Dying Light (3 page)

Napier was an unhappy-looking man by nature and had managed to select a career in which his miserable face, thinning ginger hair and hooked nose were a distinct advantage.

The inspector didn’t stand as Logan entered, just pointed a fountain pen at an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair on the opposite side of the desk, and went back to scribbling down something in a diary. There was a second, uniformed inspector sitting on the other side of the room with his back to the wall, arms crossed, face closed. He didn’t introduce himself as Logan looked nervously about Napier’s office. The room echoed the man, everything in its place. Nothing here was without function, nothing frivolous like a photograph of his
loved ones. Presuming he had any. Finishing his entry with a grim flourish, Napier looked up and flashed Logan the smallest and most insincere smile in the history of mankind.

‘Sergeant,’ he said, smoothing out a razor-sharp crease in his tailored black uniform, the buttons winking and shining away in the fluorescent lighting like tiny hypnotists’ pocket watches. ‘I want you to tell me all about PC Maitland and why he is now lying in Intensive Care.’ The inspector settled back in his chair. ‘In your own time, Sergeant.’

Logan went through the botched operation, while the silent man in the corner took notes. The anonymous tip-off: someone selling stolen electrical goods from an abandoned warehouse in Dyce. Getting the officers together, fewer than he’d wanted, but all that were available. Piling out to the warehouse in the dead of night when there was supposed to be some big delivery happening. Getting everyone into position. Watching as a grubby blue Transit Van appeared and backed up to the warehouse door. How he’d given the go to storm the building. And then how it had all started to go wrong. How PC Maitland had been shot in the shoulder and fallen from a walkway, twenty feet straight down to the concrete floor below. How someone had set off a smoke grenade and all the bad guys escaped. How, when the smoke cleared, there wasn’t a single piece of stolen property in the whole place. How they’d rushed
Maitland to A&E, but the doctors didn’t expect him to live.

‘I see,’ said Napier when Logan had finished. ‘And the reason you decided to use an unarmed search team rather than trained firearms officers?’

Logan looked down at his hands. ‘Didn’t think it was necessary. Our information didn’t say anything about weapons. And it was stolen property, small stuff, nothing special. We did a full risk analysis at the briefing…’

‘And are you taking full responsibility for the entire…’ he hunted around for the right word, settling on: ‘fiasco?’

Logan nodded. There wasn’t anything else he could do.

‘Then there’s the negative publicity,’ said Napier. ‘An incident like this gathers media interest, much in the same way as a mouldering corpse gathers flies…’ He produced a copy of the previous day’s
Evening Express
. The headline was something innocuous about house prices in Oldmeldrum, but the inspector flicked past that to the centre-page spread and handed it across the desk. T
O
M
Y
M
IND
… was a regular column, where the paper got local bigwigs, minor celebrities, ex-police chief inspectors and politicians to bang their gums about something topical. Today it was Councillor Marshall’s turn, the column topped with the usual photograph of the man, his rubbery features stretched wide by an oily smile – like a self-satisfied slug.

It went on for most of the page, using Logan’s screwed-up warehouse raid as a metaphor for everything that was wrong with the police today. He pushed the paper back across the desk, feeling slightly sick.

Napier pulled a thick file marked ‘DS L. McR
AE
’ from his in-tray and added Councillor Marshall’s article to the pile of newspaper cuttings. ‘You have been remarkably lucky not to have been pilloried in the press for your involvement in this, Sergeant, but then I suppose that’s what happens when you have friends in low places.’ He placed the file neatly back in the tray. ‘I wonder if the local media will still love you when PC Maitland dies…’ Napier looked Logan straight in the eye. ‘Well, I will make my recommendations to the Chief Constable. You will no doubt hear in due course what action is to be taken. In the meantime, I’d like you to consider my door always open, should you wish to discuss matters further.’ All the sincerity of a divorce lawyer.

Logan said, ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

This was it: they were going to fire him.

Lunchtime, and Logan was still waiting for the axe to fall. He sat at a table in the corner of the canteen, pushing a congealing lump of lasagne around his plate. There was a clatter of dishes and Logan looked up to see WPC Jackie ‘Ball Breaker’ Watson smiling at him. Bowl of Scotch broth followed by haddock and chips. The plaster cast on her left arm made unloading the tray kind of tricky, but she managed without asking for help. Her curly brown hair was trapped in its regulation bun, just the faintest scraps of make-up on her face, every inch the professional police officer. Not at all like the woman he’d gone to bed with last night, who dissolved into fits of giggles when he blew raspberries on her stomach.

