22 Dead Little Bodies

by MacBride, Stuart

  ‘She’s off her face too. Had pupils the size of doorknobs when we picked her up.’ Which was kind of ironic, given her obsession with Robson being a drug dealer. ‘Odds on it’s antidepressants.’

  ‘Five quid says she cops a plea, gets three or four years in a secure psychiatric facility. Out in two.’

  ‘Ever wonder why we bother?’ He tucked the manila folder under his arm and started down the corridor. ‘What’s the news with Heidi and Toby Skinner? Search turn up anything?’

  ‘Maybe we could get someone to section her? Indefinitely detained in a nice squishy room with a cardie that buckles up the back.’

  ‘He must’ve parked that damn car somewhere.’

  Steel gave up on the underwire and had a dig at the bit in the middle instead. ‘Can’t be hard getting a shrink to say she’s a danger to herself and others, can it? No’ with three pints of Justin Robson’s blood caked under her fingernails.’

  ‘I was thinking – the big car parks have ANPR systems, don’t they? In case you do a runner without paying, they can track you through your number plate.’

  ‘We could get your mate Goulding to section her, assuming he’s finished stuffing Professor Marks like a sock puppet. Pervy wee sod that he is.’

  Logan frowned. ‘Goulding or Marks?’

  ‘Bit of both.’ She blew out a breath and sagged against the corridor wall. ‘You want to know what we’ve got on the hunt for Skinner’s kids? Sod all, that’s what. Even with a massive search, there’s no sign of the car anywhere. No one’s seen it or the kids.’ She covered her face with her hands, fingertips rubbing away at her temples. ‘McHardy was right – they’re dead, aren’t they? Don’t get them in the first twenty-four hours: they’re dead. And it’s been three days.’

  ‘We’ll find them. And we’ll find them alive. All we need’s one—’

  A clipped voice cut through the corridor: ‘Ah, there you are.’ A cold smile followed the words, attached to an utter bastard in Police ninja black. Chief Superintendent Napier. His brogues were polished to dark mirrors, one pip and a crown glowing on his epaulettes. His hair glowed too, a fiery ginger that caught the overhead lighting like a Tesla coil. Napier spread his hands. ‘And if it isn’t Acting Detective Inspector McRae as well. Just the officers I need to talk to.’

  Oh great.

  Steel took a deep breath and held it.

  Logan poked her. ‘If it didn’t work on the apprentice, it’s not going to work on the Sith Lord, is it?’

  A frown creased Napier’s forehead. ‘Sith…?’

  She puffed out the air. ‘This about Justin Robson?’

  The smile widened and chilled. ‘Indeed it is, Chief Inspector. Tell you what, why don’t we start with you, and then move on to Acting Detective Inspector McRae? Call it privilege of rank.’

  Some privilege. But Logan wasn’t about to volunteer to go first.

  He backed away down the corridor. ‘Right. I’d … better get on with that investigation, then.’

  Nice and slow to the corner, then run for it.

  Logan wandered up the pavement, away from the knot of smokers kippering each other outside the Bon Accord Centre’s George Street entrance. The ribbed, concrete, Seventies lump of John Lewis squatted in the sunlight like a big grey wart, facing off against a row of charity shops, a supermarket, and a pawnbroker’s with ideas above its station.

  He stuck a finger in his other ear, to shut out the wails of a passing toddler. ‘You’re sure? Twenty grand?’

  ‘I know, it’s marvellous, isn’t it? He’s starting a property portfolio and thinks your flat’s an excellent rental prospect. And the offer’s unconditional. He’s paying cash: we don’t even need to do another Home Report!’ Marjory sounded as if she was about to pop the champagne. Eighteen months on the market, and it was going for twenty thousand over the asking price. Willkie and Oxford would probably give her a badge. And a hat. ‘So, shall I tell him…?’

  ‘It’s a deal.’ An extra twenty grand would make a huge amount of difference.

  ‘Wonderful. I’ll get the paperwork drawn up and pop it in the post—’

  ‘Actually, I can probably nip by and sign it. Get the ball rolling.’ Before Mr Property Portfolio changed his mind. Or sobered up.

  ‘Even better. Should be ready for you by lunchtime. We can—’

  Logan walked away a couple of paces and lowered his voice. ‘What about the moving date?’

