Close to the Bone (32 page)

‘Sodding ecstatic.’ She stuck her feet up on the desk.

Logan counted the points off on his fingers: ‘Robbie Whyte had form; he was connected to the film through Nichole Fyfe; he was off his head; he used to dump stolen cars at the Joyriders’ Graveyard.
And
he killed his own dog. What was I supposed to think? ’

‘Oh, I don’t know . . . how about: did he
actually
kill anyone? ’

‘I’ve got the uniforms stationed at the hospital checking with the nurses on the oncology ward, and going over the security-camera footage. Maybe he left his dying mum’s bedside for long enough to necklace Roy Forman and torture whoever the Kintore victim is? ’

‘Aye, and maybe my bumhole squirts rainbows and pixie dust.’

Logan scowled at her. ‘You know, you’re getting more like Finnie every day. The sarcastic motivational speeches, the fishing for info, the rummaging through people’s desks. . .’

Steel’s eyes bugged. ‘You take that back: I’m
nothing
like that frog-faced, rubbery-lipped goat-molester!’

‘Look at Rennie. He’s doing his best, and you’re . . . what, trying to make him cry? You’re supposed to mentor—’

‘I’m
way
nicer than—’

‘He’s talking about resigning. That what you want? ’

‘Pfff. . .’ She had a dig at her underwire, making the wrinkly cleavage wriggle and jiggle. ‘I’m doing him a favour. Either he can handle the pressure, or he can’t. Better to find out now – while someone else can still fix it for him – instead of later when some poor sod ends up dead ’cos Rennie’s no’ up to the job.’ Another dig, then she gave up on her bra and tilted her head back, looking down her nose at Logan. ‘Besides, never did you any harm, did it? ’

‘Yeah,’ keeping his voice flat and level, ‘you’re
such
a saint.’

‘You looking for a clip round the lug? ’ She took a long draw on her electronic cigarette. Narrowed her eyes. ‘And how come you’ve done nothing about that deid body on your roof yet? ’

‘Not my case; you gave it to Ding-Dong.’

‘That’s no excuse! Have some pride in your caravan park, man. Your roof, your skeleton, your responsibility.’

‘So approve the facial reconstruction. Worked for Roy Forman, didn’t it? ’

She squirmed in her seat. ‘You got any idea what they’re doing to the CID budget, it’s—’

‘Then don’t come moaning to me when we can’t make any progress. You want a result? Fund the investigation properly.’

A scowl. ‘See: you and the boy Rennie moan and whine at me all the time, but you’re no’ the ones stuck in here with the ACC breathing down your neck like a creepy uncle. . .’ She poked the desk with a yellowed finger. ‘And another thing: how come your mother keeps calling about taking Jasmine away to Sodding Euro Sodding Disney? I
told
you to have a word.’

‘If you don’t give Rennie a break, I’m going to give her your mobile number.’

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘And then I’m going to tell her how you’ve always wanted to join the WRI, and can she put in a good word for you? ’

‘If you think—’

‘And
then
, I’m going to show her how to stalk you on Facebook.’

Steel glowered at him, the little red LED in the tip of her fake cigarette flickering angry Morse code. ‘
Fine
: I’ll be nicer to Rennie.’

He stood. Yawned. ‘Anything else? ’

‘Don’t push it, Laz, or you’ll no’ get your present.’

‘Present? ’

Why did that sound like a threat?

PC Sim had her hands behind her back, walking up Union Street with careful measured steps, in full-on
Dixon of Dock Green
mode. She glanced up at the ribbon of sky trapped between the granite buildings standing guard on either side of the road. The shining blue had faded to milky white, with clots of pale grey spreading like cancer. She sniffed. ‘Hope the rain holds off till I get home. Got a load of towels out.’

They crossed over to the other side at the lights outside Waterstones, making for the line of charity shops and banks that lined this part of the West End. Corporate greed and unwanted paperbacks, cheek and jowl.

Next stop Gilcomston Church.

Sim hummed something to herself, smiling in the sunshine, padding slowly along. ‘Think we’re going to find a witness? ’

‘Do
you
? ’

‘Nope. Might just be a uniform plod, but I’m not daft. Body out in the middle of nowhere, killed like that, whoever did it is organized and tidy. A planner. They didn’t screech up in a black van and bundle Mr Forman inside. They did it careful and quiet, somewhere no one would see.’