She looked down at the mush on his plate. ‘No chips?’

Logan shook his head. ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Diet, remember?’

Jackie raised an eyebrow. ‘So chips are out, but
lasagne’s OK is it?’ She dug a spoon into her soup and started to eat. ‘How was the Crypt Keeper?’

‘Oh you know, same as usual: I’m a disgrace to the uniform, bringing the force into disrepute…’ He tried for a smile, but couldn’t quite make it. ‘Beginning to think Maitland might just be one cock-up too many. Anyway,’ change the subject: ‘how about you? How’s the arm?’

Jackie shrugged and held it up, the cast covered in biro signatures. ‘Itches like a bastard.’ She reached over and took his hand, her pale fingertips protruding from the end of the plaster like a hermit crab’s legs. ‘You can have some of my chips if you like.’ That produced a small smile from Logan and he helped himself to one, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Jackie made a start on the haddock. ‘Don’t know why I bothered talking the bloody FMO into letting me come back on light duties: all they’ll let me do is file stuff.’ Dr McCafferty, the Force Medical Officer, was a dirty old man with a permanent sniff and a thing for women in uniform. There was no way he could refuse Jackie when she turned on the charm. ‘Tell you: no bugger here has the faintest clue about alphabetization. The amount of things I’ve found under “T” when it should be…’

But Logan wasn’t listening. He was watching DI Insch and Inspector Napier enter the canteen. Neither of them looked particularly happy. Insch hooked a finger in the air and made ‘come hither’
motions. Jackie gave Logan’s hand one last squeeze. ‘Screw them,’ she said. ‘It’s just a job.’

Just a job.

They went to the nearest empty office, where Insch closed the door, sat on the edge of a desk, and pulled out a packet of Liquorice Allsorts. He helped himself and offered the packet to Logan, excluding Napier.

The inspector from Professional Standards pretended not to notice. ‘Sergeant McRae,’ he said, ‘I have spoken to the Chief Constable about your situation and you will be pleased to know that I have been able to convince him not to suspend, demote or dismiss you.’ It sounded bloody unlikely, but Logan knew better than to say anything. ‘However,’ Napier picked some imaginary fluff from the sleeve of his immaculate uniform, ‘the Chief Constable feels that you have had too much freedom of late, and perhaps require more “immediate supervision”.’ Insch bristled at that, his eyes like angry black coals in his large pink face. Napier ignored him. ‘As such you will be assigned to DI Steel’s team. She has a much less demanding caseload than Inspector Insch and will have more time to devote to your “professional development”.’

Logan tried not to wince. A transfer to the Screw-Up Squad, that was all he needed. Napier smiled at him coldly. ‘I hope you will look upon this as an opportunity to redeem yourself, Sergeant.’ Logan mumbled something about giving
it his best shot and Napier oozed out of the room, reeking with triumph.

Insch dug a fat finger into the packet of Allsorts and stuffed a black-and-white cube into his mouth, chewing as he put on a reasonable impersonation of Napier’s nasal tones: ‘“I have been able to convince him not to suspend, demote or dismiss you” my arse.’ The cube was followed by a coconut wheel. ‘Wee bugger will have been in there with the knife. The CC doesn’t want to fire you ’cos you’re a bona fide police hero. Says so in the papers, so it must be true. And anyway, Napier can do sod all till they’ve finished the internal investigation. If he thought there was
any
chance of doing you for culpable negligence or gross misconduct you would’ve been suspended already. You’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.’

‘But DI Steel?’

Insch shrugged philosophically and munched on a pink aniseed disk. ‘Aye, there is that. So you’re on the Screw-Up Squad: so what? Get your finger out, don’t do anything stupid and you’ll be OK.’ He paused and thought about it. ‘Long as PC Maitland doesn’t die, that is.’

DI Insch ran a tight ship. A stickler for punctuality, preparation and professionalism, his briefings were clear and concise. DI Steel’s, on the other hand, seemed to be pretty much a shambles. There was no clear agenda and everyone talked at once, while Steel sat by an open window
puffing away on an endless chain of cigarettes, scratching her armpit. She wasn’t much over forty, but looked a damn sight older. Wrinkles ran rampant over her pointy face, her neck hanging from her sharp chin like a wet sock. Something terrible had happened to her hair, but everyone was too afraid to mention it.

