Logan McRae 09 - The Missing and the Dead

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘Any idea if it’s accidental, or …?’

  ‘I hope so. We’ve got a missing paedophile on the books: Neil Wood. Disappeared three days ago. His father only reported it today.’

  ‘That’s all we need …’ The sound became muffled, as if she’d stuck her hand over the microphone, partially blocking her firing orders at someone in the background – telling someone to get the Scenes Examination Branch to hotfoot it over from the cashline job in Fraserburgh.

  Smooth tarmac gave way to scabby potholes. Knee-high grass bordered the sides of the road, punctuated by the searching pink antennae of rosebay willowherb. The patrol car bumped across the pockmarked tarmac, then wallowed as Nicholson slowed. The sound of a mudflap grinding against the uneven surface.

  The road gave up in a dead end, just before the entrance to the pool. One way in, one way out. Well, unless you wanted to work your way down the cliff path from the golf course.

  Inspector McGregor’s voice went from muffled to full volume again. ‘Logan, I need to know if this was a suspicious death ASAP. Am I calling in an MIT or not? Then secure the scene. I’ll be right there, soon as I get someone to run admin tasks for you.’

  Logan stuck his Airwave handset on its clip.

  Deano and Tufty’s little police van was parked in the middle of the road, between two jagged lumps of rock, blocking off the entrance to the site. The thing needed a wash, its white paintwork nearly grey with grime, but the stripe of blue-and-yellow blocks along the side glowed in the pool car’s flashing lights.

  No sign of either of them.

  Nicholson hit the button, killing the blue-and-whites.

  Silence.

  Logan grabbed his hat. ‘Get the tape out and secure the road. I want it blocked.’ He turned in his seat, then pointed at the top of the hill, where the first hairpin was. ‘Better make it other side of the water-treatment plant. Don’t want some scumbag with a telephoto lens selling snaps to the tabloids.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  As soon as he clunked the passenger door shut again, she was reversing through the potholes. Did a sharp three-pointer, then accelerated off.

  He turned. Picked his way around the police van. Punched Deano’s badge number into the Airwave.

  But before he could press send, Tufty appeared, scrambling across the pebbled beach, both arms held out as if he was walking the high wire. He paused. Slithered back a couple of steps. Waved. ‘Sarge? Over here.’

  Logan followed him across the pebble beach, avoiding the road. Broken kelp roots clung to the high-tide mark, pale and weathered, like a thousand human tibias. Everything smelled of ozone and salt, underpinned by a thin smear of rotting fish. He looked over his shoulder. ‘Guy was down here taking photos for some urban-decay-project-thing. Young lad doing an HND in photography at Aberdeen College. Peed himself. Then battered it over to Macduff on his bike. Saw us at the harbour, and that was that.’

  A nod. Pebbles crunched and shifted under Logan’s feet. ‘You confiscate the camera?’

  ‘Deano got the SD card.’ Tufty pointed off to the right, towards a crumbling concrete embankment. ‘This way.’

  ‘Why didn’t your student call nine-nine-nine? Thought everyone had a mobile phone now.’

  Tufty flashed a wee smile and a shrug. ‘Panicked. Says he couldn’t remember the number. Bit of a climb, sorry …’ He clambered up the embankment, then up onto the grass. Then over an outcrop of lichen-covered rock.

  ‘You sure you know where you’re going?’

  ‘Deano said there’s no way anyone would come this way carrying a body. So, you know, common approach path.’ More clambering and scrambling, and they were up on a ridge above the swimming pools. Tufty nodded. ‘Down there.’

  The site was split into two halves. In front of the main buildings were a set of wide amphitheatre steps in dark-grey stained concrete, the edges picked out in decaying whitewash. They enclosed a D-shaped shallow pool – dry as an abandoned riverbed – the wall between it and the main swimming area crumbling and partially collapsed. On the other side of the wall, water came halfway up. A stony beach at one side that couldn’t have been an original feature, speckled with broken pipes and other bits of rusting flotsam. Then the sea wall, and then the blue expanse of the North Sea.

  A dark shape was hunched at the far side of the pool, a line of black-and-yellow tape trailing from one hand: ‘CRIME SCENE – DO NOT ENTER’. Deano. He stuck both arms up and waved them. ‘Sarge!’

