Close to the Bone

10

Logan stopped at the foot of the stairs.

The voices coming from the lounge were muffled by the closed door, but it was easy enough to hear Agnes’s mum and dad arguing about whose fault it was that she’d run away. An eighteen-year-old girl whose mother poked her nose into everything, who wouldn’t let her have friends over, who went through her things every time she was out. No wonder she’d legged it the first chance she got.

There was a cupboard under the stairs, the door a blank slab of white. It’d been fitted with a bolt on the outside, held shut with a brass padlock. The kind that had tumblers instead of a key. He squinted at the architrave, the words ‘AGNES’S ROOM’ were just visible — scratched into the wood, then rendered almost invisible by layer upon layer of gloss paint.

He gave the padlock a tug. Solid enough. But the trouble with these tumbler locks, especially the cheaper makes, was how easily you could crack the combination by levering the dials apart while you turned them, feeling for the click. . There. Then the next one. . Two more to go, and the hasp popped free of the lock.

Chalmers stared at him. ‘How did you do that? ’

‘Gets easier when they’re used a lot. Loosens everything up.’ Logan drew the bolt, and swung the door open.

Inside, the little cupboard had been turned into a little room. A single mattress filled the available floor space, no sheets, just a sleeping bag and two stuffed toys: a teddy bear that looked as if one more go in the washing machine would finish it off, and a once-white rabbit turned Frankenstein’s monster with random-coloured patches and big clumsy stitching.

A bookshelf sat at the tall end of the wedge-shaped cupboard, with more paperbacks, and plastic action figures: wizards, witches, and vampires. Half a dozen grey and black roses were long dead in a vase, tied up with a black ribbon. Very cheery.

He beckoned Chalmers over. ‘This look more like it? ’

She climbed inside, kneeling on the mattress as she poked through the books on the shelf. ‘Harry Potter’s got a lot to answer for.’

‘She’s eighteen.’

‘Yeah. .’ Chalmers pulled a hardback from the collection and frowned at it. ‘She’s got this same book upstairs.’ The front cover was some sort of dragon thing curled around a woman dressed like a gypsy. Chalmers opened it. Raised an eyebrow. Then turned it so the innards were facing Logan. ‘Interesting.’

The book had been hollowed out. She pulled out a spiral-bound notebook, flicked through a few pages. ‘Oh dear. .’

‘What? ’

‘“Rowan looked at him lovingly. ‘I’m really glad you bit me Edward,’ she said enthusiastically, ‘this way we can be together forever when we get to magic school!’ He smiled at her knowingly, and thought about how much he loved her, because she was perfect. ‘I know,’ he said romantically, his eyes smouldering like a million suns falling into a million black holes, ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather battle the Dark Lord of the Werewolves with than you! You’re so much cleverer than that little swot Hermione.’ And she knew he meant it, because she was the only one who could make his cold dead heart beat again. .”’ Chalmers turned the next couple of pages, pursed her lips. ‘Oh, look at that. Then they have sex on the carriage floor while Harry watches and plays with his wand. Then he sticks it up Edward’s. .’ She shuddered, put the thing back in the book and slammed it shut. ‘God, I hate slashfic.’

‘Slashfic? ’

‘Think really bad fan fiction, only you have everyone shagging each other. It’s kind of. .’ She looked over Logan’s shoulder. ‘Mrs Garfield, did Agnes spend a lot of time in here? ’

Agnes’s mum was standing by the open living-room door, arms folded across her chest. ‘We keep that cupboard locked.’

‘So Agnes wasn’t allowed-’

‘She was obsessed with those bloody wizard books when she was younger. She’d. . When she was little she’d sneak in there and play. I know we shouldn’t have indulged her, but we did. Keep meaning to clear it out, but every time I tried, she’d burst into tears and scream till she was sick.’ Mrs Garfield narrowed her eyes, then looked away down the hall. ‘What kind of grown woman wants to be a wee wizard boy in a stupid book? ’

Logan pulled on a smile. ‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea, is there? DS Chalmers will lend a hand, won’t you, DS Chalmers? ’

She looked up at him from the cupboard. ‘I-’

‘Excellent. Milk and two for me, thanks.’ He stood back so she could climb out. ‘I just need to make a couple of calls — get the ball rolling — then I’ll be right through.’

