Dying Light

16

The Identification Bureau were delighted to have an indoor corpse for a change, it meant they didn’t have to fight with that bloody SOC tent. Karl Pearson’s lounge was decorated in much the same way as the hall, with posters and magazine pages, only the naked ladies in here were a lot more hard-core. The IB team had put down their little metal walkway and then proceeded to cover the whole place in black fingerprint powder; empty the flat’s vacuum cleaner into an evidence bag; take samples of blood — not difficult, considering how much of it there was in the lounge; argue about whether or not one of the naked women — pictured playing with a variety of battery-operated devices — was Detective Sergeant Beattie’s wife; photographed everything and stood quietly by as Doc Wilson pronounced the naked man tied to a dining-room chair with his throat cut dead. ‘Amazing the things these doctors can diagnose nowadays,’ said Insch, leaning against the far wall. He was wearing the biggest set of white paper coveralls the IB boys had, but it was fighting a losing battle against the inspector’s huge frame. ‘Care to hazard a guess at time of death?’

Doc Wilson favoured Insch with a withering glance. ‘No,’ he said, snapping his medical bag shut. ‘What is it with you people? You always want a bloody time of death off the poor bloody GP! You know what? I haven’t got a bloody clue. OK? Satisfied? You want a time of death? Ask a fucking pathologist.’ He straightened up and made for the door, pausing on the threshold to run an appraising eye over the inspector’s straining SOC suit. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a time of death, free of charge. Eighteen months if you don’t do something about your bloody weight.’ And he was out of there before Insch could do much more than go beetroot red and splutter.

Logan groaned; that was all they needed, Doc Bloody Wilson lighting the blue touch paper and running like buggery. Leaving the rest of them to deal with the explosion. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ he tried. ‘Wilson’s had a weasel up his arse all week. He’s just being a wanker for the sake of it.’

Insch turned a baleful eye on Logan. ‘You tell that bastard, if I ever see him at one of my crime scenes again, I will personally make sure he ends up in the FUCKING MORGUE!’ Everyone else in the room went very quiet. ‘I WILL FUCKING WELL DECLARE DEATH ON HIM!’ Spittle flew from Insch’s mouth. Logan had seen him angry plenty of times, but never anything like this. Trembling with the effort, Insch walked quietly into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him so hard every loose object in the flat rattled. From the apartment upstairs came the sound of a television being turned up.

‘Jesus,’ whispered the IB cameraman. ‘Touched a nerve, or what?’

DI Insch was still sulking in the kitchen when the duty pathologist arrived: Doc Fraser this time, rather than Isobel, much to Logan’s relief. Fraser agreed with the duty doctor’s diagnosis: Karl Pearson was indeed dead. Logan could go ahead and call the funeral directors to come pick up the body. The post mortem would be at three. And now that the formalities were out of the way, Logan was free to examine the victim without upsetting anyone. Just as long as he didn’t actually touch anything.

Karl Pearson: twenty-four, naked, tied to a chair and very, very dead. His throat was sliced nearly all the way through, his head hanging to one side; eyes wide open in surprise, staring vacantly out into the hall. The left ear was missing a large chunk, from the lobe right up to the tip, leaving a crescent moon of skin behind. Deep weals ran parallel along his cheeks from his open mouth round the back of his head. It looked as if he’d been wearing some sort of bondage gag, the little round buckle holes imprinted on the waxy flesh. Karl’s arms were secured behind his back, attached to the chair’s legs by a set of plastic cable ties. The hands were crusted in more blood, making detail difficult to pick out, but one thing was abundantly clear: several of Karl’s fingers were a lot shorter than they should have been. Some ended at the second joint, others had been taken off at the knuckle, some in between: bone and cartilage showing through the stumps like boiled fish eyes. The severed ends were lying underneath the chair, the nails ripped out. Karl’s chest — where it wasn’t covered with blood from the gaping neck wound — was speckled with cigarette burns and his right nipple was missing. Karl’s legs were splayed wide open, giving Logan an excellent view of his bollocks. Those were either pubic hairs, or staples, Logan couldn’t decide which, and he wasn’t going to get any closer to find out. The pale, hairy legs were also covered in little burns, the knees lumpen and misshapen. It looked like someone had taken a hammer to his feet.