‘Probably.’

A lump-faced woman marched towards them, wheeling a double buggy with two screaming toddlers imprisoned within it. The fag sticking out the corner of her mouth twitching with every muttered swear word.

Logan and Sim broke apart, taking opposite sides of the pavement and letting Mummy Dearest stomp past between them.

When they came back together Sim froze, gazing in through a charity shop window.

Logan stopped beside her.

Someone had put up a display with a mannequin dressed head-to-toe in black leather with a red notebook tucked under its arm. A sheet acted as the backdrop with a Ring Knot picked out in black paint on it, all the squiggles and circles and words identical to the one on the kitchen floor out in Kintore. A stack of hardbacks and paperbacks sat on a little wooden table beside the mannequin, a skull perched on the top. All of them copies of
Witchfire
.

Sim nodded at it. ‘My niece, Amanda, did it for her English Standard Grade. Got a B. Made the whole family read it then sit down and discuss,’ Sim made quote-bunnies with her fingers, ‘“
symbolism”
and “
themes”
, like some kind of resentful book club.’

‘Little sods don’t know they’re born. We never got a choice at school, it was
Of Mice and Men
and sodding
Macbeth
or a clip round the ear.’

‘I suppose
Witchfire
’s OK. I mean, if you like that kind of thing. Kind of a cross between
Fatherland
,
Night Watch
, and
Silence of the Lambs
. Still, at least it got her reading; always thought she’d turn out thick as bogies, like her dad.’

Logan stared at the display. ‘Started reading it last night. Got to the bit where the Moderator tells Rowan about her father.’

Sim’s mouth curdled. ‘You’re not wanting to discuss symbolism and theme, are you? Only once was bad enough.’

Logan headed up the street again. ‘Agnes is recreating bits of the book; thought it wouldn’t hurt to know what to look for.’

‘Tenet Two: “Know thine enemy, for knowledge is power and power is victory.”’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me like that, told you we had to read it.’

Gilcomston Church reared up into the sky, the jagged grey steeple towering over the surrounding buildings. The place was an elaborate gothic lump of dirt-streaked granite, its main entrance raised far enough above street level to need a short flight of stone steps up to the wide wooden door. A pair of posters were mounted on either side in Perspex-fronted display boxes. The eye-melting orange one read, ‘J
ESUS
L
OVES
Y
OU
E
ACH
A
ND
E
VERY
D
AY!
’ and the nuclear-urine yellow one, ‘NEW: S
ENIORS
’ B
INGO
E
VERY
W
EDNESDAY
!!!’

Two men and a woman lounged on the steps, wearing tatty parka jackets and waterproofs, dressed for winter even though the last few days had been like a furnace. A collection of carrier-bags made a plastic halo around them, stuffed with clothes and tins. Probably everything they had to their names.

Logan stopped at the foot of the stairs and smiled up at them. ‘Morning.’

One of the men scowled out from beneath a threadbare woollen hat, his eyes thin and yellow, flecked with red veins. He clutched a tin of extra-strong Co-op lager to his chest, shielding it with his other hand. The sour smell of stale piss and alcohol hung around him like a thundercloud. ‘I ain’t done nothing. You can’t prove I done nothing, I know my rights.’

The other man and the woman sidled closer together. He had one leg in plaster from the knee down, and his face was a mess of scabs and scratches. That would be Henry Scott, AKA: Scotty Scabs, the only one of Rennie’s shoplifting tramps not currently lying on a refrigerated drawer in the mortuary.

The woman had a wad of stained gauze wadding taped over her left eye, her hair like damp straw, fingernails painted bright scarlet. She slid a half bottle of supermarket vodka into her pocket.

Sim held up a hand. ‘It’s OK, Trevor, we’re not here to hassle you—’

‘Whoever says I did it is
lying
!’

Logan pulled the mugshot photo of Roy Forman from his pocket and held it up.

Trevor sniffed, wiped a hand under his nose, leaving a shiny trail on the dirty skin. ‘Whatever Fusty did, I didn’t have nothing to do with it.’

‘When did you last see him? ’

‘He was mental.’

