Logan McRae Crime Series Books 1-3: Cold Granite, Dying Light, Broken Skin (Logan McRae)

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘So how come you let Hissing Sid suspend the interview?’

  Insch shrugged. ‘Because we were never going to get anything out of Chalmers anyway. At least whatever the Snake comes up with will be entertaining.’

  ‘I thought he was busy representing our favourite child molester, Gerald Cleaver.’

  Insch shrugged and dug the bag of sweets out of his pocket. ‘You know Hissing Sid. That case’s got about a week, week and a half left to run. After that he’s going to need something else to get his face in front of the cameras.’ The inspector offered the open bag to Logan who helped himself to a coconut wheel with a liquorice centre.

  ‘Forensics are going to find something,’ Logan said, chewing. ‘The girl had to be in his flat. There were food scraps and empty wine bottles in that bag. There’s no way he could have got her into that bin-bag anywhere else. . . Unless he’s got another property he eats and drinks at.’

  Insch grunted, rummaging in the bag. ‘Get onto the council in the morning. See if he’s got a second property registered anywhere. Just in case.’ He found what he was looking for: one of the aniseed disks with blue bobbles on it. ‘Listen,’ he said, popping the sweet into his mouth, ‘the post mortem’s been scheduled for quarter to eight this evening.’ He paused, his eyes fixed on the floor at his feet. ‘I was wondering if you would mind. . .’

  ‘You want me to go?’

  ‘As senior investigating officer I should be there, but. . . well. . .’

  The inspector had a little girl about the same age as the victim. Watching a four-year-old being filleted like a side of meat would be rough for him. All the same it wasn’t a job Logan was looking forward to. Especially if Dr Isobel MacAlister was going to be the one doing the filleting. ‘I’ll go,’ he said at last, trying not to sigh. ‘You should probably be interviewing Chalmers anyway . . . as senior investigating officer.’

  ‘Thank you.’ As a token of his esteem he gave Logan the last liquorice allsort.

  Logan took the lift down to the morgue, hoping it would be Isobel’s night off. Maybe he’d be lucky and get one of her deputies instead? But the way his luck was running he doubted it.

  The morgue was unnaturally bright and airy for this time of night, the overhead lights sparkling off the dissecting tables and chiller cabinets. It was nearly as cold in there as it was outside. A heavy layer of disinfectant almost managed to hide the stench of corruption from this morning’s post mortem. The smell of David Reid.

  He arrived just in time to see the little girl being unloaded from her oversized body-bag. She was still wrapped in the packing tape, only now the shiny brown strips were dusted with white fingerprint powder.

  Logan’s heart sagged. It was Isobel, not one of her deputies, who stood on the far side of the stainless steel table, directing the little body into place. She was dressed in her cutting gear, the red rubber apron still clean and free from gore. The Procurator Fiscal and the corroborating pathologist were already there, dressed in coveralls, discussing the body with Isobel as she described the rubbish tip where it had been discovered.

  She looked up as Logan approached, annoyance shining out from behind her safety goggles, and pulled down her surgical mask. ‘I thought DI Insch was SIO on this case,’ she said. ‘Where is he this time?’

  ‘He’s interviewing the suspect.’

  She snapped the mask back into place and muttered her displeasure. ‘First he skips the David Reid post mortem and now he can’t even be bothered to attend this one. I don’t know why I bloody bother. . .’ Her complaints trailed off into silence as she prepared her microphone and then went through the opening preliminaries. The Procurator Fiscal cast a disapproving glance at Logan. Clearly he agreed with Isobel’s reading of the situation.

  The shrill bleeping of Logan’s mobile phone cut across her listing of those present and she hurled a furious scowl at him. ‘I do not allow mobile phones to be used during my post mortems!’

  Apologizing profusely, Logan dug the offending article out of his pocket and switched it off. If it was anything important they’d call back.

  Still seething, Isobel finished off the introductory procedure, selected a pair of gleaming stainless steel scissors from the tray of instruments and began to snip away at the packing tape, documenting the state of the body as it was uncovered.

