The Blood Road

by Stuart MacBride

  She put the phone down as Mr Sharksfin finally managed to work his way past Steel.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jerry, they barged in!’

  A shrug. ‘It’s OK, Harvey. Why don’t you get us some coffee? Flat whites all round? Great.’

  He slipped from the room, leaving the three of them alone.

  Haggis woke up, stretched. Gazed around the room with rheum-crusted eyes.

  She ruffled the fur between his ears. ‘Now, Inspector, what can I do for you this lovely October morning?’

  ‘We’re here to—’

  ‘Before we begin,’ she lowered Haggis to the carpet and stood, ‘first I want to say a huge thank you for bringing Ellie Morton home safe and sound. And not just her, but all those other children too!’ Whyte launched into a one-woman round of applause. ‘Absolutely astonishing. I saw it on the news. Stirring stuff. Well done!’

  Haggis shuffled his way over and had a good sniff at Logan’s trousers.

  She held up a hand. ‘And I know: I promised you guys a case of Glenlivet. Don’t worry, I’m a woman of my word. And we’ve got to think about the reward money. Yes, it was meant to be for “information leading to”, but I think it’s only fair to let you guys nominate a charity for that. OK? OK. Great.’ She raised her voice at the open office door. ‘Harvey? Get my chequebook!’

  Whyte settled into the couch again, arms draped along the back. Winked at Logan. ‘Don’t mention it. Happy to help.’

  Steel looked at him, raised an eyebrow. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Actually, Miss Whyte, we’ve got a present for you.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out Sergeant Mitchell’s sheet of paper. ‘Jerry Whyte, I have a warrant here to search these premises and seize all electronic items for forensic analysis.’ He made a rising gesture. ‘Up we get.’

  She stood, frowning. ‘But this is some sort of mistake, right?’

  ‘Jerry Whyte: I am arresting you under Section One of the Criminal Justice, Scotland, Act 2016 for organising events where children are bought and sold for the purposes of sexual exploitation.’

  Her face hardened. ‘Harvey? HARVEY, GET MY LAWYER HERE! GET HIM HERE NOW!’

  Deep breath: ‘The reason for your arrest is that I suspect you have committed an offence and I believe that keeping you in custody is necessary and proportionate for the purposes of bringing you before a court or otherwise dealing with you in accordance with the law. Do you understand?’

  ‘HARVEY!’

  ‘You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence. Do you understand?’

  Haggis stopped sniffing Logan’s trousers and started barking at him instead.

  Steel stuck two fingers in her mouth and belted out a deafening whistle. ‘In your own time, boys!’

  The ‘boys’ – Sergeant Mitchell and his team – trooped into the room, each one the size of a Rwandan silverback, dressed in combat trousers and big bovver boots.

  Haggis squared up to them, barking and growling.

  ‘I do require you to give me your name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, and address.’ Logan pulled out his handcuffs. ‘You have the right to have a solicitor informed of your arrest and to have access to a solicitor.’

  ‘This is not happening.’ Jerry Whyte backed up, till she was stopped by her desk.

  ‘These rights will be explained to you further on arrival at a police station.’

  ‘HARVEY!’

  Logan shifted in his chair. Didn’t matter how much he wriggled, nothing made it ache any less. He wiped his greasy fingers on another napkin. No point getting it all over DI Bell’s laptop.

  He moved the mouse till the pointer hovered over the video of Sally MacAuley torturing Fred Marshall. Clicked it open again.

  The shed. Marshall tied to a chair. Gag in his mouth.

  Sally, sounding drunk: ‘What’s your name? Say your name.’

  Marshall mumbling something behind his gag.

  She slapped him, ripped out the gag. ‘State your name for the record.’ As if she was taking a deposition. As if this would have ever been admissible in court.

  ‘I’m gonna kill you, bitch! I’m gonna carve you up like—’

  Logan switched the video off before the screaming started. Slumped a bit further, rubbed his face with his hands.

  Still no sign of anyone.

  Should’ve headed home after arresting Jerry Whyte. It wasn’t as if Whyte was going to confess, was it? Nope: it’d be an expensive lawyer, followed by about two hours of ‘no comment’ and, if they were extremely lucky, remanded without bail.

