Now We Are Dead

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘Actually, the word of the day is—’

  ‘Don’t mess with me today, Davey.’

  ‘Sorry, Sarge.’

  She turned left at the bottom of the street, past rows and rows of pale granite homes. ‘I’m off to pick up Tufty. With any luck that bash on the head will have dunted some sense into it.’

  ‘Well, we can always dream, can’t— Oops. Hold on, got a visitor.’

  A muffled voice in the background sounded suspiciously like Detective Chief Infector Simon Stinky Rutherford. ‘Where’s Detective Sergeant Steel?’

  ‘Don’t you dare, Davey!’

  ‘Sir. She’s just left to collect Constable Quirrel from the hospital.’

  ‘Oh. Good. And what about these phones and things: progress?’

  ‘Tell him to jam them up his fundamental orifice.’

  ‘Got our first batch of people coming in to collect their property later today.’

  ‘Excellent. Well, keep up the good work, and tell DS Steel I need to see her as soon as she gets back. Top priority.’

  ‘Will do, sir.’ He lowered his voice, all conspiratorial. ‘You get that?’

  ‘Oh I can hardly wait.’

  She locked her MX-5 and sauntered across the car park, puffing away on her fake cigarette. Making clouds of watermelon steam. That was the trouble with real cigarettes, they didn’t come in fun fruity flavours. And ‘menthol’ didn’t count. That was just like smoking a rolled-up old person.

  Anyway: twenty to nine and the hospital car park was already crowded with the usual collection of rustbuckets and massive four-by-fours that never had to deal with anything more ‘off-road’ than the potholes on Great Western Road.

  Nice day, though. Warm and sunny.

  What was that, four days in a row? Probably due a monsoon by the end of the week, then. Or snow. After all, it was only July. Probably be sledging down School Hill in—

  The harsh breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep of a car horn made her jump, then scuffle off to the side as a hatchback growled past on lowered suspension and alloy rims. Peugeot 208 with an oversized spoiler and a neon-orange paintjob. The wee turd behind the wheel couldn’t have been much past seventeen: a baseball cap on backwards and a pair of oversized dark sunglasses perched on a long nose. Young woman in the passenger seat.

  The words ‘TOMMY & JOSIE’ were printed on a strip at the top of the windscreen. Did people really still do that?

  And it was a bit early in the day for boy racers too.

  The Peugeot stopped at the end of the row, as close as you could actually get to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in a car these days. Then the passenger door popped open and the young woman got out. Blonde hair long enough to reach the small of her back, a mole on her right cheek. She turned and blew a kiss back into the car, with pouty red lips.

  Well, well, well. If it wasn’t the star of Tufty’s erotic bathroom photo shoot – the one on the stolen phone. Which meant the guy behind the wheel was the phone’s owner. Just as well he was barely out of nappies, because in real life, with her clothes on, his photographic model didn’t look a day over fifteen. Skin-tight jeans, bright-red crop top, denim jacket, and shiny-white trainers with three-inch soles.

  Little Miss Porn Star trotted around to the driver’s side and he buzzed the window down, letting out his horrible Bmmmm-tsh-Bmmmm-tsh-Bmmmm-tsh techno music. She gave him a quick snog, winked, then blew him another kiss, hopped over the wooden barrier and skipped across the road towards the hospital’s main entrance. ‘TOMMY’ watched her all the way. Probably ogling her fifteen-year-old backside, having nasty filthy thoughts about what he’d do to it later.

  Roberta marched over, narrowed her eyes, leaned forward and stared into the car.

  ‘JOSIE’ disappeared through the automatic doors and ‘TOMMY’ faced front again. Saw Roberta staring at him and flinched.

  ‘The hell you looking at, Granny?’ He gave her the finger, cranked up the tunes, and drove off. BMMMM-TSH-BMMMM-TSH-BMMMM-TSH …

  Who the fudgemonkeying motherfunker was he calling ‘Granny’?

  She whipped out her phone and took a photo of the Peugeot’s number plate before it disappeared. Little sod was about to find out what happened when you screwed about with the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009.

  Roberta thumbed out a quick text to go with the picture:

  Gordy: I need you to look up a wee shite

  for me

  Possible first name “Tommy”

  Drives a sharny neon-orange Peugeot GTI

  Registration number in the pic

  ASAP

  The Peugeot BMMMM-TSHed its way along the road skirting the car park, then zoomed off with a boy-racer roar of oversized exhaust.

