Читать книгу All That’s Dead - Stuart MacBride - Страница 12

The living room wasn’t much better. Books, books, dust, and more books – heaped up on the floor around a tatty leather sofa. A massive stereo system complete with racks and racks of vinyl took up the space where a TV should have been, the speakers big enough to pass for sarcophaguses. Or was it sarcophagi?

King looked as if he was ready to be buried in one of them, anyway. He half-sat, half-collapsed into the sofa, sending a puff of dust billowing out from the underside. Motes of it glowed in the sunlight as he put his head in his hands. ‘They’re going to fire me, aren’t they?’

Logan shrugged. ‘Well, you can see how it looks: here you are, working the disappearance of a prominent Brit-Nat academic, and all the time you were a member of …’ Nope, drawing a blank. Logan pulled out his notebook and checked. ‘“The People’s Army for Scottish Liberation”. Soon as the media get hold of that it’ll be like throwing an injured piglet into a bathtub full of piranhas.’

‘I was sixteen! Sixteen and stupid. And she was pretty and Welsh.’ King sagged even further. ‘I just wanted to impress her.’

‘Welsh?’

‘And I only went to a couple of meetings! Till I found out Cerys was shagging Connor O’Brien behind my back.’ He rubbed at his face. ‘She said it was all about “uniting the Celtic nations to cast out the English oppressors and break the final bonds of imperialist subjugation”.’

Which was probably code for a threesome. ‘Well, she does sound fun.’

‘After all, India managed to win its independence, why couldn’t we?’

‘Only, from what I remember, the PASL weren’t so keen on the peaceful protest approach, were they? More into blowing up statues and abducting politicians. Not very Gandhiesque.’

King waved a dismissive hand. ‘That wasn’t the People’s Army for Scottish Liberation, that was the Scottish Freedom Fighters’ Resistance Front.’

Don’t smile! ‘Splitters.’

‘I didn’t do anything!’

‘The Post says it’s got proof.’

‘I don’t hate the English – my wife’s English, my kids are half English. Hell, Josie was born in Newcastle!’ He curled forwards, knees against his chest, arms wrapped around his head for a muffled scream.

Which, given the circumstances, was understandable.

There was a photo in the hall of a handsome woman in what had to be her late forties. Fiery red hair swept back from a high forehead, green eyes, and a twist to her mouth that made it look as if she was about to burst out laughing at any moment. The wooden frame was worn through, nearly to the glass along the bottom.

Logan ran his fingers along it. Smooth.

King’s voice growled out through the living room door. ‘For God’s sake, Gwen, can you just support me for once in your life? … No. And to be honest, I think it’s the least you could do!’

Probably best to give him a bit of privacy. So Logan eased that door shut and opened the only one he’d not seen inside yet.

Bathroom: and not a huge one, made to feel even smaller by all the towels on the floor, and the overflowing bin, and the skeletal remains of long-dead loo rolls, and the discarded empty boxes and pill packets, and the impressive collection of bleachy / toilet-cleanery bottles around the pan. All smothered by the ever-present geological layers of dust. An archaeologist would have a field day in here …

Was that a scraping noise?

Logan stopped, head on one side, ears straining to pick up the—

Yup, there it was again. Not in here, though.

He backed into the hall, just in time to see the taller, broader, less pregnant of the two Scene Examiners lumber out of the kitchen in his rustly SOC suit, carrying a blue crate with a couple of brown-paper evidence bags in it. He’d pulled down his facemask, revealing a swathe of glowing shiny red skin, coral pink lipstick and a bit too much blusher for the natural look. Grimacing as a drip worked its way down his cheek. ‘Gah … Never join the SE, Inspector. You think it’s bad wearing black in this heat? Try a sodding Tyvek suit. It’s like a waterfall of sweat from my balls all the way down to my socks.’

‘You make it sound so romantic, Charlie.’

‘I squelch when I walk.’ And to prove the point, he squelched away down the hall and out the front door.

That scratching noise sounded again.

And was that a whimper?

Logan peered up the stairs.

Yup, definitely coming from up there.

He climbed up to a tiny landing, where yet more books lay in wait, narrowing a space that was already claustrophobic because of the coombe ceilings. Two doors led off it, one of them rattling slightly as whatever it was scraped and whined.

The noise stopped as Logan turned the door handle.

He pushed it open, revealing a bedroom littered with yet more books. Discarded clothes lay heaped up on a wicker chair in one corner, a laundry basket overflowing in the other. A mound of cigarette stubs, ground out in a saucer. The whole room reeked of stale washing, fags, and a sort of dirty sweaty funk normally reserved for spotty teenagers.

No doubt about it, King’s missing professor was a bit of a slob.

But other than the mess, there was no sign of Captain Scrapey McWhinesalot.

‘Hello? Anyone there?’

Another whimper.

Logan hunkered down onto his haunches. Pitched his voice soft and low. ‘Who’s that?’

A manky old Jack Russell terrier tottered out from underneath the bed – cobwebs in his ears and dust bunnies on his flanks. He wobbled on his stiff little legs, tail going like a manic windscreen wiper as he stared up at Logan with cloudy eyes and whined.

