Стюарт Макбрайд - 22 Dead Little Bodies and Other Stories

Blood made spattered patterns on the fence behind and beneath them.

Mrs Black sobbed, tears coating her cheeks, gulping down air only to cry it out again. ‘My babies ...’

‘OK.’ A nod. ‘Is Mr Black—’

‘Don’t you... don’t you dare mention... mention that bastard’s name.’ She ground the heel of her hand into her eye sockets. ‘He walked out on me. On ME! Packed his bags like I was the one being unreasonable.’ She threw her arms out. ‘LOOK AT IT! LOOK WHAT HAPPENED!’ The arms drooped by her sides. ‘My babies...’

Logan puffed out a breath. Then patted Wheezy Doug on the shoulder. ‘Constable Andrews, maybe you should get Mrs Black inside and make a cup of tea, or something. I’m going next door.’

Justin Robson folded his arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter. ‘Nope. Nothing to do with me.’ His face was pale with greeny-purple bags under the eyes, his breath stale and bitter. Hair slicked back and wet. Dark-blue dressing gown.

Behind him, the garden was in darkness, the early morning sunshine murdered by Mrs Black’s spite hedge. A curl of smoke twisted up into the gloom.

Logan pulled out his notebook. ‘Come off it: she trashes your car, and you decide to turn the other cheek? Really ?’

‘Wasn’t even here: out all night at a friend’s house. You can check if you like.’

‘Oh we will.’ The pen hovered over the pad. ‘Name?’

‘Can do you better than that. Hold on, I’ll call him.’ Robson picked the phone out of its cradle and fiddled with the buttons. The sound of ringing blared out of the speaker.

Then, click. ‘Hello?’

‘Bobby? It’s Justin. Sorry to call so early, but can you tell this guy where I was last night?’ He held out the phone.

‘What? Yeah, Justin came round about six-ish? We watched a couple of films. Had a bit too much wine and a moan about girls till about three in the morning. Justin was so blootered he could barely stand.’

‘Cheeky sod. No I wasn’t.’

‘Were. So I put him in the spare room. Set the alarm. And went to bed.’

Logan wrote it all down. At least that explained the pallor and the smell. ‘And he didn’t leave the house?’

‘No way Justin could’ve got out without deactivating the alarm and he doesn’t know the code. Didn’t go home till about half an hour ago? Forty-five minutes? Something like that? Told him he should cop a sicky and crash here all morning, but blah-blah work etc.’

A nice tight alibi. Very convenient. ‘OK, I’m going to need your full name and address.’

Wheezy Doug snapped off his blue nitrile gloves and stuffed them into a carrier bag. ‘What kind of dick does that to harmless wee birds?’

Logan nodded back towards the house with the decorated cherry tree. ‘How is she?’

‘Mangled. Says that after her husband stormed out, she hit the vodka. Staggered off to bed about eleven after checking the birds were all fine. Gets up at seven this morning and finds that .’ Wheezy puffed out his cheeks. ‘Poor wee things. I had to lever them off the fence with a claw-hammer. That’s why some are a bit squashed.’ He pulled out a pen and printed the evidence label for twenty parakeets, all sharing a big evidence pouch. Each one individually zip-locked into its own tiny plastic bag. ‘What about laughing boy?’

‘Says he had nothing to do with it. Got himself an alibi.’

‘That’s convenient.’ Wheezy closed the pool car’s boot.

‘Exactly what I thought.’ Logan led the way back to the house.

Robson had moved through to the lounge, a bowl of Rice Krispies in his lap. Breakfast News burbled away on the widescreen telly as he tied a tie around his pale neck. He’d swapped the dressing gown for trainers, jeans, and a pale-yellow shirt.

‘... double murder in Aberdeen yesterday have been identified as Emma Skinner and Brian Williams...’

He straightened his tie, then dipped a spoon into his cereal. ‘You forget something?’

‘... committed suicide on Saturday.’ The screen filled with amateur mobile-phone video of John Skinner preparing to jump.

Logan stepped between Robson and the TV as the anchor handed over to Carol for the weather. ‘You do understand that we can take DNA from the parakeets, don’t you? Whoever killed them will have left their DNA on their feathers. We’ll get it from the nails too. And fingerprints.’

‘Isn’t science marvellous.’

‘We can match contact traces of metal between the nail-heads and a specific hammer. We can match the nails with ones from the same batch.’

‘OK.’ He killed the TV, then put his breakfast on the coffee table. ‘Tell you what, if you don’t believe I was with Bobby all night, why don’t you search the house again? Do the garden too. You can even try the shed.’

Little sod was either innocent, or arrogant enough to believe he could get away with it.

Wheezy Doug tucked his hands into his pockets and nodded at Robson’s feet. The trainers were bright white, without so much as a scuff on them. ‘They’re nice. Look new.’

‘Cool, aren’t they? Fresh on today.’

‘Where are the old ones?’

He smiled. ‘Yeah, they were getting all stinky and dirty. Plus, someone might have been sick on them last night. So I got rid of them.’

What a surprise. Nothing quite so incriminating as a pair of blood-stained Nikes.

Logan took out his notebook. ‘And where, exactly , are these sick-drenched shoes now? In the bin?’

‘Ah...’ Robson bared his top teeth in a rabbit grin. ‘I burned them soon as I got home. Was doing some garden rubbish anyway.’ He stood and walked through to the kitchen. Pointed out through the window to a stainless-steel bin, hidden away in the shadows at the bottom of the garden. The thing had holes in its sides and a chimney lid. Coils of smoke drifted away into the morning sky. ‘Never had one before, but it’s really efficient. Burns everything.’

Definitely arrogant. And probably right.

Robson frowned. ‘You know, now I think about it, if I’d been nailing live parakeets to a fence, I’d be all covered with scratches and pecks, wouldn’t I?’ He held up his hands. Not a single mark on them. ‘I mean, they’re going to put up a fight, aren’t they?’

Logan stepped in close. ‘This stops and it stops here. No more. Understand?’

The smile didn’t slip an inch. ‘Nothing to do with me. You’d have to speak to the bitch next door.’

Yeah, there was no way this was over.

‘We’ll be watching you, Mr Robson.’ Logan turned and marched from the room, down the hall and out the front door.

Wheezy Doug hurried after him. Unlocked the pool car and slipped in behind the wheel. ‘He did it, didn’t he?’

‘Course he did. He doesn’t have scratches on his hands, because he wore gloves. And then he burned them. So no fingerprints on the nails or the birds. And odds on he’d wear a facemask too.’

‘So no DNA, or good as.’

‘Bet he even burned the hammer.’ Logan stared back at the house.

Robson was standing in the living room, smiling through the window. He gave them a wave.

Logan didn’t wave back. ‘This is going to get worse before it gets better.’

Wheezy pulled away from the kerb. ‘And last time we were here, I distinctly remember DCI Steel making a big thing of how no one ever gets rid of their shoes. The wee turd listened and learned.’

Logan took his Airwave handset from his jacket pocket. ‘Should’ve arrested them both when we had probable cause.’ Too late for that now though, it’d been no-crimed. He pressed the talk button. ‘DI McRae to Control. I need a Wildlife Crime Officer, or whatever it is we’re calling them these days.’