"Was it the cause of death?"
"If drinking bleach didn"t kill her... I won"t be able to say until I"ve opened up the skull."
There was a bone-saw lying on the trolley by the table. Logan didn"t want to watch what was going to happen next.
d.a.m.n Detective Inspector Insch and his little b.l.o.o.d.y daughter. He should have been the one standing here watching a four-year-old getting cut up into little chunks, not Logan.
Isobel ran the scalpel blade from behind one ear, all the way across the top of the head to the other, slicing through the skin. Without even flinching, she dug her fingers into the wound and pulled, peeling the scalp forward like a sock. Logan closed his eyes, trying not to hear the sounds as the skin separated from the underlying muscle structure: like breaking up a head of lettuce. Exposing the skull.
The teeth-rattling shriek of the bone-saw echoed around the tiled room and Logan"s stomach lurched.
And all the way through it Isobel kept up her detached, emotionless narrative. For once he was glad they weren"t seeing each other any more. There was no way he could have her touch him tonight. Not after this.
9.
Logan stood outside the front door of Force Headquarters under the concrete canopy, looking out at the dreary buildings. The rain looked as if it was settling in for another night and this end of the town was virtually deserted, enjoying the post-nine o"clock lull. The shoppers had gone home hours ago, the drinkers were all in the pubs, where they"d stay till closing time. The crowds outside the Sheriff Court dispersed for another day.
Force HQ was pretty quiet too. The day shift were long gone: off enjoying a pint, or the arms of a loved one. Or, in DI Steel"s case, someone else"s loved one. The back shift were drowsy and bloated after a heavy lunch, coasting the last three hours towards midnight and home-time. The night shift still another hour away.
The air was clean and cold, with just the slightest hint of traffic fumes: which was a d.a.m.n sight better than the smell of burning bone. He never wanted to see the inside of a child"s skull again. Grimacing, he clicked the top off the painkillers and swallowed another one. Last night"s punch was still making his stomach ache.
Taking one last breath of fresh air, Logan shivered and made his way back into the tiny reception area.
The man behind the gla.s.s frowned at him, then recognition dawned and he beamed a welcoming smile. "It is you!" he said. "Logan McRae! We heard you was coming back."
Logan did his best to place the middle-aged man with the rapidly receding hairline and wide moustache, and failed.
The man turned and shouted over his shoulder, "Gary, Gary, come see who it is!"
An overweight man in an ill-fitting uniform stuck his head round from behind the mirrored part.i.tion. "What?" He had a big mug of tea in one hand and a Tunnocks Tasty Caramel Wafer in the other.
"Look!" The moustached one pointed at Logan. "It"s himself."
Logan smiled uncertainly. Who the h.e.l.l were they? And then it clicked... "Eric! I didn"t recognize you." Logan peered at all the scalp on display above the desk sergeant"s gla.s.ses. "What"s happened to everyone"s hair? I saw Billy this afternoon: he"s bald as a coot!"
Eric ran a hand through his thinning locks and shrugged. "It"s a sign of virility. Anyway, look at you!"
Big Gary grinned at Logan, little flakes of chocolate falling from his caramel wafer down the front of his black uniform like dirty dandruff. "DS Logan McRae, back from the dead!"
Eric nodded. "Back from the dead."
Big Gary took a slurp of his tea. "You"re like that bloke that comes back from the dead. Whatsisname, you know, the one from the bible?"
"What," said Eric, "Jesus?"
Big Gary smacked him lightly on the back of the head. "No not b.l.o.o.d.y Jesus. I think I can remember Jesus" b.l.o.o.d.y name. The other one: leper or something. Comes back from the dead. You know."
"Lazarus?" said Logan, starting to inch away.
"Lazarus! That"s right!" Big Gary beamed. Bits of chocolate biscuit were stuck to his teeth. "Lazarus McRae, that"s what we"ll call you."
DI Insch wasn"t in his office, or the incident room, so Logan tried the next logical place: interview room three. The inspector was still closeted with Watson, Slippery Sandy and Norman Chalmers. There was a look of utter disgust on Insch"s face. Things obviously weren"t going well.
Logan politely asked if he could have a word and waited outside until the inspector suspended the interview. When he came out, Insch"s shirt was almost transparent with sweat. "G.o.d, it"s boiling in there," he said, wiping his face with his hands. "Post mortem?"
"Post mortem." Logan held up the thin manila folder Isobel had given him. "Preliminary results. We won"t get the bloodwork back till later this week."
Insch grabbed the folder and started flicking through it.
