Shatter the Bones

Chapter 16

On the little screen, DI Bell pushed a sheet of paper across the scarred interview room table. ‘I’m showing Ms Brown a selection of photographs reference: one fi ve zero fi ve zero one. Can you identify the man you say raped you?’

‘No she bloody can’t.’ Logan took another swig of coffee. Bitter and dark, which was pretty sodding appropriate. The caffeine fizzed through his arteries, making his eyeballs itch.

Sitting on the other side of the table, Trisha Brown rocked back and forth, then chewed on the side of her thumb. They’d chucked the ID sheet together using a bunch of random faces from the database — local criminals: a couple of rapists, some burglars, a paedophile — Logan, George Clooney, and the current head of the BNP. Nine faces for Trisha Brown to pick from.

‘Trisha? Can you pick him out?’

Logan leaned forward until his nose was just inches from the TV screen. It was mounted on a rickety old table in what was laughingly referred to as the Downstream Observation Suite. It’d been a broom closet before the last refit, and still had that pine and bleach smell.

‘Trisha?’

She took her thumb out of her mouth, held it above the ID sheet, then turned it down, like a Roman emperor, and jabbed it into one of the faces.

DI Bell scratched his hairy head. ‘OK… I see. Are you sure?’

A nod.

‘You have to say it out loud for the tape.’

‘Aye, it was him. Number Five.’

A silent pause. Then the inspector scraped his chair back from the table. ‘Right, well, interview terminated at…’ He checked his watch. ‘Three thirty nine AM. Constable Gray will take you downstairs to the duty doctor for a wee examination, OK?’

Logan watched them filter out of the interview room, then clicked off the set.

A minute later DI Bell clunked open the door and slumped back against the wall. He folded his arms, tufts of hair sticking out from the ends of his shirt cuffs. He wasn’t smiling.

‘Well?’

‘Bad news.’

Oh … fuck. She’d picked him out. Nine faces to chose from, and Trisha Brown had chosen his. She only recognized him because he was the idiot shouting in through the hatch of her cell. Stupid. Stupid. Fucking. Idiot.

‘Come on, Ding-Dong, you know it’s not-‘ ‘We’ve got to go arrest George Clooney. His fans are going to be gutted.’

‘Sarge? Sarge, you awake?’

Logan jolted upright in his seat, grabbing the desk for support. He sat there, staring at the blurry screensaver on his computer monitor for a moment. ‘What time is it?’

A lanky young lad with a streaky-bacon complexion, watery eyes, and a PC’s uniform fidgeted with the Airwave handset clipped to his stab-proof vest. The numbers on his epaulettes marked him out as one of the year’s new recruits. God knew how he’d ended up on nights, he looked as if a strong fart would blow him over. ‘DI Bell says that’s the duty doc done with your junkie. Says you can sod off home if you like?’

Logan yawned, stretched out in the seat, shuddered, then slumped. ‘Where is he?’

‘Had to go out on a shout — some tadger’s taken a scaffold ing pole to Vicious Vikki’s Ford Fiesta.’

‘He say what the result was?’

The constable nodded. ‘Car’s completely buggered.’

‘Not the window, you idiot, the rape kit.’

‘Don’t know, Sarge.’

Logan creaked his way out of his swivel chair, stuck his palms against the small of his back and tried to straighten the knots out of his spine. Then let out a big hissing breath.

Constable Streaky-Bacon was still standing there. ‘Anything else?’

Shrug. ‘Get back to sodding work then.’

Dr Donna Delaney looked up from the copy of the Aberdeen Examiner open on the desk in front of her, covering the key board of a battered laptop. ‘LOCAL PSYCHIC’S PLEA TO POLICE’. A white porcelain teapot — with matching cup and saucer — trailed the lemon-washing-up-liquid smell of Earl Grey into the tiny office set aside for the on-call duty doctor.

She peered at Logan over the top of her trendy glasses, then smiled. ‘How’s the stomach?’

‘You did a rape kit on Trisha Brown?’

‘Yes… Lovely young lady. Apparently I tried to, now how did she put it, “Lez her up”. Let me see your hands.’

He held them both out, and she scooted her chair closer on squeaky castors, took hold of his left hand and peered at it. Two little scars marked the middle of the palm, about half an inch apart, the skin all pink and shiny. She turned it over and peered at the back. Two more scars.

‘Still giving you gyp?’

Shrug. ‘Depends on the weather.’

‘Well, let me know if they start to throb, or you get swelling, or stiffness moving your fingers. Don’t want to end up with cysts.’

‘Rape kit?’

‘Hmm? Oh, yes. Well, there’s vaginal bruising consistent with forced intercourse, some tearing to the anus as well, more bruising on the breasts and inner thighs.’

‘Semen?’

Dr Delaney bit her top lip. ‘Some.’

‘But?’

‘Well, you see, someone like Trisha, with her habit, has to get money somewhere. So while it does look like she’s been raped, it wasn’t today, and the semen I’ve got to send off to the labs is probably going to be from her last bunch of punters. She’s not big on using protection.’

‘She say anything?’

‘Other than, “get your hands off me you dirty lesbian bitch”? Not really, no.’ The duty doc scooted her chair back to the desk. ‘It’d be nice to think that she’ll get herself some help — kick the drugs, settle down somewhere nice with her wee boy. But I get the feeling we all know where she’s going to end up.’

‘Yeah.’ Sooner or later, Trisha Brown would go from being Dr Delaney’s patient to Doc Fraser’s corpse.

‘Shh… It’s going to be OK, sweetheart. It’s going to be OK…’

Mummy’s voice sounds like something sticky, caught on broken glass. Arms wrapped around her Good Little Girl, rocking her from side to side in her lap. Sometimes, when you’re scared, Mummy is the warmest place you can be…

Sometimes.

She sniffs and wipes her sleeve across her eyes. Then only just stops herself from sucking her thumb. Sucking your thumb is naughty, it makes your teeth all squint like a nasty rat.

Teddy Gordon watches her from the foot of the bed, plastic eyes glittering and black.

He has eyes like a rat.

Like a crow tearing chunks out of a squished rabbit.

Like the lens of a video camera.

‘Shhhhhhh… Shhhhhh…’ Mummy shudders.

Something lands in her hair, then trickles down to her scalp — warm and wet. Mummy never cries. Not since they put Daddy in a box in the ground so he could be with the angels.

Mummy strokes her hair. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry… It’ll only hurt for a little bit, I promise.’

When the monsters come back to take her toes.