  Yes, but there was no point going home till Steel and Rennie returned with Rooster, AKA: Lionel Beaconsfield. The greasy, child-molesting lump would absolutely brick himself when they dragged him in. That would be worth a watch.

  Till then. Pfff…

  He had a look in DI Bell’s documents folder. All of which seemed to be in Spanish. So someone else would have to go through that.

  How about the pictures?

  The directory was full of folders, the folders full of happy family snaps. Bell and his new wife and their wee boy, grinning away in the Mediterranean sunshine. At a market. At the beach. In the mountains. Eating ice cream. A first birthday party. A romantic candlelit dinner for two…

  And now he was dead. Because he tried to save Sally MacAuley from herself.

  Logan swivelled his seat. ‘Tufty, has anyone delivered the death message to…’

  Ah. Right. He was the only one here. ‘Talking to yourself again, Logan. Told you: it’s not a good sign.’

  He frowned at the laptop.

  ‘I wonder…’

  It only took a couple of seconds to track down the Skype logo and click on it. The sign-in box popped up, the username ‘CARLOSPRIETO1903’ already loaded up as the account name. Logan clicked on ‘NEXT’ for the password screen.

  What was it Tufty had come up with: ‘The Dons’ in Spanish?

  Logan tried, ‘los dones’ but that threw an error.

  How about with capitals? ‘LOS DONES’ – still no.

  ‘OK, all one word…’

  Aha! The computer made its weird backwards-sigh noise and up came Skype, with all of Bell’s contacts listed on the left.

  He clicked on the ‘RECENT’ tab.

  Top of the list was ‘TERESA CASCAJO LUCIANA’. The avatar next the her name was the same happy woman from the family snaps. But second from the top was ‘ROSE SAVAGE’.

  Clicking on her name brought up a big list of interactions – the most recent being a call on Thursday, the day before they found Bell’s body, lasting forty-nine minutes and eighteen seconds.

  The office door bumped open and Tufty reversed in, carrying a tray with teas and biscuits on it. He clunked a mug down in front of Logan. ‘Got an update on the Sally MacAuley interview. She’s now denying she had anything to do with stabbing DI Bell. Says he was like that when he turned up at her door, and she tried to help him.’

  She lied to them. Sergeant Rose Savage, lied.

  Tufty wiggled a packet of Jammie Dodgers at him. ‘You want a biscuit?’

  The rotten, dirty, scheming—

  ‘Are you OK, Sarge?’

  Logan curled his hands into fists. ‘I want you to go find Sergeant Rose Savage and I want you to bring her here. Right now.’

  51

  Sergeant Savage sat on the other side of the table, dressed in her civvies, hair hanging down around her shoulders. Arms crossed. Big Gary hulked next to her in all his porky glory – chest, shoulders, and belly straining his Police Scotland T-shirt to near bursting point. The sergeant’s epaulettes on his shoulders looked tiny in comparison. And, for once, he wasn’t smiling.

  Tufty had his notepad out, the little red light on the recording apparatus winking away next to him. Pen wriggling as he wrote down Logan’s question.

  Savage shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It’s over, OK?’
Logan shifted in his seat, but the burning embers wouldn’t settle. They wanted to ignite.

  She turned to Big Gary. ‘Do you know what he’s talking about?’

  ‘Don’t look at me.’

  Logan tapped the tabletop. ‘When I spoke to you at the Mastrick station, you told me you hadn’t seen DI Duncan Bell since you identified his body two years ago. Would you like to amend that statement?’

  Her expression didn’t change. ‘I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘Well, that is odd. Constable Quirrel?’

  Tufty produced his phone and poked at the screen.

  The Skype ringtone binged and booped out from Savage’s pocket.

  Logan pointed. ‘It’s OK, you can go ahead and answer that.’

  She did. ‘Hello?’

  Her voice crackled from Tufty’s phone. ‘Hello?’

  Big Gary shook his head, setting his jowls wobbling. ‘So she’s on Skype. There a point to this?’

  ‘I wanted to make sure that the Skype address we had was actually yours, Sergeant Savage. Would you like to know where we found it?’

  ‘You’re my Federation rep, Gary, do I have to put up with this, or can I leave?’

  A huge rolling shrug. ‘Wouldn’t advise it at this stage.’

  ‘We found your address on DI Bell’s laptop. You spent forty-nine minutes and eighteen seconds on Skype with him on Thursday evening.’

