Стюарт Макбрайд - All That’s Dead

Rennie poked his head in from the hall. ‘Anyway, yeah, so we’re the ones that keep everything working. Without PSD there’d be no rule of law.’

A fridge sat under the tiny worktop. Logan squatted down and opened it. Milk and beer. Butter and cheese. Some unidentifiable green sludge in the salad drawer. A packet of sausages on the shelves two days past its sell-by date.

‘The law only exists as long as the general population have faith in it. We’re the ones maintaining that faith.’

He tried the washing machine, rearing back as the hard sharp stench of wet clothes left in there too long jabbed out. ‘Urgh...’ He clunked the door shut again.

‘Yeah, I hate it when the towels go all widdly like that. Who wants to dry themselves on something that smells like a tramp’s peed on it?’

The cupboard next to the washing machine was full of whisky bottles, the vast majority of which were supermarket own-brand, all of them cheap looking, and none of them with more than a dribble left in the bottom.

Logan stood. ‘What’s your impression of DI King?’

‘Oh yes.’ Rennie rolled his eyes, then put on a decent impersonation of King’s Highland burr. ‘“Sergeant, there’s five hundred and thirty-three English MPs and only fifty-nine Scottish ones.”’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘What a shock: England gets more MPs than we do. There’s ten times more people living down there than live up here, what do you expect? Pfff... Man’s a broken record.’

Logan closed the cupboard door. ‘Last room.’

The flat’s only bedroom wasn’t exactly huge. A wall of mirrored wardrobes did their best to make the place look larger, but it was an uphill struggle. A double bed took up most of the floor, the only other bit of furniture being a chair in the corner covered in discarded clothes. There wasn’t even space for a bedside cabinet.

Logan pointed at their reflections. ‘Check the wardrobe.’ Then dug into the pile of clothes, fabric squeaking against his nitrile gloves. Socks, pants, trousers, shirts, all needing a wash.

‘So, where was I?’ Rennie went for a rummage. ‘Ah, right: without Professional Standards you get anarchy, rioting, looting, chaos, dogs and cats living together...’ Silence.

‘What?’ Logan looked over from the pile of rumpled clothes. ‘Find something?’

‘Nah.’ Rennie’s reflection frowned back at him from the wardrobe door. ‘You know what I think?’

‘Suicide.’ Was the obvious conclusion.

‘Only we’ve not had any John Does turn up at the mortuary. I checked.’

‘You try the hospitals?’

His head disappeared inside the wardrobe again. ‘If I said yes, would you believe me?’

Nope.

Logan dumped the last shirt on the floor, then heaved up the corner of the mattress and peered underneath. Nothing. He let it fall back again with a spring-echoing whump. ‘Let’s go see if we can find Councillor Lansdale’s car.’

You had to be a special kind of soulless monster to work in the Aberdeen Planning Department — it was the only explanation possible. Surely no human being would’ve granted permission to build houses and flats this bland, depressing, and lifeless.

A few forlorn trees wilted in the heat, leaves curling at the edges. The tiny squares of grass, little more than yellowy scrub. Nothing in the car park outside Lansdale’s building responded to the fob on his car key.

Logan pointed it at the other side and tried again. None of the lights flashed.

Rennie ran a finger around the collar of his black T-shirt. ‘God it’s boiling...’

OK, time to try the street.

Logan walked out into the middle of the road and pressed the button.

Still nothing.

‘Urgh...’ Rennie fanned himself with his peaked cap. ‘Remember the good old days when it got warmer gradually and you had the chance to acclimatise?’

Other side of the road.

Yet more nothing.

Maybe Lansdale had parked somewhere else? Got drunk and took a taxi back to the flat?

‘Nowadays: today it’s hot, tomorrow it’s cold, then tepid, then baking, then cold again. How are you supposed to get used to that?’

Logan turned the corner, where the depressing flats gave way to depressing houses — all tiny and squeezed in.

Rennie scuffed along beside him. ‘Scotland’s not meant to have twenty-five-degree heat, it’s not natural. We’re a race of gingery people! Anything past eighteen degrees and we melt.’

One last go.

Logan held up the fob, pushed the button, and an old, black, Ford Mondeo flashed its lights in reply. Bingo.

He marched over and peered in through the window. Lansdale’s car was a lot tidier than his flat.

Rennie kicked the front tyre. ‘Well, at least we know he didn’t perform the old hose-from-the-exhaust trick.’

‘Just to be on the safe side.’ Logan unlocked the Mondeo’s boot and popped the lid... Holy mother of stink ! A rancid tsunami crashed out of the boot, the sweet stomach-churning stench of rotting meat burying him as he staggered backwards, waving a hand in front of his face, the other clutched over his nose and mouth. It was so strong you could taste it — bitter and rancid.

Rennie blanched. ‘Oh no... It’s not a dead body, is it?’

‘Jesus...’ Logan blinked, turned his head away for a clean breath of air, then tried again.

Asda carrier bags filled the Mondeo’s boot, their contents slumped and oozing. What was left of a free-range chicken clearly visible in all its swollen mouldy glory. ‘He’s left his weekly shop in the boot, in this heat, for a week.’

Rennie took one look, gagged, then retreated. ‘Ooh, I’m gonna be sick.’

Logan clunked the boot closed again. Backed away. ‘Check the hospitals.’

Grey granite buildings slid past the Audi’s windows, sparkling in the sunlight. The people, not so much. Oh, they’d embraced the summer with T-shirts and shorts, but seemed to have forgotten the sunscreen. It was like driving through a city populated by lobsters.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Rennie nodded. ‘OK, thanks. Bye.’ He stuffed his phone in his pocket. ‘No sign of Councillor Lansdale anywhere. The only John Doe I could find in the northeast was an auld mannie who got hit by a bus in Elgin.’

‘Well, maybe we—’

Logan’s phone launched into ‘Space Oddity’ and seconds later ‘BEHOLD THE GREAT TUFTINO!’ appeared on the centre console, as the hands-free kit connected.

What?

Why ‘BEHOLD THE GREAT TUFTINO!’? Pretty certain the wee spud was filed under ‘Tufty’ in his contacts list.

Logan shook his head and thumbed the button on the steering wheel. ‘Tufty? Have you done something to my phone?’

His voice boomed out of the car’s speakers. ‘Loop quantum gravity’s even weirder than I thought, it’s totally awesome. I has a fascinated!’

He had an idiot, more like.

‘Have you found out who sent the first tweet yet, or not?’

‘Oh, the tweet : no. No, we’re still running that.’

Some days, people just begged for a kick up the backside. ‘Have you done any work at all?’

‘See, diffeomorphism invariance and background independence mean there’s a definable minimum size to things like time and space and—’

‘How long?’

‘Ten to the minus thirty-five metres, but the smallest volume is ten to the minus hundred and five cubic metres, and that means—’

‘No, you idiot, how long before you find out who sent that tweet?’

There was a pause as more Lobster People from the Planet Too-Ginger-To-Be-In-The-Sun went by.

‘Tufty?’

‘No way of knowing. We’ve got forty-two massive servers churning their way through Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. But it could take months.’