Logan held a hand out for sniffing. ‘Hello, little man, did you get shut in here by mistake?’

The terrier did a shaky lap of him, yipping and yowling.

‘You need a wee, don’t you? I know that dance – Sergeant Rennie does the same one.’ He stood and clapped a hand against his leg. ‘Come on then.’

Then back down the stairs, the dog thump-lumping along behind him, scampering around Logan’s feet as they made their way along the hall to the front door.

Charlie squelched in through it before they got there, evidence crate swinging from one hand, and the ancient terrier went berserk – hackles up, barking and growling, making little feinted charges.

‘AAAARRRRRGH!’ Charlie flinched back against the wall, crate held out like a lion-tamer’s chair, eyes wide. ‘What the hell did you let it out of the room for?’

More barking, tiny brown teeth flashing.

‘He’s only—’

‘GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU LITTLE HORROR!’

Logan picked the poor wee thing up, holding him against his chest. The dog trembled in his arms, still growling at Charlie. ‘He needs a piddle.’

‘He needs a bloody muzzle! Get him out of here!’

‘All right, all right. Keep your squelchy pants on.’

Logan carried Professor Wilson’s dog out through the front door and into the sunshine. Popped him down on the gravel, where he immediately turned around and directed a bark towards the house. Charlie let loose a high-pitched shriek and slammed the door shut, sealing them outside. The terrier stared at it for a moment, then scuffed its back paws on the driveway, announcing that he’d won that argument, then tottered away around the side of the house.

Logan followed him, past the bins, through a patch of grass that had clearly seen a lot of pooping, but no scooping, through a clump of docken that was nearly shoulder-height, and into what might have been a back garden at one point. Now it was just a vast collection of weeds and unmown grass, with the corpse of a hen coop decomposing in its chicken-wire mortsafe. Butterflies danced whirling polkas through the hot air, flitting from one tangled clump of nettles to another. The rat-a-tat-tat of a belligerent woodpecker.

Shirley and Charlie had already done this bit, going by the back door’s liberal coating of fingerprint powder and the spiky white remnants of plaster in the grass where they’d taken casts of footprints.

Just a shame they hadn’t bagged and tagged the disaster area in the rumpled linen suit; grey hair, styled by lightning conductor and earwax; eggy stains on her lime-green shirt – unbuttoned so far it showed off way too much leathery cleavage; wrinkly face turned towards the sun. Basking, like an iguana crossed with a gonk. Phone clamped to her ear with one hand, massive e-cigarette in the other, puffing out plumes of strawberry-scented vape. Voice a gravelly growl, ‘Tell you, my arse is on fire today. It’s like the Battle of the Somme down there, only with fewer soldiers and more explosions. I’m …’ She froze for a moment, then opened one eye and looked at him. ‘Have to call you back.’

Logan sniffed. ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Detective Sergeant Roberta Steel.’

She pocketed her phone as the wee dog snuffled around her feet. ‘Oh it’s you, is it? Those sodding sausages have had my guts like—’

‘“The Somme”. Yeah, I heard. And there was nothing wrong with my sausages yesterday. Perfectly good barbecued sausages.’

‘Then why are my innards trying to become outards?’

The terrier wobbled over to the hen run and cocked an arthritic leg.

‘I think it might have something to do with the Long Island Iced Teas you were knocking back all afternoon. No wonder your eyeballs look like two oysters drowned in Tabasco.’

‘Mmmph …’ She pulled out a pair of sunglasses and popped them on. Then nodded at the house. ‘So, you here for me, or for His Royal Highness? Can’t be me – I’m a paragon of sodding virtue, me.’

Aye, right.

Logan stuck his hands in his pockets. All innocent and casual. ‘So what’s he like to work for, King?’

‘Pff … You asking me to clype on my beloved DI? Cos you can ram that right up your liquorice allsort.’

King’s voice boomed out across the back garden / weed patch. ‘Should think so too.’ He scraped his left foot in the long grass a couple of times, nose crinkled in disgust. Matching suit jacket on over his blue shirt, face all pink and shiny in the heat. He frowned at Steel. ‘Is there any …’ A blink. Then he watched the ancient terrier snuffle his way past. ‘Is that Professor Wilson’s dog?’

‘Yup.’ Logan smiled. ‘He’s having a wee.’

‘OK …’ Back to Steel. ‘Any progress?’

She took another long draw on her fake cigarette – a huge metal tube of a thing with rings and protuberances all along its length, making it impossible to tell if the person who’d designed it had been going for ‘Sonic Screwdriver’ or ‘Steampunk Sex Toy’. Steel puffed out her strawberry fog. ‘Forensics aren’t finding much. Whoever did it, they didn’t break anything on the way in and wiped everything down before they left.’

Steel dug out her phone again and poked at the screen. ‘The Alt-Nat trolls are out in force, mind. And I quote: “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Hope you burn in hell you traitor bastard”, says Tartan Numpty One Three Six. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Where’s your English superiority now?” asks Willy Wallace Was Here.’

