Insch was getting redder and redder. ‘You bloody well knew I wanted to speak to them, but did you call me and let me know you had them in custody? No: I had to hear it when I came in this afternoon. After they’d been released on bail!’
‘They got bail?’ Bloody typical, you could murder your granny with a tattie peeler these days and still not get remanded in custody.
‘Of course they got bail!’ The inspector’s face had gone past red, heading into a dangerous shade of purple, spittle flying from his lips as he yelled. ‘You tried to do them for a piddling little drugs charge! I wanted them for suspected murder. MURDER! Understand? Not just a couple of condoms of heroin!’
‘It was crack cocaine…’ He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.
Insch jabbed a sausage-like finger into Logan’s chest. ‘I don’t care if they were filled with C-Four explosive and rammed up the Duke of Edinburgh’s backside: I wanted to speak to them!’ He took a deep breath then settled back onto his desk, crossing his huge arms and scowling. ‘Come on then, let’s hear it: your brilliant excuse.’
‘DI Steel told me not to.’ He might feel shitty for landing the inspector in it, but it was hardly his fault. He’d tried to get her to involve Insch at the outset. ‘I told her you should be informed about the operation and she refused.’
Insch’s eyes narrowed, until they were little angry black pearls, glittering dangerously in his flushed, piggy face. ‘Is that so…’ He stood, flexing his shoulders, making his shirt bulge alarmingly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Sergeant, I have some business to attend to.’
The sky was low and grey above the opulent granite buildings of Rubislaw Den as Colin Miller heaved himself out of the car, dragged the laptop from behind the driver’s seat and plipped on the alarm. It had been yet another shitty day. Not so long ago he’d been a proper journalist. Used to win awards. And now look at him; reduced to writing crappy human interest stories, and all because of that lousy puff piece on Malk the Knife’s bloody housing development. Bad enough Malkie sends his psychopaths up to lean on him to produce the thing in the first place, but now the paper didn’t trust him to write about anything more challenging than bloody knitting fairs and sheep dogs. And the one good story he had, the one that would save him from all this shite, was the one story he couldn’t publish.
Colin stood up straight and glowered at the looming clouds. He should quit: write a book. Something gory with lots of death, blood and sex in it. The paper could stick their human-bastard-interest stories. He’d be out there drinking champagne and eating fucking caviar! He didn’t need the P&J, it needed him…
He sighed, slumping slightly, feeling the weight of his new responsibilities. Who was he kidding, he couldn’t afford to lose his job. Not now there was—
‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t ace paperboy, Colin Miller.’ Edinburgh accent, deep voice, right behind him.
Colin spun around to see Brendan ‘Chib’ Sutherland leaning casually against a big silver Mercedes. Oh Christ, what now? ‘Er… Mr Sutherland, nice to see you again…?’
Chib shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t think so, Colin. I don’t think it’s going to be very nice at all. Shall we go for a little ride? We can take my car.’
‘I… er…’ He took a couple of steps back, clutching the laptop bag like a shield, and bumped into a solid mass. It was Chib’s mate, standing right behind him. ‘I can’t, I have—’
Chib held up a finger. ‘I insist.’
A large pair of hands wrapped around Colin’s upper arms and forced him into the back of the waiting car. Slithering over the leather seats to the far side, he scrabbled for the handle, but nothing happened – the child lock was on. He turned to see Chib slide onto the back seat with him, closing the door with a solid clunk. ‘Now then,’ said the man he’d called a wannabe Weegie, pulling a pair of poultry shears from his coat pocket. The curved blades glinted in the grey evening light. ‘My associate is going to drive us somewhere nice and quiet, where we can be alone. I need to ask you some questions and you’ll need to scream.’
Six forty and Logan was legging it away from HQ – Marks and Spencer for a bunch of scarlet roses, back along Union Street, stopping off at Oddbins for the second time that day: sparkling Chardonnay from the chiller cabinet. Then hell for leather round the corner and down Marischal Street, getting to the flat’s communal front door with thirty seconds to spare. Puffing and wheezing, he let himself in, clambered up the stairs, and got into the flat just after the stroke of seven.
Silence.
