Stuart MacBride - The Missing and the Dead

But the dog didn’t come. He was back at the fence, circling that patch of healthy weeds. Then he lay down right in the middle of it.

Bingo.

‘God, Klingon and Gerbil are the gift that keeps on giving, aren’t they?’ The words came out flat and nasal, as if the backshift Duty Inspector needed a good clean out with a drain rod. He paused for a sneeze. Then a sniff. ‘ And you’re sure it’s her? ’

‘Well … not a hundred percent, but there’s definitely something there, Guv.’ Logan stepped back as a line of anonymous figures in white SOC suits rustled past and out the back door. ‘The IB’s ready to start digging.’

Outside the window, a blue marquee snapped and rippled in the wind. Hiding the deposition site from prying eyes.

‘They killed his mum, and buried her in the back garden? Are they mental?’

‘Well, Klingon and Gerbil were never the sharpest spoons in the drawer.’

‘Why didn’t they chuck her in the sea? Or take her out to the middle of nowhere? Not like we don’t have excellent body-burying opportunities round here.’

‘Some people are just lazy.’

‘Place should be a Mecca for people looking to get rid of their no-longer-loved-ones. We could sell spades and souvenir T-shirts.’

There was a knock on the door and Constable Griffiths poked her head into the kitchen. Her eyebrows were up, the edges of her mouth down. ‘Sarge, there’s a boss outside and he’s foaming. Big Paul won’t let him in, ’cos it’s a crime scene.’

Oh. Logan sucked a breath in through his top teeth. ‘Any idea who it is?’

‘A Detective Chief Inspector McInnes?’

The guy in charge of Operation Troposphere. This wasn’t going to be fun.

‘OK, thanks Penny.’ Back to the handset. ‘Sorry, Guv, got to go. Someone wants to give me a bollocking for doing my job.’

‘I’ll be over soon as I can.’

Logan clipped his Airwave back into place, slipped the elastic band off his body-worn video, pulled his chin up, and marched out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the porch.

Big Paul stood on the top step, blocking the front door, towering over a figure wearing a suit, a tie, and a homicidal expression. That would be McInnes, then.

Big Paul tapped the clipboard in his other huge hand. His voice was a collection of rumbling bass notes that vibrated everything for twenty yards. ‘I know that, sir, but this is a crime scene and I’m not going to let you in until the Scenes Examination Branch tell me it’s OK. Those are the rules.’

McInnes paced up and down on the short path. Streetlight glinted off the bald patch at the back of his head every time he turned around, like a lighthouse in a sea of short curly grey hair. A thin face with permanent lines etched past the sides of his mouth, a gathering storm of them between his eyebrows. He was at least a foot shorter than Big Paul, but didn’t seem to let it bother him. Too used to getting his own way. ‘Don’t make me call your Divisional Commander!’

‘Feel free.’ Big Paul leaned forward, voice dropping to an even more menacing rumble. ‘Now get behind that barrier tape, before I-’

‘All right.’ Logan tapped him on the arm. Solid muscle, bunched tight beneath the black T-shirt. ‘Thanks, Paul, I’ll take it from here.’

He turned. Smiled. ‘Sarge.’ Then stepped to one side, letting Logan squeeze past onto the path. Before returning to blocking the front door. Both huge arms crossed over his huge chest.

McInnes jabbed a finger at Logan. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ The auld-mannie scent of Old Spice wafted off him like cheap vodka.

‘We’re-’

‘Did I, or did I not expressly forbid you from interfering in Operation Troposphere? Because I’m pretty sure I told you to keep your damn nose out of it!’

‘Sir, I need you to-’

‘THIS!’ Another finger, but this one made contact, stabbing Logan’s stabproof vest. ‘THIS IS WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!’

‘Sir, I need you to calm down. Shouting the odds isn’t helping.’

‘DON’T YOU BLOODY TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!’

‘The curtains are already twitching all along the street. Do you really want to see yourself having a rant posted on YouTube by some nosy neighbour?’

McInnes hissed a couple of breaths in and out through gritted teeth. Then, ‘Fine.’ His voice dropped to a growling whisper. ‘You listen to me, Sergeant , and you listen well. This isn’t some halfwit divisional bumfest, it’s an extremely high-profile inter-agency cross-border operation, and what you’re doing is screwing it about!’

Logan pulled his shoulders back. ‘With all due respect-’

‘Shut up! I’ve given you chance after chance, but somehow, because you lucked into the initial bust, you think that gives you the right to decide how a thousand-man-hour operation is run?’

‘I didn’t-’

‘You think I don’t know you’ve been asking people to question Kevin McEwan and Colin Spinney in Craiginches? And now here you are, digging up MY BLOODY CRIME SCENE!’

The dogs in Syd’s Transit must have finally had enough, because shotgun barks boomed out through the open windows.

McInnes marched down the path to the line of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape and back again. ‘You will stay the hell away from Kevin “Gerbil” McEwan and Colin “Klingon” Spinney. You will stay away from their house. You will stay away from their friends. And if I hear so much as a whisper about you coming anywhere near Operation Troposphere there’s going to be a lifetime of misery coming your way.’ He dipped into his pocket and produced a smartphone. ‘And so we’re clear: right now, I’m going to call my guvnor and get him to rain crap on your area commander’s head from a great height. You enjoy the fall-out, Sergeant. You’ve had your last warning.’

‘No, Guv, with all due respect, that’s-’

‘Don’t you dare “all due respect” me, Sergeant.’ The backshift Duty Inspector’s cold didn’t sound as if it had improved any. ‘This isn’t an “all due respect” situation, it’s “shut up and do what you’re told”.’

‘Guv, I-’

‘McInnes called his boss. His boss called the Chief Constable, who opened the sewage floodgates. It’s cascading all the way down through B Division from way on high and I don’t appreciate being in the bloody flood zone! You will stay the hell away from Klingon, Gerbil, and Operation Troposphere, do I make myself clear?’

‘But we found-’

‘I don’t care if you found Shergar, the Ark of the Covenant, and the entrance to sodding Narnia: no more! It’s done. Now get out there and do your job.’

The muscles in Logan’s jaw ached. He prised his teeth apart, barely far enough to squeeze the words out, ‘Yes, Guv.’

And the Duty Inspector was gone.

The handset creaked in Logan’s fist.

Slow calm breaths.

Don’t smash the thing against the pavement. Then gather up the broken shards and ram them up McInnes’s backside.

Fifteen minutes. That’s how long it had taken for McInnes’s crap to roll all the way downhill. Fifteen minutes.

A hand thumped down on Logan’s shoulder. Syd. ‘You look like you’re going to kill someone.’

‘Don’t tempt me.’

‘Only saying.’ He hauled back the sliding door on his Transit van, getting a few low yowls of welcome from the dogs. A couple of fold-down seats and some plastic crates filled the space between the Transit’s cab and a partition wall with four hatches set into it — each one marked with a little sticky label. ‘ENZO’ and ‘LUSSO’ on the bottom two, ‘DINO’ and ‘DO NOT USE!’ on the top ones.