The Missing and the Dead

52

‘… absolutely dinging it down.’

Logan pressed the talk button. ‘Well, don’t hang about too long then, Joe. Don’t want you and Penny catching pneumonia.’

Heat wafted through the Sergeants’ Office, making spider-webs of steam on the mullioned window. A clatter of rain against the glass made it shiver.

‘Definitely. We’ll finish up the last interview and be back in time for eightses. Penny’s got chocolate éclairs.’

Logan put his Airwave back on the desk and bashed in comments against two or three actions that needed following up. Shockingly, none of them belonged to Tufty. And speaking of Constable Quirrel …

His thin face appeared at the door. Cheeks shiny and red, with nose and ears to match. ‘Ooh, it’s perishing out there. Fancy a cuppa?’

Logan held out his mug. ‘Any news?’

‘Hospital say it wasn’t as bad as it looked. A broken leg and a couple of ribs. Not bad for getting knocked down by a bus.’ He pulled off his hat and a dribble of rainwater pattered against the carpet tiles.

Logan dug into his pocket and came out with a small paper bag. Tossed it on the desk. ‘Before I forget, that’s for you.’

‘Is it cola bottles?’ Tufty picked up the bag and peered inside. ‘It’s a badge.’

‘For your help yesterday with the CCTV.’ A smile. ‘Put it on then.’

Tufty unzipped his high-vis jacket and pinned the badge to his stabproof. Round and red, with ‘GENIOUS’ on it in little white letters. He beamed. ‘Thanks, Sarge!’

‘No problem. You earned it.’

‘You’ve got a visitor, by the way. Outside.’

‘In this?’ Logan grabbed his waterproof high-vis gear. ‘Not supposed to leave members of the public out in the rain, Constable. Sends a bad message.’

‘Yeah … Didn’t want to let him into the building. Not after what he did to the Big Car. It’s Stinky Sammy Wilson and, going by the smell, I think he’s here to report his own death.’

‘I’ve changed my mind: you’re an idiot.’ Logan hauled on the vest, the jacket, and fastened his equipment belt over the top on his way to the tradesmen’s exit. Instantly a stone heavier. ‘Go make the tea — Penny and Joe are on their way back for eightses.’

‘Sarge.’

He let himself out the door, pulling his peaked cap on, high-vis collar up.

Joe and Tufty were right, it was a foul evening. Not far off eight o’clock and it didn’t look as if the sun would ever shine again. The sky was a slab of grey marble, mottled with black, and from it icy needles hurled themselves down to bounce off the houses, tarmac, and cars. Making dark lakes on the pavement that spread out across the roads from swollen gutters.

A fist of wind rocked Logan back on his heels.

Yeah, tonight was going to be one for staying indoors and doing paperwork. No villain with half a brain would be out and about in this.

He narrowed his eyes against the rain, and there was Sammy Wilson, huddled in the lee of the portico over the station’s front door. Not that it gave much protection from the horizontal weather. Sammy’s trademark filthy tracksuit hung baggy and shiny, soaked through. But in a fit of inspiration he’d fashioned a balaclava from a Tesco carrier bag — the handles tied beneath his chin.

Tufty had been right about the stench as well. Even from here the reek of rotting onions and spoiled meat was enough to catch the back of the throat.

Logan blinked, working the sting out of his eyes. ‘Sammy?’

He looked up, eyes dark pits in the bony hole of his face. The blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ sign above his head gave his skin a sickly pallor, making him look as dead as he smelled. ‘Sergeant, Sergeant, yeah, right, hi.’ Those grimy twig fingers knotted themselves in front of his chest. ‘Yeah, been looking into it, you know? Doing some James Bond on the down and out. Like you asked.’

‘It doesn’t matter — you can stop looking.’

A cough, then a sniff. ‘You got my ten quid, right? Ten quid for Samuel Ewan Wilson, half now, half earlier, cause I asked questions. Questions, questions. Who is the Candleman?’

‘Sammy: it’s over. It’s not my case any more.’ Besides, DCI McInnes was hacked off enough already. He’d go thermonuclear if he found out Sammy Wilson was sniffing around Operation Troposphere on Logan’s behalf. Didn’t matter if the Chief Constable had called Logan personally to say what a good little boy he was — the explosion would be horrendous and the fall-out? It’d last for years.

