Chapter 24
Logan clunked the pool car’s door shut, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare as a white plane with a red-tartan tail scrambled into the sky, propellers going like the clappers.
The tiny bungalow they’d parked outside sat in the middle of a row of dilapidated wooden sheds. Isolated from the rest of the street. As if the other houses were scared of catching something.
It didn’t even have a strip of pavement outside.
This was ‘SAOR ALBA’, according to the nameplate screwed to the wall by the gate.
Grey harled walls, lichen-greened slate roof, the woodwork peeling and in need of a paint.
The front garden was a bit of a mess too.
But the building backed onto a field of barley – rapidly losing its green tinge as it slowly baked – so at least the view was nice.
If you didn’t mind being on the Aberdeen Airport flight path . . .
Rennie climbed out and pulled on a pair of shades. ‘Lonnnng way from Duthie Park.’
With insights like that, it was amazing he hadn’t made Inspector yet.
Logan opened the garden gate, setting it groaning and squealing like a haunted pig, then marched over to the front door. Rapping on the wood with his knuckles.
‘This is all a waste of time, isn’t it.’ Rennie scuffed down the short path, following him. ‘Stupid idea.’ Casting a scowl back towards Tufty – currently gazing out across the field, like a badly dressed garden gnome.
A muffled, ‘Hold on . . .’ came through the door, then it swung open and a small woman appeared.
Sixty-something? With grey hair, jeans, clogs, and a lime-green sweatshirt that had ‘END OF EMPIRE’ embroidered across the chest, along with some twee thistles.
Looking rumpled and a bit confused as she blinked out at Logan and Rennie . . . then sagged in disappointment.
Again: always nice to feel wanted.
Logan pulled on a professional smile. ‘Mrs Shaw? We’re here about your break-in.’
‘Oh?’ Peering around them at the street beyond, clearly looking for something. Or someone. It can’t have been Tufty, though, because seeing him just caused her to sag even more. ‘I thought you lot didn’t bother your backsides for anything less than a full-on murder these days.’
Logan spread his arms wide. ‘And yet: here we are.’
She let out a tut, then a long-suffering sigh. ‘You’d better come in then.’
Wow.
The tiny room looked as if someone had been through it with a petrol strimmer. Film posters hung in tatters from the walls, the bed lay on its side, the mattress slashed. Every drawer hung wide open, their contents flung about; wardrobe too.
A small desk – the kind kids were given to do their homework at was missing a leg, leaving it tipped back at a drunken angle. All its drawers were open too, but there was no sign of the contents. Nothing computery on the floor or wedged on top of other broken things.
Mrs Shaw turned in place, flapping her arms like a lime-green penguin. ‘I mean look at it! What sort of animal does this to a wee boy’s bedroom?’ Pointing at the piles of clothes. ‘All his things.’
Logan stepped back out into the hall.
It was tiny too. But then this was a tiny house.
Paintings of Scottish pastoral scenes dotted the walls, between five doors leading off. Two hung open, revealing a tidy little lounge and a tidy little kitchen.
He tried the other three: tidy little bathroom, tidy little linen closet, and a tidy little bedroom.
Hmmm . . .
Logan stepped back into the maelstrom, where Mrs Shaw was picking up a pair of black boxer shorts – folding them, then turning around again, trying to find somewhere tidy to put the things.
‘And they didn’t touch anything else? Just your son’s room?’
She put the boxer shorts on the wonky desk and plucked another pair of pants from the floor. ‘I don’t know what Andrew will say when he gets home. They took his new laptop!’
‘But you didn’t hear anything?’
‘Well, I was fast asleep, wasn’t I. Soon as I’ve taken my pills, I’m out like a badger.’ Her shoulders dipped. ‘Came through to see if Andrew wanted a boiled egg for his breakfast and found . . . this.’
Not the best start to the day.
Logan snapped on a pair of gloves. ‘And where was your son when all this happened?’
‘Oh, he was out. Probably at a girl’s house.’ A smile. ‘Thinks I don’t know, but he’s just like his father: proper ladies’ man. Well, he is very handsome.’
She rescued a photo from the messy floor and held it out: a professional headshot, eight-by-ten, of a young man with a strangely .
. . plastic face. Tidy little beard to go with the tidy little house, black hair swept back from a perfectly smooth forehead, plucked eyebrows, teeth so white they probably glowed in the dark.
Sort of handsome, in a Made-By-Mattel way.
A curly signature was superimposed over the bottom of the image, with the words ‘ANDREW WALLACE SHAW ~ AVAILABLE FOR MODELLING AND ACTING WORK’ and a mobile number.
So much for ‘wee boy’.
