Close to the Bone

24

DI Leith cracked a yawn, showing off a mouthful of fillings. He blinked, rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin: grey to go with the short-back-and-sides clinging precariously onto his scalp. The washboard wrinkles on his forehead deepened. ‘I’m just asking you to take a look at it, McRae. Half an hour. Forty-five minutes tops.’

Logan shifted the folder to his other arm, balancing the polystyrene cup and grease-windowed paper bag on top as he reached for the door handle. ‘Can’t. I’ve got a stalker in the cells on animal cruelty and assault charges who’s probably going to need sectioned, and Steel’s on the warpath about the necklacing case. You heard her.’

Leith slumped against the wall and let loose another yawn. ‘We both know it’s not going to happen, OK? We can’t just pluck a result out of thin air because she wants to stick it to the review team. The trail for our torture victim is still viable. We need to chase it down before it goes cold.’

‘So you do it then.’ He turned the handle and pushed through into his office. A rumpled-looking Rennie was slouched in the visitor’s chair, blond hair sticking out at random angles, as if he’d had a fight with the styling gel and lost. The bags under his eyes were even more impressive than Leith’s.

Rennie scrambled out of the chair. ‘Guv.’

Leith slumped into the vacated spot. ‘Thought I told you to go home.’

‘Need to talk to DI McRae, Guv.’

Logan settled behind his desk, cricked the plastic lid off his coffee, then unwrapped the bacon buttie. ‘He’s right: go home. You look like an extra from a zombie film.’ The squeezy bottle of tomato sauce was locked away in the bottom drawer, where the thieving sods on nightshift couldn’t get at it. Logan liberated it and slathered the bacon in scarlet.

‘Come on, McRae, I can’t do it myself: I’ve been up all night, the post mortem’s at half nine and there’s no way that’s going to be done before lunchtime. I need an experienced pair of eyes on the ground now, not this afternoon.’ Leith thumped a blue folder onto Logan’s in-tray. ‘I’ll owe you one.’

‘You already owe me one.’

‘Fine, so I’ll owe you two. Please? ’

Logan eased open the folder’s front flap. Photograph: a blackened bloated body specked with mould, lying on a stainless-steel cutting table. The skin was lined with tiny dark-purple cuts each one surrounded by darker circular mottling that might have been bruises. Difficult to tell with the remains being so decomposed. No hair on the head, groin, armpits, or chest. Same as their necklacing victim. Logan closed the folder again and took a bite of his buttie. Bacon crunched between his teeth, filling his head with its smoky salty tang. ‘What about Ding-Dong? ’

‘Detective Inspector Bell couldn’t find his arse with both hands if you duct-taped them to it. Come on.’

He licked a blob of sauce from the side of his mouth. ‘OK, but if Steel asks, I’m off doing something about the necklaced guy. Deal? ’

Leith stood. ‘Deal.’ Then made for the door.

As soon as it shut, Rennie crumpled into the seat again, arms hanging at his sides, head thrown back, showing off a stubbly Adam’s apple. ‘Urrrrrrrgh. .’

‘I told you to go home.’

‘Why can’t everything be like it used to? ’

‘You’re making the place look untidy.’

‘No, seriously.’ He raised his arms, then let them flop down again. ‘Being detective sergeant’s a crap job. All the DIs and Steel treat you like crap, all the DCs and uniform whinge and bitch and give you crap about everything you ask them to do. It’s like. . being the filling in a crap sandwich.’

Logan took Leith’s folder from the in-tray and pulled out the photos inside. ‘My heart bleeds.’

‘We used to be so happy. .’

‘So resign. Tell Steel you don’t want to be a DS any more.’

A snort. ‘Yeah, good luck explaining that to the wife.’ He wrapped his arms around his head. ‘Why couldn’t it have been a simple one-punch murder, or a nice easy domestic? ’

Logan spread the photos out across the desk. The close-ups of the face were the worst, there was almost nothing human left, just a battered lopsided mess swollen after four days in a warm room, speckled with orange and green mould. Whoever it was had even shaved off the poor sod’s eyebrows. The eyes were two black empty slits — always the first to go when decomposition set in.

