Dying Light

35

Back at FHQ the mood was grim but optimistic. DI Steel hadn’t managed to get a confession out of the Pirie woman yet, but it was only a matter of time. Half past ten and the rest of the team were in the pub. Archibald Simpson’s sat at the eastern end of Union Street, a hop, skip and a stagger away from Force Headquarters, a popular hangout for off-duty policemen in need of something to take the day away. The Procurator Fiscal bought the first round, told everyone what a great job they’d done getting a suspect into custody so quickly, and that they were going to put Clair Pirie away for a very, very long time. She raised her glass and Logan, Rennie and Rachael Tulloch chinked their drinks off it, self-consciously, trying to kid on they didn’t feel ridiculous. The PF left after the first one, but her deputy stayed behind, face covered in a huge smile as she got the second round in. Then it was Rennie’s turn to buy and the conversation started drifting away from work. By the time Logan was lurching back from the bar with two lagers and a large gin and tonic, things had started to get a bit fuzzy round the edges — the effect of three pints on an empty stomach and no decent sleep for a fortnight. Back at the table Rachael told a joke about two nuns on holiday in a Mini Metro, fluffing the punch line by giggling too much. Rennie told one about two nuns in a condom factory and Logan thought the deputy PF was going to wet herself. She howled with laughter and slapped Logan’s thigh, letting her hand linger there as she wiped the tears from her eyes...

He eventually crawled back to the flat just after midnight, dropping his clothes on the hall floor as he stripped off on the way to the toilet. Bleary urination followed by roughly brushed teeth and two pints of water. He staggered into the bedroom, curled up under the duvet and was snoring away within minutes. He didn’t even hear Jackie coming in off the back shift half an hour later.

The music was probably supposed to be soothing, but came off more gloomy than anything else — a low-key set of hymns on the church organ as the place slowly filled up with police officers. Sitting up at the back, Logan tried not to look as bloody awful as he felt. Monday morning had arrived on the wings of a hangover, beating in time with his lurching stomach. He’d not been sick yet, but there was still time. Half past eight was way too early for a funeral.

Jackie looked up from the order of service as We Plough the Fields and Scatter wheezed to a halt. ‘Good turnout.’ The place was packed — one of the benefits of getting seen off at this ungodly hour was that the night shift were able to attend after knocking off for the day. PC Trevor Maitland had spent a lot of time on the night shift, and the dark, wooden pews in Rubislaw Church were full of his colleagues, friends, family and the man who’d got him shot. A sudden hush as the minister stepped up to the lectern and thanked them all for coming.

The service was every bit as depressing as Logan had expected. His stomach lurched all the way through the eulogies, each one a glowing character reference for the recently deceased. Then the Chief Constable got up and made a speech about how dangerous the life of a police officer was and how brave everyone was who stepped up to that challenge. And how the courage and sacrifice made by their families was every bit as great, while Maitland’s widow cried quietly. Then the music started, Whitney Houston warbling her way through I Will Always Love You as the funeral directors picked up the floral tributes and piled them carefully on top of the coffin before wheeling it out of the church and into the hearse.

What a great way to start the week.

DI Steel’s incident room was charged with excitement when Logan got back to FHQ, dirt under his nails from throwing a handful of earth down onto the polished mahogany casket: yesterday they’d discovered a body in a suitcase AND got a suspect into custody. Today the search teams were back out again, working their way carefully through the Tyrebagger, Garlogie and Hazlehead woods. It was a lot of forest to search, but they were making good progress; the maps pinned to the incident room’s walls were covered with crossed-out grid marks. Another two days at most, and they’d be finished. Then they’d start searching the next set of woods on the inspector’s list and keep on going until Holly McEwan was lying in one of Isobel’s refrigerated drawers.

Someone had pinned up a copy of that morning’s Press and Journal, the front page screaming SUITCASE TORSO MURDER WOMAN HELD! along with a photo of the police cordon at Garlogie Woods and an inset of DI Steel — the picture apparently taken on one of the rare days when she didn’t look as if her hair had been styled by seagulls. According to the story that went with the indecipherable headline, Detective Inspector Roberta Steel had solved one of the most difficult murder cases in Scottish legal history. There was even a quote from Councillor Andrew Marshall, telling the world what a credit DI Steel was to the force and how lucky Aberdeen was to have someone like her about. Logan and Rennie didn’t even get a mention.

