‘When I was a DS, Force Headquarters was awash with stories about the great Detective Sergeant Logan “Lazarus” McRae. How you were the brains behind that wrinkly disaster area Steel. That you solved all those cases, not her…’ Hacker stuck his feet up on his desk, coffee mug held against his chest. ‘After all that, you’d think they’d at least have made you Assistant Chief Constable. But here you are, nothing more than a lowly inspector.’
‘Keeps me humble.’
He toasted Logan with his mug. ‘AberRAD Investigation Services are committed to bringing Aiden MacAuley home to his mother. We haven’t billed her a penny in two years. We – will – bring – him – home.’ A broad smile. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me: Danielle will see you out. I’ve got work to do.’
Rain spattered up from the drenched tarmac as Danielle held the Portakabin door open for them.
Tufty smiled at her. ‘Thanks.’
‘Keep walking, Skinny Malinky Short Legs.’
Logan dug out one of his Police Scotland business cards. ‘In case you remember anything else.’
‘Oh right. Yes.’ She fluttered her eyelashes at him. Then tore the card up and sprinkled it into the nearest wastepaper basket like seasoning. ‘Now, if you don’t mind – it’s meant to be my day off and I’d like to go home.’ She shooed them out of the door and into the pounding rain. ‘Go on. Away. Sod off.’
As soon as they stepped outside she slammed the door shut and flipped the sign to ‘SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED’.
Logan hurried over to the car, jumping in as soon as Tufty plipped the locks. ‘Urgh.’ Absolutely drenched. Again.
Tufty clambered in behind the wheel. Shuddered. Turned and frowned out of the passenger window. ‘They were … nice.’
Danielle rattled down the blinds, one by one, until there was nothing to see.
‘You know what, Guv? I get the feeling that they didn’t has a truthful.’
Logan clicked on his seatbelt. ‘They discovered something about the Livestock Mart and Chalmers found out about it. Possibly DI Bell too.’
‘Maybe that’s why they were killed?’
‘And if Chalmers can find out, so can we.’
Tufty started the car, driving away from the Portakabins – headlights on, windscreen wipers at max. He drifted to a halt at the junction. ‘Back to the station?’
Maybe there was another way to go about this?
‘If you were Raymond Hacker, and you were getting close, would you tell your client?’
‘Sally MacAuley? Don’t see why not, after all…’ He puckered his lips, eyes narrowed. ‘Actually: no. No, I wouldn’t. You’d be getting her hopes up, wouldn’t you? What happens if it doesn’t pan out? She thinks her son’s coming home, but he isn’t.’
‘True.’ Still: might be worth a try.
Difficult to see how to do it without tipping them off, though.
A white Clio pulled up alongside the pool car, Danielle Smith behind the wheel. She revved the engine a couple of times, giving Logan the cold hard stare. Bared her teeth at him. Then drove off.
Logan watched the Clio disappear into the rain. ‘Is it just me, or would you not trust Hacker and his merry band further than you could spit them?’
‘Nope.’
‘Me neither.’
38
‘Thanks for your help.’ Logan hung up and wrote ‘ARGOS’ next to the number he’d just dialled.
The office was quiet – nobody but him and his phone.
He called the next one on the list.
An over-the-top cheery voice belted out of the earpiece. ‘Sparkles! Your hair is our flair! How may I assist you on the road to your fabulous best today?’
You could dial it down about three notches.
‘I need to speak to someone about Lorna Chalmers.’
‘One moment.’ Some flappy, clacky typing sounded in the background. ‘Yes indeed. Lorna’s coming in to see us on Tuesday at six for a cut and colour. Does she need to change her appointment?’
‘Well, she died on Friday night, so I don’t think she’ll be able to make it.’
‘But we confirmed it with her on Thursday?’ As if that was going to make any difference to the situation.
‘I can check, but I’m pretty sure she’ll still be dead.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Every bit as cheerful. ‘Well never mind, that’s that cancelled now.’ A bleep. ‘Please hold, I have a caller on line two.’
No chance.
Logan hung up. Wrote ‘HAIRDRESSER’ next to the number.
Well, that settled things, didn’t it? People planning on killing themselves didn’t make appointments to get their roots done.
Right: next number.
