Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

‘So, who wasn’t on the menu that night?’

‘Karl Pearson. Twenty-four. Lives with his mum and dad in Kingswells, or he did until about three weeks ago. They got a call from him looking for some money Wednesday before last, but that was it. Haven’t heard from him since.’ He pulled a holiday snap from his inside pocket showing a lumpy young man with a broken nose and a single eyebrow stretched across his face. He looked like the kind of person who would quite happily start a fight at a football match, just for the hell of it.

Logan studied the picture for a minute. ‘You think he’s the torch?’

Insch nodded. ‘Been in trouble a couple of times for burning things that weren’t his. Neighbours’ sheds, an abandoned caravan, that pitch-and-putt hut down at the beach.’

‘That was him?’

‘The very man. I’ve put out a lookout request, but I also have a couple of addresses.’ An evil smile split the inspector’s huge, bald head. ‘Thought you might fancy the exercise.’

‘What about your DS, you know, the bearded one?’

‘What, Beattie?’ DI Insch stuck his hands in his pockets, making the already groaning material bulge alarmingly. ‘Bugger that. Lazy sod couldn’t catch clap in a Dundee whorehouse, let alone crooks.’

‘I’m supposed to be helping DI Steel, she—’

‘Already OK’d it with me. You’re not needed till the operation tonight. Grab your coat.’

‘But—’

Insch dropped his voice, laying a huge ham-like hand on Logan’s shoulder. ‘Thought you wanted off the Screw-Up Squad: this is your chance.’ He turned and lumbered out of the room, grabbing PC Steve by the collar on his way past. Logan hesitated, looking from the inspector to the photo gallery of death. Bloody DI Steel, trading him off to Insch without even consulting him! Muttering obscenities, Logan followed on behind.

The first address for Karl Pearson was no use, neither were numbers two, three or four. No one had seen him in ages. Four down, two to go. Address number five was halfway up a block of flats in Seaton — down where the River Don meets the sea — one of a set of four seventeen-storey buildings with spectacular views out over the water. Lovely on a clear summer’s day and bloody freezing in the dead of winter, when the wind roared in off the North Sea, fresh from the Norwegian fjords. Logan and Insch headed inside, leaving PC Steve downstairs to watch the front door.

Sixth floor, corner apartment. Insch marched straight up to Karl Pearson’s alleged flat and did his policeman’s knock, putting his weight behind it. Making the door boom and rattle as if God himself had come to announce judgment day.

No response.

Insch launched into his wrath-of-God routine again and a door cracked open down the hall. The occupant took one look at the huge man pounding on the corner flat’s door and hurried back inside.

‘Think they’ll call the police?’ asked Logan.

‘Doubt it, but just in case...’ Insch dragged out his mobile phone and called Headquarters, letting them know that the thug trying to break into the corner flat was him, so not to bother sending out a squad car. While he was doing that, Logan squatted down and peered in through the letterbox. A small hallway decorated with Aberdeen Football Club posters and pages torn from FHM magazine — half-naked women and footballers: an adolescent boy’s dream — coats hanging on a set of hooks, mirror on the other side, scabby-looking golf clubs leaning in the corner, a little mudslide of junk mail on the mat. There was a door at the far end, slightly ajar, leading into what looked like a kitchen. Four more doors led off the little corridor, but only one of them was open and Logan couldn’t really see into the room. He was about to give up when suddenly he got the feeling someone was staring at him... And then his eyes drifted to the hall mirror again. Someone was staring at him through the reflected lounge door, only Logan was pretty sure they couldn’t actually see him. They couldn’t see anything, not with their throat lying wide open like that, dark brown blood covering everything.

He sat back on his heels and let the letterbox flap snap shut.

‘You still on the phone to HQ?’ he asked Insch.

‘Aye.’

‘Better tell them to call off the search: we’ve found Karl Pearson.’

