Shatter the Bones

Chapter 44

It had to be them. Had to be. If it wasn’t… Logan ran a hand across his face. If it wasn’t them, then everything he’d done to Shuggie Webster was…

His pulse thumped in his ears, heart beating hard enough to make his whole body rock. Thump. Thump. Thump. Oh Jesus.

‘You OK, Sarge?’ Someone sat down on the other side of the canteen table. ‘I mean, you know, Inspector?’ A cough. ‘Sorry, Guv.’

Logan looked up from his coffee and the canteen snapped back into focus. The sound of officers and support staff gossiping and laughing. He blinked.

PC Guthrie shrugged, his shoulders coming up to touch his red-tipped ears. ‘Force of habit.’

‘Yes.’ Logan took a sip of coffee. Cold. God knew how long he’d been sitting here.

The constable unwrapped a Tunnock’s Teacake, carefully smoothing out the paper until it was mirror-smooth. ‘Going for a record attempt later, thought I’d get some practice in.’ He put his hands behind his back and loomed over the teacake. It looked like a little brown breast — a circle of biscuit topped with a dome of marshmallow and dipped in chocolate. ‘Sergeant Downie’s on four point five seconds.’

Logan pushed his mug away. ‘Have you done the door-to-doors?’

Guthrie licked his lips, not taking his eyes off the teacake. ‘Trisha Brown? Yup — no one recognized the e-fit. Did a search for other properties Edward Buchan had access to, like you asked: allotments, lock-ups, garages, caravans, friends on holiday, that kind of thing. Doesn’t look like he’s got anywhere to keep her.’

‘No one recognized the e-fit at all?’

‘Sorry, Guv. Did two streets either side and put up a couple of “have you seen this man?” posters as well. Nothing.’ He lined the teacake up with the edge of the canteen table. ‘OK, we ready?’

Maybe no one recognized the e-fit because Edward Buchan had made the whole abduction story up to hide the fact he’d killed Trisha and dumped her body somewhere. Unless… Logan frowned. According to ‘Britain’s Next Big Porn Star’, Robert Marley told her if she wasn’t careful she’d end up like Trisha Brown.

‘OK: three, two, one- Hey!’

He grabbed the teacake and took a big bite. ‘We’ve got two Yardies in the cells downstairs: I want the one calling himself “Robert” in an interview room in ten minutes.’

‘I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ without me lawyah.’ Robert Marley lounged back in his plastic chair, bare arms and chest shining with a faint sheen of sweat, flame-coloured hair glowing in the light from the interview room’s narrow window. ‘I knows me rights.’

‘Do you now?’ Logan tilted his head on one side and stared, letting the silence stretch.

Standing with his back to the wall, Guthrie unwrapped the replacement teacake Logan had bought to stop him moaning.

Outside, the wail of a patrol car’s siren rose, then faded.

Logan tapped the scarred Formica tabletop. ‘What about Trisha Brown’s rights?’

‘Eh, mon, I told you: I an’ I ain’t sayin’-’

‘Oh grow up, Charles, you’re not kidding anyone with the mock-Jamaican patois. You sound like a stereotype from a seventies sitcom.’

The Yardie bared his teeth, showing off a line of gold crowns. ‘You got no bizzzzness disrespectin’ me cultural heritage, white boy.’

‘Cultural heritage?’ Logan checked his notes. ‘You were born in Manchester, you did two years at Leeds University studying political science, your mum’s Welsh, and your dad’s in the Rotary Club. Have you even been to Jamaica?’

‘I an’ I is honourin’ me roots.’

‘Then why didn’t you become a quantity surveyor like your dear old dad?’

Charles Robert Collins, AKA Robert Marley, narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t have to answer any of your questions without a legal representative.’ He raised his chin, all trace of Jamaican accent gone. He didn’t even sound Mancunian, so he’d probably been putting that on too. ‘This is an infringement of my civil liberties.’