‘Yeah, about a week ago?’ There was a muffled voice in the background. ‘Ooh, hang on a second, I think our man’s come out of the… No. Sorry, it’s not him.’
Logan swivelled in his chair. ‘What did she want?’
A knock on the door and DI Fraser stuck her head into the room. ‘You about ready?’
He pointed at the phone in his other hand, then mouthed ‘Two minutes.’ at her.
‘It was weird. Chalmers calls us up, completely out of the blue, like, wanting intel on Fred Marshall. Last known whereabouts, associates, home address, outstanding warrants etc.’
‘She say why she wanted it?’
‘Nah, but you know what Chalmers is … was like. Never wanted to share anything with anyone. She… Ooh! That’s definitely him this time. Got to go.’ The clunk of a car door opening. ‘HOY! YOU! STAND—’ Silence. He’d hung up.
Logan wrote ‘DC OWEN’ next to his number. Stuck the list in the ‘pending’ tray, grabbed the case report and an A4 notepad. Stood. ‘Right. Shall we?’
‘Yes, because nothing lifts the spirits like sitting in a three-hour ongoing-cases meeting when we could be out, oh, I don’t know …’ she rolled her eyes, ‘actually solving crimes?’
‘So if you turn to page seventeen in your briefing you’ll see the numbers.’ DI Vine wheeched his laser pointer across the screen, circling the pie chart. ‘Car crime is a particular concern, especially in zones E through H…’
Logan turned the page and nodded. Then went back to doodling in the margins of his pad.
It wasn’t that Vine was boring – though he really, really was – it was just very difficult to get excited about car crime when there were murder investigations to get on with.
‘You’ll note that vandalism is on the up in zone B as well…’
The meeting room was packed – a dozen officers sitting there with their piles of briefing notes, printouts of PowerPoint slides, notebooks, glasses of water, cups of terrible tea and nastier coffee, waiting for their turn with the laser pointer, all doing their best to look interested. Most of them failing.
And still Vine droned on. And on. Standing there, like a heavyweight boxer with his broken nose, squinty eyes. A massive forehead that ended in a pointy black widow’s peak.
‘Page eighteen.’ The slide on the screen changed to a bar graph. ‘Antisocial Behaviour Orders.’
Pff….
Of course, the real question was: how did Chalmers find out about DI Bell in the first place? She’d been to the pig farm where he’d buried the body, she’d been to the mountainside where he’d reburied it last week, she’d even been to the crash site where they’d found Bell’s body in the car.
But how did she know?
Maybe she’d seen him somewhere? Recognised him, realised he wasn’t dead, and started digging.
‘…that right, Inspector McRae?’
Or was she looking into something else and somehow managed to stumble across him that way?
There had to be a connection. All Logan had to do was figure out what it—
‘Inspector McRae?’
Someone nudged him.
He blinked.
The whole room was staring at him.
Sod.
No idea what the question was. So Logan nodded, pulling his face in
to a thinking frown as if he were actually considering it. ‘In what way?’
DI Fraser nudged him again, hooking her thumb at the screen where his name was projected in big block capitals above the words, ‘INVESTIGATION INTO EX-DI DUNCAN BELL’S FALSIFIED SUICIDE. INVESTIGATION INTO LORNA CHALMERS’ ALLEGED SUICIDE.’
Ah. Right. It was his turn with the laser pointer.
DI Fraser stuffed her stack of briefings, printouts, and other assorted nonsense into her massive handbag as the rest of the room filed out. Keeping her voice down. ‘Three and a half hours. Three and a half.’ She smiled and waved at Hardie as he lumbered away, already on his phone. ‘Did you see the colour Hardie went when McCulloch kept talking over the top of him?’
Logan gathered up his papers. ‘Would’ve gone a lot quicker if that idiot McPherson hadn’t broken the projector.’
‘What do you expect: it’s McPherson.’
He followed her out into the corridor. ‘True.’
‘Think we’re too late to get something from the canteen?’
‘Mushroom stroganoff today. That or breaded haddock.’
‘Blearg. Mushrooms are the devil’s bumfungus. And so are fish.’ She did a quick turn, the hem of her black skirt-dress flaring out, and stared towards the stairs. ‘Come on then: how much of your briefing was a load of old testicles?’
