Logan McRae 09 - The Missing and the Dead

by Stuart MacBride

  Srry for being all wierd at lnch I just didnt expect all the ppl Im not usd to all th family anymore Still gt steak fr tea if U want it? I cn make chips

  How could any gentleman refuse an offer of chips?

  He hit reply, then stopped. Put his mobile away and headed back along the groaning corridor to the Sergeants’ Office. Picked up the internal phone.

  ‘Cellblock.’

  ‘Hi, it’s Sergeant McRae. Any word on our friend Martyn Baker yet?’

  ‘Still on the phone to his solicitor. Takes a while to remember to say “no comment” to everything. Takes practice.’

  ‘OK, well I’m heading out for a bit. Give me a shout soon as he’s ready.’

  Out the door, down the stairs, and onto the rear car park.

  Slivers of blue jabbed their way through the grey cloud. The leaching drizzle and unforgiving rain had gone, leaving the windscreens and bodywork of the parked patrol cars and van dulled to a pewter sheen.

  He pulled out his mobile, found Helen’s number, and—

  ‘Sarge?’ Tufty.

  Logan froze. ‘Martyn Baker said something?’

  ‘Well … No. PCSO said you were heading out. So, you need backup? Shall I get the Big Car?’

  Yes, because that was going to make it so much easier to phone Helen.

  Think fast.

  A patrol car rocked over the speedbump and into the car park. There had to be a job out there that needed seeing to.

  Logan turned to watch the officer behind the wheel make a pig’s ear of parking. ‘Actually, I’m going to wander down to Broch Braw Buys. See if the owner’s got any idea why the Cashline Ram-Raiders picked him instead of another Co-op.’

  A nod. ‘Right, I’ll get my hat.’

  ‘No, you’re all right. You stay here and …’ Come on – what could he get Tufty to do instead of playing gooseberry? ‘Do me a favour – Helen Edwards. If she is our Tarlair little girl’s mother, I want to know about the father. See what you can dig up.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  ‘… possible drugs death in Peterhead. Ambulance is on its way.’

  Next door to Fraserburgh police station, the houses were grand and granite. Bungalows on one side, two-storey jobs with bay windows on the other.

  Logan wandered down Finlayson Street, mobile phone to his ear as the Airwave cackled away to itself. ‘I don’t really know. They’ve still not got a replacement for Sergeant Muir, so unless they can find someone else I’ve got to pull another green shift. Officially two, maybe half-two tomorrow morning?’

  Helen’s voice sank a bit. ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He crossed the road. ‘I don’t know if I’ll get home for dinner, but I’ll do my best. It all depends what happens this evening. If something kicks off or not.’

  ‘Well, I can always put the steaks back in the fridge and eat all the chips myself.’

  He groaned. ‘Don’t tempt me with chips, that’s police kryptonite.’

  On the left, the houses gave way to the car park outside Riteway. The homeware store’s boxy frontage was stained dark grey. A handful of kids rattled skateboards up and down in front of it, doing low-level tricks and falling off.

  ‘Helen: you’re sure you’ve not heard anything from your ex-husband? Nothing at all?’

  ‘One postcard. It was the Cathedral Church of Saint Martin, in Ourense. It was three months after he took her.’

  ‘And nothing since?’

  ‘“Don’t bother trying to find us. You had your shot poisoning her against me. You’ll never see her again, you jealous frigid bitch. You’ll die alone, because no one could ever love a useless ugly cow like you.”’ A shuddering breath. Then a pause. ‘It was postmarked Ourense. My private investigator spent two weeks there, looking for them.’

  Logan stopped at the crossroads, where Finlayson Street met Gallowhill Road. ‘Brian sounds like a proper charmer.’ And in need of a good sodding kicking.

  ‘I paid for adverts in the local papers, from A Coruña to Zamora, but no one recognized Brian’s photo, or Natasha’s. Like they’d vanished …’

  On the other side of the road, Broch Braw Buys was sandwiched between the betting shop and the chipper. The boards over the shattered window had gone, replaced instead by a nice sheet of shiny new glass, already disappearing under a plastering of offers and notices.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know it makes me a bad person, but if I got my hands on Brian, I’d kill him. I wouldn’t care about going to prison. I’d kill him.’

