Читать книгу Logan McRae Crime Series Books 1-3: Cold Granite, Dying Light, Broken Skin - Stuart MacBride - Страница 33

Logan stayed at the farm as long as he could, examining animal carcases with the rest of the team. Even with all that protective gear on he felt dirty. And everyone was on pins and needles after the rat attack. No one wanted to join PC Steve in A&E waiting for a tetanus and rabies shot.

In the end, he had to call it a day: he still had work to do back at Force HQ. They dropped an ashen-faced Colin Miller off at the gate to the farm track. He was knackered, going straight home to drink a bottle of wine. Then he was going to climb into the shower and exfoliate until he bled.

The gaggle of reporters and television cameras outside the farm had thinned out. Now only the hardcore remained, sitting in their cars with the engines running and heaters going full blast. They leapt from the warm safety of their vehicles as soon as Logan’s car appeared.

No comment was all they got.

DI Insch wasn’t in the incident room when Logan got back to FHQ. Getting an update from the team manning the phones was an uncomfortable experience. Even after the inspector’s speech they obviously still thought Logan was shite in a suit. No one actually said anything, but their reports were curt and to the point.

Team one: door-to-door – ‘Have you seen this man?’ – had generated the usual raft of contradictory statements. Yes, Roadkill had been seen talking to the boys, no he hadn’t, yes he had. The Hazlehead station had even set up a roadblock to ask drivers if they’d seen something on their way into and out of town. A long shot, but worth a try.

Team two: Bernard Duncan Philips’s life story. They’d been the most successful. There was a large manila folder sitting on the inspector’s desk containing everything anyone knew about Roadkill. Logan perched himself on the edge of the desk and flicked through the collection of photocopies, faxes and printouts. He stopped when he got to the report on the death of Bernard’s mother.

She’d been diagnosed with bowel cancer five years ago. She’d been ill for a long time, unable to cope. Bernard had come home from St Andrews, leaving a PHD behind, in order to look after his sick mother. Her GP had insisted she get help, but she refused. Bernard was on mummy’s side and chased the man off the family farm with a pickaxe. Which was when they spotted the mental problems.

Then her brother, who’d found her face down on the kitchen floor, made her go to the hospital. Exploratory surgery and bingo: cancer. They tried treating it, but the cancer had spread to her bones by February. And in May she was dead. Not in the hospital, but in her own bed.

Bernard shared the house with her for two months after she died. A social worker had gone to check on Bernard. The smell had met her at the farmhouse door.

So Bernard Duncan Philips got a two-year spell in Cornhill, Aberdeen’s only ‘special needs’ hospital. He responded well to the drugs so out he had gone into the care of the community. Which roughly translated meant they wanted the bed freed up for some other poor sod. Bernard buried himself in his work: scraping dead animals off the road for Aberdeen City Council.

Which explained a lot.

Logan didn’t need an update on team three: he’d seen enough at first hand to know they weren’t getting anywhere fast. Making them go through all that stuff in the waste containers hadn’t helped, but at least now they knew they hadn’t missed anything. At the rate they were going it’d be Monday at the earliest before they’d worked their way through all three steadings-worth of animal corpses. Providing the superintendent authorized the overtime.

Logan’s mini incident room was empty by the time he got there. The lab results had come back on the vomit Isobel had found in the deep cut in the little girl’s body. The DNA didn’t match the sample from Norman Chalmers. And Forensics still hadn’t come up with anything else. The only thing tying him to the girl was the supermarket till receipt. Circumstantial. So they’d had to let Norman Chalmers go. At least he’d had the good sense to go quietly, rather than in a barrage of media attention. His lawyer must have been gutted.

There was a neatly typed note sitting on Logan’s desk, summarizing the day’s sightings. He scanned through them sceptically. Most looked like utter fantasy.

Next to it was the list of every female TB sufferer under the age of four in the whole country. It wasn’t a big list; just five names, complete with addresses.

Logan pulled over the phone and started dialling.

It was gone six when DI Insch stuck his head round the door and asked if Logan had a moment. The inspector had a strange look on his face and Logan got the feeling this wasn’t going to be good news. He put one hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and told the inspector he’d just be a minute.

