Stuart MacBride - The Missing and the Dead

‘Sammy: it’s over. It’s not my case any more.’ Besides, DCI McInnes was hacked off enough already. He’d go thermonuclear if he found out Sammy Wilson was sniffing around Operation Troposphere on Logan’s behalf. Didn’t matter if the Chief Constable had called Logan personally to say what a good little boy he was — the explosion would be horrendous and the fall-out? It’d last for years.

‘I asked them high, and I asked them low, and they never suspected I was James Bond and they were all stupid and I was slicker than a monkey, I was. Yeah. Questions. You got my ten quid?’ His fingers disengaged and one hand reached for Logan, palm up, eyes glittering. ‘Ten quid for a cuppa tea and that?’

‘Here.’ Logan dug in his pocket and came out with five pound coins and some smush. ‘It’s all I’ve got.’ He tipped it into Sammy’s open palm and it got snatched back against the sodden, dirty tracksuit.

‘Tenner, we said, ten quid for questions, right? Ten quid, not …’ His lips moved as he counted. ‘Six pound twenty-three.’

‘I’ve nothing else. That’s it. I’m skint till the end of the month. Now give it up. No more asking questions. It’s over .’

The eyebrows went up. ‘No more James Bond? I’ve been asking and asking for ten quid, only we’re three pound seventy-seven short. Can’t give any of the questions back, sale is final: no receipt, no returns.’

‘Let it go, Sammy. Thanks for the help, and I’ll get you the other three quid when I’ve got it.’

‘Three seventy-seven.’ Another cough — this one longer and deeper — had his back heaving. His knees bent until he was almost in two. Hacking and wheezing to a stop. Then a deep gasp hauled him upright again. ‘Sammy’s dying …’

A car ploughed its way along the road in front of the sea wall, sending up plumes of water.

Wind rattled the station windows.

Logan cleared his throat. ‘Have you got somewhere to stay tonight? A bed at the shelter, a friend’s couch?’

Samuel Ewan Wilson stepped in close enough for the heat radiating off him to seep into Logan’s skin. ‘If I find out his name, I get my three pounds seventy-seven, right?’

‘No!’ Rain dripped from the brim of Logan’s hat. ‘It’s over, understand, Sammy? It’s over . Stay away from the whole thing. Take the cash and go get some chips or something. A kebab. I don’t want you asking any more questions.’

The skeletal face tilted to the left, eyebrows pinched together. Breath like a ruptured bin-bag. ‘You don’t want to know who he is? Why don’t you want to know? Police always want to know, right? Why don’t you want to know?’

‘Drop it. And find somewhere warm and dry to sleep. Don’t spend the night out in this. You’ll catch your death.’

‘I still get my three pound seventy-seven though, right? Ten quid for asking questions. We had a deal, that was the deal, ten quid.’

‘Sarge?’ The word came from the rain behind Logan. He turned and there were Penny and Joe. ‘You OK there, Sarge?’

‘I’m fine. See you inside.’

A pause. Then, ‘OK.’ And they let themselves in the tradesmen’s entrance.

And when Logan turned back, Sammy Wilson was lumbering off into the gloom, rain sparking off his plastic-bag hat.

‘All units be aware: we’ve got a lorry fire on the B9093, between New Pitsligo and Strichen …’

Tufty tapped his fingers along the top of the steering wheel. ‘You know what I don’t understand?’

Logan scrolled through the text messages on his phone. ‘Here we go.’

Outside, the day had given up. Wind rocked the lampposts, the rain making shimmering golden orbs around their sodium bulbs. The windscreen wipers thunked back and forth across the glass, engine barely ticking over. They’d parked facing the road to Macduff, lurking beside a council bin, overflowing with newspapers and plastic bags. Someone’s broken umbrella poked out of the side, its black-ribbed skin making it look like something with bat wings was trying to escape from within.

‘No. Look, everyone who’s like of northern European decent has got a chunk of Neanderthal DNA in them, right? Because somewhere back in the dawn of time our ancestors fancied a bit of caveman. So they can’t have been a different species, can they? Whole point of speciation is you can’t breed with the rest of them any more.’

‘Are you finished?’

‘Well, makes you think, doesn’t it?’

‘No.’ Logan settled back into his seat.

A shrug. Then he launched into whistling the theme tune to Bonanza .

‘Tufty!’

‘Sorry.’ Back to tapping his fingers along the steering wheel. ‘Can’t believe I wasted all that time digging up info on Brian Menendez Guerra.’

‘Who?’

‘Brian Menendez Guerra — Helen Edwards’s ex-husband. Snatched their daughter? Spent ages on that.’

Logan checked his phone for text messages. Nothing. ‘Why wasted?’

‘Well, no one cares now, do they? The wee girl we found at Tarlair wasn’t Natasha Edwards, so no one cares her dad’s dead.’

‘Brian Edwards is dead?’

‘Hit-and-run in Middlesbrough two years ago.’

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer scumbag.

Mind you, it showed how rubbish Helen’s private investigator was. Tufty had dug up the fact that Edwards was dead in a couple of hours, while all Sam Spade ever managed was ‘he disappeared’. Yeah, he was definitely worth whatever Helen had been paying him all these years.

Idiot.

‘What about the daughter?’

‘No record. Probably still at home with Ex-Wife Number Two in Spain. She got shot of him for battering her and the kids.’

Why the hell would Helen marry someone like that?

‘Do me a favour, Tufty, text me the address in Spain. Might be worth following up.’

‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

Logan talked into his shoulder. ‘Bang away.’

‘We’ve had another three sightings of David and Catherine Bisset: Inverness, Carlisle, and Ellon. Local forces are investigating.’

‘Thanks.’ He let go of the button.

Tufty was looking at him.

‘What?’

‘If it was your dad, if you were David Bisset, what would you do? Would you kill Graham Stirling?’

‘It wasn’t, and I’m not, so I wouldn’t.’

A nod. ‘Don’t know if I could kill someone, not even if they’d done horrible things to my dad. Well, maybe. I mean, if they’d done something to my mum , then yeah. I’d crack them open like a pistachio nut.’

‘You’re supposed to be a police officer, Constable Quirrel. We don’t “crack people open”, we arrest them and we prosecute them.’

‘Yeah, but if it was your mum …’

A rust-flecked Transit growled past on the way to Macduff, towing a plume of oily black smoke from its exhaust. The driver had his elbow on the windowsill, mobile phone clamped to his ear. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt either.

Logan pointed. ‘We’re on.’

Tufty clicked on the headlights and pulled out onto the road.

‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

‘We’re in hot pursuit at the moment.’ The speedo had barely nudged thirty and they were already catching up with the Transit’s greasy cloud. ‘Well, lukewarm pursuit.’

‘Got an assault victim up at Elgin A-and-E with your business card in her pocket.’

‘Elgin? You got a name?’ Logan reached out a finger and hit the button marked ‘BLUES’. The lights on top of the Big Car flickered to life.

‘Yeah, one Kirstin Rattray. IC-One female, thin, twenty-four but looks forty-five. Well, she looks like she’s been run over by a tractor, but you know what I mean.’