Shatter the Bones

Chapter 14

Logan climbed out into the sunny evening, then slammed the car door shut. Locked up. Followed Steel across the road to the McGregors’ house.

There had to be thirty or forty people standing vigil by the garden fence. Men, women, children: all dressed as if they were just out for an evening stroll, enjoying the sun. An outside broadcast unit was setting up on the opposite side of the road, probably getting ready for the next live news bulletin.

Steel picked her way through the minefield of supermarket bouquets and teddy bears to the front gate.

The crowd turned to stare as she clacked the latch and pushed on through.

A uniformed constable sat on the top step, reading a copy of the Aberdeen Examiner, the bald patch on top of his head going beetroot in the evening sun. He glanced up as Steel and Logan tramped up the path. ‘Hoy, I’m not telling you again: get back on the other side of the sodding…’ He scrambled to his feet, hiding the newspaper behind him. Then ducked back down to retrieve his peaked cap and ram it on his head. ‘Sorry, Boss. Thought you were another one of them journalists. Rotten sods have been trying to get past us all week.’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘You want inside?’

‘No, Gardner, I want to stand about out here like a pillock for a couple of hours. Open the bloody door!’

Constable Gardner’s cheeks flushed bright pink. ‘Yes, Boss.’

‘Divot.’ Steel waited for him to haul open the door, then barged past. ‘And we’re no’ paying you to sit on your arse reading the paper. At least try to look like a bloody police officer!’

‘Sorry, Boss…’

Logan waited till they were both inside, and the door had clunked shut again. ‘Was that not a bit harsh?’

‘Laz, what do you think’s going to happen if he’s still sitting there when that bunch of gits from Channel Four turn on their TV cameras? “Bobbies skive off during hunt for Jenny’s killer.” Finnie’ll love that.’ She hitched her trousers up. ‘Besides, Gardner’s the prick who delivered a death message to the wrong house, couple of weeks ago. Deserves all he gets.’

The hall looked much the same as it had in the video, only a little more depressing. It had that slightly fusty smell that the Identification Bureau always left behind. A mix of fingerprint powder, emptied Hoover bags, and sneaky Pot Noodles.

Logan took a pair of blue nitrile gloves from his jacket pocket, pulled them on and opened the door to the lounge. TV in the corner on a wooden stand, a Freeview box on the top, some sort of DVD recorder/player underneath. A stack of celebrity gossip magazines. A sofa well past its sell-by date, a colourful throw doing its best to disguise the faded brown corduroy. Three drawings were framed above the mantel-piece, bright crayon renditions of a man and a woman holding hands beneath a smiley yellow sun; a vague black-and-green blob with the word ‘Sooty’ printed beside it in scruffy lower-case; a happy family outside a square house with a blue roof and smoke coming out of the chimney — ‘MUMMY, DADDY, ME, DOGGY.’

A square-jawed young man in a black glengarry — with a silver stag’s head cap badge on the side and a wee blue bobble on the top — stared out from a silver picture frame, blue eyes not-quite hiding the beginnings of a smile. There was a black ribbon tied around one corner of the frame, a little sprig of dried heather held in place by the bow.

Steel stuck her hands in her pockets and rocked back and forth on her heels. ‘Doesn’t look like much, for someone who’s on the telly…’

The kitchen was stocked with tins of soup, diet ready meals, the kind of children’s breakfast cereals that came laden with E numbers and sugar. An open bottle of white wine in the fridge.

‘Shame to let it go to waste.’ Steel dragged the bottle out, found a glass on the draining board, rinsed off the fingerprint powder, and poured herself a hefty measure. ‘Don’t look at me like that — you’re driving remember?’

Then she followed him from room to room, glass in one hand, bottle in the other, watching as Logan worked his way through the bathroom medicine cabinet. Then the master bedroom.

Steel settled on the edge of the bed, bounced a couple of times. ‘No’ bad. Could have a decent shag on this.’

The room was festooned with photographs. Half a dozen wedding pictures sat on the wall by the bed — Alison McGregor dressed in a huge white dress that made her look a bit like a pregnant shuttlecock. Then a couple of her on holiday somewhere sunny with the dead man from the picture downstairs. Then another version of the photo the media department had used on all the posters. Alison and Jenny on Aberdeen Beach, the sea in the background, only this time James McGregor was standing beside them. A happy family, beaming away for the camera.

One of Jenny with a huge microphone clutched in her hand, front two teeth missing, singing her little heart out. She looked more like her mum than her dad — long blonde curls, a long straight nose she’d never get the chance to grow into, apple cheeks…

Steel knocked back the last of her wine, then emptied the bottle into the glass, ‘Have a wee rummage in the bedside cabinets.’

‘Why?’

‘Humour me.’

Logan pulled out the top drawer. Some jewellery — nothing expensive, amber mostly — a stack of ironed hankies, a couple of scarves. Next drawer down: pants — frilly skimpy ones and huge industrial passion-killers, all mixed up together. The bottom drawer looked as if it was full of socks. Logan scraped the top layer to one side, then pulled out a big stack of envelopes, held together with a red elastic band.

He held them up. ‘This what you were after?’

