Stuart MacBride - The Missing and the Dead

Kirstin Rattray?

The Transit’s driver clearly wasn’t looking in his mirrors. So Logan gave the ‘SIREN’ button a go too. Its wail cut through the downpour. But the Transit kept on trundling up onto the bridge across the Deveron.

Right: Kirstin Rattray. Shoplifter extraordinaire and drug addict. The woman who’d tipped them off about Klingon and Gerbil in the first place.

‘Someone attacked her?’

‘Doctor thinks they used a crowbar. Broke her jaw, her cheekbone, and her nose. Fractured skull, one leg, and both arms. Seven cracked ribs, three cracked vertebrae, and a shattered right kneecap. She’s waiting for a scan to see if they’ve ruptured her spleen too.’

Logan sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Oooh …’ That didn’t sound like an assault, that sounded like attempted murder. He poked Tufty in the shoulder. ‘Are you planning on pulling this guy over any time soon, or are we going to follow him all the way to Fraserburgh?’

‘Sorry, Sarge.’ Tufty drifted out into the other lane and overtook the Transit. Slowed in front of it, all lights blazing.

Back to the Airwave. ‘She conscious?’

‘Nope. According to the doctors, she’s lucky whoever it was didn’t kill her.’

Finally, the Transit’s driver seemed to get it through his thick skull. He pulled in to the side of the road with his load of burnt-oil smog.

Logan stared at it in the wing mirror. The Transit’s driver still hadn’t put down his mobile phone. Or pulled his seatbelt on. Had to admire stupidity that thick. ‘Why Elgin? Why did she turn up there?’

‘What’s wrong with Elgin?’

‘She lives in Banff, why did she end up thirty-five miles away? Not as if she could’ve walked it with a broken leg and shattered kneecap.’ He held the Airwave against his chest, then poked Tufty again. ‘You sitting there for a reason, Constable?’

Tufty curled his top lip. ‘But it’s bucketing down.’

Another poke. ‘You’re not going to sodding melt. Now get out there and see how many things you can do him for. And if you come back with less than three, I’m sending you out to try again.’

His face drooped with his shoulders. ‘Yes, Sarge.’ Then he stuffed the peaked cap on his head, grabbed his high-vis jacket, and scrambled out into the rain.

‘You still there?’

‘Had to motivate my constable.’ Logan pulled out his notebook and scribbled down Kirstin’s name, the date and the time. ‘How did she get to the hospital?’

‘Ambulance. Pair of caravanners found her in a lay-by, east of Fochabers. Thought she’d been in a hit-and-run; called it in.’

Logan tapped his pen against the notebook for a bit. ‘OK, thanks for letting me know. If something happens — if she wakes up, or anything like that — give me a shout, OK?’

‘Will do.’

He hooked his Airwave back into place, frowned at the windscreen as the wipers thumped and groaned their curves against the glass.

OK, so Kirstin was a drug addict, and sometimes drug addicts made poor choices and plenty of enemies. But still …

She was the one who dobbed Klingon and Gerbil in. Cost their supplier a hundred grand’s worth of heroin.

What if the Candy Man found out?

Maybe Jack Simpson wasn’t the only one who’d be serving as an object lesson.

Which meant it was Logan’s fault.

Wonderful.

Wasn’t as if he’d had any choice, was it? Couldn’t turn a blind eye to drug dealing, just in case someone got hurt.

A long slow breath hissed out between his teeth, leaving his shoulders slumped.

Poor Kirstin.

Should probably hand it over to Operation Troposphere. Assuming they didn’t already know about it.

Mind you, what if it wasn’t the Candy Man? What if someone else decided she needed her skeleton rearranged with a crowbar?

Wouldn’t hurt to ask about a bit first. See if anyone knew anything.

The driver’s door clunked open and Tufty avalanched in behind the wheel, dripping on the upholstery. ‘Dear Lord, it’s wet …’ He cranked the blowers up to full, then dumped his damp hat in the back. Held out his notebook. ‘Driving without a seatbelt. Driving while using a mobile phone. Using a vehicle which has faulty lights. Using a vehicle which is in a dangerous condition. And two bald tyres in contravention of Section Twenty-Seven of the Road Vehicles, Construction and Use, Regulations 1986. Oh, and his road tax is three weeks out of date too.’

‘And?’

‘Says he was on his way to the garage to get it all fixed and didn’t know about the tax. So I gave him an on-the-spot fine and fourteen days to attend a police station with evidence it’s all been fixed, or we’re confiscating the vehicle and doing him.’

‘Good.’ Logan pointed through the rain-shimmered glass. ‘Now get a move on, we’ve got some druggies to spin.’

‘And you’ve got nothing on your person I should know about?’ Tufty snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. ‘No knives, needles or blades?’

A sniff caught the drop on the end of Lumpy Patrick’s nose and hauled it back in. ‘Nah, I’m, you know, clean and that …’ His arms were like sticks, knotted around with rope. Thin hands with thick black crusts under the fingernails. Sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes.

He stood in the battered glow of a lamppost on Low Street, shielded from the wind and rain by the triangular frontage of a sheltered housing block.

Lumpy assumed the position and Tufty ran his hands along the outside of his manky sweatshirt. ‘I hear you’re dealing again.’

‘Nah, not me, no, not dealing. Don’t deal no more. Nah, someone’s lying.’

Logan dug his hands deeper into his pockets, out of the cold. ‘You hear about Kirstin Rattray, Lumpy?’

His head wobbled round to blink with two bloodshot eyes. He’d lost a couple of teeth since last time. ‘She pregnant again?’

‘No. Someone battered the living hell out of her. Left her for dead in a lay-by.’

One eyebrow crawled its way up Lumpy’s forehead. ‘Oh. Right. No.’ He sent a pale tongue slithering across greying gums. ‘No. Didn’t know that. No.’

‘You sure?’

‘Nah.’ Pause. ‘Yes.’

Tufty finished the pat down. ‘Right: pockets.’ Then dipped into them.

Lumpy sniffed back another droplet. ‘I hear stuff from time to time, though. Yeah, everyone thinks I don’t, but I do.’

‘Like what?’

A grin. ‘Like Stinky Sammy Wilson saying you gave him fifty quid to dig out someone called the Candleman. You can’t trust Sammy Wilson, but you can trust me . Totally. For fifty quid I could be, like, your eyes and ears and that. Much better than Sammy Wilson; man’s a moron and a liar.’

No honour amongst addicts.

And what the hell was Sammy doing telling everyone he was asking after the Candleman? Silly sod was leaving a trail a mile wide that led right back to Logan. And it wouldn’t take much for McInnes to stumble across it. Then BOOM, followed by nuclear winter.

‘Forget the Candleman. There is no Candleman. But if you find out who battered Kirstin Rattray, we’ll talk about it.’ He stuck a business card in Lumpy’s fingers.

‘Arms out, Bill, you know the drill.’

A sigh, then the arms came up, increasing the choking stench of old cheese and socks. Bill’s red hoodie was smeared down the front, hanging like a scarlet shroud over his skeletal torso.

Wind moaned in the branches of the trees, rustling the leaves outside St Andrew’s Episcopal Church. Rain pattered against the lanced windows and gothic frontage, darkening the granite. Making it glisten in the streetlight.

Tufty worked his way along Bill’s arms.