Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

The lights changed to green, a couple of stragglers meandering past without a care in the world. Finally Rickards pulled away, drifting past the crowds of identically dressed kids milling about outside the Robert Gordon’s gates — determined not to go through until the very last minute. Enjoying their freedom. Logan turned to watch them. ‘Stop the car.’

‘What?’

‘Pull up over there.’ Pointing at the grey slab of Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Rickards did as he was told.

They marched through the crowds, making for a small knot of children by the statue of the school’s eighteenth-century founder. There were five of them, laughing and pushing a small ginger-haired girl around. Logan grabbed the ringleader by the scruff of the neck — a boy, seven or eight years old, in expensive sunglasses. The laughter stopped dead. ‘Still not learned your lesson?’

‘Getoffme! Getthefuckoffme!’ Flailing his arms around.

Logan pushed him towards Rickards, before he could do any damage. The constable got a good double handful of jacket, stopping the kid from doing a runner. No longer the centre of attention, the little girl slipped away.

‘Peter, isn’t it?’ asked Logan as the kid struggled. ‘You carrying a knife, like your mate Sean?’

The child’s face was every bit as ugly and petulant as it had been in the interview room on Friday — one of Sean’s little posse. ‘My dad says I don’t have to tell you fuckers nothing!’

‘Good, you can keep your mouth shut while we search you.’

The struggling got more violent and Rickards tightened his grip as the boy screamed, ‘POLICE BRUTALITY!’ at the top of his lungs. ‘You can’t search me! I’ve not done nothing!’

‘I have reason to believe you may be carrying a concealed weapon. That means I have the power to search you. We can-’

‘He touched my arse!’ Wriggling, looking back at PC Rickards. ‘He’s a pervert! CHILD ABUSE!’

‘Shut up and empty your pockets.’

‘Think you’re so fucking hard, don’t you? Sean kicked your arse! Soon as this fucking paedo lets go I’m gonna kick it too!’

‘Your mum and dad must be so proud. Hold him.’ Logan started with the jacket: an iPod, a portable game station, a bag of crisps, and a mobile phone. ‘What have we here?’ Logan flicked it open and clicked it on, the screen lighting up with a picture of a naked woman. The keypad wasn’t locked. ‘You got a receipt for this, Peter? Not stolen is it?’

‘Fuck you!’

Logan called up the built-in phone book and scrolled through it till he found what he was looking for: SEAN — MOBILE. The phone his parents had sworn blind he didn’t have. He punched ‘call’ and held the thing to his ear, listening as it rang, and rang, and rang, and-

‘ Pete ?’

‘No. You remember me, Sean?’

The kid in Rickards’ hands squirmed and writhed, shouting, ‘It’s the pigs! Sean, it’s the fucking police!’

Silence from the other end. Not the sound of a dead line, but of someone very scared, trying to breathe softly.

‘Sean, the policewoman’s going to be OK. You can come home.’

‘Don’t fucking listen to him, Sean! Don’t-’ Rickards clamped a hand over the kid’s mouth.

More silent breathing.

‘Your mum and dad are worried about you, Sean.’

‘ I …’

Logan waited for him to say something else, but that was all he got. ‘Come on, Sean, tell me where you are and we’ll come get you. It’ll be OK.’ He left a long pause. Still nothing. Time to try something else. ‘You’ve kept it inside for a long time, haven’t you, Sean? What happened six months ago?’ A sharp intake of breath on the other end. ‘Don’t you want to talk to someone about it?’

And the line went dead.

Logan closed the phone and told Rickards to un-gag Sean’s mate. ‘Where is he?’

A furious scowl. ‘I’m telling my dad! I’m telling the teachers! You’re fucked! They’ll fire you and-’

‘He’s gone, hasn’t he: London? Edinburgh?’

Something cunning passed across the kid’s features, then he said, ‘Yeah. Yeah, he’s gone. London. You’ll never find him.’

The first peal of bells from St Nicholas Kirk rang through the cold morning air, sounding nine am and the kids began to drift away to class. Logan took a note of Sean’s number and tossed the phone back to the sour-faced child, telling Rickards to let him go. The eight-year-old scrambled for the mobile, catching it just before it hit the pavement.

Back in the car, Logan settled into the passenger seat and told Rickards to do a quick one-eighty at the roundabout, keeping his eye on Sean’s friends. Expecting one of them to make a break for it, bunk off and go see the eight-year-old murderer. But one by one they shuffled in through the gates and were gone.

‘Damn.’ Logan frowned, watching the school go slowly by. Insch or Steel? Insch or Steel …’ Right,’ he said, not really liking either alternative, ‘back to the station.’

Constable Rickards looked appalled. ‘But the inspector-’

‘I know. He’ll blow a gasket. You drop me off, then go round the carpet places. Not like you can’t handle it on your own, is it?’

‘Well, no …’

‘And you can check out Macintyre’s alibi too.’ Logan dug out the notes he’d made at the footballer’s house yesterday — the pub and the takeaway — and handed them over. ‘But if you find anything, you call me first!’ And with any luck Insch would never know Logan had dumped him for DI Steel.

‘What do you mean, you spoke to him?’ Steel looked as if someone had tried to comb her hair with a ferret. She sat behind her desk, feet up, cigarette dangling out of the side of her mouth, a small drift of ash falling from the tip down the front of her blouse, like dandruff.

Logan smiled. ‘Searched one of his little friends — he had Sean’s number programmed into his mobile.’

Steel scowled. ‘His bloody parents swore blind he didn’t have one!’

‘And he’s still in Aberdeen too. The kid claimed Sean had run off to London, but he’s not as good a liar as he thinks.’ He pulled out the hastily scribbled note with Sean Morrison’s mobile number on it, and passed it over.

‘Ya wee beauty …’ She picked up her phone and started to dial. Listening in silence as it rang, then hung up. ‘Voicemail.’

‘My guess is he’s only going to take calls from numbers he knows. But now we can-’

Steel was already dialling again — getting on to Control to set up a GSM trace on Sean’s phone. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. ‘Get on to the incident room, I want all search teams converging on …’ Silence for a moment, as she waited for the information. ‘Cragiebuckler …’ A small area on the west of the city, between Rubislaw and Mannofield. ‘Hazledene Road!’ She slammed the phone down. ‘We’ve got him!’

Tracking someone through their mobile phone wasn’t one hundred per cent accurate, but at least they had Sean Morrison pinned down to within fifty metres. A patrol car sat at either end of the quiet road, and more blocked off the surrounding streets, just in case Sean tried to leg it through the back gardens, while a team of twenty uniforms went door to door. He wasn’t going to get away this time.

Steel marched up and down the pavement, scratching away nervously at her shoulder as the search teams reported in. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing- ‘Inspector!’ A PC, waving from the open front door of a house just up the road.

She hurried over, looking hopeful. ‘You found the little bastard?’

He shook his head, holding up a clear evidence pouch with a mobile phone in it. ‘He’s not here.’