The Blood Road

by Stuart MacBride

  Cthulhu washed her tummy in a barrage of shlurpy noises.

  ‘True… I don’t think I’d trust Lorna Chalmers either.’ Logan perched on the end of the bed and pulled on a pair of painty trainers. ‘Tara’s coming over later for pizza. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’

  One last shlurp and Cthulhu stopped washing and stared at him.

  ‘What?’

  More staring.

  ‘Oh come on, not this again. There’s nothing wrong with talking to your cat. People do it all the time.’ He leaned over and kissed her on her fuzzy little head. ‘And it’s not as if you’re actually answering back, is it? Only crazy people own talking cats.’ Another frown. ‘Which reminds me.’

  Logan stood and wandered down the landing again, into the bathroom.

  Still have to finish tiling those other two walls. Just because the shower was usable, didn’t mean the room was done.

  Blah, blah, blah.

  He opened the medicine cabinet, took out the box of Aripiprazole and popped two small orange tablets out of their blister pack and onto his hand.

  Cthulhu appeared in the cabinet’s mirrored door as he shut it – following him into the bathroom and jumping up onto the toilet lid. More staring.

  ‘I know: I’m taking them, see?’

  He popped the pills in his mouth, washing them down with a full glass of water before the taste hit. Then turned and opened his mouth wide for Cthulhu to see.

  ‘Look: all gone. So if Doctor Goulding asks, you can tell him I’m definitely taking my antipsychotics.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘Because I know you’re in cahoots with him, that’s why.’

  A long slow blink of those big yellow-and-black eyes.

  Logan sagged. ‘I know. I love you too.’ He blinked back at her. ‘Now, do you want to help Daddy wallpaper the living room?’

  She jumped down from the toilet and padded off towards the bedroom.

  ‘Lazy sod!’

  Ah well, she’d only make the wallpaper paste all hairy anyway.

  Logan smoothed down the lining paper’s edges with his brush, making the seam disappear. Might even get this wall finished tonight. Which would be—

  His phone launched into its generic ringtone.

  ‘Arrrgh! Leave me alone!’

  But it kept on ringing.

  He gave the lining paper one last flourish, then dumped the brush on the table and wiped his fingers clean on his painty T-shirt. ‘Pfff… Almost finished as well.’

  When he picked his phone off the couch, the words ‘DS LORNA CHALMERS’ glowed in the middle of the screen.

  Interesting.

  He prodded the ‘ANSWER’ button then stuck the thing on speakerphone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello?’

  Lorna sagged back in her seat. Outside, the North Sea boomed and crashed against the beach, the spray a grey smear in the night. Lights flickered in the gloom, small and distant – huge supply boats anchored down to wait out the storm. If only it could be that simple…

  The tower blocks of Seaton rose up on the left, windows shining as normal people went about their normal evenings as they did every single day of their normal little lives.

  When did she forget what that felt like?

  Most of her ached. And what didn’t ache, hurt. Stung. Burned.

  ‘Hello? DS Chalmers? Are you there?’

  She dragged in a breath, ribs squealing in protest at the movement. Her voice came out muffled and lisping. Weak. Pathetic. ‘All I ever wanted to do was help.’

  A sigh came from her phone’s speaker. ‘Then come in tomorrow and help. Ellie Morton might still be out there, alive.’

  She wiped her other hand across her eyes. Do not give him the satisfaction of hearing you cry! ‘Why does it always have to be so hard?’

  Headlights swept around the corner, getting closer, making her squint.

  The woman in the rear-view mirror was a disaster: her face covered in scrapes and fledgling bruises. A black eye. Shirt collar ripped. Jacket too. Blood smeared around her nose and mouth.

  Then the car was past and she was in darkness again.

  ‘Because it’s about people. Nothing about people is easy.’ McRae put on one of those fake, gentle voices – pretending he cared about her. When he didn’t. No one did. ‘Come in, Lorna. We can find her. Together. We can save a wee girl’s life.’

  Lorna swallowed. Blew out a breath. Blinked at the car’s roof. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Lorna? Lorna, it’s—’

  She hung up. Put her phone on the passenger seat.

  Fumbled a half-dozen painkillers into her palm, swallowing them with a mouthful of Ribena. Grimacing as they clawed their way down her throat. Chased them with another mouthful.

