Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

Logan stepped out of the way as the CC stormed past, closely followed by the Press Liaison Officer. ‘Don’t think God’s very happy about it either.’

Steel watched the man disappear through the double doors. ‘Bugger the lot of them. Come on: we’re going to the pub. I think we deserve a pat on the back, even if no other bastard does.’

Logan clunked the drinks down on the sticky, beer-spilled table and dumped half a dozen packets of crisps in the middle. There was a feeding frenzy as Steel and two uniforms from the team that had grabbed Sean Morrison fought over the tomato sauce flavour. Three rounds into the evening and the conversation had drifted from work to football and Rob Macintyre’s hat trick against St Mirren at the weekend. Everyone tactfully ignoring the rape allegations in favour of the four-one final score. DI Steel threw her hands in the air, staring over Logan’s shoulder, back towards the bar, shouting, ‘Just in time!’ at the constable who’d tackled Sean in the garden. He had one hand swathed in white bandages. ‘Laz!’ the inspector bellowed, ‘Laz, go get that man a drink! On me! Double whisky!’

Logan was still waiting to get served when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned, expecting to see Steel, or Jackie, but it was PC Rickards, dressed in tatty jeans, a pornographic T-shirt, and a scruffy jacket. ‘Er … sorry to bother you, sir, but Sergeant Mitchell said I’d probably find you here.’

‘You want a drink? Steel’s buying — we caught Sean Morrison.’ Logan knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he couldn’t help it.

Rickards looked uncomfortable. ‘I just wanted to tell you I’d gone through all those carpet places — no one’s sold anything to a B amp;B for months. Sorry.’

‘Not your fault, it was always a long shot …’ Logan frowned. ‘Wait a minute, didn’t your shift finish about three hours ago? Have you been hanging around the station waiting for me all this time?’

‘What? No, no. God.’ He pulled a face. ‘I mean, how sad would that be? Urgh …’ Going slightly red. ‘I had a couple of hours to kill, so I’ve been reading through some of those break-in reports. You know, see if I can spot a pattern.’

‘In that case you definitely deserve a drink.’ Logan caught the barman’s eye and ordered Steel’s double whisky then turned to ask Rickards what he wanted.

‘No, really, sir, I can’t-’

‘Yes you can. Pint?’

‘I …’ Rickards was going red again. ‘Everyone keeps taking the piss. Ever since that bloody briefing — it’s all innuendo and double entendre and bloody “suits you, sir!” Some bastard’s even been posting condoms through the grille in my locker. I’m bloody sick of it.’

Logan ordered him a pint of lager. ‘Look, if you let them get to you they’ll keep on doing it. They like to get a reaction, that’s all. Come on — one pint’s not going to kill you, is it?’ He took the drinks from the bar and handed Rickards his pint. ‘That’s an order, Constable.’

Rickards cracked a twisted smile. ‘Yes, sir.’

It was quieter outside, standing under the columned portico at the front of the pub, staying out of the wind, waiting for Jackie to pick up the flat’s phone. It rang through to the answering machine, so Logan tried her on her mobile. Ringing and ringing and ringing and …’ Hello ?’

‘Hey, we caught him!’

‘ What? ’ sounding distracted.

‘Sean Morrison, we caught him.’

‘ Oh, yeah, I heard on the news. Cool … ’

‘We’re in the pub, want to come?’

A pause, then, ‘ Oh, no, I can’t — you remember my friend Janette? Her fiance’s just dumped her, she’s in a right state, so I’m kinda stuck .’

‘Oh,’ trying not to sound disappointed, ‘well, that’s OK. Don’t worry about it.’

‘ Sorry … Look, don’t wait up for me, I’ve no idea when I’m going to escape. Probably not till late. She’s a nightmare when she gets started .’

A bendy bus thundered past, narrowly missing a barely dressed young woman and her Neanderthal boyfriend. Logan watched them hurling abuse at the driver.

‘ Look, she’s coming back from the toilet, gotta go .’

‘OK, I …’ But she’d already hung up.

Logan stood on the top step, looking down at the phone in his hands. Then closed it up and went back inside.

First thing Tuesday morning and Logan was in DI Insch’s office, listening to the big man grumble about not getting enough resources to make a murder case against Frank Garvie. They still hadn’t found anywhere he could have taken Jason Fettes to kill him: he didn’t own or rent any other property; wasn’t looking after anywhere for an ageing relative, or a work colleague; and the B amp;B idea was a complete dead end. So all they had was the large black dildo found in Garvie’s closet. Yes it was clarted with DNA, but none of it belonged to Jason Fettes.

The inspector scowled and tore open another family-value-sized bag of jelly babies. ‘The PF’s not happy,’ he said, ripping the head off a little pink infant, ‘says we’re not going to get a conviction without forensic evidence …’ A handful of tiny figures disappeared into Insch’s mouth, to be chewed unhappily. ‘ And I’ve got this bloody stupid terrorism thing today. Like I don’t have enough to deal with!’ He dragged a copy of that morning’s ScottishSun from his in-tray and slapped it on the tabletop. MACINTYRE SAYS, ‘I’LL SUE!’, above a photo of the ugly footballer and his well-dressed lawyer, Sandy Moir-Farquharson. COPS CATCH KILLER KID was relegated to a tiny sidebar. ‘Bad enough we get slapped with an injunction for harassing him, but now the raping wee bastard thinks he’s got a case for libel and slander!’ Little flecks of spit sparked in the overhead lights. He ground his teeth, turning a delicate shade of angry scarlet, then stared over Logan’s shoulder at the big framed Mikado poster. Fuming. ‘What about his alibi for Friday night?’

‘I got Rickards to check it out: Macintyre and his fiancee left the pub at nine, went to the takeaway, picked up a chicken chow mein, beef in black bean sauce-’

‘I didn’t ask for the bloody menu!’

‘Sorry, sir. They left the carryout at half nine.’

Insch gave him a grim smile. ‘Nikki Bruce was attacked between midnight and quarter past — plenty of time for the wee shite to get down the road to Dundee and catch her coming out of the nightclub.’

‘Only his fiancee swears he was with her all night. And we’ve got nothing that proves otherwise, so-’

The inspector’s smile vanished. ‘Exactly whose side are you on, Sergeant?’

Logan didn’t answer that and Insch scowled at him, letting an uncomfortable silence grow, before grabbing the Fettes case file off his desk and tossing it across the Formica. ‘I want you to go through everything we seized from Garvie’s flat — find me a connection.’

Rickards was waiting for him in their tiny, makeshift incident room when Logan lurched in, carrying a huge box from the evidence locker. The constable helped him get it up on the desk, eyeing the contents suspiciously. Everything was covered in a patina of black and white fingerprint powder, sealed away in individual evidence bags. Logan pointed at the open box. ‘Need to go through this lot for DI Insch. And before you say anything: I know, OK?’

‘Oh God …’ Rickards pulled out a stack of DVDs with titles like Deutsche Mannliebe and Knechtschaftgummijungen with a lot of half-naked men on them. Some of whom were wearing lederhosen. ‘We’ve not got to watch this lot, have we?’

Logan patted him on the shoulder. ‘Not we , you. I’ve got to go chase up the IB about those servers.’