Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8

by Stuart MacBride

  She pursed her lips, raised an eyebrow, then closed the door behind him.

  Logan went back to his forms. ‘Steel about?’

  ‘She’s sloped off to get a quick cigarette in before the review.’

  Small mercies.

  He moved on to the next form in the pile. ‘How did you get on?’

  Chalmers dragged out her notebook. ‘Far as we can tell, there’s no record of Roy Forman being referred for counselling in the last two years. He saw a therapist for about eighteen months after he got back from Kuwait, but that was it.’

  So much for that. ‘Never mind, what about—’

  ‘But …’ Theatrical pause. ‘I did manage to track down the head of psychiatric care at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, and he says that there’s a handful of therapists offering free treatment to the long-term homeless and victims of violent crime.’

  ‘Did you …?’

  She peeled a Post-it note from her book and placed it on Logan’s desk. ‘Thought you might ask.’

  Four names, one of them instantly recognizable: Dr David Goulding. Giving free therapy sessions to the homeless. Poor sods. Each of the doctors on the list had a telephone number picked out in careful numerals beneath it.

  Chalmers flipped over the page in her notebook. ‘According to Agnes Garfield’s parents she was undergoing treatment as part of an experimental trial programme at Aberdeen University. Something about a comparative benefit analysis of cognitive behaviour therapy and medication.’ Another Post-it note joined the first, this one with a single name in the middle: Prof. Richard Marks. ‘I tried talking to him, but he’s squealing patient-doctor privilege. We could get a warrant?’

  ‘We could do that,’ Logan chucked the form back on top of his in-tray and stood, ‘or we could try the old two birds, one stone, routine.’

  ‘… and when I read the script, I fell in love with it. Of course I’d adored the books as a wee girl, I mean, who didn’t, right? I always knew it’d make a great film, but I never thought I’d be lucky enough to be in it!’

  Logan’s manky Fiat Punto bounced and thrummed over the cobbles on College Bounds, past the dirty beige-and-grey stonework of King’s College – the big vaulted crown on top of the bell tower swathed in scaffolding and gauzy material like some massive spider’s web.

  Chalmers scowled out from behind the steering wheel. ‘It’s all double yellows …’

  ‘Wow. I know.’ The DJ’s voice had more cheese in it than Steel’s macaroni. ‘Right, you’re listening to Jimmy’s Late Lunch, and I’m here with Nichole Fyfe. Yeah, that’s right, local girl made good, and full-on Hollywood superstar: Nichole Fyfe! How cool is that?’

  A silky laugh. ‘I’m definitely not a superstar, Jimmy. Dame Judi Dench is a superstar, Robbie Coltrane is a superstar, Morgan Mitchell is a superstar. I’m just a wee girl from Kincorth hoping no one’s going to start wondering what on earth I’m doing hanging about with all these great people.’

  Logan pointed through the windscreen. ‘Keep going. Might be a couple of spaces further up.’

  ‘So, are you going to pick another track for us, Nichole?’

  ‘You bet, Jimmy. This is a song that meant a lot to me when I was growing up: it’s Eminem with “The Real Slim Shady”.’

  Chalmers grimaced, then clicked the radio off. ‘Can’t stand rap.’

  A group of students, dressed as ninja chickens, leapt and twirled across the road, pausing in the middle to throw some sloppy kung fu moves about, before sprinting off across a small chunk of emerald grass. White feathers tumbled in their wake.

  Logan’s phone rang, ‘The Imperial March’ muffled in his jacket pocket. Steel.

  Chalmers rumbled the rusty car up the High Street, ivy-covered university buildings on one side, bland granite tenements on the other. ‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’

  He shifted in his seat. ‘Sooner not.’

  Eventually the music stopped. Then two beats later it started up again.

  ‘You sure, Guv?’

  ‘Positive.’ He pulled his mobile out and set it on silent. Put it away again. If Steel wanted to shout at him for dodging the National Police Improvement Authority review, she’d just have to wait.

  Chalmers frowned out at the street. Every parking space was jammed with a shiny new hatchback or a Smart car. ‘Look at them. When I went to uni, you know what I had? A bike. And some thieving sod nicked it halfway through first term.’