  It took a moment to pick out the body. Grey against grey.

  Not a mistake then.

  A couple of inches below the ridge they stood on lay the decaying flat roof of some sort of ancient pump house. No way in hell Logan was risking standing on that. ‘Where’s this common approach path go, then?’

  Tufty pointed. ‘Far as we can tell, he’d take her in a straight line from the entrance over there, along the side, take the walkway between the two bits, and dump her in the pool.’ His shoulders drooped. ‘I wanted to do some searching, but Deano won’t let me go down. Says I’ve got to stay up here.’

  Proper procedure. Wonders would never cease.

  Logan eased himself down the rock face and onto the amphitheatre steps. No way to get to where Deano was without crossing the killer’s route. Well, except for picking his way along the sea wall, but it looked narrow and slippery with green slime. And according to the sign at the entrance, it was a two-metre drop from there to the rocks, so sod that.

  Assuming there was a killer.

  He pointed at Tufty. ‘As of now, you’re acting Crime Scene Manager. You record the time and the date and everyone who’s been near the body. Guard the entrance and make sure no one gets past you till I say so. No one. Don’t care if it’s the Chief Constable himself, he cools his heels in the car park till I say otherwise. Understand?’

  ‘Sarge.’

  Good.

  He went right, dropped into the D-shaped inshore pool and made his way through the rubble and rubbish to the other side.

  Deano jabbed a metal spike into a crack in the crumbling concrete at his feet, then looped the tape through the pig’s tail at the top. Moved on to the next spike, unspooling a trail of crime-scene yellow behind him. He sighed. ‘Poor wee sod.’

  Logan stopped, level with the tape, and peered over the crumbling walkway. ‘Suspicious?’

  A grimace. ‘When’s a dead kid not?’

  ‘True.’ He scrambled up and ducked under the yellow-and-black cordon.

  The wee girl couldn’t be much more than five or six. The same age as Jasmine. Same hair colour …

  Something knotted in the middle of his chest, compressed by the stabproof vest’s squeezing fist until it was hard and sharp.

  But it wasn’t her.

  Breath hissed out of him.

  Deano put the roll of tape down. ‘You OK, Sarge?’

  Blink. Logan coughed the lump out of his throat. ‘Yeah. It’s … She looks like Jasmine.’

  The girl lay on her front, three feet from the dirty concrete wall and the ramp down into the pool. She was half-in, half-out of the water. Head, arms and torso floating amongst the detritus, lower half stranded on the rocks.

  One leg lay straight out behind her, the small red shoe pointing back towards the main building. Looked as if the strap across her ankle had got caught on a rusting length of broken pipe. Holding her in place. The other leg stuck out at nearly ninety degrees. White socks and a grey dress. All covered with a thin dusting of white crystals.

  Her grey jumper was sodden – torn between the shoulders, and at the elbows, showing the white shirt underneath. A school uniform.

  Skin was pale as snow, covered in small scratches and tiny triangular holes. Her hands swollen and white. Neck bent at an unnatural angle.

  Her cheek rested against a submerged rock. Eyes open, staring out through the murky water. Mouth open. Pale blonde hair floating around her face. A big dent in her forehead.
/>   Deano tied the length of tape off on the last metal post. ‘You sure you’re OK?’

  A shrug. ‘Yeah. Bit of a surprise, that’s all.’

  ‘See if I thought it was my daughter, I’d skin the scumbag alive …’ He sniffed. ‘Well you know: if I actually had any kids.’

  Logan picked his way down the ramp, boots slithering on the weed-covered concrete, and squatted down at the edge of the water. Licked the tip of his index finger, then tapped it against the snagged red shoe. Pressed the finger against his tongue. Salt.

  ‘Deano, when’s high tide?’

  ‘No idea. Can find out, though.’