‘What do you think?’

Logan turned to see the deputy PF standing on her own in the doorway, trying to look casual in the standard-issue boiler suit while completely avoiding eye contact with the blood-caked, naked body. There was no sign of the IB team, who were probably poking through the rest of the flat, giving the kitchen a wide berth until DI Insch calmed down a bit. ‘Well,’ said Logan, ‘if he knew anything, he’ll have talked.’

Rachael risked a glance at Karl Pearson’s body. ‘Tortured for information?’

‘Probably drugs-related. Karl had form for dealing and we know there’s a new crew in town. Looks like they play rough.’

Rachael worked her way around to the far side of the lounge, staring out of the window at the sun-kissed North Sea. Keeping well away from Karl Pearson. ‘How the hell do you torture someone in a block of flats and not get caught? Surely someone must have heard something! He’s in here getting... getting that done to him and no one called 999?’

‘Well, if it was me I’d gag him, tie him to the chair and then torture him. Stub out some cigarettes, rip out some fingernails, break some toes... Then, when he’s finished screaming behind the gag, pop it off and start asking questions. By now he knows you mean business. You put the gag back in and you go to work again. Slice off an ear, hack off a couple of fingers: really make him suffer. Ask your questions again. See if you get the same answers twice. Then do it all one last time, just to be safe.’ He sighed. ‘Long as you keep the gag in while you’re working, no one’s going to hear a thing... Except maybe the hammering.’ She was silent. ‘You OK?’

Rachael shuddered. ‘You know what it’s like: never really seen anything on this...’ she waved at Karl’s tortured body, ‘this scale before. Not in the flesh. I mean we get to see a lot of photographs when we’re doing the cases in court, but...’ She flapped her hands again.

‘But it’s not the same.’ Logan nodded. Outside the window a seagull swept past on the breeze, its white body caught in a beam of sunshine, fluorescing against the deep, clay-blue sea.

‘What the hell’s wrong with this place?’ she asked, staring out at the clouds scudding across the eggshell sky. ‘You’d think a quiet little city like Aberdeen would be safe... You ever look at the statistics? According to the Scottish Office, we murder more people here, per million head of population, than the whole of England and Wales combined. How about that?’ She leaned her head against the glass. ‘And if that’s not bad enough, we’ve got twenty-six times as many attempted murders as we have successful ones! Really makes you proud.’

Logan joined her at the window. ‘Really? Twenty-six times?’

Rachael nodded. ‘Twenty-six times.’

He shook his head. ‘Wow... We must be really crap! How could we miss so many times? I blame the parents.’

She actually cracked a smile.

‘Anyway.’ Logan wandered back to the tortured body in the middle of the room. ‘My guess is that our parochial wee drugs war has just stepped up a notch. We’re going to start seeing a whole lot more of this kind of thing.’ He stared down at Karl Pearson’s sliced-off ear and realized he was starving. According to his watch it was already two thirty. The post mortem on Karl Pearson was due to kick off at three; that left him thirty minutes to get something to eat and get back to the station.

A clunk at the front door and the Procurator Fiscal stuck her head into the lounge, sweeping the crime scene with a practised eye before frowning, marching straight past the body and peering at Karl’s homemade wallpaper. ‘Isn’t this DS Beattie’s wife?’

Karl Pearson’s post mortem seemed to take forever, and by half five Logan had to excuse himself, claiming a prior engagement — making sure DI Steel had everything in place for the surveillance operation this evening. Knowing her, she’d be expecting him to do all the legwork. And anyway, the only bit of real news from Doc Fraser’s dissection of the tortured body was the collection of fresh needle marks in Karl’s upper bicep. Logan was willing to bet the blood work would come back with traces of narcotics. Not enough for Karl to get high, just enough to stop him from going into shock. Maybe even enough to act as a reward if he told the truth. Something to make the pain go away.