"The results are pretty conclusive," said Logan. "Someone else killed David Reid. The MO"s different, the method of disposal"s different, and the victim was female rather than male-"
"f.u.c.k." It was more of a grunt than a word. Insch had reached the part of the form marked "PROBABLE CAUSE OF DEATH".
"And they can"t rule out a fall at this stage," said Logan.
Insch said f.u.c.k again and stomped off down the corridor, heading for the coffee machine by the lifts. He punched in the numbers and handed Logan a plastic cup of pungent, brown, watery liquid with a faint sc.u.mming of white froth on the top. "OK," he said. "So Chalmers is out of the frame for the Reid kid."
Logan nodded. "We"ve still got a killer out there, preying on little boys."
Insch slumped against the coffee machine, making it rock alarmingly. He rubbed a hand across his face again. "What about the bleach?"
"Applied after death: there wasn"t any in her stomach or lungs. Possibly trying to get rid of DNA evidence."
"Successful?"
Logan shrugged. "Isobel didn"t find any seminal fluid."
The inspector"s shoulders sagged. He stared blankly at the file in his hand. "How could he do something like that? A wee girl..."
Logan didn"t say anything. He knew Insch was thinking about his own daughter, trying not to put the two images together.
At last DI Insch straightened his shoulders, his eyes sparkling dark in his round face. "We"re going to nail this b.a.s.t.a.r.d to the wall by his b.a.l.l.s."
"But the head injury? If she fell, if it was an accident-"
"We"ve still got him on concealing a death, getting rid of the body, attempting to pervert the course of justice, maybe even murder. If we can persuade a jury that he pushed her."
"Think they"ll go for it?"
Insch shrugged, sipping suspiciously at his white coffee with extra sugar. "No. But it"s worth a crack. Only fly in the ointment is forensics. So far there"s no sign of the girl having ever been in Chalmers"s flat. And it"s not like the place had been recently cleaned either, the bedroom was your proverbial pigsty. Chalmers says he"s got no idea who the girl is. Never seen her before."
"That"s a shock. What"s Sandy the Snake saying?"
Insch glowered in the direction of the interview room. "Same thing the dirty wee s.h.i.te always says," he said, mopping the sweat off his head. "We"ve got no evidence."
"What about the receipt?"
"Circ.u.mstantial at best. Says the kid could have been stuffed into that bag after it left Chalmers"s property." He sighed. "And the little sod"s right. If we can"t find some solid evidence linking Chalmers to the dead girl, we"re screwed. Hissing Sid will tear us to pieces. And that"s a.s.suming the Procurator Fiscal wants to risk going to trial. Which isn"t likely, unless we get something concrete..." He looked up from his coffee. "Don"t suppose his prints were all over the packing tape she was wrapped in?"
"Sorry, sir: wiped clean."
It was all wrong. Why would someone go to all the trouble of making sure there were no fingerprints on the tape and then just chuck the body in a bag full of his own rubbish?
"Well," said Insch, straightening up, and staring back down the corridor towards interview room number three, "I suppose we shall just have to ignore the complete lack of hard evidence and keep Mr Chalmers banged up. But I gotta admit, I"m getting a bad feeling about this one. I don"t think we"re going to make it stick..." He stopped and shrugged. "On the bright side: it"ll ruin Sandy the Serpent"s day. He won"t get to strut his stuff in front of a jury."
"Maybe another death threat would take his mind off his disappointment?"
Insch smiled. "I"ll see what I can do."
Norman Chalmers was formally arrested and sent back to his cell to appear in court on the next lawful day; Sandy Moir-Farquharson went back to his office; DI Insch went to his dress rehearsal. Logan and WPC Watson went to the pub.
Archibald Simpson"s had started life as a bank, the large banking floor transformed into the main bar. The ornate ceiling roses and high cornices were blurred above a fug of cigarette smoke, but the crowd were more interested in the cheap drinks than the architectural details.
As the bar was a two-minute walk from Force HQ it was a popular hangout for off-duty police. Most of the search team were in here. They"d been out in the pouring rain all day, some hunting for forensic evidence on the muddy banks of the River Don, the rest looking for Richard Erskine. Today they"d been searching for a missing child. Tomorrow they"d be looking for a dead body. Everyone knew the statistics: if you didn"t find an abducted child within six hours, they were probably dead. Just like three-year-old David Reid, or the unknown girl lying on a slab in the morgue, a big Y-shaped scar running the length of her torso where all her insides had been taken out, examined, weighed, slithered into jars, bagged, tagged and handed into evidence.
They"d spent the first third of the evening talking in serious tones about the dead and missing children. The second third had been spent b.i.t.c.hing about the Professional Standards investigation into the leaking of information to the press. Changing their name from Complaints and Discipline hadn"t made them any more popular.
