Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

Silence.

The door to reception banged open and a ragged-arsed man lurched in, breaking the moment. Dressed in a tatty AFC tracksuit from three seasons ago, with a beard that looked more like mould than hair, he made a concerted stagger for the centre section of the reception desk, pounded on the wooden top and shouted, ‘Ah’ve hud ma script nicked!’

The missing persons form arrived on a tray with two mugs of hot, milky tea and a folded note from Sergeant Eric Mitchell suggesting that Logan might like to finish up his interview sharpish and get the hell out of the station and not come back for the rest of the day. Slippery Sandy the Snake was making a formal complaint.

Trying not to look as if he was hurrying the process along, Logan went through the background of the case with Gavin Cruickshank’s distraught wife. How they were both desperate for a baby and had been trying for months. How she’d given up her job so she’d be less stressed and more fertile. How Gavin had to work late most nights these days. About his battles with the next-door neighbour. The last time she’d seen her husband he’d been going out the front door, a pair of sunglasses hiding a black eye — courtesy of the harridan next door — still furious... and that was Wednesday morning. She hadn’t heard from him since. ‘I phoned the office, but... but they said he was out with a client and wouldn’t be back till late.’ Her eyes were desperate. ‘He always comes home! Always!’

‘So, when he didn’t you phoned the police?’ said Logan, scanning the report for the date she’d reported her husband missing: half past seven, Thursday morning.

She nodded, sending tears dripping into her congealing tea. ‘Sometimes he doesn’t get back till four or five, if he has to go to the casino, or one of those...’ she blushed, ‘ clubs , so I went to bed. When he wasn’t back by six I tried his mobile, but it said to leave a message. I tried again and again and... then I called the police.’

Logan nodded, trying to concentrate on her story and failing. Why on earth did he have to threaten Hissing Sid? As if the enquiry into PC Maitland’s death wasn’t going to be painful enough without adding a formal complaint to the pile... Suddenly Logan realized that Mrs Cruickshank had just finished saying something and was looking at him expectantly. ‘Hmmm...’ he said, putting on a frown of concentration, no idea at all what she’d just asked him. ‘In what way?’

‘Well.’ She scooted her chair closer to the table. ‘What if she’s done something to him? She’s dangerous !’

‘Dangerous... I see...’ No he didn’t: he wasn’t any the wiser. He’d just have to bite the bullet and admit that he hadn’t been listen—

‘That woman next door has been nothing but trouble since she moved in! She hit him! Gave him a black eye! He reported it...’ The tears started again. ‘You have to find him!’ Logan promised her he’d do his best and escorted her to the front door. There was no sign of Sandy the Snake in reception — probably off complaining to the Chief Constable in person — so he made himself scarce, grabbing one of the CID pool cars. Not really caring where he went just as long as he was far away from FHQ before anyone noticed he was gone. To be on the safe side, he switched off his mobile phone as well. What he needed was something to keep his mind off things. Something to make him feel useful, even if he was only marking time until the summons back to headquarters for another ear-bashing. And maybe a bit of getting fired. According to Mrs Cruickshank, her husband worked for an oil-service company based in the Kirkhill Industrial Estate, hiring lifting gear out to the drilling rigs and platforms. OK, so it was only a missing persons job, but at least he’d be doing something.

ScotiaLift occupied a featureless two-storey rectangle with a small car park in front and a gated enclosure out the back stacked with brightly coloured lifting equipment. The car park boasted a Porsche, a huge BMW four-wheel-drive thing, a soft-top Audi — none of which looked more than a couple of months old and all of which had personalized number plates — and a six-foottall sign with the company’s logo rendered in layers of shiny plastic. Logan parked his filthy, dented CID pool car next to the Porsche, severely lowering the tone of the place, and let himself into the building’s reception.

Aberdeen had a long and proud history of hiring attractive young ladies to sit behind reception desks and ScotiaLift was no exception. She smiled brightly as Logan entered. ‘Can I help you?’ The smile faltered as he proffered his warrant card and told her he was there to ask some questions about the disappearance of a Mr Gavin Cruickshank. She looked from the card to Logan and back again, worry making little creases at the corners of her eyes.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘it’s a dreadful photo. I need to speak to Mr Cruickshank’s colleagues and anyone else who might have seen him on Wednesday.’

‘But he didn’t come in on Wednesday!’

Logan frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

The woman nodded and tapped the reception desk with a painted fingernail. ‘I would have seen him.’ Logan turned and took a quick look around the reception area. It wasn’t huge and the front door was directly opposite where the woman sat. She was right: if he’d come in the front she would have seen him.

‘There isn’t a back way?’

She nodded, pointing off through an open door to the left of the desk. ‘Round the side, but it opens into the yard and the gate’s kept locked. Well, unless there’s equipment getting moved. Everyone parks out front — I’d’ve seen his car.’

‘In that case,’ asked Logan, ‘how come when Mrs Cruickshank phoned on the Wednesday afternoon she was told her husband was out with a customer?’

A slight blush. ‘I don’t know.’

Logan let the silence hang for a minute, hoping she’d leap in and say something more. But she didn’t. Instead she took an all-consuming interest in the phones, as if willing them to ring and give her an excuse not to speak to him any more, cheeks turning redder by the minute. ‘OK,’ he said at last, breaking the uncomfortable silence, ‘then I’ll need to speak to everyone who worked with him.’

She found him an empty office on the first floor, Gavin’s: an untidy room with a girlie calendar hanging on the back of the door, another one on the far wall, two computers and a huge desk that looked as if it hadn’t been cleared since the last ice age. But it did have a lovely view of the car park. One by one, all of ScotiaLift’s employees were called into Logan’s commandeered office, from the yardsman to the managing director, sitting on the other side of the messy desk and telling Logan what a great guy Gavin Cruickshank was and how it wasn’t like him to just disappear like that. None of them admitted to speaking to Gavin’s wife on the phone and telling her he’d just popped out to see a client. Logan was getting ready to leave when a flashy two-seater sports car pulled up out front. He watched from his first-floor window as a tanned man in his early twenties hopped out, pointed his key fob at the car and plipped on the alarm, before swaggering towards the building and disappearing from view. Thirty seconds later the same tanned face popped around the door to Logan’s office and grinned at him.

‘Evenin’, squire, understand you’re looking for me?’ Spiky blond hair, linen suit, no tie, Armani sunglasses, faint Dundee accent.

‘That depends. You speak to Gavin Cruickshank’s wife on Wednesday?’

‘The lovely Ailsa?’ The grin grew even wider as the man peeled off his jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. ‘Guilty as charged. One of these days she’s going to wise up and dump that tosser husband of hers.’ He gave Logan a wink. ‘You ever met her? Knockers like melons, sexy as hell. Never believe she used to be the size of a house. Must go like a fucking bunny...’ He sighed, happy with his fantasy.