  ‘Well, standard terms are four weeks, but we can probably stretch that to a month and a half if you need time to—’

  ‘No, I mean does it have to be that long? Can we make it a week, or ten days, or something?’ Ten days – it’d be cutting it close, but at least he’d be able to afford the phase-one payment for Samantha’s place at the care centre.

  ‘Well, it’s unusual, but I can try.’

  ‘Please.’ Logan waited till she’d hung up, then had a quick look around to make sure no one was watching before doing a little happy dance. Straightened his tie. Wandered back to the entrance and nodded at DS Baird. ‘We good?’

  She had one last sook on her cigarette, then nipped the end out and dumped it in the bin. ‘Ahhh … I needed that.’

  Logan pointed over her shoulder. ‘Let me guess, Wheezy?’

  Wheezy Doug paced the pavement in front of John Lewis, on his phone, head down, brow furrowed.

  ‘Not this time.’ She shook her head, then dug in a pocket for a packet of mints. ‘Police Constable Allan “Sunshine” Guthrie. Got stuck with him for three hours this morning. I swear to God, Guv, if I hear the story of how he had a threesome with the cast of Snow White one more time, I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  Baird shuddered. ‘I mean, can you imagine it?’

  ‘Rather not.’

  Wheezy Doug got to the end of the kerb and stopped, head bowed over his phone, eyes screwed up. Then there was swearing and coughing. A gobbet of phlegm hit the gutter.

  Baird shook her head. ‘It’s a miracle he’s not been invalided out yet.’

  Logan stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘Steel thinks the kids are dead. We’re looking for bodies.’

  ‘Probably. You know what these selfish wee gits are like. Kills the wife, kills the kids, kills himself. If he’s going to die, the rest of them have to too.’ Her top lip curled. ‘How could they possibly live without him?’

  Wheezy stuffed his phone back in his pocket and lurched over, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Eyebrows down. Shoulders hunched. Hands curled into fists. ‘Sodding goat-buggering hell.’

  Baird grinned at him. ‘Good news?’

  ‘Postmortem result on Gordy Taylor. Pathologist says he’d scoofed down about a litre of rough whisky before he died: stomach was sloshing with it. Official cause of death is asphyxia caused by aspiration of regurgitated particulates.’

  ‘Choked on his own vomit.’

  ‘We knew that yesterday.’ Logan folded his arms. ‘So why all the swearing?’

  ‘Lab’s got a new piece of kit in, so they rushed through the tox report as an excuse to play with it. Gordy’s blood was full of sleeping pills, painkillers, and …’ he checked his notebook then took his time pronouncing the word in little chunks, ‘bro-ma-diolone.’

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

  ‘It’s a fancy way of saying “rat poison”.’

  The smile died on Baird’s face. ‘Poor Gordy.’

  ‘According to the labs, it was probably soaked into whole grain wheat: you know the stuff they sell in tubs coloured bright blue? You use it to bait traps. Only Gordy didn’t have any wheat in his stomach, or in the puddle of vomit he was lying in.’

  ‘That’s all we need.’ Logan let his head fall back and stared at the sky for a beat. A breath hissed out of him. The other stuff – the drugs – that was easy enough to explain. Gordy breaks into someone’s house, raids their medicine cupboard, decides he fancies getting high on whatever he finds, it doesn’t react wel
l with the booze, he throws up and dies. But rat poison?

  And what had Logan done when the poor sod had been hit by a car and assaulted? Blamed him for being a drunken idiot. Told him it was basically his own fault.

  Wonderful: more guilt.

  Logan squeezed it down with all the rest. ‘Any ideas?’

  Wheezy spluttered a bit. Then spat. ‘Lab says if you dumped the rat bait in milk, water, or alcohol, you could leach the bromadiolone out of the poisoned wheat. And as his stomach was full of whisky…’

  ‘So he drinks a bottle of supermarket McTurpentine laced with rat poison and dies.’

  ‘Nope. Apparently, it takes a day, day and a half for bromadiolone to kick in. It thins the blood and causes internal bleeding – he’d have popped like a water balloon during the postmortem.’

