Broken Skin

21

The flat was warm when he got home, the TV competing with the kitchen stereo for who could make the walls shake more. Jackie was through in the bedroom, pulling a pair of old black jeans on over a thick pair of tights. She didn’t hear him the first time, so he had to shout it again: ‘YOU GOING DEAF IN YOUR OLD AGE?’

‘What?’ she looked puzzled for a moment, then zipped up her jeans. ‘It’s that moron downstairs, he’s been on a Whitney Houston binge since I got home.’ She stopped, and ran a hand across Logan’s battered cheek. ‘That’s some wallop you got … Big Gary said they didn’t fire you.’

‘Napier wasn’t happy about it.’

‘Napier’s never bloody happy.’ Jackie pulled on her thick, padded, black jacket, then dug a woolly hat out of the top drawer. It was black too.

‘Going somewhere?’

She nodded, stuffing her curly hair into the hat. ‘Rennie’s been shooting his mouth off about this Mikado thing all day. I bet him twenty quid he’d be dreadful, so I’m going to the rehearsal to heckle.’ Jackie paused, hunting through her coat pockets till she found a pair of black padded gloves.

‘You look like a cat burglar.’

‘Thanks a heap.’ She pulled on her gloves, then frowned at him, head on one side. ‘You want to come?’

‘No: I’ve seen them. Your twenty quid’s safe.’

‘Thought so. Don’t wait up, OK? I’m going to the pub afterwards, and you know what Rennie’s like when he gets a drink inside him.’ And then she was gone.

Monday morning was cold and clear, the sky tainted pale blue with pre-dawn light as Logan walked Jackie up the hill to the Castlegate, making for FHQ and a seven o’clock start. Her nose and ears were bright red by the time they reached King Street, breath streaming out behind them, frost sparkling on the pavements. She stifled another yawn — breaking the scowl that had been creasing her face since the alarm went off at six.

‘So what time did you get in then?’ he asked, trying not to think about the story in that morning’s P amp;J. The one titled, POLICEMAN ATTACKED My CHILD!

Jackie buried her hands deeper into her coat pockets. ‘No idea. Late. And you were right — they were bloody awful. Easiest twenty quid I ever made.’ She didn’t even crack a smile.

‘You want to talk about it?’ Logan asked.

‘What, the rehearsal?’ Shrug. ‘Bloody disastrous-’

‘You’ve had a face on all morning.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’ They stopped, waiting for a break in the traffic so they could hurry across the road and down the little alleyway at the side of the Tollbooth and the side entrance to FHQ. ‘It’s Macintyre, OK? We let the raping bastard get away with it and now he’s attacking women in Dundee.’

‘Might not be him.’

‘Are you kidding? Of course it’s him, dirty little fuck.’ She stepped out onto the road as the lights changed. ‘And where is he? In prison? No, he’s sodding about in his expensive house and expensive cars with that pregnant bitch fiancee of his. How the hell can she give him an alibi? She’s got to know he’s guilty!’

They kissed goodbye in the shadow of the morgue, then Jackie stomped off, still cursing Rob Macintyre under her breath, while Logan made his way up to the Jason Fettes incident room.

DI Insch’s morning briefing had a triumphant feel to it, even if it did start nearly an hour late. The inspector perched on a desk at the front of the room, telling everyone about Frank Garvie: the ex-porn star was due to appear in court at half eleven, where the Procurator Fiscal would ask for him to be held for trial without bail. But it wasn’t likely to happen. ‘Officially, this isn’t a murder investigation,’ said Insch, his voice booming in the small room, ‘but we’re going to treat it like one. It might look like an accident, like a sex game gone wrong, but Garvie’s got guilty written all over him. He strapped Jason Fettes down and rammed something so far inside him he ruptured the intestinal wall. Fettes broke his own teeth biting down from the pain. He died in agony. We need to know where Garvie took his victim.’

The trouble with asking bed and breakfast establishments if they rented out rooms by the hour for illicit sexual liaisons was that they all said ‘No.’ Accommodation in the city was at a premium anyway — most places made quite enough exploiting the oil and service companies, without having to cater for that kind of thing as well. So Logan was given the task of trolling round the carpet warehouses, looking to see if any of the hundreds of Aberdeen B amp;Bs had replaced carpets recently, trying to get rid of suspicious bloodstains.

It was a complete waste of time: if the owners had woken up to find one of their rooms drenched in blood they would have called the police. Stood to reason. But DI Insch was adamant, and Logan didn’t see any point in arguing — it would just get him shouted at.

He grabbed Rickards and signed for a leprous Vauxhall, making the constable drive. The morning sky was crystal blue, one side of the street bathed in sunshine, the other shivering in frigid shadow. Rickards took them up Schoolhill, stopping at the lights to let a troop of schoolchildren swarm across the road, dressed up in their Robert Gordon uniforms: the boys in charcoal-grey trousers, the girls in kilted, tartan skirts, dark blazers marking the cut-off line for untucked shirts and squint ties. Nearly all of them had mobile phones clamped to their ears.

