Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

Logan grunted. No wonder Ailsa thought the woman had something to do with her disappearing husband. She certainly would’ve had a motive. That’s if Gavin wasn’t screwing a pole-dancer on a foreign beach somewhere, while his poor wife fretted and worried.

‘What about Ritchie, the Shore Lane Stalker?’

Rennie shrugged. ‘Have to ask the inspector about that. Playing it close to her chest.’

That figured. She wouldn’t want to share even the slightest hint of glory...

The forest suddenly opened up into a large, waterlogged dip. This was as far as the Identification Bureau van had got. It was abandoned halfway down the track, its rear wheels partially submerged in watery brown slime, the sides covered with fresh sprays of mud. There was a line of blue and white POLICE tape leading off into the trees just up ahead, and Logan and Rennie followed it. Two hundred yards in and they came across the cordon marking the outermost edge of the crime scene. A bored-looking WPC with a clipboard made them change into SOC boiler suits and overshoes before signing them in. The IB had put up a makeshift canopy of blue plastic, stringing it up between the trees on the periphery of the clearing. Smack bang in the middle of this impromptu marquee was a red fabric suitcase, identical to the last one, wedged under the bole of a fallen tree, partially covered by a layer of pine needles and soil, with fern fronds piled on top as camouflage. ‘I don’t get it,’ said Logan, watching as one of the IB team squatted down in front of the case and started delicately clearing off the greenery, needles and dirt into a large evidence pouch. ‘Why buy a bright-red suitcase if you’re going to hide the damn thing in a forest? I mean, it’s always going to stick out like a sore thumb, isn’t it? Why not buy a green one, or black? Why red?’

Rennie shrugged. ‘Wanted it to be found?’

‘Then why take it out into the middle of the bloody woods and hide it under a fallen tree? Why bury it under leaves and stuff?’

A thoughtful pause and then: ‘Maybe to make it easy to find, but look like it’s hard to find, so you’d find it but think it wasn’t meant to be found, even though you only really found it because someone wanted it to be found?’

Logan looked at him. ‘Did that make sense when it was inside your head?’ Cos it lost something in translation.’

Doc Fraser was already there, his medical bag sitting next to him on a roll of plastic sheeting while he leant against a tree and read the paper, waiting for the IB to finish taking samples, photographs, video, dusting for prints... He looked up from the P&J’s farming section and smiled. ‘Whatho, chaps,’ he said in a mock English accent, ‘smashing evening for a spot of the old dismembered-corpse routine, don’t ya think?’

Logan pointed at the milling throng of IB technicians. ‘Any sign of the PF yet?’ Doc Fraser shook his head: no one here but us chickens — not even DI Steel, who by rights should have got there before Rennie and Logan. Grumpy Doc Wilson was about somewhere, but given his recently acquired permanent foul mood the pathologist hadn’t bothered to make conversation and he’d sodded off into the woods to make some phone calls. There was a crash and a clatter from down the track they’d just walked up and DI Steel emerged, looking a little flustered, hauling at the backside of her boiler suit.

‘Call of nature,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask.’ The inspector took a quick stroll round the fallen tree, following the IB’s little raised path. ‘So,’ she said to Doc Fraser when she’d made a complete circuit, ‘you going to hang about here all day reading the paper, or you planning on actually doing some work?’

The suitcase’s lock came off in one piece and was dropped carefully into an evidence bag by a nervous-looking IB techie. ‘You know,’ said Steel as Doc Fraser gripped the top of the case, ‘we’re all going to look like a right bunch of idiots if this is a Cocker Spaniel.’

Fraser opened the case.

The smell wasn’t a patch on the dismembered Labrador, but it was still strong enough to make them all gag. There, lying in a pool of putrid liquid, was a large, grey-white chunk of meat. Definitely not a Cocker Spaniel. It had the word AILSA tattooed on its chest.

Rennie drove foot flat to the floor, rallying along the country roads making for Westhill while Logan phoned the Wildlife Investigation Officer who’d worked the dog-torso case. Had he spoken to a Mrs Clair Pirie when he was going through the list of missing black Labradors? No, he hadn’t, because Mrs Pirie hadn’t reported her dog missing. DI Steel sat up front in the passenger seat, a grin stretching her face wide. The Procurator Fiscal had been ecstatic — a search and arrest warrant was being rushed through. Her office promised it would be faxed to the Westhill police station by the time the inspector’s team got there. Alpha Two Nine was following on behind, having difficulty keeping up with Rennie’s driving.

The PF’s office was as good as its word and twelve minutes later Rennie pulled up outside Clair Pirie’s house in Westfield Gardens. Alpha Two Nine was parked round the back, on the entrance road to Westhill Academy — just in case. Next door, Cruickshanks’ Repose was in darkness, no car in the driveway, no answer when Logan phoned. But the television flickered in Clair Pirie’s lounge, making bruise-coloured shadows lurch and sprawl across the wallpaper.

‘Right,’ said Steel, holding a hand out to Rennie. ‘Warrants.’ The constable handed over the wad of faxed documents, all duly signed and countersigned. ‘Let’s do it.’

Rennie knocked on the front door, forgoing the broken bell, and settled back to wait. Behind him Steel shifted excitedly from foot to foot, like she was a little kid waiting for her turn at the ice-cream van. Eventually, grumbling and swearing, Clair Pirie opened the door, took one look at Rennie standing on her doorstep and slammed it shut again. ‘Fuck off!’ she shouted through the rippled glass, ‘I’m not in.’

Steel shoved Rennie out of the way, squaring up to the closed door. ‘Don’t be bloody stupid. Open this door now, or I’ll have it kicked in.’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘Really?’ Steel dragged the warrant out of her pocket and pressed it against the glass. ‘Clair Pirie: I have a warrant here to search these premises. You can either... Damn!’ The large silhouette had disappeared from the glass. Steel grabbed her radio. ‘Heads up, people — she’s doing a runner!’ She slapped Rennie on the shoulder. ‘What the hell you standing there for? Break it down!’

DC Rennie slammed his foot into the wood and the door sprang backwards. At the other end of the hall they could see the kitchen window, and through that into the back garden where they had a perfect view of Mrs Pirie’s backside as she clambered over the garden fence. Her large rear-end froze at the top and then she dropped back into the ruined flowerbed, shoulders slumped — closely followed by a uniformed constable from Alpha Two Nine.

DI Steel steepled her fingers and grinned. ‘Excellent.’

The Identification Bureau van arrived at twenty past nine, having just finished up in Garlogie Woods. Gavin Cruickshank’s torso was now on its way back to the morgue. They started in the bathroom: bathtubs being a popular location for the hacking up of dead bodies. People were always so keen to not make a mess. Steel left Mrs Pirie in the tender care of DC Rennie while she and Logan went upstairs to watch the IB team work. Willing them to find something.

The bathroom was a mess: a pile of dirty towels lying in the corner; dusty plastic tampon wrappers lying on the floor by the toilet; slivers of old soap decaying in a little dish attached to the shower. Mildew spread grey tendrils across the corner above the medicine cabinet and limescale turned the off-pink tiles a dirty grey. Very homely. ‘Manky cow...’ Dirty Moustache was kneeling by the side of the bath, working a cotton swab about in the plughole. It came out clarted in pubic hair.