‘I asked them high, and I asked them low, and they never suspected I was James Bond and they were all stupid and I was slicker than a monkey, I was. Yeah. Questions. You got my ten quid?’ His fingers disengaged and one hand reached for Logan, palm up, eyes glittering. ‘Ten quid for a cuppa tea and that?’

‘Here.’ Logan dug in his pocket and came out with five pound coins and some smush. ‘It’s all I’ve got.’ He tipped it into Sammy’s open palm and it got snatched back against the sodden, dirty tracksuit.

‘Tenner, we said, ten quid for questions, right? Ten quid, not …’ His lips moved as he counted. ‘Six pound twenty-three.’

‘I’ve nothing else. That’s it. I’m skint till the end of the month. Now give it up. No more asking questions. It’s over.’

The eyebrows went up. ‘No more James Bond? I’ve been asking and asking for ten quid, only we’re three pound seventy-seven short. Can’t give any of the questions back, sale is final: no receipt, no returns.’

‘Let it go, Sammy. Thanks for the help, and I’ll get you the other three quid when I’ve got it.’

‘Three seventy-seven.’ Another cough — this one longer and deeper — had his back heaving. His knees bent until he was almost in two. Hacking and wheezing to a stop. Then a deep gasp hauled him upright again. ‘Sammy’s dying …’

A car ploughed its way along the road in front of the sea wall, sending up plumes of water.

Wind rattled the station windows.

Logan cleared his throat. ‘Have you got somewhere to stay tonight? A bed at the shelter, a friend’s couch?’

Samuel Ewan Wilson stepped in close enough for the heat radiating off him to seep into Logan’s skin. ‘If I find out his name, I get my three pounds seventy-seven, right?’

‘No!’ Rain dripped from the brim of Logan’s hat. ‘It’s over, understand, Sammy? It’s over. Stay away from the whole thing. Take the cash and go get some chips or something. A kebab. I don’t want you asking any more questions.’

The skeletal face tilted to the left, eyebrows pinched together. Breath like a ruptured bin-bag. ‘You don’t want to know who he is? Why don’t you want to know? Police always want to know, right? Why don’t you want to know?’

‘Drop it. And find somewhere warm and dry to sleep. Don’t spend the night out in this. You’ll catch your death.’

‘I still get my three pound seventy-seven though, right? Ten quid for asking questions. We had a deal, that was the deal, ten quid.’

‘Sarge?’ The word came from the rain behind Logan. He turned and there were Penny and Joe. ‘You OK there, Sarge?’

‘I’m fine. See you inside.’

A pause. Then, ‘OK.’ And they let themselves in the tradesmen’s entrance.

And when Logan turned back, Sammy Wilson was lumbering off into the gloom, rain sparking off his plastic-bag hat.

‘All units be aware: we’ve got a lorry fire on the B9093, between New Pitsligo and Strichen …’

Tufty tapped his fingers along the top of the steering wheel. ‘You know what I don’t understand?’

Logan scrolled through the text messages on his phone. ‘Here we go.’

Outside, the day had given up. Wind rocked the lampposts, the rain making shimmering golden orbs around their sodium bulbs. The windscreen wipers thunked back and forth across the glass, engine barely ticking over. They’d parked facing the road to Macduff, lurking beside a council bin, overflowing with newspapers and plastic bags. Someone’s broken umbrella poked out of the side, its black-ribbed skin making it look like something with bat wings was trying to escape from within.

‘No. Look, everyone who’s like of northern European decent has got a chunk of Neanderthal DNA in them, right? Because somewhere back in the dawn of time our ancestors fancied a bit of caveman. So they can’t have been a different species, can they? Whole point of speciation is you can’t breed with the rest of them any more.’

‘Are you finished?’

‘Well, makes you think, doesn’t it?’

‘No.’ Logan settled back into his seat.

A shrug. Then he launched into whistling the theme tune to Bonanza.

‘Tufty!’

‘Sorry.’ Back to tapping his fingers along the steering wheel. ‘Can’t believe I wasted all that time digging up info on Brian Menendez Guerra.’

‘Who?’

‘Brian Menendez Guerra — Helen Edwards’s ex-husband. Snatched their daughter? Spent ages on that.’