‘Scottish legal system, Charlie. You should have done your research before you decided to sell drugs here.’ Logan dug a photo out of a blue folder and slapped it down on the table between them. A bruised face glowered out from an ID shot — Trisha Brown, holding up a board with her name spelled out in magnetic letters. ‘What did you do to her?’

Charles looked away, a crease between his eyebrows. ‘I’ve never seen this woman before.’

‘Really? Because we’ve got a witness who saw you snatch her off the street.’

‘No you don’t.’ But he wouldn’t look Logan in the eye. ‘Oh, but we do.’ Logan went back into the folder. No sign of the e-fit. He waved PC Guthrie over. ‘Go get the e-fit.’

The constable shifted. ‘Guv?’

God help us. Logan stood and whispered in Guthrie’s ear. ‘The e-fit. The one you did with Edward Buchan. Go get it.’

‘Oh… But I left a copy on your desk.’

Logan frowned at him. ‘That was you? The e-fits with no bloody case numbers? You have to fill in all the details — how’s anyone supposed to know what they’re looking at?’

Pink rushed up the constable’s cheeks. ‘Thought they were meant to be anonymous so the witnesses don’t-’

‘Not the internal copies, you idiot.’

‘Oh.’ Guthrie’s shoulders slumped. ‘Now go get me a copy of the bloody e-fit!’

‘But…’ The constable leaned in close, his voice carried on a warm chocolaty whisper, ‘It doesn’t look anything like him. The guy Edward Buchan saw was white.’

‘You made me look a complete prick!’ Logan slammed his hand against the cell door, and the boom reverberated around the small room, echoing back from the bare concrete walls.

Sitting on the blue plastic mattress with her knees drawn up against her chest, Emily — Britain’s Next Big Porn Star — flinched. She was backed up into the corner, keeping her head down, like a dog waiting to be beaten. Another victory for Team Logan.

He sighed and tried to soften his voice. ‘You told me they’d used Trisha Brown as a threat.’

Emily nodded, still keeping her eyes on her chewed fingers. ‘What happened?’

She glanced at him, then away again. ‘There was some drugs went missing, Shuggie got them on credit, like. Some cop raided them and he couldn’t pay them back…’

Logan leant back against the cell door. ‘And?’

‘Bob and Jacob thought Shuggie needed a lesson.’

She went back to chewing at her nails.

Silence.

‘Emily, I’m going to need more than that.’

‘Way I heard it, they invite Shuggie and Trisha over to discuss spreading the repayments, only when they get there, Bob takes this knife and he…’ She shuddered. ‘He, you know.’ Emily stuck out the little finger on her left hand, then pretended to skin it with an invisible knife. ‘Then the bastards make Shuggie watch them taking turns. You know: raping her.’

Emily wrapped her arms around her knees, fingertips stroking the bruises beneath her T-shirt. ‘Wrote the cop’s name on her chest and told her to fuck off and get the drugs back if she didn’t want to swap places with Shuggie.’

‘Fuck me.’ Acting DI Mark MacDonald closed the door to Logan’s makeshift office and slumped against it. ‘Like a bloody bear pit down there.’ He peered at the packet of shortbread sitting next to Logan’s in-tray. ‘Any chance…?’

‘Not mine, Rennie left them.’

‘Good enough for me.’ He tore open the wrapper and helped himself to a couple. ‘I hate media briefings.’ He perched himself on the edge of Logan’s desk. ‘How come you’re not off with the cavalry?’

Logan brushed the bits of shortbread from his mouse and scrolled onto the next page of the interview report form — typing up his meeting with Robert Marley. ‘You’re getting crumbs everywhere.’

‘Anyway, if you’re not off arresting this Clayton tosser, do you want to give me a hand with a risk assessment for the hostage handover?’

Logan sat back. ‘They’re arresting Stephen Clayton? Who’s arresting Stephen Clayton? When?’

‘Thought you knew. Finnie and the tosser Green set off with a firearms team fifteen minutes ago.’

Bastards!

Logan opened his desk drawer. His Airwave handset was nesting in a collection of witness statements and check-lists. He punched in Finnie’s number.

