Shatter the Bones (11 page)

‘That hurt!’

‘Jesus, and I thought Rennie was a wimp.’

The constable paused, halfway through a huge sausage roll. ‘Hey!’

Logan rubbed at his arm. ‘I don’t go around hitting you, do I?’

‘Inspector?’ The lumpy constable hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the corridor outside.

‘Aye, I know.’ Steel wiped her fingers down the front of her red satin shirt, leaving little greasy smears. ‘Come on, Laz,
carpe pervertum
.’

Bruce Preston (46) – Possession of Indecent Images; Animal Cruelty; Obstructing, Assaulting, Molesting or Hindering an Officer in the Course of their Duty; Bestiality
‘Well, I
suppose
…’ Bruce Preston shifted in his seat, squiggling his bum left and right, as if he had worms, or an unreachable itch. He was slightly chubby, slightly balding; completely unremarkable in every way, except for the huge collection of photos of people having sex with dogs the IB had found on his computer. Apparently Bruce’s home-made snaps all featured next door’s Cairn terrier.

He gave a huge, overacting shrug, arms coming out to forty-five degrees. The bitter-oniony stench of stale armpits got even worse. ‘But it’s not really the same thing, is it? Besides, I don’t really watch the TV any more. Not since that cow on Channel Five did that “Britain’s Secret Sex Shame” show.’

‘And you’re sure you don’t know anyone at the hospital, or a vet’s?’

Preston rubbed his fingers along his thighs, cheeks flushing pink. ‘Told you – I’m not allowed within a hundred metres of a veterinary surgery or dog-walking park.’

Logan logged the end of the interview, thanked Bruce Preston for his time, then told him he could see himself out.

As soon as the door clunked shut, Logan sprawled in his chair, hanging over the edges; arms dangling, fingertips brushing the carpet. ‘That was fun.’

Rennie gagged. ‘Bloody hell… Mind if I open the window?’

‘Oh, God,
please
!’

Clunk. And the sound of traffic filtered in from the nearby dual carriageway, the rumble of a plane fading into the distance, the tweet and whitter of birds.

‘Do you think Steel’s right?’

Logan checked his watch – nearly twenty to four. He stretched, then flopped back again. ‘Been rumours doing the rounds about the “livestock” market for years. Kids, women, snatched to order, sold in secret auctions… All we need to do is catch
one
of these bastards and the whole thing falls apart.’ There was a creaking noise. He looked over to see Rennie slumped in the other seat, arms hanging over the edges, fingertips brushing the tartan carpet.

‘Will you stop doing that?’

Rennie raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’

‘The bloody monkey-see-monkey-do routine. It’s getting on my nerves.’

‘NLP, my dear Sergeant McRae. Did it when I was on the Interviewer Accreditation Course last month. Got top marks, by the way.’ He slumped back, just like Logan. ‘It puts the subject at ease subconsciously, makes them think they have a connection, an ally in the room.’

‘There’s going to be a bloodstain in the room if you don’t cut it out.’

Rennie sat up straight. ‘What mark did you get?’

‘None of your business.’ Sixty-five percent. ‘How many more on the list for today?’

‘Three. Then it’s DI Bell’s turn.’ He smiled. ‘Hey, maybe we’ll get lucky and crack the case before the end of the day? Interview Superstar Rennie and his sidekick: Sergeant McRae.’

‘You’re a dick, you know that, don’t you?’

Henry MacDonald (24) – Assault, Possession of a Controlled Drug, Drunk and Incapable, Breach of the Peace, Public Indecency
‘Yes, but only on the TV.’ Henry sat completely still in the hotel chair, knees firmly clamped together, hands clasped in his lap. Someone had dressed him up in his Sunday best – a shiny grey suit that looked like a charity shop special. Didn’t really fit him. Hair that he
must
have cut himself, probably with garden shears.

Rennie crossed his arms, then uncrossed them again. Rearranged himself into Henry’s mirror image. It didn’t take a perfect score in Neuro-Linguistic Programming to see the technique wasn’t going to work this time.

Not that it made any difference. No one was admitting to knowing anyone at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Albyn, Wood End, Cornhill, or any of the other hospitals in the north-east. And it was the same story with the area’s fifty-eight veterinarian practices.

Mind you, they were only a third of the way through Grampian’s Sex Offenders’ Register, not to mention the six or seven dozen more on DI Ingram’s unofficial list.

But at least they were doing something…

Silence.

