Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

‘A word, Constable.’ Logan marched straight past.

‘Eh? Oh, OK … sure.’ Rennie stuffed Beattie’s wife back in his pocket and scurried after him, down the corridor and into the tiny room Logan had appropriated for the break-in investigation. It was slowly turning back into a cupboard, piled high with files and junk. ‘What can I-’

‘I know.’ He kicked the door shut. Ever since he’d found out about them — Jackie and DC Halfwit here — he’d been wondering how he’d feel when it finally came to this. And the answer was surprisingly fucking angry.

Rennie backed up, banging into the little desk, sending a pile of forms skittering to the carpet tiles. ‘Hey, I don’t know what-’

Logan grabbed him and shoved him up against the wall. ‘I trusted you!’

The constable’s eyes went wide, words falling out of him, ‘Look, it wasn’t my idea, we-’

‘Don’t you bloody-’ He curled his right hand into a fist.

‘It was Insch! He made us do it!’

For a moment Logan forgot to breathe. ‘Insch? What the hell does-’

‘We’re supposed to take turns-’

‘TAKE TURNS?’ That was it: Logan was going to smack him one.

‘But … but I had rehearsals Monday and Wednesday and Jackie was at that party and I couldn’t get to Macintyre’s house in time and-’

‘Macintyre?’ Logan let go of him.

‘Watching his house. I couldn’t get there till after rehearsal and I watched the house all night, but he could’ve been out already and I didn’t mean to let him get away and that girl got raped and-’

‘Oh God.’ He sat down on the creaky office chair, feeling sick — they’d just been keeping tabs on the footballer … And he’d kissed the Deputy PF! Logan covered his face with his hands and groaned; he was supposed to be seeing Rachael again tonight! Jackie was going to kill him.

Rennie was still babbling, ‘I wanted to tell you, but Insch didn’t want to get you involved. He … Are you OK?’

Logan said, ‘No,’ and went back to banging his head off the desk.

The morgue was surprisingly empty for Dr Isobel MacAlister’s farewell performance: just Logan, DI Insch, and Brian — her floppy-haired assistant. Thank God this wasn’t a suspicious death, or the PF would be here and so would Rachael. And Logan was dreading having to speak to her … A nervous-looking man with a shaven head and a bad case of the fidgets bumbled through from the storage room. ‘This,’ said Isobel, her voice even more disapproving than usual, ‘is Dr Milne. He’ll be standing in for me while I’m on maternity leave.’

The man raised a twitchy hand and said, ‘Hi. Call me Graeme, I’m sure we’re all going to-’

Isobel cut him off. ‘Shall we get started?’

Frank Garvie’s rubber-clad body nearly filled the stainless-steel cutting table. Normally he would have been stripped, his clothes sent up to the IB for examination, but Isobel had insisted that she was going to be the one to peel Garvie’s remains; arguing that the gimp suit was so tight it needed to be seen in context with the corpse. But Logan got the feeling she was just doing it to spin the whole thing out for as long as possible. Making the most of her last post mortem. Never wanting the fun to end.

First the mask came off, the rubber squeaking as Isobel rolled it back, revealing Garvie’s sallow face. The jaws were slightly open, something red and shiny just visible between the pale lips. ‘A ball-gag,’ said Isobel, getting her assistant to photograph the thing in situ, before extracting it. Next the rope around the man’s throat came off, was dropped into an evidence bag, documented and logged. And then she ran a scalpel along the suit’s seams, the rubber suddenly contracting back to its original size, letting Garvie’s waxy skin bulge out onto the cold metal table.

Four and a half hours later they were done, and everything Isobel had taken out of the ex-porn star was stuffed back inside, except for his brain — which now hung upside down in a white plastic bucket of formalin — and the six-and-ahalf-inch bipolar probe she’d removed from his rectum: the other half of the electrostim set he’d been wired up to. ‘Well,’ she said, while her assistant and the new pathologist manhandled Frank Garvie’s violated body onto a gurney, ‘I’d say it’s almost certainly self-inflicted. The groin area of the suit was covered in seminal fluid: the electrical pads strapped to his penis and perineum would have milked the prostate. That, the rope round the throat, and the gag make it look like autoerotic asphyxiation taken to its logical conclusion. Bruising of the neck indicates he’s probably tried it before …’ She turned and gazed at her beloved morgue, the water gurgling in the cutting table, sluicing away the last traces of Frank Garvie. ‘I’m …’ a small catch in her voice, ‘I’m going to miss this place.’ Her eyes sparkled, and she wiped them with the heel of her hands. ‘Excuse me.’

Logan and Insch watched her go.

‘Right,’ said the inspector clapping his hands together as the morgue door closed behind the departing pathologist, ‘lunch.’

‘Well, you should have got here earlier then, shouldn’t you?’ said the man clattering two plates of microwaved moussaka down on their table. ‘There’s no chips.’ He saw the look on Insch’s face. ‘It’s not my fault! We’re cleaning the fryers for the next meal. I shouldn’t even be serving!’

‘So,’ said Logan as the man went back to his dirty deep-fat fryers and Insch went mad with the salt and pepper, ‘how’s the Rob Macintyre case coming?’

The huge man froze for a moment, then started eating. ‘There is no case, remember?’

Logan just sat there and stared at him, not saying a word. Giving him a taste of his own medicine.

‘What?’ Insch shovelled in another mouthful, chewing. Then another. Before finally coming out with, ‘Who the hell told you? It was Watson wasn’t it? I knew I shouldn’t have-’

‘It was Rennie. And I didn’t give him any option.’ Which was almost true. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were keeping tabs on Macintyre?’

‘You didn’t need to know. And neither does anyone else, so if you breathe a word of this I will personally see to it that both your testicles end up hanging on my office wall. Clear?’

‘Crystal.’

Insch nodded and polished off the last forkful. ‘We’ve got one car out the front of Macintyre’s house — Rennie and Watson alternating. Not perfect, but it’s all I’ve got.’

‘But,’ said Logan as the inspector started wiping the plate clean with a podgy finger, sweeping up the sauce and grease then sooking it clean, ‘you can’t just-’

‘I made a promise! Those women deserve justice! Robert Macintyre raped them and I’m going to put him behind bars if it kills me!’

The head of CID was waiting for them in the Fettes incident room, leaning back against the wall with his arms folded, a smile on his face, and very little hair on his head. ‘Inspector,’ he said as Insch froze on the threshold of the nearly empty room. The handful of uniform and CID were gone, leaving just the skeletally thin admin officer and a pile of file-boxes.

‘Where are all my-’

‘I’ve got some good news for you.’ The Detective Chief Superintendent picked a sheaf of paperwork from a folder on the table next to him. ‘Garvie was your prime suspect and he’s committed suicide, yes?’

‘Yes …’ Insch sounded cautious, as if he wasn’t sure where this was going.

‘And you’re certain he was the one involved in …’ he checked the sheets in his hand, ‘Jason Fettes’s death?’

‘Positive. We’re just looking for corroborating evidence, and-’