Chapter 3.06
Roberta slouched in Betsy’s passenger seat, vaping away with the window down.
Marischal College’s facade might’ve been a spiky display of gothic frippery, but around the back it looked more like a Victorian prison, with lumpy blockwork and mean windows, devoid of fancy flourishes.
The car park featured a couple of mobile CCTV vans though, a speed-camera unit, and a trio of police Transits, five or six manky pool cars, and one lonely patrol car with a cracked windscreen.
A cluster of far swankier vehicles sat at the far end – BMWs and Audis and Range Rovers – because senior officers couldn’t be expected to struggle for parking on side streets like the lesser ranks.
Meaning Tufty had no business abandoning his fusty old rattletrap here. But sod them.
Roberta sent another whoomph of raspberry out into the cold grey world, and reread Logan’s latest text from sinful Dundee:
Bloody papers are just making everything worse.
Bunch of bastards!
You see the Scottish Daily Post today?
Nope.
But then she and Susan were a P&J/Aberdeen Examiner household. None of your right-wing tabloid shite here, thank you very much. Even if the Examiner was heading that way fast.
And yeah, she could buy a copy to see what Logan was moaning about, or look it up online, but there was an easier way.
She thumbed out a text to Tufty:
While you’re there, go nick a copy of the Sharny Dick Plop for me, there’s a good boy.
TODAY’S!
Because Divisional Headquarters got copies of all the major papers. And nicking theirs would serve the buggers right.
And speaking of buggers: Chief Superintendent Pine’s ‘Executive’ Mercedes was parked in the far corner. It had two spaces to itself, separated from the other cars by a pair of traffic cones. All kept safe and snug.
Be a shame if something happened to it . . .
Roberta crunked open her door and wriggled out, making a big show of leaning on her walking stick as she cast a furtive eye about.
No witnesses, but just in case: ‘Oh deary me. I am so stiff and sore after spending all that time in this rather crap car, what with my traumatic head injury and everything. I had better stretch my poor legs.’
That should do it.
Roberta hurpled up the middle of the car park, between the cars and vans. Taking her time. Nothing suspicious to see here, nope, nope, nope.
Ding-buzz.
SUSAN:
Are you having fun playing consulting detective with Tufty?
Playing? Playing?
Roberta wasn’t ‘playing’, she was making breakthroughs, cracking cases.
Playing!
She stopped in front of Pine’s Merc – all black and shiny and desperate for a house key to be dragged across the paintwork. Maybe all down one side? Or a nice rude word gouged deep into the bonnet?
Quick glance left and right, to make sure no one’s watching.
Keys out. And—
‘Guv?’
Shite . . .
Hiding her keys, Roberta turned. Pulling on a fake smile. ‘Victoria. What a lovely surprise.’
Lund was in full uniform black, but without the stabproof, high-vis, and belt. ‘Bumped into the wee loon in the mortuary. Said you were out here.’ She squinted, head on one side. ‘You OK? Only you’re looking shiftier than normal.’
‘Shifty? Cheeky sod. I’m a paragon of sodding virtue, me. Just stretching my legs. You know, after getting blown-up.’ Hobbling back towards Betsy. ‘What you working on now?’
‘Operation Firedrake.’ Falling into step beside her.
‘Which is doing nothing for my diet. Can you believe we’ve got enough food vans in Aberdeen to have a turf war?
You’d think one greasy burger would be much like another, but these deep-fried scumbags are at each other’s throats like rabid weasels. ’
‘I heard: Hungry Helen’s Noodle Doodle.’
‘Urgh . . . Poor cow’ll be lucky to walk again, after that.’ Lund sighed. ‘They’re just burger vans – somewhere cheap to grab an unhealthy lunch – how can that possibly be worth crippling someone over?’
‘She say who did it?’
‘Can’t: broken jaw.’
‘Aye, it’s a cruel, cruel world, right enough.’ Roberta leaned back against Tufty’s decrepit Panda, fiddling with a loose bit of duct tape. Keeping her voice all innocent and casual. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about those arrests I made on my last day?’
‘Who was that?’
‘Charlotte MacNeal and Campbell Brown.’
Blank look.
‘Operation Basilisk? Lithuanian teddy bears, stuffed full of class A drugs? Honestly, do you no’ keep up with—’
‘Not my case. It’s . . .’ Lund’s eyes narrowed. ‘Wait a minute, we were warned about—’
‘You know, Veronica, I’ve always seen you as the lynchpin of my Queen Street Irregulars.’ Putting an arm around her shoulders. ‘My Number-One, Main-Woman, Go-To-Girl when I need someone smart and resourceful I can really rely on . . .’
