Chapter 17
It looked as if Mrs MacGarioch had worked her magic in Charles’s room as well, clearing up after the search team’s ‘enthusiastic rummaging’.
She’d changed the bed, picked everything up off the floor, and tidied the desk – though there were obvious holes where the computer, games console, and every single game had been confiscated.
With any luck they’d be getting analysed right now, rather than played with.
Just in case the search team had missed something, Logan snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and had a wee peek under the mattress.
Nothing there.
There was nothing interesting in the rolling-drawer things under the bed, either. Unless you were fascinated by neatly folded T-shirts, ironed pants, and paired socks.
So Logan tried the bedside cabinet – checking behind and beneath it. Then did the same with every drawer.
Nope.
The wardrobe was full of shirts, trousers, and jackets; a scuffed mountain of trainers; and an open six-pack of Lynx Africa.
Three were missing, so Charles had already squirted his way through half the packet.
Probably all in one day, going by how much it honked in here when they broke the door down yesterday.
One last place to try: Logan squatted down in each of the room’s four corners and tugged at the carpet, but it was all securely nailed down. No access to loose floorboards and secret hidey-holes.
Pfff . . .
He opened the window, leaned on the sill, and peered out.
There was the trampoline, two storeys below, with a half a dozen little kids boinging up and down on it.
God knew how Charles MacGarioch managed to make it all the way from here. And, OK, the ‘second floor’ didn’t sound very high, but the ground was a long, long, long way down.
Splat.
Logan plonked himself on the edge of Charles’s bed, looking around at the posters and children’s books. No adult books. Not meaning ‘dirty’ books – doubt his granny would approve of anything racier than a Catherine Cookson – but books for grown-ups. These were all for kids, and teenagers.
Mind you, MacGarioch was only nineteen.
Hell of an age to kill someone.
Maybe—
A ding-buzz sounded from Logan’s pocket, and when he pulled his phone out, ‘IT’S TUFTALICIOUS!’ glowed in the middle of the screen. The little sod had done something to his phone again.
Checked With Forensic IT · STOP
Not Gained Access To Computer Yet · STOP
Have Asked Them Nicely To Be Less Pants · STOP
Great. So much for a ‘pineapple suppository’.
Ding-buzz.
TUFTY-DOODLE-DOOOOO!:
Press Release On Search Underway · STOP
Sweeny May Be Having Nervous Breakdown · STOP
Tayside Say Drone Operator Ill With Diseases · STOP
Oh, for goodness’ sake . . .
Logan flopped back on Charles’s bed, with his feet still on the floor.
What were they supposed to do now?
No drone, no forensic IT, and no idea where Charles MacGarioch had disappeared to.
. . .
It was odd, seeing the room from this angle. The video game posters were OK, but there was something slightly obscene about the female popstars – looming over him in their bikinis and/or underwear.
One, near the head of the bed, was particularly pneumatic: in her early twenties; blonde hair; and a bikini that was more straps than fabric, festooned with sequins.
She was kneeling on a beach, while a lake of fire burned behind her.
Oiled-up and pouting. Coming off as ‘creepy and predatory’ when she’d probably been aiming for ‘sultry and alluring’.
Maybe Charles MacGarioch liked that kind of thing, though?
She’d been Sellotaped to the wallpaper – like all the other posters in here – but Miss Bikini-Pop-Star must’ve been there a while, because the tape on the corner nearest the pillows had curled away from the wall a bit.
Lying there, half on the bed, Logan reached up and smoothed it back into place.
Hmm . . .
Parallel lines marred the surface of the poster, just above the tape, where the ink had flaked away. Hard to see, because of the flame-lit beach, but definitely there.
Wasn’t easy, what with the blue nitrile gloves and everything, but after a bit of fiddling, he peeled the Sellotape away from the wallpaper again, slipped a finger under the poster’s edge, and eased the other side off too.
Most of Miss Bikini-Pop-Star’s right leg curved out from the wall, revealing a photo hidden underneath. Six by four – the kind you could get printed out on a self-service machine at most supermarkets.
It was Charles MacGarioch and a young woman, the pair of them posing for a selfie on the dodgems at some travelling funfair. Can’t have been the permanent one, down the beach, because there were trees off to one side and what looked like a big out-of-focus stripy Union Jack thing in the background.
Charles was grinning away as she planted a duck’s-arse-pout kiss on his cheek.
