Chapter 23
Logan stepped out of the front door of number eighty-six, into a fancy portico with granite pillars, because the houses in this bit of Rubislaw weren’t exactly modest. Big flash homes with big flash gardens and big flash cars parked outside.
Mr Copeland followed him out into the sunshine – wringing his hands. Mid-seventies, in a ‘LOCHSKIAN HOTEL’ polo shirt, shorts, baldy head, and hairy knees. ‘It’s all quite distressing, really.’
Logan tucked his notebook away. ‘It might be an idea to get a decent padlock on your shed. You never know when thieves will strike.’
‘Oh yes, definitely. Definitely.’ Nodding so hard his wattles wobbled. ‘Thank you, Officer.’
Greasy, lying, hairy-kneed fraud that he was.
A quick nod, and Logan wandered off, down the driveway and around the corner, onto Forest Road.
How thick did he think Logan was? Someone broke into his shed and made off with a ride-on lawn mower worth three-thousand-pounds, a chainsaw, a petrol strimmer, pole saw, and over two grand’s worth of power tools?
Aye, right.
The front lawn was nowhere near big enough for a ride-on mower – most of it was lock-block parking for the two Jags and a Lexus – and the back garden had been covered in paving slabs. OK: it was a very nice patio, but doubt it needed a lot of mowing.
Should put a flag on the crime number, in case the insurance company got in touch.
Why was it, the richer some people got, the fewer morals they had?
Of course, maybe that’s how they got to be rich in the first place . . .
Forest Road was even swankier, with huge granite mansions, baronial palaces, Edwardian halls, and the odd Schloss thrown in for good luck. And it was lined with trees, so there was a nice bit of shade from the punishing sun.
Good for strolling along with your hands in your pockets.
Logan’s phone ding-buzzed as he took a left onto Rubislaw Den North. Which was posher still. You’d need a serious lottery win to afford anything in this part of Aberdeen. Or old family money.
Ah, a boy could dream . . .
He checked his phone, pulling up the new message as he wandered through the leopard-spot shade. Not a text this time, but an email.
SHEILA DALRYMPLE:
Well met, good fellow; I trust the day finds ye hale and hearty.
Attached, please find, these photographic representations of our sorry victim’s physiognomy as recorded by mine device of miraculous wire-free communication this very morning. {official pics to follow}
My mistress hath scheduled a post-mortem ere the cock crows ten tomorrow’s morn. And greatly pleased we would be to have thy presence for this grand affair!
Your obedient servant,
Miss Sheila J. Dalrymple
Swear to God, she was drinking on the job.
Logan clicked on the attachment, starting the download.
Over on the other side of the street, a woman jogged by in her Gucci tracksuit and Chanel sweatband, with a ridiculous-looking cockapoo trotting along beside her on an extending leash. No doubt impressed by Logan’s fighting suit, she gave him a cheery smile on the way past.
Little did she know that his entire outfit came from the big Asda in Garthdee.
But he returned her greeting anyway, the smile vanishing from his face as Sheila Dalrymple’s attachment finally appeared.
Bloody hell . . .
Logan leaned against the cool trunk of the nearest tree. Frowning at the screen.
It was a portrait shot: the body lay on its back on the pebbled beach. Even with the flash on, the camera hadn’t been able to adjust for the watery blue light that seeped in through the SOC-marquee walls, draining colour from the remains.
Which was probably a blessing.
The features were lopsided – barely recognisable through all the swelling. One cheek looked broken, and the eye socket above it was virtually gone too. The mouth nothing but a mess of tattered flesh. The nose almost non-existent.
It wasn’t just a beating: whoever this poor sod was, they’d been subjected to a horrific level of violence. Didn’t matter what they’d done: no one deserved that.
Because the body had been lying facedown in the river, all the blood had pooled in the lowermost tissues. Turning the skin there beetroot-purple, while everything above it was the colour of frozen butter.
Logan huffed out a long breath and scrolled through the other photos.
Number Two was a close-up of the eyes, ballooned up to scarlet slits. Number Three showed the left ear, almost completely ripped from the victim’s head. And last, Number Four. The poor sod’s right hand – with every single finger on it broken and dislocated.
