The Blood Road

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘You’re crazy, bitch! You’re crazy!’

  Then she grabbed a cordless drill from the shelf. Pressed the button. It vwipped and buzzed. Eager.

  ‘Gah…’ Logan recoiled from the screen as screaming belted out of the laptop’s speakers.

  Steel puffed out her cheeks. ‘Jesus…’

  ‘It wasn’t DI Bell…’

  Tufty nodded, a big smile on his face. ‘And in case you’re interested: the whole thing lasts forty-three minutes and fifty-two seconds.’ He pointed at the numbers on the bottom right of the screen. ‘I’m betting it gets a lot worse before the end.’

  Marshall screamed and sobbed as Sally went in for another go.

  ‘Where’s my son? Tell me where he is and this can all stop. Just tell me. TELL ME!’

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know…’ More sobbing. ‘I never touched him. It wasn’t me! I didn’t—’ Then more screaming.

  Rennie licked his lips. ‘Yeah, we might owe the labs a bit of an apology.’

  Steel jabbed him with a finger. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘TELL ME WHAT TO SAY! PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO SAY!’

  ‘It wasn’t my—’ Rennie’s eyes bugged and he turned away from the laptop, phone up to his ear again. ‘Professor Ferdinand, how lovely to speak to— … No, I appreciate that. … Yes.’

  Logan reached forward and clicked pause. Sally MacAuley froze in the act of pulling the drillbit out of from Fred Marshall’s blood-soaked knee. ‘Does anyone else appear on this at any time?’

  Tufty shrugged. ‘No idea, I only found it a minute ago. But I can have a look?’ He fiddled with the mouse and the picture lurched into fast forward, the figures blurring.

  ‘No, Professor, you’re quite right: professional courtesy costs nothing. … Yes. … I totally and utterly apologise. Unreservedly. … I—’ Another groan. ‘No, that’s definitely your right, Professor. … Thank you.’ Rennie hung up. Shuddered. Took a deep breath. Then turned, face and ears an uncomfortable shade of hot pink. ‘That was Professor Ferdinand. He says they’ve found Sally MacAuley’s DNA on DI Bell’s body. They only got a match because she had to give a sample when we arrested her for abducting Rebecca Oliver.’ He pulled on a sickly smile. ‘He might get in touch because, somehow, someone at the labs thinks I may have implied that they’re an incompetent bunch of arsemonkeys who couldn’t find yuck on a jobbie… Sorry.’

  On the screen, the video whizzed all the way through to the end, freezing at the final frame – Fred Marshall, sagging in the chair, covered in blood, face a ruined mess of flesh and bone. Sally MacAuley standing beside him, weeping.

  Tufty shook his head. ‘Looks like it’s a one-woman show. Well, one woman, one victim, but you know what I mean.’

  Logan thumped him on the shoulder. ‘Get the car.’

  Sally sat at the kitchen table, hands curled around her mug, face turned to the patio doors. She didn’t look around as Logan levered himself into the chair opposite.

  Through the patio doors, the garden was a riot of green and orange – the pale fingers of beech leaves falling in one corner. In the other, Aiden was sitting on the playset’s swing. Not playing, not smiling, not laughing: sitting there. Motionless.

  Sally wiped at her glistening eyes. ‘It’s like he’s dead.’

  Logan put his notebook on the table. ‘It wasn’t kids who burned down the shed, was it? It was you.’

  ‘It’s like they took him away and killed my baby boy. And all I got back was this lifeless husk.’

  ‘After you tortured and murdered Fred Marshall, you needed to get rid of all that blood. So you burned it down.’

  She bit her bottom lip. ‘He’s my son. But he’s dead.’ Wiped at her face again. ‘All this time I’ve been telling people I know he’s alive … and he’s not.’

  ‘Only DI Bell found out, didn’t he?’

  She tore her eyes from the motionless child outside. ‘He was the only one who ever cared, so I called him up. I told him: “I’ve done something terrible…”’ A bitter laugh rattled free. ‘I only wanted Marshall to confess. To tell me what he’d done with Aiden, but he wouldn’t. And I got angrier and angrier and then…’ Deep breath. ‘And Duncan came round and he was horrified, of course he was, but he understood. He made it all better. Made the body disappear.’

  ‘Then why did you kill him?’

