Стюарт Макбрайд - Now We Are Dead

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ Then for some bizarre reason she did a proper about-face turn and marched from the room, back straight, arms swinging as if she was back on the parade ground at Tulliallan.

Nice bum too.

Before she’d managed to close the door behind her, Roberta launched into, ‘Kate and Tufty, sitting in a tree, H.U.M.P.I.N.G.’

Ah young love...

The cursor blinked at her on the computer screen.

Should really get back to those forms.

Nah, sod that. It was half six on a balmy Tuesday in Aberdeen. Time to go home, crack out the barbecue, get Susan a bit squiffy on sauvignon blanc and take advantage of her.

There’d be time for crappy paperwork tomorrow.

Sunlight washed in through the French doors, making the kitchen work surface gleam like an oiled stripper.

Susan took a sheet of paper and pinned it to the fridge door amongst all the other kids’ pictures: frogs, princesses, unicorns, dragons, and monster trucks. All of which looked as if they’d been done during Picasso’s Off His Face period. The new one was some sort of dinosaur/unicorn hybrid wearing a pirate hat.

She still had a lovely arse — Susan, no’ the dinosaur — firm and round and spankable. The kind of bum you could really sink your teeth into. The rest of her wasn’t bad either. A curvier Doris Day in her heyday, wearing a sundress covered in little pink flowers. Shame about the Crocs, though.

The perpetrator of the fridge’s latest artistic travesty was sitting at the breakfast bar, shovelling cornflakes into her gob and swilling down the orange juice. Her wee sister, on the other hand, wheeched round and round the floor with a toy truck, making roaring noises.

The toast went chlack! and Susan fished it out. Dumped both slices on a plate. ‘Come on, Robbie, it wouldn’t kill you to speak to the man.’

Roberta took hold of the litter tray and gave it a shake, evening out the wooden pellets and making dark things rise from the depths. She scooped them out with a plastic bag. Held it up for the world to see. ‘Oh look, Mr Rumpole’s made a little Logan McRae! Isn’t that clever? Looks just like him.’

‘The girls need to see their father.’

The turd went in the bin, and her hands went under the tap. ‘Am I stopping them?’

‘I’m serious .’

‘And I’m late.’ She kissed Jasmine on the head—

‘Gerroffus, Mum.’

— swept Naomi up for a hug and a kiss.

Giggles.

Then groped that magnificent arse of Susan’s, gave her a smooch, accepted the proffered slices of hot buttered toast and swept from the room.

Susan’s voice thumped out from the kitchen as Roberta marched down the hall. ‘Don’t be late tonight! We’re going to see that play. And remember to pick up my trophy from the engravers!’

‘Love you.’

Photos of every family holiday they’d ever taken lined the walls. Just the two of them in Benidorm, Margate, Normandy, Shetland, Edinburgh, Wales. Half a dozen pictures of Susan on her own, showing off her latest golfing trophy. That trip to New York when Susan was six months pregnant. Then more holidays with the addition of a teeny weeny Jasmine — getting bigger and bigger. And finally: all four of them on the sands at Lossiemouth, everyone but Naomi grinning at the camera — she was too busy trying to eat a flip-flop.

Roberta grabbed her jacket from the coat rack, chomping on toast as she plucked car keys from the bowl and pulled out her phone. Bumping out the front door, dialling and chewing all at the same time. Multitasking.

Sunlight dappled through the trees, making leopard-spot shadows undulate across the garden. Next door were getting their roof redone — the whole place shrouded in scaffolding, their builders far too well behaved to wolf whistle. Well, Rubislaw Den was a classy area. Couldn’t have riff-raff swinging from the scaffolding with their sexual harassment and hairy arse-cracks on show.

Barrett’s voice sounded in her ear, all efficient and polite. ‘CID office, can I help you?’

‘Aye, aye, Davey. Is everyone in?’

‘In and working, Sarge.’

‘God, that’ll be a first.’ She plipped the locks on her MX-5 and clambered in behind the wheel. Propped the toast up on the dashboard. ‘What about Beatrice Edwards?’

‘Your rape victim? Nothing so far.’

She started the car and pulled away from the kerb. ‘But they’ve arrested that crenelated fudgemonkey Wallace, right?’

‘Actually, the word of the day is—’

‘Don’t mess with me today, Davey.’

‘Sorry, Sarge.’

She turned left at the bottom of the street, past rows and rows of pale granite homes. ‘I’m off to pick up Tufty. With any luck that bash on the head will have dunted some sense into it.’

‘Well, we can always dream, can’t— Oops. Hold on, got a visitor.’

A muffled voice in the background sounded suspiciously like Detective Chief Infector Simon Stinky Rutherford. ‘Where’s Detective Sergeant Steel?’

‘Don’t you dare, Davey!’

‘Sir. She’s just left to collect Constable Quirrel from the hospital.’

‘Oh. Good. And what about these phones and things: progress?’

‘Tell him to jam them up his fundamental orifice.’

‘Got our first batch of people coming in to collect their property later today.’

‘Excellent. Well, keep up the good work, and tell DS Steel I need to see her as soon as she gets back. Top priority.’

‘Will do, sir.’ He lowered his voice, all conspiratorial. ‘You get that?’

‘Oh I can hardly wait.’

She locked her MX-5 and sauntered across the car park, puffing away on her fake cigarette. Making clouds of watermelon steam. That was the trouble with real cigarettes, they didn’t come in fun fruity flavours. And ‘menthol’ didn’t count. That was just like smoking a rolled-up old person.

Anyway: twenty to nine and the hospital car park was already crowded with the usual collection of rustbuckets and massive four-by-fours that never had to deal with anything more ‘off-road’ than the potholes on Great Western Road.

Nice day, though. Warm and sunny.

What was that, four days in a row? Probably due a monsoon by the end of the week, then. Or snow. After all, it was only July. Probably be sledging down School Hill in—

The harsh breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep of a car horn made her jump, then scuffle off to the side as a hatchback growled past on lowered suspension and alloy rims. Peugeot 208 with an oversized spoiler and a neon-orange paintjob. The wee turd behind the wheel couldn’t have been much past seventeen: a baseball cap on backwards and a pair of oversized dark sunglasses perched on a long nose. Young woman in the passenger seat.

The words ‘TOMMY & JOSIE’ were printed on a strip at the top of the windscreen. Did people really still do that?

And it was a bit early in the day for boy racers too.

The Peugeot stopped at the end of the row, as close as you could actually get to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in a car these days. Then the passenger door popped open and the young woman got out. Blonde hair long enough to reach the small of her back, a mole on her right cheek. She turned and blew a kiss back into the car, with pouty red lips.

Well, well, well. If it wasn’t the star of Tufty’s erotic bathroom photo shoot — the one on the stolen phone. Which meant the guy behind the wheel was the phone’s owner. Just as well he was barely out of nappies, because in real life, with her clothes on, his photographic model didn’t look a day over fifteen. Skin-tight jeans, bright-red crop top, denim jacket, and shiny-white trainers with three-inch soles.