Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

Logan pulled a photograph from his pocket and placed it on the table beside the skeletal hand. ‘Is this our necklacing victim? ’

‘Ah.’ She frowned at the picture of Anthony Chung. ‘Actually, if everything goes to plan I’ll get the epidermis on the reconstruction tomorrow. It would’ve been quicker, but I had to make the mould, and cast the skull, and examine the new skeleton. .’

‘But it could be him, right? Isobel said the victim had liver damage — and this guy was a serious drinker. Bottle of vodka a day serious. Two: his girlfriend’s obsessed with a book where witch-finders execute people by necklacing them. And three: she suffers from psychotic episodes, and she’s been off her medication for weeks.’

‘Well. .’ Her eyebrows and cheeks twitched, as if there was something wriggling around under the skin. ‘No. It’s not him.’

‘Are you sure ? ’

Beneath his tabloid blanket, Dr Ramsey snorted and twitched, making the chairs creak.

‘Shhh. .’ Dr Graham froze, staring at the duty doctor until he rolled over onto his back and the snoring started again. ‘Trust me: this isn’t our victim.’

‘But-’

‘If it was, I’d have expected rounder eye sockets and a flatter front to the skull as well. Plus there should be a rounded palate and the incisors would be shovel-shaped, but our victim’s teeth are spatulate. I know the body would have looked a bit — and I’m not meaning to be racially insensitive here — yellowy during post mortem, but that’s because the blood settles in the areas closest to the ground.’ She picked up the photo and handed it back to Logan. ‘He wasn’t from the Far East. And he wasn’t in his late teens, early twenties, either.’

‘Oh. .’ So much for that theory. It wasn’t Agnes Garfield’s boyfriend. She wasn’t on a psychotic rampage.

Dr Graham patted the clay-covered skull. ‘Our friend here was male, Caucasian, and about forty years old. The remains on your roof, on the other fingertip-less hand, are definitely female, mid sixties, five foot three, and her second and third lumbar vertebrae were surgically fused at some point: that might be worth chasing up? ’

Logan glanced back at the pale-grey bones. ‘How did she die? ’

‘My life coach says I should always turn a negative into a positive. So: there are excellent opportunities there for further discovery.’

‘You have no idea, do you? ’

She scrunched up one side of her face. ‘Well, there’s no knife marks on the bones, or signs of blunt-force trauma, or bullet holes. . To be honest, it’s impossible to tell, especially without the rest of the remains. We’ve got nothing below the knees and we’re missing both arms too — he could have hacked them off and she bled to death. Maybe he drowned her? Suffocated her. There’s no hyoid, so she could’ve been strangled. Or he stabbed her in the stomach. Or made her drink bleach. Or-’

‘Enough, OK. I get the picture.’

Dr Graham shrugged. ‘If you want, I can send a sample off to that friend of mine in Dundee? ’

‘Do it.’

She picked the left femur from the plastic sheet and hefted it like a club, tapping the hip joint on the palm of her hand. ‘I’ll just need you to sign a couple of release forms. .’

‘Yeah, sorry.’ Logan sat on the edge of Dr Forsyth’s old desk, mobile phone pinned between his shoulder and his ear, hunting through his jacket pockets for a pen. Bloody things must be hiding. He pulled out his notebook, his car keys, his warrant card, laying them on the desk beside him. Then a handful of business cards, two packs of individually sealed blue nitrile gloves. Then that white DL envelope Hissing Sid gave him, and then the brown one. .

They sat on the Formica desktop like tombstones.

A female voice dribbled into his ear. ‘ . .there yet? ’

Blink. ‘Erm. . I think so.’ The pen was lying sideways in the bottom of the pocket. He pulled it out and got her to repeat the authorization number and scrawled it down in his notebook, along with the Fiscal Depute’s name and the time and date. Covering his arse, just in case. ‘Thanks.’

‘ And this isn’t going to take a chunk out of budget? ’

‘Pro bono, apparently.’ He stared down at the tombstones. Puffed out his cheeks. Then picked up the white envelope and tore it open.

‘ Really? Is this a regular thing, or a special favour, because the PF would definitely use this stable isotope thingy a lot more often if it’s free. ’

Inside were two sheets of paper tagged with little yellow Post-its marked ‘SIGN HERE’ with an arrow pointing to the relevant part of the form. Logan’s pulse thumped in his ears, pins and needles sparking along his forearms. ‘Holy mother of crap. .’

‘ I beg your pardon? ’

‘I. .’ He licked his lips. ‘Got to go, something’s. . Bye.’ He hung up. Put the phone down with all the other rubbish from his jacket pockets. Cleared his throat. Blinked at the sheet of paper in his hand. The words were still there:

IHAMISH ALEXANDER SELKIRK MOWAT(Mains of Clerkhill, Grandhome, Aberdeen, AB22 8AV), being of sound mind, do hereby nominate and appointLOGAN MCRAE(23 Persley Park Caravan Park, Aberdeen, AB21 9NS) as sole executor for my last will and testament, and further grant him CONTINUING and WELFARE POWER of ATTORNEY. .

Oh dear Jesus. No. No chance. No chance in hell.

Logan tore the brown envelope open and tipped the contents into his hand. It was a cheque for thirty thousand pounds.

‘Little shite. .’

‘. .cheeky bastard gave me a cheque for thirty thousand pounds! Can you believe it? The sodding nerve of-’

‘ Oh boo hoo.’ Samantha yawned at him down the phone. ‘ Are you seriously moaning because someone gave you thirty grand? I mean, really? ’

Union Street sparkled in the sunshine, mica chips in the granite making it look like someone had sneezed glitter all over the place. Traffic thundered across the junction to Rosemount Place, buses and taxis played chicken in the middle of the box junction.

Probably better waiting for the green man.

‘I can’t take-’

‘ You could finally get the flat finished — move out of the caravan and back into an actual house. ’

‘Thought you loved that caravan.’

The pedestrian crossing bleeped and Logan marched across, dodging his way through a gaggle of middle-aged men in suits bragging about how much they were going to drink tonight.

‘ I do. But you’ve made it smell all fusty. ’

‘Of course, you know what’ll happen if I’m an executor for his will, don’t you? I’ll be a target for anyone who thinks they deserve a slice of the Wee Hamish empire: drug dealers, thugs, loan sharks, protection racketeers, people traffickers, smugglers, pimps. .’

‘ When was the last time you opened the curtains and let a bit of air in? ’

‘Reuben’s going to love that. He. .’ Logan screwed his face shut for a heartbeat. Bloody hell: that explained the random punch on the nose that morning. Reuben knew about the will. Brilliant. Thirty grand and a death sentence.

Right onto the cobbles of Diamond Street down the side of KFC, past the sandwich bar and the hairdresser’s.

‘ Logan? ’

‘All right, all right, I’ll open the windows.’

‘ And it wouldn’t hurt you to give the place a scrub as well. There’s a mouldy patch in the bathroom that’s beginning to look a bit like Shakespeare. I don’t want Shakespeare watching me in the shower, it’s perverse. ’

‘He’s giving me power of attorney too. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? ’