  A Fiat Panda growled past, followed by a motorbike, a rusty Land Rover, and a Council Transit with rusty wings.

  Yeah … Probably best to change the subject.

  ‘Helen, about today, before Steel and Susan and Jasmine—’

  ‘It’s OK. Really. I shouldn’t have …’ Deep breath. ‘Look at me, wittering away. I should let you get back to work.’

  ‘Yes. Right. Well, I’ll see you for dinner. If I can.’ He forced a smile. ‘You know, if there’s chips?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Helen?’

  She was already gone.

  He sighed. Put his phone away. Waited for a break in the traffic, then crossed over.

  A couple of old men stood outside the Kenyan Bar and Lounge, smoking rollups and moaning about getting booted out at three, yet again, same as they were every Sunday.

  ‘All units, be on the lookout for a Raymond Goldmann, IC-One male, grey beard and bald head. Apprehension warrant issued for indecent exposure.’

  Speaking of apprehension warrants. He unhooked his Airwave. ‘Shire Uniform Seven. Has there been any update on David or Catherine Bisset?’

  The two old men eyed him for a moment, then shuffled off.

  ‘Roger that, we’ve had a dozen sightings from Dundee to Oban, via Edinburgh and Kilmarnoch. Local officers are looking into them. You want me to put you on the update list?’

  Why not? ‘Thanks.’

  Wouldn’t have thought it was that easy to kill two people and then disappear, but apparently it was. He hooked his Airwave in place and turned back to the shop.

  Broch Braw Buys was deeper than it was wide, with racks of breakfast cereals barely visible through the blizzard of notes and signs. The one offering a thousand quid to anyone who helped ID the Ram-Raiders – so the shop owner could break their legs – had pride of place in the middle, over the Coco Pops.

  The door bleeped as Logan stepped inside.

  Rows of shelves, aisles of shelves, everywhere: shelves, all heaped with food and tat. The smell was a strange mixture of fust and dust, overlaid with fresh paint and glazier’s putty. Big circular mirrors were dotted about above head height, presumably arranged so that whoever was behind the counter could see every nook and cranny in the shop from there. A CCTV camera sat not far below the ceiling in every corner, red lights glowing.

  ‘I help you?’ A wee man with a tweed waistcoat and post-box eyes appeared at Logan’s elbow. Stubble covered his nub of a chin, the hair on his head trimmed into a bowl around a smooth shiny crown.

  Logan pointed at the floor, where four drill holes marked out a relatively clean rectangle on the ancient linoleum. ‘They haven’t fitted a new cash machine?’

  ‘What’s it look like to you? Course they haven’t. Insurance company are playing silly buggers. Oh, you’re not covered for that, you’re not covered for this, have you not read the small print?’ His face soured. ‘Thieving bunch of scum. Come the revolution, they’re first against the wall.’

  The wee man scuffed the toe of his trainers over the clean rectangle. ‘Only agreed to cough up for the window yesterday. Had thirty-five thousand quid’s worth of my stock nicked, and do they care? Do they hell.’

  ‘It was only twenty-seven thousand last week.’

  He jammed his hands in his pockets. ‘Inflation. Now, what do you want? I don’t do discounts for plod till you catch the thieving sods who robbed
me.’

  Logan looked up at the security camera, mounted above the door. ‘I need to see the footage from the raid.’

  The front door bleeped again, and a wee girl in denim shorts and a Chainsaw Teddy T-shirt skipped in, all smiles, dimples, and pigtails, a Hello Kitty skateboard tucked under one arm.

  ‘You! Get out, you’re banned. Go on!’ He grabbed Logan’s arm. ‘Look, I’ve got the police here. You get out of here now, or he’ll arrest you!’

  She stuck her middle finger up at the pair of them, spat on the floor, then turned and skipped back out of the shop again. Couldn’t have been much more than five years old.

  The shopkeeper let go of Logan’s arm, and spread his hand across his own chest, fingertips trembling. ‘They’re like jackals.’

  ‘What about the CCTV?’

  ‘They come in here in packs and they steal and they make threats and they break things and they spit.’