Somehow he’d been expecting soft candlelight, romantic music, the smell of something nice simmering away on the stove. He did a quick tour of the flat, but it was cold and empty. ‘Bastard.’ He stuck the fizzy in the fridge, the roses in a dusty vase and the heating to ON. It clunked, pinged and rattled as he stripped off and clambered into the shower. Running around like an idiot had left him pouring with sweat. He could hear the phone ringing while he fought with the shampoo bottle, but let the machine pick it up. Whatever it was, it could wait. And that’s when the thought occurred to him that it might be DI Steel, calling to thank him for landing her in it with Insch. Screwing her over. After all she’d done for him – which would have been laughable yesterday, but that was before Professional Standards had bent over backwards to play down the complaint from Sandy the Snake. Why couldn’t he have come up with a nice convincing lie? Something that would have defused DI Insch, but kept Steel out of it. He groaned. She was going to kill him.
By the time he’d climbed out of the shower and into some clean clothes the flat was warming up nicely, but there was still no sign of Jackie. She clattered in fifteen minutes later, swearing under her breath and struggling with half a dozen carrier bags. ‘Ever tried shopping in town with your arm in a cast? Don’t, it’s a bastarding nightmare.’ She froze, staring past him at the vase on the kitchen table. ‘You bought flowers?’
‘And champagne. Well, not champagne-champagne: it’s Australian, but it’s supposed to be good.’
Jackie smiled. ‘You know, Mr McRae, sometimes you’re not so bad.’ She dumped all her bags on the carpet, wrapped her arms round his neck – accidentally bashing him one on the head with her plaster cast – and planted a big, soggy kiss on his lips. Logan worked his way through the buttons on her blouse, opening it wide to expose—
‘What the hell is this?’ He took a step back and stared in horror at the huge, industrial lace construct that imprisoned Jackie’s chest. ‘I thought you were going to buy some new bras and pants: this thing looks like the Forth Rail Bridge!’
‘This,’ she said, snapping the bra strap with pride, ‘is the Triumph Doreen: bestselling bra in the world. Get used to it.’
Logan flinched. ‘Are you seriously going to be wearing this?’
‘Hey, I’m running after some scumbag: you want my boobs bouncing up and down like watermelons in a sock, getting all saggy? You want me to have saggy boobs? That what you want?’ Logan had to admit that no, he didn’t. Trying not to think about the Bra From Hell, he pulled her close and kissed her.
Jackie closed her eyes, leaning into him, enjoying the heat of their bodies pressed against each other, unaware that Logan’s gaze had strayed to the little red light flashing away on the answering machine. The winking, baleful eye of a guilty conscience.
29
The woods were deep and dark, the faint slivers of sky visible between the trees fading from tarnished silver to graveyard black in the dying light. A cough rattled feebly in the small clearing, a wet, sick sound that finished in a dribble of blood. With a small start, Colin Miller realized it was him. He’d been somewhere… somewhere dark and warm, but now he was back. Cramp in his legs, cramp in his shoulders, numb everywhere else. He’d stand up in a minute. Just as soon as the feeling died down. Just as soon as his shoulders and legs stopped hurting. Just as soon as… darkness.
Sparks of white and yellow exploded through his head, shoving him back, tipping the l
awn chair over, sending him crashing backwards into the leaves, his arms and legs still strapped to the seat. Unable to move. And then the real pain starts, not the cramp – that’s nothing, this is like fire! Like someone’s taking a blowtorch to his hands. Burning his hands! He opened his mouth and screamed.
‘Evening, handsome. Nice to see you’re awake.’ A pause, filled with Colin Miller’s screams, then, ‘Pick him up, will you, Greg? And see if you can’t get him to shut up.’
Large hands grabbed the front of Colin’s shirt, dragging him up until the lawn chair was back on its feet. He screamed again, but something hard smacked into his cheek and the taste of fresh blood filled his mouth. The cry faded to a whimper.
A face loomed out of the growing darkness: cropped white hair, perfect teeth, eyes like holes carved in marble. ‘There we go! That wasn’t so bad now, was it?’ Miller didn’t answer and the bastard from Edinburgh just shrugged. ‘OK, Greg, you can untie his hands.’
