Chapter 30
The pale granite lumps of the Central Library and Saint Mark’s gave way to the pale granite lump of His Majesty’s Theatre – whose name was finally topical again after seventy years.
About a dozen little kids skipped along the pavement towards it, all wearing knitted pink onesies with oversized ears – being shepherded by a trio of adults dressed as the Grim Reaper.
Scythes glinting in the baking light as a heat haze shimmered above the tarmac on Rosemount Viaduct.
Bet sweat was cascading down their bumcracks.
Going by the posters outside the theatre, they were off to see ‘SKELETON BOB & THE UNFEASIBLY LARGE SHEEP!’
Jammy bastards.
Because Logan was heading back to the office, windows rolled down, radio chattering away to itself.
‘. . . but here’s a wee traffic update before the six o’clock bulletin: Holburn Street has just reopened!
So that’s the good news. The bad news is you’ve got another hour of me to endure, before Stevie B’s Preload Playlist.’ Honks and twiddles and whooshing noises blared out of the speakers in a ‘comedic’ fashion.
‘Tell you what, let’s squeeze in a quick tune, shall we?
Here’s the Brigadoon Tourist Board with their new single: “The Whale That Ate The World”. Aaaaaaaaaall aboard!’
Cue indie guitars and someone wanging the hell out of a drumkit.
Wonder if there was a special school DJs went to, where they learned how to be massive arseholes? Honk-honk, ding, wibble! And now here’s another heeeeeeeeeeeeelarious wind-up call!
Tossers.
Well, maybe not all of them, but still . . .
A singer joined the music:
‘Still afloat, in my old boat, and I can’t stop,
Antidote, for every note, over-the-top,
Scapegoat, it’s so cutthroat,
and I-I-I-I-I-I ride these waves!’
Logan’s Airwave joined in with a trio of bleeps. He pulled the thing out. Fumbling with the buttons one-handed and switching the radio off at the same time.
When he looked up again, the bus shelter was stampeding straight towards the pool car’s bonnet.
Logan stamped on the brakes – the nearside front wheel skiffing off the kerb as he wrenched the steering wheel right. Getting out of the bus lane and back where he was meant to be.
No one saw that, right?
Hopefully . . .
He pressed the Airwave button and told a teeny white lie: ‘Safe to talk.’
Rennie’s voice joined him in the car. ‘Got some updates for you, Guv.’
Logan checked the dashboard clock: nearly six o’clock. ‘Thought you’d have gone home by now.’
‘Urgh . . . Sore point. Half of us are on compulsory green shifts. And that’s not the worst of it: we’re all back in frigging uniform!
Itchy trousers and nylon T-shirts, because “we need a visible police presence to reassure the public” .
. .’ A wet raspberry noise rattled free.
‘Sod the public. What did the public ever do for me?’
‘What is it with people whinging at me today?’ Straight through at the roundabout onto Schoolhill, past the Cowdray Hall with its columned war memorial and carved lion statue – currently wearing a traffic cone on its head, because why should Glasgow’s Duke of Wellington get all the fun?
‘I’m not your agony aunt. If you need therapy I can easily swap you out for Tufty.
The wee loon did good today, with the sex-offender-break-ins thing. ’
‘No! It’s fine. Team player all the way, Guv.’ Some rustling of paperwork. ‘Got a positive match on the victim’s remains. DNA matches samples from the bedroom – hairbrush, manscaping razor, that kinda stuff. The body in the river is definitely Andrew Shaw.’
Really?
‘Pathology said “definitely”?’
‘Course they didn’t. They couched it in “high probability that”s and “on the balance of probability it’s likely”s, but unless our victim broke into Shaw’s bedroom to shave their balls, it’s definitely him.’
Now there was an image.
Looked as if Mrs Shaw’s heart was getting broken after all.
‘Someone needs to deliver the death message to his mother.’
‘Biohazard’s on his way now.’ Rennie puffed out a heavy breath. ‘Don’t envy him that one: “Sorry, Missus, your wee boy’s dead – someone bashed his brains in and dumped him in the river. Oh, and by the way, turns out you raised a rapey wee shite.”’
Yeah . . .
Logan checked the clock again. ‘Get your bum out front – I’ll pick you up on Broad Street.’
‘Cool.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And don’t worry: I won’t tell You-Know-Who.
We can have some decent grown-up conversation without Constable Sodding Quirrel wanging on about particle physics and who’d win in a fight: Stephen Hawking or Davros.
I mean, everyone knows Davros’s chair is equipped with Dalek—’
Logan ended the call.
He dawdled past the old Robert Gordon’s building – now turned into some sort of ‘tech hub’ – and the ‘UNIQUE DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY’ that used to be the old student union, and the old .