The other end of the phone was connected to a PC in Birmingham who was, at that moment, sitting with the last girl on Logan’s list. Yes she was still alive and was Logan aware that she was Afro-Caribbean? So probably not the dead white girl lying on a slab in the morgue then.

‘Thanks for your time, Constable.’ Logan put the phone down with a weary sigh and scored off the final name. ‘No luck,’ he said as Insch settled on the edge of the desk and started rummaging nosily through Logan’s files. ‘All children in the right age group treated for TB are alive and well.’

‘You know what that means,’ said Insch. He had hold of the statements Logan had picked out as being nearest to Norman Chalmers and his wheelie-bin. ‘If she’s had TB and been treated, it wasn’t in this country. She’s—’

‘—not a British national,’ Logan finished for him before burying his head in his hands. There were hundreds of places in the world still regularly suffering from TB: most of the former Soviet Union, Lithuania, every African nation, the Far East, America. . . A lot of the worst places didn’t even keep national records. The haystack had just got an awful lot bigger.

‘You want some good news?’ asked Insch, his voice flat and unhappy.

‘Go on then.’

‘We’ve got an ID on the girl we found at Roadkill’s farm.’

‘Already?’

Insch nodded and placed all of Logan’s statements back in the wrong order. ‘We looked through the missing persons list for the last two years and ran a match on the dental records. Lorna Henderson. Four and a half. Her mother reported her missing. They were driving home from Banchory, along the South Deeside road. They’d had a row. She wouldn’t shut up about getting a pony. So the mother says: “If you don’t shut up about that damn pony you can walk home”.’

Logan nodded. Everybody’s mum had done that at one time or another. Logan’s mother had even done it to his dad once.

‘Only Lorna really, really wants a pony.’ Insch pulled out a crumpled bag of fruit sherbets. But instead of popping one in his mouth, he just sat there and stared morosely into the bag. ‘So the mother makes good on the threat. Pulls the car over and makes the kid get out. Drives off. Doesn’t go far, just around the next bend. Less than half a mile. Parks the car and waits for Lorna. Only she never shows up.’

‘How the hell could she put a four-year-old girl out of the car?’

Insch laughed, but it was humourless. ‘There speaks someone who’s never had kids. Soon as the little buggers learn to talk they don’t stop till their hormones kick in and they become teenagers. Then you can’t get a bloody word out of them. But a four-year-old will moan all day and all night if it really wants something. So in the end the mother snaps and that’s it. Never sees her daughter ever again.’

And there was no way she was ever going to now. When the body was finally released for burial it would be a closed casket affair. They wouldn’t let anyone see what was inside that box.

‘Does she know? That we’ve found her?’

Insch grunted and stuffed the untouched sherbets back in his pocket. ‘Not yet. That’s where I’m off to now. Tell her that she let her kid get caught by a sick bastard. That he battered her to death and stuffed her body in a pile of animal carcases.’

Welcome to hell.

‘I’m taking WPC Watson with me,’ said Insch. ‘You want to come?’ The words were flippant, but the voice wasn’t. The inspector sounded low. Not surprising given the week they’d just had. Insch thought he could bribe Logan into coming by dangling WPC Watson in front of him. Like a carrot in a police uniform.

Logan would have gone without the bribe. Telling a mother her child was dead wasn’t something he was looking forward to, but Insch looked as if he needed the support. ‘Only if we go for a drink afterwards.’

They pulled up at the kerb in DI Insch’s Range Rover, the massive car towering over all the little Renaults and Fiats that lined the street on either side with their white hats of pristine snow. No one had said much on the trip out. Except for the Family Liaison Officer, who’d spent the whole trip making ‘Who’s a pretty girl?’ noises at the smelly black-and-white spaniel in the back of Insch’s car.

The area was nice enough: some trees, a bit of grass. You could still see fields if you climbed on the roof. The house was at the end of a two-up, two-down terrace, all done out in white harling, the little white chips of stone and quartz sparkling in the streetlights, mimicking the snow.

