Chapter 2.18
Roberta licked a finger, then dabbed it about the silvery foil interior of her eviscerated crisp packet. Gathering up the final prawn-cocktail crumbs – the rest of her Markie’s meal-deal already wolfed and consigned to the bin.
Feet up on the desk, she frowned her way through the post-mortem report on those skeletal remains for the third time in a row, because there must be something Beattie and his crew of malodorous morons had missed.
No idea what it was, though.
Ding-buzz.
LOGAN:
How’s your last day going?
Sorry I can’t be there. I really wanted to (just to make sure you were actually gone) but I’m stuck in Dundee.
Cheeky sod.
Tick, tick, tic-tic-tic-tic-tick:
I am desperately offended and will never forgive you.
SEND.
Actually:
And you’d be home by now if you’d manned up and asked ME for help catching your Tayside tosspot!
That’d teach him.
SEND.
And back to the post mortem.
The trouble with skeletonised remains was that lots of things just didn’t show up on them.
You could slice someone’s belly open and let them bleed out – long as you didn’t damage the bones, who’d know?
Could get away with drownings, suffocation, maybe electrocution?
Hypothermia, heat stroke, hypoxia . . . Not to mention several poisons that wouldn’t leave a trace once the flesh was gone.
And the toxicology report wasn’t a hell of a lot of use. After all that time, fermenting away in the hot sun, everything was too degraded to help.
Meaning their victim was every bit as anonymous as she’d been two months ago.
Roberta stuffed the photos and reports back in their folder and tossed it into her ‘OUT’ tray.
Sagged. Rubbed her face with her hands. Grimaced at the ceiling. Picked up her phone, thumbs tic-ticking away:
Getting nowhere here, Laz.
Pine’s having a strop-fest, so I’m confined to barracks till end of shift.
Starting to think her bum’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
SEND.
Roberta dug into the Operation Troglodyte folder instead – Billie Nesbit’s stabbing – making separate piles for each set of interview notes: Inturds on one side, Polo-shits on the other.
Then there were the incident reports.
Every attending officer had filled one out .
. . well, everyone except Roberta. But then she’d been a bit busy trying not to die with a dirty-big hole in her skull.
But the wee loon had taken a brief statement from her while she was laid up in hospital, whacked on morphine, and under the watchful beady eyes of Doctors Blue, Pink, and Green.
The reports went in a pile of their own, along with one from the paramedics who’d wheeched Billie Nesbit away for emergency surgery.
Ding-buzz.
LOGAN:
Maybe Pine just wants to keep you close because she LOVES you! (hahahahaha)
Our boy’s started sending notes now.
As if she hadn’t already read about that in the paper. Then drew willies all over it.
There wasn’t any point making a pile for witness statements, because there was only one – from Captain Rainbow-Tie, AKA: Emma Dornoch’s camp campaign manager, Frank Abercrombie.
It was barely two sides of A4, and not a massive help.
Oh, I was so overwhelmed by the situation and all the thugs. I didn’t see the knife. I heard Billie scream. Rushed to her aid. Got shouted at by a ‘short, rude, angry policewoman’.
Better not have been talking about her.
And who the hell was he calling ‘short’?
And she wasn’t ‘rude’, he was just a big sodding Jessie.
The file also contained a whole bunch of photos: the rioters, the scene, the knife, the wound . . . Then there was a sort of ante-mortem report compiled by the surgeons at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary who’d plugged the holes in Billie’s innards.
Had to give them points for effort on that one, but it wasn’t exactly revelatory, given everyone already knew she’d been stabbed.
Roberta scoofed back the last mouthful from a tin of Irn-Bru, and frowned at her piles.
Was going to take a while to get through this lot.
She checked the clock hanging on the office wall. The big hand was at ten and the small hand at four. Which was bugger-all use.
According to her phone, it was twenty to two.
And Logan’s text still sat there, unanswered.