  Lorna curled forward, till her forehead rested on the steering wheel, and let the tears come. Why did everyone hate her? Why did everything go wrong? Why wasn’t—

  Her phone burst into ‘The Bends’ and there was his name on the screen again: ‘BRIAN’.

  She stared at it. Snarled. Picked the thing up.

  ‘AAAAAAAAAA‌AAAAAAAAAA‌AAAAAAAAAA‌AAAAAAAARGH!’ Then hurled it into the passenger footwell.

  Enough!

  She turned the key in the ignition, scrubbed a hand across her eyes, turned on the headlights, and pulled away from the kerb.

  There was going to be a reckoning, and it was going to happen right now.

  ‘Sure you don’t want any wine?’ Tara waggled the half-empty bottle again, making the tips of her long, dark-orange hair jiggle.

  Logan gave her a pained smile. ‘Sorry the kitchen’s kind of a tip.’

  That was gilding the jobbie a bit. The walls hadn’t even made it as far as the chicken pox stage – instead seventies brown-and-green wallpaper lined the room, faded so much that the pattern looked more like mould than anything else. Dark shapes lurked around the edges where he’d ripped out all the kitchen units. Sockets and switches dangled from their wiring. All the skirting removed to reveal holes in the lathe and plaster. The whole thing topped off by the decorative sculptural presence of an electric cooker straight out of the Flintstones and a battered stainless-steel sink.

  Tara settled back in one of the six nonmatching chairs arranged around the rickety kitchen table and looked at him over the top of her glass. Piercing blue eyes, a bit like a wolf’s, surrounded by smokey make-up and freckles. Heart-shaped face with a strong jaw. And, let’s face it, slightly out of his league. The unattainable goddess vibe was only undermined by the big red blob of sauce on her fitted white shirt.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I boring you?’

  ‘No. No. Not at all.’ He took another slice of pizza from his box. Shrugged. ‘It’s just … my day’s been all errant cops and a missing child. It’s not really … you know.’

  Cthulhu jumped up onto the table and plonked herself down between Logan’s ham-and-mushroom and Tara’s vegan Giardiniera with prosciutto. Stuck a leg in the air and started washing her tail.

  Tara took a sip of wine. ‘Mine’s been all lockups stuffed to the rafters with counterfeit vodka and cigarettes. So I think you probably win.’

  He took a bite. ‘Can’t help wondering what happened to Ellie Morton. Maybe it’s better if she isn’t still alive.’ He followed it with a mouthful of fizzy water. Stifled a burp. ‘You ever heard of something called the “Livestock Mart”?’

  ‘What, Thainstone?’

  ‘No, not Thainstone. This one’s highly illegal: supposed to be a place where you can buy and sell abducted children. Moves about the countryside so no one can find it unless they know where to look.’

  ‘Yeah…’ She lowered her glass. Curled her lip. ‘Not really the kind of thing we deal with in Trading Standards.’

  ‘Been rumours doing the rounds for years. Decades, probably. But no one’s ever—’

  Cthulhu sat bolt upright on the table, staring off into the corner of the room at a large hole gnawed through the lathe and plaster.


  Logan scooted forward on his chair. ‘Oh ho, here we go.’

  Cthulhu thumped down from the table like a dropped washing machine and prowled across the kitchen floorboards. Hunting.

  ‘Mice.’ Another bite of ham-and-mushroom. ‘Rotten wee sods have eaten half the wiring and nearly all the pipe insulation.’

  ‘So let’s get this straight: you invited me round to your vermin-infested house to eat takeaway pizza and talk about people buying and selling kids – and you think you’re getting lucky tonight?’

  He pointed at the bottle in front of her. ‘There’s more wine, if that helps?’

  Tara shook her head. ‘I’m a fool to myself.’

  ‘Hopefully…’ A grin. ‘And what’s a few mice between friends?’

  Tara shuddered. ‘I hate mice.’

  Ellie hugged her knees to her chest and pulled the blankie tight. It wasn’t easy, cos the man had tied her hands together with itchy rope. She sucked a breath in around the big red ball stuck in her mouth. And she couldn’t even spit it out cos it was all buckled at the back of her head.

  The buckle pulled at her hair whenever she leaned against the wall of the crate.

  A wooden crate, made of bits of wood, with spaces between the bits of wood so she wouldn’t stuffocate. And she could peer out, through the gaps, into the Scary Room that was all dark and smelled of dirt and nasty things and crying.

