Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8

by Stuart MacBride

  ‘—mass of Arctic air coming in will hit the north east of Scotland, so we can expect some unseasonably cold weather over the next couple of days—’

  Logan finished his wine in a single gulp. ‘OK, OK: fine. I’ll set the machine.’

  She didn’t look around, just stared straight at the TV, where the map of Scotland was a mess of blue and grey. ‘Thank you.’ Clipped.

  He levered himself to his feet. Tried to force a smile into his voice. ‘You want some more wine?’

  Silence.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘How’s your arm?’

  Logan looked down at the sleeve of his shirt, all bulked out by the bandages. ‘It’s OK.’ No it wasn’t. It throbbed and stung every time he brushed against anything. Bloody Steel punching it hadn’t helped.

  Sam sneaked a glance at him. ‘You’re a terrible liar.’ Then back to the telly. ‘And we’re watching Britain’s Next Big Star tomorrow, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Fffff?’ Logan sat straight up in bed, blinked a couple of times, then breathed out again. Squinted at the alarm clock. Quarter past two.

  He collapsed back into the pillow. Who the hell called at quarter past two?

  Lying next to him, Samantha made mumbling noises.

  The phone kept ringing.

  Logan rolled out of bed, grabbed his mobile, and hit the button. ‘This better be important!’

  ‘Hullo? Hullo?’ A broad Doric accent, not one he recognized. ‘That DS McRae?’

  ‘Who’s this?’ Rubbing his eyes with the heel of one hand.

  ‘PC Gilbert, doon the station? Anyway, got a wifie in here screamin’ blue murder. Keeps sayin’ she’s been raped.’

  Another yawn.

  ‘Hello? Sarge?’

  ‘Gilbert, I’m going to call you a very rude name, then I’m going to hang up. Then you can go get someone who’s on bloody duty to deal with it! I’m on day-shift, you—’

  ‘Hud oan, DI Bell wants a word …’

  The constable’s voice disappeared, there was some muffled talk, then DI Bell’s voice grated in Logan’s ear. ‘McRae? Get your arse up here.’

  ‘It’s quarter past two in the—’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s the second coming, I’ve got a mental cow up here trying to castrate people, and she’s got your name on her.’

  ‘No offence, sir, but—’

  ‘I mean literally. She’s literally got your name on her. In black marker pen. And if you’re not wanting a visit from Professional Standards first bloody thing, you’ll do as you‘re sodding well told!’

  Half-two on a Saturday morning and the streets were in their usual post-pub haze. By now most of the chucking-out-time violence had settled down. It would only to flare up again when the nightclubs kicked their crop of boozed-up idiots out onto the streets. Men and women, barely dressed, bashing the crap out of each other for a place in the taxi rank, or kebab shop queue, ‘Are you lookin’ at my bird?’ ‘Leave it, Tracy, she’s not worth it …’

  Logan paused halfway across Union Street, waiting for a battered Toyota with a taxi sign bolted to the roof to grumble past. There were two blokes just inside the entrance to Lodge Walk: the usual short-cut to the back of FHQ. One was keeping himself upright with a hand against the wall, peeing on his own shoes, the other making retching noises.

  He took the scenic route instead, round the council buildings and down Queen Street.

  Stopped outside the Sheriff and JP Court.

  The crowd gathered on the forecourt outside Force Headquarters was a lot smaller – just forty, fifty people? All linking arms and swaying back and forth. They had makeshift lanterns: tea lights in old jam and pickle jars, the captive flames flickering a warm waxy glow that made shadows writhe as they sang.

  It took a while for Logan to recognize the tune: Wind Beneath My Wings. Of course it was. Only someone had changed the lyrics so it was all about Jenny and Alison McGregor. Christ that was quick.

  And touching …? Or creepy. It was hard to decide.

  A few uniformed officers hovered on the periphery, some watching the crowd, the rest watching the small knot of drunken idiots lurching about and trying to sing along.

  Logan wandered over to the nearest officer – a wee man with thick hairy eyebrows and a baggy face. ‘What’s this?’

  Constable Baggy sniffed, then nodded towards the crowd. ‘Candle-lit vigil, Guv. Don’t know what possible bloody good they think it’ll do. Outside the house, or the church where they’re doing that memorial thing, maybe, but here?’ He sucked on his teeth for a moment. ‘Whole city’s gone fuckin’ mental.’