And the last third getting seriously drunk.
One of the PCs Logan couldn"t remember his name lurched back to the table with another round of beers. The constable was entering that stage of drunkenness where everything seemed very funny, giggling as half a pint of lager went all over the table and down the leg of a bearded CID man.
Logan had no intention of being the responsible adult tonight, so he grabbed his pint and walked, a little unsteadily, across to the bandits.
There was a small knot of off-duty officers gathered round a quiz machine, shouting and cheering, but Logan walked right past them.
WPC Watson was standing on her own, jabbing away at a bandit. Flashing lights spiralled round and round the machine"s face, glittering and bleeping and dinging away. A half-drunk bottle of Budweiser was clutched in her other hand as she stabbed the flickering b.u.t.tons, sending the tumblers whizzing round again.
"You look happy," said Logan as two lemons and a castle appeared on the display.
She didn"t even look round. "Not enough b.l.o.o.d.y evidence!" Watson hammered the nudge b.u.t.ton, getting an anchor for her troubles.
"Have to keep looking," said Logan, taking a swig, enjoying the warm fuzzy feeling spreading out from the middle of his head. "Forensics didn"t find anything at the flat-"
"Forensics couldn"t find s.h.i.te in a septic tank. What about the b.l.o.o.d.y receipt?" She stuffed another couple of pounds in the slot and smacked her fist down on the Go b.u.t.ton.
Logan shrugged and Watson snarled at the pictures: anchor, lemon, bar of gold.
"We all know he"s guilty!" she said, sending the tumblers spinning again.
"And now we"ve got to prove it. But we wouldn"t even have him in custody if it wasn"t for you." Logan had a bit of difficulty with the word "custody", but WPC Watson didn"t seem to notice. He leaned forward and poked her gently in the shoulder. "That receipt was a d.a.m.n clever catch."
He could have sworn she almost smiled as she fed another pound into the machine.
"I didn"t spot the Clubcard points. You did that." She didn"t take her eyes off the flashing lights.
"And I wouldn"t have if you hadn"t found the receipt in the first place." He beamed at her and took another drink.
She took her eyes off the machine"s flashing lights to watch him sway slightly, almost in time with the music. "What happened to "one four times a day, not to be taken with alcohol"?"
Logan winked. "I won"t tell anyone if you don"t."
She smiled at him. "Babysitting you is going to be a full time job, isn"t it?"
Logan clinked his pint gla.s.s against her bottle of beer. "I"ll drink to that!"
10.
Six o"clock and the alarm"s insistent bleeping dragged Logan out of his bed and into a blistering hangover. He slumped at the side of the bed, holding his head in his hands, feeling the contents swell and throb. His stomach was gurgling and churning with lurching certainty. He was going to be sick. With a grunt he staggered to the bedroom door and out into the hall, making for the toilet.
Why did he have so much to drink? The pills said quite clearly they were not to be taken with alcohol...
Afterwards, he leant on the edge of the sink and let his head droop forward to touch the cool surface of the tiles, the acid tang of bile still burning his nostrils.
He slid one eye open, just far enough to make out the pint gla.s.s sitting on top of the cistern. There was still half a bottle of the painkillers he"d been given the first time he"d come out of the hospital, when the scars were still fresh. Logan pulled them out with a trembling hand, struggling with the childproof lid. He filled the gla.s.s with water, knocked back a couple of the pebble-sized capsules, and slouched into the shower.
He wasn"t feeling that much better by the time he was finished, but at least he didn"t smell like a cross between a brewery and an ashtray any more. He was halfway across the hall, rubbing a towel through his hair, when he heard a polite cough.
Logan spun around, heart suddenly racing, his hands balling into fists.
WPC Watson was standing in the kitchen doorway, wearing one of his old T-shirts and waggling a plastic fish slice at him. Her hair, released from its tight regulation bun, fell over her shoulders in dark brown curls. A pair of bare legs stuck out of the bottom of the T-shirt and they were very nice legs indeed.
"Cold, is it?" asked Watson with a smile and Logan suddenly realized he was standing there in the nip, with everything on show.
He clutched the towel swiftly over his exposed nether regions and a furnacelike blush worked its way from the soles of his feet all the way up to the top of his head.
Her smile slipped a bit and WPC Watson frowned, a small crease forming between her neat, brown eyebrows. She was staring at his stomach, where the scars covered the skin with little puckered trails.
"Was it bad?"
Logan cleared his throat and nodded. "I wouldn"t recommend it," he said. "Er... I..."
"Do you want a bacon b.u.t.tie? There weren"t any eggs. Or much of anything else come to that."