Even with the sun softening the tarmac, the day had turned a lot colder.
Logan took a breath, hit ‘FORWARD’, and thumbed out an email to Biohazard.
This is your victim. PM’s at 10:00 tomorrow (don’t be late, or Prof. McAllister will dissect you!).
Looks like either blind rage, or a punishment beating. Maybe torture?
Get onto the labs and chase the crap out of them for that DNA!
Soon as the email registered as ‘SENT’ Logan pocketed his phone and marched up the road – it wasn’t a strolling kind of day any more.
He’d made it about halfway, when the pool car appeared, something thin and poppy piffling out of the open driver’s window.
‘Doodle-dee-doo, doodle-dee-doo,
Cos I love you, doodle-dee-doo,
My heart is on fire, hot like vindaloo!
Doodle-dee, doodle-dee, doodle-dee-doo . . .’
Rennie took one look at Logan’s face and killed the radio. ‘What’s wrong?’
Could just show him the photos, but there was a risk – after the whole DNA-Test-Every-Man-In-Scotland rant – he’d want to celebrate, and that would not go well.
Logan forced a smile instead. ‘Someone “broke into” an old man’s Shed of Lies.’
‘Ah, OK.’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
‘Mine was a crotchety pair of auld farts whose home-help allegedly made off with a set of silver cutlery and two crystal decanters. Silly sods didn’t get their key back before stiffing her a month’s wages for breaking a casserole dish.
’ Grin. ‘Why are rich people such twats?’
A question for the ages.
Logan climbed into the passenger seat. ‘So, if my OAP was working an insurance fiddle, and yours were—’
‘The technical term is “twats”.’
‘That just leaves the wee loon.’
Rennie put the car in gear, and off they went.
Bayview Road wasn’t as swanky as Rubislaw Den North, but then not much in Aberdeen was.
It was still pretty grand, though. Even if whoever named the street was a lying sod.
That or they had a massive ladder, because the only thing visible from here were the large granite houses.
And even they were partially hidden behind hedges and trees.
Rennie peered through the windscreen. ‘Where is the little spud?’
‘Play nice. Or I’ll promote him to Head Sidekick and you can go help Doreen search the riverbank.’
‘God . . . Total shudderfest.’
Two doors down, a gate opened in a seven-foot-high hedge and out lolloped the little spud in question.
He paused on the pavement, turned, and waved back towards the house. Then closed the gate and stood there, face upturned, beaming back at the sun.
Rennie ponked the horn.
Tufty gave them a wave as well, then scurried up the road and clambered into the back.
‘Afternoon, Sarges.’ Rubbing his tummy with happy hands.
‘Mr and Mrs Knowles did has the loveliest of finger sandwiches and teeny quiches and strawberry tarts and meringues with rhubarb cream!’ Sigh. ‘Couldn’t eat another thing.’
There was a scowl from the driver’s seat, but Rennie kept his gob shut. His stomach rumbled a complaint, though.
It wasn’t wrong.
Logan gave the mirror a stare. ‘What about the break-in?’
‘Some poophead jimmied the patio door in the dead of night, and tried to make off with their DVD player.’
Interesting. ‘Tried to?’
‘They does also has a very big dog. And Captain Woofalot doesn’t like burglars.’
Rennie raised an eyebrow. ‘Bingo.’
‘No: no “bingo”. Mr Knowles is in a wheelchair, Mrs Knowles is in a leg brace, and they’re both in their eighties.
’ Pausing for a chin stroke. ‘Unless she beat him to death with her walking stick, I don’t think they’re our killers.
Plus, it’s difficult to dump a body when you drive a mobility scooter . . .’
Rennie’s face tightened, but the threat of being demoted to squelchy-riverbank-searching kept him silent.
Tufty consulted the Post-it-note map. ‘Northfield?’
‘Northfield.’ And now it was Logan’s stomach’s turn to howl. ‘But we’re stopping somewhere for lunch, first.’
Rennie took a scoof of Irn-Bru. ‘. . . but the thing that worries me is: what happens if it all kicks off like last time? Cos that’s what these bastards want, isn’t it – anti-migrant riots on the streets, smashing in corner-shop windows, burning people out their homes.
