Broken Skin

by Stuart MacBride

  Logan patted him on the shoulder. ‘Not we, you. I’ve got to go chase up the IB about those servers.’

  ‘Give us a chance!’ said the middle-aged man in the SKATE OR DIE T-shirt, his desk littered with laptops, mice and scribbled-on Post-it notes. ‘We’re still going through that stuff from the brothel raid. No way we’ll get anywhere near your stuff for at least a week.’

  Logan didn’t like the sound of that. ‘What about Dundee – thought they were supposed to be the computer experts.’

  That got a shrug. ‘Big fraud case – ETSA four weeks minimum.’

  ‘ETSA?’

  ‘Estimated Time Sodding About.’ He picked up an old Biro from his pigsty desk and stuck it in his gob, sooking distractedly. A placebo cigarette.

  ‘Insch will throw a wobbler if we don’t get this done soon as.’

  Skate Or Die swore. ‘Marvellous. Finnie in one ear, Insch in the other. What a bastarding week …’

  ‘Could you not just take a quick peek?’

  ‘No! Finnie’s on my neck as it is.’ He pulled the pen from his mouth, automatically flicking nonexistent ash on the floor. ‘Well, maybe … Look, I’ll see what I can do, OK? No promises.’

  It was better than nothing.

  Nine am and Logan decided it was about time Rickards had a break. He dragged the constable up to the canteen and bought him a cup of tea and a rowie with jam. Both disappeared in record time. ‘You got many more to go?’ asked Logan as Rickards wiped his greasy hands on a paper napkin.

  ‘Six.’ He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘Highspeed, hardcore, German gay porn is even less fun than it sounds …’

  ‘Talking about your personal life again?’ It was DC Rennie, with a croissant and a cup of fancy coffee. He sat down with a grin. ‘Tell you, I was this close—’

  ‘I’m not gay!’ Rickards jumped to his feet. ‘Fucking hell, what’s wrong with you bastards? You know what? I have more sex in a month than you get all year!’ He leant over the table to poke Rennie in the shoulder, as the whole canteen went quiet. ‘With women! It’s BDSM, OK? Just because you don’t fucking understand it, doesn’t make it gay!’ And then he stormed off.

  Rennie sat there with his mouth hanging open, and slowly conversations started back up again. ‘I was only kidding.’

  ‘Yeah, well … He’s a bit touchy.’

  ‘You think?’ Rennie ripped a bite out of his croissant and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. Just taking the piss.’ He stared at the empty doorway. ‘Is he really into all that leather and spanking?’ Rennie grinned. ‘He’s probably on the phone right now to his mates in the bondage mafia. I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and there’ll be a horse’s head in a gimp mask lying on top of the duvet.’

  ‘Think you might have overreacted a bit there?’ asked Logan back in their grubby little incident room, sitting a fresh mug of tea down in front of Rickards and his protruding bottom lip.

  The constable scowled up at him. ‘Did you tell them? I trusted you and—’

  ‘Of course I didn’t! Rennie was just pulling your leg. No one knew. Well, not till you shouted it all over the canteen …’

  Rickards opened his mouth to say something and froze, realization dawning in his horrified eyes. ‘Oh fuck.’ He buried his head in his hands.

  ‘Congratulations.’ Logan patted him on the back. ‘You’ve just come out of the bondage closet.’

  It was nearly lunchtime before they got to the bottom of Frank Garvie’s porn stash, and by then Rickards was beginning to come to terms with his outing. The DVDs were all what they claimed to be, the videos homemade – Garvie in his dark red rubber romper suit, sometimes with friends, but mostly alone. The only things Rickards hadn’t tried were the two canisters of old seventeen-millimetre film. Logan cracked open The Butler’s Revenge and examined the case. According to the Identification Bureau’s audiovisual team it was probably Victorian and there was nothing in the station that could handle film stock that old. Not that it mattered: anything illegal in there would be well past its sell-by-date. There was nothing here to tie Frank Garvie to the corpse of Jason Fettes.