OK:
See? This is what happens when you don’t ask the Great Roberta Steel to help with your sharny serial-killer cases!
What kind of notes?
And are you sure it’s him, not some squirrel shit?
SEND.
Glancing up at the dead clock again.
OK: twenty to two. Shift ended at four. Which meant just over two hours to read all this, digest it, and get everything back to the wee loon.
No way that was enough time.
Of course, she could go and photocopy the lot . . .
If she had any idea how to work the photocopier. That kind of job was what you had constables for.
Besides, it’d take ages, and the chances of getting caught doing it weren’t exactly slim.
Be nice to finish her final shift without having to sit through yet another bollocking . . .
Ding-buzz.
LOGAN:
If it’s a squirrel, the fluffy wee bastard knows things we haven’t released to the press.
Locations of the bodies, which bits were missing, etc.
See, now that was interesting.
Tick, tick, tic-tic-tick:
Could be someone on the investigation?
Rogue cop turns cannibal serial killer!
SEND.
But didn’t help with her dilemma.
Mind you, if paper copies were too risky, maybe electronic was the way to go?
Have a wee dig through the office servers and winkle out the files.
And yes, that kind of computery thing was usually the wee loon’s area, but he’d just bitch and whinge and moan if she asked him.
‘Ooh, Chief Superintendent Pine wouldn’t like it!
Ooh, you’ll get me into trouble! Ooh, it’s illegal! ’
Blah, blah, wankity wank.
Just have to find them herself – how hard could it be?
Question was: then what?
Couldn’t email the files to her home address, because it’d leave a paper . . . well, digital trail. Which might make things a bit sticky if the Rubber Heelers ever tried to do her for unauthorised retention of police documents.
But there might be another way.
Roberta burrowed through her cardboard box for those novelty-shaped USB drives – hacking the plastic blister-pack open with a pair of stolen scissors. Then popped the boob free.
The thing was silicone, about the size of a squash ball, with a perky nipple. And it made squeaky noises when she squeezed it. Which was fun. Squeak, squeak, squeakity-squeak.
Anyway.
She plugged it into the USB port on her computer and the thing vibrated.
OK . . .
Took a bit of searching to find all the Billie Nesbit stabbing files, but Roberta copied the whole lot onto her jiggly boob. Then tried the same with Operation Demogorgon.
Only her boob wasn’t big enough to hold all the data on both cases, so the overspill would have to go onto the USPenis.
When she inserted it into her USB port it sort of . . . wriggled.
Don’t know who Santa was, but no surprise he wanted to remain anonymous. Pervert.
Soon as the files were copied over, she unplugged the writhing willy and stuck it in her pocket, along with the jiggly boob.
Quick check left and right to make sure no one had seen any of that highly illegal—
Ding-buzz.
Roberta flinched. Because, you know . . .
LOGAN:
Don’t think I haven’t considered it.
I suspect everyone!
Especially Sgt. O’Grady because he’s a devious little squit who doesn’t like rowies . . .
Deep breath.
Aye, that’s a red flag, right enough.
ALMOST AS BIG AS MISSING MY RETIREMENT SODDING PUB CRAWL!
SEND.
That’d teach him for giving her a fright.
She clonked her phone onto her desk and leaned back in her chair, pulling an evil smile and steepling her fingers. All she needed was Mr Rumpole, a scar, a secret volcano lair, and she could give it the full Bond villain.
Now she had the files, she could review them whenever she liked.
Hmmm . . .
Wonder if there were any other investigations worth industrial espionageing while she had the opportunity? Cos it wouldn’t come around again.
Roberta dug the bum from the blister-pack and slotted it into her USB port. Staring as the thing throbbed.
Wow.
Right.
She copied everything from Operation Basilisk onto it. Then filled her bum with Operation Firedrake, cramming the files in there till there was no space left.
Nothing left to do but kill time till four, then head off for a well-deserved hedonistic roister to celebrate thirty years protecting the public as a police officer.
And no one would ever know.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA . . .