Stuart MacBride - The Missing and the Dead

Got you.

‘Stay here.’ Logan sprinted across the road and through the car park. His peaked cap flipped up and over in the wind, abandoning his head. Sod it. He could find it later.

The smell of diesel and iron grew with every thumping step, bringing with it the acidic reek of long-dead fish. Past the shipyard warehouse …

Where now?

‘Shire Uniform Seven, ambulance is on its way.’

A pair of large fishing boats were propped up in the dry docks, their curved hulls scraped back to the metal beneath. They towered up on either side of the slipway down into the inky water.

Where the hell was he?

There — on the other side of the slipway, not running back towards town, but out along the harbour wall.

‘COME BACK HERE!’ As if that ever worked.

Logan ran to the dry dock’s edge, scrambled down the ladder built into the concrete wall. Water lapped halfway up the slipway. He sploshed through it, picking his way over the weed-slicked surface. Cold and damp leached through his boots. Up the ladder on the other side.

The harbour curved around the edge of the town, a narrow strip of water less than two hundred feet wide in most places, fishing boats packed in nose-to-keel along both sides.

Somewhere behind him, the pained wail of a siren battered its way through the wind.

Keep going.

He lurched into a run again, socks squelching in his sodden boots. The North Sea battered against the sea wall, sending up jagged plumes of spray that smelled of salt and seaweed.

They crashed down onto the harbour’s outer arm, making the concrete glisten in the light of swaying lampposts. Jabbed and stabbed at Logan’s face and high-vis jacket. Soaked through his trousers.

Might as well jump in the sodding water, probably be drier than this.

Up ahead, the lights flickered on in one of the fishing boats rocking at the quayside.

Little sod was not getting away.

A figure clambered back onto the harbour side, by the boat, caught in the glow of its lights. Bent over, removing the lines tying it to its moorings. Then he jumped back onto the deck.

Closer. Come on. Only two boat-lengths to go …

A gurgling roar and the fishing boat pulled away.

Oh no you don’t.

Logan picked up the pace, feet slapping against the spray-soaked concrete.

Jump it. Couldn’t be more than six feet. Then eight. Then ten.

Even with the waves hammering the harbour wall on the seaward side, the water on this side was still and black. The fishing boat surged forwards, engine making a burbling roar, leaving a wake of churned white behind it.

Twelve feet.

Yeah, sod that.

He scrabbled to a halt on the lip of the harbour side, arms windmilling. ‘YOU! TURN THAT BOAT AROUND NOW!’

The figure in the wheelhouse turned and stared at him. A leathery face, stretched in a grimace above waterproofs, greying hair hanging damp across his forehead.

Dear God: it was Charles ‘Craggie’ Anderson.

‘YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!’

The engine changed tone, dropping in pitch and ferocity. Coming to a halt, instead of forging away. ‘PEERIE WULLIE’S RANT’ was painted along the bow in red letters, over a thick white stripe that circled the hull. Charles Anderson opened the wheelroom window, picked up a radio handset — stretching the loops out of the coil of wire — and thumbed a button. His voice crackled out from the boat’s PA system. ‘I am dead.’

Logan made a loud hailer out of his hands. ‘WHO WAS IT IN THE BOAT, UP IN ORKNEY? IT WASN’T YOU BURNED TO DEATH.’

‘Someone who deserved to die. He liked to play with little boys.’

‘AND YOU KILLED HIM.’

‘You let him go. You could’ve kept him in prison for ever, but you let him go. You let him run free, abusing children!’

‘I DIDN’T, IT’S …’ The boat wasn’t holding position any more, it was edging forward, towards the next section of the harbour. Towards the exit. ‘COME BACK AND WE CAN TALK ABOUT IT.’

No reply.

A stack of ancient lobster creels were piled at the foot of a flight of steps up onto the sea wall. Logan pulled out a Police Scotland business card and scrawled his mobile number on the back. Stuck it in one of the creels. Then took a run and flung the thing out over the harbour side.

It twirled through the air, crossing twenty foot of inky water, then crashed down on the deck of the fishing boat. Slid back against the wheelhouse and jammed beneath a railing. ‘MY NUMBER’S IN THERE. CALL ME AND WE CAN SORT SOMETHING OUT!’

But Charles Anderson stayed at the controls. ‘Neil Wood was hanging about the Community Centre. He was following schoolboys into the changing rooms and giving them money to let him touch them. Not years ago, two weeks ago.’

Logan kept pace with the boat. ‘WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ANYONE? WE COULD’VE DONE SOMETHING!’

‘I didn’t know, till just before he died. Sometimes it takes a while for people like him to tell the truth.’

The boat slipped through the bottleneck by the old fish market building. From here the harbour opened out, twisting around to the right, before narrowing one final time, then it was a straight run out to the sea. But Anderson kept Peerie Wullie’s Rant twenty feet from the harbour wall where Logan was. Close enough to shout, but too far to jump.

‘DON’T DO THIS. COME BACK AND WE CAN TALK ABOUT IT. WE DON’T-’

‘He told me about the Livestock Mart. He told me about what they were doing. Him and his nasty little ring. Told me about the little girl they’d bought to share.’

Little girl. The one they’d found floating face-down in Tarlair Outdoor Swimming Pool. The one on the board in Charles Anderson’s garage, connected by a red ribbon to Dr Gilcomston.

‘It was Neil Wood’s “turn”.’ The word came out as if it tasted of sick. ‘He didn’t even like little girls. I tried to save her. I couldn’t. I tried, but I was too late.’

On the other side of the harbour, an ambulance raced along Shore Street, lights flashing, siren wailing. It disappeared behind the fishing boat for a heartbeat, then screamed past. Siren dopplering away.

‘IF YOU’VE GOT EVIDENCE, I CAN-’

‘William Gilcomston, Neil Wood, Mark Brussels, and Liam Barden bought a little girl to share from the Livestock Mart. I know, because Liam Barden screamed their names before he died. Think they’d let you have a warrant based on that?’

Logan’s Airwave gave its four point-to-point beeps. ‘Shire Uniform Seven, ambulance is on scene now.’

‘WE CAN ARREST THEM. WE CAN SEARCH THEIR HOMES AND FIND SOMETHING CONNECTING THEM TO THE LITTLE GIRL: DNA, FIBRES-’

‘They’re not that stupid. The law isn’t justice, it’s the law. You lock them up and then you let them out and they never change.’

The boat accelerated, making for the narrowest part of the harbour. Definitely be able to jump on board there. Wouldn’t be more than six or seven feet between the deck and the wall.

But the boat would be through, long before he got there.

Damn it.

Anderson stepped out of the wheelhouse and picked up the lobster creel. Turned it over in his hands as the fishing boat puttered towards the exit.

‘CALL THE NUMBER!’

He stepped back inside the wheelhouse. Closed the door.

Another wave pounded against the sea wall, showering Logan with a spray of frigid brine.

‘YOU CAN’T GO OUT THERE, THE SEA’S TOO ROUGH.’

‘You never arrested Liam Barden. He was at it for years. Boys, girls: didn’t matter to him.’ The boat slipped through the narrow point. ‘You know what else he told me before he died? He told me about Andrew. He told me about how he and Neil Wood shared my son.’