Close to the Bone

26

A pair of fat magpies strutted up and down on the grass, white breasts like little waistcoats, as if they were barristers debating some obscure point of law in a murder trial.

The china cup shook in Wee Hamish’s hand, tea sloshing from one side to the other. ‘The real worry comes after I’m gone.’

Logan settled back in the folding wooden chair. ‘You’re not-’

‘Oh, don’t worry: they gave me six months three years ago. I’m going nowhere without a fight.’

Reaching into his pocket, Logan pulled out the two envelopes and placed them on the little round table. ‘We need to talk about these.’

‘I looked into your necklacing victim, by the way. We had a couple of. . meetings about it last night. No one’s admitting anything.’

‘They wouldn’t, would they.’

Wee Hamish smiled. ‘Logan, when you do something high-profile like that, it says, “Look at me, look what I do to people who cross me!” You have to take ownership of it, or it’s worthless as a warning.’

‘It’s not drugs-related.’ It never was.

‘Of course, I should never have abdicated responsibility for that part of my portfolio. Letting Reuben have his head was a weakness on my part. A good captain knows every inch of his ship.’

Logan topped up his tea. ‘You need to tell Reuben to back off.’

‘One thing I discovered this morning, is that we’ve got a drugs war going on. Nothing big, just a little one: a skirmish between some of our local entrepreneurs and a group of businessmen from the Far East.’

‘If he threatens me, or mine, I’m going to come for him.’

‘Yes.’ Wee Hamish chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, eyes creased up. ‘I’ve been thinking about that too. When he finds out I’ve made you executor, he may become somewhat. . vociferous.’

‘I mean it.’

‘He’s a simple soul, Logan, not suited to the role of commanding the ship. He won’t chart a course around the icebergs, he’ll call for ramming speed and head right for them.’ Wee Hamish stared out into the garden. ‘The sensible thing would be to cut his lifeboat loose. . But I’m too soft-hearted, that’s my problem.’

Soft-hearted? Aye, right.

Wee Hamish nodded. ‘I think your wisest course of action would be to take care of that as soon as you hear the news, before he moves against you.’

‘I don’t want. .’ A sigh. ‘I can’t be executor. What am I supposed to do, hand out bits of your empire to the rival factions, sit back and hope they don’t kill each other and everyone in their path? I’m a police officer.’

‘The alternative is that Aberdeen goes full-steam ahead into the iceberg.’

‘I can’t do it.’

Wee Hamish smiled at him. ‘Look at this skirmish between the local lads and our Oriental friends: fighting over cannabis farms. A small thing, but it’ll get out of hand without someone sensible at the helm. People will always want drugs, Logan. And as long as people want them, someone will supply them. Supply and demand. Controlling it as a central entity means continuity, cuts down on conflict, keeps everyone safe and in their place.’

‘So what am I supposed to do, swap my warrant card for a claw-hammer? ’

He reached across and laid a twitching hand on top of Logan’s. The skin was papery; hot as if something deep inside was burning.

‘You should do whatever you think best.’

Like run a bloody mile.

Logan parked the crumbling Fiat next to DCI Steel’s MX5, successfully lowering the tone of the whole rear podium. Then leaned forward until his head rested against the steering wheel and stifled a yawn, mobile phone still clamped to his ear. ‘He basically told me I had to kill Reuben.’

Samantha made a sooking noise, like she was a car mechanic about to deliver very bad news. ‘Maybe he’s right? ’

‘I can’t kill-’

‘What if he came after me, would you kill him then? Because if not you’re in trouble, buster!’

‘Well, yes, but that’s-’

‘What if he hurt Jasmine? Or your brother? Or your mum?. . Well, maybe not your mum, but the others? ’

‘I’m a police officer.’

‘You’re a wimp, more like. Remember the talk we had about growing a pair? ’

Someone knocked on the passenger window, and Logan flinched. He turned his head and looked across the car. DCI Steel peered in at him, mouthing something and pointing at her watch.

Back to the phone, voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I don’t want to kill anyone.’

‘Might not have any choice.’ And Samantha was gone.

Logan stuck the phone in his pocket and climbed out. ‘What? ’

‘Where the hell have you been? ’

‘Dr Graham wants to do a facial reconstruction on the skeleton too.’

‘Aye, I’ll bet she does. I’m no’ made of money.’ Steel hauled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one off her battered Zippo. ‘The Weegie buggers get here at two. I need a suspect, Laz.’

