Chapter 3.18
Dear. Snidging. God. Why. Did. He. Never. Shut. Up?
‘Of course, then you come to the mince itself. And that’s another barrel of worms.’ Harmsworth pulled a face, as if this was one of the greatest scandals of our time.
Twenty past six and the sky was a solid lid of slate and burnt toast, with a line of fire on the horizon.
The headlights on the other carriageway glowed, misty and blurred in the rain, as the ancient Volvo followed an Aberdeenshire Council van along the bypass: its load bay stuffed full of orange cones – probably off to enlighten someone’s morning commute with a surprise contraflow – rear tyres kicking up a dirty wash of road-spray, lit blood red by its taillights.
Roberta pressed her head against the passenger window, doing lots of sighing as rain streaked the glass.
And Harmsworth still wouldn’t take the hint.
‘. . . because you can’t make decent mince-and-tatties with low-fat mince! You just can’t. It needs to be twenty percent minimum.’
She rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out her arse. ‘Uh-huh.’
The Volvo’s windscreen wipers screek-scronnnnked greasy arcs through the road-spray and fizzing rain.
‘Now some people will tell you to fry off your onions and carrots first, but you’re never going to get a proper sear on your mince that way.’
Ding-buzz.
Oh, thank Christ for that: a distraction.
TUFTY:
Have emailed you the DDD!
@~@
Flipping Wingwangs of Spon! Young people today don’t 1/2 post a load of corrugated snidge!
I can feels IQ points withering away as I does read them!!!
Oh, the irony.
Anyway, it was about sodding time.
Lazy little sod.
Bet he’d been getting wriggly with his tasty wee bidie-in, when he should’ve been working.
Roberta opened her emails.
Meanwhile, on wanged Harmsworth: ‘And you have to really sear it. Till it’s all gnarly and crackling in the pan. Cos that’s all flavour, flavour, flavour, flavour.’
Spam, spam, spam, spam . . .
But between the threats to cancel antivirus software she didn’t subscribe to, offers of free solar panels, and discount Viagra, lay Tufty’s digital deep dives on Sophia Mitchell, Amelia Wilson, Megan Lockheart, and Violet Erving.
Each came with a brief summary and links to at least three social media accounts – Vivian Staybridge topped the league with six – followed by contact details and a decent head-and-shoulders shot of the four young women.
‘Of course the key to perfect mince is in the onions. Lots and lots of onions. Cooked down until they melt into your gravy. Now—’
‘Bloody hell.’ Roberta sat up.
Abercrombie wasn’t joking: they were all raging hotties.
Sophia Mitchell was hydraulically blonde, with a dainty wee upturned nose and electric blue eyes; Amelia Wilson was a full-on Bollywood sex kitten; Violet Erving had bee-sting lips and the kind of smouldering gaze that could strip the pants off a grown woman at thirty paces; while Megan Lockheart . . .
Hang on.
Roberta zoomed the picture.
Long black hair in a central parting, pouty lips, Disney eyes, teeny dimple in her chin. Familiar. In a déjà vu kind of way.
Harmsworth harrumphed. ‘As I was saying: I like to roughly chop, then microwave two large onions while the mince browns. And before you say anything, a microwave is a perfectly acceptable method of softening onions without colour.’
Roberta stared . . .
Then scrolled through the lot of them again.
Hotties, hotties, hotties, hotties . . .
Had to wonder – did Sir Norman Fordyce have a pop at Billie Nesbit and Vivian Staybridge too?
Bet he did. Dirty, randy, jammy old bugger that he was.
Now, where was that sodding file?
Roberta flailed a hand about in the rear footwell, until it latched onto her bag-for-life, pulling out Operation Troglodyte. Then the photos of Billie Nesbit and Vivian Staybridge. Peering at them in the light of her phone’s torch.
Yeah.
Line all six of them up, and the pattern was clear – Sir Norman Fordyce liked his wife’s interns young and he liked them pretty, with small noses and sexy eyes. They were just bonkable variations on the same theme.
‘You add your softened onions to the now crispy mince with a splash of soy sauce and enough beef stock to properly cover. Then let it simmer for at least twenty minutes.’
But that still didn’t explain why Megan Lockheart looked so familiar, with her long dark hair and rosy cheeks and big eyelashes . . .
Of course she looked familiar – seen her before. Megan was one of Davey McLeod’s missing persons, with her poster up in his office/garage.
‘Then you’ve got the vexed question of peas or carrots? And I mean in the mince, not with the mince.’
That’s why Megan had seemed so strangely familiar at the time. Didn’t matter that Roberta had never actually seen her before, she’d recognised the same thing about her that Sir Norman found so attractive in all the others.
Megan had that Billie-and-Vivian-iness about her.