  The wind picked up outside, tumbling fallen leaves across the lawn, setting Aiden swinging – but not much. As if the ghost of his father was trying to push him, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  Sally stared into her coffee. ‘Have you ever done something you can’t … undo? That it doesn’t matter how good you try to be from that moment on, you’ve got this horrible dark stain that goes right to your core?’

  Of course he had.

  ‘You stabbed him.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I scrub myself till I bleed. I’ll never be clean again. No wonder Aiden hates me.’

  ‘Bell heard there was going to be a new slip road going right through the pig farm where he buried Fred Marshall, so he came all the way back from Spain, back from the dead, to dig Fred up and rebury him somewhere he’d never be found. To protect you. And you killed him.’

  A small shrug. ‘He’d found out about the plan to buy Aiden from the Livestock Mart. He wanted to go to the police.’ Her bitter laugh got colder and harder. ‘The police. All this time you’ve done nothing! And he wanted to hand the whole thing over to you. Let you ruin it. After everything I’d done to get that invitation.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Rennie put his hand on top of Sally’s head, making sure she didn’t bash it off the roof as she got into the pool car – both hands cuffed in front of her.

  The other pool car sat between the horsebox and her four-by-four, blocking it in.

  Steel took a long drag on her fake pipe thing, the words coming out in a huge cloud of strawberry steam. ‘So Ding-Dong didn’t kill anyone.’

  Logan leaned on his crutch. ‘Except maybe Rod Lawson. Assuming the body we exhumed is actually him.’

  ‘Hairy Roddy Lawson? Pfff… I’d lay even money on the furry sod overdosing on bargain-basement heroin and supermarket vodka. That boy was a walking corpse at the best of times.’

  Rennie buckled Sally in, clunked the door shut, and waved at them, grinning away like an idiot. Because what was the point of being one if you didn’t advertise the fact? One last flourish, then he climbed in behind the wheel, and drove off.

  Don’t see what he had to be so happy about. It wasn’t as if anyone got a happy ending out of this one.

  Logan limped across to the other pool car. ‘Only thing we can be certain of is that Fred Marshall didn’t kill Kenneth MacAuley. What she did to the poor sod… He would’ve confessed, no way he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Guvs?’ Tufty appeared around the corner of the woodshed, with Aiden in tow. The wee boy held his hand, but there was no connection to it. Tufty might as well have been pulling a wheelie suitcase behind him. ‘Well, technically Guv and Sarge, but “Guvs” was quicker. Anyway: update from the Children and Families team: they’re sending out a Margaret McCready? Says she knows you?’

  ‘Fred Marshall’s social worker.’ Logan nodded. ‘Suppose there’s a symmetry in that.’

  Tufty squatted down in front of Aiden and smiled. ‘You’re going on an adventure! Isn’t that great?’

  Aiden just looked at him.

  ‘Come on, Laz, get a shift on, eh?’ Steel leaned on the steering wheel, vaping out huge clouds of strawberry steam as Logan winced his way into the passenger seat.

  He sat there, panting. Teeth gritted. It wasn’t so much a raging inferno as one of those underground coal fires. Smouldering deep in his innards.

  That’s what he got for ignoring his consultant’s advice and discharging himself from hospital.

  A deep breath. Then another one. Damping down the embers.

  Steel reached across the car and put a hand on his arm. ‘Let’s get
you home.’

  Not yet.

  Logan struggled the seatbelt into its clip. ‘Not till we’ve paid Danielle Smith a visit.’

  Steel puffed out her cheeks. Shook her head. ‘You’re an idiot. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ A smile. ‘But right now, I’m your superior idiot. So drive.’

  50

  The pool car bumped into the wee industrial estate in Northfield. It was a lot more picturesque in the sunshine – OK, the Granite Hill transmitter still loomed in the middle distance, but it wasn’t quite so angry Dalek-ish.

  Logan pointed past the metal warehouses towards the Portakabins. ‘That one, down the end.’

  ‘And then we’re taking you home.’ She parked outside the AberRAD offices.

  A big sign hung in the window, ‘CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE’.

  So much for that.

  Steel sniffed. ‘What now, oh great Superior Idiot?’

  ‘We try her home.’

  Fields drifted past the car windows. They’d lost their lakes, and recovered a bit – the swathes of barley not quite so battered and bent, straightening out in the sun.

  Steel frowned at him. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? Cos I’ve scraped healthier-looking things out of Mr Rumpole’s litter tray.’

