Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

She clapped her hands. ‘I’ll get the sherry!’

She watched the home movie unfold in silence, impassive as Jason Fettes screamed and struggled against his leather restraints. ‘It’s not very good,’ she said at last. ‘I mean the special effects are all right, but who’d want all that whinging? It’s not very sexy.’

‘It’s real.’ Logan opened the case file and pulled out the glossy shots of Jason Fettes’ post mortem. ‘Jason was twenty-one.’ He put a photo on the coffee table. ‘He wanted to be an actor. He was writing a screenplay. He died in agony. His mother and father came back from holiday to find out he was dead.’ Laying out one picture for every sentence, until the coffee table was covered in stomach-churning Technicolor.

‘I …’ She ran a dry tongue over her scarlet lips. ‘I’d like a glass of water please.’ Closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at the photos.

‘Who did you get the film from?’

‘I’m feeling a bit sick …’

‘A young man’s dead, Ma. He was in the Scouts when he was wee. Just like your grandsons.’

‘I don’t … Oh God …’ She scrambled out of her seat, rushing through to the kitchen. They could hear her retching from the lounge. Logan picked up the photographs and put them back in the folder.

It didn’t take long before she was back in her chair again, looking decidedly unwell, clutching a glass of water.

‘So,’ said Insch, ‘do you want to tell us where you got the film from?’

Ma shuddered. ‘I never knew. I thought it was just … you know. Someone messing around. If I’d known …’

‘So who was it?’

‘I get most of my stuff from this bloke from Dundee. Comes round once a month with DVDs and …’ She suddenly stopped talking, as if realizing she was about to say something she really shouldn’t and cleared her throat instead. ‘Anyway, he wasn’t well — poor soul’s got sciatica and it’s a long drive up from Dundee if you’ve got a bad back. My Jamesy was just the same, God rest his soul. When we went to Prestwick for our holidays-’

‘Ma,’ Logan leant across the table and took one of her cold, flabby hands, ‘the film. It’s important.’

She took a deep breath, stared at her hand in Logan’s and said, ‘Sometimes people are stretched a bit, and maybe they’ve been unlucky on the horses. They give us things to look after … or sell for them.’ Which was the most genteel description of seizing property for non-payment Logan had ever heard. ‘The …’ She pointed at the television and shuddered. ‘That film was in a DVD player someone handed in.’

Insch leaned forward in his seat. ‘Who?’

‘I don’t know, I’ll have to check.’ She got up and rummaged in an old sideboard, coming out with a tatty blue exercise book, flipping through the pages, talking to herself. ‘Derek MacDonald.’ She scribbled the details down on a piece of pink notepaper with roses round the edge and handed it over.

Insch accepted it with a grunt then passed it to Logan.

‘Recognize the name?’

‘Derek MacDonald?’ Logan shrugged. ‘Could be anyone. Hundreds of them living round here. Assuming it’s even the guy’s real name. The address rings a bell though …’

‘Call it in.’

So Logan did, standing out in the hallway with the lounge door closed, listening as Control came back to him with details on half a dozen Derek MacDonalds with police records in the north-east. Only three of them lived in Aberdeen: one with a drink driving conviction, one with a couple of assaults to his name, and one unlawful removal — nicking cars in Tillydrone. None of them lived at the address Ma had given them. But according to Control the building was under surveillance by the drug squad — part of an ongoing operation to pick up some likely lads from Newcastle who were having a serious go at moving into the Aberdeen market. Which meant Insch would have to clear it with the Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of CID before he went barging in there like a bear with piles.

‘Address is flagged,’ said Logan, back in the lounge. ‘DI Finnie. But there’s no Derek MacDonald at that address.’

Ma tutted, arms folded under her enormous, pasty bosom. ‘Trust me, there is. We’re very careful about that kind of thing. When people owe you money, it always pays to know where they live.’

Reggae music. Logan hated reggae music, but it was coming out of the alarm clock radio anyway, dragging him back from dark dream. Groaning, he mashed the snooze button and retreated beneath the duvet. There was some indistinct muttering from the other side of the bed, and Jackie rolled over and wrapped herself around his torso, burying her head into the crook of his neck. All warm and cosy … It wasn’t until the alarm went off again that Logan woke up enough to remember he wasn’t speaking to her, and why.

DI Insch’s Range Rover slid into the kerb, the engine pinging and ticking in the cold morning air. ‘This it?’

Ma Stewart peered out of the window, then down at the piece of paper in her hand. ‘Have you ever tried those Magic Tree things? They work wonders for doggy smells.’ Which was her polite way of saying the inspector’s car stank.

‘Is — this — the — bloody — house?’

‘Yes. Honestly, there’s no need to be like that. I was only saying.’ She sniffed. ‘They come in all sorts of different flavours these days, not just pine.’

Sitting in the back with Ma, Logan tried not to groan. The pair of them had been at it since they’d picked her up at half-eight. She’d do her usual rambling non sequitur thing, Insch would snap at her, she’d sulk for a bit, and then it would all start up again.

The address she’d given them was deep in darkest Mastrick, part of a long line of grey granite tenements that looked even drearier than normal under the blue-grey clouds. Muttering darkly about old ladies, blunt objects and shallow graves, the inspector called into Control and told them the Drug Squad could take a running jump at themselves: he was going in. ‘I don’t care,’ he said to whoever it was on the other end of the phone. ‘I’m investigating a murder: it takes precedence. Finnie can-’

Someone knocked on the window, a jowly, middle-aged man with wide, rubbery lips, floppy hair, leather jacket and a pained expression. Insch hung up on Control and buzzed the window down.

‘Not wanting to be funny,’ said the man, ‘but what the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’

‘Derek MacDonald.’

‘This is an ongoing surveillance operation you idiot! Get out of here!’

‘I’m going nowhere without Derek MacDonald.’

‘That’s it.’ DI Finnie pulled an Airwave handset from his jacket pocket. ‘I’m calling the DCS.’

‘Fine,’ said Insch, with a nasty smile, ‘you tell him I’m after a murderer, but you’re busy playing cops and junkies. I’m sure he’ll be dead impressed.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake …’ The man glanced back over his shoulder at the house. ‘Who did you say you were looking for?’

‘Derek MacDonald.’

‘No, can’t help you. Now if you wouldn’t mind fucking off before someone sees you, I’ve got a surveillance operation to-’

‘I don’t give a toss about your operation.’

‘You’re such an arsehole.’

‘I’m investigating a murder.’

‘Fine. Be like that. Fuck over six weeks’ worth of work. Way to be a team player, Insch.’

‘All I want is Derek MacDonald.’

‘HE — DOESN’T — LIVE — HERE!’

‘Tall chap,’ said Ma, beaming at him out of the window, ‘brown hair, sideburns, mid-twenties, squint nose, little round glasses like Harry Potter?’