Her team was relatively small – no more than half a dozen CID and a couple of uniforms – so they didn’t sit in ordered rows like DI Insch insisted on, just clustered around a handful of chipped tables. They weren’t even talking about work; half the room was on ‘did you see
EastEnders
last night?’ and the other half on what a bloody shambles the last Aberdeen–St Mirren football match was. Logan sat on his own in silence, staring out the window at a crystal-blue sky, wondering where it had all gone wrong.

The door to the briefing room opened and someone in a brand-new suit backed in, carrying a tray of coffee and chocolate biscuits. It went onto the middle table, starting a feeding frenzy, and as the figure straightened up Logan finally recognized him. PC Simon Rennie, now a detective constable. He spotted Logan, smiled, grabbed two coffees and a handful of chocolate biscuits before joining Logan at the window. Grinning as he handed over one of the chipped mugs. He looked awfully pleased with himself.

DI Steel took a sip of coffee, shuddered and lit up another cigarette. ‘Right,’ she said, her head
wreathed in smoke, ‘now that DC Rennie has delivered the creosote, we can get started.’ Conversation drifted to a halt. ‘As you boys and girls can see, we have a couple of new recruits.’ She pointed at Logan and DC Rennie, then made them stand so a half-hearted round of applause could be wrung from the rest of her team. ‘These two have been selected from the hundreds of keen applicants, desperate to join our ranks.’ That got a small scattering of laughter. ‘Before we go any further I’d like to give our newest members the standard intro speech.’

That got a groan.

‘You are all here for one reason and one reason only,’ she said, scratching. ‘Like me, you are a fuck-up, and no one else will have you.’

DC Rennie looked affronted: this wasn’t what he’d been told! He’d only been a DC for three days, how could he have screwed up?

Steel listened to him with sympathy, before apologizing. ‘Sorry, Constable: my mistake. Everyone else is here because they’ve fucked up; you’re here because everyone
expects
you to fuck up.’ More laughter. The inspector let it die down before carrying on. ‘But just because those bastards think we’re worthless, doesn’t mean we have to prove them right! We will do a damn good job: we will catch crooks and we
will
get the bastards convicted. Understood?’ She glared around the room. ‘We are not at home to Mr Fuck-Up.’ There was a pause. ‘Come on, say it with me: “We are
not at home to Mr Fuck-Up”.’ The response was lacklustre. ‘Come on. Once more with feeling: “
We
are not at home to Mr Fuck-Up!
”’ This time everyone joined in.

Logan snuck a look at the other people in the tiny, untidy room. Who were they kidding? Not only were they at home to Mr Fuck-Up, they’d made up the spare bed and told him to stay for as long as he liked. But DI Steel’s speech seemed to have a galvanizing effect on her team. Backs straight and heads held high, they all went through their current assignments and any progress they’d made. Which generally wasn’t much. Up at the hospital, an unknown man was showing his willy to anyone daft enough to look; there was a spree of shoplifting going on at the local Ann Summers – naughty lingerie and ‘adult’ toys; someone was sneaking in and helping themselves to the till at a number of fast-food joints; and two men had beaten the crap out of a bouncer outside Amadeus, the big nightclub down at the beach. When the updates were finished DI Steel told everyone to bugger off outside and play in the sunshine, but she asked Logan to stay behind. ‘Mr Police Hero,’ she said when they were alone. ‘Never thought you’d end up in here. Not like the rest of us no-hopers.’

‘PC Maitland,’ Logan told her. ‘The straw that broke the camel’s back.’ Other than WPC Jackie Watson, his luck had been nonexistent since Christmas. Since then everything that could go wrong, had.

Steel nodded. Her luck hadn’t been much better. She leant forward and whispered conspiratorially into his ear, engulfing his head in a cloud of second-hand cigarette smoke. ‘If anyone can work their way out of this crummy team back to the real world, it’s you. You’re a damn fine officer.’ She stepped back and smiled at him, the wrinkles bunching around her eyes. ‘Mind you, I say that to all the new recruits. But in your case I mean it.’

Somehow that didn’t make him feel any better.

