Chapter 9
Susan sat in that high-backed armchair by the window, scowling at the rain. Disapproval oozing out of her like stink from a chunk of forgotten haggis, festering away at the back of the fridge. Honestly, the woman could hold a grudge better than anyone.
Ah well, nothing Roberta could do about it now, standing there naked from the waist down, towelling her lower half – working a bit of life back into the cold, pale, wobbly skin.
And that wasn’t cellulite, thank you very much, it was goose pimples.
Because it was much colder inside this old pile than out.
Her stripy pair of soggy socks sagged over the hotel room’s radiator, but the jeans had to be abandoned in the bath, draped over the shower rail. Dripping.
Susan gave a pointed sniff as Roberta moved on to one set of wrinkled toes. ‘I don’t see why I have to be confined to my room like some sort of criminal.’
Again.
No point rising to it, she was spoiling for a fight – could see that a mile off. She had her spoiling-for-a-fight face on. Mouth pinched. Chin up. Arms folded, squishing her boobs down as she pressed herself back into the chair.
‘Can we no’ do this right now?’
Susan’s eyes got harder. ‘Bad enough you humiliated me last night without—’
‘A man’s been murdered, OK? And yes, he was a shitty man who screwed everyone over, but he was still murdered and that means we all have to make sacrifices.
All of us.’ Roberta finished her drowned-corpse feet, dumped the towel on the bed, and had a rummage about inside her suitcase.
Had to be another pair of pants in here somewhere . . .
‘You just want me out of the way.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Muttering it just loud enough to make sure it was audible. Roberta stood, a pair of big grey pants clutched in one hand – the elastic gone a bit hairy around the waistband. ‘Look, I’ve got to go catch a killer, so can we—’
‘And those!’ Susan released an arm to point at the pants. ‘I bought you three nice new sets of decent underwear – they were La Perla, have you any idea how expensive they were? Did you even try them on?’
A sigh. ‘I had the black lacy ones on yesterday and spent the whole time hauling half of it out the crack of my—’
‘And what about the bra?’ Teeth bared, working herself up. ‘Because you weren’t wearing it at the wedding, were you? No, you were wearing that horrible ancient grey thing!’
‘It made my boobs all—’
‘Is that why we don’t have sex any more? You don’t even try, Robbie. I’m just some sort of shapeless sexless blob to you!’
Roberta just stared at her.
It was only underwear, for Christ’s sake. Underwear apparently designed for flat-chested stick insects who didn’t mind six inches of lacy netting jammed up their bumhole. Why the hell did it—
Susan’s voice turned brittle and sharp. ‘You’re having an affair, aren’t you.’
What?
‘No!’
She grabbed a tartan cushion from the armchair and hurled it at Roberta. ‘That’s why you won’t wear nice things for me, you’re too busy wearing them for someone else!’
Roberta hauled on her huge grey pants with the hairy elastic. ‘I’m no’ having an affair! How could I? Look at me!’
‘So, what, you just don’t find me sexy any more?’
The woman was insane. Certifiably, clinically, insane.
‘Sexy? Find you sexy? Susan, the sun rises in you. The moon sets in you. The oceans rise and fall because of you. You’re everything!
’ The room got a bit swimmy at that – don’t you dare cry!
– and Roberta’s throat tightened, making her voice creak.
‘It’s . . .’ Sagging a bit. ‘It’s me I don’t find sexy.
’ She pulled her T-shirt up, showing off those ugly pants and her ugly stomach with its rash of midge bites.
Took a double handful of pale flabby belly and squeezed it.
Like lardy Play-doh. ‘I’m fat and I’m old and I’m horrible.
’ She let go of the horrorbelly and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her palms. ‘OK?’
Susan stood, nodded, then swept her up into a hug, squeezing the breath out of her, holding her. ‘Then let’s grow old and fat and sexy together.’ She reached down and gave Roberta’s bum a grope, voice a dirty whisper: ‘No time like the present.’
Sir Reginald Bradbury-Scott’s body dangled above them, willy out.
Roberta grinned at Sergeant Moore and PC McKinnon, fingers wrapped around a mug of hotel-room-packet-hot-chocolate.
All warm and sweet and melty inside. Just like her.
She’d changed into her last dry pair of jeans, second-last dry pair of socks, and the Converse trainers she’d turned up in yesterday.
Sort of an investigative-casual outfit for the pretend detective chief inspector about town.
McKinnon and Moore watched her from a safe distance, as if she was about to do something horrible to them. Possibly with a six-foot fencepost.