  Rickards picked up one of the ancient film canisters. ‘Er … sir,’ he said, turning it over and reading the title, Festive Frolics, ‘I think these are stolen …’ He dumped it on the desk, then went squirrelling in a stack of paperwork on the floor by the radiator, coming up with a handful of forms, mumbling to himself as he flicked through the pages. ‘Here: three canisters of vintage Victorian erotic films stolen from ClarkRig Training Systems. Knew I recognized them.’ He smiled, proud of himself. ‘Told you I’d been reading the reports.’

  Logan checked the list of stolen property – Rickards was right. Zander Clark, Aberdeen’s premier pornographer, had reported the films missing in amongst a host of other antique sex toys and outfits, with a few computers, mobile phones and digital video cameras thrown in for good measure. A slow smile spread across Logan’s face.

  He dialled DI Insch’s number, but it went straight through to voicemail, so he tried Steel instead. Voicemail again. One more go – the Control Room, where a woman with an almost impenetrable Banff accent told him that both inspectors were in the Terror Readiness Review and wouldn’t be gettin’ oot till aifter six. Logan hung up, tapping the phone against his chin. ‘I think,’ he said at last, ‘that you and I should go pay Mr Frank Garvie a visit. See if he can explain why he’s got stolen Victorian pornography hidden in his sock drawer.’

  But first they were going to take a wee detour and test out a theory.

  Zander with a Z was in the editing suite, a huge insulated mug of coffee sitting alongside a plate of stovies, dark disks of pickled beetroot leaching purple into the potato. People in hard hats lurched back and forwards on the screen in front of him as the director fiddled with the console. He didn’t even look up as Logan and Rickards entered. ‘With you in a minute … this is an important scene …’

  ‘When do the naked Viking women arrive?’

  The large man punched a button and the people froze in place. ‘They don’t,’ he said, winding it back and pressing play, staring intently at the finished product. ‘Perfect!’ He rewarded himself with a massive forkful of stovies, chewing as he spoke. ‘This is Safety First! A guide to container management. Lot of people don’t bother with plot and narrative when they do this kind of stuff, it’s just one stupid scene after another. “Don’t do this, don’t do that” … My safety films have theme and subtext. That’s why they win awards.’

  ‘Yes …’ Logan pulled one of the ancient film canisters out of Rickards’ hands. ‘We were wondering if you recognized this.’

  Zander’s eye went wide. ‘The Butler’s Revenge! You caught the bastard!’ He reached forward and grabbed the other one from the constable. ‘And Festive Frolics!’ he stopped, looking slightly puzzled. ‘What happened to Kitty-Cat Katy and all the other stuff?’

  ‘Kitty-Cat …?’

  ‘Katy. It’s a woman who comes on dressed as a cat and licks herself. One of those old Victorian circus acts. Contortionist pornography from eighteen ninety-eight. Very, very rare.’ He held the films against his chest, cuddling them. ‘You do have them, don’t you? The rest of the stuff that was stolen?’

  ‘We’re currently pursuing several lines of enquiry.’ Which usually meant, ‘we don’t have a sodding clue’ so it was nice to able to use it legitimately for a change. ‘We’ll need to hold on to them for a while as evidence,’ he said and Zander’s face fell. ‘But you’ll get them back.’

  The director nodded. ‘At least you’ve found them … Tell you what,’ he bustled out into the reception, coming back with a couple of DVD cases, ‘I felt kinda guilty you didn’t get one last time. Here: best thing I ever did.’ He gave Rickards his own copy too: Crocodildo Dundee.

  Logan turned the thing over in his hands, and there on the cover – hamming it up behind the heroine’s long, bronzed legs – was Jason Fettes, dressed lik
e a gangster. Which was the real reason for their visit. ‘You never asked us what he’d done.’

  ‘Who?’ Zander’s smile slipped an inch.

  ‘Jason Fettes, AKA Dick Longlay, you never asked what he’d done.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Logan stuck the DVD in the deep pocket of his overcoat and settled back against the mixing desk, arms crossed, giving him DI Insch’s patented silent technique.

  ‘I … well … it all depends what you mean by “knew” … I mean.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Look, I knew Jason was into other stuff. That’s all! I didn’t know he was dead or anything. I get a bit obsessive when I’m working on a film.’

  ‘Other stuff like BDSM?’

  A blush rushed up Zander’s cheeks. ‘He was … renting himself. For sex.’

  ‘Was he now?’