Upstairs, DI Steel’s incident room was nearly as dead as Karl Pearson. The occasional phone rang, but nothing much was going on. The inspector was lounging against a computer terminal, picking her teeth and reading an Evening Express. Yes, of course she’d done the paperwork, and had it signed by the Detective Chief Superintendent himself, no less. Which meant they couldn’t screw this one up; if they did everyone and their dog would be lining up to tear a chunk out of their arses. And let’s face it, if DI Steel didn’t get results from the stakeout, what the hell else could she do? It wasn’t as if leads were easy to come by on this bloody case. Somehow two dead prostitutes hadn’t captured the attention of the public, not even with the words ‘Serial Killer’ attached. They’d barely received a call all day.

‘How about we stage a reconstruction?’ Logan asked. ‘Get it on the news?’

Steel smiled at him in a disturbingly motherly kind of way. ‘What a great idea! We’ll get someone to dress up as a murdered prostitute and get someone else to be the killer, enticing her into his car. Then we’ll ask for anyone who was hanging around the docks at that time of night to come forward with any information they have.’ There was something sarcastic coming, Logan could feel it. ‘Can you imagine the avalanche of calls we’ll get? All those public-spirited pimps, whores and kerb-crawlers! “Yes officer, I was down the docks that night lookin’ for a prostitute and I saw a nasty man pick up the tart who got killed...” I’d better get some more uniforms to answer the phones. We’ll be swamped!’

‘Fine,’ said Logan. ‘Be like that.’

Steel grinned at him. ‘Never mind, Mr Police Hero, if it all goes tits-up tonight I’ll think about it. If nothing else it’ll make the Chief Constable think we’re doing something. Now why don’t you go pick out a couple of nice, ugly WPCs to be our hookers? Tell them there’s a bottle of vodka in it for them, if they don’t wind up stripped and beaten to death.’

Half past eight and the briefing was winding to a close. DI Steel had laid out the ground rules, walked everyone through the plan — including the Detective Chief Superintendent who gave a five-minute inspirational speech on the risks and rewards of this kind of operation — and detailed the four teams. Team one was the smallest: WPCs Davidson and Menzies, the inspector’s fake prostitutes, neither of whom would win a beauty contest anytime soon. They were already dressed up for their role tonight: short skirts, push-up bras, three inches of make-up and hair like a home perm gone bad. Each one wearing a transmitter/receiver, a secondary backup set — just in case — and a handheld GPS tracker sewn into their formidable underwear. If anything happened they weren’t going to disappear off the face of the earth. Not to mention the tiny canisters of CS gas they both carried. Team two was eight plainclothes officers, two per car. They’d park in the places Logan had identified, where they could keep an eye on Davidson and Menzies plying their trade. Team three was by far the largest, three marked patrol cars, two unmarked CID pool cars, and half a dozen uniforms in the back of an unmarked dark blue Transit Van, lurking on the streets leading to and from the red light district all kitted out with video surveillance equipment and ready to roll as soon as the word was given. Team four would stay at the station and keep all the communication channels open. Relay the messages. Make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be and, in the cases of WPCs Davidson and Menzies, still alive. It was a big operation; lots of manpower, expensive, but the Detective Chief Superintendent assured them all that the Chief Constable was behind them one hundred percent. Steel had sanction for the next five nights, but the DCS was sure they’d get a result long before that. Logan, well aware of just how many holes there were in the plan, kept his mouth shut.

DC Rennie cornered him as the briefing broke up and everyone headed off to their assigned positions. ‘I’ve got that bloke you were looking for.’ Logan obviously looked puzzled, because Rennie felt obliged to explain. ‘The one who’s patrolling the docks at the moment? You wanted me to track him down?’

‘Right, right. Where is he?’

‘Comes in at ten: PC Robert Taylor. Been doing tom patrol for about two years. I left a message with Control that you wanted to speak to him.’ Rennie smiled, as if he was waiting for a sweetie. Logan didn’t give him one.

‘What about the e-fit pictures?’

‘No one recognized the girl but a couple of CID thought the bloke might be called Duncan or Richard or something.’

Logan frowned. The Lithuanian girl had said her pimp was called Steve. ‘No last name?’

‘Nada.’

‘Shite.’

‘Aye.’

