Now We Are Dead

by Stuart MacBride

  The wee boys didn’t say anything. Then one of them reached out, took hold of the wardrobe door and slid it closed. Leaving Lund and Roberta staring at their own reflections.

  Great.

  The back garden looked like the kind of place plants went to die. And then get widdled on. Nowhere to sit. So Roberta turned a bucket over and sat on that instead. A modern-day version of Oor Wullie, only much sexier.

  She took a long draw on her e-cigarette, dribbling the vapour down her nose as she chased an itchy bit around her left armpit. Mobile phone clamped between her ear and shoulder. ‘No, they’re no’ saying. But the snottery one in the SpongeBob T-shirt’s got a Belfast accent, so maybe no’ even local.’

  ‘Hmmm …’ DCI Rutherford sounded a bit distracted, as if he had something more important to do. Tosser. ‘You’d think someone would miss a five-year-old boy …’ The clickity sound of a keyboard being fingered rattled out of the earpiece. ‘We’ve got nine missing children in Aberdeen-slash-Aberdeenshire right now: four girls, five boys. Six of them “allegedly” abducted by a parent. Remaining three are early teens.’

  ‘Social Services are on the way. Maybe if we get them cleaned up and photographed …?’ Roberta rubbed at her eyes as the weight of it all dragged her shoulders down another inch. ‘Wee kids, hiding in a wardrobe.’

  ‘We just have to do what we can.’

  She took the e-cigarette out of her mouth and spat into the yellowy grass. ‘Yeah. Suppose so.’

  Didn’t make it feel any better, though.

  CHAPTER TWO

  in which it is a Braw, Bricht, Moonlicht Nicht

  and Tufty Has a Clever – and then a bath

  I

  Steel stopped on the stairs for a scratch. ‘Will you stop whinging?’

  Division Headquarters was surprisingly quiet for a change. Peaceful. Probably because everyone else – all the lucky people – had actually managed to go home.

  Tufty peered over the stack of evidence bags, shifted the large plastic crate in his arms. Biceps already wobbling with the strain. ‘This weighs a ton!’

  ‘Whinge, whinge, whinge, whinge, whinge.’ She gave up on the scratch and started up the stairs again. ‘And when you’ve signed that lot in, you can sit down with Lund and get an e-fit done. I want to know who our kidnappy scumbag is.’

  He groaned.

  Sergeant McRae was right – the woman was a nightmare.

  He manoeuvred the heavy evidence crate around the half-landing, puffing. ‘Shift ended two hours ago …’

  Steel paused at the top of the flight of stairs. ‘You’re no’ in uniform any more, Dorothy; CID doesn’t go home till the job’s done. And just for that, when you’ve finished the e-fit you can …’ Her eyes bugged, mouth hanging open as she stared at something Tufty couldn’t see.

  ‘What?’ He struggled up beside her.

  She was staring at the double doors that led off to the third floor. Muffled voices came from the other side.

  Then one of the doors twitched.

  ‘Quick!’ Steel grabbed him, bustling them both into a room just off the stairwell.

  She stood there, one eyebrow raised as the trough urinal along one wall flushed, fresh water glistening across the suspicious limescale streaks that striped the stainless steel. The sound echoed around the gents’ toilet. A row of cubicles lined the wall opposite the trough, a row of sinks down the middle. That eye-nipping smell of urinal cakes and ancient piddle. ‘Oh.’

  She didn’t … Did she? Was this supposed to be some sort of sex thing? Dragging him into the gents to have her wicked way with him?

  Noooooooooo!

  Not that she wasn’t – well, let’s be honest she really wasn’t – but it was still sexual harassment!

  Tufty backed off a couple of paces. ‘Er … It … I mean, I’m flattered and I’m sure you’re a lovely—’

  She slapped a hand over his mouth. Stared at the toilet door.

  Which began to open.

  ‘Eek!’ She dragged him and his box backwards, thumping open a cubicle door and shoving him inside. Squeezed in there with him and swung the door shut, catching it at the last moment so it wouldn’t bang.

  Her body was warm, pressed against him like that – the toilet roll holder digging into the small of his back.

  He opened his mouth to complain but she just tightened her grip on his face and pulled panicked faces.

  ‘Shhhh!’

  A voice bounced back and forth against the tiles outside their cubicle. ‘Inspector McRae.’

  And then the Sarge’s voice: ‘Charlie.’