  Dick.

  Her phone launched into Cagney & Lacey.

  ‘Gordy?’

  ‘Aye, hold on. System’s running like a one-legged dog the day … OK. Registered owner is Angela Shand, sixteen Oldfold Gardens, Milltimber.’

  ‘He didn’t look much like an Angela.’

  ‘Checking insurance details … Here we go: named driver is Thomas Corona Shand, seventeen, resident at the same address.’

  ‘Seventeen? Insurance must be costing them a sodding fortune.’ Still, if ‘JOSIE’ was fifteen instead of fourteen, Tommy would have a decent chance of getting off when it came before the Procurator Fiscal. A less than two-year difference got him a free pass under Section Thirty-Nine.

  Two years and a day got him a stint at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and his very own place on the Sex Offenders’ Register.

  Roberta looked back towards the hospital entrance – a dirty-grey cantilever overhanging a clot of smokers in their hospital dressing gowns, at the end of a turning circle marked ‘NO ENTRY’ and ‘BUSES ONLY’.

  OK, so ‘JOSIE’ hadn’t exactly looked as if she was being coerced in the photos, but that didn’t mean Tommy Shand hadn’t pressurised her into it. Or that the photography session was the first time. Or that she wasn’t fourteen in real life.

  And it’d only take a minute to check.

  ‘We done?’

  ‘Aye. Thanks, Gordy.’ She hung up and hurried across the road. Skirted the smoky clot, and stepped in through the automatic doors. No sign of ‘JOSIE’ in the wee shop just inside the main entrance. Roberta peered over the balustrade at the stairs leading down to the lower level. No sign of ‘JOSIE’ there either.

  There were rows of plastic chairs, bolted to the floor in front of the reception desk at the far end of the lobby. A half-dozen wheezy-looking men and women peppered the rows … and there she was, sitting on her own, head down so her hair hung forward over her face nearly into her lap. She was fiddling with the ends, knees together, one leg jumping up and down on its own.

  Roberta sank into the seat next to her. ‘Aye, aye.’

  She flinched upright, eyes wide and startled.

  ‘It’s OK, I’m a police officer, no’ a pervert.’ Roberta flashed her warrant card. ‘See?’

  ‘Hello?’ A wee voice, wobbly, nervous. Like the smile.

  ‘You OK? Cos you look—’

  ‘Dad’s got cancer.’ The smile slipped a little. One shoulder came up in a lopsided shrug. ‘It’s moved to his lungs and his spine.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’ Roberta cleared her throat. ‘So … you in visiting?’

  A nod. ‘Waiting for Mum, Aunty Vicki, and Uncle Pete. Don’t want to go in on my own.’ She shrank a little in her seat, her voice shrinking too. ‘He’s going to die.’

  ‘That sucks arseholes.’

  She nodded. Blinked a couple of times. Ran a hand across her eyes.

  ‘I’m Roberta, by the way.’

  A sniff. Another nod. ‘Josie.’

  ‘How old are you, Josie?’

  ‘Fifteen.’ She went back to fiddling with her hair. ‘But I’ll be sixteen in January.’

  So Tommy probably wasn’t going on the register. But the randy wee sod was still getting charged. Shagging a fifteen-year-old. There were things you
could turn a blind eye to, and things you couldn’t. Plus there was the ‘Granny’ thing. But mostly the underage sex.

  Roberta pointed towards the entrance. ‘Your boyfriend drop you off?’

  Another nod. ‘We grew up next door to each other.’

  ‘No’ easy being fifteen, dealing with stuff like this.’ She dug a business card out of her pocket and wrote her mobile number on the back. Held it out. ‘If you’re ever in trouble, I want you to give me a call, OK?’

  Voices came from the lobby behind them: ‘No, Pete, I don’t have to agree with you. You know nothing about it.’

  ‘I’m not fighting with you, Vicki, I’m just saying that if I’d taken Anderson Drive we would’ve got stuck at the roadworks.’

  Josie looked over her shoulder. Stood. Pulled on her wobbly smile again. ‘Mum.’

  Roberta creaked to her feet and turned.

  Two women and a man were bustling towards the seating area.

