Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

‘Give us a chance!’ said the middle-aged man in the SKATE OR DIE T-shirt, his desk littered with laptops, mice and scribbled-on Post-it notes. ‘We’re still going through that stuff from the brothel raid. No way we’ll get anywhere near your stuff for at least a week.’

Logan didn’t like the sound of that. ‘What about Dundee — thought they were supposed to be the computer experts.’

That got a shrug. ‘Big fraud case — ETSA four weeks minimum.’

‘ETSA?’

‘Estimated Time Sodding About.’ He picked up an old Biro from his pigsty desk and stuck it in his gob, sooking distractedly. A placebo cigarette.

‘Insch will throw a wobbler if we don’t get this done soon as.’

Skate Or Die swore. ‘Marvellous. Finnie in one ear, Insch in the other. What a bastarding week …’

‘Could you not just take a quick peek?’

‘No! Finnie’s on my neck as it is.’ He pulled the pen from his mouth, automatically flicking nonexistent ash on the floor. ‘Well, maybe … Look, I’ll see what I can do, OK? No promises.’

It was better than nothing.

Nine am and Logan decided it was about time Rickards had a break. He dragged the constable up to the canteen and bought him a cup of tea and a rowie with jam. Both disappeared in record time. ‘You got many more to go?’ asked Logan as Rickards wiped his greasy hands on a paper napkin.

‘Six.’ He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘Highspeed, hardcore, German gay porn is even less fun than it sounds …’

‘Talking about your personal life again?’ It was DC Rennie, with a croissant and a cup of fancy coffee. He sat down with a grin. ‘Tell you, I was this close-’

‘I’m not gay!’ Rickards jumped to his feet. ‘Fucking hell, what’s wrong with you bastards? You know what? I have more sex in a month than you get all year!’ He leant over the table to poke Rennie in the shoulder, as the whole canteen went quiet. ‘With women! It’s BDSM, OK? Just because you don’t fucking understand it, doesn’t make it gay!’ And then he stormed off.

Rennie sat there with his mouth hanging open, and slowly conversations started back up again. ‘I was only kidding.’

‘Yeah, well … He’s a bit touchy.’

‘You think?’ Rennie ripped a bite out of his croissant and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. Just taking the piss.’ He stared at the empty doorway. ‘Is he really into all that leather and spanking?’ Rennie grinned. ‘He’s probably on the phone right now to his mates in the bondage mafia. I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and there’ll be a horse’s head in a gimp mask lying on top of the duvet.’

‘Think you might have overreacted a bit there?’ asked Logan back in their grubby little incident room, sitting a fresh mug of tea down in front of Rickards and his protruding bottom lip.

The constable scowled up at him. ‘Did you tell them? I trusted you and-’

‘Of course I didn’t! Rennie was just pulling your leg. No one knew. Well, not till you shouted it all over the canteen …’

Rickards opened his mouth to say something and froze, realization dawning in his horrified eyes. ‘Oh fuck.’ He buried his head in his hands.

‘Congratulations.’ Logan patted him on the back. ‘You’ve just come out of the bondage closet.’

It was nearly lunchtime before they got to the bottom of Frank Garvie’s porn stash, and by then Rickards was beginning to come to terms with his outing. The DVDs were all what they claimed to be, the videos homemade — Garvie in his dark red rubber romper suit, sometimes with friends, but mostly alone. The only things Rickards hadn’t tried were the two canisters of old seventeen-millimetre film. Logan cracked open The Butler’s Revenge and examined the case. According to the Identification Bureau’s audiovisual team it was probably Victorian and there was nothing in the station that could handle film stock that old. Not that it mattered: anything illegal in there would be well past its sell-by-date. There was nothing here to tie Frank Garvie to the corpse of Jason Fettes.

Rickards picked up one of the ancient film canisters. ‘Er … sir,’ he said, turning it over and reading the title, Festive Frolics , ‘I think these are stolen …’ He dumped it on the desk, then went squirrelling in a stack of paperwork on the floor by the radiator, coming up with a handful of forms, mumbling to himself as he flicked through the pages. ‘Here: three canisters of vintage Victorian erotic films stolen from ClarkRig Training Systems. Knew I recognized them.’ He smiled, proud of himself. ‘Told you I’d been reading the reports.’

Logan checked the list of stolen property — Rickards was right. Zander Clark, Aberdeen’s premier pornographer, had reported the films missing in amongst a host of other antique sex toys and outfits, with a few computers, mobile phones and digital video cameras thrown in for good measure. A slow smile spread across Logan’s face.

He dialled DI Insch’s number, but it went straight through to voicemail, so he tried Steel instead. Voicemail again. One more go — the Control Room, where a woman with an almost impenetrable Banff accent told him that both inspectors were in the Terror Readiness Review and wouldn’t be gettin’ oot till aifter six. Logan hung up, tapping the phone against his chin. ‘I think,’ he said at last, ‘that you and I should go pay Mr Frank Garvie a visit. See if he can explain why he’s got stolen Victorian pornography hidden in his sock drawer.’

But first they were going to take a wee detour and test out a theory.

Zander with a Z was in the editing suite, a huge insulated mug of coffee sitting alongside a plate of stovies, dark disks of pickled beetroot leaching purple into the potato. People in hard hats lurched back and forwards on the screen in front of him as the director fiddled with the console. He didn’t even look up as Logan and Rickards entered. ‘With you in a minute … this is an important scene …’

‘When do the naked Viking women arrive?’

The large man punched a button and the people froze in place. ‘They don’t,’ he said, winding it back and pressing play, staring intently at the finished product. ‘Perfect!’ He rewarded himself with a massive forkful of stovies, chewing as he spoke. ‘This is Safety First! A guide to container management . Lot of people don’t bother with plot and narrative when they do this kind of stuff, it’s just one stupid scene after another. “Don’t do this, don’t do that” … My safety films have theme and subtext. That’s why they win awards.’

‘Yes …’ Logan pulled one of the ancient film canisters out of Rickards’ hands. ‘We were wondering if you recognized this.’

Zander’s eye went wide. ‘ The Butler’s Revenge ! You caught the bastard!’ He reached forward and grabbed the other one from the constable. ‘And Festive Frolics !’ he stopped, looking slightly puzzled. ‘What happened to Kitty-Cat Katy and all the other stuff?’

‘ Kitty-Cat …?’

‘ Katy . It’s a woman who comes on dressed as a cat and licks herself. One of those old Victorian circus acts. Contortionist pornography from eighteen ninety-eight. Very, very rare.’ He held the films against his chest, cuddling them. ‘You do have them, don’t you? The rest of the stuff that was stolen?’

‘We’re currently pursuing several lines of enquiry.’ Which usually meant, ‘we don’t have a sodding clue’ so it was nice to able to use it legitimately for a change. ‘We’ll need to hold on to them for a while as evidence,’ he said and Zander’s face fell. ‘But you’ll get them back.’