The head of CID’s voice crackled out of the speaker, nearly drowned out by the roar of an engine. ‘Ah, Inspector McRae, how nice of you to report for duty. What, were you busy getting your hair done?’

‘You’ve gone after Clayton! Why the-’

‘Where were you? We’ve been calling you for the last forty minutes.’

Logan closed his eyes and swore. He pulled out his mobile phone and swore again: he’d switched it off for the interview with the flame-haired ‘Marley’ brother. He turned the thing back on and it bleeped at him, the screen flickering with little alerts. ‘YOU HAVE 12 NEW MESSAGES’. Perfect.

‘I’ve been interviewing suspects in the Trisha Brown abduction.’

‘I want your pet psychologist at the station in half an hour, ready to downstream on the Clayton interview.’

‘I can be out at Hillhead in fifteen minutes, if…’ A solid tone came from the speaker, then silence. Finnie had hung up on him. ‘Great.’ He dumped the handset back in the drawer and slammed it shut. ‘I do all the work and they waltz in and make the arrest.’ He scowled at Mark. ‘What’s that look for?’

‘How come, you’re “Detective Inspector McRae”, but I’m always, “Acting Detective Inspector MacDonald”?’

‘Because Finnie’s a dick, that’s why.’ He turned back to his screen. ‘Can’t believe they went after Clayton without me.’

‘You’re only DI till bloody McPherson gets back, I’m-’

‘Did anyone else find a suspect for Alison and Jenny’s abduction? Did they buggery.’ Logan hauled everything out of his in-tray and dumped it on the desk, rifling through the pile of letters and forms. ‘But do I get to be part of the pick-up team? No. That’d be too much to ask for.’

Burglary, burglary, unlawful removal, complaint about someone’s dog barking, memo from Baldy Bain about not parking personal vehicles on the Rear Podium… Where the hell was Guthrie’s e-fit?

The door thumped shut. Logan looked up — Mark was gone. Flounced off in a huff.

How could Finnie go after Stephen Clayton without him? The anonymous trio of e-fits were wedged between reports of a flasher and complaints about a gang of kids dressed in Cub Scout uniforms running riot in Bridge of Don. Logan laid the three computer-generated identikits side by side on his desk. Two looked as if a drunken monkey had been operating the software, but the third actually bore a passing resemblance to a human being.

A man, mid-fifties to early sixties, long hair, goatee beard, glasses, a Brothers Grimm fairytale nose, lopsided ears of different sizes. Vaguely familiar. Logan held the e-fit out at arm’s length and squinted at it, blurring his vision…

Nope.

He trundled his chair back from the desk and headed downstairs.

A middle-aged man was standing on the grey terrazzo floor in front of the reception desk, waving his arms about like an angry windmill, his brown suit stained and splattered with scarlet. As if he’d stood too close to someone who’d exploded. ‘…little bastards! What sort of people raise children like that?’

Big Gary was standing on the other side of the desk, behind the glass partition, nodding — every gesture setting his collection of chins wobbling. ‘I know, sir. Dreadful. If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll get someone down to take your statement…’ His eyes locked on Logan, then a grin pulled at his chubby cheeks. ‘Ah, DS McRae: there’s a gentleman here who’s-’

‘They need a damn good slap. If I did that when I was kid, my mum would’ve battered the shite out of me!’

Logan slipped the e-fit through the gap between the glass partition and the desk. ‘He look familiar to you?’

‘This is what you get for being a concerned bloody citizen. Who wants to use a bus shelter covered in graffiti?’

Big Gary scratched at his big pink head. ‘Kind of…’ He squinted one eye shut. ‘Who did it?’

‘Guthrie.’

‘When I was in the Cubs we respected our elders, now it’s Lord of the Bloody Flies!’

‘That explains it.’ Big Gary stuck his tongue out and frowned. ‘Might be Darren McInnes? If it is, he’s not been well…’ He handed the e-fit back to Logan. ‘You could try the Horny Grolloch Squad; but I’m pretty sure it’s him.’

‘It’s a bloody disgrace. Who’s going to pay for my suit, that’s what I want to know!’