And all the time they’re raking in the cash! ’
This bit of Northfield was a lot less swanky than Rubislaw Den.
Instead of granite mansions, the pool car sat between twin terraces of beige-and-brown harling.
Two-storey, flat-faced, with the occasional tiny awning bolted above the front door.
No mature trees, or towering green hedges here.
Instead, most of the gardens had been lock-blocked, or tarmacked-over for off-street parking.
Hatchbacks and vans, instead of Range Rovers and BMWs.
‘And you know what?’ Rennie took a bite of pie, chewing through the words. ‘Bet half of it comes from Russia too. Destabilising the West, one knuckle-dragging racist arsehole at a time.’
To be fair, they were very nice pies.
And it was easier to let him rant on by himself – just throwing in the occasional, ‘Uh-huh,’ every now and then to show willing – than actually pay attention to whatever it was he was wanging on about this time.
Logan shifted his pie around a little, using the paper bag as a container to keep the grease off his fingers. Steak mince. The king of pies. Hot, gristle-free, savoury, dark, and delicious, from the bakery on Byron Square.
Munch, munch, munch.
It was just the two of them in the car, the back seat lying vacant while Tufty was out doing a bit of work for a change.
That would teach the little sod to stuff himself full of fancy finger sandwiches and tasty pastries.
‘Tell you,’ Rennie swigged more Irn-Bru, ‘we should make it illegal to own a newspaper, or radio station, or any of that shite, if you don’t live and pay tax in the UK.’
Logan’s phone ding-buzzed on the dashboard. He checked it, one-handed, leaving the other free to provide another tasty munch of crisp pastry and beefy gravy.
‘And they’re forever bleating on about being “patriotic”, and “having pride in our country”!
How are we supposed to be proud of it, when it’s full of wankers like Charles MacGarioch and those hostel-burning pricks in Edinburgh?
What, we’re supposed to just turn a blind eye and salute the sodding King? ’
TARA:
Don’t forget: P/T conference is TONIGHT!
New time = 1930
Will you be home first?
Good question.
‘And don’t get me started on the politicians!’ Rennie tore at his pie, getting flakes of pastry all down his clip-on tie. ‘Pretending they’re “men of the people” – half these tossers went to private school!’
Logan pecked out a reply with one thumb:
Do my best.
If I’m not home by 7 – go without me and I’ll meet you there.
. . .
Promise.
SEND.
‘Working class? Never done a hard day’s work in their bloody lives!’
Ding-buzz.
TARA:
Logan!
Yeah . . . Had a feeling that wouldn’t go down well.
‘You know why they want to drag us all back to the seventies? It’s cos that’s when they were kids – no responsibilities, no worries, no mortgages, or any of that shite.
Mummy looked after their every need, and you could call people “nig-nog” and get away with it.
’ A grunt. Some angry chewing. ‘Bunch of fucks.’
Logan’s thumb ticked across the teeny keyboard:
Picked up another murder this afternoon. A really nasty one.
But I WILL be there, I swear on Cthulhu’s fuzzy whiskers.
And you couldn’t get a more solemn oath than that.
SEND.
The rear door creaked open and in thumped Tufty – all black and fluorescent yellow, like a radioactive liquorice allsort.
‘Mr Bhattacharjee thinks it was one of the kids from a couple of streets over. They wriggled in through the bathroom window, ransacked his mum’s bedroom – she wasn’t there, on account of being in hospital with the lurgie – and made off with her life’s savings.
About two and a half grand, stashed under the mattress. ’
Logan popped his phone back on the dashboard. ‘Think he might be our killer?’
‘Doesn’t drive. And it’s going to look weird if you call an Uber and ask if it’s OK to pop a body in the boot.’
True.
Logan polished off the last morsel of pie. ‘Starting to think this housebreaking idea of yours is a washout.’
‘Was only a hypothesis, Sarge.’
Rennie crammed in the final toenail-curl of pastry, chewing as he scrunched up the paper bag and lobbed it over his shoulder. Where it just missed Tufty’s head. ‘Stoneywood, ho!’
And off they went again.