The Blood Road

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘We’re just trying to figure out what happened to DI Bell.’

  She turned, face dark and creased. ‘WHEN YOU SHOULD BE TRYING TO FIND MY SON!’

  Outside, the dogbear started barking again.

  Mrs MacAuley bared her teeth. ‘Instead I had to hire private detectives. So when the timewasters and the greedy come after the reward at least I know someone’s investigating it.’

  ‘Now,’ Logan held up a hand, ‘I’m sure the inquiry team is—’

  ‘Is anyone even working on the case any more?’

  Good question.

  ‘I’ll look into that, I promise.’

  She stared at him in silence for a bit, the colour in her cheeks faded to its usual grey, then she nodded. ‘Duncan turned up on my doorstep at two o’clock one morning. He’d been drinking. He stood there in my kitchen crying and apologising, because he couldn’t catch the piece of shit who killed Kenneth and took my boy.’

  Now that was interesting.

  Logan sat forward. ‘You called him “Duncan”?’

  She waved a hand – dismissive. Turned her back on them.

  ‘Mrs MacAuley, were you and DI Bell…?’

  ‘Duncan was … complicated. He was the only one of you who cared. And I don’t mean pretend “I’m sorry for your loss” cared, I mean really cared. And now he’s dead.’ She rested her forehead against the glass. Sighed. Her shoulders slumped even further. ‘I think I’d like you to leave now.’

  The pool car lurched and rumbled down the track, the dark woods swallowing Skemmelsbrae Croft in the rear-view mirror. No wonder Mrs MacAuley was a bit… Well, living there, given what had happened by that little shonky bridge, surrounded by those looming twisted trees.

  Rennie clicked the radio on. More pop music. ‘What do you think: were she and Ding-Dong at it?’ A smile. ‘Good for Ding-Dong if they were, she’s milfalicious. I would, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be a sexist arsehole. Her husband’s dead and her son’s missing. Have a bit of respect.’

  Pink rushed up Rennie’s cheeks. ‘Sorry, Guv.’

  Logan turned the radio off again, pulled out his phone and dialled. ‘Shona? Hi, It’s Logan. Listen I need a favour.’

  A disgusted sigh. Then, ‘You always need a favour.’

  ‘I’m out and about at the moment – see if you can dig up whoever’s SIO on the MacAuley investigation: murder and abduction.’

  ‘What happened to your plainclothes gruntmonkey?’

  ‘He’s out and about too.’

  ‘Pfff…’ The sound of a keyboard receiving two-finger punishment clacked in the background. ‘Right, here we go. … Oh.’

  ‘Shona? I don’t like the sound of that “oh”, Shona.’

  ‘Senior Investigating Officer is DCI Dean Gordon.’

  Wonderful. Just sodding marvellous.

  Logan screwed his eyes closed. ‘Oh for God’s sake.’

  ‘Not my fault.’

  ‘DCI Dean Gordon. The same DCI Dean Gordon who had a stroke three months ago and is now permanently off on the sick?’

  ‘And I repeat: not my fault.’

  As if Mrs MacAuley didn’t feel let down enough already.

  A sigh. ‘Thanks, Shona.’ Logan hung up and slumped in his seat.

  Rennie pulled a face. ‘Let me guess: complete and utter, total cocking disaster?’

  ‘In a top hat.’

  13

  Logan’s phone dinged at him again.

  TS TARA:

  I was going to have a bath, but you don’t have any bubble bath. HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE ANY BUBBLE BATH YOU MONSTER?!?!

  Rain battered against the pool car’s roof, bounced off the bonnet, hammered the hatchbacks on either side. The Lidl they’d parked outside squatted in the downpour, a dreary grey bunker of a building with cheery posters in the windows.

  Logan thumbed out a reply:

  Because I’m a man. The willy should have been a giveaway on that one. Are you staying for tea tonight?

  SEND.

  Ding.

  I’ll swap you. You bring home bubble bath & I’ll cook something for dinner. No more pizzas and takeaways. Proper food for a change!

  Now that sounded like an excellent idea.

  The driver’s door opened and Rennie thumped in behind the wheel. Sat there grimacing for a moment with his arms raised. Hair plastered flat to his head. Clothes darkened and dripping. ‘Urgh…’ He stuffed a couple of carrier bags into the rear footwell. ‘It’s like swimming out there!’