He locked the car and made for the steps down to the mortuary. ‘How about Agnes Garfield: your missing teenager.’

Steel clumped along behind him. ‘She’s only a kid.’

‘She’s eighteen, obsessed with this Witchfire book, psychotic, and off her medication.’

Empty crisp packets, cigarette butts, and plastic fizzy-juice bottles were piled up in little drifts on the stairs. Logan picked his way through them then punched his ID into the keypad. ‘The Kintore body was lying in the middle of a magic circle identical to the one witch-finders use in the book. All the cuts — that was Agnes looking for the Devil’s mark, that’s in the book too. There was a knot of bones outside the back door, like the ones outside my house: they’re in the book. Of course it’s her.’

Inside, the hum and roar of the extractor fans made the ceiling tiles rattle.

Logan stuck his head into the staff room, but it was empty. The pathologists’ office too. The red light was on above the cutting-room door: probably still working on the poor sod who’d ended up tried for witchcraft on a kitchen floor in an abandoned house.

Steel slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You know what this means, don’t you? If you’d no’ farted about and actually done something about finding her, none of this would’ve happened! She’d be banged up in the loony bin, and those poor sods would still be alive.’

‘Think I don’t know that? ’ He pushed through the door into the viewing area — a small room with two seats and a heavy red velvet curtain down one wall. He pulled at the cord behind it and they creaked open.

Dr Graham was on the other side of the glass, where the bodies were normally displayed, hunched over her clay-covered skull, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. She looked up and smiled at them. Then turned the reconstructed head around and held it up.

Steel squinted at it. Took a step forward until her nose was pressed up against the glass. ‘Does he look familiar to you? ’

‘Who the hell are you? ’ Steel picked up the reconstructed head, turning it back and forth while the kettle boiled.

The staff room was just cold enough to be uncomfortable. Half-size lockers took up most of one wall, each of them decor-ated with stickers and bits cut out of newspapers. The one with the ‘SHEILA DALRYMPLE’ nameplate was covered in My Little Pony stickers and unicorns and teddy bears in tutus. A lime-green Post-it note glared out from the saccharine montage, with ‘STOP STEALING MY BLOODY JAFFA CAKES!!!!!’ scrawled across it in angry letters. A faint whiff of ruptured bowel and rotting meat oozed in through the gap under the staff-room door that led out onto the ‘dirty areas’, the parts of the mortuary members of the public weren’t allowed to see. The places where the bodies were loaded, stored, and dissected.

Logan dumped teabags into mugs. ‘Maybe he’s one of Agnes Garfield’s teachers? Or a friend of the family? ’

Steel held the head out at arm’s length. Closed one eye. ‘Looks a bit like Burns from accounting. .’ She swapped eyes. ‘Who the hell are you? Why do I know you? ’

Dr Graham fetched the milk from the little fridge. ‘What about the skeleton, would you like me to get cracking on that one too? If I can get a cast of the skull on the go by lunchtime I could start in on the tissue depth markers by five-ish? ’

‘You’ve no’ proved this one’s any good yet. .’ More squinting. ‘There’s something missing.’

‘Well, it’s not an exact science, there’s lots of interpretation involved. You can’t just push a button and hey-presto it’s perfect, we have to make assumptions. Like, there’s no way to tell if the subject has a moustache, or tattoos, or a beard, or warts, or a-’

‘Beard!’ Steel put the reconstruction down on the coffee table, amongst the copies of Hello! and Heat. Severed head meets celebrity cellulite. ‘Give it a beard. Big bushy one and a ratty ’tache.’

‘Erm. . OK.’ She scuttled out of the room.

Steel sniffed. ‘Still no’ convinced this isn’t just a big steaming pile of useless.’

Logan plonked a mug of tea down in front of her. ‘We need to up the hunt for Agnes Garfield. I’ve got, “Have you seen this girl?” posters up all over the place, but they’re sod-all use now she’s dyed her hair and changed her appearance. Have to get the papers involved, TV too; release that footage from the cash-machine security camera.’

‘Still don’t see it.’