Oh God, his hands! Someone fumbled with the cable ties holding his wrists to the back of the chair, and then they were free… He pulled his hands round to see how badly they’d been burned. And screamed again as it all came flooding back. The searing pain of flesh parting, the noise of bones and cartilage snapping apart.
‘Oh Christ, again with the bloody screaming?’
This time Greg didn’t need to be told, just balled up a fist and smashed it into Miller’s face. He crashed sideways to the ground, still attached to the chair by his ankles, sprawling out on the forest floor, staring at his ruined hands. Sobbing.
‘Now then, Colin, there’s just two more items on the agenda before we’re finished here. First one is this…’ Chib dropped down and stuck a photo into Colin’s face. Blocking his view of the stumps. It was from Miller’s wallet: Isobel, standing on the balcony of a hotel in Spain. There was a smudge of blood in the top left corner, where Chib’s latex glove had touched it. ‘Good-looking woman. Now, Colin, if I even think you’ve been hanging about with the police again, I’m going to finish the job on you, and then I’m going to make her very, very ugly.’ He took the photo back, kissed it and slipped it into his inside pocket. ‘Item number two is just a wee matter of tidying things up.’ Something hard and cold bounced off Colin’s face, then another one, and another and another. Chunks of fingers, each a single bone long, raining down from the sky. ‘I want you to eat them.’
Miller stared, trembling, at the pale cylinders lying in the dirt. Four of them were just the tips – fingernail to first joint; three were the middle section; two were from the base – still trailing the tendon that was supposed to lie across the knuckle. Nine little bits of piggies go to market. ‘I… I can’t!’ He sobbed. ‘Oh please God, I can’t…’
Chib smiled down indulgently. ‘Now now, let’s have less of that. You eat them up like a good boy and we can all go home.’
Colin reached out with fumbling hands. Trying to pick up the pieces of his own fingers, the remaining digits slick with blood. Feeling the bile rise again. ‘Oh fuckin’ God, my hands… my fuckin’ hands…’
‘I’m running out of patience, Colin. Either you eat them, or I snip off another joint and make you eat that as well.’ He waggled the poultry shears in the reporter’s face, the stainless steel clarted with blood. ‘The longer you mess me about, the less fingers you got.’
Two bits: a tip and a middle section lying in the palm of his shaking, blood-clotted hand, their flesh cold and white. The ends dark red-black, bone and cartilage showing through. ‘Oh God… They could… they could put them back on! They could stitch them back on!’ A hand grabbed the hair on top of his head and pulled it round until he was looking up at Chib Sutherland’s smiling face.
‘You know what: maybe they could.’ The smile grew wider. ‘I’m a reasonable man. Why don’t you pick three bits to keep? That’s a whole finger’s worth! Call it a gesture of good faith. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?’
Tears were streaming down Colin’s face, making streaks in the dirt and blood. ‘I can’t…’ Voice small and broken. Then a shriek as Chib grabbed his left hand by the wrist and pulled it up, opening the shears wide and clamping them around the top joint of the index finger.
‘Now you choose your three bits, then you eat the rest of your fucking fingers. Understand?’
Crying like a frightened child, Colin picked up the remains of his butchered hands and did as he was told.
30
‘You wee beauty!’ DI Steel stood by the window in her office, having a sly fag, reading the preliminary forensic report on the hair samples from Neil Ritchie’s brand-new Audi. They were a perfect match for the ones taken from a hairbrush in Holly McEwan’s flat. She turned and beamed at Logan as he entered the room, technically an hour and a half late for work, but as he’d worked the two days he was supposed to be off he didn’t think it would matter that much. And anyway, he wanted to put off seeing the inspector for as long as possible. That winking red light – when he’d finally plucked up the courage to find out what it was at half past four this morning – turned out to be a recorded voice telling him his phone number had won a Caribbean cruise, five thousand pounds cash, or a certificate as the world’s most gullible bumhole. He hadn’t called them back.
Steel waved him over and shot him a grin. ‘Lazarus, just the man I’ve been waiting for all my life…’ She paused and checked her watch. ‘Well, since seven am anyway. Still, never mind,’ she said. ‘You’re here now.’
Logan frowned. This wasn’t exactly the welcome he’d been expecting. Why hadn’t the inspector ripped a chunk out of his backside yet? ‘Er…’ Change the subject. ‘What did you charge Ritchie with?’ With no body it would be hard getting a conviction.
