Stuart MacBride - Shatter the Bones

Logan stood. ‘You think you can walk, or do you want me to give you a piggy back?’

Ricky looked up at him, then away again. He gripped a handful of duvet cover. ‘Are you going to shag me up the arse?’

‘Wasn’t top of my agenda, no.’

A nod. ‘Can you carry me then?’

Logan knocked on the doorframe. The paintwork was chipped and peeling, a thick grey line halfway up marking where countless trolleys had bashed their way through. ‘Shop?’

The mortuary was nearly twice the size of the one in the basement of FHQ, done in sparkling white-and-blue tiles, like a swimming pool. A little speaker system sat on a shelf by the refrigerated drawers, Dr Hook’s Sexy Eyes echoing slightly in the antiseptic space.

‘Hello?’ A head appeared from a door at the back of the room — ginger curls bobbing as she wheeled a mop and bucket into the cutting room, white mortuary clogs squeaking on the floor. She smiled. ‘Sergeant McRae, we’ve not had you here for a while. Picking up, or dropping off?’

‘They got you mopping up now? You not a bit overqualified for that?’

‘Fred’s off sick, so we’re all chipping in.’ The Anatomical Pathology Technician hauled the mop out of the bucket and slopped it across the tiles, making little streams rush along the grout. ‘How’s Sheila? She still channelling Vincent Price?’

‘Three weeks to go.’ He limped into the room. ‘Wanted to ask you a question.’

‘What happened to your leg?’

‘Rottweiler. Look, I’ve only got a minute — have you had any dead children in recently? Girls. Between four and eight years old?’

‘I had a neighbour with a Rottweiler, lovely big lump it was. Broke her heart when it got cancer.’ The APT dumped the mop back in the mangle bit of the bucket and hauled the handle down, squeezing out the dirty water. ‘Hop up on the table and I’ll take a look.’

Logan looked at the stainless-steel table, the one with guttering around the edges, and a water supply to rinse away the blood. ‘I’m… Nah, it’s OK. I’m fine.’

‘Oh come on.’ She smiled. ‘Never lost a patient yet.’

‘Ever saved one?’

A sigh. ‘That’s a good point.’ She leant the mop against the wall, then crossed to a laptop sitting on its own on an expanse of shining worktop. ‘Little girls between four and eight…’ Her fingers clicked across the keys. ‘Am I allowed to ask why?’

There’s no need to sound so dramatic , Sergeant. Where do you think the kidnappers got the thing from, Toes R Us?

‘Was sitting upstairs, waiting for them to put a dozen stitches in a wee boy’s feet, and I thought — where would you get a dead little girl’s toe from?’

‘Lovely.’ She shook her head, Irn-Bru curls swaying. ‘So when you think of dead little girls: I’m the one who springs to mind?’

‘Have you had any? Over the last two or three weeks? They’d have been given morphine and thiopental sodium.’

She leant her head closer to the laptop’s screen. ‘That narrows it down a bit… Here we go: female, five-year-old, brought in suffering from abdominal pains. Died on the operating table.’ A sigh. ‘Poor wee soul.’

The song on the stereo changed to All the Time in the World . Logan limped over. ‘Could we do a DNA test? See if the toe they sent us was hers?’

‘I remember her now. Such a pretty little girl. When we opened her up she was riddled with cysts and cancer… Five years old.’

‘You’d have tissue samples though, right? We could-’

‘It’s not her.’

‘But if we check-’

‘It’s not her.’ The APT stepped back and pointed at the screen.

A photograph filled the right-hand side next to a list of post mortem notes: a little girl, lying on the cutting table, eyes taped closed, the breathing tube still in her mouth. Her skin was the colour of dusty slate, all the blood and life leached out of it.

The APT closed the laptop with a click. ‘There’s no way they could pass a toe from her off as coming from a little white girl.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ Deep breaths. Stay calm.

‘Then what did you mean, Sergeant?’ Superintendent Napier steepled his fingers, then rested his chin on the point. He smiled, dark eyes wide behind his glasses. His desk was arranged so that his back was to the window, meaning the chair reserved for visitors, supplicants, and sacrificial offerings, faced into the sun. The light made a fiery halo of Napier’s ginger hair, his black dress uniform a solid silhouette against the bright blue sky.

Logan squinted. ‘There just didn’t seem to be an opportunity to call it in. After I banged my head…’ He reached up and rubbed a spot behind his ear, just to sell the lie.

‘Ah yes. Of course. Detective Constable Rennie mentioned … where are we?’ The superintendent picked a sheet of paper from his in-tray and peered at it down his long pointy nose. ‘“He was acting all confused and had difficulty remembering the end of sentences, when I collected him. I believe he may have been concussed.”’ The paper went back in the tray. ‘A more cynical man might think you’d cooked that up between you to deflect the blame, don’t you think, Sergeant?’

‘When was the last time you were attacked by a Rottweiler?’ Or battered to death with your own office chair?

‘And I suppose it was this alleged “concussion” that made you twenty minutes late for our appointment?’ Napier swivelled from side to side, sunlight flaring in Logan’s eyes: shadow, bright, shadow, bright. ‘We’ve not had to deal with you for several months, Sergeant, but I see from Chief Inspector Young’s notes that you were in here only yesterday. Twice in two days. Are you embarking upon some kind of record attempt?’

‘They were trumped up charges by-’

‘Someone allegedly trying to extort drugs from you. Yes, I do actually read the case files of the officers I deal with, Sergeant. And a little birdie tells me that you’re having interpersonal difficulties with Chief Inspector Green from SOCA?’

Did the bastard hire a publicist? ‘We had a frank exchange of views, yes.’

‘Did you now?’ Napier swivelled again. ‘We disagreed about what was and wasn’t acceptable behaviour when interviewing sex offenders. Green thinks it’s OK to put the fear of God in them and threaten to tell their colleagues.’

‘I see…’ He sat forward, blocking out the sun. ‘So, would you say that Superintendent Green was less than receptive to Grampian Police’s thorough and rigorous approach to offender management? That he disregarded best working practice? Was contemptuous of it?’ There was that smile again, the one that made him look like a shark, about to tear into a paddling pool full of orphans.

‘Er…’ Logan was getting set up for something. ‘It was … a non-standard situation that … may have caused some confusion on his part.’

Napier raised an eyebrow. ‘I shall, of course, attempt to smooth out any difficulties in understanding. It’s important that we all get on with our colleagues from the Serious Organized Crime Agency, don’t you think?’

‘…Yes?’

The superintendent picked a silver pen from his desktop, rolled it back and forth between his fingers as if it were a shiny joint. Then returned it to its rightful place, lining it up perfectly with the edge of a desk calendar. ‘Well,’ he stuck out a hand for Logan to shake, ‘thank you for coming in, Sergeant. It’s been most … informative.’

That’s it — he was screwed.

It would just take a while to find out why, and exactly how badly.

‘Well, if you’d hold still for two minutes I wouldn’t have to, would I?’ Dr Delaney shifted her grip on Logan’s ankle. She had fingers like pliers, digging into the skin and muscle, the purple nitrile gloves pulling out leg hairs every time she moved.