‘You want tea? ’ Mrs Garfield’s mouth hung open. ‘You’ve not done anything yet!’

‘Like I said, I need to make a few calls. And DS Chalmers needs to ask you some questions about Agnes’s friends.’

Chalmers blinked. ‘I do?. . Oh, right, yes, that’s right. Questions. Er, shall we? ’

As soon as they’d disappeared into the kitchen, Logan shut the lounge door again, then clambered into the cupboard under the stairs. There was just enough space to kneel at the tall end without banging his head on the sloping ceiling.

He frowned up at it. Now there was something you didn’t see every day. A pentagram covered the plasterboard, scratched out in red ink. It sat within a couple of circles, with squiggles in various bits, and what looked like Latin around the outside.

Why were teenagers such a bunch of freaks?

A pair of wingnuts sat on the inside of the doorframe. Logan peered outside again. The bolt fitted into a metal bracket held in place by the wingnuts. So if you cracked the padlock, opened the door, unscrewed them, put the padlock back on the now unattached bolt mechanism, then climbed inside — you could pull the door shut, do up the wingnuts again, and no one would know you were in there. From the outside it’d look as if the cupboard was still locked.

He shifted the action figures to one side of the shelf and picked his way through the books. Three of them were hollowed out hardbacks, like the one with Harry and Edward getting intimate. One held a notebook, with curly leaves and squiggles inlaid into the red leather cover. It was full of cramped black handwriting, interspersed with sketches of magic circles and other occult thingies. The next held a little woollen dolly, no bigger than the palm of his hand, with button eyes and a lock of brown hair fastened to its chest with a safety pin; a wizened chicken’s foot wrapped in tartan ribbon — like a really cheap kilt pin; a hairbrush; and a test-tube of something dark and viscous.

Book number three was a lot more interesting. Logan tipped the contents out on the mattress. One pack of cherry-scented pipe tobacco. One old-fashioned long-necked pipe. One blister-pack sheet of little orange pills. And one clear plastic Ziploc bag with what looked like catnip in it. He opened the bag and took a sniff: the sweet, sweaty smell of marijuana.

What kind of person smoked weed in a pipe, like an auld mannie?

There was a lot of it too — enough to get a coach-load of students off their faces for a week. Enough to count as possession with intent to supply.

Logan sat back on his haunches. Why would someone run away and leave that much pot behind? Maybe Agnes got into difficulties with her supplier, or another dealer, and needed to get out of town in a hurry?

Assuming she actually managed to leave Aberdeen before they caught up with her. .

Well, while he was here, might as well be thorough.

He unzipped the sleeping bag and turned it inside out: nothing. The mattress was old and saggy, soft enough that he could lift the corners up and over and poke at the floorboards underneath. More nothing. He let the corner fall back and a puff of fusty dust billowed out into the air.

Logan turned and struggled to haul the mattress up from the short end of the cupboard. Bloody thing was like manoeuvring a dead body. .

There: a plastic folder lay on the floorboards. He grabbed it and the mattress thumped back into place. More dust.

Inside the folder was a stack of press clippings about Witchfire being filmed in Aberdeen — the actors burbling about what a great script it was; the author hedging his bets as to whether it would be any good or not; some toad from the local council banging on about job creation and tourism opportunities; a photo op with the actors doling out soup to homeless people; another with a troupe of little kids in school uniform on the movie set, all grinning and holding swords. But the biggest thing was a copy of the script, marked up with green and yellow highlighter pen:

Witchfire

A Golden Slater Production

Based on the book by William Hunter

Script V: 4.0.2

The name ‘NICHOLE FYFE’ was written in red ink on the top-right corner. . Nichole Fyfe. . Nichole Fyfe. . Wasn’t she the blonde woman? The one in that awful Disney romcom about undertakers last year? The one on the telly that morning with the red hair?