  The Police Custody and Security Officer puffed out her cheeks and scowled at Logan. A red mark covered half of her chin, slowly purpling itself into a bruise. She pointed along the corridor, mouth barely moving, teeth clamped together. ‘Down there.’

  DI Bell was limping up and down outside the little row of cells reserved for female prisoners. He walked like a bear that hadn’t quite got the hang of it yet, thick rounded shoulders rocking from side to side. He stopped, gave Logan his second scowl of the night, then waved him over with a big hairy paw. ‘Where have you been?’ Voice not much louder than a whisper.

  ‘Thought you were meant to be on back shift? How’d you get on with Steel’s sex offenders, anything—’

  ‘Want to explain this?’ Bell pointed at the cell in front of him.

  Logan checked the name scrawled on the little board beside the door: name, alleged offence, and last time checked. ‘TRISHA BROWN ~ O.A.M.H.O. ~ 02:30’ Which meant she’d probably been done for taking a swing at some poor PC.

  ‘So?’

  DI Bell hauled open the hatch, and Logan peered into the little cell.

  Trisha Brown was lying on the blue plastic mattress, with her knees drawn up against her hollow ribs. She was wearing a skimpy halter-neck top, exposing a swathe of sickly-pale skin that almost glowed in the harsh strip-lighting, a couple of bruises, and a tattoo. Bare feet with long toes, like an extra set of fingers.

  Logan shrugged. ‘She working tonight?’

  The inspector closed the hatch again. ‘Says you raped her.’

  ‘She …?’ Logan backed off a step. ‘Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t touch her with fucking Bob’s never mind mine! She’s lying!’

  Bell grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him away to the stairwell. ‘She better be … But soon as she makes the complaint official, you know what happens: Professional Standards explore your colon with a searchlight. Something like this, you’re probably looking at gardening leave while they investigate.’

  ‘But it’s—

  ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s a load of old shite or not – it goes down on your record.’

  ‘No. Fuck this.’ Logan turned and marched back to the cell, slammed the flat of his hand against the metal door. Bang, bang, bang. He hauled the hatch open. ‘Trisha Brown! WAKEY WAKEY!’

  The figure on the mattress stirred, rolled over onto her back, one arm flopping across her eyes. Her hip bones stood proud beneath her sallow skin, sores on her forearms, ribs on show. How the hell could anyone think he’d get naked with her?

  Bang, bang, bang. ‘TRISHA!’

  A muffled voice came from the next cell. ‘Fuckin’ shut it! Some of us trying to sleep here …’

  Bang, bang, bang. ‘TRISHA BROWN!’

  Another disembodied voice. ‘Christ’s sake, don’t wake her up – daft bitch only just stopped screaming.’

  The figure on the bed, moved her legs, sat up. Blinked. Then twisted sideways and sprayed yellow vomit all over the dark-red terrazzo floor, chunks of orange and pink splattering everywhere. She heaved a couple more times, then wiped a trembling hand across her chapped lips. ‘Thirsty …’

  Logan banged his hand on the door again. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  She squinted at him. ‘Fuck off.’ Then collapsed back on the mattress. ‘Not well …’

>   Bang. ‘Who the fuck am I?’

  ‘Leave us alone!’

  Logan turned to DI Bell. ‘See? She hasn’t got a bloody clue.’

  The inspector pushed Logan out of the way and shouted through the hatch. ‘Trisha? Remember when we brought you in? What were you saying?’

  A loud sigh. Then she dragged herself up off the thin mattress, bare feet splatching through the puddle of sick as she made for the door. The bitter, eye-tightening stench of vomit wafted out of the hatch. ‘I was raped. RAPED!’ A dull thunk, as she rested her head on the metal. ‘I was raped.’

  Logan banged his hand on the door again and she flinched back. ‘Who?’

  Trisha pulled her halter top up, exposing tiny wrinkled breasts covered in penny-sized bruises. ‘DS LOGAN MCRAE’ was written on the bony expanse of chest below her clavicles in black ink block capitals. Trisha frowned at it, a drip of spittle dangling from the tip of her chin.