Clunk, and Dr Graham was back with an armful of cotton wadding. She sank into one of the chairs, knocking a stack of gossip mags off the coffee table and onto the floor. ‘Oops.’ She picked up the head and fiddled the wadding around the jaw, pressing it into the clay. ‘It’s the stuff they use to pack the heads after they’ve removed the brain. .’ Some more fiddling. A bit of a trim with a pair of scissors. Then she nodded and held the head up again. With the red-brown clay skin, and the grey wadding beard, he looked like a sunburned Santa Claus. ‘How’s that? ’

A slow smile unfurled across Steel’s face. ‘The very dab. .’ She pointed. ‘Laz, look who it is.’

Logan stared at it. ‘Who? ’

‘God’s sake. Do you no’ read any of the memos I send out? ’

‘Of course I-’

‘It’s Roy Forman.’ A pause. ‘Fusty Forman? The Hardgate Hobo? Come on, you must’ve seen him, lurching about with that ratty AFC bobble hat on, shouting “Arseholes!” at the seagulls? ’ Steel sighed. ‘He was in the Gordon Highlanders, till they invalided him out with PTSD.’

Dr Graham lowered the head to the tabletop. ‘You knew him.’

‘Arrested him. . God knows how many times. His patrol copped a roadside bomb in Iraq — aye, no’ the sequel, the first time round — came home blind in one eye with all his mates dead. Crawled inside a bottle and never left.’

Logan frowned at the head. ‘So what was he doing out in Thainstone with a burning tyre around his neck? Think he did something to Agnes? Harassed her, or something? ’

Steel sat back and smiled. ‘I remember this one time, I did Fusty Forman for peeing in some shop doorway, absolutely goat-buggeringly hammered, he was. And soon as I get him back to the station, there’s Finnie shouting the odds about. .’ She cleared her throat. ‘Well, let’s call it a misunderstanding over whether it was OK to claim three lap-dances and a bottle of tequila on expenses or not. And Finnie’s mid-rant, when Fusty leans over and barfs chunks all over him. I mean all over him.’ The smile turned into a grin. ‘Bits in his hair and all down his front and everything. So Finnie lurches off, all stinking of sick, and Fusty gives us this big wink. Says he did it on purpose, ’cos Finnie was being a dick to his favourite copper.’

She sat there in silence, looking at the head, the grin fading from her face. ‘Poor old sod.’

‘Nooo. .’ On the other end of the phone, Rennie sounded as if he was on the verge of tears. ‘Do you have any idea what time it is? ’

‘Quarter past eleven.’

‘I was asleep!’

‘Hey, you’re the one who moaned because you weren’t told about us solving the jewellery heist.’

‘Jewellery. .? ’ A yawn. ‘I don’t care. Sleep. Need sleep. .’

‘OK, well, in that case you go back to bed and I’ll get Chalmers to look into it.’

Silence. ‘Chalmers? ’

‘We’ve found one of your missing tramps: Roy Forman. He was our necklacing victim.’

A thump, a crash, some swearing, then: ‘I’ll be right in.’

Logan hung up. Now they knew who the victim was it was going to be a lot easier to solve. Connect Agnes Garfield to Roy ‘Fusty’ Forman, and that would be that. How hard could it be? He swivelled back and forth in his chair a couple of times.

Then stopped.

There was a sheet of paper sitting in his in-tray, on top of Steel’s half-completed budget analysis. It was a PNC search for Nichole Fyfe’s ex-boyfriend Robbie Whyte. Guthrie must have dropped it off while Logan was off visiting the Kintore crime scene.

He picked it up and skimmed through it. Shoplifting, assault, blah, blah, breaking into people’s cars and nicking things, joyriding. .

A smile stretched across Logan’s face.

‘Oh, you little beauty.’

The viewing suite still smelled of old Pot Noodles, but now came with an extra stale-biscuity whiff of cheesy feet.

Dr Goulding huffed a breath onto his little rectangular glasses, polished them on a cloth, then slipped them back onto his long, hooked nose. Ran a hand through the thick black hair on top of his head, cut short like animal pelt, grey flecks spreading their way around his temples. A pair of flaming dice sat in the middle of his bottle-green tie. He reached out and pressed play on the video console. ‘This is the interesting bit.’

Logan scooted his chair closer as the crackling screen filled with the interior of interview room two. Robbie Whyte was sitting in the dead seat — the one bolted to the floor — Goulding in the one opposite him, the legs and stomach of PC Guthrie just poking into the side of the frame.

Whyte gave his lopsided shrug again. ‘I don’t know. I found it.’

The on-screen Goulding nodded. ‘You found a dog’s head.’ Not a question, just a statement.

‘I know she still loves me. .’