  Baird nodded. ‘So whoever did it didn’t know it’d take thirty-six hours. I mean, it’s not suicide, is it? You don’t kill yourself with rat poison, you kill other people.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter if he choked on his own vomit or not, he would’ve been dead by Wednesday anyway.’ Wheezy’s shoulders slumped an inch. ‘Suppose it’s not my problem any more then. Have to hand it over to the Major Investigation Team.’

  Logan patted him on the shoulder. ‘Welcome to Police Scotland.’

  ‘Sod Police Scotland. I miss Grampian Police.’

  ‘Better head back to the ranch and get the paperwork started.’

  A sigh. ‘Guv.’ Then Wheezy slouched off.

  Baird screwed up one side of her face. ‘Rat poison.’

  ‘Not our problem any more.’ Logan pushed through into the shopping centre.

  ‘Yeah, but still… It’s a CID case, we should be the ones chasing it down.’

  They marched past the juice bar and into one of the atrium spaces, queuing for the escalator behind a group of schoolkids in squint uniforms.

  ‘That’s the way things work now. Fighting it will get you nothing but ulcers. And possibly a reprimand, so—’ Logan’s phone launched into ‘The Imperial March’ as they glided slowly upwards. That would be Steel, calling up to whinge about Napier.

  Baird raised an eyebrow and tilted her head at his pocket. ‘You going to answer that?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What if it’s important? Maybe they’ve found Skinner’s kids?’

  As if they could be that lucky. But maybe Baird was right.

  He pulled the phone out and hit the button as they hit the top of the escalator. ‘What?’

  Steel’s voice was low and whispery. ‘I need you to set off the fire alarm.’

  Typical.

  ‘I’m not setting off the fire alarm.’ Logan followed Baird past a couple of shops, then through a bland grey door marked ‘STAFF ONLY’.

  ‘Don’t be a dick! Had to fake a dose of the squits so I could get away and phone you. Napier’s lurking outside the ladies’, making sure I don’t do a runner. How untrusting is that?’

  ‘I’m in the Bon Accord Centre.’ His voice echoed back from the corridor walls. ‘Doubt that setting off the fire alarm here’s going to help you any.’

  ‘You rotten sod! This is no time to do your shopping, get your puckered rectum back here and rescue me!’

  A handful of doors sat at the end of the corridor. Baird knocked on the one with ‘SECURITY’ on it.

  ‘I can’t come back, I’m busy.’

  ‘Busy my sharny arse. If you don’t get back here right now, I’m—’

  Logan made a grating hissing noise. ‘… lo? Hello? Whhhhh…’ More hissing. ‘… an you hear me? Hello?’

  ‘How thick do you think I am?’

  Ah well, it’d been worth a try. ‘Look: I can’t come back and rescue you, because I’m trying to find your missing kids. We’re…’

  There was a clunk, the security door opened an inch, and a little old lady in a brown peaked cap peered out. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Got to go.’ Logan hung up and produced his warrant card. ‘Police Scotland. We need to see Saturday’s ANPR data for the Loch Street car park.’

  ‘Oh.’ She squinted at Logan’s ID, then nodded. ‘Better come in then.’ She opened the door wide, revealing a turd-brown uniform with sweetcorn-coloured buttons and piping. ‘You looking for anything specific?’

  The room was small, lined with television monitors showing multiple views of the shopping centre. People going about their shoppy business, dragging stroppy toddlers and stroppier boyfriends behind them.

  Baird took out her notebook. ‘Dark-blue BMW M5, parked here sometime before two.’ She rattled off the registration number as the old lady sank into a swivel chair and pulled a keyboard over.

  Grey fingers flew across the keys. ‘Of course, I should really be asking to see a warrant – data protection and all that – but it’s my last day on Friday, so sod it.’ A line of letters popped up on the screen. ‘Here you go. Got it coming in at twelve oh three.’

  Logan leaned on the desk. ‘When did it leave?’

  More lightning keystrokes. ‘That’s odd…’ A frown, then she leaned forward and peered at the screen. Another frown. Then she put her glasses on. ‘Oh, no – here we go. Left at three twenty-two.’

  Over an hour and a half after John Skinner did his Olympic diving routine onto the cobblestones.

  Baird wrote the details down in her notebook. ‘We were right – he had an accomplice.’

  Logan hooked a thumb at the bank of screens. ‘Can you bring up the car park CCTV footage for then?’