  Dirty-orange light glowed through a manky-pants window, thick with spiders’ webs and the shiny black lumps of dead flies. It was barely bright enough to see the edges of boxes and piles of stuff and dead bicycles hiding in the shadows. And the other crates…

  Seven crates and her one made eight – same as the number of tentapoles on an octopus.

  Mouses skitter-pattered across the dirt floor between them, on teeny pink feet, their eyes shiny as black marbles, teeny pink noses twitching, teeny pink ears swivelling.

  One of them crept closer to Ellie’s crate, sniffing, whiskers twitching.

  It slid between two of the wooden bits, even though the gap was only big enough to poke a finger.

  A tiny mousey, with its twitchy tail and its sniffy nose.

  She held her breath as it stared at her, then inched towards what was left of her sammitch – just the crusts, because they were icky.

  Soft and fluffy mousey.

  Ellie tried to make a smile, but the big red ball in her mouth was all difficult, so she did gentle crooning noises instead. Grubby fingers reaching, reaching…

  The mousey looked at her, pointy head on one side as her fingers got closer and closer.

  Then she’d got him! She’d got the mousey! And he was all soft and fuzzy and warm and she would call him Whiskers and Whiskers would be her best—

  Whiskers squeaked and sank his teeth into her thumb and it stung and it hurt and teeny drops of blood fell out of her thumb and she dropped Whiskers cos he’d bitted her!

  Bad mousey!

  She snatched her hand away and he tumbled to the floor, scampering back out through a gap in the wooden boards.

  He bitted her…

  Her thumb thumped and stung and throbbed and there was nobody to kiss it better.

  Ellie slumped against the crate walls as big snottery sobs rattled out of her.

  She only wanted a friend.

  Everything was horrid and cold and unfair and her thumb hurt and SHE WANTED TO GO HOME!

  And outside, in the Scary Room, someone else started crying too – all muffled and sniffy. Then the other someone, till all three of them were snuffling in the darkness. Like little piggies, waiting to be turned into sausages.

  — the widows’ waltz —

  8

  The letterbox went chlack, and that morning’s Aberdeen Examiner thumped onto the bare floorboards. Logan bent to pick it up, as the light on the papergirl’s bike faded through the rippled glass.

  He held his mug against his chest, its warmth seeping into the bare skin. Probably should have put on a bit more than jammie bottoms, but hey-ho.

  A noise mumbled out from the bedroom upstairs.

  Logan took a sip of coffee and unrolled the newspaper, heading back through into the living room.

  The Examiner’s front page carried a big picture of DI Bell’s crashed hire car, beneath the headline ‘“SUICIDE COP”’ FAKED OWN DEATH’.

  A grunt. ‘“By Colin Miller.” Of course it is.’

  Logan tossed the paper onto the couch and kept going to the open patio doors. Had another sip of coffee.

  Twenty past seven and the sky was a dirty shade of charcoal, the first rumours of dawn catching at the horizon. A thin drizzle misted its way across the gloomy expanse of grass and weeds and bushes and trees. Going to be an absolute nightmare getting all that whipped in to shape. No point worrying about it now, though – had the house to do first.

  He scratched at his checked jammie bottoms and yawned – a proper jaw-cracking one – then sagged. ‘Pfff…’

  Cthulhu sat right at the edge of the veranda, on a little stump of log, just out of reach of the rain. Logan wandered over and squatted beside her. Tried to ignore the popping sounds his knees made. Goosebumps rippled his bare arms as he rubbed the fur between her ears. Soft and warm. She mrowped.

  ‘Don’t start – I’ve taken my pills, OK? Did it first thing, so Tara wouldn’t see.’ He smiled. ‘What makes you think that? Was it the sleeping together? Of course I like her.’

  Cthulhu turned big dark eyes on him.

  ‘Well, yes, I know she snores, but so do you.’ More between-the-ear rubbing. ‘That’s very true, she is less of a nutjob than my usual.’

  A stretch, then Cthulhu thumped down from her perch and sashayed back into the living room.

  ‘Yes, OK. You’re right: “so far”.’ Logan stood. ‘But we can always—’

  ‘Logan?’

  He turned and there was Tara, wearing one of his old baggy hoodies. Bare legs poking out from underneath. Her hair was …huge. Haystack huge.

  She yawned. Shuddered. ‘Who are you talking to?’

  ‘Cthulhu. She likes you.’