  The women couldn’t have looked more different if they’d tried. One was short, with a shoulder-length tumble of nearly-blonde curls, with half an inch of roots showing. Round cheeks and a slightly piggy nose. Terrible clothes, though, as if she’d bought the entire outfit from Frumps-R-Us. The other woman was tall, with long features and a short brown bob, tweed jacket and jeans. Oh aren’t I so stylish?

  Josie hugged the frumpy one, while Aunty Vicki had another go at Uncle Pete: ‘For goodness’ sake, could you not have put on a tie? Why do you always have to look like a slob?’

  Pete sighed. ‘I don’t need to wear a tie to visit my own brother!’ A tie probably wouldn’t have helped, he’d still be a middle-aged man with greying sideburns and a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. High forehead. A little chubby. The kind of person who coached under-fifteens’ football and spent his life ferrying his kids to dance class and chess club. The kind whose neighbours ended up on Crimewatch saying what a nice guy he was and how no one could have guessed that he’d finally snap and bury his dismembered wife under the patio.

  Josie’s mum gave one last squeeze and backed away a couple of steps. Put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Did you have a nice sleepover at Emma’s, sweetheart?’ Then she seemed to notice Roberta, standing right there beside her daughter. ‘I’m sorry, are you …?’

  Josie pointed. ‘Mum, this is Roberta, she’s a police officer.’

  Her mum paled, reached out a hand and grabbed the back of a seat. ‘Is Dan … Is … Did he …?’

  ‘Nah, I was just passing and Josie looked a bit worried. Thought I’d see if I could help.’

  Aunt Vicki stuck her hands on her hips. ‘If you’re looking for something to do, Officer, I’d suggest tracking down the animal that attacked that poor woman yesterday!’

  Cheeky tweed-wearing cow.

  Roberta took a step towards her, but Uncle Pete got in the way.

  ‘Come on, Victoria, she was only trying to be nice to Josie.’

  ‘Don’t fawn, Peter.’ Aunt Vicki couldn’t even look at him. ‘If the police did their jobs properly that kind of thing would never happen!’

  ‘She doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘Yes I bloody do!’

  Roberta sniffed. ‘It’s OK. I was just leaving anyway.’ She gave Josie a wee hug. ‘Don’t lose that number.’ Then turned and sauntered off, hands in pockets.

  With any luck Uncle Pete would snap sooner rather than later. And there wasn’t a jury in the land that would convict him for it.

  Meantime, she had a detective constable to collect.

  Tufty stepped out of the ward and gave her a smile. ‘I did has scrambled eggs for breakfast.’ They’d taped a bit of gauze to the back of his head and his left eye was aubergine-purple around the outside – the white marred with a fingernail-sized splodge of red – but other than that he looked OK. Or as OK as he ever did. Scrawny wee spud that he was.

  Roberta stuck her hands in her pockets and slouched against the wall. ‘No Cone of Shame, then?’

  ‘Don’t know what they did to it, though. Tasted like linoleum laced with furniture polish.’

  A nurse hurried out of the ward, pretty in a pneumatic, spank-me-Matron, jolly-hockey-sticks kind of way.

  She bustled up to Tufty and handed him a bit of paper. ‘Just in case.’ She winked, then sashayed away, putting a bit of bum into it.

  Unbelievable.

  Roberta raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh aye?’

  Tufty stuck the note in his pocket and grinned. ‘So, what we doing today?’

  ‘Nurses by the look of it.’ She shook her head. ‘What the hell do perky young things see in you? Two in two days. Look at you: a whippet that’s been bashed by the ugly stick.’

  ‘Jealous much?’

  ‘I’ll never understand heterosexual women as long as I live.’ She led the way down the corridor, making for the lifts. ‘Back in the real world – your mate and mine: Kenny Milne. Going to lean on him a little bit.’

  ‘Ah …’ Tufty pulled a face. ‘Without a lawyer?’

  ‘I don’t give a toss about “admissible in court”, I care about the wee kids he had hiding in his wardrobe. And if we’re lucky, he’ll be too off his face on painkillers to remember we did it.’

  Tufty sneaked up the corridor to the ward door. Checked both ways. No one else in sight, just him and Steel. She’d done something different with her hair today, like comb it with an angry badger. ‘Clear.’ He opened the door and slipped inside.

  Steel followed with a very rude groaning noise.