Grumbling under his breath, Logan slouched across to the admin officer — who told him the inspector was still up in interview room three with the Pirie woman and didn’t want to be disturbed. Logan swore. Bloody Detective Bloody Inspector Bloody Steel. He started poking about for something useful to do, but everything seemed to be in hand. Teams were out searching for the missing prostitute’s body, Steel was off questioning the torso murderer... That left Insch’s arsonist, Karl Pearson’s torturer and Jamie McKinnon’s killer. And Logan was pretty sure he knew who was behind Jamie’s ‘rock star’ ending: Brendan ‘Chib’ Sutherland. With McKinnon dead the drugs case was too. They had no other witnesses, or evidence. The Procurator Fiscal wasn’t going to take it to trial — it just wasn’t worth it.

So if they wanted to put Chib away for something it’d have to be Jamie McKinnon’s murder. There was bugger all linking him to Karl Pearson — nothing that would stand up in court anyway — but if Logan could prove Chib had ordered McKinnon’s death it’d be a different story.

Rennie backed into the incident room with another tray of coffees and a plate of chocolate biscuits. The mug he put down in front of Logan came with a Jammie Dodger and a couple of paracetamol. ‘Looked like you could use them,’ he explained before settling down at his desk to finish reading Jamie McKinnon’s post mortem report — what with all the excitement, and the visit to the pub, there’d been no time to finish it yesterday. Poor sod, thought Logan knocking back the painkillers. Rennie complained about always having to make the coffees, but he still went the whole hog with proper mugs and biscuits every time. He just didn’t seem to understand that as long as he kept doing that, DI Steel was going to keep on using him as a tea boy. If Rennie didn’t want... Logan had a brief moment of epiphany and groaned. Just like if he kept on solving Steel’s cases for her, it was always going to be in her best interests to keep him around. She’d never give him enough of the credit to let him escape her Screw-Up Squad. All that time he’d spent telling Jackie this was his only way to get away from that manipulative, wrinkly old bag, and he’d just ended up making himself indispensable. ‘Bastard.’ Insch had pretty much told him the best chance he had of getting out of the Fuck-Up Factory was to work on the arson investigation. But would he listen? No. He had to go busting his hump, day in, day out, so DI Steel could take all the glory.

‘Everything OK, sir?’

Logan looked up to see the admin officer frowning at him. ‘No it bloody isn’t.’ He dragged himself out of his seat. ‘I’m going out. If anyone wants me, you don’t know where I am.’

The admin officer’s frown grew confused. ‘But I don’t know where you’re... Sir?’ But Logan was gone.

He signed for a patrol car, not recognizing the registration number until he got down to the rear podium and beheld the same rubbish-filled mobile tip they’d taken yesterday. If anything, it was even more of a mess now; the whole vehicle stank of stale fast food and cigarette smoke.

A patrol car pulled up as Logan was stuffing chip papers into the wire bin by the door with bad grace. Someone familiar unfolded himself from the back seat: DI Steel’s mate from the Drugs Squad, the one with the big hands. He looked up, saw Logan, nodded a greeting then turned to help an old lady out of the car. Graham Kennedy’s grandmother, looking shaken. Poor old cow probably had her flat broken into and vandalized again. ‘You OK, Mrs Kennedy?’ asked Logan, going back for an armful of pizza boxes, the cardboard waxy with cold cheese-grease.

She wouldn’t look at him, but Detective Big Hands grinned. ‘Not today she isn’t. Sweet little old ladies shouldn’t run drug rings from their homes, using wee kiddies as mules. Should they, Mrs Kennedy?’ No response. ‘She had a pair of little boys pushing their wee sister about in a stroller packed with drugs. All nice and innocent looking. Attic was full of hydroponic equipment and a big fuck-off chemistry set — growing cannabis and making PCP. One-woman drug cartel. Weren’t you?’ The old woman kept her face folded shut, staring at the ground. ‘No comment, eh? Well, we’ll see if you’re more talkative after a full body-cavity search.’ He led her in through the back door, followed by the WPC who’d been driving — carrying a large plastic evidence bag with a teddy bear in it, one of the ears chewed almost bald — leaving Logan alone on the rear podium with a pile of fat-saturated cardboard.

‘Fuck.’ He should have bloody known. Bloody thing had been staring him in the face the whole bloody time! He’d even found a huge bag of the stuff in her fridge, for God’s sake! ‘Fuck!’ He hurled the pizza boxes in the bin and stomped back to the car. All those kiddies hanging around, watching her house, waiting for the police to sod off so they could go about their Telly Tubby drug-running business. ‘Fuck!’ The bloody chemistry teacher thing. The locked attic. The grandson/drug dealer. It was all there and he didn’t put it together. ‘FUCK!’ Swearing and cursing he mashed the last of the boxes into the bin then took two steps back and kicked it hard enough to buckle the wire frame. Then limped back to the car, pulling out his mobile phone and telling Rennie to get down here pronto: they were going out.