It was Sergeant Moore who plucked up the courage first. ‘OK, I’ll bite: what?’
She cranked the grin up a bit. ‘Nothing.’
McKinnon backed off a pace. He’d changed out of his soggy police-issue itchy trousers and black boots, and into a pair of old jeans and grey Crocs. They didn’t really go with the stabproof vest, high-vis and peaked cap. ‘Aye, but you’re positively glowing.’
‘Just love being a police officer.’ A sip of scalding hot brown.
To be honest, it smelled a lot better than it tasted, but Susan made it and it was the thought that counted.
‘Right: so the bridge is out, all communication’s down, we’ve got a killer on the loose, and fifty-one suspects. I miss anything?’
‘Forty-six, remember?’
The wee loon was right. Fifty-one, less the three of them and their respective bonk buddies. All except for poor old unshaggable Sergeant Moore . . .
She tilted her head on one side and frowned at him, standing there in his country-club polo shirt and chinos. No wonder his willy was surplus to requirements. Got to put a bit of effort in if you wanted sexytimes. ‘What happened to Mrs Moore, then?’
His cheeks flushed. ‘We’re divorced.’
‘I know that, you daft spud. I mean: how come she’s not here to see her son getting married? Thought that was every mother’s dream?’
The blush darkened. ‘Anyway, won’t be long till it’s hoaching with flies in here. Already getting hotter.’
McKinnon rolled his eyes. ‘The crime-scene manual clearly states—’
‘And you remember how long it took them to rebuild the bridge after last time? Never mind days, we could be here for weeks.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Be nothing left of the body by then, just a pile of bones on the floor.’
Roberta hardened her frown into a scowl. ‘You pair are seriously harshing my mellow here.’
He spread his hands. ‘All I’m saying is: circumstances change, and if we don’t do something there’s going to be no crime scene left to preserve.
The bugs will have eaten it all.’ He curled his lip.
‘And can you imagine the smell? Even if the forecast’s wrong and it only hits twenty degrees, the whole hotel’s going to stink like a charnel pit. ’
Well that was romantic.
How were you supposed to enjoy a good romp with your wife when the stink of rotting corpse was slithering in under the bedroom door? That’d dampen your ardour.
She looked up at their dead knight and his shrivelled willy. ‘Mind you, how can I catch a murderer if we’ve no clue how or where our victim actually died?’
Moore nodded. ‘Exactly! At least if the Scene Examiners and the Pathologist were here, we’d have something to go on. But with the bridge out . . .?’
‘Ooh, ooh!’ McKinnon did his bouncing up and down thing. ‘We’ve got stuff for taking fingerprints in the crime-scene kit, if that helps?’
He was kinda sweet, in his own way, but clearly thick as mince.
‘Oh aye, that’ll be a great help.’ Roberta gave him her best innocent smile.
The one that every PC in NE Division had learned to fear.
‘And what, pray tell, are we going to do with any fingerprints you find? Will we be able to run them through the system with no phone lines? No internet connection? Mobile signal?’
His face fell a bit at that. ‘Ah.’
‘Maybe we can leave them at the bottom of the garden, and the Fingerprint Fairies will spirit them off to Magic Pixie La-La-Land, so the Great Goblin can sprinkle unicorn powder on them and tell us which of the guests they match?’
‘Well, it—’
‘Or are you planning on doing it yourself, by hand? Trained in fingerprint analysis, are we? Got our own magnifying glass and deerstalker?’ She thumped him. ‘Didn’t think so.’
He stared at his boots. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’
‘Go see if you can find us a couple of long ladders. And make sure you wear gloves! Killer might have been at one of them.’
McKinnon scurried off.
Sergeant Moore watched him go. ‘He was only trying to help.’
‘You go find the laundry. I want a couple of double sheets, clean as you can get them.’
‘I know he’s young, but Mikey’s not as daft as he looks. He’s a good kid.’
‘He’s an idiot.’ She pointed off into the hotel. ‘Go. Sheets.’
Sergeant Moore sighed, then turned and wandered off, shaking his head.
Leaving Roberta on her own with the body.
A middle-aged man, crucified on a big metal stag’s antlers, with his pyjama bottoms round his ankles. Moore was right, it wasn’t really dignified, was it? Even if Sir Reginald Bradbury-Scott was a dick.
She nodded at his corpse. ‘Right, listen up: I didn’t like you, and you didn’t like me.