  Tufty checked his notes. ‘Call started at twenty-five past seven and ended at eight fourteen.’

  She stared. ‘I don’t…’

  ‘So,’ Logan spread his hands out on the tabletop, ‘I’m going to ask you again: would you like to change your statement?’

  ‘Bloody…’ She took a deep breath. ‘So, the thing is—’

  ‘Before you launch into another lie, Sergeant, bear in mind we’ll find out the truth anyway. And it’ll look a lot better for you if you cooperate.’

  She covered her face with her hands and screamed at the tabletop. Then sagged. Sat back. Let her hands fall. And stared at Logan. ‘Ding-Dong wasn’t a bad cop, he just…’ She shook her head. ‘The MacAuley woman had him wrapped so tight he was about to pop. He was talking about leaving Barbara for her. Thought she was this noble warrior queen…’

  The only sounds were Tufty’s pen scratching at his notepad and the distant-thunder growl of Big Gary’s stomach.

  ‘So he’s all guilty that we can’t get anything to stick on Fred Marshall and he goes round there and he blubs the whole thing out to her. What we knew, what we suspected. And two days later he gets this call from her – she’s drunk and she’s sorry and she needs his help. And what does Ding-Dong find when he rushes over there like a lovesick spaniel?’

  Tufty glanced up from his pad. ‘Fred Marshall?’

  ‘Frederick Albert Marshall, looking like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So Ding-Dong takes care of it. Buries the body on some pig farm he knows about, where it’ll never be found. To protect her.’

  Logan sat forward. ‘What about Rod Lawson?’

  ‘Ah.’ She bit her lip. Frowned at the tabletop. ‘Ding-Dong was consumed with guilt. After all: if he’d kept his big mouth shut she wouldn’t have killed Fred Marshall. He bottles it up for weeks and weeks, but he’s getting worse, you know? Calls me in the middle of the night and he’s talking about ending it all.’ Savage huffed out a breath. ‘Eight days later he’s following up a lead on a batch of heroin that’s been cut with scouring powder, and there’s Rod Lawson – lying on his back in this manky squat, all on his own, dead as a breeze block. Hadn’t been dead for long – rigor mortis not even set in yet – but it’s too late to save him. So Ding-Dong decides to fake his own death using Rod Lawson’s body, then slips away to start a new life in Spain.’

  ‘And DI Bell did this all on his own, did he?’

  The car lurches and bumps into the clearing, its headlights catching a manky old caravan. Rusty, and forgotten. Which is what makes this the ideal spot.

  Ding-Dong’s Volkswagen Passat is already sitting there, parked opposite, the engine running.

  Rose pulls up next to it.

  He’s behind the Passat’s wheel, wiping the heel of his hand across his eyes. As if now was the time to start getting squeamish. Nope. Too late for that.

  She hauls on the handbrake, gets out, and walks over to the Passat. Opens the driver’s door. ‘Ready?’

  Ding-Dong just nods. Probably doesn’t trust himself to speak without blubbing.

  Typical.

  ‘Leave your wallet and the suicide notes on the passenger seat.’

  He bites his bottom lip and does what he’s told.

  ‘Come on, Guv: best get it over and done with.’ She snaps on a double pair of blue nitrile gloves and leads him around to the boot of her car. Well, not her car. The car she ‘borrowed’ from outside Rod Lawson’s house. The one that’s going straight to the dismantlers, soon as they’re done here.

  Rose pops the boot open and frowns down at the star of the show: Rod Lawson, groaning and grunting away. Ugly, hairy sod that he is, all dressed up in Ding-Dong’s Tuesday best. Hands cuffed behind his back, high-viz limb restraints securing his knees together. Well: no point taking any risks, is there?

  ‘Grab his legs.’

  Ding-Dong doesn’t move.

  ‘I’m not doing this all myself. It’s your arse I’m saving here!’

  Finally, he nods, and together they wrestle Lawson out of the boot, across the litter-strewn clearing, and into the caravan.

  The car’s headlights ooze through the grimy windows. Not enough light to read by, but enough for what they need. Inside, the caravan’s filthy: most of the units twisted and broken, graffiti and stains on the walls, the door torn off the chemical toilet. The burnt stubs of roaches and scraps of scorched tinfoil make it pretty clear what this place has been used for.