‘Nothing yet. Get this: he’s still on a voly! He’s no’ even been detained yet!’ Her face lit up like the Stonehaven Christmas lights. ‘How cool is that?’ The six-hours detainment rule wouldn’t start until Ritchie was formally detained. He was still here voluntarily; as it was, they could keep him as long as they liked. Or at least until he asked to leave. ‘Spent most of last night blubberin’ about how he hadn’t done nothing and it’s all some dreadful mistake.’ She grinned. ‘Had that pompous tosspot Bushel interview him, doing his criminal psychiatrist bit. Four-eyed git was so excited he nearly wet himself – Ritchie fits the profile to a tee: absent mother, domineering father who liked to shag prozzies, miserable childhood, blah, blah, blah, nobody loved him. The usual stuff.’
‘Wait a minute – the profile said he’s supposed to have a menial job; Ritchie’s a hydrocarbon accountant!’
‘So what? Profiling’s hardly an exact science, is it? Anyway, the forensic evidence ties him to Holly McEwan – the PF agrees, Ritchie’s our man.’
‘What about Michelle Wood and Rosie Williams?’
‘Don’t complicate things. We’ve still got Jamie McKinnon if we can’t do Ritchie for all three tarts. In the meantime…’ She rummaged about in the mess of paperwork that covered her desk, coming out with an address. ‘Ritchie claims he didn’t have his shiny new car when Holly went missing. Probably bollocks, but I want it checked out. And take Rennie with you: he’s getting right on my tits this morning.’
Wellington Executive Motors was a single-storey glass box, lined inside and out with top-of-the-range motorcars that cost more than Logan’s two-bedroom flat. The showroom sat on Crawpeel Road, in Altens – an industrial estate on the coast road south out of Aberdeen, packed with oil-service companies. Here and there huge architectural monstrosities in steel and glass loomed over the yards and warehouses – major oil companies making sure everyone knew who was boss. But this early on a Sunday morning, Wellington Motors was the only place open.
Still worrying about why DI Steel hadn’t chewed him out for landing her in it to Insch, Logan had barely heard a word Rennie said on the way across town from FHQ. Which was probably just as well; today the detective constable was on his high horse about some sub plot in Coronation Street being identical to
one in Brookside years ago.
He was still banging on about it as they pushed through the glass doors onto the showroom’s dark, rubber flooring. The whole place smelled of new car and freshly brewed coffee, Vivaldi emanating discreetly from hidden speakers.
‘Good morning, gentlemen.’ They turned to find a saleswoman smiling at them with all her teeth. ‘Welcome to Wellington Executive Motors.’ She indicated the showroom with a sweeping gesture, just in case they didn’t already know where they were. ‘I’d be delighted to assist you in selecting a model to test drive, but while we do: cappuccino? Biscotti?’ Logan asked for the manager and her smile faltered, before scrambling back into place. ‘Is there anything I could help you with?’ No, there wasn’t. ‘Well, er… Mr Robinson’s with a customer at the moment. Can I offer you something while you wait? Cappuccino? Biscotti?’
Mr Robinson was a round and jovial man with a light grey comb over and a neatly trimmed beard, all smiles and handshakes until he found out Logan and Rennie were policemen. Then it was all pensive horror, wringing hands and, ‘Has something happened?’
Logan put on his best disarming smile. ‘Nothing like that, sir, I need to talk to you about a car you sold to one Neil Ritchie last week. Brand new—’
‘Audi. Yes, Audi. Executive model, air-conditioning, sunroof, satellite navigation, power—’
‘When did he pick it up?’
Mr Robinson spluttered. ‘I… No, no, it’s out of the question. I couldn’t discuss a client’s details, Wellington Executive Motors values our—’
‘It’s important.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m sure you would need some sort of warrant—’
Logan pulled out two sheets of folded paper from his pocket and held them up. ‘I have a warrant.’ No he didn’t – it was just a printout of the e-fit pictures of Kylie and her pimp, but Robinson didn’t know that. The fat man blanched and Logan hid the pages away again, just in case he asked to see them. ‘According to the car’s registration papers he bought the car last Monday. When did he pick it up?’
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