Harmsworth sniffed. ‘Some people don’t put either in. Can you believe that? I favour both, but then I’ve always been a great epicurean gourmet.’
Roberta followed the links in Tufty’s email, digging into Megan’s social media posts.
‘But not cut into rounds. No one should be eating rounds of carrots, they’re a crime against humanity. Little random chunks are what you need.’
She’d put out loads of posts about world hunger; and Putin’s murderous war in Ukraine; and the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza; and the Trump regime’s chaos, incompetence, and cruelty . . .
And it all came to a sudden halt on Saturday the third of May.
After that: not a single post on Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, Bindle, or Pinterest.
Something nasty crawled its way up Roberta’s spine.
‘And down south, they put garlic and tomato puree in it! I mean, what are you even eating at that point?’ Harmsworth indicated right, slowing as the sign appeared for the Kingswells South Junction. Preparing to leave the ring road. ‘That’s not mince, that’s a half-arsed bolognese!’
Third of May.
Digging back into Operation Troglodyte, Roberta ferreted out Frank Abercrombie’s statement. Couldn’t care less what he’d said about Billie’s stabbing, but his contact details were printed at the top of the form.
She poked Abercrombie’s number into her phone. Set it ringing.
‘So, twenty minutes have passed, and only now do you add in your random nuggets of carrot. And another chopped onion. Because—’
‘Shut up a minute, OK? I’m on the—’
‘Urgh . . .’ A muffle-mumble voice gravelled down the line. Thick and sticky with a rosé hangover. ‘Who is this?’
‘Aye, we met this morning. You were baking scones?’
‘What? God . . . Urgh . . .’ There was a clinking noise in the background, followed by the kind of glug-glug-glug that implied someone was filling a large wine glass with Chateau Hair-Of-The-Dog.
‘Need to ask you about Megan Lockheart.’
No reply.
‘Frank? Mr Abercrombie? You there?’
A long shuddery exhale – as if he’d just chugged the whole glass in one. ‘Sorry. Who?’
‘Megan Lockheart.’
‘What about her?’
Dear Jesus . . .
‘What happened to her?’
Another silence, another sigh. ‘In what way?’
That six-bottles-a-day wine habit had clearly pickled his brain cells.
‘You had to find some other campaign for her to go work on? Because Sir Norman Fiddly Fordyce couldn’t keep it in his pants? Kept “polling the electorate”? “Stuffing her ballot box”?’
Glug-glug-glug . . .
‘Please! There’s no need to be so crude. And I’m sure I never said anything as indiscreet as that. Sir Norman is a patron of the arts, a proud supporter of women’s issues, and happily married.’
Why did everything have to be such a sodding struggle?
‘Whose. Campaign. Did. You. Move. Her. To?’
Could hear him swigging. ‘Does it matter? Why does it matter?’
Roberta massaged her forehead. ‘Frankie: I switched your oven off, so you didn’t burn your house down. Give us a break, here.’
He made a little groaning noise. Then drank some more.
‘Look, between you and me, sometimes young women’s heads are turned by a dashing older gentleman with silver hair, a flash car, lots of money, and a knighthood.
It falls on me to ensure they don’t confuse their infatuation for some sort of .
. . mutual feelings on his part.’ A little snort. ‘Because he hasn’t got any. Trust me.’
One more go: ‘So where, in the name of all that’s sodding holy, did you send her?’
‘Oh.’ Drink. ‘Hold on, I’ll check my little red book.
’ Followed by some clunking and thunking and rattling, then the bang of a drawer being shut.
‘Here we go. There was a councillor in Edinburgh, got caught with one hand in the till and the other in his assistant’s frilly knickers.
Which put a seat in play, so Megan went to help our preferred candidate win it. ’
At least now they were getting somewhere.
‘And did she?’
‘He. And no, it went Labour instead.’
‘When was this?’
‘Erm . . . Says here I told her on Thursday about the change – first of May – played it as a promotion to “Campaign Coordinator”, starting Monday in Edinburgh. She was going to stay with a friend in Portobello, I think?’
Thursday the first, Friday the second, Saturday the third, and Megan Lockheart never posts on social media ever again.
‘So what happened to her?’
Another groan. ‘How do I know. I can’t keep track of every delusional hormone-addled teenager that flounces through the place.’ Swigging back more wine. ‘Now, are we done? I’ve got important work to do.’
Aye, involving a corkscrew and rosé-tinted glasses.
Roberta put a bit of steel in her voice. ‘We’re no’ done till you tell me who the candidate was. Name, address, phone number, the whole doodah. Right now.’
Streetlights trembled in the wind, rain turning into sparks as it fell through their fever-yellow glow.
Hazlehead grumbled by the Volvo’s windows, drenched and dreich, the tower blocks off to one side of Queen’s Road like shimmering checkerboards of fireflies through the gloom and whipping branches.