Logan checked his phone for text messages. Nothing. ‘Why wasted?’

‘Well, no one cares now, do they? The wee girl we found at Tarlair wasn’t Natasha Edwards, so no one cares her dad’s dead.’

‘Brian Edwards is dead?’

‘Hit-and-run in Middlesbrough two years ago.’

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer scumbag.

Mind you, it showed how rubbish Helen’s private investigator was. Tufty had dug up the fact that Edwards was dead in a couple of hours, while all Sam Spade ever managed was ‘he disappeared’. Yeah, he was definitely worth whatever Helen had been paying him all these years.

Idiot.

‘What about the daughter?’

‘No record. Probably still at home with Ex-Wife Number Two in Spain. She got shot of him for battering her and the kids.’

Why the hell would Helen marry someone like that?

‘Do me a favour, Tufty, text me the address in Spain. Might be worth following up.’

‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

Logan talked into his shoulder. ‘Bang away.’

‘We’ve had another three sightings of David and Catherine Bisset: Inverness, Carlisle, and Ellon. Local forces are investigating.’

‘Thanks.’ He let go of the button.

Tufty was looking at him.

‘What?’

‘If it was your dad, if you were David Bisset, what would you do? Would you kill Graham Stirling?’

‘It wasn’t, and I’m not, so I wouldn’t.’

A nod. ‘Don’t know if I could kill someone, not even if they’d done horrible things to my dad. Well, maybe. I mean, if they’d done something to my mum, then yeah. I’d crack them open like a pistachio nut.’

‘You’re supposed to be a police officer, Constable Quirrel. We don’t “crack people open”, we arrest them and we prosecute them.’

‘Yeah, but if it was your mum …’

A rust-flecked Transit growled past on the way to Macduff, towing a plume of oily black smoke from its exhaust. The driver had his elbow on the windowsill, mobile phone clamped to his ear. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt either.

Logan pointed. ‘We’re on.’

Tufty clicked on the headlights and pulled out onto the road.

‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

‘We’re in hot pursuit at the moment.’ The speedo had barely nudged thirty and they were already catching up with the Transit’s greasy cloud. ‘Well, lukewarm pursuit.’

‘Got an assault victim up at Elgin A-and-E with your business card in her pocket.’

‘Elgin? You got a name?’ Logan reached out a finger and hit the button marked ‘BLUES’. The lights on top of the Big Car flickered to life.

‘Yeah, one Kirstin Rattray. IC-One female, thin, twenty-four but looks forty-five. Well, she looks like she’s been run over by a tractor, but you know what I mean.’

Kirstin Rattray?

The Transit’s driver clearly wasn’t looking in his mirrors. So Logan gave the ‘SIREN’ button a go too. Its wail cut through the downpour. But the Transit kept on trundling up onto the bridge across the Deveron.

Right: Kirstin Rattray. Shoplifter extraordinaire and drug addict. The woman who’d tipped them off about Klingon and Gerbil in the first place.

‘Someone attacked her?’

‘Doctor thinks they used a crowbar. Broke her jaw, her cheekbone, and her nose. Fractured skull, one leg, and both arms. Seven cracked ribs, three cracked vertebrae, and a shattered right kneecap. She’s waiting for a scan to see if they’ve ruptured her spleen too.’

Logan sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Oooh …’ That didn’t sound like an assault, that sounded like attempted murder. He poked Tufty in the shoulder. ‘Are you planning on pulling this guy over any time soon, or are we going to follow him all the way to Fraserburgh?’

‘Sorry, Sarge.’ Tufty drifted out into the other lane and overtook the Transit. Slowed in front of it, all lights blazing.

Back to the Airwave. ‘She conscious?’

‘Nope. According to the doctors, she’s lucky whoever it was didn’t kill her.’

Finally, the Transit’s driver seemed to get it through his thick skull. He pulled in to the side of the road with his load of burnt-oil smog.

Logan stared at it in the wing mirror. The Transit’s driver still hadn’t put down his mobile phone. Or pulled his seatbelt on. Had to admire stupidity that thick. ‘Why Elgin? Why did she turn up there?’

‘What’s wrong with Elgin?’

‘She lives in Banff, why did she end up thirty-five miles away? Not as if she could’ve walked it with a broken leg and shattered kneecap.’ He held the Airwave against his chest, then poked Tufty again. ‘You sitting there for a reason, Constable?’