  The ward beds were nearly empty, just an old man snoring away and a young man playing something on his iPad, headphones on. Kenny Milne was in the bed by the window. And going by the state of him, it was clear he wouldn’t be messing with Grand Master Police Ninja Tufty ever again. He had one leg in plaster, one arm too. His face was a road map of bruises, and that nose of his would never be straight again.

  ‘Bloody hell, Tufty, what kind of animal are you?’

  A shrug. ‘Can’t take all the credit. Those two auld mannies had a go at him while I was fighting off that drunk wifie. Think they battered him with the RNLI collecting tin.’

  She grabbed the privacy curtain and hauled it around Kenny’s bed, setting the rail rattling, sealing them in. ‘Kenny. Kenster. Ken-fit-I-mean. How they hanging?’

  Milne’s head came around slowly, eyes big as dung beetles and twice as shiny. That was a lot of painkillers. He blinked at them. ‘Mmmm … Thirsty …’ Ooh look, missing teeth.

  Seriously injured and off his face on drugs. There was no way questioning him was legal. ‘Sarge, you sure about this?’

  ‘Go wait outside, then. Kenny and me’s having a wee chat.’ She settled on the side of the bed. ‘So, Kenny, be honest now: have you been fiddling with the wee kiddies we found at your place?’

  ‘Sore.’

  ‘Good. Where’d you get the kids from?’

  ‘You wanna know a secret?’ He leaned forward, wobbling, one bruised hand coming up to put a finger to his battered lips. ‘Shhh … See when a prozzie has a kid? No one cares about them, right? No one cares … So, I care. Yup. Care, care, care …’

  ‘You saying their mums don’t mind you interfering with them?’

  ‘Not interfering!’ A scowl. ‘I’m … I’m, you know, running a day care centre! Should get a medal. Looking after … after prozzies’ kids … No one cares, but me.’ He grabbed Steel’s hand. ‘Teaching them a trade, aren’t I? Looking after them and teaching them a trade. Something to fall back on.’ He nodded, agreeing with himself. ‘So what if their mums are on … on the heroin and smack? I’m teaching them a trade.’

  ‘You sure you’re no’ interfering with them?’

  ‘Gotta pick … pick a pocket …’

  Steel let out a little sigh, clearly a bit relieved by that. ‘The two wee kids, I need their mums’ names.’

  ‘Is a secret.’

  ‘No’ between us though, right, Kenny? You and me are best mates.’

  His face made a passab
le impersonation of someone thinking. ‘Oh … OK. I forgot. Yeah …’

  ‘Come on then, Kenny, the mums’ names, soon as you like.’

  ‘Right. Daphne … Daphne McClellan and … and Sally Gray.’

  She glanced over at Tufty. ‘You get that?’

  Oh. Right. Erm … ‘You don’t want me to write it down in my notebook, do you? The one that could get seized as evidence if anyone found out that we did,’ Tufty waggled a finger in a circle taking in the curtained-off bed, ‘this?’

  ‘Fair enough.’ She prised Kenny’s hand off her own and pushed him back into his pillows. ‘Me and my performing monkey here are off to do important police things. You don’t be a stranger, OK?’ Then she hopped off the bed and swept out through the curtains.

  Tufty wiggled his fingers in front of Kenny’s face, putting on a ghosty-hypnotist voice. ‘You are sleeeeping and you dreeeeamed all this. Weeee were never heeeere …’

  Worth a try anyway.

  By the time he escaped the curtains and then the ward, Steel was already halfway down the corridor.

  He hurried after her, catching up as she marched straight past the lifts. ‘Thought we were going back to the station?’

  ‘Soon as we’ve made a wee stop.’

  Yeah … Why did that sound ominous?

  II

  Steel marched through the warren of corridors, boot heels clacking out a drumbeat against the patchwork floor.

  Tufty trotted along beside her. ‘Wherever we’re going, it’s not going to get me into trouble, is it?’

  ‘Let’s no’ spoil the surprise, eh?’

  Yeah … That was ominous.

  They turned a corner and there was a lanky wee PC poking away at a vending machine, a plastic cup of coffee in his other hand. The machine whirred and clunked, something falling down into the retrieval tray. He collected his purchase and stood, turned, clapped eyes on Steel and flinched like he’d been slapped.

  She grinned at him. ‘Hope that Twix is for me.’

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone!’

  ‘Good boy.’ She helped herself to his coffee. ‘Beatrice Edwards said anything yet?’

  Lanky sent Tufty a pleading look: help me. Help me!