Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

The woman sighs. ‘Horrible, isn’t it? How could anyone do something so. . horrible ? ’

A shrug, then Rowan rubs at the scars on her left wrist. Like thin shiny worms wriggling beneath her fingertips. ‘Maybe he deserved it? ’

‘No one could ever deserve that .’ The blue and green swirl trembled. ‘Oooh. . junior’s on the move again. Tell you: I feel like that bloke out of Alien . Only he was lucky — he didn’t have a little monster’s foot in his bladder.’

If only she knew.

Broodmother looks out at the sea of deathstones. ‘I was here when they had that service for Alison and Jenny McGregor, did you see it? Got Robbie Williams’s autograph. .’

A man walks in through the ornate pillared frontage that screens the graveyard off from Union Street. He’s here . The man has a mobile phone pressed to his ear, a bag from Primark in his other hand. And an aura like a house fire — black and orange and red tongues of smoke trailing in his wake, caressing the tombs.

‘Of course, that was before Steve. And now look at me.’

The wide path from the main street to the church is made up of paving slabs and ancient headstones, worn almost smooth by generations of feet. The living trampling on the dead. She can almost hear them groaning as he marches past the bench.

‘I tell you, they say giving birth’s the greatest thing you can ever do, but it’s the bit before that’s a pain in the- Oh, are you off? ’

Rowan marches after him, staying far enough back to not be touched by his filthy stench: the cracking lines like burning blood. The beasts are too powerful and so was the woman with the aura of black, but a witch . . Now that’s something different.

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.

‘It’s not my fault, OK? ’ Logan grabbed his jacket off the hook by the filing cabinet in his office. ‘Not like I ordered them off the bloody internet.’

Steel blocked the doorway. ‘How could you no’ know they were human? ’

‘Yes, because you’re such an expert on anthropology. Who leaves actual finger bones on someone’s doorstep? ’ He picked up the phone on his desk, punched in the number for the CID main office. ‘Who’s this: Guthrie? ’

Little sod sounded half asleep. ‘ Yes, Guv? ’

‘I need you to go through the missing persons reports. Looking for someone between forty-five and sixty-five, right-handed, with arthritis. Five-one to five-six.’

‘Aye, right.’ Steel had a dig at the underside of her left boob, one side of her face all creased up. ‘Like that’s no’ going to throw up a million hits.’ Dig, dig, dig. ‘Think my boobs are getting bigger? ’

‘ Male or female? ’

‘Probably female, but check both just in case.’ Logan put the phone down on the grumbled complaints.

‘I think they’re getting bigger. .’ She squidged them together, making a crevasse of wrinkly cleavage. ‘Look.’

‘No.’

‘What about your mate the scumbag journalist? He got his fingers lopped off, maybe he’s sending you the bits as a wee gift? ’

‘I need a search warrant for Reuben’s house. And he’s got a workshop, or a lockup or something, out in the countryside — we need to search that too. He’s killed someone, maybe a rival dealer, that’s where he’s getting the bones from.’

‘You’re no’ right in the head. When did you last hear of a little old lady drug dealer? ’

Logan hauled open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out a bundle of empty evidence bags, held together with an elastic band. ‘There was that one in Torry last year with the cannabis farm in her garage. And the granny selling coke in Northfield. And the bunch of pensioners running that meth lab in Huntly.’

Steel scowled at him. ‘They were retired chemistry teachers, it doesn’t count.’

The drawer clanged shut again. ‘Reuben’s the only-’

‘God’s sake, you’re obsessed. Why would Reuben boil the bones clean? Why no’ just send you the fingers? ’

‘Well, who else would it be? ’

A face appeared over Steel’s shoulder. DS Chalmers, glasses perched on the end of her nose. ‘Guv? Sorry to interrupt, but we’ve got activity on Anthony Chung’s bank account. Debit card was used to withdraw two hundred and sixty pounds this morning from the Clydesdale Bank cash machines outside Marks and Spencer on Union Street.’

Steel turned around. ‘Believe it or no’, Sergeant, we do actually know where Markies is.’ She squidged her boobs together again. ‘Do these look bigger to you? ’

A blush rushed up Chalmers’s cheeks. She stared at Logan. ‘Guv? ’

‘Pull the security camera footage from the machine. Then go through the CCTV tapes — find out where he came from and where he went.’

She scribbled it all down in her notebook. ‘They’re still in Aberdeen: only a matter of time before we find them.’

Steel let go, and her breasts sagged and separated again. ‘Unless someone’s chibbed him and nicked his cards.’ She pointed at Logan. ‘You, Bone Boy, when did you find the last lot? ’

‘This morning, in a box on the top step.’

‘Then it’s no’ Reuben, is it? He’s been banged up in here since six last night.’

‘So he got someone else to deliver it for him. It’s a threat. He wants. .’ A frown. What? What on earth would Reuben get out of it? ‘OK, I haven’t got a clue what he wants, but you don’t send someone finger bones for fun.’

‘See if you’re right, and this is some OAP drug dealer from Manchester, or Birmingham, or Christ knows where, I’m going to sodding kill you. How are we supposed to solve that? ’

Logan pocketed his phone and his keys. ‘Chalmers — when you’re done with the CCTV, go dig up a list of Agnes Garfield and Anthony Chung’s friends so we can start interviewing them.’

‘Yes, Guv.’

‘And get me someone in uniform with their head screwed on the right way round: search trained. I’m going out.’

Even with her police-issue boots on, PC Sim barely made it past Logan’s shoulder. Her dark-brown hair was swept back and imprisoned in a tight bun, just under the rim of her bowler. That and the glasses made it look as if she was trying to get her head to go faster. She wrinkled her nose. ‘You live here ? ’

Logan hefted a roll of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape out of the pool car’s boot. ‘What’s wrong with here? ’

She turned around on the spot, then pointed at the sewage treatment plant on the opposite side of the river. Then the dirty big supermarket. Then the graveyard. Then up past that to the dual carriageway where the eighteen-wheelers thundered. ‘Where do you want me to start? ’

‘Hmph.’ Logan dumped the tape in her arms. ‘String this up between the trees. I want a twelve-foot cordon around the caravan.’

‘Just saying.’ She unravelled the end of the tape and tied it around the trunk of a big beech.

‘And you should have seen it when the chicken factory was right behind us.’

A pair of magpies swooped down, landing on the pool car, hopping on the bonnet, heads cocked to one side, watching as Sim picked her way through the trees that ran behind the caravan, twisting the tape around trunks and branches. Then out around a bush, then another tree, then the caravan next door, until she had a wobbly-sided rhomboid. ‘Should we not have a whole team or something? ’

‘Don’t want this splashed all over the Aberdeen Examiner tomorrow morning. Low-key.’

‘Smart thinking.’ She smiled at him. ‘And the cordon of blue-and-white, with the word “Police” written all over it, isn’t going to be a giveaway at all .’