Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

Insch got as far as, ‘What the-’ before Logan jumped in with ‘Butt plug.’ The inspector stared at him.

‘I … er … DI Steel told me about them when we found one in Fettes’s bedroom.’ Feeling a blush rising up his cheeks, suddenly uncomfortably hot in his SOC outfit.

Garvie’s porn collection was alphabetically ordered in a small bookcase next to the bed — a handful of his own films, and a collection of American and Dutch hardcore gay porn. Hidden away at the back of the sock drawer was a collection of unlabelled video tapes and two ancient seventeen-millimetre film canisters. One marked THE BUTLER’S REVENGE, the other FESTIVE FROLICS in faded brown script.

‘You know,’ said Logan as they were bagged up, ‘somehow I don’t see Garvie being the old-fashioned projector type …’ And he was right — they searched the whole place from top to bottom but there was no sign of any device that would play anything that old. ‘He’s got something dodgy in there.’ Logan asked the IB guys to take the canisters out and open them, expecting a nice juicy haul of drugs. Disappointed when they turned out to contain exactly what it said on the tin — old rolls of brittle, black and white film.

‘Never mind,’ said Insch, as they were sealed back up again and returned to their bags, ‘I’m sure you’ll get something right soon. Law of averages.’ Then he clomped off to stand on the doorstep and eat Chewits, leaving Logan to keep an eye on the IB team as they started sampling the bedclothes and carpet for blood and semen stains.

An hour later and they were back in the car, watching the last of the evidence bags being loaded into the back of the IB’s filthy-white Transit van. ‘This makes no sense,’ said Insch, as Logan started the car, ‘there should be blood everywhere. Even if Garvie’s got kinky rubber sheets, there’d be a trail between the bedroom and the front door …’ He stared off into the middle distance for a bit. ‘Check all the hotels and B amp;Bs — see if anywhere rents rooms by the hour to the bondage crowd. Flash Fettes and Garvie’s photos about: I want to know if anyone put them up that night. And get a door-to-door done here too. Was Fettes a regular visitor?’ The inspector went rummaging in the glove compartment again, coming up empty. ‘Sod it. Well, come on, Sergeant, back to HQ, we haven’t got all bloody day.’

The flat was warm when he got home, the TV competing with the kitchen stereo for who could make the walls shake more. Jackie was through in the bedroom, pulling a pair of old black jeans on over a thick pair of tights. She didn’t hear him the first time, so he had to shout it again: ‘YOU GOING DEAF IN YOUR OLD AGE?’

‘What?’ she looked puzzled for a moment, then zipped up her jeans. ‘It’s that moron downstairs, he’s been on a Whitney Houston binge since I got home.’ She stopped, and ran a hand across Logan’s battered cheek. ‘That’s some wallop you got … Big Gary said they didn’t fire you.’

‘Napier wasn’t happy about it.’

‘Napier’s never bloody happy.’ Jackie pulled on her thick, padded, black jacket, then dug a woolly hat out of the top drawer. It was black too.

‘Going somewhere?’

She nodded, stuffing her curly hair into the hat. ‘Rennie’s been shooting his mouth off about this Mikado thing all day. I bet him twenty quid he’d be dreadful, so I’m going to the rehearsal to heckle.’ Jackie paused, hunting through her coat pockets till she found a pair of black padded gloves.

‘You look like a cat burglar.’

‘Thanks a heap.’ She pulled on her gloves, then frowned at him, head on one side. ‘You want to come?’

‘No: I’ve seen them. Your twenty quid’s safe.’

‘Thought so. Don’t wait up, OK? I’m going to the pub afterwards, and you know what Rennie’s like when he gets a drink inside him.’ And then she was gone.

Monday morning was cold and clear, the sky tainted pale blue with pre-dawn light as Logan walked Jackie up the hill to the Castlegate, making for FHQ and a seven o’clock start. Her nose and ears were bright red by the time they reached King Street, breath streaming out behind them, frost sparkling on the pavements. She stifled another yawn — breaking the scowl that had been creasing her face since the alarm went off at six.

‘So what time did you get in then?’ he asked, trying not to think about the story in that morning’s P amp;J. The one titled, POLICEMAN ATTACKED My CHILD!

Jackie buried her hands deeper into her coat pockets. ‘No idea. Late. And you were right — they were bloody awful. Easiest twenty quid I ever made.’ She didn’t even crack a smile.

‘You want to talk about it?’ Logan asked.

‘What, the rehearsal?’ Shrug. ‘Bloody disastrous-’

‘You’ve had a face on all morning.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’ They stopped, waiting for a break in the traffic so they could hurry across the road and down the little alleyway at the side of the Tollbooth and the side entrance to FHQ. ‘It’s Macintyre, OK? We let the raping bastard get away with it and now he’s attacking women in Dundee.’

‘Might not be him.’

‘Are you kidding? Of course it’s him, dirty little fuck.’ She stepped out onto the road as the lights changed. ‘And where is he? In prison? No, he’s sodding about in his expensive house and expensive cars with that pregnant bitch fiancee of his. How the hell can she give him an alibi? She’s got to know he’s guilty!’

They kissed goodbye in the shadow of the morgue, then Jackie stomped off, still cursing Rob Macintyre under her breath, while Logan made his way up to the Jason Fettes incident room.

DI Insch’s morning briefing had a triumphant feel to it, even if it did start nearly an hour late. The inspector perched on a desk at the front of the room, telling everyone about Frank Garvie: the ex-porn star was due to appear in court at half eleven, where the Procurator Fiscal would ask for him to be held for trial without bail. But it wasn’t likely to happen. ‘Officially, this isn’t a murder investigation,’ said Insch, his voice booming in the small room, ‘but we’re going to treat it like one. It might look like an accident, like a sex game gone wrong, but Garvie’s got guilty written all over him. He strapped Jason Fettes down and rammed something so far inside him he ruptured the intestinal wall. Fettes broke his own teeth biting down from the pain. He died in agony. We need to know where Garvie took his victim.’

The trouble with asking bed and breakfast establishments if they rented out rooms by the hour for illicit sexual liaisons was that they all said ‘No.’ Accommodation in the city was at a premium anyway — most places made quite enough exploiting the oil and service companies, without having to cater for that kind of thing as well. So Logan was given the task of trolling round the carpet warehouses, looking to see if any of the hundreds of Aberdeen B amp;Bs had replaced carpets recently, trying to get rid of suspicious bloodstains.

It was a complete waste of time: if the owners had woken up to find one of their rooms drenched in blood they would have called the police. Stood to reason. But DI Insch was adamant, and Logan didn’t see any point in arguing — it would just get him shouted at.

He grabbed Rickards and signed for a leprous Vauxhall, making the constable drive. The morning sky was crystal blue, one side of the street bathed in sunshine, the other shivering in frigid shadow. Rickards took them up Schoolhill, stopping at the lights to let a troop of schoolchildren swarm across the road, dressed up in their Robert Gordon uniforms: the boys in charcoal-grey trousers, the girls in kilted, tartan skirts, dark blazers marking the cut-off line for untucked shirts and squint ties. Nearly all of them had mobile phones clamped to their ears.