Stuart MacBride - In the Cold Dark Ground

‘Logan?’

No.

Couldn’t be.

Could it?

‘Sergeant: I said it’s time to go interview Katie Milne.’

He span around. ‘Paper. I need a newspaper.’ There were a pile of them on the coffee table, in front of the TV with its mute newsreader. Daily Mail, Telegraph, Press and Journal, Scottish Sun . The front pages were a mix of political scandals, showbiz gossip, and atrocities in the Middle East.

Damn it.

‘Sergeant McRae, are you—’

‘Ah!’ Logan lurched over to the recycling bins, lined up between the kitchen area and the vending machines. He knelt, ripped the cover off the paper bin and rummaged inside — throwing hand towels and printouts and sandwich wrappers and cereal boxes and scrunched-up envelopes over his shoulder.

‘Have you gone mad? Narveer, stop him!’

Where the hell was... Ah. Perfect.

Logan stood holding a copy of that morning’s Aberdeen Examiner aloft as if it were Excalibur itself. ‘Got it!’

He slapped it down on the table, face up: ‘HUNT CONTINUES FOR STUDENT EMILY’S KILLER’ above the photo of Emily Benton. ‘You see?’

Narveer held up his hands. ‘OK, Sergeant, I think it’s maybe time you went home and got some sleep.’

‘Look.’ He poked the newspaper with a finger, then the photo from Shepherd’s collection. ‘That’s why she looks familiar.’ The young woman getting spanked was grinning back over her shoulder, half of her face hidden. But it was her.

‘Yeah... No. Don’t see it.’

Logan dragged out his Airwave. ‘Control, I need to speak to someone about the Emily Benton post mortem. Right now.’

‘ Hold on... ’

Narveer grimaced, looking across the explosion of paper debris radiating out from the recycling bins. ‘You said it yourself, it’s been a long day. You’ve been through a lot and—’

A broad Doric accent thumped out of the Airwave’s speaker. ‘ Aye, fa’s this? ’

‘Sergeant McRae, B Division. You got Emily Benton’s PM photos?’

‘ Aye. ’

‘I need any distinguishing features.’

‘ We can have a bash... Tum-tee, tum-tee, tum-tee... Right, here we go: scar on outside of left ankle, strawberry birthmark inside of right thigh, crown on second molar lower left. ’

Harper picked up the photograph and squinted at it. Then held it out to Logan. ‘There.’ A strawberry birthmark, just visible on her inner thigh, below Shepherd’s spanking hand. If you didn’t know what it was, it could easily be mistaken for a shadow. ‘You were right.’

She didn’t have to sound so surprised about it.

Katie Milne shifted on the other side of the table, setting her white oversuit rustling. ‘When will I get my clothes back?’

‘When our forensics lab are finished with them.’ Harper gave Logan the nod.

The interview room was far too hot. Beads of sweat glistened on the forehead of Katie’s lawyer — the same saggy disappointed man who’d represented her husband last time they were in here. He moved his notebook out of the way as Logan laid out the photographs from Shepherd’s bedroom porn collection. One at a time. Slow and deliberate, as if he were dealing tarot cards.

‘Do you recognize any of these women, Mrs Milne?’

She blinked at him, then at the images, then at her lawyer. ‘Barney?’

‘Superintendent Harper, are you deliberately trying to distress my client?’

‘We’re trying to get at the truth, Mr Nelson. Please continue, Sergeant McRae.’

More women joined the ranks on the tabletop. ‘How about now?’

‘Look, this has nothing to do with the unfortunate events surrounding Martin’s death. Please move on.’

The very last picture was Emily Benton, looking back over her shoulder.

Katie flinched.

Harper sat forward. ‘So you recognize her ?’

‘I...’ She licked her lips. ‘No. I’ve never seen her before.’ But she didn’t seem to be able to look away.

Logan put the other faces back in the folder, leaving Emily Benton in the middle of the table. ‘Do you want to tell us about her?’

Katie wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forwards. ‘I didn’t... It... I don’t know.’ She stared at the photograph. ‘I mean, she could—’

‘One moment, please.’ Her lawyer put a hand on her arm. ‘I think, in the circumstances, my client and I need to have a further discussion. We—’

‘He lied to me. When Ethan was born, Martin swore he’d never cheat on me again. He swore .’

‘Katie, I really don’t think this is a good—’

‘I got a text meant for her. He sent it by mistake. There was a... an intimate photograph.’ She ground the palm of her hands into her eyes. ‘He was screwing her.’

‘Katie, please. Let’s take a minute and—’

‘So I did what any good mother would do: I confronted her. Told her she had to stop seeing him. He was my husband. He loved us , not her .’

Harper went to say something, but Logan nudged her with a knee under the table. She closed her mouth.

‘The little bitch laughed; rubbed it in my face.’ Katie bared her teeth, eyes narrowed as she glared at the woman in the photo. ‘Him and her. And she laughed .’ Katie reached out with one hand, placing it flat over the picture. Then crumpled it into her fist. ‘She laughed at me and my family.’

Logan kept his voice low and neutral. ‘And what did you do, Katie?’

‘I made her stop.’ A frown. ‘I don’t know how. One minute we were in the car park, and the next we were in the woods. Her head was all broken and there was a wrench in my hand. It was all... sticky.’ Katie let go of the photograph. Emily Benton’s face was creased and distorted. ‘I left her there.’

Logan nodded. ‘Is that what happened with Peter Shepherd, Katie?’

She blinked at him. ‘I started going through Martin’s pockets. Checking his email. Checking his phone. I needed to know he wasn’t doing it again.’

The radiator growled away to itself, pumping out heat into the already oppressive room.

No one moved.

Then Katie shrugged. ‘I found a receipt for three business-class tickets to Dubai. Him, Ethan, and Peter Shepherd. They were going to work for some firm building roads and bridges on the other side of the world. Martin was going to leave me.’ She bared her teeth. ‘Peter Shepherd was going to take my family away from me.’

Her solicitor sighed. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t say anything more, Katie?’

‘You wouldn’t believe how he cried. Pleading and bawling, all covered in bruises on the forest floor. And Martin begging me to stop...’

‘Katie. Please.’

‘Then all that stuff in the papers. The Emily bitch wasn’t a one-off mistake, there were dozens of them. And him and Peter. The sex. The dirty filthy lying bastard. He promised me. He swore!’

Logan leaned forward. ‘Whose idea was it to pretend that gangsters killed Peter Shepherd?’

She frowned at him. ‘You’d have found his body sooner or later: Martin said we had to make it look like someone else did it. That he could make it look convincing. That he could lie about some Edinburgh heavy lending Peter money and you’d jump to all the wrong conclusions.’

And he’d been right.

‘Where’s the money now?’

‘I knew GCML was in trouble, but I didn’t know it was going bankrupt. Not till then.’ She laughed, short and bitter. ‘Two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds embezzled from the company. They thought they could run away to Dubai and set up house before anyone noticed what they’d done. Can you believe that? Oh yes, they’d be fine, but what about me ?’ Katie curled her top lip. ‘When the bank forecloses on the company and repossesses our home? What was I supposed to do?’