  ‘Are you not cold?’ Tara’s finger was warm as it traced its way down his chest to the collection of twenty-three shiny lines that criss-crossed his stomach. ‘This is a lot of scar tissue for one man.’

  ‘I was dead for five minutes on the operating table, if that makes me sound windswept and interesting?’

  ‘Makes you sound like a zombie. Or a vampire.’ She narrowed her eyes and poked him with the finger instead. ‘You better not be the sparkly kind!’

  ‘So technically you’ve had sex with a dead person. You dirty necrophiliac pervert.’

  She poked him again. Then stole his coffee, padding across the bare floorboards to where Cthulhu waited at the kitchen door – one paw up on the wood. Expectant.

  Logan cleared his throat. ‘I have to head off soon. Got an exhumation organised and a couple of widows to talk to. You can stay here and keep Cthulhu company if you like? There’s a spare key by the kitchen door.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Why, Inspector McRae, are you giving me a key to your house?’

  ‘Lending. On the condition that you don’t turn out to be a complete nutjob.’

  A smile made little dimples in her cheeks. ‘I promise nothing.’

  Logan hurried through the rear entrance to Bucksburn station, shaking the rain from his peaked cap. No sign of anyone as he walked down the corridor, past closed office doors.

  Water rippled the stairwell windows, distorting the romantic view of the station car park – almost empty – and the main bulk of the building itself. Two storeys of rectangular brown-and-grey blockwork, devoid of character or charm. Like a miserable primary school, only without the swings and roundabouts.

  His phone dinged at him and he hauled it out.

  HORRIBLE STEEL:

  Hope you’re happy with yourself, McRae. We had to spend the night watching kids’ TV instead of dinner and a shag! I WILL HAVE MY REVEN
GE!!!

  He thumbed out a quick reply on his way up the stairs:

  Tough. I was busy.

  His footsteps echoed back at him – still no sign of anyone – through the doors at the top and into another empty corridor. Ten to eight on a rainy Saturday morning and the place was like the Mary Celeste… At least that meant he might actually get some work done for a change, free from the distraction, whingeing, and general all-round pain-in-the-backside-ishness of his fellow officers.

  Logan punched in the door-code and let himself into the Professional Standards office. Stopped. Suppressed a little groan.

  So much for the Mary Celeste.

  Rennie was slouched in his chair, surrounded by his file-box battlements, staring at the ceiling tiles as he swivelled left and right.

  Logan stripped off his fleece and hung it on the coatrack. ‘Thought you were taking Donna swimming?’

  ‘Guv.’ Rennie snapped upright.

  ‘You’re an idiot; it’s Saturday morning. Go home.’

  A frown. ‘You didn’t hear?’

  Logan sank into his own chair and powered up his computer. ‘Get the kettle on. And there better be some of those Penguins left.’

  ‘Yeah, but…’ Rennie grabbed a sheet of paper from his in-tray and hurried over. Held it out. ‘It’s DS Chalmers.’

  He didn’t bother suppressing this groan. ‘What’s she done now?’

  Sobbing howled out of the living room in jagged painful stabs. He was just visible, through the open door, hunched up on the floor in the corner of the room slumped against a set of DVD racks. A slightly chubby man, going bald at the back, arms wrapped around himself. Face buried in his knees, shoulders shaking.

  Logan eased the door shut.

  A uniformed PC stood at the other end of the hall, talking into the Airwave handset attached to her shoulder. ‘…no, Sarge, no sign of forced entry I can see, but the SE haven’t finished with the back garden yet.’

  Past her, a patrol car sat at the kerb, its lights flickering blue and white in the rain.

  Logan stepped through the plain door and into the garage again.

  It probably hadn’t been big enough to park an actual car in to start with – ‘Executive Family Homes’ being developer-speak for ‘Tiny Rabbit-Hutch Houses You Can’t Swing A Cat In’ – but it definitely wasn’t big enough now. Lorna Chalmers and her husband had filled the garage with metal shelving, leaving a four-foot-wide path down the middle. Tins of beans, soup, tomatoes, fruit, and sweetcorn. Semi-transparent boxes of crockery, others of spices, towels, clothes, cleaning products, and unidentifiable things. Various items of kitchen gadgetry, still in the original boxes. Cartons of washing powder, rice, macaroni-and-cheese mix, cereal… As if they’d tried to pack their lives away out here.