Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

Logan pulled out his warrant card again. ‘Coincidence: I’m working too.’

The girls took a step back, but Mr Boiler Suit squared his shoulders — he couldn’t have been much over five foot three, but Logan supposed ‘height’ wasn’t the measurement they’d hired him for. Not standing up anyway. Boiler Suit scowled. ‘You heard her, we’re working !’ He flexed his muscles and gave Logan his best hard-man impersonation. ‘Now clear off out of it!’

Logan stared at him, until the man looked away, then shuffled backwards to stand with the Vikings. ‘You recognize any of these men?’ Logan handed over the three screenshots from Jason’s porn collection.

‘Hey,’ said the man, peering at one, then flipping it over, reading the film name off the back, ‘this is me! Wow … Claire, you remember Cumlamity Jane ?’

Claire groaned. ‘ Fastest Dildo In The West : couldnae walk straight for a week!’ Boiler Suit handed over the printout and she laughed. ‘You used to be such a porker, Brian!’

Logan checked the e-fit — without the extra weight round the face he looked nothing like the man in the picture. But Logan asked him where he was the night Fettes died anyway.

‘Eurodisney. Two weeks with the girlfriend and her kid. Pissed down the whole time.’ It’d be easy enough to check.

‘And what about the other two?’

Gemma ID’d the man in From Rubber With Love : ‘Frank Garvie — I think he’s somethin’ in computers now … Oh and this een,’ she held up the last printout, ‘Mat McEwan, he’s deid. Took an overdose at Christmas. Shame, he was nice.’

Logan thanked them for their time, then went and asked the camera crew the same questions, just in case, but the stars seemed to be telling the truth. Insch and Zander were laughing about something when Logan got back to the food table, both of them drinking coffee and stuffing their faces with Danish pastries. ‘You see,’ said the director in a shower of pastry flakes, ‘it’s all about challenging expectations. It doesn’t have to just be sex, sex, sex — there should be a real emotional message to it as well. It has to have some heart! That’s why I don’t do gonzo films. No freak sex, nothing that degrades women, no violence,’ another bite, ‘OK, there’s a bit of spanking in the bondage stuff, but it’s all safe, consensual, and straight.’

Insch opened his mouth, but Logan butted in before he could say anything. ‘What about James Bondage: the nun with the strap-on?’

‘Oh, please, that’s straight. Kinky, but straight. I don’t do gay porn.’

‘No? What about the two girls then? Your Vikings.’

Zander smiled indulgently, patting Logan on the shoulder. ‘Girl-on-girl isn’t gay, it’s erotic .’

‘Yes … well … I’ve identified the guys from Fettes’s porn collection: one’s dead, one’s here, and the other quit the business about a year ago.’

Zander peered at the screenshot. ‘Oh, Frank. Yes… got performance anxiety after a while. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was floppy. Works for an IT company in the Bridge of Don now. Used to do our website. I’ve got his business card around here somewhere if it helps?’ Insch told him that it would, and the director led them back through to the reception area, copying Garvie’s home and work addresses down onto a compliments slip. ‘Look, I’ve got to get back to it, but before you go,’ Zander rummaged about in a cardboard box under the desk, coming out with a DVD. ‘ Crocodildo Dundee , my masterpiece. I’d really like to know what you think. It’s so nice to actually talk to someone about the art for a change.’

He showed them to the front door, shook Insch’s hand, then did the same with Logan, winking as he did. ‘Remember, Sergeant: kinky, but straight.’

Insch made Logan drive: he was too busy reading the blurb on the back of his new DVD. ‘You know,’ he said as Logan wrestled the Range Rover through the Sunday lunchtime traffic, ‘I always wanted to work in films. OK, maybe not this kind of thing, but proper movies with cameras and lights and clapperboards …’

Logan had never heard the huge man sigh wistfully before. ‘You not think he’s a bit suspect?’ he asked, edging out into the traffic on King Street, ‘Everything he does has anal sex and dildos in it. He’s obsessed.’

‘So?’

‘Jason Fettes: internal bleeding, torn sphincter, prolapse …?’ He squeezed in between a bus and a filthy grey lorry. ‘Plus when Steel and I asked him if he could identify Fettes’s photo he didn’t ask “what’s he done”?’

Insch frowned, then rummaged about in the glove compartment, letting loose an avalanche of sweetie wrappers. ‘Not everyone asks.’ He popped a toffee into his mouth. ‘You’ve been hanging round with DI Steel for too long. It’s rotted your brain.’

There was no response at Frank Garvie’s flat, so they tried his work address instead. Aberdeen Science and Technology Park sat in a little belt of green, surrounded by trees, in the Bridge of Don, the car parks virtually empty except for a handful of vehicles and a family of deer grazing on the grass verges. Garvie’s office was a couple of rooms in a wing of Davidson House, a starfish-shaped building at the furthest end of Campus One. He didn’t look much like a porn star — balding, slightly podgy, clean shaven, shirt and tie. No sign of the raven-and-skull-tattooed backside Logan had seen bobbing about in From Rubber With Love . It wasn’t that kind of office.

Everyone else was away for lunch, so they had the room to themselves: a collection of cubicles decorated with plants, plastic Darth Vaders, and Dilbert cartoons. The blinds drawn to keep the low sun from glaring back off the computer screens. Garvie’s smile was nervous as the inspector lowered himself into one of the office chairs and made a show of looking round the room. ‘So: not in the porn business any more then?’

‘Er … no … And I’d rather people didn’t know about it, OK? I’ve got a good job here.’

‘In IT.’

‘The money’s a lot better, I get overtime on the weekends. And… well, you know…’

Insch just sat and stared at him, letting the silence grow. It didn’t take long before Garvie felt uncomfortable enough to start talking again. ‘I couldn’t do it, OK? Get an erection. I couldn’t get it up. You try screwing two women in front of half a dozen people, with cameras and sound men and someone shouting instructions the whole time — it’s not easy.’ He folded his arms, bit his bottom lip, then said, ‘Plus there … Look, it …’ An embarrassed cough. ‘You’ve heard of gay-for-pay, yeah? Well … I was the other way round.’

‘And no one else knows.’

Garvie hung his head, mumbling, ‘A couple of friends. Not my parents or the guys I work with. So … I’d rather you didn’t …’ He shrugged. ‘You know.’

‘Don’t worry, sir, we’re the soul of discretion. Aren’t we, Sergeant?’

That meant it was Logan’s turn: ‘Where were you on Monday night, four weeks ago?’

‘Four weeks? Erm …’ He checked his Star Trek calendar. ‘At home? I think? Monday I usually go out role-playing, but I was in bed with something.’

Insch smiled. ‘And does “something” have a name?’

Garvie blushed. ‘There wouldn’t be any point … I still can’t …’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m impotent.’ Staring hard at Captain Kirk fighting Spock in some sort of arena.

‘I see. And is there anyone who can confirm that you were in bed, alone?’

‘Not unless my cat counts. What am I supposed to have done?’

‘Do you know a Mr Jason Fettes?’