Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

Steel’s reply came out in a cloud of cigarette smoke: ‘She was a whore, Jamie, sold her arse on the streets for—’

‘SHUT UP! SHE WAS NOT A WHORE!’ He jerked up and slammed his fists on the table, making it jump. His face was flushed, eyes sparkling and damp.

Logan sighed and stepped in, playing the good cop. ‘So you taught him a lesson for insulting your woman. I can understand that. What happened next? Did you go looking for her?’

Jamie nodded, eyes fastening on Logan, ignoring the inspector. ‘Yes... I wanted to tell her: it has to stop! She has to stay home, look after the kids. No more going out on the streets...’ He sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve.

‘What happened when you found her, Jamie?’

He looked down at his picked-at fingers. ‘I’d been drinking.’

‘We know that, Jamie: what happened?’

‘We had this argument... She... She said she needed the money. Said she couldn’t stop.’ Jamie laid down another trail of silver on his sleeve. ‘I told her I’d support her. I was getting something together, she wouldn’t have to worry... But she wasn’t having any of it: kept going on and on about how I couldn’t support her and the kids...’ He bit his bottom lip. ‘So I hit her. Just like that. And she started screaming at me. So I hit her again. Just to make her stop...’

Logan let the silence hang for a bit, while DI Steel dribbled smoke down her nose. ‘Then what did you do?’

‘Threw up in the toilet. Washed the blood off my hands... She was lying on the floor, all bruised... So I picked her up and put her to bed.’

Steel snarled. ‘Put her to bed? That what they’re calling it these days? “Putting someone to bed”? What a lovely euphemism for strangling someone in an alleyway! Like fucking poetry that is.’

Jamie ignored her. ‘Next day she was covered in bruises. Threw me out. Said she never wanted to see me again. But I never meant to hurt her!’

Logan sat back in his seat and tried not to groan. ‘It’s Monday night we want to know about, Jamie. What happened on Monday night?’

‘Went to see her, on the street.’ He shrugged. ‘Wanted to say I was sorry... show her I was making good money... You know, from the fast-food jobs? I could take care of her and the kids. I loved her... But she wouldn’t talk to me: said she had to earn a living... didn’t want anything to do with me... had clients to see. I’d have to pay...’

‘And did you?’

Jamie hung his head. ‘I... Yes.’

DI Steel spluttered, sending ash sparking from the end of her fag. ‘So you forked out to screw your ex? Jesus, how fucking twisted is that?’

Logan scowled at her. ‘Then what happened, Jamie?’

‘We did it in a doorway and... and I cried and told her I loved her and I was so sorry for what I’d done, but I loved her so much I couldn’t stand to see her out there with other men...’ His red eyes filled with tears. ‘I was making good money now, I could do it, we could be together...’ He wiped his eyes with the same silvered sleeve.

Steel inched forward in her seat, bathing Jamie in a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘She said no though, didn’t she? She said no and you hit her. You hit her and you kept hitting her ’cos she wouldn’t take a slimy wee shite like you back. You killed her,’ cos it was that or pay for it your whole life. Pay to screw her in alleyways, just like hundreds of other desperate wee fucks.’

‘NO! She said she’d think about it! She was going to come back to me! We were going to be a family!’ The tears were falling freely now, running down his chubby cheeks, his scarlet nose streaming as sobs shook his body. ‘God, she’s dead! She’s dead!’ He crumpled to the tabletop, shoulders heaving.

Logan’s voice was soft. ‘Did you hit her again, Jamie? Did you kill her?’

He could barely make out the reply. ‘I loved her...’

The ride back from Craiginches was spent with DI Steel smoking and swearing furiously. Now that Jamie McKinnon had admitted to paying for sex with Rosie the night she died, Logan’s disappearing Lithuanian witness was worthless. And so was any DNA evidence they got from the hundreds of discarded condoms. Things had been a lot simpler when McKinnon was just denying everything. She pulled up outside Logan’s flat and demanded the tapes of the interview. He handed them over and asked if she didn’t want him to do the paperwork: taking them into evidence, releasing one copy to Jamie McKinnon’s defence lawyer. ‘Do I buggery,’ was her response. ‘Bloody things screw up my investigation.’ She took the recordings, turned them upside down and picked a loop of tape free with a nicotine-stained fingernail. Then did ‘Flags Of All Nations’ with it, sending reels of shiny brown ribbon spooling out into the interior of the car. ‘Far as anyone’s concerned there was something wrong with the machine OK? No tape was ever made. We forget anything that was said and go back to proving Jamie McKinnon did it.’ Logan tried to protest but the inspector was having none of it. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘We both know he did it! It’s our job to make sure he doesn’t get away with it.’

‘What if he didn’t do it?’

‘Of course he did it! He’s got form for beating her up ’cos she was on the game. He goes and pledges his undying love and she makes him fork out for a knee-trembler in an alleyway. Then goes off to shag someone else. He’s overcome with rage and kills her. The end.’ She shook her head. ‘Now get your arse out of my car. I’ve got things to do.’

Logan spent the rest of the afternoon pottering about the flat. Sulking. So much for the Rosie Williams murder being his ticket out of the Screw-Up Squad. The way DI Steel was going they’d end up with no admissible evidence and a fully compromised case. The woman was a bloody menace. By seven thirty there was still no sign of Jackie, so he went out to the pub and to hell with everyone else. Archibald Simpson’s wasn’t an option: being just around the corner from Force Headquarters and full of cheap beer, the bar was a regular haunt for off-duty police, and he’d had enough dirty looks about getting PC Maitland shot to last him for one week, thank you very much. So instead he wandered up Union Street to the Howff, sitting on a creaky beige sofa in the farthest corner of the basement-level bar, nursing a pint of Directors and a packet of dry-roasted. Brooding over Jackie and her foul temper. And then another pint. And another. And a burger — smothered in chilli so hot it made his eyes water — and then another pint, getting maudlin. PC Maitland — Logan couldn’t even remember his first name. Until the screwed-up raid he’d never worked with the guy, only knew him as the bloke with the moustache who shaved his head for Children In Need one year. Poor bastard. Two pints later and it was time to lurch blearily home, via a chip shop for jumbo-haddock supper; most of which he abandoned, uneaten, in the lounge, before staggering off to bed alone.

Saturday morning started with a hangover. The bathroom cabinet was devoid of massive blue-and-yellow painkillers — the ones Logan had been given after Angus Robertson had performed un-elective surgery on his innards with a six-inch hunting knife — so he had to make do with a handful of aspirin and a mug of strong instant coffee, taking it into the lounge to see what kind of cartoons were on. There was a shape on the couch and his heart sank. Jackie, all wrapped up in the spare duvet, blinking blearily as he froze in the doorway. He hadn’t even heard her come in last night. She took one look at him, mumbled, ‘Don’t want any coffee...’ and pulled the duvet over her head, shutting him, and the rest of the world, out.