The blizzard had turned into the occasional lazy flake, drifting slowly through the bitter night. They tramped through the ankle-deep snow to the front door together. Insch taking the lead. He pressed the doorbell and ‘Greensleeves’ binged and bonged from somewhere inside. Two minutes later the door was opened by a displeased, damp woman in her mid-forties, wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe. She wore no make-up, the faint remains of mascara smearing outwards from her eyes towards her ears. Her hair was wet, hanging over her face like damp string. The look of irritation on her face vanished as she saw WPC Watson’s uniform standing at the back.

‘Mrs Henderson?’

‘Oh God.’ She clutched at the front of the robe, twisting the neck tightly shut. All the colour went from her face. ‘It’s Kevin isn’t it? Oh God . . . he’s dead!’

‘Kevin?’ Insch looked flustered.

‘Kevin, my husband.’ She stepped back into the tiny hall, her hands all a flutter. ‘Oh God.’

‘Mrs Henderson: your husband’s not dead. We—’

‘Oh, thank the Lord for that.’ Instantly relieved, she ushered them through the hall into a pink, candy-striped living room. ‘Excuse the mess. Sunday’s usually my day for the housework, but I had a double shift at the hospital.’ She stopped and surveyed the room, moving a discarded nurse’s uniform off the sofa and onto the ironing board. The half-empty bottle of gin was swiftly tidied away to the sideboard. Above the fireplace was a framed fake oil painting, one of the ones photographers churn out. A man, a woman and a fair-haired little girl. A husband, a wife and a murdered child.

‘Of course Kevin doesn’t live here right now. . . He’s having a break. . .’ There was a pause. ‘It was after our daughter went missing.’

‘Ah. That’s why we’re here, Mrs Henderson.’

She waved them towards a lumpy brown sofa, the leather covered up with pink-and-yellow throws. ‘Because Kevin doesn’t live here? It’s only temporary!’

Insch pulled a clear plastic envelope from his pocket. There were two pink hairclips in it. ‘Do you recognize these, Mrs Henderson?’

She took the envelope, peered in at the contents and then back at Insch and went pale for the second time. ‘Oh God, these were Lorna’s! Her favourite Barbie hair things. She wouldn’t go out of the house without them! Where did you get them?’

‘We found Lorna, Mrs Henderson.’

‘Found? Oh God. . .’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Henderson. She’s dead.’

She seemed to turn in on herself and then: ‘Tea. That’s what we need. Hot sweet tea.’ She turned her back and scurried away into the kitchen, her towelling bathrobe flapping as she went.

They found her sobbing into the kitchen sink.

Ten minutes later they were back in the lounge, Insch and Logan on the lumpy settee, WPC Watson and Mrs Henderson on matching lumpy brown armchairs, the Family Liaison Officer standing behind her making consoling noises, one hand on Mrs Henderson’s shoulder. Logan had made a big pot of tea and it sat steaming away on top of a coffee table festooned with Cosmopolitan magazines. Everyone had a cup, but no one was drinking.

‘It’s all my fault.’ Mrs Henderson seemed to have shrunk two sizes since their arrival. The pink bathrobe was draped around her like a cloak. ‘If we’d only bought her that damn pony. . .’

DI Insch shifted forward on the settee slightly. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you this, Mrs Henderson, but I need you to tell us about the night Lorna went missing.’

‘I never really believed it. You know: that she wasn’t coming back. She’d just run away. One day she’d just walk back through that door and everything would be right again.’ She looked down into her teacup. ‘Kevin couldn’t take it. He kept blaming me. Every day. “It’s your bloody fault she’s gone!” he’d say. He was right. It was my bloody fault. He. . . he met this woman at the supermarket where he works.’ She sighed. ‘But he doesn’t really love her! He’s just punishing me. . . I mean, she’s got no breasts. How can a man love a woman with no breasts? He’s only doing it to punish me. He’ll come back. You’ll see. One day he’ll walk right back in that door and everything will be all right again.’ She fell back into silence, chewing away at the inside of her cheek.

‘About the night Lorna went missing, Mrs Henderson, did you see anyone on the road? Any vehicles?’