  Another jiggly nod. ‘He was so desperate to get out to Hollywood and try being a proper actor. Had this screenplay he was working on … You’d be surprised how many people want to sleep with a genuine porn star, even in Aberdeen.’ An uncomfortable pause. ‘We used to get emails through the Crocodildo website.’

  Logan stayed silent, watching as Zander Clark, porn producer, started to sweat.

  ‘I … I wasn’t his pimp, if that’s what you’re thinking! I never had anything to do with that! We just treated everything as fan mail and forwarded it on. Really!’

  ‘And did you keep copies?’

  ‘No! Nothing. Deleted everything. It wasn’t anything to do with me, or the company. If Jason wanted to make a bit of money sleeping with deluded, middle-aged ladies that was his business …’ He started picking at the side of his thumb with the nail on his index finger. ‘Seriously, I don’t know anything else.’

  ‘I want the email address you forwarded them on to.’

  ‘Sure, sure, no problem, always happy to cooperate with the police.’ Going for jovial bonhomie and overshooting the mark by about a mile.

  ‘You see,’ said Logan as the fat man hurried off to get it for them, ‘sometimes even Miss Marple gets it right.’

  25

  Garvie wasn’t at work, where a frosty-faced man in jeans and a polo shirt told Logan in no uncertain terms what he thought of the police harassing innocent men until they had to be signed off for stress. So they tried the ex-porn star’s flat in Danestone. The sun was hidden behind the building, casting a long, blue shadow across the frost-bleached grass and glittering grey tarmac. Rickards leant on the bell again and again, until finally an upstairs window cracked open and a bleary face peered out. ‘Go away!’

  Logan put on his best, friendly smile. ‘Come on Frank, let us in: it’s freezing out here.’

  ‘I’m not well.’ And it looked like he was telling the truth: dark purple bags under his eyes, a day’s worth of blue-grey stubble stretched across his double chin and pallid cheeks.

  ‘I can get a warrant if you like?’

  The man’s face went even paler, then disappeared. Thirty seconds later a low buzzing sound came from the door lock. They pushed through into the stairwell, marching up to the third floor. Things had changed in the twenty-four hours since they’d searched Garvie’s apartment. Now the word PERVERT!!! was sprayed across the front door in dripping scarlet paint.

  Garvie hurried them into the flat, slamming the door and locking it behind him. The tiny hallway stank of disinfectant and the lingering taint of burning paper and excrement. They settled in the dark lounge, curtains drawn, the only light coming from the huge projection screen, with one of the starships Enterprise whooshing across it. Garvie hit pause and the music stopped. Up close Logan could see a line of fresh bruising wrapped around the ex-porn star’s throat. As if someone had tried to strangle him. Garvie slumped down onto the large black leather sofa, knocking over two empty wine bottles that clunked and rattled on the laminate floor. ‘Is this going to take long?’ He couldn’t even look at them.

  ‘Depends on you, sir.’ Logan settled into a matching black armchair. ‘We …’ he trailed off. ‘That new?’ Pointing at a stainless steel hook bolted to the ceiling. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before.

  Garvie barely glanced at it. ‘No. What do you want?’

  ‘Tea with milk would be nice. Rickards, do the honours would you?’ The constable nodded, and headed off into the kitchen. Soon the sound of drawers and cupboards being opened and closed filtered into the living room. ‘We’ve got a problem, Frank,’ said Logan, holding up the Victorian film canisters. ‘When we searched your house we found these.’

  Garvie’s eyes flashed up, then back down to his lap. ‘I don’t know anything about those.’

  ‘They were in your bedside cabinet with your home movies and socks. Ring any bells?’

  ‘I …’ And then he was silent again.

  ‘They’re stolen property. Someone broke into ClarkRig Training Systems and made off with these and a number of other items from your exemployer’s private collection. Bit of a coincidence that, isn’t it?’

  Garvie stared at the films. ‘I didn’t steal them!’

  ‘Come on Frank, you knew Clark had these, you knew what they were worth, you broke in and—’

  ‘I bought them!’

  Logan sat back, looking sceptical. ‘Bought them?’

  ‘From a guy. In the pub. I …’ he coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again. ‘I knew they were Zander’s. I was going to give them back to him. I just … didn’t get round to it …’

  ‘And does this guy in the pub have a name?’