  More students, dressed in long black jackets and little black sunglasses, backpacks over one shoulder, nodding along to a collective beat. Was The Matrix old enough now to be considered ironic? Or were they just goths, out for a bit of a mope?

  Logan smiled. One of them had a Frisbee.

  The phone vibrated in his pocket. Steel just couldn’t take a hint, could she? Like Agnes Garfield.

  He looked down at the latest poster the media department had put together. Three different versions of Agnes’s face: the photo her parents handed over, the one from the cash-machine’s security camera, and a third one knocked up on the identikit software. They’d given her blonde hair, just in case. A pretty young woman with freckles and a warm smile. Brunette, redhead, blonde – surely someone would recognize her?

  Logan popped the poster on the dusty dashboard. ‘What happened with the diary?’

  Silence.

  For God’s sake. He stared at Chalmers. She stared straight ahead.

  ‘Sergeant, I told you to read it two days ago. Why haven’t—’

  Her voice was sharp and brittle: ‘I was up till three this morning going through it. I wrote you a report and everything!’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Put it on your in-tray first thing this morning.’

  ‘Ah …’ Where it was probably buried under four tons of paperwork.

  ‘You didn’t even look at it, did you?’ Mouth a thin hard line.

  ‘Didn’t even know it was there: Steel uses my in-tray as a dumping ground for all the stuff she can’t be arsed doing.’ He pointed at a shiny, tiny, red Alfa Romeo as it pulled away from the kerb. ‘Parking space.’

  Chalmers slipped the scabby Punto into the still-warm spot. Then looked out of the window, face turned away from him. ‘I would’ve done it sooner, but there was everything else going.’

  Logan undid his seatbelt. ‘I know the feeling. But next time, do me a favour and hand whatever it is to me in person. Put it right in my hand.’

  A nod, still not looking at him. ‘Yes, Guv.’

  ‘In Grampian CID you only ever stick something in someone’s in-tray if you’re avoiding them, or you’re dumping something unpleasant on them and don’t want caught holding it. Think “Pass the Parcel”, only the prize is an exploding jobbie.’

  He climbed out into the afternoon, phone buzzing away silently in his pocket, vibrating against his ribs like an angry wasp. ‘Come on: you can give me the short version on the way.’

  The dove-grey sky matched the granite buildings, the breeze tumbleweeding an empty crisp packet and a carrier-bag across the grass. Definitely getting colder. Logan followed the path behind the Old Brewery, taking a shortcut under the concrete Tetris block of the Taylor Building.

  Chalmers dug her hands into her pockets. ‘First half of the book isn’t a diary. It’s more like some sort of slavish recreation of—’

  ‘The Fingermen’s dittay books. It’s a prop from the film, she stole it.’

  ‘Oh … You knew.’ A little sag, then Chalmers brought her chin up again. ‘The second half isn’t her handwriting – doesn’t match the slash-fiction we found. It’s still her, but it’s like she’s trying to make her writing look like whoever did the first part.’

  Across a car park wedged in between the buildings, the yellow hatching of a box junction flaking away and scarred with potholes.

  ‘There’s loads of angst-ridden poetry, a bit of moaning about how no one understands her, how she hates the way the medication
makes her feel, quite a lot about how she loves Anthony Chung more than oxygen … Blah, blah, blah. Standard teenager stuff.’

  ‘She’s eighteen.’

  ‘There’s nothing in the book about her planning to run away, or where she’d go if she did.’

  They marched past Coopers Court, warm for a moment in a beam of sunlight, the concrete lump of a building acting as a windbreak.

  ‘What about the mysterious Stacey …?’

  ‘Gourdon, Guv. Stacey Gourdon. Still no sign.’

  Not good news: if Agnes was prepared to necklace some random tramp, she wasn’t exactly going to bake cookies for the woman screwing her boyfriend. And it wouldn’t be Anthony’s fault, would it? No, it’d all be Stacey Gourdon’s.

  Be lucky if they found her in one piece, never mind alive.

  ‘Get on to the hospitals. See if Ms Gourdon is lying in A&E somewhere.’ Logan stepped to one side, allowing a young woman on a skateboard to trundle past, blonde hair down to the small of her back, ragged saggy jeans low enough to show off a pair of red pants and a ‘DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL’ tramp stamp. ‘If you were eighteen, running away from home, what would you take with you?’

