The Missing and the Dead

16

Gerbil and Klingon sat side by side on the grubby couch. The whole place was grubby — carpet, walls, curtains. Even the ceiling had its own collection of stains. Filth streaked the floor around the couch, as if whoever usually sat there couldn’t be arsed getting up to use the bin, just tossed it where they sat.

Sergeant Mitchell stood behind Gerbil and Klingon, a hand on each of their shoulders. The pair of them doing their best not to make eye-contact with anyone else in the room.

A sagging coffee table sat in the middle of the carpet, a set of digital scales and a spoon parked on a red-top tabloid: ‘NONCE ON THE RUN ~ DID MISSING SICKO WOOD CLAIM ANOTHER VICTIM?’

Logan pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. ‘Right, you want to save us the bother and tell us where the stuff is?’

Gerbil stared at his knees. Klingon blinked behind those thick NHS-style glasses. Not a single word.

‘OK.’ Logan removed the elastic band holding his body-worn video closed, and slid the front panel down, setting it recording. ‘Sergeant Logan McRae, five minutes past four p.m., twenty-first of May, thirty-six Fairholme Place. Constable Fraser?’

Syd unclipped the lead from Enzo’s collar, then slipped a fluorescent yellow vest thing over his head. Fastened the strap behind the Labrador’s front legs. The dog was huge — big fluffy golden ruff, big fluffy tail, big block-shaped head. ‘Come on, Enzo, off you go …’

The dog bounced his front legs from one side to the other, then scampered off, tail wagging, nose down.

Syd slung the lead over his head, clipped it behind his back in one fluid movement. ‘The first ninety seconds, he’s not really working. Having a bit of a sniff about. Too excited at being somewhere new.’

The dog reappeared from behind the couch and went straight for his master’s legs. Bounced about a bit again.

‘Come on, Enzo, calm down and get your nose in gear.’

Gerbil shifted in his seat. Squared his shoulders. Then came out with a Glaswegian accent you could cut soap with. ‘I want a lawyer, and aw that. Ma rights, in’t it?’

Deano stared. ‘Seriously? You’re from Peterhead, Kevin, what’s with the mock Weegie?’

‘I’m no’ answering anything else till I see a lawyer, but.’

He sighed. Raised his eyebrows at Logan. ‘Tell you, they do eighteen months in Polmont and they come out sounding like Begbie.’

The Labrador did another circuit of the lounge. Only this time there was a lot less bouncing about and lot more snuffling.

‘There we go, he’s got his working head on now.’ Syd waved an arm up and out, as if he was introducing the wall. Enzo turned and followed the direction of the gesture, sniffing his way along the skirting board. Around the sofa. Then settled down in front of Klingon and stared at him.

Sergeant Mitchell took his hand off Gerbil’s shoulder and hauled Klingon to his feet, getting an involuntary squeak from those wet rubbery lips. ‘Think it’s strip-search time, don’t you?’

‘Come on, Enzo, let’s try the kitchen.’ Syd clicked his fingers and did the same magician’s apprentice gesture, this time aiming at the hallway.

Logan followed them, keeping the dog more-or-less in range of the BWV lens.

Through the hall, past the stairs, and into a small kitchen.

If the lounge was grubby, the kitchen was a pigsty. Dishes piled up in the sink. Food smears on the walls above the cooker. Everywhere covered in opened tins and takeaway containers. The bin overflowing with pizza boxes and kebab papers. A curdling reek of spoiled food and cigarette ash. The lazy burrr of bluebottles, dancing a slow-motion waltz through the foetid air. Pausing now and then to bang their heads against the window.

Logan curled his top lip. ‘Can you imagine living like this?’

‘Pff …’ Syd puffed out his cheeks as Enzo did the rounds. ‘You think this is bad? Had to search a place once, and they kept a bucket at the end of the couch. Not for rubbish, it was so they wouldn’t have to leave the room to take a crap or have a pee. Never bothered to empty it either. Dear Jesus, the smell.’

Logan opened the cupboard nearest the door. It was stuffed with boxes of baby milk formula. ‘Looks like they’ve stocked up stuff to cut it with.’

‘Probably be more milk than heroin by the time it hits the streets. Honestly, if Trading Standards had to regulate drug dealers …’ A smile. ‘There we go.’

Enzo sat down in front of the cooker, giving it the same stare he’d treated Klingon to.

‘Onwards and upwards.’ He ushered the Labrador up the stairs.

Logan stuck his head into the living room. Nicholson and Carole were nowhere to be seen, but, sadly, the same couldn’t be said of Klingon.

