Stuart MacBride - The Missing and the Dead

The lounge was as they’d left it on Wednesday after the raid, but in the kitchen, someone had pulled the cooker away from the wall. Probably DCI McInnes’s Major Investigation Team, giving the place another going over. They’d done the same with the fridge-freezer, getting the white goods out of the way so they could search behind them.

A door off the hall led into the garage. A gloomy, dusty space full of cobwebs and discarded beer tins. Cigarette butts. Roaches. Shelves all higgledy-piggledy with cardboard boxes, paint tins, and filthy gardening equipment.

Dark-brown stains covered the middle of the concrete floor, beneath the fluorescent strip light. That would be where Jack Simpson got used for batting practice, before they stuffed him in the attic ready for tomorrow’s beating.

Back into the house proper. Up the sticky stairs.

Logan’s Airwave gave its point-to-point beeps as he reached the landing. He unhooked it and wandered into the smaller of the two bedrooms. ‘Safe to talk.’

‘McRae? It’s DI Jackson.’

Here we go. ‘How did you get on with Marlon Brodie?’

Piles of clothes and dirt and bin-bags. The view through the window would have been great in daylight — out across the rooftops to the sea — but the moon had been smothered by clouds, leaving everything shrouded in darkness beyond the streetlight’s glow.

Jackson sighed. ‘He says Stephen Bisset was dead when he got there.’

‘What happened to “no comment”?’ Back onto the landing.

‘Brodie had a change of mind when we told him we’d read his blog.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Should’ve done that in the first place.

The bigger bedroom had all its filth piled up in one corner and the mattress leaning against the wardrobe. The painting of Jesus was squint on its nail. Logan walked over to the window and pulled the curtain back.

‘He’s admitting to masturbating over multiple patients in the coma ward, male and female. Says them lying there all cool and still and almost dead was one of the sexiest things he’s ever seen. Claims he wasn’t really hurting anyone. And definitely denying murder.’

The garden was caught in the glow from the kitchen window, the garage, and the houses on either side. Weeds mostly. Docken and rosebay willowherb jabbed their spears at the dark sky. A patch of brambles in the corner. No shed, but there was a whirly washing line — canted over to the left, its stainless-steel branches buckled and twisted like a tree caught in a storm. The grass had grown in long tufts and clumps, its blades turned rusty and brittle in the recent spate of hot weather.

‘You believe him?’

‘Probably. We went through it a dozen times and he didn’t change his story once. He got into the room, he saw Stephen Bisset was dead, and he grabbed the chance to crack one out over a genuine corpse for a change.’

‘You going to throw the book at him for it?’

‘Going to try.’

‘Good.’

One patch was denser than the others. Over by the back fence, the grass and weeds were shorter and a more luscious shade of green. As if someone had cut a chunk out of some other garden and dropped it into the scrubby wasteland Klingon and Gerbil had ruled over.

‘Listen, McRae, I’m sorry about your girlfriend. We can’t tell if he … you know. But I’ll make sure he’s going away for as long as we can get.’

Why just that patch? Why wasn’t it half-dead and choked like the rest of the garden?

‘Trouble is, if he’s telling the truth and he didn’t kill Stephen Bisset, who did?’

It was as if there was something under the surface, feeding the plants.

Couldn’t really see Klingon and Gerbil out there with the Baby Bio. They weren’t exactly Gardeners’ Question Time kind of guys.

‘McRae? You still there?’

Logan let the curtain fall shut and pressed the talk button. ‘Sorry. Yeah. Listen, has anyone spoken to Bisset’s kids?’

‘Not specifically. I spoke to the mother soon as we picked Brodie up. She knows we arrested someone for her husband’s death, but not who. Well, assuming she was sober enough to take any of it in.’

Out onto the landing and down the stairs. ‘No, I mean there’s no one on the CCTV footage going into Stephen Bisset’s room between his kids leaving and the time Marlon Brodie turns up. Don’t know about you, but I think they might have noticed if their dad was dead. So if he was alive when they went in, and dead by the time Marlon Brodie visited …?’

‘Why the hell would they murder their own-’

‘It wouldn’t be murder for them, it’d be a mercy killing. Or it’s because they’re ashamed of the sex thing. Or maybe they couldn’t face the thought of their father lying there like a corpse for the rest of his life. Doesn’t really matter, does it?’

Steel’s right-hand woman, Becky, had been right after all. Even if she was a sour-faced moaning pain in the backside.

Logan marched along the hall and through the kitchen.

The key was still in the door. He unlocked it and stepped out into the back garden.

‘Unbelievable …’ A sigh crackled out of the Airwave’s speaker. ‘OK, I’ll get them picked up.’

Cool air caressed his face, bringing with it the aniseed-and-petrol smell of wood preservative and the gritty scent of dusty vegetation. He twisted his LED torch free from its catch. Clicked it on.

The grass was soft beneath his boots, like walking on a dying mattress.

‘McRae? Thanks. I owe you one.’

There it was. The only patch of healthy-looking weeds in the whole jungle. Definitely shorter than the rest, as if it’d been trimmed down, or only recently grown. Lush and green and healthy in the LED’s hard white spotlight.

‘Do me a favour? Go easy on them. They’re pretty screwed up as it is.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Then DI Jackson ended the call.

Logan tapped the Airwave handset against his leg.

The patch was about five foot by three. Perfect size, if you wanted to get rid of a body.

He thumbed Syd Fraser’s shoulder number into the Airwave. No response. So he dug out his phone and tried Syd’s mobile instead.

‘Hello?’

‘Syd, it’s Logan. Logan McRae, from Banff? You busy?’

‘Sitting here with a cup of tea, watching The Wrong Trousers , that count?’

‘Am I remembering right: does one of your dogs do cadavers?’

‘Hold on.’ A scrunching squelch came from the handset’s speaker, then a muffled, ‘It’s work. Only be a minute.’ Some clunking. Another scrunch, and Syd was back. ‘Lusso did a bit of training as a cadaver dog before I got him. Dog handler who had him ended up falling off a railway bridge after a bottle of vodka, twelve packs of paracetamol, and a note.’

‘The other guy named him Lusso? Dog Section full of Ferrari freaks is it?’

‘Nah, the idiot named him “Goldie”. Don’t know how much of the training stuck, though; I’ve been using Lusso as a cash and explosives dog for years. Hidden firearms, things like that. He’s good at it.’

Better than nothing.

Logan stared at the patch of verdant green. Could just dig it up and see what was down there, but the powers-that-be were already hacked off about him not following procedure. No point giving them another stick to beat him with.

‘Any chance you’re free tomorrow? I’m at what might be a deposition site.’

‘You there right now?’ Some more clunking. Then that scrunching squelch again, and a muffled, ‘Think I’m going to take the wee hairy lads out to stretch their legs before bedtime. Don’t wait up if I’m late.’ Another clunk and he was back, full volume. ‘OK, where am I going?’