  ‘How are you finding working for DI Vine?’

  ‘I’m serious, Laz. From his litter tray.’

  ‘Everyone seems to have really gelled as a team.’

  A snort. ‘Aye, because that’s all down to Johnny “the Vampire” Vine. Man’s got the people skills of a drunk pit bull.’ She slowed for the limits at Drumoak, the fields giving way to bungalows and teeny semidetached houses. ‘See, the key to dealing with motherfunkers like Vine is: you’ve got to keep them busy. Load them down with stuff to review and meetings to attend. Leaving you free to get on with the job.’

  Logan nodded. ‘Wish I’d known that when I was working for you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t work on me.’ She turned into a housing estate of cut-and-paste bungalows. ‘I’m no’ a motherfunker. I’m spanktastic.’

  ‘You keep telling yourself that.’

  She took a left, then another right, past a row of homes that looked as if they’d been modelled on bird boxes. ‘I’m a damn sight more spanktastic than you.’

  ‘Blah, blah, blah.’

  Steel smiled across the car at him. ‘Have to admit, I’ve kinda missed this.’

  He smiled back. ‘Big softy.’

  Danielle Smith’s building plot sat at the end of the bird boxes, sealed away behind its border wall of temporary fencing. It looked as if she had company – two other cars had joined her white Clio on the driveway.

  Steel parked across the entrance, blocking them in. ‘Try no’ to get stabbed this time, OK?’

  ‘Do my best.’ He clambered from the car, grabbed his crutch from the rear footwell, and limped up the driveway.

  Danielle had been busy – the ground floor was laid out in stud partitioning, most of it wrapped in dark-blue builder’s paper. No sign of anyone, but the smell of hot coals and barbecuing meat wafted towards him in stomach-rumbling coils of smoky goodness.

  Logan hobbled up the makeshift wooden ramp and in through a gap in the woodwork.

  Danielle, Raymond Hacker, and Andy Harris occupied a large skeletal room in the far corner. It was a proper suntrap, sheltered from the wind, and the two men lounged in their shirt sleeves and folding picnic chairs, drinking bottled beer from a large plastic cooler. Danielle wore a vintage Rolling Stones T-shirt, showing off a red floral tattoo that covered most of one forearm, grilling sausages on a kettle barbecue. Tongs in one hand, what looked like a G-and-T in the other.

  She looked over her shoulder at Logan and Steel. Groaned. ‘What is it with cops and sausages? I swear you lot have a special built-in radar.’

  Steel puffed out a cloud of strawberry vape. ‘Well would you look at that – the whole gang of tossers is here!’

  Hacker curled his lip. ‘Oh grow up. You were a pain in the arse when I was a DS and you’re twice as bad now.’

  ‘Aye.’ Andy Harris grinned. ‘Only we don’t have to put up with it no more!’ He and Hacker clinked their bottles together in a toast. As if this was all some sort of joke. As if nothing had happened.

  Really?

  Logan hurpled through the maze of stud partitions towards Danielle. ‘You attacked me. You threatened me with an illegal firearm. You tied me up and stuck me in your bloody boot!’

  Andy Harris’s grin got wider. ‘Some people would pay good money for that.’

  She turned, tongs in hand. ‘You attacked me from behind, tied me up, and left me to burn to death! If Andy hadn’t found me, I’d be a Bacon Frazzle by now.’

  ‘So you admit being there?’

  Danielle glowered. ‘You nearly ruined everything, you moron!’

  Hacker sat forward, voice low and warning. ‘Danners…’

  ‘No, you know what? Time for some home truths.’ She jabbed the tongs at Logan. ‘You have any idea how long we spent getting in with those guys? Two years! Working weddings and events and charity dinners and concerts till they trusted us enough to do the Livestock Mart!’ She grabbed a sausage with her tongs and waved it at him. ‘And you swan in like a halfwit and come this close to screwing it all up.’ She slammed the sausage down again. ‘Should be ashamed of yourselves.’

  Logan stared. ‘You were there to…?’

  ‘TO RESCUE AIDEN, YOU MORON!’ Face red, little flecks of spittle glowing in the sunlight.

  Andy Harris shook his head. ‘Much good it did us. Never saw a penny of the reward.’ He thumped Hacker on the arm. ‘And has she answered any of your calls? No. Not a word. Didn’t even return your savings.’