It took Logan a moment to realise both Rennie and MacDonald were staring at him. ‘Hmm…’ He cleared his throat. ‘In what way?’

‘Well,’ Rennie shifted in his chair, ‘I mean, it’s not likely, is it?’ Nope, still no clue.

Logan shrugged. ‘You never know.’ Checked his clipboard. ‘Erm … your social worker says you’ve applied for chemical castration?’

MacDonald shrugged, the barest twitch of his shoulders. ‘I don’t like feeling… I…’ A long, hard frown. ‘I don’t want to
be
like this any more. Inside…’ He clapped a bony hand to his chest. ‘You understand?’

Not really.

Logan nodded. ‘Well, if you’re sure. And you’re sure you’ve not heard anything about the McGregors?’

‘It’s like being broken all the time.’

‘OK…’

Brian Canter (41) – Attempted Abduction of a Child, Possession of Indecent Images of Children, Attempt to Pervert the Course of Justice
‘I’m sorry if that makes me an unsympathetic character,’ Canter licked his lips – it was like watching a slab of liver slither across a rubber band, ‘but my therapist says I have to be honest about who I am if I’m ever going to get better.’

Rennie cleared his throat. ‘So you’re saying, given the opportunity—’

‘I’d tie Jenny McGregor to a sideboard and fuck her till she split: yes. Might even make her eat her mother out. You know? Do a threesome?’ All said in the same tone of voice normal people reserved for talking about ordering a pizza. ‘I’d probably video it too. You know, so it’d last? I mean, I wouldn’t
kill
her or anything – they’re no fun if they don’t wriggle.’

Silence.

‘…OK…’ Rennie looked at Logan, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. ‘Erm, Guv?’

‘How often are you seeing your social worker, Mr Canter?’ That dark-purple tongue made another pass across the thin red lips. ‘Every other week?’

‘Right. I see…’ Logan nodded, and wrote, ‘I
MMEDIATE
24H
R
S
UPERVISION
R
EQUIRED
!!!’ on the form attached to his clipboard and underlined it three times.

Logan climbed out into the sunny evening, then slammed the car door shut. Locked up. Followed Steel across the road to the McGregors’ house.

There had to be thirty or forty people standing vigil by the garden fence. Men, women, children: all dressed as if they were just out for an evening stroll, enjoying the sun. An outside broadcast unit was setting up on the opposite side of the road, probably getting ready for the next live news bulletin.

Steel picked her way through the minefield of supermarket bouquets and teddy bears to the front gate.

The crowd turned to stare as she clacked the latch and pushed on through.

A uniformed constable sat on the top step, reading a copy of the
Aberdeen Examiner
, the bald patch on top of his head going beetroot in the evening sun. He glanced up as Steel and Logan tramped up the path. ‘Hoy, I’m not telling you again: get back on the other side of the sodding…’ He scrambled to his feet, hiding the newspaper behind him. Then ducked back down to retrieve his peaked cap and ram it on his head. ‘Sorry, Boss. Thought you were another one of them journalists. Rotten sods have been trying to get past us all week.’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘You want inside?’

‘No, Gardner, I want to stand about out here like a pillock for a couple of hours. Open the bloody door!’

Constable Gardner’s cheeks flushed bright pink. ‘Yes, Boss.’

‘Divot.’ Steel waited for him to haul open the door, then barged past. ‘And we’re no’ paying you to sit on your arse reading the paper. At least
try
to look like a bloody police officer!’

‘Sorry, Boss…’

Logan waited till they were both inside, and the door had clunked shut again. ‘Was that not a bit harsh?’

‘Laz, what do you think’s going to happen if he’s still sitting there when that bunch of gits from Channel Four turn on their TV cameras?
“Bobbies skive off during hunt for Jenny’s killer.”
Finnie’ll
love
that.’ She hitched her trousers up. ‘Besides, Gardner’s the prick who delivered a death message to the wrong house, couple of weeks ago. Deserves all he gets.’

The hall looked much the same as it had in the video, only a little more depressing. It had that slightly fusty smell that the Identification Bureau always left behind. A mix of fingerprint powder, emptied Hoover bags, and sneaky Pot Noodles.