  Well, not ‘Sarge’ any more, not since the promotion, but old habits and all that.

  Piddling noises joined the echo chamber.

  Steel adopted a hissing whisper, the words barely audible. ‘What the hell is he doing here? Supposed to be in Bucksburn with the rest of his Satan-worshipping mates!’

  Tufty tried for: ‘I don’t think you’re being very fair to Sergeant McRae,’ but all that came out was, ‘Mmmphnnn, gnnnnphnnn innng, pfffnnnnggg,’ muffled by her hand. And where was that weird garlicky-onion taste coming from?

  Steel shook her head. ‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’

  Someone’s phone burst into an upbeat ringtone.

  McRae answered it. ‘Hello? … Hi, Susan … Yes, looking forward to it. Erm, will she be there?’

  OK, another go: please get your stinky oniony hand off my mouth. ‘Mmnnff, ffnnnphm mnnnnfffnn nnnnnnffn mmmmnf ff mmnnfff.’

  She shrugged, keeping her voice low. ‘Well … look on the bright side: at least he’s no’ in the cubicle next to us making smells. Bloody place stinks like a dead tramp’s Y-fronts as it is.’

  ‘No, not a problem for me, but you know how she gets … Yeah.’

  ‘Mmnph?’

  Steel glowered at him. ‘Don’t you dare!’

  A hand dryer roared, drowning everything else out. Then clunk, the door closed.

  Steel peeled her oniony hand from Tufty’s mouth. ‘Is he gone?’

  Urgchhhh. He machine-gunned out a barrage of teeny spits. ‘Your hands taste horrible!’

  She stuck her ear against the cubicle door, just next to a bit of biro graffiti about what a lovely bottom some PC named Mackenzie had. ‘Maybe we’d better wait a bit? Just in case.’

  He shifted his grip on the evidence crate. ‘Listen, while we’re here—’

  ‘Don’t care what freaky sexual fantasy you’ve got, the answer’s no.’

  ‘Shudder!’ He shook his head. ‘No: the Blackburn Onanist – I’ve been thinking. They say the events are all random, right? But I has a clever!’

  ‘Shhh!’ She slapped a hand over his mouth again. ‘Was that the door? Did you hear the door?’

  He wriggled free. ‘The first time he goes out for a wank, he has another one the very next day. Then it’s twenty-five days till he does it again. Then twenty-eight days. Then seven—’

  ‘All right, Rain Man.’

  ‘—Then sixteen. Then one. Then eleven— Ow!’

  The rotten sod hit him.

  Steel’s voice went back to its smoky whisper. ‘There’s someone out there!’

  He copied her, so quiet even he could barely hear it. ‘Then sixteen, then one, then six—’

  And again with the oniony hand: squeezing his cheeks so he couldn’t escape this time.

  The cubicle door swung open and there was Inspector Evans, with a copy of the Racing Post tucked under one arm. A look of horror spread across his face. ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’

  Steel let go of Tufty’s face, reached out, and grabbed the door. ‘Do you mind? I’ve got this meeting room booked till seven.’ Then pulled it shut again and snibbed on the lock.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Anyway …’ Tufty gave up on the whispering. ‘There was this article in New Scientist about some new open-source pattern recognition software they’re using to re-examine the data from the Large Hadron Collider – which is completely super
cool – and I thought, why not apply it to the Blackburn wanking dates?’

  She sighed at him. ‘I need a big success, Tufty, no’ a bunch of wee kid shoplifters. No’ some pervert playing slap-the-Womble in other people’s back gardens. A big success.’

  Inspector Evans’s voice took on an imperious tone. ‘I insist you come out of there this instant!’

  ‘Yeah, but listen: I modelled the whole sequence with the days and dates. He never plays with himself on a Monday or Wednesday, or at the weekend.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to work your way back up to detective chief inspector?’

  ‘And he’s got these blocks where nothing happens at all. So I thinks to myself, “What if he’s a shift worker?” Eh?’

  Evans knocked on the door, rattling it. ‘You can’t be in here, this is the gents!’

  Steel bared her teeth. ‘Use another cubicle, this one’s occupied!’

  ‘Right, that’s it – I’m calling Professional Standards. We’ll see what they say about this.’

  She opened the door and stepped out. ‘OK, OK, we were just leaving anyway.’ Snapped her fingers. ‘Detective Constable Quirrel: heel!’

