Stuart MacBride - Shatter the Bones

Sitting on the blue plastic mattress with her knees drawn up against her chest, Emily — Britain’s Next Big Porn Star — flinched. She was backed up into the corner, keeping her head down, like a dog waiting to be beaten. Another victory for Team Logan.

He sighed and tried to soften his voice. ‘You told me they’d used Trisha Brown as a threat.’

Emily nodded, still keeping her eyes on her chewed fingers. ‘What happened?’

She glanced at him, then away again. ‘There was some drugs went missing, Shuggie got them on credit, like. Some cop raided them and he couldn’t pay them back…’

Logan leant back against the cell door. ‘And?’

‘Bob and Jacob thought Shuggie needed a lesson.’

She went back to chewing at her nails.

Silence.

‘Emily, I’m going to need more than that.’

‘Way I heard it, they invite Shuggie and Trisha over to discuss spreading the repayments, only when they get there, Bob takes this knife and he…’ She shuddered. ‘He, you know.’ Emily stuck out the little finger on her left hand, then pretended to skin it with an invisible knife. ‘Then the bastards make Shuggie watch them taking turns. You know: raping her.’

Emily wrapped her arms around her knees, fingertips stroking the bruises beneath her T-shirt. ‘Wrote the cop’s name on her chest and told her to fuck off and get the drugs back if she didn’t want to swap places with Shuggie.’

‘Fuck me.’ Acting DI Mark MacDonald closed the door to Logan’s makeshift office and slumped against it. ‘Like a bloody bear pit down there.’ He peered at the packet of shortbread sitting next to Logan’s in-tray. ‘Any chance…?’

‘Not mine, Rennie left them.’

‘Good enough for me.’ He tore open the wrapper and helped himself to a couple. ‘I hate media briefings.’ He perched himself on the edge of Logan’s desk. ‘How come you’re not off with the cavalry?’

Logan brushed the bits of shortbread from his mouse and scrolled onto the next page of the interview report form — typing up his meeting with Robert Marley. ‘You’re getting crumbs everywhere.’

‘Anyway, if you’re not off arresting this Clayton tosser, do you want to give me a hand with a risk assessment for the hostage handover?’

Logan sat back. ‘They’re arresting Stephen Clayton? Who’s arresting Stephen Clayton? When ?’

‘Thought you knew. Finnie and the tosser Green set off with a firearms team fifteen minutes ago.’

Bastards!

Logan opened his desk drawer. His Airwave handset was nesting in a collection of witness statements and check-lists. He punched in Finnie’s number.

The head of CID’s voice crackled out of the speaker, nearly drowned out by the roar of an engine. ‘Ah, Inspector McRae, how nice of you to report for duty. What, were you busy getting your hair done?’

‘You’ve gone after Clayton! Why the-’

‘Where were you? We’ve been calling you for the last forty minutes.’

Logan closed his eyes and swore. He pulled out his mobile phone and swore again: he’d switched it off for the interview with the flame-haired ‘Marley’ brother. He turned the thing back on and it bleeped at him, the screen flickering with little alerts. ‘YOU HAVE 12 NEW MESSAGES’. Perfect.

‘I’ve been interviewing suspects in the Trisha Brown abduction.’

‘I want your pet psychologist at the station in half an hour, ready to downstream on the Clayton interview.’

‘I can be out at Hillhead in fifteen minutes, if…’ A solid tone came from the speaker, then silence. Finnie had hung up on him. ‘Great.’ He dumped the handset back in the drawer and slammed it shut. ‘I do all the work and they waltz in and make the arrest.’ He scowled at Mark. ‘What’s that look for?’

‘How come, you’re “Detective Inspector McRae”, but I’m always, “ Acting Detective Inspector MacDonald”?’

‘Because Finnie’s a dick, that’s why.’ He turned back to his screen. ‘Can’t believe they went after Clayton without me.’

‘You’re only DI till bloody McPherson gets back, I’m-’

‘Did anyone else find a suspect for Alison and Jenny’s abduction? Did they buggery.’ Logan hauled everything out of his in-tray and dumped it on the desk, rifling through the pile of letters and forms. ‘But do I get to be part of the pick-up team? No . That’d be too much to ask for.’

Burglary, burglary, unlawful removal, complaint about someone’s dog barking, memo from Baldy Bain about not parking personal vehicles on the Rear Podium… Where the hell was Guthrie’s e-fit?

The door thumped shut. Logan looked up — Mark was gone. Flounced off in a huff.

How could Finnie go after Stephen Clayton without him? The anonymous trio of e-fits were wedged between reports of a flasher and complaints about a gang of kids dressed in Cub Scout uniforms running riot in Bridge of Don. Logan laid the three computer-generated identikits side by side on his desk. Two looked as if a drunken monkey had been operating the software, but the third actually bore a passing resemblance to a human being.

A man, mid-fifties to early sixties, long hair, goatee beard, glasses, a Brothers Grimm fairytale nose, lopsided ears of different sizes. Vaguely familiar. Logan held the e-fit out at arm’s length and squinted at it, blurring his vision…

Nope.

He trundled his chair back from the desk and headed downstairs.

A middle-aged man was standing on the grey terrazzo floor in front of the reception desk, waving his arms about like an angry windmill, his brown suit stained and splattered with scarlet. As if he’d stood too close to someone who’d exploded. ‘…little bastards! What sort of people raise children like that?’

Big Gary was standing on the other side of the desk, behind the glass partition, nodding — every gesture setting his collection of chins wobbling. ‘I know, sir. Dreadful. If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll get someone down to take your statement…’ His eyes locked on Logan, then a grin pulled at his chubby cheeks. ‘Ah, DS McRae: there’s a gentleman here who’s-’

‘They need a damn good slap. If I did that when I was kid, my mum would’ve battered the shite out of me!’

Logan slipped the e-fit through the gap between the glass partition and the desk. ‘He look familiar to you?’

‘This is what you get for being a concerned bloody citizen. Who wants to use a bus shelter covered in graffiti?’

Big Gary scratched at his big pink head. ‘Kind of…’ He squinted one eye shut. ‘Who did it?’

‘Guthrie.’

‘When I was in the Cubs we respected our elders, now it’s Lord of the Bloody Flies !’

‘That explains it.’ Big Gary stuck his tongue out and frowned. ‘Might be Darren McInnes? If it is, he’s not been well…’ He handed the e-fit back to Logan. ‘You could try the Horny Grolloch Squad; but I’m pretty sure it’s him.’

‘It’s a bloody disgrace. Who’s going to pay for my suit, that’s what I want to know!’

‘Aye, weil, I suppose it does kinda look a bittie like him.’ DC Paul Leggett held the e-fit up next to his computer screen. A familiar wrinkled face stared out of the monitor: Darren McInnes (52) — Exposing Children to Harm/Danger or Neglect, Possessing Indecent Images of Children, Theft by Housebreaking, Serious Assault.

No wonder he’d looked familiar: he was one of the first registered sex offenders they’d interviewed in the Munro House Hotel.

Leggett ran a hand through his collar-length hair. ‘Aye, maybe…’

The stocky wee man wouldn’t have got away with the bohemian look in uniform or CID, but in the Mong Squad it helped not to look like a police officer.