Logan pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket and stuck the weed and pills into it, sealed the sticky flap, and wrote down the details on the form printed onto the plastic.

‘. .I mean it isn’t right, is it? Boy like that sniffing around our. .’ Mrs Garfield’s mouth clicked shut as Logan walked into the room.

The kitchen was warm, the units painted a terracotta colour, French doors lying wide open, as if they were in the middle of the Mediterranean and not a housing estate in Northfield, overlooking the backside of Middlefield Primary School.

Chalmers nodded towards a mug on the counter. Her mouth turned down at the edges. ‘Milk and two.’

Probably came with free spit.

Logan dumped the evidence bag next to it. ‘I found this in your daughter’s room under the stairs.’

Chalmers whistled. ‘That’s a lot of marijuana.’

Agnes’s mum squared her shoulders, voice getting louder with every word: ‘You planted that, didn’t you? You planted it to deflect attention from the fact your lot are doing nothing to find my bloody daughter! You sick-’

A man’s voice blared out across the kitchen. ‘For God’s sake, Doreen!’ Agnes’s dad shuffled in: black goatee, long greying hair swept back from his high forehead with a black Alice band, wearing a T-shirt and torn jeans. Like a middle-aged skateboard dude. He even had a tattoo snaking down his left arm. ‘It’s hers, OK? They didn’t plant anything.’

Doreen Garfield’s mouth hung open. ‘You knew about this? ’

‘Why do you think I kept buying all that incense? It covered the smell. The weed kept her. . level. Meant she didn’t need the pills as much.’

Doreen grabbed Logan’s mug and sent it hurling across the kitchen, tea spraying out behind it like a banner. ‘HOW COULD YOU NOT TELL ME? ’ It hit the wall by Agnes’s dad’s head and exploded.

‘You wouldn’t listen! You’re so busy controlling everything, you never stop to talk to her.’ He slapped a hand against his chest. ‘I did, OK? While you were busy making rules and trying to control everything and everyone, I sat down and listened to what she had to say.’

‘How could you? ’

He brought his chin up. Stared Logan in the eye. ‘She was doing so much better: had a boyfriend, got good marks in her exams; she was going to Aberdeen University in September to do accountancy. .’

Doreen dug her fingers into her hair. ‘It’s all that. . Chung boy’s fault. If he’d left her alone, we’d-’

‘Oh, come off it, she dotes on him. You have no idea how depressed she was when you said she couldn’t see him any more, have you? No sodding clue at all.’

‘He was a bad influence on-’

‘You’re the bad bloody influence! She didn’t slit her wrists for fun, did she? ’

Silence.

‘She tried to kill herself? ’ Logan closed his eyes. Gritted his teeth. Counted to five. ‘Did you not think it would be important to actually tell us that when you reported her missing? ’

‘It was. . We didn’t want it spread all over the papers. What would she think if she saw it? That we betrayed her? ’ He looked away. ‘She’s been doing so much better.’

‘When did it happen? ’

‘Just after Christmas. I found her in the back garden with a bottle of tequila and a packet of razor blades. .’ A little shudder twitched at his shoulders.

Doreen took another mug from the dishwasher and put it on the working surface. The porcelain rattled against the terracotta tiles, shaking in time with her hand. But her voice was perfectly level as she plucked a teabag from the box. ‘That’s why we read her diary every week. We have to be sure she’s not. . having those kinds of thoughts. We have to be ready to help.’

The kettle growled and rumbled back to the boil.

Logan pulled out his notebook. ‘Does Agnes have a car? ’

Her mother shook her head. ‘We don’t allow her to drive. Not on her medication — it wouldn’t be safe.’

Agnes’s dad bent and picked up the bits of broken mug from the floor. ‘What if she’s hurt herself? ’

Logan slipped the evidence bag into his pocket. ‘The fact that Anthony Chung is missing too means they’ve probably run away together. Let’s not get all worked up over nothing.’ He turned towards the door. Then stopped. ‘Now before we go, is there anything else you’re not telling us? ’