Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

Logan grabbed a couple of uniforms and sent them off to do a background search on Deborah Kerr, hoping it would turn up some sort of history: drugs, violence, parking tickets — he wasn’t fussy. And if they could find out where she might have taken Fettes that would be a bonus — friends’ or relatives’ houses, rented accommodation, holiday home, secret bondage dungeon — exactly the same thing they’d done with Frank Garvie before he killed himself.

And then he went to check up on Insch’s search team.

The wind whistled through the granite streets, stealing the warmth from bundled-up bodies as they picked their way through Holburn, Ruthrieston and Mannofield, looking for the little red hatchback Rob Macintyre had taken on his jaunts south. ‘Anything?’ asked Logan, collar turned up, hands deep in his pockets as a large, shivering policeman slowly succumbed to hypothermia.

‘Bugger all.’ The sergeant cupped his hands and blew into them, ears and nose neon red. ‘Bloody thing could be anywhere. If it was me, it’d be a burnt-out wreck somewhere out Ballater way by now, or at the bottom of a loch. We’d never find it.’

Which was pretty much what Logan was starting to think. And without the car they had no forensic evidence.

Four o’clock and they still hadn’t found the hatchback, so he and Insch were back in interview room two with Rob Macintyre’s fiancee. A day in the cells hadn’t done her any favours — her make-up was smudged, mascara all down her face, her eyes red and watery, nose raw from wiping it on the sleeve of her black blouse, leaving little, glittering silver trails. Logan doubted she’d stopped crying since they’d questioned her that morning.

Insch didn’t beat about the bush: ‘Where’s the car?’

Ashley shrugged, eyes down, picking the red varnish off her nails. ‘Think Rob’s auntie might have picked it up again’

‘She lives in a nursing home in Ellon. She’s in a wheelchair.’ They’d checked.

Another shrug. ‘Not my car.’

‘Let’s try something else then.’ Logan opened the case file and started pulling photographs out, laying them one by one in front of Ashley. ‘Christine, Gail, Sarah, Jennifer, Joanne, Sandra, Nikki, Jessica, Wendy. These are the before shots.’ All smiling young women, making nice for the camera with their whole lives ahead of them and no idea what was coming. Looking at them all together like this, it was obvious that Macintyre was a predator of opportunity. None of his victims had anything in common, other than being young, attractive, and in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘Would you like to see what they looked like after your fiance got hold of them?’

Ashley stared at him. ‘My Robert didn’t do anything.’

‘Sarah Calder.’ Logan laid the photograph taken when she’d got out of hospital on top of the smiling ‘before’ image. Dark hair, frightened eyes, bruised chin, her left cheek held together with black stitches: an inch and a half of raw, puckered flesh. ‘She’s twenty-three. Was getting married in April, but now she can’t stand for her boyfriend to touch her.’ He took the next pic out and placed it over another happy face. ‘Jennifer Shepherd, she was second.’ A deep-purple bruise stretched across her forehead, her nose swollen and misshapen where it had been rammed into the pavement, the mark of the knife curling from her left ear to the side of her mouth. ‘She works with disabled children. On tranquillizers now, too scared to leave the house.’ Then it was numbers three, and four, and five, and six, the violence and scarring getting worse every time. ‘Christine killed herself: swallowed a pile of sleeping pills and painkillers, climbed into the bath and slit her wrists from here to here,’ Logan took hold of Ashley’s arm and demonstrated with the tip of his finger.

She yanked it back out of his grasp, rubbing at the skin as if it were infected. ‘He didn’t! I …’

‘You gave him an alibi, Ashley: you lied for him. And he went out and he did that .’ Pointing at the women. ‘Every time you lied, another one got added to the list.’

He pulled out the first photo from the Dundee attacks. ‘Nikki Bruce.’ And as Logan went through the list Ashley got paler and paler, crying quietly, eyes wide and bloodshot. Rocking back and forth with an arm wrapped around herself, as if that would hold her world together.

He almost felt sorry for her.

Logan placed the last photo down, completing Rob Macintyre’s mosaic of pain. Insch leant forward. ‘What did it cost?’ he asked, tapping the table with a fat finger. ‘What did he give you to lie for him? New car? Jewellery? Don’t tell me: you did it for love!’ Logan’s money was on jewellery, like that fancy gold and ruby necklace she’d been wearing the day they went round to interview Macintyre after the first Dundee rape. The one she played with whenever the attack was mentioned. Then there were the earrings and the bracelet. A brand-new, blood-red ruby for every woman her fiance attacked.

Bottom lip trembling, she wiped the tears from her eyes with the heel of her hand. More welled up in their place. ‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why are you doing this? He’s in a coma, for God’s sake!’

Insch’s voice was like a dark rumble in the silence that followed. ‘Can you not see the photographs? Do you think your boyfriend being in hospital makes it all better? That they don’t wake up screaming in the dark, because of him? They deserve more than that.’

She jumped to her feet, eyes full of fire and tears. ‘WHAT ABOUT ME? WHAT DO I DESERVE?’

Insch stood, looming over her. ‘Right now you deserve five to eight years. You covered up for him and he ruined nine women’s lives. You’ll get out on parole in three, maybe four years, but they’ll never stop suffering. And it’s all your fault.’

By the time Logan finished off everything he needed to do, the day shift had been over for more than an hour. There was still no sign of the little red hatchback and no confession from Macintyre’s mum or fiancee. And to make things worse, the team Logan had sent off to look into Debbie Kerr had come back with nothing more exciting than two outstanding parking tickets and a drunk and disorderly when she was eighteen. All in all it had been a crap day.

Logan switched off his computer, leant back in his chair and scowled at the ceiling tiles. Now he had to go home and deal with Jackie. Why the hell couldn’t he have got involved with someone more stable ? Someone like …’ Fuck.’ Rachael — the dinner invitation, something scary from Delia and wine. What was it, last night? The night before? He’d not even called her back to cancel, and now he couldn’t even find his mobile to check the message again. ‘Bloody, sodding, bastarding fuck .’

DI Insch thundered into the CID office, his voice making the walls shake, ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you for the last half hour.’

Logan pulled out his handset and checked it. ‘It’s not-’

‘I’ve been calling you on your bloody mobile.’ Insch turned and marched back towards the door. ‘Well, come on then, get your backside in gear or we’re going to be late for rehearsal.’

Oh Christ: not another night of Gilbert and bloody Sullivan. ‘Actually, I’m going to give it a miss tonight, I-’

‘No you bloody don’t! This is all your stupid idea. And if I’ve got to question the only person in my entire cast with any talent, you’re sodding well going to be there too!’

It might have been Logan’s imagination but Insch’s driving seemed to be getting worse the further they got from the station. Roaring out at junctions, leaning on the horn every two minutes to berate some motorist or pedestrian. Swearing a blue streak when an old lady dared to use the zebra crossing. So Logan kept his mouth shut and tried to remember what he’d done with his mobile phone. The damn thing had to be somewhere !