  Inspector Evans stared after them. Then ruffled his copy of the Racing Post, shuddered, and stepped into another cubicle.

  Tufty dumped the evidence crate alongside the other ones – pretty much covering the creaky desk in the corner. ‘So, anyway: if it’s just him working shifts it’d be a more straightforward pattern, wouldn’t it?’

  Did the wee sod never shut up?

  The CID office had all the charm of a cat with diarrhoea: the paintwork peeling from the walls and woodwork, the carpet tiles an archaeological record of every spilled cup of tea and coffee going back decades. Half the ceiling tiles were missing too, showing off an impressive collection of spiders’ webs, speckled with teeny black fly carcases.

  Wasn’t like this when she was a detective chief inspector, was it. No, course it sodding wasn’t. Office of her own. A coffee machine that worked. A window you could crack open if you fancied a crafty cigarette. All the minions stuffed into a different room so they weren’t underfoot and asking stupid questions the whole time.

  Roberta pulled on her coat. Keys. Keys. Keys … Where the hell were her keys? ‘Have you seen my keys?’

  ‘There wouldn’t be all this numerical variation to the pattern.’

  ‘Who moved my keys? Why does everyone have to fiddle with things?’

  ‘But what if there’s someone else in the house who works nights sometimes? And that’s when he slips out to bash Uncle Bulgaria. Spank Madame Cholet. Tug the Tobermory.’

  There they were! Hiding under that stack of crime statistics she was technically supposed to have finished last week. ‘Do you never shut up?’ She stuck them in her pocket along with various bits, bobs, and her phone. Which made a ding-ding noise as soon as she picked it up.

  A text message from Susan:

  Come home, Roberta. Don’t do this again.

  J&N need to see their father.

  Humph … She wasn’t stopping them, was she? No. She was being nice and staying away. If anything Susan should be thanking her for no’ coming home and ramming one of those golf trophies right up Logan Sodding McRae’s backside.

  Tufty still hadn’t taken the hint. ‘Our wanky little friend did it last night. And I’ll bet you a fish supper he does it again tonight. We can catch him pink-handed!’

  She scowled at him. ‘It’s red-handed, you neep. Red-handed.’

  ‘Nah, think about what he’ll be holding, Sarge. We’re only going to catch him red-handed if he’s squeezing really hard.’

  Idiot.

  And why was it suddenly her fault? She wasn’t the one who’d clyped to Professional Standards. She wasn’t the traitorous bastard.

  ‘Sarge? Are you all right? Only you look like something’s just thrown up in your mouth.’

  ‘Being a sperm donor doesn’t count.’

  He stared at her. ‘O – K …?’

  She thumbed out a reply on her phone:

  I’ll be late home. Got a pervert to catch.

  Then stuck it in her pocket. Sniffed. ‘Go down to the desk and book out a pool car. We’ll see if you owe me a fish supper or no’.’

  Steel curled her top lip, shifting in the passenger seat, elbows in, hands curled so she wouldn’t touch anything. ‘Could you no’ have picked a cleaner one?’

  ‘This was all they had. And you’re welcome.’ Though, to be fair, the pool car was a bit of a tip. It rustled with discarded crisp packets, chocolate wrappers, biscuit packets, polystyrene takeaway containers, paper bags from Burger King and McDonald’s, crushed Irn-Bru tins, Coke, Fanta, ginger beer … They littered the footwells and piled up on the back seat. And crumbs – crumbs everywhere.

  ‘Hmph.’ She crossed her arms and stared at her own reflection in the passenger window. Ungrateful lump.

  Woods reared up to the right of the dual carriageway, its greenery burnished with gold and amber as the sun sank its way down to a hazy horizon. A patchwork quilt of fields, stitched together with drystane dykes, blanketed the land. The pointy bits of Bennachie just visible in the distance.

  Tufty snuck a look at his sulky passenger. ‘Er, Sarge?’

  Grunt.

  ‘I kinda noticed … you’re avoiding Inspector McRae?’

  She crossed her arms even tighter, putting a bit more freckly cleavage on show, and grunted again.

  ‘Only, I worked with him for what, two and a half years? And he was a good boss. A bit obsessed with his cat, and God knows he could put away the lentil soup, but he stood his hand in the pub. Didn’t play favourites.’ Shrug. ‘He’s a good guy.’

