stepped up a notch. We’re going to start seeing a whole lot more of this kind of thing.’ He stared down at Karl Pearson’s sliced-off ear and realized he was starving. According to his watch it was already two thirty. The post mortem on Karl Pearson was due to kick off at three; that left him thirty minutes to get something to eat and get back to the station.
A clunk at the front door and the Procurator Fiscal stuck her head into the lounge, sweeping the crime scene with a practised eye before frowning, marching straight pa
st the body and peering at Karl’s homemade wallpaper. ‘Isn’t this DS Beattie’s wife?’
Karl Pearson’s post mortem seemed to take forever, and by half five Logan had to excuse himself, claiming a prior engagement – making sure DI Steel had everything in place for the surveillance operation this evening. Knowing her, she’d be expecting him to do all the legwork. And anyway, the only bit of real news from Doc Fraser’s dissection of the tortured body was the collection of fresh needle marks in Karl’s upper bicep. Logan was willing to bet the blood work would come back with traces of narcotics. Not enough for Karl to get high, just enough to stop him from going into shock. Maybe even enough to act as a reward if he told the truth. Something to make the pain go away.
Upstairs, DI Steel’s incident room was nearly as dead as Karl Pearson. The occasional phone rang, but nothing much was going on. The inspector was lounging against a computer terminal, picking her teeth and reading an Evening Express. Yes, of course she’d done the paperwork, and had it signed by the Detective Chief Superintendent himself, no less. Which meant they couldn’t screw this one up; if they did everyone and their dog would be lining up to tear a chunk out of their arses. And let’s face it, if DI Steel didn’t get results from the stakeout, what the hell else could she do? It wasn’t as if leads were easy to come by on this bloody case. Somehow two dead prostitutes hadn’t captured the attention of the public, not even with the words ‘Serial Killer’ attached. They’d barely received a call all day.
‘How about we stage a reconstruction?’ Logan asked. ‘Get it on the news?’
Steel smiled at him in a disturbingly motherly kind of way. ‘What a great idea! We’ll get someone to dress up as a murdered prostitute and get someone else to be the killer, enticing her into his car. Then we’ll ask for anyone who was hanging around the docks at that time of night to come forward with any information they have.’ There was something sarcastic coming, Logan could feel it. ‘Can you imagine the avalanche of calls we’ll get? All those public-spirited pimps, whores and kerb-crawlers! “Yes officer, I was down the docks that night lookin’ for a prostitute and I saw a nasty man pick up the tart who got killed…” I’d better get some more uniforms to answer the phones. We’ll be swamped!’
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