Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

Logan — who’d spent the interview cringing with embarrassment at the inspector’s crass technique — waited until she’d stomped off for a cigarette, leaving him alone with Jamie McKinnon, before saying anything. ‘You know, you don’t have to go through this on your own, Jamie. The prison has counsellors. You could—’

‘Who the fuck does she think she is?’

‘What?’

‘Wrinkly old hag, coming in here, treating me like dirt! I’m no’ dirt! I’m a fucking human being!’

‘I know you are, Jamie.’ Logan settled himself down in the spot Steel had vacated. ‘Who did the number on your face?’

Jamie raised a hand to his swollen eye, touching the puffy flesh with tender fingers. ‘Don’t want to talk about it.’

‘You sure? Some bastard takes his bad day out on you and you’re OK with that?’

A big, shuddering sigh escaped Jamie McKinnon. He slumped further into the pillows. ‘Don’t know his name. John something or other. He wanted some... stuff.’ He shrugged. ‘You know, but I didn’t have any! I’m in prison, for fuck’s sake. Where the hell am I going to get smack from? Only he says he knows I’ve got it and why won’t I sell it to him?’

‘So he beat you up?’

McKinnon forced a brave smile. ‘Didn’t beat me up. I fucked him over good...’ Logan recognized a bare-faced lie when he heard one.

‘How come he thought you were holding?’

A shrug, and the forced smile disappeared. ‘Don’t know.’

Logan settled back and gave him a blank stare, letting the silence grow. Jamie shifted uncomfortably, making the starchy white sheets crackle. ‘Look, I know... I used to know people, OK? I could get hold of things.’

‘What kind of things?’

McKinnon looked at him as if he was stupid. ‘You bloody well know what kind of things.’

‘So this violent scrotum thought your friends would supply you some stuff, even if you were inside?’

A small, humourless laugh and Jamie bit his lip, not hard, but enough to open up the split in it, fresh red oozing up through the yellow-scarlet crust. ‘Won’t be getting nothing for no one any more...’

‘No?’ Logan had a shrewd idea who Jamie’s suppliers had been, and where they were now: filling a collection of body-bags in Isobel’s morgue. ‘Where you going to get your stuff from now?’

There was a long pause, and then: ‘I didn’t kill her.’

‘I know you say that, Jamie, but there’s forensic evidence and witnesses and you’ve battered her before—’

Jamie sniffed, tears starting. ‘I loved her.’

Logan frowned. No matter what Steel said, he was beginning to get the nasty feeling that Jamie might actually be telling the truth. ‘Tell me about what happened that night. Right from the start.’

Out in the corridor DI Steel was waiting for him, hands in her pockets, slouching in front of a large oil painting in shades of blue and orange. ‘You got any idea what this is supposed to be?’ she asked him.

‘It’s a post-modern representation of the birth of man.’ Logan knew all the paintings in the hospital by heart. He’d spent enough time with them, wandering the corridors after dark, IV drip in one hand, walking stick in the other. ‘Looks a lot better on morphine.’

Steel shook her head. ‘Takes all bloody sorts.’ She cast Logan a sly glance. ‘So did McKinnon spill his guts then? Come clean to the nice cop?’

‘Still maintains he didn’t kill her. But from the sound of things he was a reseller for the kids who got burnt up in that fire Monday night.’

Steel nodded. ‘That figures.’ She held up McKinnon’s hospital chart. Logan hadn’t even seen her swipe it. ‘Attempted suicide my arse: he swallowed a plastic fork. Every fucker in Craiginches tries it at one time or another. It’s not fatal, you get transferred out to hospital for a nice wee low-security holiday. Come visiting time you can get your hands on any substance your loved ones care to bring in. McKinnon’s a dealer: he’ll be looking for someone to slip him a bundle of something before he goes back inside. Maybe sell some, use the rest himself.’ She tossed Jamie’s chart into the nearest bin and started for the exit. ‘We’ll have someone keep an eye on him. See what comes in.’

Logan took one last look at The Birth of Man and followed.

The rest of the day was spent getting authorization for a low-key surveillance on Jamie McKinnon, and as usual Logan did all the work. The inspector smoked lots of cigarettes and offered ‘helpful suggestions’, but it was Logan who had to fight his way through the forest of paperwork. The only bit she’d actually done herself was present the request to the head of CID, who wasn’t best pleased. His men were stretched thin enough as it was. The best he could do was get a plainclothes officer to drop by during visiting hours. Provided nothing more important was going on at the time.

That done, DI Steel went off in search of a bottle of wine and a half-dozen red roses. It looked like she was in for a much better night than Logan was.

Half eight Sunday evening: Jackie would be up and getting ready for the night shift. The sound of someone murdering the theme tune to The Flintstones echoed out of the shower as he let himself in. The singing trailed off into ‘da-da, dum-de da-da...’, the shower juddered to a halt and The Flintstones started up again, this time the X-rated version Jackie liked to perform at parties after one too many vodkas.

Logan set the table, complete with tablecloth and candles. Then it was out with the funny-shaped balti dishes his mother had given him for Christmas the year he got out of hospital, and a bottle of white from the fridge. He was just plonking a small bunch of carnations in a dusty vase when someone said, ‘What’s all this in aid of?’ He turned to see Jackie standing in the doorway, wrapped in a Barbie-pink bathrobe, her hair turbaned up in a towel, her broken arm wrapped in a black plastic bag to stop the cast getting soggy.

‘This,’ he said, making a sweeping gesture to take in the table, ‘is a peace offering.’ He dug into a plastic bag from the local curry house. ‘Chicken jalfrezi, chicken korma, nan bread, poppadums, lime pickle, raita and that red, raw oniony stuff you like.’

She actually smiled at him. ‘Thought you weren’t speaking to me... You know, after Friday...’ Pause. ‘You were out all day yesterday.’

‘Thought you’d want to be alone. You spent the night on the couch...’

‘I... I was out on the piss till one in the morning. Didn’t want to wake you.’

‘Oh...’

Silence.

Jackie bit her lip and took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m sorry for storming off, OK? It wasn’t you, it was me... Well, it wasn’t all me, I mean you should’ve never let that manipulative old bitch talk you into working on your day off, but I suppose it wasn’t all your fault.’ She unpeeled the sticky tape wrapped around the bin-bag, pulling it off to expose the cast on her left forearm. The once pristine-white plaster was now a dirty yellow-grey. ‘Ever since I did it, I’ve been bored out of my head. Filing! Can you believe it? I’m a bloody good police officer, but I’m stuck doing the crappy, shitty, boring, fucking filing.’ She picked a fork off the perfectly set table and used it to scratch inside the cast. ‘Going out of my bloody mind...’ Grimace, scratchscratchscratch.

Logan picked a fresh fork out of the drawer. ‘I was beginning to think you were fed up with me,’ he said.

She stopped scratching for a moment and looked at him. ‘Trust me: right now I’m fed up with pretty much everything. But this sodding thing comes off in a couple of weeks, I get to go back to normal duties, everything’s fine.’