  A wee girl exploded from the Lidl’s doors – couldn’t have been much older than eight – a bottle of brandy clutched in both hands. Running for it.

  Two seconds later, a lanky security guard appeared, sprinting after her, mouth moving as if he was shouting something.

  Logan turned, watched the pair of them hurdle the low stone wall and race off down the Lang Stracht. ‘I’m troubled, Simon.’

  ‘Might as well have jumped in the River Don.’ Wiping his face with his hands. ‘Utterly soaked.’

  ‘The timeline worries me.’ He counted it off on his fingers. ‘Aiden MacAuley is abducted and his dad is killed. DI Bell fancies Fred Marshall for it, but can’t prove anything so Marshall is released without charge. Then Marshall vanishes off the face of the earth and Bell fakes his own death.’

  ‘You still think Bell killed Marshall?’

  ‘He killed whoever it was we buried, so why stop there? If you’re planning on disappearing anyway, why not go for a bit of rough justice?’

  Rennie wriggled his bum in his seat. ‘I would like to announce that I’m damp right down to my pants here. There’s going to be a whole lotta chafing going on.’

  ‘What else did you dig up on Fred Marshall?’

  ‘Forget trench foot, I’m going to get trench—’

  ‘Rennie: concentrate! Fred Marshall.’

  ‘OK, OK. Sheesh…’ He pulled out his phone and poked at the screen. ‘Emailed myself the details.’ More poking. ‘Here we go: Frederick Albert Marshall, AKA Freddy Marsh. Two kids, both under five. Different mothers, though. He’s got a brother doing a nine-stretch in HMP Grampian for armed robbery and his sister’s awaiting trial for attempted murder.’

  ‘Bet family Christmases are fun.’

  ‘His mum died of an overdose when he was eleven and his dad’s not been arrested for three whole years. Which is something of a record for him. Burglaries, possession with intents, assaults … oh, and dear old dad’s a registered sex offender too.’

  The security guard came limping up the road again, one hand clutching his side, face a worrying shade of puce. No sign of the brandy or the little girl.

  A bus rumbled by, drenching him with dirty road spray.

  Rennie started the engine and cranked up the blowers. ‘If we hurry, we can probably make the PM on Not-DI-Bell’s burnt and stinky remains?’

  ‘It’ll be all poking about and tissue samples. Won’t get anything useful out of the labs for weeks. If we’re lucky.’

  The security guard clambered over the low stone wall and into the car park. Then turned and shook his fist. Bested by an eight-year-old criminal mastermind. And a bus.

  Hmmm…

  Logan frowned. ‘Has Fred Marshall still got a social worker?’

  ‘Dunno, but I can find out?’

  Laughter rang through the Bon Accord shopping centre – high-pitched and giggly – as Logan climbed the stairs. Then some screaming. Then more giggling.

  He stepped onto the landing.

  The upper floor was pretty crowded. Families. Feral children. Couples. Slouching teenagers. Young men and women with clipboards and collecting buckets. Lots and lots and lots of shops full of damp people.

  Rennie topped the stairs and looked around, then pointed over at the food court. The usual collection of baked tattie / salad / things on a conveyor belt / fried chicken joints were arranged around the outside of the seating area. ‘That’s her there.’

  Two women sat at a table over by
the baked tattie place: one short, young-ish, with a short-back-and-sides haircut, a leather jacket that had seen better days, a pot of tea, and a raisin whirl; the other a sagging, knackered-looking figure in a burgundy cardigan, hunched over a latte and a sticky bun. Her brown hair had a thick grey line, right down the middle of it, face as pale as rice pudding. Not a make-up kind of person.

  The pair of them had bags under their eyes you could fit a week’s shopping in.

  Logan walked over. ‘Maureen Tait?’

  The one in the scabby leather raised a hand. ‘For my sins.’ She nodded at her becardiganed companion. ‘This is Mrs McCready, she was Fred Marshall’s C-and-F worker when he was a juvenile. What she doesn’t know about him ain’t worth knowing. Isn’t that right, Mags?’

  Mrs McCready looked up from her milky coffee and pulled a sour face. ‘Has he decided to grace us with his presence again, then? Freddie?’