  Rose kicks an empty two-litre of supermarket-brand cider out of the way, sending it skittering and booming its hollow plastic song under the table, where it bounces off the pile of firewood stacked there.

  Between them, they get Lawson propped up on the table. He wobbles a bit, but he stays there. It’s OK: doesn’t have to be for long.

  She marches over to the car, grabs two of the green plastic petrol cans from the Passat’s boot, then makes another trip for two more.

  Ding-Dong still hasn’t moved – standing there with his bottom lip trembling. Staring at Lawson.

  Rose gives him a shove. ‘Get the shotgun.’ And finally, he stumbles out.

  Poor old Hairy Roddy Lawson. The Sandilands Sasquatch. Wobbling away on a manky table, in a manky caravan, parked in a manky clearing. The huge egg growing on his left temple is all red around the edges – not yet darkened into a proper bruise.

  ‘I got…’ Ding-Dong climbs into the caravan, clutching the shotgun against his chest in his ungloved hands. He clears his throat and tries again: ‘It’s…’ He fidgets with the gun, staring at it, avoiding the drug dealer in the room. ‘It was my dad’s.’

  Why do men have to be such babies?

  Rose arranges the petrol cans around the caravan. No point opening them yet – want the thing to burn, not explode.

  Ding-Dong is still standing there.

  ‘Sooner the better, Guv.’

  A thick greasy tear fights its way over the bags under his eyes, rolls down his cheek and into his beard. ‘I can’t.’

  Babies, the lot of them.

  ‘Fine. We’ll go arrest Sally MacAuley for murder instead. That what you want?’

  ‘I never …’ full-on sobbing now, ‘I never wanted … any … of this!’

  She sighs. Puts her hand out. ‘God’s sake, give it here.’

  The shotgun is cold and heavy in her hands as she swings it around and pulls the trigger. No hesitation. No sodding about.

  BOOOOOOOOM! It makes the whole caravan vibrate as most of Rod Lawson’s head disappears. Like popping a water balloon full of tomato soup. The air reeks of butchers’ shops an
d fireworks, a high-pitched whistling screech in her ears.

  Ding-Dong’s mouth falls open. Eyes wide. Tears pouring down his cheeks.

  She shoves him towards the door. ‘Come on, out. Get out of here, now!’

  Have to admit, without the head, Lawson looks a lot more like Ding-Dong. The clothes help, of course. Now: time for the finishing touches. She uncuffs his hands, opens the ziplock bag of jewellery and dresses him up in Ding-Dong’s rings, watch, and bracelet. Double checks everything is where it should be as bits of skull and teeth and scalp and brains drip down the rear window.

  Done.

  She has one last look at him. Shrugs. ‘Nothing personal.’

  Then Rose unscrews the caps from all the petrol cans, tips three of them over, and hurries outside with the fourth – leaving a trail of unleaded behind her. As soon as she’s at a safe distance, she stops. Takes out a book of matches, cups her hand to shield one as she lights it, then holds it to the puddle at her feet.

  Blue and yellow flames race towards the caravan, leap the steps and WHOOMP! The skylight and windows blow out, spinning away into the darkness. Then the fire takes hold and Rod Lawson’s funeral pyre pops and crackles as flesh and plastic and fibreboard go up.

  She tosses the empty petrol can in through the door. Turns.

  Ding-Dong is on his knees, arms wrapped around his head, sobbing.

  Poor old sod. And all because he couldn’t say no to Sally MacAuley…

  Rose walks over and pats his shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s get you on that boat.’

  The recording light blinked as Sergeant Savage frowned. ‘I only found out what Ding-Dong had done when he Skyped me on Thursday. Completely out of the blue. He didn’t mention anything about an accomplice, but … I don’t know. Maybe? Be impossible to prove, though. After all this time.’

  Logan stared at her. ‘Really.’

  ‘I genuinely thought he was dead. When I identified his remains, I thought that was him on the mortuary slab.’ She sighed. Shook her head. Pity poor me. ‘I was going to come forward, after he called, but it’s all been such a shock…’

  Of course it had. And it was about to get much worse.

  Logan pulled a sheet of paper from his folder and placed it on the table. ‘If you hadn’t heard from him, then why is there a big list of calls between your Skype account and his over the last two years?’