By the time they pulled into the Craiginches car park the sun was blazing, not a cloud in the sky, a faint haze on the horizon as the morning haar burned off. But summer didn’t seem to have penetrated the prison walls. There was a man in a filthy boiler suit hunkered down by a radiator in the reception area, banging away at it with a spanner, trying to make it work by a combination of foul language and violence. ‘Right,’ said Logan when the tired-looking woman behind the desk went off to get a list of all the prisoners who were supposed to be out in the exercise yard when Jamie McKinnon overdosed. ‘This is how it’s going to work — you lead the interview, I observe. If I want to ask a question I’ll step in, but other than that, you’re the man, OK?’ Logan was going to be the organ grinder, rather than the monkey for a change.

Rennie squared his shoulders and nodded. This was his chance to shine...

Four interviews later and they were no nearer getting anyone for McKinnon’s death. No one had seen anything. Surprise, surprise. As the fourth inmate trooped out of the door Logan let out a yawn. Much to his surprise, Rennie had turned out to be a pretty competent interviewer; he’d only had to step in twice to get something clarified and that was during the first session — after that the constable had made sure he included Logan’s supplementary questions for everyone else.

But they still weren’t getting anywhere.

Frustrated Logan checked the list they’d got from the front desk again — twenty-seven people in the exercise yard while someone pinned Jamie McKinnon down, someone else covered his mouth so he couldn’t scream and a third rammed a syringe into his arm. How could no one have seen anything?

‘Er, sir?’ He looked up to see Rennie shifting uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Any chance we can take a break? I’m bursting.’

‘Good idea: pee and tea break.’

Rennie nodded, resignation on his face. ‘Yes sir. Two teas coming up: milk no sugar.’ And Logan remembered his own moment of epiphany.

‘No, you know what? This time I’ll make the tea.’

The staff rest area was a small room, jaundiced by decades of cigarette smoke, the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign on the wall modified by someone with a black marker pen so the cigarette in the red circle now looked like a penis, dripping sperm from the end. The word SMOKING had been crossed out and WANKING scrawled in its stead. Classy.

Logan filled the kettle and stuck it on to boil. There were no clean mugs in the cupboard, but someone had hidden a packet of Wagon Wheels behind a collection of yellowing coffee filters, so Logan helped himself to a couple. There was a loud sneeze from the corridor outside and he hurriedly stuffed the biscuits in his pocket as the rec-room door opened. It was the social worker from last time, still looking as if she was dying from a cold. Logan slapped a smile on his face. ‘Hi, just looking for some clean mugs,’ he said, trying to provide a non-chocolate-biscuit-stealing reason for rummaging about in the cupboards.

‘In this place? No chance.’ She blew her nose on a tatty grey handkerchief and prodded the rumbling kettle. ‘You’ll have to wash one.’ So Logan did, picking two that didn’t look as if they’d recently been used for slopping out and rinsing them under the hot tap.

‘Still on your own?’ he asked, making small talk while the kettle boiled.

‘As sodding usual.’ She shook a mountain of instant coffee into a huge mug. ‘Margaret can’t come in today. Margaret’s got flu.’ The coffee was followed by an unhealthy amount of sugar. ‘Bloody hangover more sodding like...

‘So,’ she said as they walked back along the corridor, ‘you here for anything special?’

‘Remember Jamie McKinnon?’

‘Christ, how could I forget! Got a sodding Fatal Accident Enquiry to go to for that one.’ She scowled and sniffed, putting on a whining voice, ‘“Why wasn’t he more closely supervised? Why was he allowed to commit suicide on the premises? Why was he allowed to get hold of drugs?” Like he filled in a sodding form asking permission!’

‘If it’s any consolation, we think someone killed him. We’re interviewing everyone who was in the exercise yard at the time.’

That produced a laugh. ‘Good luck — you’ll need it!’ They’d reached the interview room. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a pile of reports to get back to. Every bastard in here has to be re-checked for “suicidal tendencies” since Jamie McKinnon.’ Another bitter laugh. ‘And do I get any sodding credit for doing the work of a whole sodding department on my own? Do I hell!’

Logan grunted, the scowl on his face matching hers. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said. Bloody Steel and her... something occurred to him. ‘What about Neil Ritchie? He on suicide watch?’

She looked momentarily puzzled. ‘Ritchie...? Oh, the “Shore Lane Stalker”. Too bloody right he is, the man’s a wreck. One death in custody a week’s more than enough.’

A grim smile pulled at Logan’s face. DI Steel couldn’t get a confession out of Ritchie, but then she couldn’t interview her nose for bogies. Now if he got Ritchie to cough, they’d have to let him out of the Screw-Up Squad. ‘Any chance I could have a word?’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not. Can’t hurt after all.’

No, thought Logan, it couldn’t hurt at all.