Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

Jackie was parked in the same space as before, where she could watch the footballer’s house without sitting right in front of it. She looked surprised to see him as he climbed in beside her. ‘I didn’t-’

‘Fish and chips.’ Logan, dug the bags out from under his jacket. ‘Thought you’d be tired of cold sandwiches and cups of thermos coffee.’ She accepted a paper parcel and unfolded it, filling the car with warm, tasty smells.

‘Thanks.’ They ate in silence.

Sunday morning should have involved nothing more strenuous than a lie-in and a late breakfast. Instead it creaked and groaned after a night spent in the passenger seat of a manky Vauxhall Vectra. Predawn had turned the sky purple, slowly lightening between the silent grey buildings, making the snow glow pink in the gloom. Jackie was fast asleep in the driver’s seat, legs splayed out like a frog, snoring gently with her mouth open. Very feminine. But at least they were on speaking terms again.

Logan tried to stretch, yawned, shook his head, then checked his watch. Six twenty-two. He knew this was a complete waste of time — the ANPR would have picked Macintyre up if he really was driving to Dundee to attack women — but if it meant an end to the fighting and angry silences, he was prepared to put up with an uncomfortable night in a filthy car. Even if it was his day off.

There was a light on in one of Macintyre’s upper rooms and had been for nearly fifteen minutes. The front door opened and Macintyre stepped out into the early morning cold, a heavy holdall in one hand, a mobile phone clamped to his ear with the other. Logan leant over and shook Jackie’s shoulder.

She surfaced with a, ‘Phff, emem, neghe …’ blinking and yawning, as Macintyre locked up then climbed into his brand-new silver Audi with the personalised number plates.

She didn’t pull out until Macintyre was down at the end of the street, indicating left onto Great Western Road. Right would have taken him to the junction with South Anderson Drive and the road to Dundee. Left went towards the town centre.

They followed him at a safe distance, joining a convoy of cars crawling along behind a council gritter, its yellow flashing lights reflecting back from dark and lifeless shop windows all the way down Union Street, then along King Street too … Macintyre took a right halfway down, and so did Jackie, leaving the main road for a snow-covered side street, hanging back as far as possible.

The footballer pulled into the car park opposite Pittodrie Football Stadium, but Jackie kept on going, drifting past, then stopping at the end of the road, where they could watch Macintyre climb out of his car, march round the back, take out the large holdall, then swagger off towards the players’ entrance. Giving some slope-foreheaded troglodyte a high five on the way.

‘Sod it,’ said Logan, ‘he’s just going to morning practice.’

But just before the footballer disappeared into the ground, Logan could have sworn he looked directly at them and winked.

The Inversnecky Cafe was something of an institution in Aberdeen: a dark green, single-storey building, lurking on the seafront along with half a dozen other ice cream places and restaurants, facing out towards the grey, wintry North Sea. The amusement arcade on the corner was open, but it was unlikely to be doing a lot of business on a freezing cold Sunday morning: There was no one about to see the bright flashing lights but bulldog-sized seagulls who waddled grumpily along the cold pavement, tearing into discarded chip papers and burger cartons.

Surprisingly, Colin Miller was already waiting for Logan as he pulled into one of the parking spots opposite. The reporter was huddled round the side of the building, puffing away on a cigarette, looking out over the sea, oblivious to everything but the crashing waves and screeching gulls.

‘Didn’t know you smoked.’

Miller cringed, dragged back from the middle distance. ‘I don’t. And if you tell Izzy any different

I’ll fuckin’ do you. She’s mad enough at me as it is.’ He looked better than he had outside Garvie’s flat the other night. The stubble was gone, but the bags under his eyes were as dark as the clouds lowering over the water. At least he was dressed more like his old self: an expensive suit with scarlet woollen scarf and heavy black overcoat. He pulled the cigarette from his lips with black leather fingers and coughed long and hard, then flicked the butt out into the road.

It was warm inside the cafe, the hiss and gurgle of an espresso machine sounding over a radio tuned to Northsound Two: the weather report predicting doom and gloom for the week ahead. It was busier than Logan had been expecting, couples and families down for the full fried Scottish heart attack experience. No one went to the Inversnecky for a bowl of muesli and half a grapefruit. A tall, gangly man, with a hairline that wasn’t so much receding as running hell for leather, took their order and left them to find their own table. Miller picked the one closest to the heater, complaining the whole time about how come they couldn’t get any decent weather in this shit-hole town for a change.

‘It’s March,’ said Logan settling in opposite, ‘what did you expect — a heat wave? Not exactly the Costa Del Sol, is it?’

The reporter scowled, rubbing his gloved hands in the heater’s warm glow. ‘No, Aberdeen’s the Costa Del Shite.’ He looked up to see the man from the counter standing over him with two coffees and a raised eyebrow. ‘Aye, no offence like.’

‘You’re going to get spit in your breakfast, you know that, don’t you?’ said Logan when he’d gone.

‘Nah, Martin’s all right, I come here often enough. He knows what I’m like.’

And so did Logan. ‘Come on then — why all the secrecy?’ There had been a mysterious message waiting on Logan’s answering machine when he’d got back to the flat after the unofficial stakeout: ‘Meet me at the Inversnecky, nine o’clock, you’re buying.’

‘Eh? Oh …’ Miller shrugged and stirred an extra packet of sugar into his mug. ‘Wanted to get out the house, you know? Only been a day and a bit and she’s already goin’ stir crazy. Next six months are goin’ tae be a soddin’ nightmare.’

‘Try the next eighteen years. Maybe longer — my brother didn’t leave home till he was thirty-two.’ Logan grinned. ‘And if it’s a girl, you’ve got boyfriends to worry about, teenage pregnancy, drugs, tattoos, piercings-’

‘Gonnae no dae that?’

‘Why?’

‘Just gonnae no! Bad enough as it is without you stirring.’

The door jingled open and a red-nosed couple stomped in from the wintry outdoors, bringing a blast of cold air with them. Miller shivered, even though they were practically sitting on top of the heater. ‘And get this,’ he said, pulling a disgusted face, ‘They want me to do a “Baby Diary”. Fuckin’ investigative journalist and they want me to do puff pieces on changing shitey nappies …’ He went off on a whinge, complaining about how he wasn’t appreciated, and how The Scotsman had offered him a huge chunk of money to move down to Edinburgh and work for them. And how he was seriously considering it, even though Logan knew there was no way in hell Miller would ever return to the central belt. Not if he wanted to keep the fingers he had left. He finally stopped whinging when their breakfasts arrived.

Logan grabbed the tomato sauce. ‘You know I asked you to dig up some dirt on-’

‘DC Simon Allan Rennie, twenty-five, five foot eleven, went to Powis Academy — suspended six days for getting into a fight with his maths teacher. Lives in a flat on Dee Street …’

Logan listened to Miller detailing the minutiae of Rennie’s life between bites of sausage, bacon, mushroom and egg. The reporter knew everything: from who the DC’s first girlfriend was, to the number of complaints made against him by members of the public in the last three years. But the upshot was that the Bastard Simon Rennie was clean. ‘How the hell do you know all this?’