Her eyes came up from her cup, glistening and far away. ‘What? I don’t remember. . . It was a long time ago and I was so angry with her. Why didn’t we buy her that bloody pony?’

‘How about vans, or trucks?’

‘No. I don’t remember. We went over all this at the time!’

‘A man with a cart?’

She froze in place. ‘What are you trying to say?’

DI Insch kept his mouth shut. Mrs Henderson stared at him for a moment and then jumped to her feet. ‘I want to see her!’

DI Insch, put his cup carefully down on the carpet. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Henderson. That’s not going to be possible.’

‘She’s my daughter, damn it, and I want to see her!’

‘Lorna’s been dead for a long time. She’s . . . you don’t want to see her, Mrs Henderson. Please trust me. You want to remember her how she was.’

Standing in the middle of the lounge, Mrs Henderson scowled down at DI Insch’s bald head. ‘When did you find her? When did you find Lorna?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Oh God. . .’ she slapped a hand over her mouth. ‘It’s him isn’t it? The man in the papers! He killed her and buried her in that filth!’

‘Calm down, Mrs Henderson. We have him in custody. He’s not going anywhere.’

‘That filthy bastard!’ She hurled her teacup against the wall. It exploded, raining shards of china, staining the wallpaper with lukewarm, milky tea. ‘He took my baby!’

No one said much on the way back either. The Family Liaison Officer called in a neighbour to look after Mrs Henderson, who collapsed into tears as soon as the large, concerned woman arrived. They left the pair of them weeping on the sofa and let themselves out.

The roads were quiet as the grave as they headed back towards the centre of town: the snow was keeping everyone but the gritters inside.

Eight o’clock. A familiar figure slipped past as Insch swung the car round the Hazlehead roundabout. Peter Lumley’s stepfather, trudging through the falling snow, shouting his son’s name. Logan stared glumly at the soaking, cold figure until they’d left him far behind. He still had that dreadful visit from the police to look forward to. When they finally told him that his son’s body had been found.

Insch checked in with Control and got an address for Mr Henderson. He shared an apartment with his flat-chested supermarket woman in the less salubrious end of Rosemount.

They went through the same painful scene again. Only this time there was no self-blame. This time it was all directed at his stupid bitch ex-wife. His girlfriend sat on the couch in tears as he raged and swore. This wasn’t like him, she said. He was usually such a gentle man.

And then back to Force Headquarters.

‘Christ, that was a fun day.’ Insch sounded completely drained as he shambled across to the lifts. He mashed the up button with a fat thumb. Surprisingly the doors slid open immediately. ‘Look,’ he said getting in, leaving Logan and WPC Watson standing in the corridor. ‘Why don’t you two get changed and meet me back here in five. I’ve got two forms to fill in and then I’ll buy you both a drink.’

WPC Watson looked at Logan and then back at the inspector. She looked as if she was searching for a good excuse to be somewhere else. But before she could find it, the lift doors slid shut, taking DI Insch away.

Logan took a deep breath.

‘If you’d rather not,’ he said to her ‘I understand. I can tell the inspector you had a prior engagement.’

‘You that keen to get rid of me?’

Logan raised an eyebrow. ‘No. Not at all. I thought. . . Well, after all that crap in the papers . . . you know,’ he pointed at himself, ‘Mr Shitebag.’

She smiled. ‘With all due respect, sir: you can be a right arse at times. I met Miller, remember? I know he’s a wanker.’ The smile slipped. ‘I just didn’t know if you’d want me there. After that outburst. Swearing at the car?’

Logan beamed. ‘No! It’s OK. Honestly. OK, the swearing wasn’t OK—’ Her smile slipped and Logan charged on, afraid he’d screwed it all up again, ‘—but that’s got nothing to do with anything. I’d like you to come. Especially if Inspector Insch is buying.’ He stopped. ‘Not that I wouldn’t want you to come if I was paying. . . It’s. . .’ He clamped his mouth shut to keep any more babble from falling out.

She looked at him for a moment. ‘Right,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll go get changed then. See you out front.’

