Стюарт Макбрайд - The Blood Road

Tufty shrugged. ‘No idea, I only found it a minute ago. But I can have a look?’ He fiddled with the mouse and the picture lurched into fast forward, the figures blurring.

‘No, Professor, you’re quite right: professional courtesy costs nothing... Yes... I totally and utterly apologise. Unreservedly ... I—’ Another groan. ‘No, that’s definitely your right, Professor... Thank you.’ Rennie hung up. Shuddered. Took a deep breath. Then turned, face and ears an uncomfortable shade of hot pink. ‘That was Professor Ferdinand. He says they’ve found Sally MacAuley’s DNA on DI Bell’s body. They only got a match because she had to give a sample when we arrested her for abducting Rebecca Oliver.’ He pulled on a sickly smile. ‘He might get in touch because, somehow, someone at the labs thinks I may have implied that they’re an incompetent bunch of arsemonkeys who couldn’t find yuck on a jobbie... Sorry.’

On the screen, the video whizzed all the way through to the end, freezing at the final frame — Fred Marshall, sagging in the chair, covered in blood, face a ruined mess of flesh and bone. Sally MacAuley standing beside him, weeping.

Tufty shook his head. ‘Looks like it’s a one-woman show. Well, one woman, one victim, but you know what I mean.’

Logan thumped him on the shoulder. ‘Get the car.’

Sally sat at the kitchen table, hands curled around her mug, face turned to the patio doors. She didn’t look around as Logan levered himself into the chair opposite.

Through the patio doors, the garden was a riot of green and orange — the pale fingers of beech leaves falling in one corner. In the other, Aiden was sitting on the playset’s swing. Not playing, not smiling, not laughing: sitting there. Motionless.

Sally wiped at her glistening eyes. ‘It’s like he’s dead.’

Logan put his notebook on the table. ‘It wasn’t kids who burned down the shed, was it? It was you.’

‘It’s like they took him away and killed my baby boy. And all I got back was this lifeless husk.’

‘After you tortured and murdered Fred Marshall, you needed to get rid of all that blood. So you burned it down.’

She bit her bottom lip. ‘He’s my son. But he’s dead.’ Wiped at her face again. ‘All this time I’ve been telling people I know he’s alive... and he’s not.’

‘Only DI Bell found out, didn’t he?’

She tore her eyes from the motionless child outside. ‘He was the only one who ever cared, so I called him up. I told him: “I’ve done something terrible...”’ A bitter laugh rattled free. ‘I only wanted Marshall to confess. To tell me what he’d done with Aiden, but he wouldn’t . And I got angrier and angrier and then...’ Deep breath. ‘And Duncan came round and he was horrified, of course he was, but he understood . He made it all better. Made the body disappear.’

‘Then why did you kill him?’

The wind picked up outside, tumbling fallen leaves across the lawn, setting Aiden swinging — but not much. As if the ghost of his father was trying to push him, but couldn’t quite manage it.

Sally stared into her coffee. ‘Have you ever done something you can’t... undo? That it doesn’t matter how good you try to be from that moment on, you’ve got this horrible dark stain that goes right to your core?’

Of course he had.

‘You stabbed him.’

‘It doesn’t matter if I scrub myself till I bleed. I’ll never be clean again. No wonder Aiden hates me.’

‘Bell heard there was going to be a new slip road going right through the pig farm where he buried Fred Marshall, so he came all the way back from Spain, back from the dead , to dig Fred up and rebury him somewhere he’d never be found. To protect you . And you killed him.’

A small shrug. ‘He’d found out about the plan to buy Aiden from the Livestock Mart. He wanted to go to the police.’ Her bitter laugh got colder and harder. ‘The police . All this time you’ve done nothing ! And he wanted to hand the whole thing over to you. Let you ruin it. After everything I’d done to get that invitation.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

Rennie put his hand on top of Sally’s head, making sure she didn’t bash it off the roof as she got into the pool car — both hands cuffed in front of her.

The other pool car sat between the horsebox and her four-by-four, blocking it in.

Steel took a long drag on her fake pipe thing, the words coming out in a huge cloud of strawberry steam. ‘So Ding-Dong didn’t kill anyone.’

Logan leaned on his crutch. ‘Except maybe Rod Lawson. Assuming the body we exhumed is actually him.’

‘Hairy Roddy Lawson? Pfff... I’d lay even money on the furry sod overdosing on bargain-basement heroin and supermarket vodka. That boy was a walking corpse at the best of times.’

Rennie buckled Sally in, clunked the door shut, and waved at them, grinning away like an idiot. Because what was the point of being one if you didn’t advertise the fact? One last flourish, then he climbed in behind the wheel, and drove off.

Don’t see what he had to be so happy about. It wasn’t as if anyone got a happy ending out of this one.

Logan limped across to the other pool car. ‘Only thing we can be certain of is that Fred Marshall didn’t kill Kenneth MacAuley. What she did to the poor sod... He would’ve confessed, no way he wouldn’t.’

‘Guvs?’ Tufty appeared around the corner of the woodshed, with Aiden in tow. The wee boy held his hand, but there was no connection to it. Tufty might as well have been pulling a wheelie suitcase behind him. ‘Well, technically Guv and Sarge, but “Guvs” was quicker. Anyway: update from the Children and Families team: they’re sending out a Margaret McCready? Says she knows you?’

‘Fred Marshall’s social worker.’ Logan nodded. ‘Suppose there’s a symmetry in that.’

Tufty squatted down in front of Aiden and smiled. ‘You’re going on an adventure! Isn’t that great?’

Aiden just looked at him.

‘Come on, Laz, get a shift on, eh?’ Steel leaned on the steering wheel, vaping out huge clouds of strawberry steam as Logan winced his way into the passenger seat.

He sat there, panting. Teeth gritted. It wasn’t so much a raging inferno as one of those underground coal fires. Smouldering deep in his innards.

That’s what he got for ignoring his consultant’s advice and discharging himself from hospital.

A deep breath. Then another one. Damping down the embers.

Steel reached across the car and put a hand on his arm. ‘Let’s get you home.’

Not yet.

Logan struggled the seatbelt into its clip. ‘Not till we’ve paid Danielle Smith a visit.’

Steel puffed out her cheeks. Shook her head. ‘You’re an idiot. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ A smile. ‘But right now, I’m your superior idiot. So drive.’

The pool car bumped into the wee industrial estate in Northfield. It was a lot more picturesque in the sunshine — OK, the Granite Hill transmitter still loomed in the middle distance, but it wasn’t quite so angry Dalek-ish.

Logan pointed past the metal warehouses towards the Portakabins. ‘That one, down the end.’

‘And then we’re taking you home.’ She parked outside the AberRAD offices.

A big sign hung in the window, ‘CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE’.

So much for that.

Steel sniffed. ‘What now, oh great Superior Idiot?’

‘We try her home.’

Fields drifted past the car windows. They’d lost their lakes, and recovered a bit — the swathes of barley not quite so battered and bent, straightening out in the sun.