He smiled. ‘Don’t know what you mean, Kim. Why, how about yours?’
‘Twenty, maybe twenty-five percent.’ A sigh. ‘In real life we’ve no idea who stabbed Ding-Dong or why. Would help if we had an ID on the body you dug up.’
‘You think it was a revenge attack? DI Bell killed their friend, so they killed him?’
She pushed into the stairwell. ‘Makes sense. He comes back from Spain, digs up the guy he tortured to death, and reburies him. Then a couple of days later someone parks their knife in Ding-Dong’s side.’ She gave Logan a sideways glance as they started down the stairs. ‘You sure you don’t know who it is?’
‘A hundred percent? No. And the last time I suggested who it might be, I got my head bitten off by our delightful pathologist.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Ever heard of a thug-for-hire called Fred Marshall? We’re trying to get hold of his dental and medical records for comparison.’
‘Fred Marshall… Fred Marshall…’ Fraser stopped on the landing and frowned. ‘Wait, wasn’t he one of Crowbar Craig Simpson’s cronies?’
‘Yes, but a knife’s not really Crowbar’s style, is it?’
‘People change.’ A smile spread across her face. ‘I might go pay Mr Simpson a social call. See if I can’t rattle something out of him.’
‘You’re in luck – we arrested him on Saturday morning. He’s not up before the Sheriff till half four, so if you hurry…?’
‘Now you see me.’ And she was off again, clattering away downstairs on her three-inch heels.
Logan watched her go. Oh to be young and enthusiastic again.
He used his elbow to turn the handle and pushed through into the temporary office, both hands tied up with a fish-finger buttie on a paper plate and a wax-paper cup of proper coffee.
Tufty looked up from his computer and stretched, mouth wide open in a huge yawn. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of Logan’s plate and smiled. ‘Why yes, I’d love a little smackerel of something.’
‘Get your own. This is my lunch.’ He plonked the plate and the cup on his desk, then dipped into his fleece pocket for the half dozen plastic sachets of tomato sauce and mayonnaise. ‘Where’s Stinky and Wrinkles?’
‘DS Rennie’s away picking up medical and dental records for Fred Marshall and Rod Lawson, while the esteemed DS Steel has an appointment with a search team and Naughty Norman Clifton’s mum’s house. And I …’ he did a small drumroll on the desk with his fingers, ‘have gone through and reverse look-up’d all the numbers in Chalmers’ call history. It’s in your in-tray, and are you sure none of that buttie’s for me?’
‘Positive.’ Logan opened it and slathered the fish fingers inside with red and white blobs. Took a big crunchy bite. Hot and fishy and delicious. Talking with his mouth full. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear that Hardie’s putting DI Vine in charge of you bunch of miscreants. As of tomorrow morning, you’re his problem.’
‘Not DI Vine!’ Tufty’s face sagged. ‘He’s the police equivalent of having your verrucas and eating them.’
Another bite of buttie, washed down with coffee. Logan held his hand out. ‘Give me your phone.’
‘My phone?’
‘You said you’d copied all of Chalmers’ photos onto it.’
‘Oh, my phone!’ Tufty dug it out. Looked at Logan’s sauce-smeared fingers. ‘Yeah. Maybe after you’re a bit less … sticky?’
Such a baby.
Logan polished off his buttie and scrubbed his hands clean on a wee individual moist towelette pilfered from last night’s takeaway. ‘Happy now?’
‘Cool.’ Tufty scooted his chair over, cradling his phone as if it were a tiny baby and he the proud father. ‘I fitted an extra-large SD card: two hundred and fifty-six gig. Utterly massive storage capacity.’ He laid it on the desk with careful reverence. ‘There’s rumours they’re working on a one terabyte micro SD card, how mind-blowing’s that? I know, right? A thousand gigabytes in something smaller than your—’
‘I’m waiting for the passcode, you idiot.’
‘Ah. Six, six, two, six. If you need an easy reminder it’s the first four digits of Planck’s Constant.’
Weirdos and freaks…
Logan punched the four digits into the smartphone’s screen, then poked the icon for its photo gallery. A folder right at the top was marked, ‘CHALMERS’ PHONE PICS!!!’
He selected it and the screen filled with thumbnails.
‘These in any sort of order?’
‘By date, oldest to newest.’
