Стюарт Макбрайд: Now We Are Dead

She didn’t... Did she? Was this supposed to be some sort of sex thing? Dragging him into the gents to have her wicked way with him?

Noooooooooo!

Not that she wasn’t — well, let’s be honest she really wasn’t — but it was still sexual harassment!

Tufty backed off a couple of paces. ‘Er... It... I mean, I’m flattered and I’m sure you’re a lovely—’

She slapped a hand over his mouth. Stared at the toilet door.

Which began to open.

‘Eek!’ She dragged him and his box backwards, thumping open a cubicle door and shoving him inside. Squeezed in there with him and swung the door shut, catching it at the last moment so it wouldn’t bang.

Her body was warm, pressed against him like that — the toilet roll holder digging into the small of his back.

He opened his mouth to complain but she just tightened her grip on his face and pulled panicked faces.

‘Shhhh!’

A voice bounced back and forth against the tiles outside their cubicle. ‘Inspector McRae.’

And then the Sarge’s voice: ‘Charlie.’

Well, not ‘Sarge’ any more, not since the promotion, but old habits and all that.

Piddling noises joined the echo chamber.

Steel adopted a hissing whisper, the words barely audible. ‘What the hell is he doing here? Supposed to be in Bucksburn with the rest of his Satan-worshipping mates!’

Tufty tried for: ‘I don’t think you’re being very fair to Sergeant McRae,’ but all that came out was, ‘Mmmphnnn, gnnnnphnnn innng, pfffnnnnggg,’ muffled by her hand. And where was that weird garlicky-onion taste coming from?

Steel shook her head. ‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’

Someone’s phone burst into an upbeat ringtone.

McRae answered it. ‘Hello?... Hi, Susan... Yes, looking forward to it. Erm, will she be there?’

OK, another go: please get your stinky oniony hand off my mouth. ‘Mmnnff, ffnnnphm mnnnnfffnn nnnnnnffn mmmmnf ff mmnnfff.’

She shrugged, keeping her voice low. ‘Well... look on the bright side: at least he’s no’ in the cubicle next to us making smells. Bloody place stinks like a dead tramp’s Y-fronts as it is.’

‘No, not a problem for me, but you know how she gets... Yeah.’

‘Mmnph?’

Steel glowered at him. ‘Don’t you dare!’

A hand dryer roared, drowning everything else out. Then clunk , the door closed.

Steel peeled her oniony hand from Tufty’s mouth. ‘Is he gone?’

Urgchhhh. He machine-gunned out a barrage of teeny spits. ‘Your hands taste horrible!’

She stuck her ear against the cubicle door, just next to a bit of biro graffiti about what a lovely bottom some PC named Mackenzie had. ‘Maybe we’d better wait a bit? Just in case.’

He shifted his grip on the evidence crate. ‘Listen, while we’re here—’

‘Don’t care what freaky sexual fantasy you’ve got, the answer’s no.’

‘Shudder!’ He shook his head. ‘No: the Blackburn Onanist — I’ve been thinking. They say the events are all random, right? But I has a clever!’

‘Shhh!’ She slapped a hand over his mouth again. ‘Was that the door? Did you hear the door?’

He wriggled free. ‘The first time he goes out for a wank, he has another one the very next day. Then it’s twenty-five days till he does it again. Then twenty-eight days. Then seven—’

‘All right, Rain Man.’

‘—Then sixteen. Then one. Then eleven— Ow!’

The rotten sod hit him.

Steel’s voice went back to its smoky whisper. ‘There’s someone out there!’

He copied her, so quiet even he could barely hear it. ‘Then sixteen, then one, then six—’

And again with the oniony hand: squeezing his cheeks so he couldn’t escape this time.

The cubicle door swung open and there was Inspector Evans, with a copy of the Racing Post tucked under one arm. A look of horror spread across his face. ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’

Steel let go of Tufty’s face, reached out, and grabbed the door. ‘Do you mind? I’ve got this meeting room booked till seven.’ Then pulled it shut again and snibbed on the lock.

‘Hello?’

‘Anyway...’ Tufty gave up on the whispering. ‘There was this article in New Scientist about some new open-source pattern recognition software they’re using to re-examine the data from the Large Hadron Collider — which is completely super cool — and I thought, why not apply it to the Blackburn wanking dates?’

She sighed at him. ‘I need a big success, Tufty, no’ a bunch of wee kid shoplifters. No’ some pervert playing slap-the-Womble in other people’s back gardens. A big success.’

Inspector Evans’s voice took on an imperious tone. ‘I insist you come out of there this instant!’

‘Yeah, but listen: I modelled the whole sequence with the days and dates. He never plays with himself on a Monday or Wednesday, or at the weekend.’

‘Do you have any idea how hard it is to work your way back up to detective chief inspector?’

‘And he’s got these blocks where nothing happens at all. So I thinks to myself, “What if he’s a shift worker?” Eh?’

Evans knocked on the door, rattling it. ‘You can’t be in here, this is the gents!’

Steel bared her teeth. ‘Use another cubicle, this one’s occupied!’

‘Right, that’s it — I’m calling Professional Standards. We’ll see what they say about this.’

She opened the door and stepped out. ‘OK, OK, we were just leaving anyway.’ Snapped her fingers. ‘Detective Constable Quirrel: heel!’

Inspector Evans stared after them. Then ruffled his copy of the Racing Post , shuddered, and stepped into another cubicle.

Tufty dumped the evidence crate alongside the other ones — pretty much covering the creaky desk in the corner. ‘So, anyway: if it’s just him working shifts it’d be a more straightforward pattern, wouldn’t it?’

Did the wee sod never shut up?

The CID office had all the charm of a cat with diarrhoea: the paintwork peeling from the walls and woodwork, the carpet tiles an archaeological record of every spilled cup of tea and coffee going back decades. Half the ceiling tiles were missing too, showing off an impressive collection of spiders’ webs, speckled with teeny black fly carcases.

Wasn’t like this when she was a detective chief inspector, was it. No, course it sodding wasn’t. Office of her own. A coffee machine that worked. A window you could crack open if you fancied a crafty cigarette. All the minions stuffed into a different room so they weren’t underfoot and asking stupid questions the whole time.

Roberta pulled on her coat. Keys. Keys. Keys... Where the hell were her keys? ‘Have you seen my keys?’

‘There wouldn’t be all this numerical variation to the pattern.’

‘Who moved my keys? Why does everyone have to fiddle with things?’

‘But what if there’s someone else in the house who works nights sometimes? And that’s when he slips out to bash Uncle Bulgaria. Spank Madame Cholet. Tug the Tobermory.’

There they were! Hiding under that stack of crime statistics she was technically supposed to have finished last week. ‘Do you never shut up?’ She stuck them in her pocket along with various bits, bobs, and her phone. Which made a ding-ding noise as soon as she picked it up.

A text message from Susan:

Come home, Roberta. Don’t do this again.

J&N need to see their father.

Humph... She wasn’t stopping them, was she? No. She was being nice and staying away. If anything Susan should be thanking her for no’ coming home and ramming one of those golf trophies right up Logan Sodding McRae’s backside.