  ‘Don’t make me wash your mouth out with soap and water, Constable.’

  ‘He always said nice things about you.’ Sort of. If you didn’t count all the horror stories.

  ‘Because I will if you don’t shut up.’

  Ah. Fair enough.

  He cleared his throat. ‘OK, so you want to know how I know the Blackburn Womble-Spanker’s going to spank again tonight?’

  She turned and scowled at him. ‘And for your information: Logan Scumbag McRae can away and crap in his hat. Then wear it.’

  Roberta sat forward and rubbed a clear patch in the fogged-up passenger window. Scowled out at the identikit houses. No’ one hundred percent identical, but imperfect clones of each other. With grey harled bits, stonework details, grey tiled roofs. New enough for the gardens to still look as if they’d just been planted yesterday.

  She sighed. ‘Bored.’

  ‘I wanted to play I Spy, but noooo, that was too childish.’ Tufty didn’t even look up from his mobile phone. Just sat there like an idiot playing some stupid game – it binged and wibbled to a backdrop of irritating plinky-plonky music. ‘And when I tried to discuss quantum chromodynamics, suddenly quarks and gluons were “stupid and boring”. Do you remember that bit? Because—’

  She hit him. ‘Where is he then? The World’s Wiliest Womble Walloper?’

  More bings and wibbles. ‘Patience, Grasshopper.’

  ‘And it’s cold. Cold and boring.’ Roberta thumped back into her seat. Then did it again. Like a petulant teenager. Hamming it up with a big long-suffering sigh.

  Should’ve brought a book.

  She folded her arms. Unfolded them again.

  It killed five or ten seconds.

  Gah …

  Roberta poked a finger at the dashboard, making a dull thunking sound. ‘You know what? We should go visit every house he’s wanked outside. At least then we could scam a cup of tea and a bit of a warm. Maybe even a biscuit or two?’

  Roberta dunked her Jaffa Cake in her tea. Bone china, believe it or no’, the tea poured from a pot, with milk in a wee jug. Biscuits in a porcelain dish. Very swish.

  It was a nice wee conservatory. Right at the back of the house, it had a view out over stubble fields, angled just right to catch the setting sun. All reds a
nd yellows. Blue shadows reaching out from the drystane dykes. A comfy set of couches flanked a glass-topped coffee table artfully littered with the kind of magazines normally reserved for dentists’ waiting rooms. A couple of wicker chairs with chintzy cushions.

  Mrs Rice sat in one of them, fiddling with the pearls around her throat. Couldn’t have been a day over thirty and she was actually wearing a twinset to go with it. Pastel blue. As if she was ninety. She shifted, making the wicker groan. ‘Honestly, I didn’t know where to look. Standing right there in the back garden … pleasuring himself.’ She pointed out at the manicured lawn and shuddered. ‘We had to throw the garden gnomes out in the end. I couldn’t bear to look at them leering.’

  Tufty nodded, making a note in his book. Swot. ‘And he was …’ He stared at Roberta as she licked the chocolate off to get at the orangey bit in the middle. ‘Sorry. And you say he was wearing a superhero mask?’

  Mrs Rice pulled a face. ‘About all he was wearing. I ask you, when you’re making spaghetti Bolognaise for four, is that really what you want to see through your kitchen window? Spider-Man playing with himself?’

  Another note went in Tufty’s book. ‘And did he …?’ A euphemistic hand gesture. ‘You know?’

  ‘What?’

  Thick as two shorts.

  Probably better help the poor thing. Roberta leaned forward and put a chocolaty hand on her knee. ‘Did he arrive? Did he succeed in his endeavour? Did he finish his fun?’ A wink. ‘Did he squirt his filthy man-mayonnaise all over your begonias?’

  Mrs Rice stared back, horrified.

  Roberta popped the remaining half biscuit in her mouth. ‘Cos if he did, then my constable here can scoop it up and we’ll run some tests. Maybe find out who your saucy wee friend is.’

  ‘Oh …’ Her face curdled for a moment, then she forced an unconvincing smile and reached for the pot. ‘Oh. Er … More tea?’

  The kitchen was minuscule, nearly every flat surface covered in carrier bags and boxes of cereal and plates and pots and pans. More carrier bags on the floor.

  Mrs Morden shook her head and poured boiling water into four mugs, sending up the burnt-toast scent of cheap instant coffee. Her tracksuit looked nearly as tired as she did.