He was stripped to his pants in the middle of the room, hands cuffed behind his back, palms up. Muscles stood out on his arms and legs like elastic bands, his chest sunken, ribs on show, a proper full-on six pack. Standing there with his shoulders hunched and his back curved, showing off every bump and hollow of his spine. Blue-and-purple bruises rippled across his stomach and up one side. A wonky tattoo of the starship Enterprise and Captain Picard covered one arm from shoulder to elbow. Or at least, it was probably meant to be Captain Picard. It looked more like a constipated potato.

Wafts of bitter onion stink came off him like hungry tendrils. Burrowing their way into Logan’s sinuses.

Mitchell was pulling a second pair of nitrile gloves on over the ones he was already wearing. Not taking any chances. ‘Now, have you banked anything, Colin? Am I going to have to go spelunking here?’

Definitely not planning on hanging around for that. Logan pointed at the kitchen. ‘When you’re done here, try around the cooker. Got a hit from the dog.’

Then out again before the saggy grey pants came off.

Upstairs.

A greasy smear ran along the wallpaper at shoulder height.

Logan kept his hands away from the banister and picked his way down the middle of the landing, staying away from the manky wall. With most crime scenes, no one touched anything in case they contaminated the evidence. Here it was more about not wanting to catch anything.

The master-bedroom door lay open — Syd stood on the threshold and Enzo’s tail was just visible on the other side of the bed. No sheet on the mattress, no cover on the squashed pillow. Both were covered in yellow-brown stains, saggy, threadbare. Mounds of dirty clothes surrounded the bed. A framed picture of Jesus had pride of place on the wall above the headboard.

Syd looked over his shoulder. ‘I’m saving the bathroom till last.’

Yes, because that was going to be such a treat.

They gave Enzo a couple of minutes, then held the wardrobe doors open for him.

Nothing.

The second, smaller bedroom was the same, only messier. A single mattress lay on the floor, a large brown stain covering one side, complete with its own collection of spiralling bluebottles. A windowsill laden with dead flies and wasps.

Other than a bong and a little drift of burnt tinfoil on the windowsill, Enzo didn’t find anything there either.

A stepladder leaned up against the wall, in the corner of the room. Free of dirty socks, pants, T-shirts, or trousers.

Logan nodded at it. ‘Does that look a bit suspicious to you?’

Back onto the landing. Staring up at the ceiling.

A hatch led up into the attic, right outside the single bedroom. The hatch’s edges were filthy with layers and layers of dirty fingerprints.

He pointed. ‘You think we can get Enzo up there?’

‘Not without giving us both a hernia.’

Logan grabbed the stepladder and carried it through. Popped it open beneath the hatch. Climbed up the first couple of steps. Looked down over the side of the banister to the bottom of the stairs. Long way down. ‘Do me a favour and hold the ladder for a minute?’

Better safe than sorry.

He climbed, pushed the hatch up and slid it to the side. Blackness. Logan’s torch sent a beam of white LED light scorching across the roof beams. Another couple of steps and his head popped over the threshold into the loft space. Warm up here. Stuffy too. Partially floored.

He played the torch beam around him: boxes and boxes and shadows and boxes, and …

‘Oh, ho. What have we here?’

It was a baseball bat, duct tape wrapped around the handle, the wooden end scraped and scarred. Smeared with what looked like dark-red jam but had the coppery smell of raw meat. It wasn’t the only smell up here. There was something rank and sewage-like too.

Another couple of steps up, till his whole torso was in the attic.

Boxes and boxes. He popped one open. Grinned.

Syd’s voice came up from below. ‘Anything?’

‘Either Klingon and Gerbil are stockpiling bags of cornflower up here, or we’ve hit the jackpot. It’s …’

What was that?

A hand tugged at his trouser leg. ‘You OK up there?’

‘Shhh …’

He moved his foot to the top rung of the stepladder. Wobbled for a moment. Then a bit of a struggle and he was in the attic, kneeling on the edge of the hatch. One hand on the nearest roof beam, the torch clutched in the other. Swinging the beam slowly left and right, causing the shadows to dance. Catching motes of dust in the stuffy space and making them glow.

There it was again. A sort of scratching snuffling sound.

Rats?

They’d have to be bloody huge if it was.

‘Police. Is somebody there?’

He shuffled forwards. Let go of the roof beam. Reached out and pushed one of the boxes to the side. It fell over with a crash, spilling dusty crockery shrapnel over the chipboard flooring.

A man lay on his side, arms behind his back, ankles held together with a thick binding of duct tape. Gag over his mouth. Dried blood streaked the side of his face nearest the ground. One eye stuck closed with dried gore, the other slitted, only the white showing. Prominent cheekbones, pierced ears and nose. Jagged tribal tattoos on his neck.

In real life he was missing the Hitler moustache, glasses, and bolts out the side of his neck, but there was no mistaking everyone’s favourite drug-dealing scumbag. Only reported missing because he owed his granny money.

Jack Simpson.

So that’s where he’d been all this time …