Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

‘What do you think?’

Logan turned to see the deputy PF standing on her own in the doorway, trying to look casual in the standard-issue boiler suit while completely avoiding eye contact with the blood-caked, naked body. There was no sign of the IB team, who were probably poking through the rest of the flat, giving the kitchen a wide berth until DI Insch calmed down a bit. ‘Well,’ said Logan, ‘if he knew anything, he’ll have talked.’

Rachael risked a glance at Karl Pearson’s body. ‘Tortured for information?’

‘Probably drugs-related. Karl had form for dealing and we know there’s a new crew in town. Looks like they play rough.’

Rachael worked her way around to the far side of the lounge, staring out of the window at the sun-kissed North Sea. Keeping well away from Karl Pearson. ‘How the hell do you torture someone in a block of flats and not get caught? Surely someone must have heard something! He’s in here getting... getting that done to him and no one called 999?’

‘Well, if it was me I’d gag him, tie him to the chair and then torture him. Stub out some cigarettes, rip out some fingernails, break some toes... Then, when he’s finished screaming behind the gag, pop it off and start asking questions. By now he knows you mean business. You put the gag back in and you go to work again. Slice off an ear, hack off a couple of fingers: really make him suffer. Ask your questions again. See if you get the same answers twice. Then do it all one last time, just to be safe.’ He sighed. ‘Long as you keep the gag in while you’re working, no one’s going to hear a thing... Except maybe the hammering.’ She was silent. ‘You OK?’

Rachael shuddered. ‘You know what it’s like: never really seen anything on this...’ she waved at Karl’s tortured body, ‘this scale before. Not in the flesh. I mean we get to see a lot of photographs when we’re doing the cases in court, but...’ She flapped her hands again.

‘But it’s not the same.’ Logan nodded. Outside the window a seagull swept past on the breeze, its white body caught in a beam of sunshine, fluorescing against the deep, clay-blue sea.

‘What the hell’s wrong with this place?’ she asked, staring out at the clouds scudding across the eggshell sky. ‘You’d think a quiet little city like Aberdeen would be safe... You ever look at the statistics? According to the Scottish Office, we murder more people here, per million head of population, than the whole of England and Wales combined. How about that?’ She leaned her head against the glass. ‘And if that’s not bad enough, we’ve got twenty-six times as many attempted murders as we have successful ones! Really makes you proud.’

Logan joined her at the window. ‘Really? Twenty-six times?’

Rachael nodded. ‘Twenty-six times.’

He shook his head. ‘Wow... We must be really crap! How could we miss so many times? I blame the parents.’

She actually cracked a smile.

‘Anyway.’ Logan wandered back to the tortured body in the middle of the room. ‘My guess is that our parochial wee drugs war has just stepped up a notch. We’re going to start seeing a whole lot more of this kind of thing.’ He stared down at Karl Pearson’s sliced-off ear and realized he was starving. According to his watch it was already two thirty. The post mortem on Karl Pearson was due to kick off at three; that left him thirty minutes to get something to eat and get back to the station.

A clunk at the front door and the Procurator Fiscal stuck her head into the lounge, sweeping the crime scene with a practised eye before frowning, marching straight past the body and peering at Karl’s homemade wallpaper. ‘Isn’t this DS Beattie’s wife?’

Karl Pearson’s post mortem seemed to take forever, and by half five Logan had to excuse himself, claiming a prior engagement — making sure DI Steel had everything in place for the surveillance operation this evening. Knowing her, she’d be expecting him to do all the legwork. And anyway, the only bit of real news from Doc Fraser’s dissection of the tortured body was the collection of fresh needle marks in Karl’s upper bicep. Logan was willing to bet the blood work would come back with traces of narcotics. Not enough for Karl to get high, just enough to stop him from going into shock. Maybe even enough to act as a reward if he told the truth. Something to make the pain go away.

Upstairs, DI Steel’s incident room was nearly as dead as Karl Pearson. The occasional phone rang, but nothing much was going on. The inspector was lounging against a computer terminal, picking her teeth and reading an Evening Express . Yes, of course she’d done the paperwork, and had it signed by the Detective Chief Superintendent himself, no less. Which meant they couldn’t screw this one up; if they did everyone and their dog would be lining up to tear a chunk out of their arses. And let’s face it, if DI Steel didn’t get results from the stakeout, what the hell else could she do? It wasn’t as if leads were easy to come by on this bloody case. Somehow two dead prostitutes hadn’t captured the attention of the public, not even with the words ‘Serial Killer’ attached. They’d barely received a call all day.

‘How about we stage a reconstruction?’ Logan asked. ‘Get it on the news?’

Steel smiled at him in a disturbingly motherly kind of way. ‘What a great idea! We’ll get someone to dress up as a murdered prostitute and get someone else to be the killer, enticing her into his car. Then we’ll ask for anyone who was hanging around the docks at that time of night to come forward with any information they have.’ There was something sarcastic coming, Logan could feel it. ‘Can you imagine the avalanche of calls we’ll get? All those public-spirited pimps, whores and kerb-crawlers! “Yes officer, I was down the docks that night lookin’ for a prostitute and I saw a nasty man pick up the tart who got killed...” I’d better get some more uniforms to answer the phones. We’ll be swamped!’

‘Fine,’ said Logan. ‘Be like that.’

Steel grinned at him. ‘Never mind, Mr Police Hero, if it all goes tits-up tonight I’ll think about it. If nothing else it’ll make the Chief Constable think we’re doing something. Now why don’t you go pick out a couple of nice, ugly WPCs to be our hookers? Tell them there’s a bottle of vodka in it for them, if they don’t wind up stripped and beaten to death.’

Half past eight and the briefing was winding to a close. DI Steel had laid out the ground rules, walked everyone through the plan — including the Detective Chief Superintendent who gave a five-minute inspirational speech on the risks and rewards of this kind of operation — and detailed the four teams. Team one was the smallest: WPCs Davidson and Menzies, the inspector’s fake prostitutes, neither of whom would win a beauty contest anytime soon. They were already dressed up for their role tonight: short skirts, push-up bras, three inches of make-up and hair like a home perm gone bad. Each one wearing a transmitter/receiver, a secondary backup set — just in case — and a handheld GPS tracker sewn into their formidable underwear. If anything happened they weren’t going to disappear off the face of the earth. Not to mention the tiny canisters of CS gas they both carried. Team two was eight plainclothes officers, two per car. They’d park in the places Logan had identified, where they could keep an eye on Davidson and Menzies plying their trade. Team three was by far the largest, three marked patrol cars, two unmarked CID pool cars, and half a dozen uniforms in the back of an unmarked dark blue Transit Van, lurking on the streets leading to and from the red light district all kitted out with video surveillance equipment and ready to roll as soon as the word was given. Team four would stay at the station and keep all the communication channels open. Relay the messages. Make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be and, in the cases of WPCs Davidson and Menzies, still alive. It was a big operation; lots of manpower, expensive, but the Detective Chief Superintendent assured them all that the Chief Constable was behind them one hundred percent. Steel had sanction for the next five nights, but the DCS was sure they’d get a result long before that. Logan, well aware of just how many holes there were in the plan, kept his mouth shut.