Tufty curled his top lip. ‘But it’s bucketing down.’

Another poke. ‘You’re not going to sodding melt. Now get out there and see how many things you can do him for. And if you come back with less than three, I’m sending you out to try again.’

His face drooped with his shoulders. ‘Yes, Sarge.’ Then he stuffed the peaked cap on his head, grabbed his high-vis jacket, and scrambled out into the rain.

‘You still there?’

‘Had to motivate my constable.’ Logan pulled out his notebook and scribbled down Kirstin’s name, the date and the time. ‘How did she get to the hospital?’

‘Ambulance. Pair of caravanners found her in a lay-by, east of Fochabers. Thought she’d been in a hit-and-run; called it in.’

Logan tapped his pen against the notebook for a bit. ‘OK, thanks for letting me know. If something happens — if she wakes up, or anything like that — give me a shout, OK?’

‘Will do.’

He hooked his Airwave back into place, frowned at the windscreen as the wipers thumped and groaned their curves against the glass.

OK, so Kirstin was a drug addict, and sometimes drug addicts made poor choices and plenty of enemies. But still …

She was the one who dobbed Klingon and Gerbil in. Cost their supplier a hundred grand’s worth of heroin.

What if the Candy Man found out?

Maybe Jack Simpson wasn’t the only one who’d be serving as an object lesson.

Which meant it was Logan’s fault.

Wonderful.

Wasn’t as if he’d had any choice, was it? Couldn’t turn a blind eye to drug dealing, just in case someone got hurt.

A long slow breath hissed out between his teeth, leaving his shoulders slumped.

Poor Kirstin.

Should probably hand it over to Operation Troposphere. Assuming they didn’t already know about it.

Mind you, what if it wasn’t the Candy Man? What if someone else decided she needed her skeleton rearranged with a crowbar?

Wouldn’t hurt to ask about a bit first. See if anyone knew anything.

The driver’s door clunked open and Tufty avalanched in behind the wheel, dripping on the upholstery. ‘Dear Lord, it’s wet …’ He cranked the blowers up to full, then dumped his damp hat in the back. Held out his notebook. ‘Driving without a seatbelt. Driving while using a mobile phone. Using a vehicle which has faulty lights. Using a vehicle which is in a dangerous condition. And two bald tyres in contravention of Section Twenty-Seven of the Road Vehicles, Construction and Use, Regulations 1986. Oh, and his road tax is three weeks out of date too.’

‘And?’

‘Says he was on his way to the garage to get it all fixed and didn’t know about the tax. So I gave him an on-the-spot fine and fourteen days to attend a police station with evidence it’s all been fixed, or we’re confiscating the vehicle and doing him.’

‘Good.’ Logan pointed through the rain-shimmered glass. ‘Now get a move on, we’ve got some druggies to spin.’

‘And you’ve got nothing on your person I should know about?’ Tufty snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. ‘No knives, needles or blades?’

A sniff caught the drop on the end of Lumpy Patrick’s nose and hauled it back in. ‘Nah, I’m, you know, clean and that …’ His arms were like sticks, knotted around with rope. Thin hands with thick black crusts under the fingernails. Sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes.

He stood in the battered glow of a lamppost on Low Street, shielded from the wind and rain by the triangular frontage of a sheltered housing block.

Lumpy assumed the position and Tufty ran his hands along the outside of his manky sweatshirt. ‘I hear you’re dealing again.’

‘Nah, not me, no, not dealing. Don’t deal no more. Nah, someone’s lying.’

Logan dug his hands deeper into his pockets, out of the cold. ‘You hear about Kirstin Rattray, Lumpy?’

His head wobbled round to blink with two bloodshot eyes. He’d lost a couple of teeth since last time. ‘She pregnant again?’

‘No. Someone battered the living hell out of her. Left her for dead in a lay-by.’

One eyebrow crawled its way up Lumpy’s forehead. ‘Oh. Right. No.’ He sent a pale tongue slithering across greying gums. ‘No. Didn’t know that. No.’

‘You sure?’

‘Nah.’ Pause. ‘Yes.’

Tufty finished the pat down. ‘Right: pockets.’ Then dipped into them.