  Logan patted Rennie on the shoulder. ‘I’ll have a tea, thanks.’ Then pulled out a chair and joined the pair of them as Rennie slumped off, muttering under his breath.

  McCready sniffed. ‘Well?’

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to meet us. Especially as it’s the weekend.’

  Tait folded her arms, chin up. ‘So come on then, what’s he done? Where’s he been?’

  ‘You’ve not seen him for, what, two years?’

  She hauled a massive handbag up onto the table and went a-rummaging – producing a large ring binder packed so tight it was on the verge of bursting. It thumped down next to the handbag, setting her crockery rattling. ‘Freddie was … challenging, but he never missed a single appointment.’

  McCready nodded. ‘Not since he first came to see me, when he was six.’

  ‘And then, two years, two months ago: nothing. We went round his flat, but they hadn’t seen him for a week.’

  Logan raised an eyebrow. ‘We?’

  Tait dumped her handbag on the floor again. ‘Yes “we”. Margaret and me. And I know, technically, that Children-and-Families aren’t supposed to maintain involvement in a service user’s life once they’ve transitioned to supervision by the Criminal Justice team, but Fred Marshall needed … continuity.’ She looked at her colleague. ‘Didn’t he, Mags?’

  ‘His father beat his mother so badly she ended up in a wheelchair. She’d forgotten to put a bet on for him.’ Mrs McCready tapped the huge file. ‘Not that she was any sort of saint, but when she died it really messed Freddie up.’

  ‘Must be hard losing your mum to an overdose.’

  That got him a pitying look. ‘She was in a wheelchair, Inspector, who do you think bought drugs for her? Can you imagine being eleven years old and feeling responsible for your mum’s death?’ A sigh. ‘You know, I was probably the closest thing he had to a stable family relationship? When he was a teenager he’d go out and shoplift just so they’d catch him and he could see me again. How sad is that?’

  Tait nodded. ‘He was a very troubled young man.’

  Rennie reappeared, complete with tray: two cups, two wee teapots, some wee tartan packets of something. ‘I got us some shortbread. You’re welcome.’

  McCready picked at her sticky bun. ‘And, of course, I told him he didn’t have to get arrested, I’d be happy to see him anyway. As long as it was always somewhere public. Course he wanted to come stay with me – thought it would be the best thing in the whole world if I adopted him so we could see each other all the time. But…’ The hole she’d worried in her bun got bigger. ‘Freddie always had that sharp little core of violence in him, you could see it even when he was a wee boy. No way I was exposing my kids to that.’ McCready frowned and ripped the chunk right off. Dunked it in her latte.

  Tait tucked into her raisin whirl, flecks of pastry falling from her mouth as she spoke. ‘Tell them about Jeffery Watkins. Go on, tell them.’

  ‘Watkins was a wife-beating armed robber with a drink problem. His daughter, Nadia, was a client of mine. He didn’t like that I recommended she be taken into care, so he broke my nose and my wrist. Freddie tracked him down and battered the living hell out of him. Freddie was thirteen, Watkins was twenty-six.’

  Sounded lovely.

  Logan poured himself some tea. ‘Did Fred Marshall ever mention Aiden or Kenneth MacAuley?’

  Rennie whipped out his notebook and pen. Poised and expectant.

  Tait stared at him, face pinched, voice guarded. ‘Was he capable of it? Possibly. Did he do it?’ A shrug.

  ‘What about DI Duncan Bell?’

  ‘Oh, he was called all the names under the sun. Questioned Freddie at least five times about the killing and the abduction, even though there was absolutely no evidence. But you know what some police officers are like, they won’t…’ Tait stared at them. ‘Wait, DI Bell? He’s the one who faked his own death, isn’t he? It was on the news. You exhumed…’ She reached out and took her colleague’s hand.

  Mrs McCready shrank away from the table, eyes and mouth open wide. ‘Oh God… It’s him, isn’t it? It’s Freddie in that grave! That bastard, Bell, killed him!’

  Logan held up his hands. ‘We’re running tests now, but we don’t think it’s Fred Marshall.’

  She scraped her chair back and stood. ‘THEN WHERE IS HE?’