  ‘Him. He raped me …’

  Logan stared at his own name. Lying cow. He slammed the hatch closed again, then turned on DI Bell. ‘She hasn’t got a bloody clue. Did you do a rape kit?’

  ‘I told you, it doesn’t matter if—’

  ‘Did you or didn’t you?’

  Bell threw his hands in the air. ‘We couldn’t, OK? She was tearing the place up. Nearly ripped my balls off!’

  ‘Get her in an interview room and we’ll get her to retract the—’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no. That’s not the way it works, and you know it. No way in hell you can be in on an interview of a rape victim you’re supposed to have raped!’

  Logan paced down to the end of the little cell block and back again. Tine, you do it.’

  Bell ran a furry hand through his hair. Looked away. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes you bloody can. Stick her in number three and find out who put her up to it.’

  ‘Why would anyone—’

  ‘She’s got my name written on her! What, did the graffiti fairies break into her house and have a go with a black marker pen?’

  Bell shrugged. ‘Maybe she wrote it herself?’

  Moron.

  ‘If she wrote it herself it’d be upside down, wouldn’t it?’

  Well, maybe … I dunno, a mirror?’ He must have caught the expression on Logan’s face, because he took a sudden interest in examining his own hands. ‘OK, OK, someone else wrote it on her. Fuck.’ The inspector worried at a hangnail. ‘I’ll speak to her. But you know, if Professional Standards find out I did a sneak-around, I’m blaming you, understand?’

  16

  On the little screen, DI Bell pushed a sheet of paper across the scarred interview room table. ‘I’m showing Ms Brown a selection of photographs reference: one five zero five zero one. Can you identify the man you say raped you?’

  ‘No she bloody can’t.’ Logan took another swig of coffee. Bitter and dark, which was pretty sodding appropriate. The caffeine fizzed through his arteries, making his eyeballs itch.

  Sitting on the other side of the table, Trisha Brown rocked back and forth, then chewed on the side of her thumb. They’d chucked the ID sheet together using a bunch of random faces from the database – local criminals: a couple of rapists, some burglars, a paedophile – Logan, George Clooney, and the current head of the BNP. Nine faces for Trisha Brown to pick from.

  ‘Trisha? Can you pick him out?’

  Logan leaned forward until his nose was just inches from the TV screen. It was mounted on a rickety old table in what was laughingly referred to as the Downstream Observation Suite. It’d been a broom closet before the last refit, and still had that pine and bleach smell.

  ‘Trisha?’

  She took her thumb out of her mouth, held it above the ID sheet, then turned it down, like a Roman emperor, and jabbed it into one of the faces.

  DI Bell scratched his hairy head. ‘OK … I see. Are you sure?’

  A nod.

  ‘You have to say it out loud for the tape.’

  ‘Aye, it was him. Number Five.’

  A silent pause. Then the inspector scraped his chair back from the table. ‘Right, well, interview terminated at …’ He checked his watch. ‘Three thirty nine AM. Constable Gray will take you downstairs to the duty doctor for a wee examination, OK?’

  Logan watched them filter out of the interview room, then clicked off the set.

  A minute later DI Bell clunked open the door and slumped back against the wall. He folded his arms, tufts of hair sticking out from the ends of his shirt cuffs. He wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Bad news.’

  Oh … fuck. She’d picked him out. Nine faces to chose from, and Trisha Brown had chosen his. She only recognized him because he was the idiot shouting in through the hatch of her cell. Stupid. Stupid. Fucking. Idiot.

  ‘Come on, Ding-Dong, you know it’s not—’

  ‘We’ve got to go arrest George Clooney. His fans are going to be gutted.’

  ‘Sarge? Sarge, you awake?’

  Logan jolted upright in his seat, grabbing the desk for support. He sat there, staring at the blurry Screensaver on his computer monitor for a moment. What time is it?’

  A lanky young lad with a streaky-bacon complexion, watery eyes, and a PC’s uniform fidgeted with the Airwave handset clipped to his stab-proof vest. The numbers on his epaulettes marked him out as one of the year’s new recruits. God knew how he’d ended up on nights, he looked as if a strong fart would blow him over. ‘DI Bell says that’s the duty doc done with your junkie. Says you can sod off home if you like?’

  Logan yawned, stretched out in the seat, shuddered, then slumped. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Had to go out on a shout – some tadger’s taken a scaffolding pole to Vicious Vikki’s Ford Fiesta.’