Mrs Shaw let out a wistful breath. ‘Not that his dad hung around for very long. Wandering eye to go with the wandering hands.’
Logan turned – surveying the wreckage again. ‘Jealous or jilted boyfriend, maybe? Or a girl he’s dumped?’
That got him a scowl. ‘My Andrew’s not some sort of . . . homewrecker! He’s been raised right. A good boy. I made certain of that!’
‘I’m sure he is, but we have to ask this stuff.’ Logan had a poke around in the debris. Clothes mostly, with the occasional airport paperback thrown in. ‘How did they get in? Your burglar.’
‘Don’t know. I was asleep, remember? But when I woke up the back door was lying wide open.
And you can tell the insurance people I always lock it!
’ She folded another pair of scattered undies.
‘All they ever do is work out ways not to pay what they owe. What’s the point of insurance if they never honour their end of it? ’
‘Uh-huh.’
Something went crunch under his foot.
Logan lifted a V-neck T-shirt out of the way and frowned at what he’d stepped on. An oval tube, wide as a hardback book, but plastic, camouflage-coloured, with some sort of elasticated strapping attached to one end.
He was bending down to pick it up when his phone burst into song, blaring out ‘Ecce Homo, Qui Est Faba’. Which could only mean one thing: Biohazard.
‘Sorry: I’d better take this.’ Poking the green icon. ‘DI Marshall, what can I do for you?’
‘If you’re not safe to talk, find somewhere you are.’
Yeah . . . That didn’t sound good.
Logan put his hand over the microphone. ‘Wonder if I could bother you for a cup of tea, Mrs Shaw. If it’s not too much bother, of course?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘And I thought it was just lazy writing on all those TV shows.’ But she shuffled off anyway.
He closed the door behind her. ‘OK. Safe to talk.’
‘Got a rush job back from the labs: DNA on our victim. No ID as yet, but we’ve got a hit on five unsolved rapes.’
‘Shite . . .’ Checking the door was definitely shut. ‘Sounds as if Tufty was right.’
‘He’s a creeper – gets into people’s houses in the wee small hours. Targets single mothers.’ A grunt. ‘We’re going to need more bodies – preferably female officers – to visit the victims and check for alibis. Don’t want to add to the trauma.’
That wasn’t going to be an easy conversation.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Logan picked up whatever it was he’d stood on, turning it over in his hand.
Looked like a pair of binoculars, only much higher-tech. The lenses were all cracked, and so was the camouflage-green casing as if someone had stamped and stamped and stamped on it. Leaving wires poking out and bits of circuit board on show.
‘Not sure if it’ll come as a relief or not – knowing someone’s battered the bastard to death and chucked him in the river.’
‘Better not mention that bit. At least, not till we get an OK from the PF . . .’ Logan weighed the fancy binoculars in his hand. Looked around at the wreckage. ‘Biohazard: this creeper of yours – do the victims remember anything specific about him?’
‘Hold on . . .’ There were some rustling noises.
‘Dead of night . . . Here we go: dressed all in black, wearing a ski-mask with big sharp teeth printed on it. Like a monster’s grin.
Threatens them with a dirty big knife – “Make a sound and I’ll slit your throat, then rape your kids . . .”’ A breath. ‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Whoever did for this fucker: we should throw them a parade.’
‘The victims say anything else?’
‘Only that it was dark the whole time – he never put the lights on.’
Yeah, but how did he navigate a strange house in the dark . . .?
Wires and circuit boards.
Maybe they weren’t binoculars? Maybe they were night-vision goggles.
And maybe Mrs Shaw’s ‘wee boy’ wasn’t such an angel after all . . .
Logan leaned back against the pool car, phone to his ear. ‘No comment.’
A wave of noise washed across the street as an orange-and-white jet swooped down towards the airport – roaring in over the field, then disappearing behind a block of flats at the end of the road.
Sadly, the din faded away, and Colin Miller became audible again: ‘Seems like it’s your day for finding treats from the deep, but. First it’s Charles MacGarioch’s jacket, now his body.’
‘And again: no comment.’
‘C’mon Laz, don’t be an arse. Haven’t had my meeting with the new owner, yet – assuming she ever deigns to turn up. Be nice if I had a wee scooparoonie to show off my skills, but.’
There was still no sign of Tufty or Rennie. Hopefully the pair of them were doing a decent job of pretending to be an SOC team. Only without the scrunchy white suits and grubby Transit van.
‘You should get your ears checked, Colin. Man your age – hearing’s the first thing to go. That and the willy.’
‘OK, how about this: any comment on the old dears you traumatised yesterday, chasing that ice-cream truck into the river?’
Logan scowled out at the barley. ‘No one was traumatised! No matter what crap you printed this morning.’