Each hand and foot had its own photograph, thick lines of bruising circling the wrists and ankles. Fingertips and toes pulped.

Christ. . Logan wrapped his bacon buttie up in its napkin and dumped it in the bin. Not hungry any more. Even the coffee tasted sour now.

‘-never going anywhere? Guv? Hello? ’

He blinked at Rennie. The sergeant was staring at him.

No idea. He put the photos back in the folder. ‘You think you’ve got it tough? Ever since McPherson left it’s been nothing but paperwork, and strategy meetings, and balancing budgets, and manpower rotas, and operational targets, and key performance indicators.’ The folder went back in his in-tray. ‘I dream of being a DS again. Don’t know you’re born, that’s your problem.’

A big, theatrical sigh swelled Rennie’s body, then deflated it back to floppy-armed despondency. ‘You’ll be sorry when I’m signed off on the stress.’

‘At least then I won’t have to listen to you whinge.’ He pulled out his notebook. ‘Tell me about the scene.’

Rennie shuddered. ‘He’d been dead on that kitchen floor for ages. Flies everywhere.’

‘Forced entry? ’

‘If they did, they picked the lock. No broken windows, no jimmied doors.’

‘So whoever it was, they had a key. .’ Logan wrote, ‘ESTATE AGENTS? ’ in his notebook and underlined it twice.

‘Or someone left a window open and the satanic wee shite sneaked in and closed it after they killed him and did a runner? ’

‘Possible. You talk to the neighbours? ’

Rennie pulled a face and rolled his eyes. ‘Pair of coffin dodgers. Didn’t see anything; didn’t want to see anything.’ His voice jumped into a wobbly parody of old age: ‘Oh, Sergeant, it’s too terrible to think about, why did the Abernethys have to move to Dubai, oh the world’s such a terrible place these days, they should bring back hanging.’

‘What about the other side, did. .’ A frown narrowed Logan’s eyes. ‘Wait a minute: satanic? ’

‘Big time: drew an eight-foot magic circle on the lino in the kitchen. Bloody thing was like a conga-line for maggots.’ He shifted in his seat, pulled his chin back, frowning. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? ’

Logan pointed at the door. ‘Go: I want copies of the crime-scene photos on my desk in five minutes. And make sure there’s some good ones of the magic circle.’

‘Urgh. .’ Rennie hauled himself out of the chair and slouched from the room, leaving the office door lying wide open behind him.

Logan grabbed his phone and put in a call to ex-DI Insch, stuffing an extra set of photos into the blue folder with the post-mortem shots while it rang.

The big man’s voice boomed out of the earpiece. ‘About time you called back! I told you to have a word with Robbie Whyte, not arrest him!’

Call him back? Logan pulled the mobile from his ear and poked at the screen. Four voicemails and three text messages. All from Insch’s number. Ah. .

‘Been in meetings all morning, so I-’

‘What part of “keep it low key” did you have difficulty understanding? ’

‘He gave Nichole Fyfe a gift-wrapped severed dog’s head and assaulted two people. I didn’t have any choice.’

‘CHOICE? If you’d got your finger out and spoken to him when I asked you to, it wouldn’t have happened and I wouldn’t have my lead actress bawling her eyes out in her trailer unable to do any BLOODY WORK!’

Wonderful. A bollocking from Insch. Just like the good old days.

‘You said to get in touch if I needed anything.’

‘You think you deserve a favour? ’

‘I — didn’t — have — any — choice. I’m trying to solve three murders here, OK? I’m sorry if that’s inconveniencing you in any way.’

Silence from the other end of the phone. Then, finally, ‘What do you want? ’

‘How about the name and number of your witchcraft consultant? ’

‘Wow.’ The man in the leather jacket rubbed a hand across his downturned mouth and neatly trimmed beard. ‘And you’re sure I’m supposed to be in here? ’ He’d hauled his long blond hair back into a ponytail. That and the beard, the chiselled features, and broad shoulders made Alex Hay look more like a Viking than Aberdeen City Council’s chief historian.