  The old lady’s fingers clattered across the keys again, and half of the monitors filled with concrete, pillars, and cars. ‘There you go.’

  He flicked from screen to screen. ‘Anyone see Skinner’s car?’

  ‘Guv?’ Baird tapped one in the top left corner of the display. ‘That not it there?’

  A dark-blue BMW was heading down the ramp to the exit, only it wasn’t doing it under its own steam, it was being towed by a truck with ‘ABERTOW VEHICLE SERVICES ~ PARKING ENFORCEMENT’ stencilled along the side.

  You wee beauty.

  ‘Baird?’

  ‘I’m on it.’ She pulled out her phone, poked at the screen then held it to her ear as she pushed out of the room. ‘Control? I need the number for a local company…’

  The door swung shut, leaving Logan alone with the security guard.

  She spooled the footage backwards, following the tow truck from camera to camera. ‘So, what’s this bloke supposed to have done?’

  ‘Killed himself.’

  ‘Poor wee soul.’

  ‘But he killed his wife and kids first.’

  The old lady pouted for a moment, then nodded. ‘Well, in that case, however he committed suicide, I hope it bloody well hurt.’

  15

  Logan marched across the tarmac, mobile to his ear. ‘I don’t care if she’s got an audience with the Queen’s proctologist, get her on the phone. Now.’

  ‘Oh dear…’ A deep breath from PC Guthrie, then there was a thunk. A scuffing noise. And the crackle of feet hurrying down stairs.

  Abertow’s vehicle impound yard sat on the edge of the industrial estate in Altens. Rows of confiscated vehicles sat behind high chainlink fencing. Razorwire curled in glinting coils along the top. Big yellow warning signs hung every dozen feet or so, boasting about dirty big dogs patrolling the place. Should have been one about the seagulls too. They screeched and crawed in wheeling hordes, a couple of them squabbling across the top of a Nissan Micra that had been liberally spattered a stinking grey.

  ‘Yeah, some people just couldn’t give a toss.’ The large man in the orange overalls tucked his hands into his pockets, the added strain threatening to burst the outfit apart at the groin. He pulled his huge round shoulders up towards his ears. Sunlight sparkled off his shaved head. ‘It wasn’t really parked, more like abandoned. Right in front of the emergency exit too. What if there’d been a fire?’ A sniff. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’

  Another thunk from
the phone, then three knocks. Guthrie was barely audible. ‘He’s going to kill me…’

  What sounded like a door opening. Then a cold voice, slightly muffled by distance. ‘This better be important, Constable.’ Napier.

  Baird snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves, then ripped open the evidence bag with John Skinner’s keys in it. The plastic fob for the BMW was cracked and stained with blobs of cherry red.

  Guthrie cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, sir. But I need to get a message to the Chief Inspector. Ma’am? It’s DI McRae, says it’s urgent.’

  Baird pointed the fob at the car and pressed the button. Nothing happened.

  Napier didn’t sound impressed. ‘Constable, I think you’ll find—’

  ‘Sunshine!’ Steel’s smoky growl got louder. ‘I take back nearly everything I said about that lumpy misshapen head of yours. That for me? Come on then, give.’ A crackle as the phone was handed over.

  Baird shook the keys and tried again. Still nothing.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector I must insist—’

  ‘Don’t think I’m no’ enjoying our wee chat, sir, but operational priorities and all that.’

  Baird gave up on the fob and stuck the key in the lock instead. Clunk. The central locking kicked in.

  And Steel was full volume. ‘Who dares interrupt my meeting with the glorious head of Professional Standards?’

  ‘It’s—’

  ‘What’s that? It’s an emergency? Dear God… No, don’t worry: I’ll be right there.’ A sigh. Then the sound became muffled, as if she was holding the phone against her chest. ‘Sorry, sir, much though I’d love to stay and chat, I gotta go. But we’ll always have Paris!’ The sound of Steel’s boots clacking up the corridor, reverberated out of the phone. Making good her escape. ‘Laz, what the hell took you so long?’

  ‘We’ve found John Skinner’s car. He dumped it in the Loch Street car park and it got towed Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘It got towed?’ Some swearing rattled down the line. ‘You tell those Automatic Number Plate Recognition idiots I’m going to bury my boot in their bumholes right up to the laces. They were supposed to check!’