Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

A sigh. Then Guthrie clutched the evidence bag to his chest, staring down at the dog. ‘How could anyone do that to a wee doggie? ’ He shuffled off.

Logan slid back the hatch in the cell door. Robbie Whyte stood in the middle of the small room, arms hanging by his sides, his baggy jeans barely covering his pants, his trainers like boats. That’s what happened when they confiscated your belt and shoelaces.

Whyte’s shoulders trembled.

Logan knocked on the cold metal door. ‘You sure you don’t want to just. . tell someone why you did it? ’

‘It’s all lies. .’ Whyte ground the heel of one hand into his left eye. ‘She still loves me. I know she still loves me.’

‘Thought the expression was, “Say it with flowers.” Not, “Severed dogs’ heads.”’ A pause. ‘Was it your dog? Or did you just pick one at random? ’

‘She always wanted a yorkie. Mad, eh? Smelly, yappy, little dog like that. So I got her one off a mate.’ He sniffed. Scrubbed at his eyes again. ‘Before that talent scout tosser spotted her, she was. .’ Whyte gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘Then she did that bloody advert for tampons — “Look at me, I’m roller-skating with a penguin!” and that was it. Suddenly she was too good for us.’

‘So you hacked the head off a Yorkshire terrier? That made sense to you? ’

‘Didn’t even take the dog. Can you believe that? Walked out and left us both behind, like we were nothing to her. What sort of person does that? ’

‘What sort of person decapitates their own dog? ’

Whyte hunched over into himself, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. ‘Nichole’s mine . She’s not anyone else’s. She knows that. .’

Logan slid the hatch shut again, pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts until he got to the one marked, ‘NUTJOBS-R-US’.

It rang, and rang, and rang. . then a broad Liverpudlian accent boomed out of the earpiece. ‘Logan, haven’t heard from you in ages, is everything OK? Are you persevering with the talking therapy? ’

‘Yeah, I need you to come in and look at someone. .’

DI Leith cracked a yawn, showing off a mouthful of fillings. He blinked, rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin: grey to go with the short-back-and-sides clinging precariously onto his scalp. The washboard wrinkles on his forehead deepened. ‘I’m just asking you to take a look at it, McRae. Half an hour. Forty-five minutes tops.’

Logan shifted the folder to his other arm, balancing the polystyrene cup and grease-windowed paper bag on top as he reached for the door handle. ‘Can’t. I’ve got a stalker in the cells on animal cruelty and assault charges who’s probably going to need sectioned, and Steel’s on the warpath about the necklacing case. You heard her.’

Leith slumped against the wall and let loose another yawn. ‘We both know it’s not going to happen, OK? We can’t just pluck a result out of thin air because she wants to stick it to the review team. The trail for our torture victim is still viable. We need to chase it down before it goes cold.’

‘So you do it then.’ He turned the handle and pushed through into his office. A rumpled-looking Rennie was slouched in the visitor’s chair, blond hair sticking out at random angles, as if he’d had a fight with the styling gel and lost. The bags under his eyes were even more impressive than Leith’s.

Rennie scrambled out of the chair. ‘Guv.’

Leith slumped into the vacated spot. ‘Thought I told you to go home.’

‘Need to talk to DI McRae, Guv.’

Logan settled behind his desk, cricked the plastic lid off his coffee, then unwrapped the bacon buttie. ‘He’s right: go home. You look like an extra from a zombie film.’ The squeezy bottle of tomato sauce was locked away in the bottom drawer, where the thieving sods on nightshift couldn’t get at it. Logan liberated it and slathered the bacon in scarlet.

‘Come on, McRae, I can’t do it myself: I’ve been up all night, the post mortem’s at half nine and there’s no way that’s going to be done before lunchtime. I need an experienced pair of eyes on the ground now , not this afternoon.’ Leith thumped a blue folder onto Logan’s in-tray. ‘I’ll owe you one.’

‘You already owe me one.’

‘Fine, so I’ll owe you two . Please? ’

Logan eased open the folder’s front flap. Photograph: a blackened bloated body specked with mould, lying on a stainless-steel cutting table. The skin was lined with tiny dark-purple cuts each one surrounded by darker circular mottling that might have been bruises. Difficult to tell with the remains being so decomposed. No hair on the head, groin, armpits, or chest. Same as their necklacing victim. Logan closed the folder again and took a bite of his buttie. Bacon crunched between his teeth, filling his head with its smoky salty tang. ‘What about Ding-Dong? ’

‘Detective Inspector Bell couldn’t find his arse with both hands if you duct-taped them to it. Come on.’

He licked a blob of sauce from the side of his mouth. ‘OK, but if Steel asks, I’m off doing something about the necklaced guy. Deal? ’

Leith stood. ‘Deal.’ Then made for the door.

As soon as it shut, Rennie crumpled into the seat again, arms hanging at his sides, head thrown back, showing off a stubbly Adam’s apple. ‘Urrrrrrrgh. .’

‘I told you to go home.’

‘Why can’t everything be like it used to? ’

‘You’re making the place look untidy.’

‘No, seriously.’ He raised his arms, then let them flop down again. ‘Being detective sergeant’s a crap job. All the DIs and Steel treat you like crap, all the DCs and uniform whinge and bitch and give you crap about everything you ask them to do. It’s like. . being the filling in a crap sandwich.’

Logan took Leith’s folder from the in-tray and pulled out the photos inside. ‘My heart bleeds.’

‘We used to be so happy. .’

‘So resign. Tell Steel you don’t want to be a DS any more.’

A snort. ‘Yeah, good luck explaining that to the wife.’ He wrapped his arms around his head. ‘Why couldn’t it have been a simple one-punch murder, or a nice easy domestic? ’

Logan spread the photos out across the desk. The close-ups of the face were the worst, there was almost nothing human left, just a battered lopsided mess swollen after four days in a warm room, speckled with orange and green mould. Whoever it was had even shaved off the poor sod’s eyebrows. The eyes were two black empty slits — always the first to go when decomposition set in.

Each hand and foot had its own photograph, thick lines of bruising circling the wrists and ankles. Fingertips and toes pulped.

Christ. . Logan wrapped his bacon buttie up in its napkin and dumped it in the bin. Not hungry any more. Even the coffee tasted sour now.

‘-never going anywhere? Guv? Hello? ’

He blinked at Rennie. The sergeant was staring at him.

No idea. He put the photos back in the folder. ‘You think you’ve got it tough? Ever since McPherson left it’s been nothing but paperwork, and strategy meetings, and balancing budgets, and manpower rotas, and operational targets, and key performance indicators.’ The folder went back in his in-tray. ‘I dream of being a DS again. Don’t know you’re born, that’s your problem.’

A big, theatrical sigh swelled Rennie’s body, then deflated it back to floppy-armed despondency. ‘You’ll be sorry when I’m signed off on the stress.’

‘At least then I won’t have to listen to you whinge.’ He pulled out his notebook. ‘Tell me about the scene.’

Rennie shuddered. ‘He’d been dead on that kitchen floor for ages . Flies everywhere.’