  People at the surrounding tables fell quiet. Everyone looking at them.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ Voice soft and patient. ‘We want to make sure he’s safe, OK?’

  Tait got to her feet and wrapped an arm around her colleague. ‘Shhh… It’s all right, Mags. I’m sure it isn’t Freddie.’

  ‘I’ve known him since he was a little boy.’ She stayed where she was, trembling, the food-court lights sparkling in her wet eyes. ‘I sang at his wedding…’

  ‘Look, Mrs McCready, Mrs Tait, Fred had a reputation as a thug for hire.’ Another placating gesture. ‘I’m not saying he was one, I’m saying that was his reputation. Do you know who he worked for?’

  Tait glanced at Rennie and his notebook again. ‘Are you honestly expecting us to inform on a service user?’

  ‘He’s been missing for two and a bit years. You and I both know there’s only three possibilities: he’s gone straight, he did something so bad he had to do a runner—’

  ‘Or he’s dead.’ Mrs McCready lowered herself back into her seat and sagged a bit further.

  Tait put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Freddie isn’t a bad person, Inspector, he simply… Look: the last meeting we had he turned up with this lovely lady’s watch for Mags. He’d won some cash on the horses and wanted to treat her. Had the receipt and everything. He was so proud of himself.’

  Logan nodded. ‘I still need to know who he was working for.’

  ‘Freddie didn’t have the opportunities you and I had. Yes, he could be difficult, but he was turning his life around. Getting married to Irene was the best thing he ever did.’

  No point pushing it. Instead, Logan let the silence stretch. Sitting there, watching the pair of them.

  A couple of wee kids thundered past: the girl in a dinosaur onesie with fairy wings and a tiara, chasing a boy dressed up like a Disney princess complete with wand.

  Over in the distance someone dropped a cup or a plate and got a round of applause in reward.

  Mrs McCready wiped at her eyes.

  Maureen Tait fidgeted.

  Logan just watched.

  A ragged chorus of ‘The Northern Lights Of Old Aberdeen’ broke out in Yo! Sushi.

  Tait groaned. ‘All right, all right.’ Then jabbed a finger at Rennie. ‘But this is strictly off the record and if it comes up in court we’ll deny the whole thing. Are we clear?’

  Logan nodded. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Aw…’ But Rennie put his pen down anyway.

  ‘All right.’ She cleared her throat. ‘He might have mentioned something about a broker who put work his way from time to time.’

  ‘A broker?’

  ‘Someone called “Jerry the Mole”. And no, I don’t know any more than that.’ Tait
picked up the big ring binder and jammed it into her massive handbag. ‘Now if you’ll excuse us, our co-worker’s getting married next weekend, and we’ve a hen party to buy inflatable willies for.’ She snapped out a hand and grabbed Logan and Rennie’s packets of shortbread, stuffing them into her pocket as she flounced off. ‘Come on, Mags.’

  Mrs McCready nodded, then hauled herself to her feet and slouched off after her colleague.

  Rennie watched them go, then reached across the table and helped himself to the half-eaten sticky bun and raisin whirl. ‘Well: waste not, want not.’

  The sounds of Divisional Headquarters thrummed along the corridor: voices, phones, laughter, the elliptical dubstep whump-whump-whump of a floor polisher.

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’ Logan let go and the door to his temporary office bounced off one of the desks crammed inside. Empty. Not a single minion to be seen. Nothing but furniture and carpet stains. So much for DCI Hardie and his we-need-to-coordinate-our-investigations speech.

  Logan propelled Rennie inside with a little shove, pointing at one of the ancient computers. ‘You, Gruntmonkey: go find Jerry the Mole.’

  ‘Gah…’ The boy idiot slouched over to the computer, popping on an Igor-from-Frankenstein voice. ‘Yeth mathhhhhter.’

  ‘And when you’ve done that: make sure you do your report for the PF. And if anyone asks, I’m off to kick DS Robertson’s backside till I get my promised minions.’

  He turned and marched down the corridor, up the stairs, and onto the MIT floor. Past posters and notices. Past a handful of plainclothes officers who scattered away from him like sparrows before a cat. And through into the MIT incident room.

  Unlike his office, this one was full of minions. Officers on the phone, officers writing things up on the whiteboards, officers hammering away at their keyboards. Officers doing things.