The lights changed to green, a couple of stragglers meandering past without a care in the world. Finally Rickards pulled away, drifting past the crowds of identically dressed kids milling about outside the Robert Gordon’s gates — determined not to go through until the very last minute. Enjoying their freedom. Logan turned to watch them. ‘Stop the car.’

‘What?’

‘Pull up over there.’ Pointing at the grey slab of Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Rickards did as he was told.

They marched through the crowds, making for a small knot of children by the statue of the school’s eighteenth-century founder. There were five of them, laughing and pushing a small ginger-haired girl around. Logan grabbed the ringleader by the scruff of the neck — a boy, seven or eight years old, in expensive sunglasses. The laughter stopped dead. ‘Still not learned your lesson?’

‘Getoffme! Getthefuckoffme!’ Flailing his arms around.

Logan pushed him towards Rickards, before he could do any damage. The constable got a good double handful of jacket, stopping the kid from doing a runner. No longer the centre of attention, the little girl slipped away.

‘Peter, isn’t it?’ asked Logan as the kid struggled. ‘You carrying a knife, like your mate Sean?’

The child’s face was every bit as ugly and petulant as it had been in the interview room on Friday — one of Sean’s little posse. ‘My dad says I don’t have to tell you fuckers nothing!’

‘Good, you can keep your mouth shut while we search you.’

The struggling got more violent and Rickards tightened his grip as the boy screamed, ‘POLICE BRUTALITY!’ at the top of his lungs. ‘You can’t search me! I’ve not done nothing!’

‘I have reason to believe you may be carrying a concealed weapon. That means I have the power to search you. We can-’

‘He touched my arse!’ Wriggling, looking back at PC Rickards. ‘He’s a pervert! CHILD ABUSE!’

‘Shut up and empty your pockets.’

‘Think you’re so fucking hard, don’t you? Sean kicked your arse! Soon as this fucking paedo lets go I’m gonna kick it too!’

‘Your mum and dad must be so proud. Hold him.’ Logan started with the jacket: an iPod, a portable game station, a bag of crisps, and a mobile phone. ‘What have we here?’ Logan flicked it open and clicked it on, the screen lighting up with a picture of a naked woman. The keypad wasn’t locked. ‘You got a receipt for this, Peter? Not stolen is it?’

‘Fuck you!’

Logan called up the built-in phone book and scrolled through it till he found what he was looking for: SEAN — MOBILE. The phone his parents had sworn blind he didn’t have. He punched ‘call’ and held the thing to his ear, listening as it rang, and rang, and rang, and-

‘Pete?’

‘No. You remember me, Sean?’

The kid in Rickards’ hands squirmed and writhed, shouting, ‘It’s the pigs! Sean, it’s the fucking police!’

Silence from the other end. Not the sound of a dead line, but of someone very scared, trying to breathe softly.

‘Sean, the policewoman’s going to be OK. You can come home.’

‘Don’t fucking listen to him, Sean! Don’t-’ Rickards clamped a hand over the kid’s mouth.

More silent breathing.

‘Your mum and dad are worried about you, Sean.’

‘I …’

Logan waited for him to say something else, but that was all he got. ‘Come on, Sean, tell me where you are and we’ll come get you. It’ll be OK.’ He left a long pause. Still nothing. Time to try something else. ‘You’ve kept it inside for a long time, haven’t you, Sean? What happened six months ago?’ A sharp intake of breath on the other end. ‘Don’t you want to talk to someone about it?’

And the line went dead.

Logan closed the phone and told Rickards to un-gag Sean’s mate. ‘Where is he?’

A furious scowl. ‘I’m telling my dad! I’m telling the teachers! You’re fucked! They’ll fire you and-’

‘He’s gone, hasn’t he: London? Edinburgh?’

Something cunning passed across the kid’s features, then he said, ‘Yeah. Yeah, he’s gone. London. You’ll never find him.’

The first peal of bells from St Nicholas Kirk rang through the cold morning air, sounding nine am and the kids began to drift away to class. Logan took a note of Sean’s number and tossed the phone back to the sour-faced child, telling Rickards to let him go. The eight-year-old scrambled for the mobile, catching it just before it hit the pavement.

Back in the car, Logan settled into the passenger seat and told Rickards to do a quick one-eighty at the roundabout, keeping his eye on Sean’s friends. Expecting one of them to make a break for it, bunk off and go see the eight-year-old murderer. But one by one they shuffled in through the gates and were gone.

‘Damn.’ Logan frowned, watching the school go slowly by. Insch or Steel? Insch or Steel …’ Right,’ he said, not really liking either alternative, ‘back to the station.’

Constable Rickards looked appalled. ‘But the inspector-’

‘I know. He’ll blow a gasket. You drop me off, then go round the carpet places. Not like you can’t handle it on your own, is it?’

‘Well, no …’

‘And you can check out Macintyre’s alibi too.’ Logan dug out the notes he’d made at the footballer’s house yesterday — the pub and the takeaway — and handed them over. ‘But if you find anything, you call me first!’ And with any luck Insch would never know Logan had dumped him for DI Steel.