  Chalmers’s brow wrinkled. ‘Toilet bag, makeup, hairdryer, Mr Trousermonkey, favourite clothes …’

  ‘What about your diary?’

  ‘No way I’d leave that behind. My mum was like the Spanish Inquisition on a bad day, nothing was safe.’

  ‘Exactly. And we know Agnes’s mother’s … Hold on, “Mr Trousermonkey”?’

  ‘Mum made him from a pair of dad’s old trousers, when I was wee. He’s tartan.’

  Up ahead, the ninja chickens were poncing about outside the psychology building, doing their martial arts poses for anyone daft enough to pay any attention.

  Logan ignored them, making for the glass doors instead. ‘OK, so forgetting your dad’s appalling dress sense for a minute, you wouldn’t leave your diary. How about a big bag of weed?’

  ‘Never smoked it, Guv. I don’t put drugs into my body.’

  ‘Does Guinness not count then?’ He held the door open for her. The glass was almost obscured by posters for university am-dram productions of Gilbert and Sullivan and worthy plays, ‘DRUMMER WANTED’ ads, and coming attractions for the film club’s slash-horror season.

  ‘Maybe Agnes didn’t know she was going to run away? Spur of the moment?’

  Possible … ‘Then why didn’t she sneak back in and take the important stuff?’

  Up the stairs to the first floor.

  ‘Maybe she can’t? Maybe Anthony Chung won’t let her?’

  Maybe …

  The receptionist put the phone down, then peered at them with watery eyes, a twitchy smile uncomfortable on her face. ‘Dr Goulding will see you now.’

  Logan led the way into an office crammed with books on three walls, four large scrawl-covered whiteboards filling the other. The furniture was a collection of minimalist chrome, glass and black leather. A coffee table sat in the middle of the room, littered with publications: Psychology Review, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, European Journal of Behavior Analysis, and the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

  The room’s owner lay on what looked like a lumpy black recliner, supported by twin chrome rails, a copy of Magic Magazine draped across his face. No shoes, just a pair of black-and-red socks with pictures of flaming dice on them. The faint drone of snoring, little pot belly going up and down.

  Logan waited until Chalmers was inside, then slammed the office door shut, hard enough to make the framed diplomas rattle. ‘Dave!’

  Dr Goulding sat bolt upright, the magazine falling into his lap. ‘I’m awake, I’m awake …’ He blinked a couple of times, then reached for the pair of glasses on the coffee table and slipped them on. ‘Logan, why didn’t you …’ A frown. ‘Did she keep you waiting?’

  ‘Ten minutes. Told us you were on a conference call to Johannesburg.’

  ‘Woman’s a nightmare. Just because I told her she couldn’t have the day off to go play golf.’ He stood, brushed biscuit crumbs from the front of his stripy shirt. ‘Sorry, manners.’ Dr Goulding picked up a pair of two-tone loafers and slipped them on. ‘Take a seat, please.’

  Logan settled into a black leather chair that was all rectangles, then nodded at Chalmers. ‘Dave, this is Detective Sergeant Chalmers.’

  The psychologist stuck his hand out. ‘ChalmersDave-Goulding.’ Pronouncing it in a rush, as if it was all one word. ‘Please, sit, sit. Do you want tea, or coffee? We had some garibaldis, but …’ He glanced at the crumbs on the chaise longue. ‘Someone ate them.’

  Logan pulled out Chalmers’s Post-it note, then stuck it in the middle of the glass desk.

  Dave sniffed. Then picked it up. ‘A list of therapists? You’ve been seeing someone else?’ A frown. ‘I have to admit that I’m a little bit hurt by that, Logan. I thought the talking therapy was working, and that’s why I hadn’t heard from you. You could’ve said something when I was helping out this morning—’

  ‘The four of you have been treating homeless men and women. For free.’

  Bloody Chalmers was staring at him, one eyebrow raised as if she’d just heard he had a vestigial tail.

  A frown. ‘Well … yes. Only trying to do our bit for society. These people are vulnerable and conventional—’

  ‘Do you know if any of you treated a Roy Forman?’

  Dave tilted his head to one side. ‘You could’ve just given us a phone: didn’t have to come all the way out here. Not that I’m not happy to see you again, but …?’