  ‘He say what the result was?’

  The constable nodded. ‘Car’s completely buggered.’

  ‘Not the window, you idiot, the rape kit.’

  ‘Don’t know, Sarge.’

  Logan creaked his way out of his swivel chair, stuck his palms against the small of his back and tried to straighten the knots out of his spine. Then let out a big hissing breath.

  Constable Streaky-Bacon was still standing there.

  ‘Anything else?’

  Shrug.

  ‘Get back to sodding work then.’

  Dr Donna Delaney looked up from the copy of the Aberdeen Examiner open on the desk in front of her, covering the keyboard of a battered laptop. ‘LOCAL PSYCHIC’S PLEA TO POLICE’. A white porcelain teapot – with matching cup and saucer – trailed the lemon-washing-up-liquid smell of Earl Grey into the tiny office set aside for the on-call duty doctor.

  She peered at Logan over the top of her trendy glasses, then smiled. ‘How’s the stomach?’

  ‘You did a rape kit on Trisha Brown?’

  ‘Yes … Lovely young lady. Apparently I tried to, now how did she put it, “Lez her up”. Let me see your hands.’

  He held them both out, and she scooted her chair closer on squeaky castors, took hold of his left hand and peered at it. Two little scars marked the middle of the palm, about half an inch apart, the skin all pink and shiny. She turned it over and peered at the back. Two more scars.

  ‘Still giving you gyp?’

  Shrug. ‘Depends on the weather.’

  ‘Well, let me know if they start to throb, or you get swelling, or stiffness moving your fingers. Don’t want to end up with cysts.’

  ‘Rape kit?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes. Well, there’s vaginal bruising consistent with forced intercourse, some tearing to the anus as well, more bruising on the breasts and inner thighs.’

  ‘Semen?’

  Dr Delaney bit her top lip. ‘Some.’

  ‘But?’

  Well, you see, someone like Trisha, with her habit, has to get money somewhere. So while it does look like she’s been raped, it wasn’t today, and the semen I’ve got to send off to th
e labs is probably going to be from her last bunch of punters. She’s not big on using protection.’

  ‘She say anything?’

  ‘Other than, “get your hands off me you dirty lesbian bitch”? Not really, no.’ The duty doc scooted her chair back to the desk. ‘It’d be nice to think that she’ll get herself some help – kick the drugs, settle down somewhere nice with her wee boy. But I get the feeling we all know where she’s going to end up.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sooner or later, Trisha Brown would go from being Dr Delaney’s patient to Doc Fraser’s corpse.

  ‘Shh … It’s going to be OK, sweetheart. It’s going to be OK …’

  Mummy’s voice sounds like something sticky, caught on broken glass. Arms wrapped around her Good Little Girl, rocking her from side to side in her lap. Sometimes, when you’re scared, Mummy is the warmest place you can be …

  Sometimes.

  She sniffs and wipes her sleeve across her eyes. Then only just stops herself from sucking her thumb. Sucking your thumb is naughty, it makes your teeth all squint like a nasty rat.

  Teddy Gordon watches her from the foot of the bed, plastic eyes glittering and black.

  He has eyes like a rat.

  Like a crow tearing chunks out of a squished rabbit.

  Like the lens of a video camera.

  ‘Shhhhhhh … Shhhhhh …’ Mummy shudders.

  Something lands in her hair, then trickles down to her scalp – warm and wet. Mummy never cries. Not since they put Daddy in a box in the ground so he could be with the angels.

  Mummy strokes her hair. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry … It’ll only hurt for a little bit, I promise.’

  When the monsters come back to take her toes.

  17

  Trisha Brown sniffed. Her eyes were Barbie-pink, her pupils two tiny black dots as she peered out through the hatch in her cell door. The shakes had come early bringing a sheen of sweat with them. The hard-edged stench of BO and stale vomit radiated off her in waves.

  Logan tried again. ‘Who wrote “DS Logan McRae” on your chest?’

  ‘I’m not well …’

  ‘Trisha, it’s quarter to five in the morning, my shift starts in two and a bit hours, and I’ve been up all bastarding night because of you. Now who wrote my name on your bloody chest?’ Trying hard not to shout.