Logan tucked the folder under his arm and pointed to the path of raised metal trays beneath his feet, the little metal legs keeping them a couple of inches above the patio slabs outside the back door. ‘Forensics have got everything they’re going to get; just stick to the walkway and you’ll be fine.’

Alex pulled on a smile that didn’t seem all that happy with his face. ‘Does it always smell like this? ’

Logan patted him on the back — it was like patting a brick wall. Had to be solid muscle underneath the leather. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be worse inside.’

‘Worse. Right. Good. .’

Logan turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. The smell of meat, long past its sell-by date oozed out from the kitchen, sunk its claws into the base of his stomach and twisted. He blinked, turned his face away, breathing through his mouth. The air tasted as bad as it smelled. ‘OK, maybe masks would be a good idea.’

He put one on, then passed the other over. Waiting until the historian had his in place before stepping off the walkway onto the one-foot-square patch of linoleum just inside the door marked with black-and-yellow tape as safe. Then from there straight back onto the first tray of the path set up in the kitchen.

It was a reasonably modern space, but completely empty. No pots, no pans, no toaster, no kettle, and no furniture, just the little drifts of fly carcases piled up by the skirting boards. The walls were a disturbing shade of rippling grey.

A ragged pentagram, about six-foot across, sat in the middle of the blue-and-cream linoleum. It was lumpen, spotted, as if it’d been made by melting black candle wax onto the floor, layered over with a series of concentric circles punctuated by incomprehensible words and squiggles. Like a demonic sheriff’s badge. The smears and pools of dried blood just added to the image.

Five holes pierced the linoleum, a couple of inches in from the pentagram’s points.

Alex paused on the threshold, rubbing his fingertips down the front of his jacket, as if that would keep them clean. He stared down at the gap in the walkway. ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to-’

‘They can’t lay the trays where the door goes, can they? ’

‘Ah, OK, yes, got you. .’ He cleared his throat, then stepped inside. Clunked the door shut behind him.

The noise must have startled the flies, because the walls went from grey to magnolia as they buzzed into the rank air, bobbing and swirling like angry smoke. Alex froze. ‘I. .’

‘Ignore them.’ The walkway detoured around the pentagram and headed further off into the house. Logan stopped at the top of the five-pointed star. ‘Well, you’re the witchcraft expert: is that what I think it is? ’

‘Ah, OK. .’ A cough. ‘Do you have any gloves? ’

Logan handed him a pair, and the historian struggled them on over trembling fingers.

He hunkered down on the walkway, head moving from side to side. ‘It’s a magic circle.’

Pause. ‘I’m going to need slightly more than that.’

‘Ah, yes, of course. .’ He puffed out a breath. ‘Right, this is basically a corruption of the circles described in The Key of Solomon. Going by strict Qabalistic belief, the pentagram shouldn’t be there, it’s wrong. It shouldn’t cross the outer circles either.’

He pointed at the centre of the pentagram, where four words sat inside the innermost band. ‘Septen, merid, orien, occid — north, south, east, and west. They orient the circle. The next layer: those things that look like musical notes? They’re the letter Tau, last character in the Hebrew alphabet, they stand for the perfection of God’s creation.’ He shifted over a couple of paces. ‘Next band out is, Eloah, Tetragrammaton, Eheieh, and Elion — Tetragrammaton represents the true name of God, the rest are emanations. And all around the outside is: Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam. Basically, “Have mercy upon me, oh God, according to your loving kindness.”’

Logan opened DI Leith’s folder and pulled out the crime-scene photographs. Selected one that showed the whole room, then held it out. ‘Victim was staked out in the middle.’

Alex held a hand against the base of his throat, as if he was trying to swallow something stuck there. ‘OK, that’s just wrong.’ He made a gulping sound. Then a groan. Then lurched to his feet and stumbled for the door, making the walkway clang. Thump, out into the back garden, ripping his facemask off.

The door swung shut again, silencing the sound of violent retching.