  ‘I …’ Garvie’s eyes went back to his curry-stained jogging bottoms. ‘I never met him before.’

  Logan stood, shaking his head sadly. ‘You’ve got to be one of the worst liars I’ve ever seen. Frank Garvie, I’m arresting you for possession of stolen goods, you do not have to say anything—’

  ‘Ron! Ron Berwick. He sometimes sells stuff round the pubs in Bridge of Don – has a place outside Balmedie. I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear!’

  ‘Where outside Balmedie?’

  And Garvie told them everything.

  The afternoon was crisp and clear, frost still dusting the shadowed grass and skeletal brambles like icing sugar. Up above, the eggshell-blue sky faded to hazy white on the horizon, a thin, dark blue line marking the sea, just visible from the small clump of houses nearly eight miles north of Aberdeen. They’d been a farm steading at one point, a wide, horseshoe-shaped, single-storey granite barn for cattle or pigs, but someone had turned them into six terraced houses with lots of varnished wood and dormer windows, a row of single garages sitting off to the left. According to Control, Ronald Berwick lived in the end house, with his wife, three kids and a Labrador.

  ‘Er, sir,’ said Rickards, wriggling in the driver’s seat of their scabby CID Vauxhall, watching as half a dozen firearms-trained officers piled out the back of an unmarked filthy-white van, ‘is this not a bit …’ He pointed at the men and women scurrying towards Ronald Berwick’s house, dressed all in black: black body armour, black scarves wound round their faces, bulky black helmets on their heads, bent nearly double over their black Heckler and Koch MP5 machine pistols, Glock nine millimetres strapped to their hips. ‘Well … over the top?’

  ‘No.’ It had taken some doing to convince the inspector running the control room to let him have a firearms team, but there was no way Logan was going to have a repeat of what happened last time he’d raided a property for stolen goods. He never wanted to attend another police funeral, let alone be responsible for one.

  Two of the black-clad officers flattened themselves on either side of the front door, a third standing ready with the handheld black battering ram, while the others hurried round the back. A wee boy’s face appeared in the window of one of the houses opposite, nose pressed against the glass, eyes wide. A metallic bleep came from Rickards’ Airwave handset and the lead officer’s voice crackled into the car: ‘Team One – we are in position.’

  Another bleep: ‘Te
am Two – aye, we’re roond the back. Nae sign of any bugger.’

  Logan gave the word and the door was battered off its hinges, falling into the hallway while the three SAS-style bobbies charged inside, shouting, ‘POLICE! ON THE FLOOR NOW! NOBODY MOVE!’ Five minutes later the head firearms officer appeared where the front door used to be and gave the thumbs up. And all without a single shot being fired.

  Berwick’s home smelled of fresh paint. There wasn’t a single picture on the walls, the lounge carpet covered with newspapers, a stepladder stood by the electric fireplace, open tins of magnolia sitting next to it. A shout came from the back of the house, ‘I said keep your hands where I can see them!’ followed by a terrified shriek.

  Logan hurried through the lounge into a small hallway where a black-clad, gun-wielding PC was pointing her machine pistol in through an open door. ‘I’m not going to tell you again!’ Someone inside whimpered. Peering round the door Logan saw a terrified man in his early thirties sitting on the toilet, trousers round his ankles, bare legs trembling, face pale, eyes screwed shut, and hands in the air.

  ‘Ronald Berwick?’

  ‘Please don’t kill me!’

  Logan told the constable to lower her weapon. ‘When you’ve finished up there Mr Berwick, I’d like a word with you in the kitchen. And don’t forget to wash your hands.’

  The kitchen-come-dining-room was just as bare as the rest of the house, as if someone had stripped the life out of it. A large, American-style fridge sat in the corner, humming away quietly to itself without a single magnet or kid’s drawing to break up the monotony. The walls were equally spartan: no calendar, no knick-knacks, no flowers, nothing.

  Ronald Berwick was marched through from the bathroom at gunpoint and forced to make nine cups of tea: six for the firearms squad, one each for Rickards and Logan, and one for himself. He even managed to produce a packet of Penguin biscuits. ‘There we go,’ said Logan as the man jittered his way into a seat at the kitchen table, ‘how you feeling?’