  ‘Do you have security footage, or don’t you?’

  He sniffed. ‘Don’t. What we had, the police took after the robbery.’

  Which meant it would be locked away in the evidence store at Queen Street, Aberdeen. No way they’d let Logan anywhere near it. But it’d been worth a try.

  Logan stopped on his way back to the door. ‘Why you?’

  ‘Of course, you try to talk to the parents, but do they do anything? Of course not. Between you and me, they’re scared of their own children.’

  ‘Why did the Ram-Raiders pick this place? All the other shops they’ve hit are Co-ops. Why you?’

  He straightened a stack of toilet rolls. ‘I’m a hardworking businessman who pays his taxes and does the right thing and these people are the scum of the earth. Come the revolution—’

  ‘Yeah, I heard. Up against the wall.’ Logan pointed at the patch where the cash machine had been. ‘Why you? Someone come round threatening you, or wanting protection money? Something like that?’

  ‘The children. All the time. Money, threats, spitting. I should get a gun to protect myself.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot.’ Logan opened the door. ‘And take down that stupid reward sign. You’re not breaking anyone’s legs.’

  ‘Children? They’re not children, they’re monsters.’

  The door bleeped shut as Logan stepped out onto the pavement again.

  OK, so Broch Braw Buys was a non-starter for CCTV. No sign of cameras on the chip shop next door, but the Kenyan Bar and Lounge had one of the black dome security cameras above the door on Gallowhill Road. There was another next to the painted sign, and a third above the door on Finlayson Street.

  Perfect.

  Logan knocked on the barred gate. No reply.

  A couple of posters sat in the recess behind the gate, either side of the door. One was for the open-mike night on Tuesdays, and the other was for the new and improved Pubwatch scheme. ‘ALL SECURITY CAMERAS IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT ARE CONNECTED TO FRASERBURGH POLICE STATION. AGGRESSION TOWARDS STAFF OR OTHER CLIENTS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.’

  Even better.

  Fraserburgh’s Cellblock Gospel Singers roared their way through ‘The Ballad of Eskimo Nell’ somewhere below Logan’s feet, giving every verse the full-throated Whitney Houston warble. The viewing equipment was temporarily stacked on a scarred desk, jammed into the corner of a disused office while the viewing suite waited for a fresh lick of paint that never came.

  ‘Anything else?’ He shifted the phone to his other hand and had a sip of tea.

  It sounded as if Big Paul was checking his paperwork. ‘We’re still after witnesses to that hit-and-run. Couple of house-breakings to look into. Someone’s been smashing windows in Inverboyndie. And I want to make a nuisance of myself on Newton Drive – our old friend Lumpy Patrick’s dealing again. Going to disrupt his business.’

  ‘Good.’ Logan checked his notepad. ‘I need you to send Kate over to backfill at Fraserburgh again. And I want you to take a swing past Frankie Ferris’s place on Rundle Avenue every couple of hours. Let’s make it a bad day to be dealing drugs all round. Other than that, you, Penny, and Joe have a good shift. I’ll see you when I see you.’

  ‘Right, Sarge.’

  Logan slid the next cartridge out of the rack and into the machine. Had a slurp of tea while it whirred and groaned. Then Gallowhill Road filled the screen.

  The camera had obviously been set up to monitor events outside the front of the Kenyan Bar, that bit of the picture was sharp and clear, the rest of the street was caught in the distorting glare of the wide-angle lens. Getting more stretched and distorted the further away things got from its target area.

  Logan spooled the controller forward. The time-stamp in the bottom-right corner wheeched along at thirty times normal speed.

  Right on cue, a dark green Mitsubishi Warrior drove past the pub, slammed on its brakes, then reversed at speed through the window of Broch Braw Buys. All in perfect silence. The back end kicked up as it smashed through the glass, sending packets and tins flying. Two masked men leapt out – one from the passenger side, the other from the back – and battered in through the broken window. Forty-five seconds later, the Warrior leapt forward, yanking the cash machine from its moorings and out into the street. The thing got heaved into the four-by-four’s loadbed, and they were off.

  One minute and fifty seconds from start to finish.

