Stuart MacBride - Shatter the Bones

‘Of course, I spotted those photos the first time,’ Rennie hauled the pool car’s boot open and dumped a handful of evidence bags inside, each one filled, dated, labelled and signed for, ‘just didn’t want to prejudice your first impressions.’ He clunked the boot closed again.

‘Don’t be a dick.’ Logan climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Fair enough.’ Rennie got behind the wheel. ‘Worth a try though.’ Grin. ‘Back to the ranch?’

‘Yeah, then I want you to go through every photo on that camera and laptop. We’re looking for someone watching Alison McGregor’s house.’

‘Other than Beatrice McFruitloop, you mean.’ He started the engine. ‘How the hell did she manage to get into university? Psychology degree? Talk about “physician heal thy-bloody-self”.’

‘Maybe she’s good at exams. Just make sure- buggering hell.’ Logan’s phone was ringing. He pulled it out. ‘McRae.’

‘Told you there’d be consequences.’ Shuggie Webster, sounding stoned out of his box. ‘You happy now? You fucking happy?’

‘Shuggie, you’ve got to turn yourself in. Turn yourself in and we’ll talk about it.’

‘It’s your fault!’

Logan checked the display — not the same number as before. ‘Where are you?’

‘Consequences.’ And then Shuggie hung up.

Rennie was looking at him. ‘Sarge?’

‘Back to the ranch.’ Logan dragged out his Airwave handset, dialled Control and told them to get a GSM trace set up on Shuggie’s new mobile. If Sheriff McNab gave them a warrant, and the phone company didn’t drag its heels, they’d know where Mr Consequences was before clocking off time.

He stuck the handset back in his pocket and watched the halls of residence fade in the rearview mirror. Consequences … Then his mobile started ringing again. It was Colin Miller from the Aberdeen Examiner. ‘Got another note.’

Logan clutched at the grab handle as Rennie juddered the pool car out of the junction and onto King Street. ‘Are you trying to shake the fillings out of my head?’

‘Laz?’

‘Yeah, sorry, Colin. What are they saying? Let me guess: you have two days left or Jenny will die?’

‘No, it’s no’ from them. Look, we’ve been gettin’ in dozens of fake ransom demands every day since this kicked off, right? All fuckin’ mentalists wantin’ us tae drop off a few hundred thou in a bin bag in Torry, that kinda shite. Well today we got one that wasnae all about Jenny and Alison.’

Silence. ‘Are you waiting for me to guess what it says, Colin?’

‘OK, OK. It says, “Trisha Brown has a little boy called Ricky. If you ever want him to see his mummy alive, you’ll start raisin’ money

now. If you can do it for that showbiz bitch, you can do it for me.” That last bit’s in italics, with three exclamation points, but.’

Oh … fuck. ‘Did they say how much and where?’

‘Aye: “I want a hundred and fi fty thousand. Pocket money compared to how much that bitch is gettin’ — take it out of her pot if you like. I don’t care. Five days. Or she dies.” Note’s got blood on it.’

Logan tapped his knuckles against the car window. ‘You still there?’

‘What are you doing about it? You printing it?’

‘That’s kinda where you come in. The Examiner doesnae want tarred with that “encouraging copycat crimes” brush your guvnor likes slappin’ about. Last thing we need’s another run-in with them pricks on the Press Complaints Commission after the whole Bondage-gate fiasco.’

Consequences.

Shuggie Webster, you silly, silly bastard. Did he actually think they were going to fall for that one? Kidnap his own girlfriend, send a note to the papers, ransom her for enough to pay off their drug debt and set the pair of them up on the Costa del Sol for the next couple of years.

‘Laz?’

‘I’ll get someone over to pick up the note.’

‘Aye, but should we print-’

Logan hung up.

‘Boss?’

Logan looked up from the stack of interview forms. PC Guthrie was standing in the doorway of the little office, one hand behind his back, the other stroking his trouser leg as if it was nervous and needed comforting. Logan went back to his paperwork. ‘You’ll go blind if you don’t stop doing that.’

‘Got that note from the Aberdeen Examiner , you want it?’ Guthrie held up a clear evidence bag.

Logan closed his eyes. ‘No, I don’t want it. I want you to take it up to the third floor and get the IB to-’

‘Already done it. They lifted prints off the envelope and the note: Bill’s running them now. Blood’s off to the lab, for analysis.’

‘Already?’

A nod. ‘Rennie said you needed it urgently, so…?’

‘They got prints?’

‘Three partials and one beauty from the note, Bill says it’s a near-perfect right thumb.’

See, that was the difference between professionals — like the ones who snatched Alison and Jenny — and idiot copycats like Shuggie Webster and Trisha Brown.

‘Good, thanks Allan. Do me a favour, go chase up the GSM trace on Shuggie Webster’s phone. Who knows, we might actually get a result for a change.’

Soon as Guthrie waddled off like a happy penguin, Logan finished typing up his interview notes. Then checked them against the ones DI McPherson had done. From the look of things McPherson had taken over the campus canteen and arranged for a team of DCs to go through all of Alison’s classmates in alphabetical order. Which meant whoever interviewed Beatrice ‘Single White Female’ Eastbrook had no idea about the stalker’s shrine on her bedroom wall.

The one thing McPherson’s team had done well was to get information from the university on each of the students’ performance, along with some comment from the department head and a couple of the lecturers. Apparently Beatrice was reasonably dedicated, if a little prone to daydreaming, and not the most original thinker in the world. A mediocre student who could perhaps scrape a 2.2 if she really applied herself.

Logan read to the end, then flipped the form over again. McPherson’s team didn’t seem to have checked for criminal records.

Logan logged onto the PNC and ran a search against her name. Just in case.

Three warnings for vandalism, one for sending threatening letters. According to West Midlands Police, Beatrice had taken exception to a mother of two asking her to stop bothering her family. There was talk of a restraining order and that seemed to put an end to it. So Beatrice wasn’t new to the creepy stalker game.

Maybe she’d decided it would be a lot less effort to kidnap Alison and Jenny than follow them about the whole time? And Alison was going to be more famous than ever when she finally got released… Maybe it was all some twisted attempt to help her?

Beatrice Eastbrook wasn’t really the gang-leader-criminal-mastermind type, but Logan picked up the phone and got a patrol car organized to bring her in to ‘help with their enquiries’ anyway. Maybe get Goulding to sit in on the questioning? A bit of steamy psychologist-on-psychologist action.

Then he went back to the list of Alison McGregor’s classmates.

The PNC check on Tanya ‘Tiggy’ Marsden came back clean, even if she had lied about being Bruce’s girlfriend.

According to his lecturers, Stephen Clayton was a straight A student, but his name returned a list of petty crimes from when he was eight all the way up to the age of fourteen. Nothing serious, probably just enough to give mummy and daddy ‘look-at-me!’ palpitations. Which would explain the carefully-crafted rebellious cliche appearance and attitude.