  ‘That’s not fair. She’s—’

  ‘Oh grow up, Ray!’ Danielle hurled the tongs into the cool box. ‘All that lovey-dovey stuff was just so you’d help find her son. Soon as she got him home: nothing. She used us.’

  Andy saluted her with his beer. ‘A sad truth, but a truth nonetheless. The female of the species, etc.’

  Steel licked her lips, nostrils flaring as she sniffed. ‘Any chance of a sausage?’

  ‘See? Told you. It’s like built-in radar. And they’re vegetarian.’

  ‘Oh…’ Steel shrugged. ‘Ah well, I’m prepared to risk it.’

  Logan frowned. ‘Hold on: you said it took years getting in with “them”. I thought you told us you joined that agency to get dirt on Fred Marshall? He worked for the same…’ Oh, bloody hell. Logan screwed his eyes closed. Idiot. ‘It’s Whytedug Facilitation whatnots, isn’t it? They’re the ones who organise the Livestock Mart!’

  There was a low whistle. ‘Got to hand it to you, Danners: you said he was slow on the uptake.’

  Logan stared at Danielle. ‘Why didn’t you report it?’

  ‘Because you lot wouldn’t have done anything without evidence. And now, thanks to us, you’ve got some.’

  ‘And you’ll testify to all this in court?’

  ‘To put a whole bunch of paedos away?’ She took a sip from her gin and tonic. Smiled. ‘You try stopping me.’

  ‘Good.’ Logan stuck his hand out. ‘Now give me back my phone.’

  ‘All I’m saying is it’d no’ kill us to stop off for twenty minutes and get some lunch.’

  A burger van, parked by the side of the road, went by on the right.

  ‘I’m no’ talking about a three-course sit-down with wine and petit sodding fours. A baked tattie, a double bacon cheeseburger. Hell, even a Styrofoam thing of lukewarm stovies would be better than nothing!’

  Logan checked his phone again. The battery was still showing a red line. ‘Are you sure this charger works?’

  ‘And before you say anything: no, two vegetarian sausages in a gluten-free bap doesn’t count.’ She shuddered. ‘Who in their right mind barbecues vegetarian sausages? No wonder she got kicked off the force.’

  He pulled the plug from the pool car’s cigarette l
ighter and jammed it in again.

  Maybe all that rain had buggered the wiring? Tufty could fix that, couldn’t he? Or rip the data off the memory card and onto a laptop? Something.

  Steel pulled into the Whytedug car park. ‘You’re a slave driver, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh stop wheengeing.’

  ‘You’re no’ even meant to be on duty.’

  ‘Look, I’ll … buy you a fish supper afterwards, OK? Now can we go do this?’

  She climbed out and waited for him. ‘A proper fish supper.’ Following him as he limped across the tarmac. ‘And I want onion rings too, as compensation for my emotional distress.’

  A police Transit growled into the car park, stopping right outside the front doors.

  Logan paused on the way past and knocked on the passenger window.

  It buzzed down and he leaned on the sill. ‘Are we all set?’

  Sergeant Mitchell grinned and offered him a printout. ‘You want us to go first and Big-Red-Door-Key it?’

  ‘No, let’s go for the Pop-Up Surprise. I want to be there when it happens.’

  ‘You’re the boss, Boss.’

  Logan slipped the warrant into his pocket then hobbled through the doors and up the stairs into the reception area.

  Jerry Whyte’s assistant stepped out from behind his desk with a broad smile, shark’s-fin haircut perfectly lacquered. ‘Inspector McRae, how lovely to see you! I read all about your adventures in the paper last week.’ He put a hand against his Breton-topped chest. ‘What an ordeal! I’m so glad…’

  Logan limped straight past him to the doors.

  ‘No, hold on, I have to buzz you in or—’

  ‘“Or” what?’ Steel poked a finger in his chest, blocking his way. ‘That a threat, sunshine?’

  Logan shoved the doors open and lumbered inside.

  Jerry Whyte was on her leather couch, phone to her ear, bare feet up on the coffee table. Haggis the terrier draped across her lap – snoring as she stroked his yellowy fur. ‘No, you tell the ambassador it’s nothing but a tiny setback. My people…’ She looked up. Pulled on an annoyed smile. ‘Sorry, Claus, I have to go. … No, something’s come up. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about.’ A throaty laugh. ‘Yes. … OK, bye.’