Sounded as if Betsy’s exhaust was more holes than muffler as the rusty old Fiat Panda splutter-growled its way across Danestone. Shambling through the warren of commuter cul-de-sacs, past copy-paste houses with hatchbacks parked outside and a lifetime’s supply of wheelie bins.
A gurgling snarl popped and hissed – only that wasn’t the moribund engine, it was Tufty’s stomach. He rubbed his belly with one hand, steering with the other as he peered across the car at Roberta. ‘No, seriously, where did you get that?’
‘Hmmmm?’ She turned the page on her brand-new file.
‘Only, cos it looks like an official Police Scotland document-thing and you is definitely not allowed to has those no more.’
Not surprised it looked official. Because it was. Interview transcripts and interview notes on the drug-dealing underwearing bonk-buddies: Charlotte MacNeal and Campbell Brown. All freshly photocopied.
Roberta looked up. ‘When did Creepy Sheila say she’d get the DNA results back?’
‘If there’s any DNA to find.’ He puffed out a long breath.
‘Just cos we found a tooth, doesn’t mean it belongs to our victim.
And if they’ve had a root canal on that molar, there’ll be no tooth pulp to sample.
So we’re snidged.’ Tufty’s face scrunched for a moment.
‘Hey! No changing the subject. Where did you get . . .’ And his belly howled again.
She poked him. ‘See: this is why Charlie Sausage-Fingers never invites you to his garden parties.’
‘You promised me butties for tenses! And now it’s noon and where is my butties – question mark, exclamation mark!’
True.
‘Aye, you’re right. That was very remiss of me. Soon as we’re finished here it’s butty time.’ Pointing at the junction up ahead. ‘Take a left.’
Tufty released a whiny groan, but did as he was told, turning into a dead-end road with weird little blocks of flats on either side.
The blocks were paired up – connected by a narrower, set-back bit – each the mirror image of the other. Three-storeys high, with a redbrick front and grey-harled gables. Dutch barn roofs in pantile grey, sprouting satellite dishes like mushrooms.
Tufty followed the road to a car park tucked behind the buildings. Where Betsy was no longer the oldest and mankiest vehicle in all of Christendom.
An ancient, necrotic Daihatsu Fourtrak was parked by another brigade of wheelie bins, its bodywork more filler than metal.
Rust blistered the hand-painted bonnet – and you could tell it was hand-painted, because the brushstrokes were clearly visible in the matt finish.
The rear bumper: tied on with string . . .
He stuck Betsy in the furthest away space, as if frightened the Fourtrak might be contagious.
‘OK.’ Roberta dumped her new transcripts on the back seat, and pulled out the digital-deep-dive folder Tufty had given her on her last day. Featuring the three people Wee Davey McLeod snapped outside Noel Sherman’s joinery workshop.
And the boy Sherman himself, of course.
She flicked through to the section on Jeremy Yarrow, with his prior conviction for prostitution and manky Daihatsu Fourtrak.
Tufty had dug up, and printed out, a bunch of Jeremy’s tweets, updates, and posts, along with half a dozen photos.
Jeremy was one of those all-cheekbones-and-smouldering-eyes types.
The kind of guy who thought it was OK to Blue Steel his way through every selfie.
Thin, bordering on unhealthy, and sort of waif-like.
Androgenous. Slightly pointy ears. A nose that had definitely seen the wrong end of someone’s fist.
There wasn’t a single photo of him with his top off – even splashing about at Balmedie beach in his budgie smugglers required a long-sleeved top. So, either he was covering something up, or trying to avoid hypothermia. Could go either way when you were swimming in the North Sea . . .
Going by his posts, Jeremy didn’t have an ‘isn’t my life so shiny and great’ approach to social media.
Everything was about how hard his life was, and how his cat/dog/parrot – depending on what day it was and what account he was publishing from – was in urgent need of veterinarian treatment, but he couldn’t afford it, and they were going to die without some expensive surgery, and if they died he didn’t know what he’d do with himself, because he couldn’t face going on alone, and he’d been thinking about throwing himself in the river and just putting an end to all his suffering.
But then, if he did, who would look after his poor ill pets?
And each one of these tales of woe came with a link marked ‘DONATE TO ME’, connected to a different fund-raising website.
Tufty pulled the keys, and Betsy’s engine went into its running-on ping-and-click routine again.
Roberta sniffed. ‘You know it’s not meant to do that, right?’
‘Still don’t know why we’re here.’
‘So we can talk to Jeremy Yarrow.’
‘No, I know that. That’s not “why”, that’s “what”. Why are we talking to him?’
‘Because, my dear idiot friend, although I am celebrated as a paragon of fairness and generosity, if you cross me I can be a right vindictive bastard.’ And with phase one of Operation Screw-Beardy-Beattie-Over complete, it was time to embark upon Operation Screw-Davey-McLeod-Over instead.