  Longer than it took them to ram-raid the Co-op in Portsoy, but then they’d had a lot more practice by then.

  Logan sat back in his seat and tapped fingertips against the desk. One minute, fifty seconds. That wasn’t brave, it was idiotic – the shop was, what, a three-minute walk from the police station? Less than a minute in a car. You’d have to be pretty sure of yourself before risking that.

  Mind you, it’d probably take a minute and a half to call 999 and tell them what was going on. Call it a minute to get over the shock in the first place. Then another five minutes for a team to scramble from the station. One more to actually get there …

  Nearly nine minutes.

  By the time the police turned up at Broch Braw Buys, the Ram-Raiders could be in Rosehearty without even breaking the speed limit.

  Still, it was a big risk.

  Either they were very, very lucky, or really knew what they were doing.

  And given how many other cash machines they’d wheeched out of convenience stores, it couldn’t be luck.

  Logan sent the recording spinning backwards again. No way they picked Broch Braw Buys at random. They would’ve cased the joint, made sure they knew where the machine was inside the shop.

  He drummed his fingertips against the desktop.

  If you were smashing a stolen four-by-four backwards through a shop window, would you grit your teeth and go with it, to hell with the consequences? Or would you cruise by first, making sure no one was standing behind all the notices and special offers, ready to be flattened? Maybe drop off a spotter to give you a call when it was safe to go.

  And you wouldn’t want to swap vehicles, would you? Not before the raid. After: yes. But the less messing about beforehand the better. Which meant that, sooner or later, the stolen four-by-four would drift past the Pubwatch camera, only the people in it wouldn’t be wearing masks. They’d pull over, and someone would get out, walk into the shop, and find out what they were looking at. All caught on camera.

  He reversed all the way back to the beginning of the recording, but there was no sign of the Mitsubishi Warrior.

  Logan checked the paperwork again. The four-by-four wasn’t reported stolen until after the police turned up at the owner’s door to arrest him. The silly sod hadn’t even noticed the thing was missing until it was found two days after the raid, burned out in a field north of Woodhead.

  Maybe they dropped their spotter off around the corner and let him walk?

  Logan ran the footage again, but no one loitered about on the street looking shifty with a mobile phone.

  OK, try the previous day.
/>   He ejected the hard cartridge and slotted in Sunday’s instead.

  Let it run while he punched Tufty’s shoulder number into the Airwave. ‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

  ‘They’re onto verse forty-six, Sarge. This Eskimo Nell sounds—’

  ‘What’s happening with Martyn Baker?’

  ‘SLAB have set him up with some lawyer down in Dundee.’

  ‘Dundee? That’s a lot of sodding use. Is he coming up?’

  ‘Verse forty-seven. You’d think she’d get tired of all the—’

  ‘Tufty!’

  ‘Sorry. Don’t know, Sarge. He’s still on the phone.’

  ‘OK, let me know soon as he’s done.’ Logan put the handset down. Frowned at the screen.

  On it, a rainy Sunday morning in Fraserburgh drizzled along in silence. A handful of people hurried past in ones and twos, shoulders hunched, backs bent against the wind. None of them optimistic enough to sport an umbrella.

  No point looking for the Mitsubishi Warrior. He checked the paperwork again. According to the owner, the last time he’d driven it was Friday night. They wouldn’t have stolen it then – not that long before the raid. As soon as it was reported stolen there’d be a lookout request, all the Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras would flag it up. All they’d have to do is drive past a traffic car and they’d be nabbed.

  So they must’ve used another vehicle to stake the place out.

  He frowned his way through the day’s footage on six-times speed. No suspicious cars. And the only people loitering about looking shifty were the same pair of auld mannies outside the Kenyan Bar.

  Mind you, just because the Ram-Raiders weren’t lurking on this camera, it didn’t mean they weren’t on one of the pub’s other two.

  He reached for the eject button … Stopped. Pressed pause instead. Squinted at the screen. There – stepping out of Broch Braw Buys – a young man in a blue outdoor-hill-climby jacket, earphones on, carrier bag in one hand.

  Play.

  He walked towards the camera, features getting less distorted with every step, until he was clear in perfect focus.