The operation started at nine pm on the dot, much to Logan’s surprise. He and the inspector were sat in a rusty old Vauxhall, just inside the gates at the bottom of Marischal Street leading out onto the docks at Regent Quay. They’d parked far enough back not to arouse suspicion if spotted from the street, but with a direct line of sight — through the high fence of grey, cast-iron spikes that enclosed the docks — all the way down Shore Lane, to where WPC Menzies was trolling for business. The inspector even had the good sense to keep one hand cupped over the end of her cigarette so the glowing orange tip wouldn’t give them away. One by one the other teams checked in, and last but not least, the bait. Or the Ugly Sisters as DI Steel insisted on calling them. Not surprisingly she’d named it ‘Operation Cinderella’. Logan was amazed she didn’t get punched on the nose more often.

‘Are you sure this is going to work?’ he asked as WPC Menzies finished complaining that the wind was whistlin’ right up her arse in this bloody short skirt.

‘No,’ said Steel, puffing away, the smoke oozing out through the car’s windows. ‘But it’s all we’ve got right now. If we don’t put a watch on the docks and some other poor tart goes missing we’ll be crucified. And anyway, it’s your bloody plan, so don’t start, OK?’

‘But what if someone goes missing while we’re here?’

Steel shuddered. ‘Don’t even fucking think about that!’

‘But all we’re doing is watching two WPCs done up as pros. What if one of the real tarts gets in our man’s car? How’re we going to know? He could be anybody!’

‘I know, I know.’ She pulled the last gasp from her cigarette and chucked the tiny glowing nub out the window. ‘It’s a shite plan, but what else can we do? Rosie Williams got herself killed Monday last, Michelle Wood got it on Friday. Four days.’ She counted them off on her fingers. ‘Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. That’s tonight. If he sticks to his pattern another one’s going missing today or tomorrow.’

‘If he hasn’t already got one and we just don’t know about it yet.’

Steel scowled at him. ‘Am I missing something, Sergeant? Are you making helpful suggestions here, or just bumping your bloody gums?’ Logan kept his mouth shut. ‘Aye,’ said the inspector, ‘thought as much.’ An uncomfortable silence.

Logan sat staring out at the street, thinking. ‘Had an interesting chat with Inspector Napier this morning,’ he said at last.

‘Oh aye?’ Suspicious.

‘Yeah. He said you have to come out of this case smelling of roses or I’m for the chop.’

‘“The chop?” That doesn’t sound like Napier. Thought he was more of a “De blood is de life, hah, hah, haaah!” kind of guy,’ she said in a dreadful Transylvanian accent.

‘Well he dressed it up in an allegorical story about a farmer, a fox and a chicken, but that was what he meant.’

‘Which one were you?’

‘The chicken.’

‘Nice.’ She was grinning.

‘How come you’ve got him looking out for you?’

The grin didn’t falter as the inspector dug out another cigarette and lit it. ‘Let’s just say that Napier and I have an understanding, and leave it at that.’ Of course Logan didn’t want to leave it at that, but Steel had no intention of telling him anything more, so they sat in silence again.

After what felt like hours, WPC Menzies’ voice crackled out of the speaker, ‘Car comin’!’ A set of headlights sparked at the far end of Shore Lane. Static and rustling from the radio, and Logan pulled out the night-vision goggles, struggling with the focus until he had a good, close-up view of the entrance to the one-way alley. WPC Menzies with her hands on her hips, chest out, leaned forward to peer in the driver-side window. ‘Hey, darlin’,’ she said suggestively, ‘lookin’ for a good time?’ Logan couldn’t get a good look at the man behind the wheel: Menzies had picked one of the few working streetlights to stand under, and the reflection bounced right off the windshield, hiding the driver’s face. Some muffled conversation, too distorted to make out — she seemed to have got the tiny microphone caught up in the lace of her bra and every time she moved it scratched against the pickup, overwhelming everything with a grating hiss. ‘How about you an’ me... AYA BASTARD!’ Steel sat bolt upright in her seat. The suspect’s car roared into life. Through the night-vision goggles Logan could see WPC Menzies clutching at her left breast. She bent down, disappearing from sight as DI Steel grabbed up the radio and shouted ‘Go-go-go!’ And then Menzies was back up again, hurling something at the departing car. A loud bang and the car screeched to a halt on the cobbles. The driver had his door open in a flash and was out, staring at the smashed rear windscreen. He was too busy storming back up the alley to notice the two unmarked CID pool cars skidding to a halt at each end of Shore Lane, blocking it off.