As she disappeared Logan was sure she was laughing at him. He stood alone in the corridor, blushing furiously.

At the front desk, Big Gary was settling down to another night shift. He smiled and waved Logan over.

‘Hey, Lazarus, nice to see you getting the recognition you deserve!’

Logan frowned and Gary whipped out a copy of the day’s Evening Express, the Press and Journal’s sister paper. There on the front page was a photograph of figures in blue rubber suits, picking through blurry animal carcases by hand.

‘HOUSE OF HORROR: BRAVE POLICE HUNT FOR EVIDENCE’

‘Let me guess,’ Logan sighed, ‘Colin Miller again?’ He must have worked fast.

Gary smacked the side of his nose with a finger. ‘Got it in one, Mr Local Police Hero.’

‘Gary, as soon as I outrank you I’m going to have you out there,’ he pointed out into the snow, ‘pounding the beat again.’

Gary winked. ‘And until then you’ll just have to put up with it. Biscuit?’ He held up a packet of Kit Kats and despite himself Logan smiled. And took one.

‘So what else is Mr Miller saying?’

Gary puffed out his chest, flipped the paper over and read aloud, in his best Shakespearean voice: ‘Blah, blah, blah, snow and ice, blah, blah. Flowery shite about how brave all the police are for digging through “a gruesome mine of death”. Blah, blah, searching for “the vital evidence that will make our children safe from this beast”. Oh, you’ll like this bit. “Local Police Hero Logan ‘Lazarus’ McRae was not above helping his team sort through the carcases by hand”. Apparently you also saved Constable Steve Jacobs’ life when a huge rat attacked him. God bless you, sir!’ Gary cracked a salute.

‘PC Rennie did all the work. All I did was tell someone to get him to hospital!’

‘Ah, but without your firm leadership no one else might have thought of it!’ He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. ‘You’re an inspiration to us all, so you are.’

‘I hate you.’ But Logan was smiling when he said it.

WPC Watson was easier to think of as ‘Jackie’ when she was out of uniform. The austere black had been replaced by a pair of jeans and a red sweatshirt, her curly brown hair falling down over her shoulders. She cursed and tugged at it as she struggled into a thick padded jacket.

At least one of them would be dressed for the snow. Logan was still in his working suit. He never got changed at the station. With his house only two minutes’ walk away there never seemed any point.

She joined them at the desk, begged a Kit Kat off Big Gary and consumed it with delight.

Logan waited until she had a good mouthful before asking, ‘How’d your prisoner get on this morning?’

She munched and crunched and eventually mumbled that he’d been given forty-two hours’ community service with the council’s Parks Department, as usual, and put on the sex offenders’ register.

‘As usual?’

Watson shrugged. ‘Turns out he always gets the Parks Department,’ she said, producing a small shower of chocolate crumbs. ‘Planting, weeding, fixing stuff. You know.’ She swallowed and shrugged. ‘Judge took pity on him, what with giving evidence in the Gerald Cleaver case and all. Went through the whole thing again, only without Sandy the Snake making out it’s all some weird, twisted fantasy. Got to confess I kinda feel sorry for the kid. Can you imagine getting treated like that? Abusive father, drunkard mother and when you go to hospital you get Gerald bloody Cleaver fiddling about with you under the sheets.’

Silence settled in as they considered the flabby male nurse with a thing for little boys.

‘You know,’ said Big Gary, ‘if it wasn’t for Roadkill, I’d’ve put money on Cleaver for the dead kiddies.’

‘How? He was in custody when Peter Lumley went missing.’

Gary flustered. ‘Might have had an accomplice.’

‘And he was a fiddler, not a killer,’ chipped in Jackie. ‘He liked them alive.’

Logan winced. It wasn’t a nice image, but she was right.

But Big Gary wasn’t going to let go of it that easily. ‘Maybe he can’t get it up any more? Maybe that’s why he kills them!’

‘It doesn’t change the fact that he’s been locked up for the last six months. It’s not him.’

‘I’m not saying it was him. I’m just saying it could have been.’ Gary scowled. ‘And to think I let you buggers eat my biscuits! Ungrateful sods.’