Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

‘Right,’ said Insch, offering round the fruit pastilles again, ‘this is how it works: we go in, I announce the death.’ He pointed the packet of sweets at Logan. ‘DS McRae has a bit of a poke about while the family are still in shock.’ The pastilles came round to point at Mr Runny Nose. ‘You make the tea.’ The young man looked as if he was about to complain at being relegated to tea-boy, but Insch cut him off at the pass. ‘You’ll get to use all that touchy-feely crap they taught you once we’ve gone. Till then: I take milk, two sugars and DS McRae’s just milk. OK?’

The family liaison officer mumbled ‘OK’ as Logan rang the bell. And then they waited. And waited. And waited... Finally a light blossomed in the fanlight above the door. Sounds of shuffling and an old lady’s voice saying, ‘Who is it?’

‘Mrs Kennedy?’ Insch held his warrant card up in front of the spy hole. ‘Can we come in please?’ The chain rattled and the door opened a crack, revealing a weather-beaten face with big glasses and a grey perm. She eyed the policemen on her doorstep with concern. There had been a lot of break-ins in the street over the last couple of years — one old lady had ended up in hospital. The inspector handed her his warrant card and she held it at arm’s length, peering at it over the top of her spectacles. The inspector’s voice was soft: ‘Please, it’s important.’

The door closed, there was some rattling and then it opened all the way, exposing a grubby hallway that ran right to left, peppered with seventies-style plywood doors. She led them into a large lounge done up in faded-yellow wallpaper with orange and red roses on it. A pair of rickety couches sat in the middle of a swirly-patterned carpet, wood and fabric groaning alarmingly as Insch sat down and the old lady fussed over a large orange tabby cat the size of a beach ball.

‘Mrs Kennedy,’ said Insch as the huge cat hopped up onto the coffee table and started licking its bum. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you: it’s your grandson, Graham. He was one of the people who died in the fire on Monday night. I’m sorry.’

‘Oh my God...’ She clutched at the cat, dragging it away from its ablutions. It sagged into her lap, legs stuck out at right angles, like an over-inflated set of ginger bagpipes.

‘Mrs Kennedy, do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt your grandson?’

She shook her head, her eyes filling up with tears. ‘Oh God, Graham... You shouldn’t have to bury your grandchildren!’ The family liaison officer was dispatched to make the tea while Logan surreptitiously excused himself and had a quick look round the flat. It was a big place, shabby, but nothing a couple of coats of paint wouldn’t fix. He poked from room to room, peering under beds, into wardrobes and drawers. All the time the muted tones of DI Insch and the sobbing woman leaked through the closed lounge door. Kitchen, bathroom, spare room, Mrs Kennedy’s bedroom with its certificates of merit and group photographs of school children... Only one of the doors leading off the hallway was locked: from the look of things the stairs up to the attic, but Graham’s room was open, the bed made, the clothes all neatly folded and put away, all the socks paired off, not so much as a porn mag under the bed. It didn’t fit the image Logan had of Graham Kennedy from reading his criminal record. Minor assault, breaking and entering, possession with intent... Small stuff mostly, but it all added up. He got back to the living room just in time to hear DI Insch say, ‘We’ll let ourselves out.’ Leaving the family liaison officer behind.

They stopped at the communal front door, looking out at the rain drumming on the car roofs. ‘Well?’ asked Insch.

‘Nothing. Place is clean as a whistle. If he kept any gear, he wasn’t doing it at granny’s house.’

Insch nodded and pulled out the last of the fruit pastilles, munching sadly. ‘Poor cow: she raised him pretty much single-handed. Graham’s parents died when he was three, then her husband snuffs it a year later.’ He sighed. ‘That’s her whole family gone now.’

‘She say anything about what Graham was up to?’

The inspector shook his head. ‘Far as she was concerned he was a perfect little angel. Said he only got into trouble because of his friends — who she never approved of. Been leading him astray ever since secondary school.’

‘Don’t suppose she happens to know their—’

DI Insch held up a notebook with five names scribbled on it. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ He stuffed the notebook back in his pocket. ‘Right, back to the station. You’re supposed to be off and I’ve got an investigation to run.’

When Logan finally got back to the flat Jackie wasn’t there, just a note pinned to the fridge: GOT EXTENDED NIGHT SHIFT — BACK TOMORROW. NO ‘LOVE JACKIE’, or even ‘FOND REGARDS’. So he’d had to fend for himself, which involved a fourteen-inch pizza and two bottles of wine.

Sunday didn’t exactly get off to an auspicious start: he woke up alone, mooched about the flat feeling like crap, then microwaved the last two slices of pizza for breakfast. Standing naked in the kitchen, munching on a reheated spicy beef with extra cheese and staring morosely out at the intermittent rain, he had to admit the diet wasn’t going too well. His scar-crossed stomach wasn’t so much washboard-flat as mangle-bulgy. And feeling more than a little unsettled.

Jackie still wasn’t back by half ten, so Logan took off. She didn’t want to speak to him? Sod her. He had better things to do with his time than mope about the flat like a bloody lovesick teenager. He just didn’t know what those things were. So he went looking for them on the streets of Aberdeen.

There was an Alfred Hitchcock retrospective playing at the Belmont theatre. That would do. A whole day watching Cary Grant getting chased by aeroplanes, Norman Bates peeping on guests in the shower, James Stewart almost falling off rooftops... North by North West was just reaching its climax when Logan’s mobile went off, the bleeping and pinging cutting across the fight on Mount Rushmore. Angry muttering filled the small theatre as Logan cursed and dragged the phone out of his pocket. His finger was going for the off button when he recognized the number: Detective Inspector Steel. ‘Damn.’ Apologizing, he hurried down the aisle and out into the corridor, closing the doors behind him before taking the call.

DI Steel brought him up to speed with eight words: Jamie McKinnon. Attempted suicide. Accident and Emergency. Now!

Aberdeen Royal Infirmary was the biggest hospital in the North-east of Scotland, but you wouldn’t know that to look at its A&E waiting room. The floor had that nasty, sticky thing going for it, a faint reek of vomit easily discernible through pine disinfectant. A short Asian nurse escorted them through the building to a large public ward, most of which was taken up with elderly men and the smell of boiled cabbage. Jamie McKinnon had been in surgery for a little over an hour, but now he was sitting up in bed, looking groggy, with a big, purple bruise covering one side of his face, the eye swollen almost shut, his top lip split and raw. He flinched as DI Steel plonked herself down on his bed.

‘Jamie, Jamie, Jamie,’ she said, patting his hand. ‘If you missed me, you just had to say. You didn’t need to do all this just to get my attention.’

He pulled his hand away and scowled at her with his good eye.

‘I’m no’ speaking to you. Bugger off.’

Steel smiled at him. ‘Prison’s done nothing to dull your razor-sharp wit, has it, Jamie my boy?’

Jamie just stared at the far wall.

‘So.’ Steel bounced up and down on the bed, making the springs squeak. ‘Why’d you do it, Jamie? Racked with guilt about killing your woman? Looking for the quick way out? Much better you just talk to me. A lot less painful.’ She kept it up for a full ten minutes, teasing him, poking fun, being bitchy about Rosie Williams, the love of his life. Not surprisingly Jamie didn’t tell her anything.