Steel’s face drooped slightly. ‘Try under the bed.’

Logan tossed the envelopes onto the duvet and hunkered down on his hands and knees, peering into the shadows. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Not so much as a ball of fluff.’ The whole house was like that. If it wasn’t for the Scottish Police Services Authority looking for forensics, covering everything in fingerprint powder, the place would have been spotless.

‘Hmm… Must’ve been a fiddler.’ Steel delved into one of the envelopes, coming out with a letter — pale-blue paper, dark-blue biro.

‘What?’

‘Think about it, Laz: widow, stuck here on her own with a wee kid and a dead husband. What’s she going to do for a bit of bedtime fun? I was expecting a dirty big dildo … vibrator at the very least.’

‘Oh for goodness sake-’

‘I’ve got one that lights up, bloody weird, but saves buying a torch when there’s a power cut. But Alison was clearly a devotee of the two-finger fidget.’ Steel held out the letter. ‘Read.’

‘You know she’s probably lying dead in a shallow grave somewhere?’

‘Just ’cos she’s dead doesn’t mean she was never alive, Laz. Now read.’

It was a love letter, addressed to Alison McGregor. Logan skimmed it: love of my life — blah, blah, blah — the moon and stars pale compared to the light that shines in your eyes — blah, blah, blah — I can barely sleep when the ghost of your touch haunts me… Who wrote this dribble? Logan flicked to the last page, it was signed ‘MY ETERNAL LOVE, SERGEANT JAMES GEORGE MCGREGOR.’

He frowned. ‘Sergeant? Thought Doddy was just a squaddie?’

‘Come on, read it out.’

‘Get your eyes tested and you can read it yourself.’ Logan dropped the sheets of paper back on the bed. ‘What sort of person signs a love letter with their full name and a fake rank?’

‘Ah, you’re no fun.’ She slumped back until she was lying flat out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

Logan abandoned her, going across the hall to Jenny’s bedroom instead. The window was coated in that familiar film of Amido Black, making the back garden look dim and grey.

Pink wallpaper. Fluffy animals piled up on the toy box. Every breeze-block-sized book in the Harry Potter series.

The horse on the duvet cover was actually a unicorn… He stopped. Frowned. Tried to remember the video footage. There’d been something on the end of the bed. A teddy bear? It wasn’t there any more. Wasn’t lying on the bedroom floor either.

Maybe they’d let her take it with her? Maybe it’d offered a bit of comfort while they shot her full of morphine and thiopental sodium, so they could hack off her toe.

Maybe they’d even buried it with her. Out in the middle of nowhere, wrapped in a black plastic bag. Mouldering away in a shallow grave. Keeping her company as she rotted.

Christ, there was a cheery thought. ‘You look like you’ve eaten a cold jobbie.’ Steel: standing in the doorway.

Logan turned his back on the room. ‘There’s nothing here.’ Just a dead girl’s bedroom in an empty house.

A thin slice of sunlight lies on the bare wooden floorboards, little binks of dust glittering like fairies just above it. Everything’s blurry. And it smells. She wipes her pyjama sleeve across her eyes. Shifts her bum along the floor a bit so she’s sitting closer to the sun.

It smells of old people in here. Old people like Mrs McInnes next door, with her hairy mole and thick glasses, and breath like a sausage that’s been left in the fridge too long.

She wipes the sleeve across her face again, getting Winnie the Pooh all soggy with tears. Tries to wriggle closer, but the chain around her chest and neck pulls tight. They used to keep Sooty on a chain in the back garden, fixed to a big metal spike so he could run round and round. Till he had to go to heaven.

Only she’s not a dog, chained to a spike in the back garden. She’s a little girl, chained to a bed in a dark, dusty old house.

She reaches out a pale little foot, and wiggles her toes in that tiny line of sunshine. Not making any noise.

The monsters will come back if she does.

A groan behind her.

She turns, the chain cold against her chin. Mummy’s talking in her sleep again.

‘No… You can’t… I don’t want to…’ Then her mouth twitches, opens and closes with little smacking noises. Mummy turns over onto her side. The chain around her ankle rattles against the metal bed. ‘No…’ Then her breathing goes in and out slow and steady.

Teddy Gordon’s eyes sparkle in the gloomy room. He’s lying on the bed, on his side like Mummy, staring.

She snaps her head back to the front. Not looking at him. Not looking into those shiny eyes. One time, she’d watched a crow eating a squished rabbit in a lay-by, while Daddy was having a wee behind a tree. The crow had eyes like Teddy Gordon’s: black and shiny and horrible.

Look straight ahead. Don’t move. Don’t make any noise. Be a Good Little Girl.

There’s a clunk and she flinches, a tiny squeak pops out between her lips.

A thump.

Coming from the shadows where the door’s hiding.

A rattle.

Eyes front. No moving. Biting her lip hard enough to make it sting and taste of shiny new pennies.

Clump. Clump. Clump.

A shadow blocks out the little slice of sunlight, killing the sparkly fairies.

The monster’s voice is all metal and buzzy, like a robot. ‘Hey sweetcheeks…’

She closes her eyes.