One of those would be Tufty’s, where he was probably getting ready for work. Roberta didn’t wave though: busy.
A posh Edinburgh accent hummed and hawed in her ear. Then, ‘Well, quite. But, I thought you’d retired?’
‘Come on, Plocky, I’m no’ asking you to throw a suspect down the stairs, just make a couple of calls.’
No reply as they drifted along, Harmsworth taking one hand off the wheel to rearrange his itchy, sand-filled bits as he wriggled in the driver’s seat.
Having a moderate-level sulk, because his ‘masterclass’ on mince-and-tatties was on hold while Roberta wheedled away at Chief Inspector Irene ‘Plocky’ Whitelaw.
‘That really would be highly irregular.’
Time to bring out the big guns: ‘Who held your hair back when you went Mr Creosote on tequila-and-blackcurrant? And who stopped you booty-calling your ex-husband after the Police Pizza-and-Prosecco Pyjama Party? And who—’
‘All right, all right; we don’t need a trip down Embarrassment Lane. I’ll make the calls.’
A smile broke across Roberta’s face, like the dawn. ‘Thanks, Plocky!’
‘I’m a fool to myself, I really am . . .’
Plocky hung up, and Roberta had a happy wee stretch. Because sometimes it was nice to talk old friends into doing slightly sketchy things.
Harmsworth took a deep breath. ‘Which brings us to accompaniments. Let’s face it, doughboys are all very well and good, but a decent skirlie is where it’s at. So—’
‘Aye, that’s fascinating.’ She pointed. ‘See the roundabout? Do a one-eighty and back the way we came. There’s a knight of the realm needs a visit.’
His face sagged even further. ‘But I thought we were going home!’
‘Look at it this way: all the more time for you to tell me your desperately interesting and informative facts about cooking mince.’
The hamster wheel in his head creaked around a few times, followed by a nod. ‘And we haven’t even got to the tatties yet!’
Oh God . . .
‘. . . nope. Complete no-show. I checked the friend she was meant to be staying with too. Says Megan Lockheart never turned up.’
Roberta scowled out the car window. ‘Sodding shite-trumpets.’
Muchalls scowled back.
It was a tiny wee village on the coast, about halfway between Portlethen and Stonehaven, little more than a handful of streets.
The Volvo crept along a narrow lane, lined with squat terraced houses – single storey with a miser-thin pavement out front and gardens so small a single step would take you from your front door onto the road.
Homes that were hunkered down, with mean little windows. Built to keep wind and storms at bay.
Plocky sighed. ‘Sorry it’s not better news.’
‘Thanks for looking.’ Even if it was a disaster. ‘Next time you’re up for a night of drunken debauchery, give me a shout. They do a peekaboo night at the Whip and Corset you’re gonna love.’
A filthy laugh rattled in Roberta’s ear. ‘And in the meantime, I have to go kick a certain detective sergeant’s arse for him. TTFN.’ Then Plocky hung up, because she was never one for goodbyes . . .
Harmsworth squeezed them past a red hatchback, parked up on the teeny pavement, leaving just enough space. ‘And the secret is not to peel your potatoes. Scrub and cut out any gritty bits, or eyes, that kind of thing, and then scarify the skins with a julienne peeler.’
That thing was crawling up Roberta’s spine again.
If Megan never made it as far as Edinburgh, where was she?
Because none of the options were good.
Unless she’d eloped with a lucky boy/girlfriend?
Only, kind of got the feeling she hadn’t. Cos even an idiot like Davey could’ve solved that one.
The Volvo emerged from the far end of the street, leaving its huddled shelter – rocking as the wind shoved and barged, howling straight in off the North Sea.
‘You see, that way you get the extra flavour, but you don’t get the peel hanging around like . . . big scabs of skin. And nobody wants to eat scabs.’
Had to wonder how many people were getting away with murder every year.
Bet it was loads.
Long as you didn’t leave the scene clarted in blood and forensics – and everyone thought your victim had run away from home – you could kill dozens of people before anyone found out.
Assuming they ever did.
‘And when you’ve boiled them, for goodness’ sake, pour them and leave them to steam completely dry in the warm pot before you mash them. Otherwise you’re in for watery tatties.’
They left the protective glow of Muchalls behind, heading out into the storm-tossed gloom, with only the Volvo’s headlights to lead the way.
‘Then add your cold milk and butter to the pan and bring it up to a simmer, before mashing your tatties with lots of white pepper.’
Of course, the real question was: how long would it take Chief Superintendent Pine and her Brigade of Morons to figure out Roberta was the one who’d murdered Detective Constable Owen Harmsworth for never shutting up about bloody mince?
Mind you, they’d probably give her a medal . . .