  ‘Definitely not an accident?’ Inspector McGregor was cranked up to full volume, trying to compete with the siren of the car she was in. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘As I can be, without screwing up the scene.’ Logan marched back to the road, pulling off his blue nitrile gloves and stuffing them into an empty carrier bag. Fingers trembling, struggling with the plastic. ‘Looks as if someone battered her head in, but there’s no sign of blood on the walkway, or the wall, or the steps. So she didn’t do it falling into the pool. Best guess: she was dead by the time she hit the water. Probably had been for a couple of hours. Must’ve been completely submerged at one point – her skirt, legs and shoes are covered in salt crystals.’ He stopped, blew out a breath. ‘Poor wee soul was only five or six.’

  The second-hand roar of the siren wailed from his Airwave’s speaker.

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘I’ll be there in five minutes. You’ve secured the scene? And got a lookout request on the go for Neil Wood?’

  ‘Deano handed it off to the OMU soon as we knew the guy was missing. Don’t know if they’ve done it or not.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Logan, it’s—’

  ‘You said, get back to you ASAP.’ The carrier bag went in his pocket. ‘Thought that made it top priority.’

  A sigh, barely audible over the background noise. ‘Suppose you’re right.’

  Deano scrambled up the shingle beach, back onto the road. Stopped and shook one leg, as if he’d stood in a puddle. Waves hushed against the pebbled shore.

  ‘Guv, you still there?’

  ‘Yes. Fine. I’m getting the MIT up from Aberdeen. Make sure no one touches anything till I get there.’

  ‘Already got Constable Quirrel as acting CSM.’

  ‘Tufty’s our Crime Scene Manager? … Wonderful … We’re all doomed.’ This time she was gone for good.

  Deano marched over – one shoe leaving damp footprints on the age-dulled tarmac – while Logan punched in the badge number of the admin assistant Inspector McGregor had dug up for them.

  The woman on the other end picked up. ‘Sergeant McRae?’

  ‘I need you to run a check on all missing persons aged eleven and under.’ The wee girl looked a lot younger than that, but there was no point taking any risks. ‘Female. Blonde hair. Wearing a school uniform – grey with white socks and shirt. Red shoes and tie. No school badge on the jumper.’

  ‘Where am I looking?’

  Deano stopped in front of him, pointed at himself. Mouthed, ‘Anything needing doing?’

  ‘Better start with the Northeast and expand it from there. Go UK wide if you have to.’ He took his finger off the transmit button. ‘Deano, whoever you spoke to at the Offender Management Unit – give them a poke and make sure they’ve got a lookout request on for Neil Wood. I want him picked up.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  ‘… OK, I’ve got three mispers that match the age range in the Northeast …’ The clatter of fingers on keyboard. ‘Two are female … One red-haired, one brown. Sure yours hasn’t dyed her hair?’

  He pulled out his mobile and scrolled through the photos he’d taken. That pale little face, staring down at the stones. Deep breath. ‘Far as I can tell. Eyebrows match the hair colour, anyway.’

  ‘Then we’re going to have to search further out. Might take me a while. How far back do you want me to go: one month, two, three?’

  ‘Better give it two years. Just because she only turned up today, doesn’t mean she’s not been missing for a long, long time.’

  A sigh. Then, ‘Josef Bloody Fritzl has a lot to answer for.’

  ‘Email me if you get anything.’ Logan clipped the handset back in place.

  Deano was on the other side of the police van, marching back and forth with one squelchy shoe. ‘… oh no you don’t. I told you he was missing. I told you to get a lookout request and … No, no, no, no, no: this is your cock-up, sunshine, not mine.’

  Brilliant.

  As if today could get any worse.

  The cliffs were washed with blood, shadows long and dark as the sun sank into the North Sea. Painting the grass in shades of amber and gold. Glinting on the chain-link fence.

  Nicholson tucked her hands into the armholes of her stabproof, covered now with a clean high-vis waistcoat. Shrugged her shoulders up round her ears and kept them there, peaked cap wedged on top of her head. ‘Getting a bit nippy.’

  Logan rocked on the balls of his feet. Shoulders back. Hands clasped behind him. Chin up. ‘No slouching.’

  A double line of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape stretched between the end of the chain-link fence and the telegraph pole on the other side of the road. A handful of rusty cars were parked in front of the cordon, their drivers and passengers sitting on the bonnets, cameras and microphones hanging idle. Waiting. The Sky TV outside broadcast van partially blocked the entrance to the wastewater plant, a journalist in a fleece and serious expression doing a piece to camera. The BBC doing the same a couple of hundred yards behind them.