  ‘I need a favour as well.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘And have you been seeing someone else?’

  ‘Dave, it’s important—’

  ‘Understand, my help isn’t conditional on your response, I’m just interested.’

  Brilliant. Discuss whether or not he’d been seeing another therapist, with DS Chalmers standing there, staring at him. No way that would be all over the station by close of play. ‘No.’

  ‘Hmmm … In that case, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Professor Richard Marks. He was treating a young woman called Agnes Garfield as part of some kind of trial programme?’

  Chalmers flipped open her notebook. ‘Comparative benefit analysis of cognitive behaviour therapy and medication in the treatment of wide spectrum psychological disorders.’

  A little smile curled at the corner of Dave’s mouth. ‘Is he a suspect in something? Please tell me the baldy sausage-faced old moron’s a suspect. Is it molesting sheep? I’ll bet it is, he looks like the type, doesn’t he?’

  ‘We think Agnes Garfield might have killed Roy Forman. Professor Marks is quoting doctor-patient confidentiality.’

  Dave blinked. Then his eyes pinched nearly shut and he sank down into his big leather chair. ‘Roy’s dead?’

  ‘We ID’d his body a couple of hours ago from a facial reconstruction. He was the necklacing victim.’

  ‘I can’t believe Roy’s dead. We’d made so much progress …’

  ‘Dave, we have to find her before she hurts anyone else. I need you to go talk to Professor Marks. It’s a murder investigation, I can get a warrant if I have to, but if he cooperates it’ll make everyone’s lives a lot easier.’

  A deep breath. A nod. Then he stood, straightened the cuffs on his stripy shirt, and marched for the door. ‘Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll get Little Miss Stroppy to get you a pot of tea.’

  Clunk. And they were alone in the room.

  Chalmers sat on the chaise longue thing, then lay back on it, putting her feet up. ‘So … therapy, eh?’

  ‘I’ve been stabbed, shot at, blown up, made to eat human flesh,’ Logan held up his left hand and showed her the two thin scars in the palm, ‘someone nailed my hand to the floor with a nail-gun, then tried to do the same with my head. Someone else set fire to my flat with me in it. My girlfriend’s sti
ll in the hospital after that one …’ He wandered over to the window, looking down on a patch of green dotted with trees. The goths from the High Street had heaped up their long black coats in a big pile so they could chase back and forth after the Frisbee, laughing and squealing like children. ‘So yes: they sent me for therapy. It was that or be invalided out.’

  ‘Oh …’ She cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, Guv. I didn’t … Sorry.’

  Silence.

  Yeah, everyone was always sorry.

  ‘Get on to Control: I want someone watching Agnes Garfield’s house. Round the clock. If she wants her personal stuff she’ll have to go back for it. Chase up the lookout call on Anthony Chung’s car too. And talk to the PF’s office: I want a warrant for searching Dr Marks’s files faxed over to this office within the hour.’

  ‘I thought you said we could kill two birds with one stone?’

  ‘Just in case. You know what these academics are like, stroppy bunch of sods can’t—’

  A crash sounded from somewhere down the corridor. Then the sound of raised voices filtered through.

  ‘Unprofessional bastard!’ Liverpool accent, so that would be Dave Goulding.

  ‘Get off me! Help! Someone call the police!’ And that wasn’t.

  ‘Oh crap …’ Chalmers scrambled out of the chaise longue and ran for the door.

  Logan followed her, charging out into the reception area.

  The receptionist was standing by the door to the corridor, one hand to her mouth, eyes gleaming as she shifted from foot to foot. She was muttering to herself, voice barely audible over the shouting and scuffling coming from outside. ‘Go on, hit him again, right in the balls …’

  ‘Agh! No biting!’

  Logan stuck his head out of the office door. Dr Dave Goulding had a short bald man in a headlock and was dragging him – kicking and swearing – down the corridor towards them.

  29

  ‘I want him arrested!’ Professor Marks sat on the edge of a black leather armchair, a wad of damp paper towels pressed against his bottom jaw. His hair was little more than a memory, clinging in grey wisps around a shiny bald head. Big gold-framed glasses covered in fingerprints. No chin. His face just sagged its way down into his neck. Goulding was right: the man looked like a sausage. ‘You’re finished at this institution, do you hear me? Finished!’