Стюарт Макбрайд - 22 Dead Little Bodies and Other Stories

Twenty dead parakeets.

Yeah, this was definitely going to get a lot worse.

Baird dipped into the big evidence bag and came out with a wee, individually wrapped, dead parakeet. Wrinkled her nose. ‘Poor thing.’

Logan’s office was warmer than it had any right to be. He cracked open the window, letting in a waft of stale air tainted by cigarette smoke. ‘Killed all twenty of them.’

She placed it back in the bag with the others. ‘Twenty dead little bodies.’

‘If you were Mrs Black, what would you do?’

‘Me?’ Baird scrunched her lips into a duck pout. ‘If I was a total nutjob, what would I do? Cut his knackers off. No, not cut, I’d hack them off. With a rusty spoon.’

Logan sank into his seat. ‘That’s what worries me.’ He pointed at the big bag. ‘Get it off to the labs. I want anything they can get linking the birds to Justin Robson before this goes any further. At least if one of them’s banged up they can’t kill each other.’

‘Guv.’ She picked it up. ‘What about the Skinner kids?’

‘No idea.’

‘Seems a shame, doesn’t it? Wasn’t their fault their mum was screwing around.’

‘Never is.’ Logan pulled his keyboard over. ‘If the lab gives you stick about analysing a bunch of parakeets, tell them I’ll be round to insert a size nine up their jacksy next time I’ve got a minute. It’s—’

A knock on the door and there was Guthrie, face all pink and shiny, out of breath as if he’d been running. ‘Guv... It’s... It’s...’ He folded over and grabbed his knees for a bit. ‘Argh... God...’

Baird patted him on the back. ‘That’s what you get for eating so much cheese, Sunshine.’

He shook her off and had another go. ‘Guv, it’s... Gordy Taylor...’

Logan groaned. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Dead...’

Baird dumped the evidence bag back on Logan’s desk. ‘I’ll get a pool car.’

Baird tucked her hair into the SOC suit’s hood, then pulled the zip up all the way to her chin. Grabbed a handful of material around the waist and hoiked it up, setting the white Tyvek rustling. ‘You ready?’

Behind her, a double line of blue-and-white ‘Police’ tape cut off a chunk of Harlaw Road, tied between trees on opposite sides of the street, casting a snaking shadow. A crime scene dappled with light falling through the leaves.

The houses on the opposite side of the street didn’t look all that fancy — detached granite bungalows with attic conversions and dormer windows — but they overlooked the green expanse of the playing fields, so probably cost an absolute fortune.

Logan snapped a second set of blue nitrile gloves on over the first. ‘Might as well.’

They ducked under the outer cordon and rustled their way across the tarmac to the inner boundary of yellow-and-black — ‘Crime Scene — Do Not Cross’ — where a spotty uniform with huge eyes demanded to see their ID then wrote their names in the log before letting them past.

Two large council bins were lined up against the kerb, and behind them someone in the full Smurf outfit was squatting beside the body. He had a bony wrist in one hand, turning it over, letting the attached filthy hand flop one way, then the other.

Logan sank down next to him, blinking at the stench of alcohol and baked sewage. ‘Doc.’

The figure looked up and nodded — more or less anonymous behind the facemask and safety goggles. ‘Well, it’s official: this gentleman’s definitely dead.’

He let go of the wrist and shuffled back, letting them get a proper look at the body.

Gordon Taylor lay curled up on his side; knees drawn up to his chest; one arm thrown back, the hand dangling against his spine; the other reaching out in front. Head twisted back, mouth open. Eyes glazed. Beard and hair matted with twigs and vomit.

A bluebottle landed on Gordon’s cheek, and the Duty Doctor wafted it away. ‘Well, there’s no sign of serious trauma. He’s not been stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. The only sign of blood is that...’ The doctor pointed at the grubby bandage wrapped around Gordon’s right hand. It was stained with dark-scarlet blobs.

‘You want to guess at time of death?’

‘Very roughly? Sometime between him getting chucked out of hospital, and the bin men finding him here this morning.’ A shrug. ‘Anyone who gives you anything more precise is a liar.’

‘Any sign of foul play?’

‘Doubt it: your friend here choked on his own vomit. If you want my opinion, you’re looking at what happens when you spend your life downing litre bottles of supermarket vodka, whisky, and gin. Sooner or later it catches up with you.’ He straightened up with a groan and rubbed at the small of his back. ‘And with that, the brave Duty Doctor’s work was done, and he could get back to treating hypochondriac morons who think they know better than him because they’ve looked leprosy up on the internet.’

The uniform with the spots held up the barrier tape and the undertaker’s plain grey van eased back out onto Harlaw Road. The driver nodded to Logan and drove off.

Wheezy Doug was in conversation with a middle-aged man with a walking stick, two houses down. Stoney was at the far end of the street, nodding and taking notes as a mother of two waved her arms about, a pair of red-haired kids running screaming around her legs. DS Baird wandered up the road, hands in her pockets.

She stopped beside Logan and nodded at the departing van. ‘That him off, then?’

‘You get anything?’

‘Far as we can tell, Gordon Taylor’s been hanging around here for about a fortnight. I got Control to pull anything relating to Harlaw Road and three streets either side. There’s been an increase in breaking and enterings: low-level stuff, shed padlocks forced, meths and white spirit nicked kind of thing. One stolen handbag — owner put it on the roof of her car while she unloaded the shopping, came back: no handbag. Loads of complaints of antisocial behaviour.’ She pulled out her notebook and flipped it open at the marker. ‘And I quote, “There’s a smelly tramp staggering up and down the street at all hours, singing filthy rugby songs and rummaging through the bins.”’ Baird turned the page. ‘Eight counts of public urination. No one ever caught him at it, but in the morning people’s doorways would smell of piddle. That lot,’ she pointed at a tidy house with an immaculate garden, where a little old lady was pruning a rosebush, ‘called the police eight times in the last week.’

Well, the old dear wasn’t so much pruning the bush as nipping tiny bits off the one branch, probably using it as an excuse to have a nosy. She wasn’t the only one. At least half a dozen others were out, taking their time washing cars or raking the lawn. Pretending not to snoop.

A glazier’s van sat outside the old lady’s house. The driver and his mate were in the cab, stuffing down chocolate biscuits and pouring tea from a thermos. Staring as if this was the most interesting thing to happen all day. An episode of Taggart , playing out right there in front of them.

Logan turned his back on the gawkers. ‘So what happened?’

Baird shrugged. ‘Patrol car did a drift by a couple of times, but you know what it’s like. Don’t have time to attend every moaning numpty.’

True. But if they’d actually done something about it — if they’d turned up and arrested him — Gordon Taylor would probably still be alive today. Hard to drink yourself to death in a police cell.

Something heavy settled behind Logan’s eyes, pulling his whole head down.

And if he’d arrested Gordon Taylor on Saturday for being drunk and incapable, or done him for biting two security guards and a nurse, or for punching that other nurse on the nose...