Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

Logan hung up and rammed the phone back in his pocket. Liverpudlian git. Why did everyone have to bang on about his drinking? OK, so he was only just crawling out from under a gargantuan hangover, but that wasn’t his fault, was it? Having to deal with Knox, Steel giving him a hard time, beating Reuben up, the bribe…Enough to turn anyone to drink.

God it was cold.

He stomped his feet, scanning the building site for PC Martin and Wardrobe the Wonder Dog. The pair of them had almost made it to the first part-built house — a bare timber frame reaching up into the cold grey sky.

Logan wandered over, hands twitching through his pockets, looking for a pack of cigarettes. Only the second one today. Which was a bit of a record, considering how crappy-

‘Excuse me, exactly what do you think you’re doing?’ It was the man from the site office, not Big-and-Bald, but the other one: ridiculous trimmed beard, comb-over hidden beneath a bright orange hard hat.

Logan pulled out the sheet of paper they’d picked up at the Procurator Fiscal’s office on Guild Street on their way over and kept on walking. ‘Mr…?’

‘This is a private development. I’m going to have to ask you to-’

‘I have a warrant here to search-’

‘-leave, or do I have to call site security…?’ The man trailed off, staring at the handcuffs dangling from Logan’s index finger.

‘Police.’

He curled his top lip. ‘I thought you said you were a debt collector for some sort of local bookies.’

The man obviously thought Logan was an idiot. Mr Big-and-Bald had looked him straight in the eye and called him ‘Officer’. They knew fine what he was.

‘Speaking of “site security”, where is he? Your bald mate with the big dog?’

‘I don’t see what that has to do with-’

Logan thrust the warrant at him. ‘I think I’ll decide what’s relevant, don’t you, Mr…?’

‘Joseph Brett, project manager.’ He raised his chin. ‘And may I ask exactly why you feel it necessary to search a perfectly legitimate-’

‘Don’t mind me.’ PC Martin clumped past, dragged along behind a panting Wardrobe, then disappeared around the corner. Doing a lap of the perimeter.

‘And you say you haven’t seen Stephen Polmont since Monday?’

Pink rushed up the man’s cheeks, clashing with his orange hard hat. ‘I didn’t say anything of the sort. I said he was suspected of stealing electrical equipment and disappeared before we could contact the police.’

‘Right…’ Logan turned and watched the constable and the Labrador work their way across to the next house in line. The ground floor was already clad in a skin of pale-yellow brick, partially hidden behind a web of scaffolding. Two men in padded overalls and thick woolly hats were laying down the next course, their paint-spattered radio blaring out Radio 2. ‘Big development: four hundred houses. That’s a lot of money.’

‘It’s-’

‘Course, it’s nothing compared with how much your boss rakes in from drugs, loan sharks, and prostitutes, is it?’

The project manager stared out across the rutted mud. ‘Is this little search of yours going to take long? A development this size doesn’t run itself.’

‘Might want to tell Mr McLennan it’s not a good idea to go muscling in on someone else’s territory. Burning bridges with the local community.’ Logan jammed his hands deeper in his pockets. ‘Aberdeen doesn’t need any more scumbags, Mr Brett, we’ve got enough of our own.’

The project manager straightened his hard hat. ‘McLennan Homes is a law-abiding company. We build family homes, community centres, libraries. We do not deal drugs or start gang wars. And anyone who says we do is going to be looking at a lawsuit.’ He turned a cold smile on Logan. ‘Are we clear?’

PC Martin appeared around the other side of the house, no Wardrobe. She grinned at them. ‘He’s got something!’

Logan hurried over through the ruts of dirty brown earth. The Labrador was lying down beside the wall at the rear of the property.

PC Martin bent down and ruffled the dog’s ears again. ‘Who’s a clever boy? You are. Yes you are!’

Wardrobe’s tail thumped against the frozen earth.

‘Well, well.’ Logan turned and smiled at the project manager. ‘Looks like we might have found your missing sparky after all.’

‘There’s definitely something there.’ The IB technician pulled his white facemask off, revealing a big salt-and-pepper moustache and a face like a squeezed sponge.

They’d had to rip the chipboard floor up to get at the concrete underneath, piling the wooden sheets against the walls in jagged layers so he and his assistant could wheel the ground-penetrating radar kit slowly around the part-built house.

Logan peered at the GPR screen. It was a ripply mix of blacks, dark blues, and greens, with an orange and white blob in the middle. Squint your eyes and it could almost be a body, lying curled up on its side. Or a squid. Or a radioactive angry amoeba. ‘What if it’s not?’

Mr Moustache tapped the screen. ‘Head here, legs, and that’s an arm.’

DI Steel shoved Logan out of the way. ‘Let me see…You sure?’

The man shrugged. ‘Eighty percent.’

‘Dig it up.’ Steel hauled at the crotch of her SOC suit. ‘Don’t see why we’ve got to wear these bloody things, like huge great albino bloody Smurfs. Poor sod’s buried under three feet of concrete, what the hell are we going to contaminate?’

‘Because, Inspector,’ came a voice from the doorway, ‘we do not treat our crime scene as if it were the January sale at Primark.’

Dr Isobel McAllister stepped down from the front door onto the bare concrete, carrying a small stainless steel briefcase. She wore the same white paper oversuit as everyone else, but somehow she managed to make it look stylish. She nodded at the moustachioed IB man. ‘Where is it?’

He described a rough oval with his finger.

‘I see. And are we certain the remains are human?’

Mr Moustache shrugged again. ‘Cadaver dogs react to decaying meat, so it could be anything.’ He stomped a bootied foot on the grey floor. ‘Might be a pig, might be a deer, but there’s something dead under all this lot.’

Steel scowled at him. ‘You told me eighty percent!’

‘Yes, but-’

‘Peter,’ Isobel placed her metal case on the floor and popped it open, ‘I need you to help me mark out the body.’ She produced a measuring tape, a box of white chalk, and what looked like a bag full of ten pence pieces. Then she and Mr Moustache laid out a six-inch grid in pale-blue chalk over the rough area of the body, and marked each intersection with one of the shiny silver coins. When that was done they ran the GPR kit carefully across it, Isobel taking notes in a small pad.

‘The body is…’ She pulled a stick of white chalk from the box and, checking her notes, outlined a crouching figure at her feet. ‘Here.’ Isobel smiled down at it. ‘You know, in all the time I’ve been a pathologist, I’ve never seen a body chalked up at a crime scene. Like being on the television, isn’t it?’

Steel leant over and whispered in Logan’s ear. ‘Aye, only a hoor of a lot more boring.’

Isobel selected another stick of chalk. ‘So we need to cut…here.’ A perfect rectangle of red, never closer than twelve inches from any point on the body.

The inspector rocked back and forth on her heels. ‘Right, McRae, you nip out and grab a couple of jackhammers, and-’

‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Isobel clunked her case shut again. ‘I will not have my crime scene turned into a building site.’

Steel cast an eye around the ripped-up floor and exposed wooden frame of the part-built house. ‘Hate to break it to you…’