He scrolled through them with his finger. Flicking faster and faster. There were hundreds and hundreds of the bloody things. Who took that many photos on their mobile phone?
Finally, the screen wouldn’t scroll any more. He’d reached the end of the list.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’ He tapped the last thumbnail and a pig ark filled the screen. It was the one from Nairhillock Farm – the rectangle of stunted lime-green grass was clearly visible next to it.
Scrolling backwards produced another eight or nine photos of the same sty, and another dozen of various bits of the farm. The picture after that – or before it, chronologically – was a selfie of Chalmers, staring out across Aberdeen Beach towards the North Sea. Brooding and moody. Auburn hair tangled by the wind.
Next up: three pics of a chicken Caesar salad.
And after that… ‘Oh for God’s sake.’
It was DI Bell, sitting behind the wheel of his Trans-Buchan Automotive Rentals car, parked somewhere in the Bridge of Don, by the look of. The next one was the same. And the one after that.
Logan turned the screen to face Tufty. ‘She found DI Bell days ago! If she’d bothered her backside to tell someone, we could’ve brought him in and he’d still be alive!’
A sage nod. ‘Maybe she’d still be alive too?’
‘Gah…’
Some more photos of Bell coming out of the Netherley Arms, carrying his pickaxe and shovel.
‘This is what happens when you’re not a team player, Tufty.’
Two shots of a big bowl of mushroom tagliatelle.
Then another selfie.
‘You end up ostracised, fired, or…’
Hold on.
Logan zoomed in a bit. The selfie was Chalmers posing in a shiny black bomber jacket with ‘SECURITY’ embroidered on the left breast. Danielle Smith from AberRAD was mugging over her shoulder, sticking her chin out and one eyebrow up. She was wearing an identical jacket.
Tufty sat forward in his chair. ‘Or – dot, dot, dot – what?’
The next photo showed the pair of them again, at some sort of concert, both throwing air-
guitar poses – the band an out-of-focus blur in the background. There were another five pictures at the same venue, each one showing Chalmers and Danielle. Chums. Besties. Muckers. Mates. BFFs.
Logan grabbed the desk phone and dialled.
‘Control?’
‘I need a home address for one ex-Detective-Constable Danielle Smith.’
Traffic crawled along the South Deeside Road, winding its way along the course of the River Dee, past the sprawling mass of new-build houses at Blairs. On through the trees, twisting and turning till the view opened out on the right, exposing the gargantuan earthworks where the new bridge reached across the dark and swollen river like a vast grey slab.
Ahead, tail-lights stretched into the distance, brought to a halt by temporary traffic lights and a coned-off section.
Tufty hauled on the handbrake, then slumped in dramatic-fainting-Victorian-lady mode. ‘Please can I stick the siren on?’
‘No. Anyway, it’s not going to make much difference, is it? You overtake something on a bend down here and we’ll end up in the mortuary. And I’m not keen on Isobel ever seeing me naked again.’
‘Ooooh. Is that gossip I sense?’
‘No. And shut up.’
‘Fair enough.’ He puffed out a couple of breaths, lips pursed like a duck’s bum. ‘Course, you know the trouble with this bypass, don’t you? Going to be a green light for development. Aberdeen’s going to spread and spread, till it gets stopped by the road. Like a moat of tarmac around a city state. Or a wall around a megacity from 2000 AD. Or the belt on a really, really fat man.’
Logan stared at him. ‘Honestly, feel free to shut up any time you like.’
‘We could talk about physics instead? Where do you stand on Bohmian mechanics? Cause if it’s right, it’s a totally valid mechanism for explaining wave-particle duality!’
He covered his face with his hands and muffled out a scream.
So this was what it felt like to be DCI Hardie…
A line of temporary metal fencing ran along the side of the road and down both sides of the building plot – the kind made of panels, held upright by concrete blocks, and peppered with ‘WARNING: BUILDING SITE’, ‘AUTHORISED ENTRY ONLY’, and ‘THESE PREMISES PATROLLED BY GUARD DOGS’. It sat on the edge of an older housing estate, the beginnings of a house slowly rising from the ground about thirty yards in at the end of a rough driveway. Nothing but the foundations and a few courses of breeze blocks to mark out the shape.
The Blood Road Page 33