Lumpy sniffed back another droplet. ‘I hear stuff from time to time, though. Yeah, everyone thinks I don’t, but I do.’

‘Like what?’

A grin. ‘Like Stinky Sammy Wilson saying you gave him fifty quid to dig out someone called the Candleman. You can’t trust Sammy Wilson, but you can trust me. Totally. For fifty quid I could be, like, your eyes and ears and that. Much better than Sammy Wilson; man’s a moron and a liar.’

No honour amongst addicts.

And what the hell was Sammy doing telling everyone he was asking after the Candleman? Silly sod was leaving a trail a mile wide that led right back to Logan. And it wouldn’t take much for McInnes to stumble across it. Then BOOM, followed by nuclear winter.

‘Forget the Candleman. There is no Candleman. But if you find out who battered Kirstin Rattray, we’ll talk about it.’ He stuck a business card in Lumpy’s fingers.

‘Arms out, Bill, you know the drill.’

A sigh, then the arms came up, increasing the choking stench of old cheese and socks. Bill’s red hoodie was smeared down the front, hanging like a scarlet shroud over his skeletal torso.

Wind moaned in the branches of the trees, rustling the leaves outside St Andrew’s Episcopal Church. Rain pattered against the lanced windows and gothic frontage, darkening the granite. Making it glisten in the streetlight.

Tufty worked his way along Bill’s arms.

Logan shifted himself into the church doorway, but it wasn’t any drier there. ‘So, Bill, what do you hear about Kirstin Rattray?’

A shrug. ‘There something in it for me? Sammy Wilson says he’s getting eighty quid for info about who’s supplying Klingon and Gerbil.’

Eighty quid? At this rate he’d be on more than Logan.

‘Said it was top secret. Think he told everyone.’

Because Sammy Wilson was an idiot.

‘Do you know anything, or don’t you?’

‘Do you a deal, I’ll undercut Sammy: let’s call it sixty quid?’

Rain lashed the Big Car as Tufty took it across the bridge and into Macduff. ‘Get the feeling we’re piddling in the wind on this one, Sarge.’

‘Probably.’

‘Seven druggies, and all we know for sure is that Stinky Sammy Wilson is a useless lying wee sod. Which we kinda knew to begin with.’

That and the fact someone had a damn good go at battering Kirstin Rattray to death.

Outside, the North Sea hacked at the bay with curled white claws.

OK, so she’d clyped on Klingon and Gerbil, but that didn’t mean whoever attacked her had something to do with Operation Troposphere. Half the shopkeepers in Banff and Macduff would probably queue up to have a go. But maybe not with a crowbar.

Still, it wasn’t as if they were making much headway here, was it? And given the way things had been going lately, it might not be such a bad idea to cover his own arse for a change.

Logan twisted his Airwave free of its holder. Rubbed his thumb across the face of the buttons. He poked a shoulder number into the keypad. Pressed the talk button. ‘Shire Uniform Seven for DI Porter, safe to talk?’

Tufty pulled a face. ‘Who’s Porter?’

‘Runs the investigation into Klingon and Gerbil for that nasty wee-’

‘Hello?’ Her voice crackled out of the handset. ‘Who is this?’

Here we go. ‘It’s Sergeant McRae in Banff.’

‘This better be important, Sergeant, I’m right in the middle of something here.’

A couple of drunks weaved their way along the pavement, arms wrapped around each other’s sodden shoulders, ignoring the howling wind and battering rain.

‘I know I’m supposed to stay away from Operation Troposphere, but before you set your boss on me, there’s something you need to know.’

‘Sergeant McRae, I think Detective Chief Inspector McInnes was very clear about this.’

‘I’m not interfering, I’m passing on information. Kirstin Rattray — she gave us the nod about Colin Spinney and Kevin McEwan in the first place. She’s turned up at Elgin A-and-E. Someone’s had a go at beating her to death.’

‘And you think our Candy Man found out this Rattray woman was clyping on him and decided to shut her up.’

‘Might be. Or it might be unrelated. Either way, I thought you should know.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else.’

Logan peered at the Airwave’s screen. She’d disconnected. ‘My sodding pleasure.’

Tufty sucked at his teeth. ‘So … This means we’re done spinning druggies?’

‘What do you think?’