  Underneath the tape, the little girl was naked.

  A big chunk of hair threatened to come away as Isobel tried to unwrap the child’s head. She loosened it with acetone, the sharp chemical smell cutting through the room’s antiseptic tang and underlying perfume of decay. But at least this body hadn’t been lying in a ditch for three months.

  Isobel replaced the scissors on the tray and her assistant started packing the tape into labelled evidence bags. The body was still curled up in a foetal position. Gently Isobel worked the rigor out of the joints, flexing them back and forward until she could lay the little girl out flat on her back. As if she was just sleeping.

  A blonde four-year-old girl, slightly overweight, with numerous bruises on her shoulders and thighs, the contusions dark on her waxy skin.

  A photographer Logan didn’t recognize was snapping away as Isobel worked.

  ‘I’ll need a good head and shoulders shot,’ Logan told him.

  The man nodded and perched over the cold, dead face.

  Flash, whirr, flash whirr.

  ‘There’s a deep incision between the left shoulder and upper arm. It looks like. . .’ Isobel pulled at the arm, opening up the deep gash. ‘Yes: it goes all the way down to the bone.’ She prodded the cut surfaces with a gloved finger. ‘It was inflicted some time after death. A single blow from a sharp, flat blade. Possibly a meat cleaver.’ She moved in so close to the incision that her nose was almost touching the dark-red flesh. She sniffed. ‘There is a distinct smell of vomit in the region of the cut. . .’ She stuck out a hand. ‘Pass me those tweezers.’

  Her assistant did as he was told and Isobel ferreted around in the wound, finally emerging with something grey and gristly.

  ‘There are signs of partially-digested food in the wound.’

  Logan tried not to picture the scene. Failed. ‘He was trying to cut her up,’ he sighed. ‘Trying to get rid of the body.’

  ‘And what makes you think that?’ Isobel asked, one hand resting lightly on the little girl’s chest.

  ‘God knows there’s enough talk of dismembered bodies in the papers. He wants to get rid of the evidence, so he tries to hack it up. Only it’s not as easy as it sounds. Just trying it makes him sick.’ Logan’s voice was hollow. ‘So he wraps her up in packing tape, stuffs her in a bin-bag and puts her out for the scaffies to take away.’ In London they might be refuse disposal operatives, but in Aberdeen they were scaffies.

  The Procurator Fiscal actually looked impressed. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘You may well be correct.’ He turned to Isobel’s assistant, Brian, who was busy popping the bits of gristle into a little plastic tube. ‘Make sure that gets sent off for DNA analysis.’

  Ignoring them, Isobel opened the child’s mouth, peered in with a tongue depressor and recoiled. ‘She appears to have ingested some form of household cleaner. Quite a lot of it from the state of her mouth. The teeth and skin all show signs of corrosive bleaching. We’ll get a better idea when we get to the stomach contents.’ Isobel closed the child’s mouth with one hand, the other supporting the back of the blonde head. ‘Hello. . .’ She beckoned the photographer closer. ‘Take one of this. The back of the head has suffered a severe concussive blow.’ Her fingers moved, probing the hair just above the spot where the skull met the neck. ‘This wasn’t a blunt object, but something wide that tapered to a point.’

  ‘Like the corner of a table?’ asked Logan, not liking where this was going.

  ‘No, it would have to be sharp, solid, like the edge of a fireplace, or a brick.’

  ‘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.

  Damn Detective Inspector Insch and his little bloody 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 damn 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 glass 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 partition. ‘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 hell 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 glasses. ‘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 bloody Jesus. I think I can remember Jesus’ bloody 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. ‘God, 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—’

  ‘Fuck.’ 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 fuck 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 scumming 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 bastard to the wall by his balls.’

  ‘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 shite always says,’ he said, mopping the sweat off his head. ‘We’ve got no evidence.’

  ‘What about the receipt?’

  ‘Circumstantial 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 assuming 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 wron
g. 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 bitching 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.