‘Sometimes, Robbie, it’s hard for us to accept that the huge feelings we have aren’t shared by others.’

‘No: she loves me. I know she does.’ He sat back in his seat and stared up at the camera. ‘There was this summer we got a caravan in Lossiemouth. Was a friend’s dad’s and we stayed there for a whole fortnight. Just her and me and Wee Robbie. Caught fish and cooked them under the stars and smoked so much weed one night we saw a kelpie. .’

‘I see. You named the dog, “Wee Robbie”. Was that your idea, or Nichole’s? ’

‘Going to get married and have kids. Boy and a girl. Always wanted a son, you know? Someone to be a chip off his old man’s block.’

A nutjob who’d cut the head off his own dog. Yeah, that was something to aspire to.

The real-life Goulding pressed pause. ‘So when she left, she not only rejected him, she rejected his future child as well. A double blow. Then, when his mother died, that was the final straw. He couldn’t cope any more.’

‘He gave the dog the same name he was going to give his kid? ’

‘You asked if Robert Whyte would be capable of murder. .’

Silence.

Logan poked Goulding in the shoulder. ‘Well? ’

‘In killing the dog — the emotional surrogate for an unborn son and his potential future with the woman he loves — Robert’s metaphorically killing himself and everything he’s hoped for over the last eight or nine years. He’s a dead man. You can’t hurt the dead.’

‘Could he necklace someone? Or torture them to death? ’

‘My opinion is that Mr Whyte is a danger to himself and others. I’ll organize a Mental Health Officer to take a look at him, and we’ll get him sectioned for seventy-two hours for tests. If that goes the way I think it will, we’ll be looking at a Compulsory Treatment Order under Section Seven of the Mental Health — Care and Treatment — Scotland Act 2003.’

Logan poked him again. ‘I know a private security guy who speaks just like that.’

A sniff. ‘Sometimes it’s important to be formal. Robert’s mental health is-’

‘Did — he — kill — them? ’

Goulding frowned and puffed out his cheeks. ‘It’s much more likely he’d kill the object of his affections, then he’d kill himself.’

‘According to the PNC,’ Logan held up the sheet of paper Guthrie had dumped on his desk, ‘he’s got form for joyriding. And possession of a controlled substance, three convictions for assault, two for unlawful removal, and he just hacked the head off a dog he named after the son he wanted to have.’

‘That doesn’t-’

‘Robbie used to dump the cars he stole in the Joyriders’ Graveyard, where we found Roy Forman’s body. He’s obsessed with Nichole Fyfe, the necklacing was his way of getting her attention. And when that didn’t work, he killed the dog.’ Logan sat back in his seat. Game, set, and match.

Goulding sighed, opened his briefcase and slid his notebook away inside. ‘They should never have got involved with each other in the first place. Robbie Whyte’s needy, and co-dependent. Nichole Fyfe. . Well, she’s an actress.’ He clunked the briefcase shut and ran a finger back and forward across the tumblers on the lock. ‘They hold their emotions much closer to the surface, because they have to display and manipulate them when they perform. They feed off the external validation, then wonder why their personal lives don’t live up to the hype. Which is why they’re prone to high levels of drug and alcohol abuse.’ A sigh. ‘It was never going to work.’

‘He’s got form.’

‘Logan, think about it: the stressor event was his mother dying. She’s been in hospital for the last month and a half with pancreatic cancer. She died yesterday afternoon — I called an oncologist I know and checked. Apparently Robert barely left her bedside.’

‘But he could have-’

‘She died. The grief caused a mental collapse in Robbie. He went out and got drunk. And somewhere on the way to the bottom of a bottle, he decided giving Wee Robbie’s head to Nichole Fyfe would be a perfect expression of his undying love. If his mother hadn’t died, he’d still be just another creepy stalker ex-boyfriend.’

So much for that.

Logan checked his watch: five minutes till Steel’s latest update meeting. Just enough time to grab another coffee before getting shouted at for wasting time with this. He stood. ‘I’m still going to check his alibi.’

‘Of course you are.’ Goulding stayed where he was, smiling up at Logan with those dead-fish eyes. ‘Actually, while I’ve got you, why don’t we have a quick chat? ’

‘I’ve got. . a thing. . meeting. You know update on the necklacing-’

‘How are you getting on with the talking therapy? ’

Sodding hell. This again. ‘I’m doing it, OK? ’

‘And is it helping? Because if not, you can always-’

‘I said I’m doing it.’