King sagged a bit, eyes screwed shut. ‘Great. So it’s already all over antisocial media.’

‘Oh I’m no’ finished yet. “For sale, both of Prof. Wanky Wilson’s balls. He won’t be needing them any more.” Hashtag, “One less English scumbag. LOL.” With three exclamation marks. Cybernat Ninja Thirteen Twenty.’

‘All right, we get the point.’

‘“What do you call one dead constitutional scholar? A bloody good start. ROFL”, according to We All Eight the English. That’s the number eight, not—’

King’s voice grew a sharper edge. ‘Enough! OK? Enough.’ Then he stifled a burp and winced. Crunched down another mint, rubbing at his chest. ‘When does this stuff start showing up in his timeline?’

Steel checked. ‘First one’s yesterday morning, nearly twenty-four hours before he was reported missing.’ She looked left, then right, then dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Which kinda implies someone out there was involved, doesn’t it?’

She had a point. Logan leaned against the chicken wire enclosure. ‘So what’s the plan?’

King pointed at Steel. ‘Right. Once … whatever the dog’s called has had his wee, I want you out there doing something useful. Interview the neighbours.’

Steel stared at him as if he’d just pulled a live squid from his trouser, then she turned on the spot, pantomiming a good hard look at the weeds and the trees and the whole middle-of-nowhereiness of the place. ‘What, the squirrels?’

‘Doesn’t matter how far out in the sticks someone lives, there’s always neighbours. Find them, Sergeant.’

That got him a scowl and a sarcastic, ‘Yes, Boss.’ Then she rolled her eyes at Logan, tucked the old-age terrier under her arm and ruffled the fur on top of its head, till it kind of resembled her own. ‘Come on, little man, let’s take you away from these nasty police officers that stink like a wino’s Y-fronts.’ Marching off around the side of the house.

King shook his head. ‘I swear to God, I’m going to end up killing someone. Probably her …’

‘Ahem.’ Logan waved. ‘Hello? Professional Standards, remember?’

There was a small flinch. ‘Don’t remind me.’ Then King straightened up, all in charge again. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an investigation to run.’

‘Actually, if you don’t mind, I’m going to hang about for a bit and observe.’

A pained look crawled its way across King’s face. ‘I—’

‘You’ll barely notice I’m here. Promise.’

‘Oh for … I didn’t do anything! I told you, I only joined—’

‘To impress a girl. I know. But …’ Logan shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be doing my job if I just turned up for a quick five-minute chat, then sodded off again, would I?’

A deep and bitter sigh left King looking hollowed out and grey. ‘Right. Well, I suppose I’d better find out what happened to Professor Wilson, then.’

House martins massed over the outbuildings, chasing bugs, as Logan followed King along a dusty path. Past scaffolding and stacks of slates. Timber and bags of sharp sand. A cement mixer with teeth painted around the mouth, as if it were a World War Two fighter plane.

Most of the steading was an empty shell, stripped back to the bare granite, but the unit nearest the farmhouse was much nearer being completed. A crisp new roof and a coat of off-pink harling. The double glazing still had the blue sticky plastic on, but the hollow studwork was clearly visible through it. Watertight, but nowhere near finished.

King led the way between an overflowing skip and the remains of a cattle byre, to a stack of breeze-blocks where a middle-aged woman in a floaty paisley shirt sheltered out of the sun. She looked up from her phone when King cleared his throat.

‘Dr Longmire?’

She put her phone away. ‘Can I go now? Only I’ve got a faculty meeting at two and it’s my turn to bring the milk …’

‘It’s OK.’ King forced a smile. ‘My colleague and I just want to ask a couple of questions. Professor Wilson: did he have any enemies?’

‘Nicholas?’ A laugh sent her hair jiggling. ‘Did the man have anything but?’

Yeah, that wasn’t normal. Normally people shovelled on praise for the missing and the dead. Lifelong dicks were suddenly transformed into beloved role models and all it took was getting stabbed, strangled, bludgeoned, or abducted.

Dr Longmire sniffed. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that. Nicholas Wilson will argue water isn’t wet for the sheer joy of winding someone up. Never met anyone who relishes a fight more, and I’ve been married twice.’

Logan leaned back against the byre. ‘He seems to have a lot of trolls on Twitter.’

‘Nicholas isn’t the kind of man who keeps his opinions to himself. All that hate hammering in his direction every day – any sensible person would’ve shut down their account and burned their computer, but not Nicholas. Not when he could call people “knuckle-dragging nationalist morons” in two hundred and eighty characters or less.’

King shot Logan a look that wasn’t exactly subtle: shut up, this is my investigation. ‘Are you saying Professor Wilson isn’t popular at work?’

‘He isn’t popular anywhere. I’m only here because I drew the short straw. And I mean that literally: we drew straws and I lost.’ She sighed and stood, picked up an empty plastic container that looked as if it’d housed an iced coffee in happier times. ‘Look, I’m not saying I wanted him dead or anything – and before you ask, yes I do have an alibi – but if someone were to rough him up a bit I wouldn’t exactly complain, OK?’