Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

Rennie squared his shoulders and nodded. This was his chance to shine...

Four interviews later and they were no nearer getting anyone for McKinnon’s death. No one had seen anything. Surprise, surprise. As the fourth inmate trooped out of the door Logan let out a yawn. Much to his surprise, Rennie had turned out to be a pretty competent interviewer; he’d only had to step in twice to get something clarified and that was during the first session — after that the constable had made sure he included Logan’s supplementary questions for everyone else.

But they still weren’t getting anywhere.

Frustrated Logan checked the list they’d got from the front desk again — twenty-seven people in the exercise yard while someone pinned Jamie McKinnon down, someone else covered his mouth so he couldn’t scream and a third rammed a syringe into his arm. How could no one have seen anything?

‘Er, sir?’ He looked up to see Rennie shifting uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Any chance we can take a break? I’m bursting.’

‘Good idea: pee and tea break.’

Rennie nodded, resignation on his face. ‘Yes sir. Two teas coming up: milk no sugar.’ And Logan remembered his own moment of epiphany.

‘No, you know what? This time I’ll make the tea.’

The staff rest area was a small room, jaundiced by decades of cigarette smoke, the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign on the wall modified by someone with a black marker pen so the cigarette in the red circle now looked like a penis, dripping sperm from the end. The word SMOKING had been crossed out and WANKING scrawled in its stead. Classy.

Logan filled the kettle and stuck it on to boil. There were no clean mugs in the cupboard, but someone had hidden a packet of Wagon Wheels behind a collection of yellowing coffee filters, so Logan helped himself to a couple. There was a loud sneeze from the corridor outside and he hurriedly stuffed the biscuits in his pocket as the rec-room door opened. It was the social worker from last time, still looking as if she was dying from a cold. Logan slapped a smile on his face. ‘Hi, just looking for some clean mugs,’ he said, trying to provide a non-chocolate-biscuit-stealing reason for rummaging about in the cupboards.

‘In this place? No chance.’ She blew her nose on a tatty grey handkerchief and prodded the rumbling kettle. ‘You’ll have to wash one.’ So Logan did, picking two that didn’t look as if they’d recently been used for slopping out and rinsing them under the hot tap.

‘Still on your own?’ he asked, making small talk while the kettle boiled.

‘As sodding usual.’ She shook a mountain of instant coffee into a huge mug. ‘ Margaret can’t come in today. Margaret ’s got flu.’ The coffee was followed by an unhealthy amount of sugar. ‘Bloody hangover more sodding like...

‘So,’ she said as they walked back along the corridor, ‘you here for anything special?’

‘Remember Jamie McKinnon?’

‘Christ, how could I forget! Got a sodding Fatal Accident Enquiry to go to for that one.’ She scowled and sniffed, putting on a whining voice, ‘“Why wasn’t he more closely supervised? Why was he allowed to commit suicide on the premises? Why was he allowed to get hold of drugs?” Like he filled in a sodding form asking permission!’

‘If it’s any consolation, we think someone killed him. We’re interviewing everyone who was in the exercise yard at the time.’

That produced a laugh. ‘Good luck — you’ll need it!’ They’d reached the interview room. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a pile of reports to get back to. Every bastard in here has to be re-checked for “suicidal tendencies” since Jamie McKinnon.’ Another bitter laugh. ‘And do I get any sodding credit for doing the work of a whole sodding department on my own? Do I hell!’

Logan grunted, the scowl on his face matching hers. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said. Bloody Steel and her... something occurred to him. ‘What about Neil Ritchie? He on suicide watch?’

She looked momentarily puzzled. ‘Ritchie...? Oh, the “Shore Lane Stalker”. Too bloody right he is, the man’s a wreck. One death in custody a week’s more than enough.’

A grim smile pulled at Logan’s face. DI Steel couldn’t get a confession out of Ritchie, but then she couldn’t interview her nose for bogies. Now if he got Ritchie to cough, they’d have to let him out of the Screw-Up Squad. ‘Any chance I could have a word?’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not. Can’t hurt after all.’

No, thought Logan, it couldn’t hurt at all.

Neil Ritchie looked like shit: hunched over, dark purple bags under his bloodshot eyes, hair wild and unkempt, rocking back and forth in a creaky plastic chair. The noise of an overcrowded prison going about its daily life filtered in through the interview-room walls, while an old cast-iron radiator clunked and rattled impotently in the corner. All being recorded for posterity by the tapes whirring away in the machine. The mug of tea Logan had made for DC Rennie sat in front of the trembling man along with one of the pilfered Wagon Wheels, neither of which he’d touched. ‘So,’ said Logan, leaning forward in his seat, purposely mirroring Ritchie’s posture, ‘how you feeling, Neil?’

The man stared fixedly at the tea, watching a thin skin form on the surface. His voice was little more than a whisper. ‘They... they put me in a cell with a criminal . He stabbed someone! He told me he stabbed someone...’ Neil Ritchie screwed up his face, holding back the tears. ‘ I don’t belong here! I didn’t do anything!’

This was exactly the same trick he’d pulled with DI Steel, protest total innocence and repeat ad nauseam. Logan struggled to keep the sympathetic expression on his face. ‘What about Holly McEwan, Neil? They found her hair in your car, on the passenger seat. How did it get there, Neil? Help me understand how it got there and maybe I can help you. Did you give her a lift?’

‘No!’ The word came out like a moan. ‘I never did anything with those women — I promised Suzanne. Never again. Never.’

‘But they found her hair in your car, Neil.’ Logan settled back in his seat, sipping his lukewarm tea, letting the silence stretch.

On the other side of the desk, Ritchie shuddered. ‘I told her — the inspector — I told her it must have happened before I got the car!’ His eyes locked on Logan’s, shining with tears. ‘Someone else gave her a lift! It wasn’t me... it wasn’t me...’

‘Your car’s brand new, Neil. The garage delivered it to you by seven pm the night Holly went missing: there’s a video of her being driven away in your car five and a half hours later.’

‘No! No! It... the car wasn’t there till the morning! I woke up and it was in the drive, it was supposed to be there on Tuesday night — I had to take the bike to the shops. I was going to complain to the garage, but they left a note and a bottle of champagne...’

Lies. Logan sat back in his seat and watched Ritchie rattling on about how he didn’t like to complain, like the good, little passive-aggressive monster he was. It was odd to think that this trembling wreck had killed three women. Not to mention beating the crap out of Skanky Agnes Walker. ‘What happened to your old car, Neil?’ he asked, cutting across Ritchie’s incessant whining. He was willing to bet it would be chockablock with forensic evidence. ‘When you bought the Audi — what happened to your old car?’

The man looked at him, puzzled. ‘I... I didn’t have one. Not for years. I’ve been on the bike. I only bought the bloody Audi because Suzanne kept going on about growing up...’ A sob. ‘Oh God, why did I have to listen to her?’