Goulding nodded. ‘Good.’ He pulled on his suit jacket and straightened his ugly tie. ‘Well, you have my number. .’

Logan stuck his coffee mug down on the desk. ‘I know what I said, but it’s a bit more complicated than it looked. .’

‘In the name of Satan’s nipples, Laz, you told me it was him!’

Steel’s office was crowded: DI Bell slumped in the visitor’s seat like a partially shaved bear someone had stuffed into a shirt and tie; DI Leith leaning against the filing cabinets, Logan by the whiteboard, Biohazard Bob and DS Chalmers hovering in the background by the door.

Logan shifted his shoulders. ‘I said it might be him.’

DI Bell scratched at a scab on one hairy forearm. ‘Back in the real world: we need to do a victimology profile. Look into Fusty Forman’s last-known whereabouts, question his drinking buddies, see if they saw him fighting with anyone.’

Leith sniffed. ‘Be realistic, Ding-Dong, the review starts at two, we’re never going to get something by then.’

‘Well, let’s have your genius idea then.’

‘We don’t even know it really is Fusty Forman, do we? Just because some clay-head thing looks a bit-’

‘Oh come on, of course it’s him. Who the hell else-’

‘You’re dreaming, Ding-Dong, if it was him, they’d have got a hit off the database when they did the DNA, wouldn’t they? ’

‘Bloody lab couldn’t even tell the victim’s DNA from the kid that stabbed him. Ever since the re-org-’

‘What happened to eliminative detection? Don’t be a bell-end, it’s not-’

‘Hoy!’ DI Bell jumped to his feet, towering over Leith, fists curled into great hairy hammers. ‘Who are you calling Bell-End, you cock-faced weaselly little-’

Steel stuck two fingers in her mouth and blew. A high-pitched whistle screeched out into the room. ‘Enough! Biohazard: get onto the labs and poke them in the arse till they do another DNA match. Fresh samples, no’ the complete and utter cock-up we got last time.’

Bob nodded. ‘Yes, Guv.’

‘Next, we get. .’ A sigh. ‘Ding-Dong, sit your arse down. Leith: apologize.’

Leith chewed on the inside of his mouth, looked away, sniffed. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean anything personal. Was just an expression.’

DI Bell didn’t move for a moment, then licked his lips and sank back into the visitor’s seat.

Steel stared at the pair of them. ‘Like being a sodding primary school teacher. .’

Bell picked at his scab again. ‘He started it.’

‘As I was saying: next, we get teams going round every homeless person, tramp, junkie, alky, and beggar on the streets. Try the drop-in centres, hostels, clinics, and hospital. Flash Fusty’s mugshot and see if we can get some witnesses.’

Logan pointed at the ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN? ’ posters sitting on Steel’s desk. ‘You need to show them Agnes Garfield’s face as well.’

‘Fine, if it’ll shut you up. See if anyone’s seen the mental witch woman. Leith, you and Ding-Dong-’

‘Aya, watch it!’ Biohazard Bob lurched forward a step as the door thumped into his back. He turned and wrenched it all the way open. ‘You looking for a fat lip? ’

Rennie stood in the doorway, wearing a green bomber jacket, jeans, and a T-shirt with a rock n’ roll tyrannosaurus printed across the front. ‘Sorry.’

Steel took another puff on her fake cigarette. ‘Detective Sergeant, how kind of you to take time out of your busy social whirlwind to grace us with your presence.’

Rennie shrugged. ‘Came soon as I heard. And I’m not supposed to be on till ten tonight, OK? I was asleep.’

‘Could at least have run a comb through your hair: you look like a burst cushion.’

Which was a bit rich, given the exploding wasps’ nest on top of her own head.

‘It was my case, and-’

‘Don’t care. You were supposed to find the poor sod before he wound up dead. I gave you the simple job of tracking down three tramps, and now two of them are in body-bags. You’re like the sodding Angel of Death.’

‘How’s that fair, it’s-’

‘Think you can do us a favour and find the last one while he’s still alive? ’ She pulled a stack of forms from her pending-tray, then flapped a hand towards the open door. ‘Go on, shoo, the lot of you, find me someone who saw what happened to Fusty Forman.’

They shuffled towards the door, Rennie leading the way with shoulders slumped.

Steel’s voice cut through the mumbling. ‘DI McRae, where do you think you’re going? Not finished with you yet.’