. . whatever it was the Academy shopping centre used to be before it became a shopping centre.
Probably an academy, going by the name. Then past the hairdressers that used to be a museum and art gallery.
Giving Rennie time to escape from the office and meet him out front.
And yes, technically Logan was meant to go back to the station and give a formal statement about what happened on Holburn Street, but there were things to be getting on with.
A ding-buzz sounded deep in his pocket, but he wasn’t daft enough to read text messages while driving.
Not after nearly totalling a bus stop . . .
Schoolhill turned into a pedestrian-and-cycle zone at the crossroads with Back Wynd and Harriet Street, but Logan flickered the pool car’s blue lights and drove down it anyway.
Rebel that he was.
St Nicholas Kirk appeared between the graveyard trees, then he was at the bottom of the hill, waiting for the lights to change as sweaty people with carrier bags streamed from one bit of the Bon Accord Centre across the road to the other bit.
A rookery of nuns in black habits were busking outside the Bank of Scotland, playing a weird mash-up of punk, folk, and techno, singing away as they rocked out on guitars, decks, tambourine, double bass, and a cajon.
They seemed to be having a great time, even if no one was paying any attention to them.
On the opposite side of the street, a miserable clown handed out flyers. Clearly regretting his career choice and wishing he’d become a nun instead.
The lights changed and Schoolhill turned into Upperkirkgate.
Logan did some more dawdling.
Sure there used to be a Blackwell’s bookshop here. God knew what it was now – maybe the games shop? And what happened to the Tasty Tattie?
That was the trouble with getting older: everything changed . . .
Well, except for The Kirkgate bar.
At the top of the street, Logan turned right, and Marischal College reared into view, a jagged granite confection of narrow windows, mini-spires, and assorted pointy bits, all sparkling in the early evening sunshine.
Facing off against the miserable row of ugly grey Rubik’s cubes that went up to replace the old council buildings.
Like a jobbie, plonked down beside a wedding cake.
And speaking of jobbies – there was Rennie, leaning back against the plinth that Robert the Bruce’s horse stood on.
Brucie himself, sat in the saddle, cast in bronze, holding aloft the 1319 Stocket Charter .
. . but to be honest, it looked as if the statue was trying to send a message to someone in the horrible office building opposite.
Like the final scene of a very strange romcom.
Rennie probably thought he looked dead cool, standing there, with one foot up on the granite behind him, in the full Police Scotland uniform, wearing a pair of oversized sunglasses that gave him the air of a seventies lothario.
Logan pulled up and Rennie peered out over the top of his shades, before swaggering over and popping the passenger door.
What a knob.
‘Guv.’ He was in the middle of fastening his seatbelt, when a smaller, pointier figure scurried across the pedestrian area, waving at them.
Tufty.
He piled in the back. ‘That was close! Thought I was going to miss you, there.’
Rennie’s mouth pinched, back stiffening.
Logan turned in his seat. ‘I think DS Rennie was hoping for some quality time.’
Big grin from Tufty. ‘Don’t mind me.’
Rennie took off his sunglasses and glared. ‘Oh, but we do.’
‘No fighting, children.’ Putting the car in gear and heading for Union Street.
‘Don’t you have anything better to do, Constable?’
‘Depends on your definition of “better”, Sarge.’ Tufty leaned forwards, so his head poked through the gap between the seats.
‘The Ominous Harbinger Of Ultimate Doom is on a bit of a rampage at the moment, on account of having to be back in uniform, so it’s best to stay out of the way.
’ He gave Rennie a wee pat on the shoulder.
‘“The Ominous Harbinger Of Ultimate Doom”: that’s Detective Sergeant Steel.
It’s one of the nicknames me and Sarge have for her. ’
‘I know who she is! I’ve worked with her longer than—’
‘Apparently all her uniform trousers have “shrunk in the wash” again, so she’s got IBS. Incredibly Belligerent Sergeant syndrome.’
‘And for your information: I was calling her “Wrinkles McBumFace” when you were still in short trousers!’
Logan stopped at the lights, watching the buses rumble across the box junction and the flattened corpse of a big fat seagull. Too slow or too old to get out of the way of whatever turned it into a feathery pedestal mat. ‘Can the pair of you just, for one teeny tiny minute, focus on the case?’
Rennie snorted. ‘Which one?’ Holding up both hands to count them off: ‘We’ve got Andrew Shaw’s murder, Charles MacGarioch on the run, drugs in Lithuanian teddy bears, the break-ins at all those sports shops, car thefts, burglaries—’
‘All right, all right. We get it.’ He scowled up at the lights, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.
OK.
‘I need a PNC check on one Graeme Anderson.’