And I think we can both now agree that you were wrong and I was right about that.
But I will do my best to find out who killed you.
Even if they had good reason and you deserved it.
’ Quick swig of mediocre hot chocolate. ‘Fair enough?’
Sir Reginald just dangled there.
But then some people were just rude that way.
‘There we go.’ PC McKinnon stood back, hands on his hips, admiring his handiwork. Like he’d just painted the roof of the Sistine Chapel, single-handed, instead of stuck up a couple of large A-frame ladders in a hotel lobby.
On the plus side, they were easily big enough to reach the body.
Sergeant Moore rubbed his hands. ‘This’ll be one in the eye for Inverness. Our solving the case before they even hear about it? Serve the credit-stealing bunch of bastards right.’
‘We’ve no’ solved anything yet.’ Roberta gave McKinnon a poke. ‘Hold the ladder for us, there’s a good lad.’
He ducked in under the A-frame and took a good firm grip of the legs, watching as she clang-clanged her way to the top.
Up close, Sir Reginald Bradbury-Scott was not having a good day.
Six inches of metal antlers poked through his chest, just below nipple height, one on either side.
Little more than a crusting of dried red around the puncture wounds, so he was definitely already dead by the time they’d skewered him up here.
One horn through the palm of his left hand, one horn through the wrist of his right.
His eyes were open, mouth too, head tilted back to stare at the ceiling.
Wearing an expression of slightly startled melancholy – like the stuffed stags’ heads on the wall.
Only, unlike the taxidermied animals, he didn’t have a hard plastic tongue.
He had something, though.
Was that . . .?
She leaned in closer, peering into his gob.
There was something in there. Something made of fabric. Too dark to see properly.
She took out her phone and turned on the torch app, but it didn’t make any difference. Whatever it was, it was black and a little bit shiny. No idea what, though.
Hmm . . .
While she had her phone out, she set it to record, filming all the bits the pathologist would complain about most when they finally got here.
Puncture wounds, points of contact, face, hands, little shrivelled willy.
They’d still whinge about lack of proper procedure, but what choice did she have?
It was either this or let the maggots have him.
Roberta put her phone away and clanged down the ladder again. ‘Right, up you go the pair of you: let’s get him down.’
PC McKinnon’s face soured as he looked up at the remains. ‘Could you not have pulled his pyjama bottoms back up?’
‘Don’t be so homophobic, you’re not going to catch anything off a dead man’s willy. Now: gloves on and up!’
A slump, a groan, then McKinnon snapped on a pair of blue nitriles and climbed.
Sergeant Moore pulled on a set of gloves too. Nodded at the other A-frame. ‘Going to hold the ladder?’
‘Supervising, aren’t I? So try to no’ fall off, eh? One dead body’s enough of a pain without you joining in.’
While the pair of them scaled their respective rungs, she grabbed the folded sheets and unfurled them on the tartan carpet beneath the ladders. That should do it.
The first thing PC McKinnon did when he got level with the body, was pull its PJ bottoms up, keeping his head as far away from Sir Reginald’s cold dead naked crotch as possible.
Child.
Sergeant Moore made it to the top of his ladder, and the two of them set about pulling Sir Reginald off the antlers.
The left hand and right wrist came away fairly easily, but the torso needed a lot more grunting and swearing.
Then a sort of Velcro scratchy screltching noise as they wrestled him up and off the metal spikes that stuck through his chest.
It set both sets of ladders wobbling so hard she had to stop supervising and run forward to stabilise the damn things. ‘Don’t drop him!’
God, the pathologist would love that.
More grunting and swearing as they manhandled him over Sergeant Moore’s shoulder, after which it was a pretty straightforward fireman’s carry down to the ground.
Roberta slapped McKinnon on the back, hard enough to set him staggering. ‘See? What were you moaning about: piece of cake.’
Sergeant Moore lowered the body onto the sheets and stood back, rubbing at the small of his back. ‘Should we say something?’
‘Aye: wrap him up.’
The two of them did, folding the sheets around Sir Reginald and tucking in the ends – until he looked like a very large chrysalis. Or a really badly rolled joint.
She pointed at Moore. ‘You: take the shoulders.’ Then at McKinnon. ‘You: take his feet. I’ll get the doors.’
Took a bit, but they eventually got him lifted, the body sagging in the middle like a half-bent paperclip that rocked from side to side as Roberta led the way across the lobby.
Sergeant Moore shifted his grip on the slithery sheets. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Where do you think?’