Logan could hear the man shouting at WPC Menzies, the words picked up loud and clear, even over the bra-crackling. ‘You filthy bitch!’ He drew back a fist, but Menzies didn’t give him time to use it. Instead she floored him with a single, roundhouse kick. She wasn’t on the division’s kick-boxing team for nothing. By the time Logan and Steel arrived he was cuffed, lying prostrate on the filthy cobbled street in a pool of darkness, screaming blue murder and demanding a lawyer while Menzies held him down.

‘Ah, Jesus... Stitch...’ The inspector, bent double from the effort of running the three hundred yards from where they’d parked the car, clutched at her side and grimaced. ‘Menzies,’ she asked through gritted teeth, ‘you OK?’

The WPC growled at the handcuffed, swearing figure. ‘Bastard grabbed my fucking nipple: nearly tore the damn thing off!’ She peeled down the top of her indomitable bra to show the inspector, but Steel told her it was OK, she had two of her own and didn’t need to see anyone else’s right now. As soon as there was any threat of WPC Menzies getting her breasts out, Logan made himself scarce, choosing to examine the man’s car instead. It was a dowdy MPV thing, lots of seats and boot-space, with a sticker saying ‘MUM’S TAXI’ in what was left of the back window. There was a lump of rust-crusted metal sitting in the middle of a dog’s bed, surrounded by tiny cubes of broken safety glass. Logan dug out his mobile phone and called Force Headquarters for a PNC check on the vehicle’s registration.

Somehow DI Steel thought a cigarette would help her get her breath back. Coughing and spluttering, she dragged Logan away from the car and told Menzies to get the suspect on his feet. In the darkness of the alley it was difficult to make out his face; the fact that he was filthy from being pinned to the alley floor didn’t help. ‘Name,’ demanded the inspector, taking the cigarette from her mouth so she could spit something dark and nasty out onto the cobbles.

The man’s eyes darted left and right. ‘... Simon McDonald.’

The inspector frowned, head on one side like a cat examining a juicy hamster. ‘How come you look familiar, Simon? Have I done you for something?’

‘I have never been in trouble with the police!’

Logan’s phone went: Control, telling him that there was no vehicle of that make and registration in the system. Was he sure he’d got the number right? Logan walked back to the car and squatted down by the back bumper. Now he looked closely, there was something dodgy about the registration: it didn’t reflect the torchlight. Someone had taped a bit of laminated paper over the top of it. From a distance, in the dark, it was pretty convincing, but up close it had obviously been produced on someone’s home computer with a colour printer. He peeled off the fake number plate and gave Control the real registration hidden underneath, a grin spreading across his face as he heard the result. He swaggered back to where the inspector was giving WPC Menzies’ attacker a hard time, questioning him on his whereabouts last Monday and Friday nights. Logan waited until she’d finished before asking, ‘Don’t you know it’s an offence to give a false name to the police, Mr Marshall? Not to mention driving with falsified number plates.’

The suspect flinched and DI Steel grabbed him by the lapels and dragged him under one of the few working streetlights, letting out a low whistle as she finally recognized him: Councillor Andrew Marshall, chief spokesman for the Grampian-Police-Are-Useless-Tossers brigade. An obscene smile ripped across Steel’s face, like a fire in a nunnery.

‘Well, well, well, a member of the city council, as I live and breathe,’ she said with obvious relish. ‘You are well and truly fucked!’

Councillor Marshall spluttered, panic and indignation fighting for control. ‘You have no right to treat me like this!’

‘No?’ DI Steel winked at him. ‘Indecent assault, resisting arrest, giving a false name, driving with false number plates... Think we’ll find anything else incriminating when we search your car?’ The councillor suddenly wouldn’t meet her eyes and she nodded. ‘Thought as much. Think you and me need to have a little chat, don’t you?’

DI Steel wrapped an arm around the shivering man’s shoulders and led him away.