Stuart MacBride - The Missing and the Dead

The traffic was beginning to pick up. Not that rush hour was much to write home about in Sandhaven. Two cars going one way, a tractor going the other.

‘All units, cancel that lookout request on the green Audi estate. Been found wrapped around a signpost on the B9025.’

Steel polished off the last of the chips, then dabbed up the remaining dribbles of special sauce with a fingertip. ‘What kind of wee shops are they hitting?’

‘All Co-ops. Well, except for that place in Fraserburgh: Broch Braw Buys.’

‘Interesting.’ She licked the fingertip clean, then wiped her hands on her trousers and dug out her phone. Made greasy prints on the screen. ‘Hold on. … Aye, Andy? It’s Roberta. … Yeah, still stuck with the Mire’s Bunnit Brigade. … Really?’ She laughed, setting a crevasse of wrinkly cleavage jiggling. ‘Listen, Andy, you’re in charge of the Cashline thing, right? Anyone looked at it being an inside job? Maybe it’s someone from the Co-op, or whoever it is supplies the cash machines?’

A removal van grumbled past on the road, ‘BLOO TOON SHIFTERS ~ TOUGH ENOUGH TO SHIFT YOUR STUFF!’ stencilled down the side with a cartoon of a haddock carrying a packing case.

Steel nodded. ‘Uh-huh. … Yeah, thought so. Never mind, worth a try. Give Dawn a big wet kiss and a grope from me, OK? … Yeah, you too, Andy.’ She hung up. Pursed her lips at the phone for a second. Then thumped Logan on the arm. ‘Told you it was a stupid idea.’

‘Yeah, what was I thinking?’ He finished off his Fanta. ‘Think they’ll keep hitting Co-op stores?’

‘Suppose we could stick a bunnit in every Co-op in the northeast. That’d do it.’

‘Do you have any idea how thin we’re stretched as it is? Where are we supposed to find the bodies?’

‘There is that.’

A minibus drove past with its windows down. Everyone in the back was wearing a black-and-white striped football shirt, as if they were all referees off on a jolly. The words, ‘One-Nil! One-Nil!’ Dopplered by, battered out on the wings of far too much lager and not enough tune.

Logan’s Airwave bleeped. He wiped his hands on a napkin. ‘Safe to talk.’

‘Sarge? Deano.’

‘What you still doing on, Deano? Shift ended an hour ago.’

‘Had to break into an auld wifie’s house. Daughter was convinced the old girl was dead at the bottom of the stairs.’

‘No?’

‘Nah, drunk as a badger. Found her in the downstairs bog, all covered in sick.’ The clunk of a door closing, muffled out of the handset’s speaker. ‘Listen, turns out the auld wifie’s husband did six years for abusing wee girls. Ran his own photography business. You know the sort of thing: come get glamour shots of your kids. “Oh, don’t worry, you can leave wee Jeanie with me, and I’ll be done by the time you’ve finished your shopping.” Kind of thing.’

Logan crushed the empty Fanta can and dropped it into the bag his burger had come in. ‘At it again, is he?’

‘Not unless it’s from beyond the grave. Died last year. His shop caught fire with him in it.’

At least that was something.

‘And …?’

Sitting in the passenger seat, Steel indulged herself with a post-Wimpy e-cigarette, blowing malformed vapour rings at the windscreen.

‘And no one’s going to hire a paedo photographer, so when he got out of prison he started taking pics for competitions. Got some of them up in the house.’

‘Deano, I’m losing the will to live here.’

‘Fifth place in the Aberdeen Examiner portrait competition from four years ago. It’s Neil Wood, cooking eggs in his B-and-B. Two years ago, it’s third place for a photo of Charles “Craggie” Anderson standing alongside his ship in dry dock. Our missing person’s got his portrait up on a paedo’s wall, Sarge.’

And Neil Wood wasn’t the only one who disappeared just before that wee girl’s body turned up.

Logan propped his pilfered notepad open against the steering wheel, and frowned at the short list of names doing lateshift in Banff that evening. Big Paul, Penny, Kate, and Joe. Of the four of them, Joe had the lowest shoulder number so the most time served. Logan called him on the Airwave. ‘Shire Uniform Seven. You there, Joe?’

‘Aye, Sarge. Safe to talk.’

Outside, Steel scuffed up the steps to her hotel with her phone clamped to her ear and her fake cigarette waving about like a conductor’s baton.

The wind was getting up, making her shirttails flap as she disappeared inside.

Logan pressed the button again. ‘Where are you?’

‘Castle Street. Me and Penny’s doing the rounds.’

‘Good. What about the others?’

‘Kate’s off to Fraserburgh for the night, and Big Paul’s away following up on a couple of tractor thefts around Portsoy.’

Nice and low-maintenance. Got to love it.

‘Do me a favour — nip back to the ranch when you’ve got a minute and run a full PNC on a misper for me: Charles “Craggie” Anderson. All his details are on the briefing slide. Go digging. I want to know if there’s any soft intelligence out there about him.’

A pause. ‘Am I looking for anything in particular?’

‘Yes, but I’m not prejudicing your enquiries.’

‘Then I’ll go digging.’

‘Thanks, Joe.’

He hooked his Airwave back in place. Stuck the notepad on the passenger seat. According to the dashboard clock, it was gone ten past six. Time to patrol.

‘All units, please be on the lookout for one Mark Lee, outstanding apprehension warrant for assault.’

Logan climbed into the Big Car and tossed his cap into the back.

The old woman stood at the front door of her tiny cottage, watching as he pulled away. One arm wrapped around herself, the other giving a small half-hearted wave. Holes in her cardigan, holes in the ancient slippers on her feet.

He called it in. ‘That shed break-in in King Edward: looks like they got away with a lawnmower, strimmer, and a chainsaw. Victim’s got no idea when it happened — any time over the last three weeks.’

‘Got that. Shed was locked?’

Nope. But then that meant the insurance company could weasel out of paying for what had been nicked. ‘Yeah, they popped one of the windows in. It’s boarded up now.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

He took the back roads, past fields and lonely farmhouses, turned amber and gold in the sunlight. A herd of sheep glowed like bronze statues against a field of emeralds.

Trees and hedges blurred by the windows.

‘Anyone in the vicinity of Cruden Bay, we’ve got reports of a fight outside the Golf Club …’

With any luck, they’d have stopped by the time a patrol car got there from Peterhead. The last thing they needed tonight was more people in the cells, taking up space till the courts opened for business on Monday morning.

Stubby’s voice growled out of the speakers. ‘Roger that, Control. Show Sierra Two One responding.’

Past the big graveyard on the outskirts of Macduff, the rows of the dead cold beneath the sun-warmed grass. Plenty of space for more to join them.

God, that was cheery.

Logan twisted his Airwave out of its clasp and thumbed Joe’s shoulder number into the keypad. ‘Joe, safe to talk?’

Silence.

Then, ‘Sorry, Sarge, we’re doing a stop-and-search.’

‘OK. I’m on my way back to the station. Wanted to know if you’d found anything out. Give me a shout when you’re free.’

‘Will do.’

The River Deveron was a sheet of beaten copper at the side of the road, glittering its way to the North Sea.