The Identification Bureau were delighted to have an indoor corpse for a change, it meant they didn’t have to fight with that bloody SOC tent. Karl Pearson’s lounge was decorated in much the same way as the hall, with posters and magazine pages, only the naked ladies in here were a lot more hard-core. The IB team had put down their little metal walkway and then proceeded to cover the whole place in black fingerprint powder; empty the flat’s vacuum cleaner into an evidence bag; take samples of blood — not difficult, considering how much of it there was in the lounge; argue about whether or not one of the naked women — pictured playing with a variety of battery-operated devices — was Detective Sergeant Beattie’s wife; photographed everything and stood quietly by as Doc Wilson pronounced the naked man tied to a dining-room chair with his throat cut dead. ‘Amazing the things these doctors can diagnose nowadays,’ said Insch, leaning against the far wall. He was wearing the biggest set of white paper coveralls the IB boys had, but it was fighting a losing battle against the inspector’s huge frame. ‘Care to hazard a guess at time of death?’

Doc Wilson favoured Insch with a withering glance. ‘No,’ he said, snapping his medical bag shut. ‘What is it with you people? You always want a bloody time of death off the poor bloody GP! You know what? I haven’t got a bloody clue. OK? Satisfied? You want a time of death? Ask a fucking pathologist.’ He straightened up and made for the door, pausing on the threshold to run an appraising eye over the inspector’s straining SOC suit. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a time of death, free of charge. Eighteen months if you don’t do something about your bloody weight.’ And he was out of there before Insch could do much more than go beetroot red and splutter.

Logan groaned; that was all they needed, Doc Bloody Wilson lighting the blue touch paper and running like buggery. Leaving the rest of them to deal with the explosion. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ he tried. ‘Wilson’s had a weasel up his arse all week. He’s just being a wanker for the sake of it.’

Insch turned a baleful eye on Logan. ‘You tell that bastard, if I ever see him at one of my crime scenes again, I will personally make sure he ends up in the FUCKING MORGUE!’ Everyone else in the room went very quiet. ‘I WILL FUCKING WELL DECLARE DEATH ON HIM!’ Spittle flew from Insch’s mouth. Logan had seen him angry plenty of times, but never anything like this. Trembling with the effort, Insch walked quietly into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him so hard every loose object in the flat rattled. From the apartment upstairs came the sound of a television being turned up.

‘Jesus,’ whispered the IB cameraman. ‘Touched a nerve, or what?’

DI Insch was still sulking in the kitchen when the duty pathologist arrived: Doc Fraser this time, rather than Isobel, much to Logan’s relief. Fraser agreed with the duty doctor’s diagnosis: Karl Pearson was indeed dead. Logan could go ahead and call the funeral directors to come pick up the body. The post mortem would be at three. And now that the formalities were out of the way, Logan was free to examine the victim without upsetting anyone. Just as long as he didn’t actually touch anything.

Karl Pearson: twenty-four, naked, tied to a chair and very, very dead. His throat was sliced nearly all the way through, his head hanging to one side; eyes wide open in surprise, staring vacantly out into the hall. The left ear was missing a large chunk, from the lobe right up to the tip, leaving a crescent moon of skin behind. Deep weals ran parallel along his cheeks from his open mouth round the back of his head. It looked as if he’d been wearing some sort of bondage gag, the little round buckle holes imprinted on the waxy flesh. Karl’s arms were secured behind his back, attached to the chair’s legs by a set of plastic cable ties. The hands were crusted in more blood, making detail difficult to pick out, but one thing was abundantly clear: several of Karl’s fingers were a lot shorter than they should have been. Some ended at the second joint, others had been taken off at the knuckle, some in between: bone and cartilage showing through the stumps like boiled fish eyes. The severed ends were lying underneath the chair, the nails ripped out. Karl’s chest — where it wasn’t covered with blood from the gaping neck wound — was speckled with cigarette burns and his right nipple was missing. Karl’s legs were splayed wide open, giving Logan an excellent view of his bollocks. Those were either pubic hairs, or staples, Logan couldn’t decide which, and he wasn’t going to get any closer to find out. The pale, hairy legs were also covered in little burns, the knees lumpen and misshapen. It looked like someone had taken a hammer to his feet.