Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

Wherever they’d gone, they’d turn up soon enough. All tanned and knackered from too much sex while his wife was at home, going frantic with worry. What a shit. Logan didn’t really want to be the one to tell Mrs Cruickshank her perfect husband was probably off on holiday screwing another woman. Maybe he could get a nice, sympathetic WPC to break the news instead.

He got as far as turning the car round before his mobile phone started ringing: DC Rennie calling on behalf of DI Steel — who was obviously still too angry to speak to him in person. Jamie McKinnon was dead.

Logan was to collect DC Rennie from FHQ and then go to the prison. Take statements and make sure everything was done by the book. The rain was still hammering down, thrumming on the car roof, as he pulled up outside the back door to the station and called the constable on his mobile to let him know he was waiting. Two minutes later Rennie threw himself into the passenger seat and shivered. ‘What a lovely bloody day!’ He ran a hand through his hair and flicked the water off into the foot well. ‘Here, these are for you.’ Rennie handed over a small pile of yellow Post-it notes, each of them marking an individual phone call from Mrs Cruickshank, wanting to know if they’d found her husband yet. She must have called half a dozen times since yesterday. Logan stuffed them in his pocket; she’d just have to wait until they were through at the prison.

Rennie was quiet as they drove down Market Street, past the harbour, but Logan could see him sneaking glances at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘Come on then, out with it.’

A blush. ‘Sorry, sir, I was just wondering what you’d done to upset DI Steel.’

‘Why?’

‘Er...’ Rennie screwed up his face, obviously fighting for some sort of tactful way of putting it. ‘She said I was to tell you: “don’t fuck this one up, or she’d do the same to you.” Swear to God, made me promise: word for word.’ He threw another glance in Logan’s direction. ‘Sorry...’

‘I see.’ God knew why he was surprised — hell hath no fury and all that. ‘So tell me about Jamie: what happened?’

‘They released him from hospital yesterday morning — went to court on the possession charge and straight back to Craiginches. Found him half an hour ago in the exercise yard. They think it’s an overdose.’

‘In prison? How the hell did he manage that?’

Rennie shrugged. ‘You know what it’s like these days, they want it bad enough, they’re going to get it.’

‘Didn’t bring it in from the hospital did he?’

‘No: I checked. After we found the drugs up his bum, he wasn’t even allowed to take a dump on his own. What a great job that would be, eh? Standing in the corner while some wee scroat has a crap, checking to make sure they don’t pick anything out of the bowl and stuff it back where it came from.’

Logan pulled into the prison car park, between a patrol car and a familiar top-of-the-range Mercedes. ‘Oh Christ...’ he said, staring at Isobel’s car. Just what he needed, someone else to give him a hard time.

They found her at the furthest corner of the exercise yard, dressed — like everyone else — in a flattering white paper romper suit, hunkered down over the twisted remains of Jamie McKinnon. Looking knackered. The IB had strung together a makeshift lean-to over the body, running lines from one twenty-foot-high wall to the other, draping the blue plastic sheeting over the top. Trying to keep the worst of the rain off Jamie McKinnon’s corpse.

He was lying on his side, one arm twisted up behind his back, the other draped across his face. The bandages on his broken fingers were dirty and streaked with vomit. His left knee was up against his chest, right leg pointing due east. ‘Right,’ said Isobel to an IB technician with a huge digital camera. ‘I want everything photographed. Particularly the hands and soles of the feet.’ She looked up and saw Logan as he ducked in under the blue plastic lean-to, out of the rain. Scowled. ‘When you’ve done with the pictures, get him back to the morgue.’ The photographer got to work, the hard clack of the flash making the raindrops spark as it caught them on their way to the ground. She stood, picked up her bag and started marching for the exit, accompanied by a mountain of muscle in a prison officer’s uniform. Probably to ensure she didn’t get free and maul one of the inmates.

‘Isobel?’ said Logan as she tried to walk straight past him.

‘Yes?’ Staring straight ahead. She really did look terrible: puffy and tired, as if she hadn’t slept in a week.

‘I need to know what happened.’

She scowled, looked at her watch and then back at Jamie McKinnon’s corpse. ‘He’s dead. Apparently from an overdose, but I’m not confirming that until I do the post mortem. You’ll have the preliminary report when it’s finished.’ Her voice was even more cold and clipped than usual. ‘Until then, if you’ll excuse me, I have other matters to attend to.’ She didn’t wait for an answer, just marched off, the paper suit making zwip-zwop noises as she disappeared from the compound.

‘Aye, aye...’ said Rennie, ‘someone’s not gettin’ any.’ They grabbed a pair of spare SOC suits and clambered into them as the IB team finished off the photos and got ready to bag up the body.

‘You want we should hold on a bit?’ asked the head technician, water droplets sparkling on his dirt-grey moustache. ‘I can’t give you long though, all this rain’ll play havoc with any trace evidence.’ He tucked the body-bag under his armpit and huddled with his colleagues next to the prison wall, keeping out of the downpour.

Logan hunkered down next to Jamie. The bruises from before had faded slightly, but new ones had taken their place. Whatever was going on in here, Jamie looked like he was on the receiving end of most of it. There was vomit in his hair and jumper, the acrid reek of bile slowly mingling with the stink of fresh urine. ‘So,’ said Rennie, copying Logan and dropping down next to the body, ‘what makes them think it was an overdose?’

‘Are you serious?’

Rennie looked up, puzzled. ‘What? Is it ’cos he’s got a history of drugs and...’ he trailed off into silence as he saw what Logan was pointing at: a small disposable syringe sticking out of the crook of Jamie’s left arm. ‘Jesus, that’s a bit grim!’

‘Er... Sergeant?’ it was Dirty Moustache again, clutching his empty body-bag as if it was a hot-water bottle. ‘We’re really going to have to get him back to the morgue now.’ Logan left them to it.

Inside the prison, the social worker in charge of Jamie McKinnon’s case, along with God knew how many others, was slumped over a desk in the admin wing doodling furious skull-and-cross-bones images on a to-do pad. She was the only person in there. If Logan thought the prison itself was dingy and depressing, it was nothing compared to the in-house social work offices, a converted paint shed with oppressive strip lighting, dirty yellow-grey ceiling tiles, peeling paintwork, and carpet tiles worn down to the fibres. Box files and trays of paperwork lined the walls, filling the space between the high, barred windows and the YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE MAD TO WORK HERE poster. Onto which someone had added the rider UNLESS YOU PLAN TO STAY in blue magic marker. The only concession to life was a cluster of sickly houseplants, their leaves slowly browning as they too succumbed to the atmosphere of doom and neglect. Logan settled down on the other side of the desk and asked her about Jamie McKinnon.

The woman looked tired, bags under the eyes, the end of her long, straight nose tinted strawberry pink, as if she’d been blowing it for years. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it? Like I don’t have enough bloody paperwork to do!’ A sigh. Then she rubbed her face with her hands. ‘Sorry, we’re short staffed at the moment — as bloody usual — one on maternity leave, two off on the stress, one walked out four months ago and we’ve still not hired anyone to replace them!’ Logan counted the desks: there were only six.