Stuart MacBride - The Missing and the Dead

It buzzed slightly.

No reply.

King Kong’s knees popped as he squatted down and peered in through the letterbox. The sound of frenetic drums and guitars stuttered out through the gap. ‘Think there’s definitely someone in there.’

‘Is it locked?’

A quick turn of the handle, and the door swung open. They stepped inside.

A nice hall, bit bland and magnolia, but other than that it was OK. An old leather bible sat on the hall table, next to the phone, its edges scuffed, the gilt lettering flaking and cracked.

The music was coming from somewhere further down the hall, all the words hammering out in barrages, interspersed with a weird blend of electronic rock and heavy metal guitars.

Lounge: empty.

Dining room: empty.

King Kong eased a door open on a tiny toilet. Also empty.

That left the kitchen.

Logan stopped at the door. It was open a couple of inches. Nice new kitchen, certainly a lot more expensive-looking than the one he’d put in at the Sergeant’s Hoose. Lots of black work surface, slate tiles, and oak units. A portable speaker sat in the middle of the breakfast bar with an MP3 player plugged into the top.

A flash of purple T-shirt and black jeans in the gap between the door and frame then gone again. It sounded as if whoever was in there was having a bit of a singalong. And not doing a very good job of it. The words were all there, but the tune had stormed off in a huff.

Logan put a hand on the door and pushed.

It swung all the way.

A young man stood by the conservatory doors, with his back to the room, pouring what looked like Irn-Bru from a crystal decanter into a tall glass. Battering out the words in time with whoever was battering out of the speakers. The liquorice smell of star anise combined with the aroma of coriander and pepper, presumably coming from the trio of takeaway containers sitting on the breakfast bar. Noodles, something prawny, and what was probably spare ribs. A bag of prawn crackers lay next to them.

Logan’s stomach growled like an angry badger.

Who said crime didn’t pay?

The guy still hadn’t turned around, so Logan crept into the kitchen and pressed the power button on the speaker-dock.

What almost passed for singing continued for a couple of beats, ‘Old School Hollywood …’ then faded away. The singer cleared his throat. ‘There’s someone there, isn’t there?’ He turned around. And his eyes went wide. ‘Crap.’

Logan smiled. ‘Tony Wishart, I believe. How nice. Tell me, Tony: the bible out in the hall, that the one you stole from Pennan?’

He put the decanter down on the work surface. Licked his lips. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Is this your house, Tony?’

Wishart shuffled left a bit. ‘I’m … looking after it for a lovely old lady. Poor dear’s got Alzheimer’s. She fell and broke her hip, so while she’s in hospital, I’m, you know, doing my bit.’

‘Doesn’t look like an old lady’s house.’ Logan pointed. ‘Let me guess, that’s the ship’s decanter from the Cutty Sark ?’

Wishart pulled his lips in, squeezing his jaws together. Look left, look right. He was going to run for it. Getting up on the balls of his feet. Tensing up. Ready to go.

Constable King Kong McMahon stepped into the kitchen doorway, filling it. ‘Oh no you don’t.’

‘Oh yes I do!’ And Wishart was off in the opposite direction, yanking open the conservatory doors, sprinting past the wicker furniture and out the far side, into the garden.

King Kong lumbered after him with Logan not far behind.

Dundee Bill appeared from nowhere, arms open like a goalkeeper, and Wishart ducked, scrambled past him, once round the garden with Dundee and Tufty in hot pursuit. Then bang — he jumped for the high wooden fence, using a plastic compost bin for a boost, up and over the top.

Tufty didn’t stop in time and hammered into the fence. Bounced. Landed flat on his back with a, ‘Whoooof!’

King Kong charged up onto the compost bin and over the fence.

Logan slid to a halt on the wet grass and grabbed the wood, peering out like Kilroy.

Wishart was legging it down Mid Street as fast as his skinny legs would carry him, the mounded bulk of King Kong pounding along behind him. Gathering momentum.

Dundee Bill thumped to a halt next to Logan, grinning. Made a loudhailer from his hands. ‘RUN, FORREST, RUN!’

Nope, Wishart was faster. Little sod was going to get away …

Then a bicycle appeared from between two parked cars and CRASH . Arms and legs and wheels and swearing.

Dundee winced. ‘That’s gotta hurt.’

Tony Wishart lay sprawled across the tarmac, with one foot still tangled in the bicycle’s skeleton. He struggled to his knees, just in time to get rugby-tackled by King Kong.

‘Ooh …’ Dundee sucked a breath in through his crooked teeth. ‘But not as much as that.’

‘All units be on the lookout for a dark-red Vauxhall Astra, stolen from outside the chip shop in Gardenstown …’

Tony Wishart sat at the breakfast bar, a bag of frozen sweetcorn pressed to the left side of his face. ‘Think I chipped a tooth.’ The stubble on his chin was all matted with drying blood, where he’d smashed into the road surface.

Logan sat down opposite and helped himself to a prawn cracker. Cold, but still good. ‘So, when I search this place, what am I going to find, Tony? First World War bayonet? Maybe some paintings from the Twenties?’ Another cracker, crunching through the words. ‘How about all the stuff that got nicked from the Aberdeen Heritage Centre in Mintlaw?’

He peeled the bag of sweetcorn from his cheek. There was the beginnings of a nice shiner there. ‘Don’t suppose it’d help if I told you I’d found it?’

‘Not really.’

‘Pfff …’ Wishart dumped the sweetcorn on the worktop. Cracked his way through all eight fingers, then did the thumbs as well. ‘How did you know to find me? Someone ratted me out, didn’t they? Was it Baz? I bet it was Baz, he’s always been a tosser.’

Logan pulled out the two printouts from the Pubwatch recordings, holding them up one at a time. ‘This is you coming out of Broch Braw Buys. And this is you disappearing behind a removal van. You didn’t come out, so you must’ve gone into the house behind it.’ He laid them out on the counter. Frowned. There was something …

‘I only went in for teabags.’ Wishart’s shoulders slumped. ‘Can I at least eat my carryout?’

‘Sorry.’ Logan clicked the plastic tops back on the containers. ‘But I’ll do you a deal. You show me everything you’ve squirrelled away here, tell us what you did with the rest of it, and I’ll make sure the Sheriff knows you cooperated.’

Tufty lowered the last cardboard box into the Big Car. A brass sextant poked out of the top, nestled amongst old gramophone records and rolled-up maps. He stepped back and closed the boot. ‘That’s the lot.’

‘Good.’

Tony Wishart was squeezed into the back seat with his bag of frozen sweetcorn, and a stack of boxes full of historical memorabilia. Paintings, bowls, vases, a medical bag from the Crimean War, pens, pipes, photographs, books … A full-sized porcelain bust of some long-dead man in a naval uniform sat on the passenger seat, held in place by a set of fluorescent-yellow limb restraints.

‘Sure you’re OK to walk, Sarge?’

‘It’s two minutes up the road. Go.’

Tufty climbed in behind the wheel.

Logan stood on the pavement as the Big Car pulled away. OK, so Tony Wishart wasn’t exactly Hannibal Lecter meets Professor Moriarty, but at least the good people of Pennan, and other points north, would get their antique knick-knacks back.

King Kong clunked the front door shut and locked it. Pocketed the key. ‘That’ll put a dent in the unsolved burglaries.’