Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

‘What happened to Dr Dempsey? ’

‘Sulking. Threatening legal action.’

‘You hit him first? ’

A shrug. Marker number one was joined by two and three. ‘He pushed me.’

Logan nodded up at the shiny black globe hanging from the ceiling over the central cutting table, like a store security camera. ‘Tell him it’s all on film.’

‘Your victim was male, Caucasian.’ Four, five, and six followed the ridge of the eyebrows. ‘To be honest, he’s been spoiling for a fight for years, ever since I got sent to Iraq instead of him. Said he should be the one digging bodies out of mass graves, not me. .’ She sat back and tilted her head to one side. ‘Blue, brown, or green? ’

Shrug. ‘Blue? ’

‘Brown’s more neutral.’ Dr Graham dipped into her massive handbag and pulled out a wooden box, a little bigger than a pencil case. When she opened it, three pairs of glass eyes stared back at Logan. She plucked the brown eyes from the box, then fiddled around with rubber batons and glue until they were staring out from the skull instead. ‘There we go, much better.’

Seriously? It looked like something out of a cheap horror film.

‘Can’t you just do all this on computers? ’

‘What, like they do on the telly? ’ Markers seven to ten were longer, sticking out of the upper and lower jaws. ‘Facial reconstruction’s half science, half art. You have to really know bones. How’s a computer ever going to do that? ’

‘Go on then.’ Logan went into his jacket pocket, pulled out the junior soup starter kit that had been left on his doorstep, and dumped it on the cutting table. The bones rattled against the stainless steel. ‘What can you get from a bunch of chicken bones and some manky herbs? ’

She peered at them, then added the next couple of markers to the skull. ‘They’re not chicken bones, they’re phalanges. Finger bones. Human.’ A smile. ‘Do I pass the test? ’

‘Finger bones? ’

A sigh. ‘OK, we’ll do it properly. .’ She pulled an A4 lined notepad from beneath one of the books, flipped over to a clean sheet, then stuck her left hand flat down on it and drew around the palm and fingers with a pencil. Then untied the bundle. ‘This one,’ she held up one of the little bones, ‘is a proximal phalanx from the middle finger.’ She placed it on her wobbly outline of a hand in the right place. ‘This one’s an intermediate. . Might be from the index — going by the growth on the distal articular surface — but it’s impossible to tell for sure without having all the other bones for comparison.’ It went on the drawn hand. ‘And lucky number three is a proximal from the thumb.’

‘They’re human ? ’

‘Yup.’ She lowered the last bone into place. Then picked it up again. ‘I don’t know who cleaned them for you, but they seriously need to go on a training course. Boiling bones damages the joints, look,’ she wiggled the end at Logan, ‘see how it’s all pitted and porous? ’

It looked like a pale Crunchie bar with all the chocolate sucked off. She shook her head. ‘Very amateurish.’

Oh God. ‘ Boiled? ’

‘Yup — there’s much more efficient and less damaging ways to clean skeletal remains: boiling breaks down the cortical bone, that’s why you can see that cancellous bone underneath. If you haven’t got Dermestid beetles to clean the remains, then simmering’s the way to go — long and slow, like you’re making stock.’ She put it down again. ‘I don’t know who you’re using, but they should be ashamed of themselves.’ Another marker went on the skull.

‘Boiled. .’ Something cold slithered its way down Logan’s spine.

She picked up the last marker in the set, then frowned at him. ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone all pale.’

‘When? When were they boiled? ’

Dr Graham backed off a pace. ‘Look, I identified them, didn’t I? Can’t you just tell your bosses I’m not faking it here? I really do know what I’m talking. .’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Did Dempsey put you up to this? Is he the halfwit who ruined them? ’

‘Was someone eating them? ’

‘Because if he did, you shouldn’t touch him with a bargepole. He’s a bitter, twisted old sod and I’m doing a good job here!’

The cutting table was cool beneath his fist. ‘Was someone eating the meat off those bloody fingers or not? ’

She pulled her chin in. Then picked up the bone again, held it up to her nose and sniffed. ‘You smell that? Bleach: that’s why it’s so chalky and crumbly. Who’d eat something they’d boiled in bleach? ’

Oh thank God. .

Dr Graham picked all the bones up and held them in the palm of her hand. ‘It wasn’t a test? ’ They made a dry sandpaper sound as she rolled them back and forward. ‘Seriously? ’

‘Someone’s been leaving them outside my house.’

‘Phalanges? ’ She put them back on the paper hand. ‘My life coach told me Aberdeen was weird. .’ She cleared her throat, then dug a ruler from her stack of books and measured each of the bones in turn. ‘You can estimate height and sex from phalanges, but it’s unreliable. And I mean seriously unreliable. I wouldn’t even put it in writing.’

Logan licked his lips. ‘Thought they were chicken bones.’

‘You have to promise not to quote me on this, but best guess: these belong to a woman, about five-two, five-four, something like that. There’s a touch of arthritis, so she might be in her fifties, possibly sixties? They’ve been boiled, so you can whistle for DNA, but you could try stable isotope signature analysis? ’

‘Human fingers.’

‘There’s a professor I know in Dundee who does pro bono work for police cases. I can give him a call if you like? ’

‘I’ve been chucking them into the bushes. .’

Rowan shifts sideways on the wooden bench, making enough room for the woman with the shopping bags to puff down beside her. Pregnant. Taking the weight off her swollen ankles. A tight coil of green and blue spirals out from her tummy, making a question mark in the air that shimmers with antici-pation.

St Nicholas Kirk graveyard basks in the warm morning, the ancient granite headstones turning their crumbling lichened faces to the sun. The church building gnaws at the sky with jagged dark-grey teeth, dirty stained-window eyes glowering out at the dead and the living alike.

A comforting place.

The Kirk is my mother and father. It is my rod and my staff. My shield and my sword. What I do in its service lights a fire in God’s name.

Rowan forces down another mouthful of Blood, Ligature, and Tallow, sitting on the bench with her ankles crossed beneath her, curling around her sandwich, shoulders hunched. Newly dyed hair hangs over her face, hiding her eyes.

No one recognizes her as a redhead.

The broodmother unbuttons the top of her shirt and flaps the collar, trying to force cool air in over her swollen udders. ‘Ungh. . This heat!’ Then she pulls a rumpled newspaper from one of her carrier bags and uses it as a makeshift fan. ‘Ahh, that’s better.’

She has no idea what’s growing inside her. .

Another mouthful — forcing it down. Should have bought some water.

‘You know, Steve says I always moan when it’s too cold, but dear God I can’t wait for it to rain.’

Rowan just nods.

The broodmother dumps the newspaper on the bench between them, then pulls out a plastic bottle of apple juice. Cracks the seal and drinks deep. It smells like sunshine. ‘Pfffffff. . Can’t believe it’s this hot. We went on honeymoon to Kenya and it wasn’t this hot.’

Between them, the headline shouts in big black letters: ‘“I COULDN’T LET HIM SUFFER” ~ BRAVE GUY TELLS OF NECKLACING VICTIM’S HORROR’ and a photograph of an ugly young man in a hospital bed.