‘Aye, weil, I suppose it does kinda look a bittie like him.’ DC Paul Leggett held the e-fit up next to his computer screen. A familiar wrinkled face stared out of the monitor: Darren McInnes (52) — Exposing Children to Harm/Danger or Neglect, Possessing Indecent Images of Children, Theft by Housebreaking, Serious Assault.

No wonder he’d looked familiar: he was one of the first registered sex offenders they’d interviewed in the Munro House Hotel.

Leggett ran a hand through his collar-length hair. ‘Aye, maybe…’

The stocky wee man wouldn’t have got away with the bohemian look in uniform or CID, but in the Mong Squad it helped not to look like a police officer.

The Offender Management Unit office was cramped, every available surface covered in box files and bits of paper. The bitter-burnt smell of cheap coffee filled the air; an oscillating fan whirred and clicked its way left to right, ruffling the stack of forms nearest to it.

Leggett made humming noises. ‘The ears is all tae buggery, and the nose is three times too big, but other than that, it’s him.’

Logan took the e-fit back, folded it in thirds, and slipped it back into his pocket. ‘Thanks.’

‘Fit’s he done?’

‘McInnes? We think he might’ve snatched Trisha Brown off the street in Kincorth.’

‘Trisha Brown?’ Leggett curled his top lip. ‘And Dodgy Darren? Nah, he’s strictly into the younger woman. Did eight years for molesting a three-year-old girl doon the beach. He wouldnae know whit tae do wi’ a fully grown one.’

‘You don’t think he’s-’

‘Oh, dinna get me wrong, he’s a cantankerous dirty auld bugger and I wouldn’t put anything past him, but…’ Leggett shrugged. ‘Never can tell, I suppose. You want to go gie him a wee knock?’

Tempting. But then, what if Finnie came back with Stephen Clayton…? Not that Logan would get a look in at the interrogation — not if Superintendent ‘I’m A Prick’ Green had anything to do with it.

‘Give me a minute.’ Logan wandered over to the corner of the cramped office, looking out of the window while he dialled. Three storeys down, on the opposite side of the road, someone was peeing into the open top of an illegally parked Porsche in full view of Grampian Police Force Headquarters. You had to admire that level of stupidity.

The psychologist picked up on the third ring. ‘DrDave Goulding?’

‘Can you get down to FHQ in about…’ Logan checked his watch. ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes? We’re picking up a suspect in the McGregor case.’

‘Ah…’ There was a pause. ‘And how do you feel about that?’

‘I feel you should get your arse over-’

‘Logan, the thing about being a professional psychologist is that you learn to pick up on the tone of someone’s voice.’

‘Can you make it or not? Finnie needs you to do downstream monitoring and advice.’

‘Are you’re feeling excluded?’

‘Yes or no?’

Silence. ‘I’ve got a client at half ten. I’ll be-’

‘Cancel it.’

‘That’s not exactly-’

‘We’re talking about saving a little girl and her mum here, Dave.’

This time the silence stretched on and on and… ‘On one condition: you and I sit down for half an hour to talk. We do that, or you wait till I’m finished with Mrs Reid.’

Down on the street below, a man in a dark-blue suit stopped in the middle of the road to stare at the Porsche piddler. He dropped the collection of green Marks amp; Spencer bags he’d been carrying and ran at the guy who was using his pride-and-joy as a urinal.

‘That’s blackmail.’

‘Sauce for the goose. Take it or leave it.’

The piddler lurched back and sideways, his legs looking as if they weren’t really under control. And then the Porsche’s owner cracked a fist into his face. The pair of them tumbled to the pavement, arms and rebellious legs flailing.

‘Just make sure you tell the front desk you’re here to interview Stephen Clayton. If I’m not about you can start working up some questions.’

‘Half an hour, Logan. That’s the deal.’

A pair of uniform charged across the road, peaked caps held down with one hand. Logan watched them haul the piddler and the piddlee apart.

Logan glanced over at DC Leggett. He was holding up a set of car keys.

‘I’ll be back soon as I can. Just got to take care of something first.’