Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

‘Don’t push it, Laz, or you’ll no’ get your present.’

‘Present? ’

Why did that sound like a threat?

PC Sim had her hands behind her back, walking up Union Street with careful measured steps, in full-on Dixon of Dock Green mode. She glanced up at the ribbon of sky trapped between the granite buildings standing guard on either side of the road. The shining blue had faded to milky white, with clots of pale grey spreading like cancer. She sniffed. ‘Hope the rain holds off till I get home. Got a load of towels out.’

They crossed over to the other side at the lights outside Waterstones, making for the line of charity shops and banks that lined this part of the West End. Corporate greed and unwanted paperbacks, cheek and jowl.

Next stop Gilcomston Church.

Sim hummed something to herself, smiling in the sunshine, padding slowly along. ‘Think we’re going to find a witness? ’

‘Do you ? ’

‘Nope. Might just be a uniform plod, but I’m not daft. Body out in the middle of nowhere, killed like that, whoever did it is organized and tidy. A planner. They didn’t screech up in a black van and bundle Mr Forman inside. They did it careful and quiet, somewhere no one would see.’

‘Probably.’

A lump-faced woman marched towards them, wheeling a double buggy with two screaming toddlers imprisoned within it. The fag sticking out the corner of her mouth twitching with every muttered swear word.

Logan and Sim broke apart, taking opposite sides of the pavement and letting Mummy Dearest stomp past between them.

When they came back together Sim froze, gazing in through a charity shop window.

Logan stopped beside her.

Someone had put up a display with a mannequin dressed head-to-toe in black leather with a red notebook tucked under its arm. A sheet acted as the backdrop with a Ring Knot picked out in black paint on it, all the squiggles and circles and words identical to the one on the kitchen floor out in Kintore. A stack of hardbacks and paperbacks sat on a little wooden table beside the mannequin, a skull perched on the top. All of them copies of Witchfire .

Sim nodded at it. ‘My niece, Amanda, did it for her English Standard Grade. Got a B. Made the whole family read it then sit down and discuss,’ Sim made quote-bunnies with her fingers, ‘“ symbolism” and “ themes” , like some kind of resentful book club.’

‘Little sods don’t know they’re born. We never got a choice at school, it was Of Mice and Men and sodding Macbeth or a clip round the ear.’

‘I suppose Witchfire ’s OK. I mean, if you like that kind of thing. Kind of a cross between Fatherland, Night Watch , and Silence of the Lambs . Still, at least it got her reading; always thought she’d turn out thick as bogies, like her dad.’

Logan stared at the display. ‘Started reading it last night. Got to the bit where the Moderator tells Rowan about her father.’

Sim’s mouth curdled. ‘You’re not wanting to discuss symbolism and theme, are you? Only once was bad enough.’

Logan headed up the street again. ‘Agnes is recreating bits of the book; thought it wouldn’t hurt to know what to look for.’

‘Tenet Two: “Know thine enemy, for knowledge is power and power is victory.”’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me like that, told you we had to read it.’

Gilcomston Church reared up into the sky, the jagged grey steeple towering over the surrounding buildings. The place was an elaborate gothic lump of dirt-streaked granite, its main entrance raised far enough above street level to need a short flight of stone steps up to the wide wooden door. A pair of posters were mounted on either side in Perspex-fronted display boxes. The eye-melting orange one read, ‘JESUS LOVES YOU EACH AND EVERY DAY!’ and the nuclear-urine yellow one, ‘NEW: SENIORS’ BINGO EVERY WEDNESDAY!!!’

Two men and a woman lounged on the steps, wearing tatty parka jackets and waterproofs, dressed for winter even though the last few days had been like a furnace. A collection of carrier-bags made a plastic halo around them, stuffed with clothes and tins. Probably everything they had to their names.

Logan stopped at the foot of the stairs and smiled up at them. ‘Morning.’

One of the men scowled out from beneath a threadbare woollen hat, his eyes thin and yellow, flecked with red veins. He clutched a tin of extra-strong Co-op lager to his chest, shielding it with his other hand. The sour smell of stale piss and alcohol hung around him like a thundercloud. ‘I ain’t done nothing. You can’t prove I done nothing, I know my rights.’

The other man and the woman sidled closer together. He had one leg in plaster from the knee down, and his face was a mess of scabs and scratches. That would be Henry Scott, AKA: Scotty Scabs, the only one of Rennie’s shoplifting tramps not currently lying on a refrigerated drawer in the mortuary.

The woman had a wad of stained gauze wadding taped over her left eye, her hair like damp straw, fingernails painted bright scarlet. She slid a half bottle of supermarket vodka into her pocket.

Sim held up a hand. ‘It’s OK, Trevor, we’re not here to hassle you-’

‘Whoever says I did it is lying !’

Logan pulled the mugshot photo of Roy Forman from his pocket and held it up.

Trevor sniffed, wiped a hand under his nose, leaving a shiny trail on the dirty skin. ‘Whatever Fusty did, I didn’t have nothing to do with it.’

‘When did you last see him? ’

‘He was mental.’

Sim settled down on the step next to him, blinking. Probably from the fumes, they were bad enough from the pavement, up close they must have been horrible. ‘Trevor, we’re trying to help Mr Forman, we’re not here to hassle you. We just need to know if anyone saw him last week. Maybe Friday, or Saturday? ’

The woman ran a pale tongue across chapped lips. Her voice didn’t go with the ratty, unwashed hair and missing teeth. Posh, and not local posh either, Inverness posh. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? ’

Sim nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Sally. That’s why we need to-’

Henry Scott burst into tears. ‘He’s deid, he’s deid, he’s deid. .’

Sally wrapped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Shhh, shhh, it’s all right, Scotty, it’s all right.’ She squinted her good eye at Logan. ‘ Now look what you’ve done.’

Logan dropped down onto his haunches, so he was eye to eye with him. ‘You were Roy’s friend, weren’t you, Henry? You and Roy and Sally? When did you last see him? ’

‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t, I didn’t do it, I didn’t steal stuff. .’

‘It’s OK, I’m not here about the shoplifting thing and I’m not going to arrest you, I promise. I just need to know what happened to Roy. Did you see something? ’

Sally hauled Henry Scott closer. ‘You think we’re just tramps, don’t you? Just drunks and junkies, but we’re people too!’

‘I know you are, that’s why we’re-’

‘We die all the time and you never do anything about it, do you? You don’t care. You’re just like all the other fascists.’

Sim sighed. Furrowed her brow. ‘We do care, Sally.’

‘If you cared, you’d do something about it! They take us in the middle of the night and they do experiments on us. .’

‘Who do? ’

Her lonely eye whipped left and right, then her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘The government .’

‘He’s deid, she killed him: he’s deid, he’s deid. .’

Logan shook his head. ‘The police are independent, Sally, the government doesn’t own us, they can’t make us do things. That’s why we want to find out what happened. .’ He stared at Henry Scott. ‘Wait a minute: you said, “she killed him”. Who killed him, Henry? Who hurt Roy? ’