Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

The footballer’s fiancee was in the middle of telling everyone how her Robert wouldn’t hurt a fly when a man lurched drunkenly up from the road, shouting, ‘Fucker deserves to die!’ As soon as he opened his mouth Logan recognized him: Brian something, boyfriend of Macintyre’s sixth victim: Christine Forrester. The one before he’d tried it on with Jackie and got himself kneed in the balls and arrested.

‘Here we go …’

The man wasn’t just drunk, he was pickled: tears rolling down his face, slurring as he shouted the odds about how Macintyre was a raping scumbag who deserved to die for what he’d done. How a coma was too good for him. How he’d ruined Christine’s life. Killed her. The cameras were on him in a flash, capturing his pain for the next news bulletin.

Logan pushed through the ring of journalists and took hold of the man’s arm. ‘Come on, Brian, you don’t want to do this. Let’s you and me-’

But Brian was stronger than he looked, breaking free and hurling a barrage of foul language at Macintyre’s family. Logan waved the constable over and told her to take Brian inside. But he had no intention of coming quietly; lunging at Ashley, shouting: ‘You gave him a fucking alibi! You lying bitch ! They could’ve stopped him!’ Taking a wild swing and missing. ‘It’s your fault!’

‘Come on, sir.’ The constable grabbed his wrist, twisting it up behind his back before he could do any real damage, and frogmarching him away, the TV cameras hurrying after them.

With the spotlight off Macintyre’s nearest and dearest, Logan suggested it might be best if they went home now. ‘Before anything else happens.’

Macintyre’s mum glared after Brian — watching him struggle as he was forced through the doors into the hospital. ‘I want to press charges! He’s got no right talking to us like that when my boy’s in a coma!’

‘Why don’t we talk about that tomorrow, when everyone’s calmed down?’ said Logan, escorting them through the throng of well-wishers, across the road and up into the ranks of parked cars. Macintyre’s mum pulled out a key fob and pointed it at a silver Audi — one of the footballer’s collection of expensive motors — setting the hazard lights flashing as it unlocked. Obviously the little red hatchback wasn’t good enough for her any more. ‘Nice car. New?’ She ignored him and climbed in behind the steering wheel. Logan held onto the door frame, preventing her from closing it. ‘What happened to your lawyer: Moir-Farquharson?’

She gave him a withering stare. ‘If it wasn’t for him my wee boy would be fine! I saw the papers — he made them stop protecting Rob.’ Her face was an ugly, hard line. ‘He won’t see another penny!’ She pulled on her seatbelt as Ashley got into the passenger seat, looking shaken by Brian’s outburst. Logan let go of the door and it was slammed shut.

The driver’s window buzzed down and Mrs Macintyre’s angry face glowered up at him. ‘My wee boy’s been half killed: you should be out there catching whoever did it, no’ going on about lawyers and cars! Call yourselves policemen? You should be ashamed!’ And then they drove off, leaving Logan to think that yes, he probably should.

‘Well that was stupid.’ Logan leant back against the wall, looking down at Brian as he cried quietly to himself. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘they want to press charges. I’ll try to talk them out of it, but even if they do make a complaint it’s not going to go further than a warning. So it’s not the end of the world: OK?’

Christine’s boyfriend didn’t answer, just cried harder. The man was a wreck.

Logan sighed. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’

Brian had settled down to a gentle, near-silent sob by the time they pulled up outside the house. It lay in darkness, curtains open, lights off, like all the life had been sucked out of the place. Logan waited, but Brian didn’t budge from the passenger seat. ‘Christine will be waiting for you.’

No response. Logan climbed out of the car. He really didn’t need this tonight — he had more than enough on his plate without having to spend the evening babysitting someone’s drunken, crying boyfriend.

Brian just sat there, not looking at the house. The front door was lying open. He’d probably forgotten to close it when he staggered out to shout at Macintyre’s family, too pissed to notice. Nothing to worry about. But Logan still felt something cold crawling about in his innards.

‘Are you …’ He stared up at the dead-looking house. ‘Why don’t you wait here and I’ll just-’

‘She’s in the bathroom.’

And the cold thing inside Logan grew claws.

The ambulance crew declared Christine Forrester dead at nineteen minutes past six. She was in the bath; the water would have been hot once, but now it was cold and deep pink. This wasn’t a cry for help: Christine had done a thorough job. Two long, pale-edged scars stretched from the crook of her arms all the way down to her wrists, several horizontal slashes opening the veins up even further. Just to be on the safe side there were two empty packets lying on the bathroom floor: one of heavy-duty painkillers, the other sleeping tablets.

It would have been nice to say she looked serene in death, but she didn’t. Her once-pretty eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling, mouth hanging open as if she was about to say something. Like blame Logan for not stopping Macintyre before he raped her. Even the scar that twisted its way down her face seemed to stand out more than it had when she was alive. A trail of pain etched in broken skin.

‘You want us to get her out of there?’ asked one of the ambulance men, peeling off a pair of latex gloves.

‘No … thanks, if you can just leave her where she is.’ He’d have to call Insch and probably the Procurator Fiscal too, even if it was obviously a suicide. Christine had left a note — apologizing for not being stronger. For not being able to cope. For letting everyone down. As if it had all been her fault.

Logan couldn’t look at her any more. He closed the bathroom door and showed the ambulance crew out.

It took three goes before the inspector would answer his phone, an angry, ‘ What now? ’ blaring out into Logan’s ear.

‘Christine Forrester’s dead. Slit her wrists and took a pile of pills.’

Silence, then swearing and then the sound became muffled, as if Insch had clamped his hand over the mouthpiece. But Logan could still hear him shouting that they should do the finale again, and this time try not to screw it up. Then some crackling, and finally what sounded like a heavy door closing. ‘ When? ’

‘About three or four hours ago. Boyfriend came home and found her in the bath. He drinks all the whisky in the house, then goes up to the hospital for revenge. I think if he could have got into Macintyre’s room he’d have killed him.’

‘ Bloody hell …’

‘You want me to tell the PF?’

Insch thought about it for a moment. ‘ No, I’ll do it … Why the hell did she have to go do something stupid? ’

But they both knew why — because they’d let Rob Macintyre get away with it.

The funeral directors took Christine Forrester away in a stainless steel coffin. The IB had been in and photographed her body in situ, but it wasn’t the usual bells and whistles job, just the recording of a life ended. Without suspicious circumstances the PF didn’t need to turn up, and neither did the rest of the travelling circus, which made it all the more sad. As if Christine’s life wasn’t worth as much as some junkie knifed in an alleyway for the price of a burger.

Logan left her boyfriend with a Family Liaison officer and followed the undertakers’ grey van back to headquarters. The day shift was already two and a half hours over by the time he got there, but he had a heap of paperwork to do.