Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

‘No.’ It had taken some doing to convince the inspector running the control room to let him have a firearms team, but there was no way Logan was going to have a repeat of what happened last time he’d raided a property for stolen goods. He never wanted to attend another police funeral, let alone be responsible for one.

Two of the black-clad officers flattened themselves on either side of the front door, a third standing ready with the hand-held black battering ram, while the others hurried round the back. A wee boy’s face appeared in the window of one of the houses opposite, nose pressed against the glass, eyes wide. A metallic bleep came from Rickards’ Airwave handset and the lead officer’s voice crackled into the car: ‘ Team One — we are in position .’

Another bleep: ‘ Team Two — aye, we’re roond the back. Nae sign of any bugger .’

Logan gave the word and the door was battered off its hinges, falling into the hallway while the three SAS-style bobbies charged inside, shouting, ‘POLICE! ON THE FLOOR NOW! NOBODY MOVE!’ Five minutes later the head firearms officer appeared where the front door used to be and gave the thumbs up. And all without a single shot being fired.

Berwick’s home smelled of fresh paint. There wasn’t a single picture on the walls, the lounge carpet covered with newspapers, a stepladder stood by the electric fireplace, open tins of magnolia sitting next to it. A shout came from the back of the house, ‘I said keep your hands where I can see them!’ followed by a terrified shriek.

Logan hurried through the lounge into a small hallway where a black-clad, gun-wielding PC was pointing her machine pistol in through an open door. ‘I’m not going to tell you again!’ Someone inside whimpered. Peering round the door Logan saw a terrified man in his early thirties sitting on the toilet, trousers round his ankles, bare legs trembling, face pale, eyes screwed shut, and hands in the air.

‘Ronald Berwick?’

‘Please don’t kill me!’

Logan told the constable to lower her weapon. ‘When you’ve finished up there Mr Berwick, I’d like a word with you in the kitchen. And don’t forget to wash your hands.’

The kitchen-come-dining-room was just as bare as the rest of the house, as if someone had stripped the life out of it. A large, American-style fridge sat in the corner, humming away quietly to itself without a single magnet or kid’s drawing to break up the monotony. The walls were equally spartan: no calendar, no knick-knacks, no flowers, nothing.

Ronald Berwick was marched through from the bathroom at gunpoint and forced to make nine cups of tea: six for the firearms squad, one each for Rickards and Logan, and one for himself. He even managed to produce a packet of Penguin biscuits. ‘There we go,’ said Logan as the man jittered his way into a seat at the kitchen table, ‘how you feeling?’

Berwick stared at him. ‘I was having a crap and someone kicked the bathroom door in and stuck a machine gun in my face, how the hell do you think I’m feeling? Scared the shit out of me.’

Logan tried not to smile. ‘I’ve got a warrant to search these premises for stolen goods.’

The man groaned. ‘Great. First Margaret, now this.’ He sagged forwards till he was hunched over his mug, staring gloomily into the depths muttering, ‘Fucking fuck, fuck, fuckering fuck …’

They went through every room in the house, but there was no sign of stolen Victorian sexual ephemera. ‘OK,’ said Logan after one of the firearms officers stuck their head down from the loft hatch to tell him there was nothing in the attic, ‘let’s try the garage then.’

They trooped outside. The little boy who’d watched them break down Berwick’s front door had been joined by his younger sister, staring at the policemen as if they were the most exciting thing to happen round here for ages. By the time Berwick had led Logan and his team to the last garage on the row they were bustling out the door, desperate not to miss a single moment.

Logan let Rickards do the honours, unlocking the red garage door and hauling it up. Inside it was like Aladdin’s cave for electrical appliances, none of them in their original packaging. There were boxes full of digital cameras, DVD recorders, iPods, laptop and desktop computers, silverware, picture frames, candlesticks, DVDs, CDs, jewellery, digital camcorders …’ Good God!’ Logan was impressed in spite of himself. ‘How many houses did you have to knock over to get all this?’

Berwick suddenly found his shoes of all-consuming interest. ‘I’ve never seen these things before in my life.’

‘Oh, come on. You know fine well we can just cart all this stuff down to the station and check it against our burglary reports. Everything in here’s going to be clarted in your fingerprints. Why not save us all the trouble and tell us who you stole them from? It’ll look much better for you in court.’

There was a moment’s silent contemplation, then a long-suffering sigh. ‘Fuck. Who told you?’

‘Give us the addresses and I’ll make sure the PF knows you cooperated.’

‘It was Margaret, wasn’t it? Vindictive bitch. Not bad enough she takes my kids and everything in the building society, no , she’s got to shop me to the bloody police too.’ He stood, watching Rickards squeeze his way into the garage glory hole. ‘You married, Inspector?’

‘Detective Sergeant,’ said Logan. ‘And no.’

Berwick nodded. ‘Good. That’s where the fucking trouble starts. You go out and do your best to put food on the table. Keep a roof over their heads. Then she starts going out at night on her own, when she’s supposed to be looking after the kids. “Visiting friends”. Lying bitch.’

Deep in the garage, Rickards pulled a box from the pile and rummaged about in it, coming out with a translucent, purple dildo. ‘Sir, I’ve found something!’

Logan groaned. ‘Put on a pair of gloves for God’s sake!’

‘Course, you know what she was doing, don’t you?’ said Berwick, as Rickards snapped on a pair of latex gloves and started hefting out various items of sexual apparatus. ‘She was screwing the guy who came to install our broadband. There’s me, risking life and liberty to keep her in hair dye and French classes, and she’s off shagging some internet geek.’ He seemed to shrink. ‘And get this, when I confront her, she’s the one who acts all hurt! How dare I follow her! What happened to trust? She’s shagging someone else and I’m getting a bollocking for not trusting her … Fucking women.’

Rickards held a round metal canister aloft. ‘ Kitty- Cat Katy !’

‘I go out on a job and when I come back she’s gone. Took the kids and everything else that wasn’t nailed down. Hired a removal truck: you believe that?’ Berwick sniffed, watching the PC in his garage happily digging through the stuff from Zander Clark’s Victorian porn collection. ‘Found a note in the kitchen: “I’ve left you. Mother always said I could do better, so now I have.” ‘He shook his head. ‘Tell you, never trust a bloody woman, they’ll fuck you over every time.’

It was well after six but Logan was still sitting in DI Steel’s incident room, surrounded by ever expanding piles of paperwork, filling in all the forms that came with actually solving a burglary. Rickards was on the other side of the desk, trying to match up the list of items collected from Ronald Berwick’s garage with the properties he said he’d stolen them from. They hadn’t recovered everything on the burglary reports, but then Logan hadn’t really expected to. In his experience most people padded out their claim with at least two things they’d never owned in the first place, but always fancied — figuring the insurance company wouldn’t mind treating them. And Berwick had been flogging stuff down the pubs to finance his redecorating binge.