Logan took a pair of blue nitrile gloves from his jacket pocket, pulled them on and opened the door to the lounge. TV in the corner on a wooden stand, a Freeview box on the top, some sort of DVD recorder/player underneath. A stack of celebrity gossip magazines. A sofa well past its sell-by date, a colourful throw doing its best to disguise the faded brown corduroy. Three drawings were framed above the mantel-piece, bright crayon renditions of a man and a woman holding hands beneath a smiley yellow sun; a vague black-and-green blob with the word ‘
S
ooty’ printed beside it in scruffy lower-case; a happy family outside a square house with a blue roof and smoke coming out of the chimney – ‘M
UMMY
, D
ADDY
, M
E
, D
OGGY
.’

A square-jawed young man in a black glengarry – with a silver stag’s head cap badge on the side and a wee blue bobble on the top – stared out from a silver picture frame, blue eyes not-quite hiding the beginnings of a smile. There was a black ribbon tied around one corner of the frame, a little sprig of dried heather held in place by the bow.

Steel stuck her hands in her pockets and rocked back and forth on her heels. ‘Doesn’t look like much, for someone who’s on the telly…’

The kitchen was stocked with tins of soup, diet ready meals, the kind of children’s breakfast cereals that came laden with E numbers and sugar. An open bottle of white wine in the fridge.

‘Shame to let it go to waste.’ Steel dragged the bottle out, found a glass on the draining board, rinsed off the fingerprint powder, and poured herself a hefty measure. ‘Don’t look at me like that – you’re driving remember?’

Then she followed him from room to room, glass in one hand, bottle in the other, watching as Logan worked his way through the bathroom medicine cabinet. Then the master bedroom.

Steel settled on the edge of the bed, bounced a couple of times. ‘No’ bad. Could have a decent shag on this.’

The room was festooned with photographs. Half a dozen wedding pictures sat on the wall by the bed – Alison McGregor dressed in a huge white dress that made her look a bit like a pregnant shuttlecock. Then a couple of her on holiday somewhere sunny with the dead man from the picture downstairs. Then another version of the photo the media department had used on all the posters. Alison and Jenny on Aberdeen Beach, the sea in the background, only this time James McGregor was standing beside them. A happy family, beaming away for the camera.

One of Jenny with a huge microphone clutched in her hand, front two teeth missing, singing her little heart out. She looked more like her mum than her dad – long blonde curls, a long straight nose she’d never get the chance to grow into, apple cheeks…

Steel knocked back the last of her wine, then emptied the bottle into the glass, ‘Have a wee rummage in the bedside cabinets.’

‘Why?’

‘Humour me.’

Logan pulled out the top drawer. Some jewellery – nothing expensive, amber mostly – a stack of ironed hankies, a couple of scarves. Next drawer down: pants – frilly skimpy ones and huge industrial passion-killers, all mixed up together. The bottom drawer looked as if it was full of socks. Logan scraped the top layer to one side, then pulled out a big stack of envelopes, held together with a red elastic band.

He held them up. ‘This what you were after?’

Steel’s face drooped slightly. ‘Try under the bed.’

Logan tossed the envelopes onto the duvet and hunkered down on his hands and knees, peering into the shadows. ‘Nothing.’

‘
Nothing
?’

‘Not so much as a ball of fluff.’ The whole house was like that. If it wasn’t for the Scottish Police Services Authority looking for forensics, covering everything in fingerprint powder, the place would have been spotless.

‘Hmm… Must’ve been a fiddler.’ Steel delved into one of the envelopes, coming out with a letter – pale-blue paper, dark-blue biro.

‘What?’

‘Think about it, Laz: widow, stuck here on her own with a wee kid and a dead husband. What’s she going to do for a bit of bedtime fun? I was expecting a dirty big dildo … vibrator at the very least.’

‘Oh for goodness sake—’

‘I’ve got one that lights up, bloody weird, but saves buying a torch when there’s a power cut. But Alison was clearly a devotee of the two-finger fidget.’ Steel held out the letter. ‘Read.’

‘You know she’s probably lying dead in a shallow grave somewhere?’

‘Just ’cos she’s dead doesn’t mean she was never
alive
, Laz. Now read.’

It was a love letter, addressed to Alison McGregor. Logan skimmed it: love of my life – blah, blah, blah – the moon and stars pale compared to the light that shines in your eyes – blah, blah, blah – I can barely sleep when the ghost of your touch haunts me… Who
wrote
this dribble? Logan flicked to the last page, it was signed ‘M
Y
E
TERNAL
L
OVE
, S
ERGEANT
J
AMES
G
EORGE
M
C
G
REGOR
.’