Half an hour later Logan and DI Steel were sat in the back of a newish Vauxhall with DC Rennie driving and a family liaison officer in the passenger seat. Somehow Steel had managed to convince the Chief Constable to give her the Rosie Williams case – probably only because DI Insch was up to his ears and no one else was free, but Logan wasn’t about to say so. According to Steel this was her chance to shine again. She and Logan were going to solve the case and get the hell out of the Screw-Up Squad. Let someone else look after the no-hopers for a change.

Rennie slid the car around the bloated bulk of Mount Hooly roundabout, making for Powis. No one said much. Logan was brooding about being transferred to the Screw-Up Squad, Rennie was sulking because the inspector had said he was expected to fuck up, and DI Steel was expending all her effort on not smoking. The family liaison
officer had tried to strike up conversation a couple of times, but eventually gave up and descended into a foul mood of her own. Which was a shame, because it was a lovely day outside. Not a cloud in the sky, the granite buildings sparkling in the sunshine, happy smiley people wandering about hand in hand. Enjoying the weather while it lasted. It would be freezing cold and bucketing with rain soon enough.

Rennie swung the car around onto Bedford Road and then left again into Powis. Past a small set of shops: wire mesh over the windows, graffiti over the walls, leading to a long, sweeping, circular road lined with three-storey tenement blocks. They found Rosie’s address in a row of boarded-up properties with a yellow Aberdeen City Council van parked outside, the sound of power tools echoing out of the open stairwell next door. Rennie parked out front.

‘Right,’ said Steel, pulling a packet of cigarettes from her pocket, fingering them, and stuffing them back again, unsmoked. ‘What do we have on the next of kin?’

‘Two kids, no husband. According to Vice she’s currently involved with one Jamie McKinnon,’ said the family liaison officer. ‘Conflicting reports on whether he’s her boyfriend or pimp. Maybe a little of both.’

‘Oh aye? Wee Jamie McKinnon? Would’ve thought “toy boy” was closer to the mark; she’s got to be twice his age!’ Steel gave a big, snorting
sniff, and chewed thoughtfully for a while. ‘Come on then,’ she said at last. ‘Job’s not going to do itself.’

They left DC Rennie watching the car, trying not to look like a plainclothes police officer and failing miserably. Rosie’s flat was on the middle floor. There was a window set into the stairwell, but it was covered over with a flattened cardboard box parcel-taped into place, shrouding the hallway in gloom. The door was featureless grey with a rusty brass spyhole set into it, a faint glimmer of light shining through from the flat into the murky hall. Taking a deep breath, DI Steel knocked.

No response.

She tried again, harder this time, and Logan could have sworn he heard something being dragged against the other side of the door. The inspector knocked again. And the light in the spy hole went out. ‘Come on, Jamie, we know you’re in there. Let us in, eh?’

There was a small pause, and then a high-pitched voice said, ‘Fuck off. We’re no’ wantin’ any police bastards today, thanks.’

DI Steel squinted at the spy hole. ‘Jamie? Come on, stop buggering about. We need to talk to you about Rosie. It’s important.’

Another pause. ‘What about her?’

‘Come on, Jamie, open the door.’

‘No. Fuck off.’

The inspector ran a tired hand across her forehead. ‘She’s dead, Jamie. I’m sorry. Rosie’s dead.
We need you to come down and identify her.’

This time the silence stretched out far longer than before. And then the sound of something being dragged away from the door, a chain being undone, a deadbolt being drawn back, and the door being unlocked. It opened to reveal an ugly child wearing an out-of-date Aberdeen Football Club top, tatty jeans and huge sneakers, laced up gangsta-stylie. The haircut was pudding bowl on top and shaved up the sides. Behind him was a tatty dining-room chair. He couldn’t have been much more than seven.

‘What do you mean, “she’s dead”?’ Suspicion was written all over his blunt features.

Steel looked down at the kid. ‘Is your daddy home?’

The child sneered. ‘Jamie’s no’ my dad, he’s just some fuckin’ waster Mum’s shaggin’. She kicked his arse oot
weeks
ago. Fuck knows who my “daddy” is,’ cos Mum hasn’t got a fuckin’ clue…’ He stopped and examined the visitors on his doorstep. ‘She really dead?’

Steel nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Son, you shouldn’t have found out like this…’