  ‘Feel like a right turnip.’ But Nicholson stood upright anyway. ‘Stuck here like a pair of willies while everyone else is off doing proper police work.’

  ‘Pair of Wallies. Not willies.’

  ‘I know what I said.’ She turned back to the patrol car. ‘Don’t suppose we’ve got any of those nice padded jackets in the boot, do we?’

  A sigh. ‘Go on then.’

  An unmarked car came to a halt on the other side of the barrier tape and the nightshift Duty Inspector climbed out. Held up his hands as a swarm of lenses turned in his direction. When he spoke, the words came out as a thick roll of bunged-up vowels. ‘We’re not making any comment at this time. Thank you.’ He turned his back on them, ducked under the tape and marched up to Logan. Kept his voice low. ‘Bunch of vultures.’ A waft of Vicks VapoRub and menthol sweets.

  ‘Guv.’

  Inspector Fettes tucked his peaked cap under his arm. His hands were huge – completely out of proportion with the rest of him – and covered with freckles. His cheeks and nose were a freckle playground too, reaching all the way up his forehead to a magnificent mop of red hair. He nodded at the road, where it snaked off down the hill. ‘Inspector McGregor still down there?’

  ‘You taking over?’

  ‘Got enough on my plate running the division as it is. Wendy can hold the fort here till her shift ends. Wanted to make sure I’m up to speed before she heads home.’

  Logan’s phone vibrated in his pocket. ‘Sorry.’ He pulled it out – an email from the support officer in Elgin, listing all the young girls reported missing in the UK for the last two years, filtered for hair colour. None of the photographs worked on his phone. ‘Bloody typical.’

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Someone’s emailed through photos of all the missing girls on file, but they won’t display.’ He gave the side of the phone a slap. It didn’t help.

  Of course, the photos only mattered if she’d actually been reported missing …

  Inspector Fettes sniffed. Dabbed at his nose with a hanky. ‘Still, I suppose it’s not really our problem any more, is it?’

  ‘Like they’d trust us with a murder.’ Logan put his useless phone away again. ‘No: the Major Investigation Team turns up an hour ago, in a blaze of flashing lights and sirens, and takes it off our
hands. Thanks for your help, now sod off and go guard the scene for the rest of the night.’

  ‘Tossers.’

  ‘Exactly what I was thinking, Guv.’

  Another sniff. ‘Speak of the devil …’

  A battered Vauxhall grumbled up the hill from the swimming pool, and rattled to a halt next to the patrol car. Sat there with its engine running.

  Probably expected him to abandon his post and rush over to see what they wanted.

  Well, tough.

  Inspector Fettes popped his hat on his head. ‘Suppose I’d better go make myself useful.’ He headed over to the Vauxhall. Leaned on the roof and spoke to someone through the open window. Pointed at Logan. Then stood back up and marched off down the road towards Tarlair Outdoor Swimming Pool.

  Nicholson reappeared, hauling on a big fluorescent jacket with reflective strips. Nodded at the idling Vauxhall. ‘Something happen?’

  Logan faced front again. ‘Doubt it.’

  She checked her watch. ‘Soon be time for tenses. Nice cuppa and a chocolate éclair.’

  ‘No tenses for us tonight.’

  ‘Oh …’ Her face drooped. ‘Elevenses?’

  ‘We should be so lucky.’

  The Vauxhall’s passenger door opened and a dishevelled head poked out. Hair like an angry weasel had rampaged through a haystack. The creases deepened around her mouth. Voice like sandpaper on a rusty pipe. ‘Laz! Stop dicking about.’

  Nicholson raised an eyebrow. ‘Laz?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  Detective Chief Inspector Steel clambered out of the car. Slightly hunched in her wrinkled grey trouser suit. Black overcoat. Blue silk shirt. She waved at him. ‘Get your arse over here.’

  Pause.

  ‘Sarge?’

  Sigh. ‘OK. You stay here. No one—’

  ‘Yeah, “None shall pass”, I get it.’

  He turned and walked over to the Vauxhall.

  ‘About sodding time.’ Steel hooked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘Come on, you and me’s going for a walk.’

  8