Sim settled down on the step next to him, blinking. Probably from the fumes, they were bad enough from the pavement, up close they must have been horrible. ‘Trevor, we’re trying to help Mr Forman, we’re not here to hassle you. We just need to know if anyone saw him last week. Maybe Friday, or Saturday? ’

The woman ran a pale tongue across chapped lips. Her voice didn’t go with the ratty, unwashed hair and missing teeth. Posh, and not local posh either, Inverness posh. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? ’

Sim nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Sally. That’s why we need to—’

Henry Scott burst into tears. ‘He’s deid, he’s deid, he’s deid. . .’

Sally wrapped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Shhh, shhh, it’s all right, Scotty, it’s all right.’ She squinted her good eye at Logan. ‘
Now
look what you’ve done.’

Logan dropped down onto his haunches, so he was eye to eye with him. ‘You were Roy’s friend, weren’t you, Henry? You and Roy and Sally? When did you last see him? ’

‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t, I didn’t do it, I didn’t steal stuff. . .’

‘It’s OK, I’m not here about the shoplifting thing and I’m not going to arrest you, I promise. I just need to know what happened to Roy. Did you see something? ’

Sally hauled Henry Scott closer. ‘You think we’re just tramps, don’t you? Just drunks and junkies, but we’re people too!’

‘I know you are, that’s why we’re—’

‘We die all the time and you never do anything about it, do you? You don’t care. You’re just like all the other fascists.’

Sim sighed. Furrowed her brow. ‘We
do
care, Sally.’

‘If you cared, you’d do something about it! They take us in the middle of the night and they do experiments on us. . .’

‘Who do? ’

Her lonely eye whipped left and right, then her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘The
government
.’

‘He’s deid, she killed him: he’s deid, he’s deid. . .’

Logan shook his head. ‘The police are independent, Sally, the government doesn’t own us, they can’t make us do things. That’s why we want to find out what happened. . .’ He stared at Henry Scott. ‘Wait a minute: you said, “she killed him”. Who killed him, Henry? Who hurt Roy? ’

Henry Scott stared off down Union Street, towards the East End. His voice was barely a whisper, the words hidden in a barrage of raw onion breath. ‘The dark angel. She swoops down from the sky in the death of night and she takes us.’

Sally stared at the sky for a moment, then sighed. ‘Don’t be stupid, Scotty, it’s not angels, it’s the government! The government took him, I saw them in their big black cars with their guns and suits. They took him to do
experiments
.’

Well, this was going well. They’d only been there two minutes and already they had new suspects: the angel of death, and the government. Welcome to care in the community.

Sally licked her lips again, her other hand stroking the pocket she’d hidden the vodka in.

‘It’s OK, I’m not going to do you for drinking in public. We’re really not here to cause any trouble. Just trying to find out what happened to Roy Forman.’

‘It. . .’ She let go of Henry, fished out her bottle, unscrewed the top, chugged down a mouthful, put the top back on, and rammed it back in her pocket all in the space of three seconds. ‘Fusty was trying to get better. Seeing someone about his problems. Was going to get a job and a family and a dog called Savlon. Maybe
they
turned him into the government? ’

‘He’s deid, she killed him, he’s deid, he’s deid. . .’

The arm went around Henry again. ‘Shhh, shhh, it’s all right. They can’t hurt him any more.’

‘Guys, it’s important: when did you last see Roy Forman? ’

Trevor hunched his shoulders inside his stained parka jacket, the fur trim all matted. ‘Friday night. Soup kitchen down the Green. That’s where I saw him. . . I didn’t cause no trouble though! Anyone who says I did is a liar!’

Logan pulled out the photo of Agnes Garfield. ‘What about her? Do you recognize her? ’

‘Whatever she says, she’s lying. I never did nothing.’

Logan swapped the plastic carrier-bags from one hand to the other and squeezed out of the baker’s, past a pair of tracksuit slobs at the end of the queue and onto Schoolhill. Overhead, the sky was heading from grey to greyer, taking the granite buildings with it. He nipped across the road, skirting around the back end of an illegally parked taxi.

Then froze on the pavement.

A small knot of Strathclyde’s finest turned and stared at him: Steel’s National Police Improvement Authority review team. Two male officers and one female – all wearing Man at CID suits, with not a smile to be seen. The tallest of them, in a sharp black number, sniffed at Logan. His little evil-magician’s goatee was about three shades darker than the hair clinging to either side of a high creased forehead. He narrowed his hooded eyes. ‘Detective Sergeant McRae, isn’t it? ’