They were much the same age, both with a smattering of plukes about the forehead, only while he was pale as cheap vanilla ice cream, she was a rich salted caramel, with long wavy black hair, a button nose, and disco eye make-up.
The photo was held in place with Blu Tack, rather than tape, and when Logan popped it free an acne rash of little greasy spots marked the wallpaper underneath. As if it’d been taken down many times, then hidden away again.
Logan smoothed Miss Bikini-Pop-Star’s poster back into place, then turned the photo over.
‘CHARLIE his racist nan throws a bucket of cold water over it; he breaks up with Keira; they fight, things are said; Charles lashes out and gets a sort of twisted revenge-by-proxy at the Balmain House Hotel . . .?
Made sense, in a teenaged-boys-are-sodding-insane kind of way. Worth having a word with her, anyway.
But as Keira wasn’t on the list of known associates, they’d have to find out who she was first.
Logan pulled out his phone and took a snap of the photograph, then slipped the original into a small evidence bag.
Right, time to get out of here.
He stepped back through into the living room, where the property-attic-auction bollocks had been replaced by a house-makeover reality thing, featuring a glamorous American couple with hard hats and sledgehammers, whacking the crap out of a partition wall.
A voiceover accompanied the footage – woman’s voice, spiced with the crayfish vowels of the deep south. ‘. . . and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from doing gazillions of these projects, it’s: don’t count your cockroaches till they’ve hatched . . .’
Logan thumped the bedroom door shut, a little louder than was strictly necessary. ‘Mrs MacGarioch, this girl you didn’t approve of, the one who was leading Charles astray. I need her surname.’
Because it was worth another try, while he was here.
Onscreen, the woman’s sledgehammer battered through a rusty old pipe, and a deluge of bugs cascaded into the room – screams ringing out as both presenters danced away from the skittering waterfall in a barrage of swear-concealing bleeps.
Victoria MacGarioch smiled at the telly, clearly enjoying the cockroach rodeo. ‘What?’
‘Charles’s girlfriend: Keira, what was her last name?’
‘Told you: don’t know, do I.’ She shifted in her armchair, as if those bugs were crawling up her spine. ‘Something ethnic.’ Then grabbed the remote and cranked up the volume, not looking at him even once.
A man’s voice, dripping with Mom’s apple pie and non-existent gun control boomed out of the TV, loud enough to be physically painful: ‘I mean, we seen roaches before, but nothing like this. It’s like a gosh-darn creepy-crawly sea of the things!’
‘“Ethnic” in what way?’
No reply.
‘Mrs MacGarioch?’
The couple on the telly scrambled from the room, then out of the house.
Bursting through the front door to jiggle about in the front yard, brushing real and imagined bugs from their clothes.
High-stepping over a ‘TRUMP PENCE 2020 ~ KEEP AMERICA GREAT!’ lawn sign, while a grubby Stars-and-Stripes flew overhead.
‘Mrs MacGarioch?’
She lit a fresh cigarette and hissed a cloud of smoke at the screen. As if he wasn’t even there.
Looked as if the audience was over.
‘OK . . . Thanks for your time.’
He let himself out.
The council had given the flat a temporary-replacement front door, that was barely a step up from boarding the place up, but Logan made sure it was closed and secure, before heading downstairs.
He’d almost made it to the ground floor, when his phone launched into ‘Ode To Joy’ which wasn’t really appropriate today.
‘Hello?’
‘Where are you?’
He checked the caller ID – ‘CHIEF SUPT. PINE’. Oh joy.
‘Just paid Charles MacGarioch’s granny a visit, Boss. Might have a lead that’s worth chasing if—’
‘No: why aren’t you here? The meeting started five minutes ago.’
He stepped out into the lobby and stopped. ‘Meeting?’
‘MAPPA meeting about the protest this weekend. You’re supposed to be chairing it.’
‘What? No one told me about any—’
‘Honestly, Logan, I expect you to be across your responsibilities, now you’re an acting chief inspector.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘With all due respect, Boss, I’m not psychic! I can’t just magically know what—’
‘We’re in Conference Room One. I’m prepared to hold the fort till you get here, but put a rocket under it. I’ve got better things to do than cover for you.’
‘But . . .’
She’d hung up.
Wonderful.
Logan sagged like a discarded sock, staring up at the underside of the stairs above.
Because who didn’t want to spend hours and hours and hours wasting their life away in a Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements meeting?
Being an acting chief inspector sucked arse.