Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

Chalmers grimaced, then clicked the radio off. ‘Can’t stand rap.’

A group of students, dressed as ninja chickens, leapt and twirled across the road, pausing in the middle to throw some sloppy kung fu moves about, before sprinting off across a small chunk of emerald grass. White feathers tumbled in their wake.

Logan’s phone rang, ‘The Imperial March’ muffled in his jacket pocket. Steel.

Chalmers rumbled the rusty car up the High Street, ivy-covered university buildings on one side, bland granite tenements on the other. ‘Aren’t you going to answer that? ’

He shifted in his seat. ‘Sooner not.’

Eventually the music stopped. Then two beats later it started up again.

‘You sure, Guv? ’

‘Positive.’ He pulled his mobile out and set it on silent. Put it away again. If Steel wanted to shout at him for dodging the National Police Improvement Authority review, she’d just have to wait.

Chalmers frowned out at the street. Every parking space was jammed with a shiny new hatchback or a Smart Car. ‘Look at them. When I went to uni, you know what I had? A bike. And some thieving sod nicked it halfway through first term.’

More students, dressed in long black jackets and little black sunglasses, backpacks over one shoulder, nodding along to a collective beat. Was TheMatrix old enough now to be considered ironic? Or were they just goths, out for a bit of a mope?

Logan smiled. One of them had a Frisbee.

The phone vibrated in his pocket. Steel just couldn’t take a hint, could she? Like Agnes Garfield.

He looked down at the latest poster the media department had put together. Three different versions of Agnes’s face: the photo her parents handed over, the one from the cash-machine’s security camera, and a third one knocked up on the identikit software. They’d given her blonde hair, just in case. A pretty young woman with freckles and a warm smile. Brunette, redhead, blonde — surely someone would recognize her?

Logan popped the poster on the dusty dashboard. ‘What happened with the diary? ’

Silence.

For God’s sake. He stared at Chalmers. She stared straight ahead.

‘Sergeant, I told you to read it two days ago. Why haven’t-’

Her voice was sharp and brittle: ‘I was up till three this morning going through it. I wrote you a report and everything!’

‘You did? ’

‘Put it on your in-tray first thing this morning.’

‘Ah. .’ Where it was probably buried under four tons of paperwork.

‘You didn’t even look at it, did you? ’ Mouth a thin hard line.

‘Didn’t even know it was there: Steel uses my in-tray as a dumping ground for all the stuff she can’t be arsed doing.’ He pointed at a shiny, tiny, red Alfa Romeo as it pulled away from the kerb. ‘Parking space.’

Chalmers slipped the scabby Punto into the still-warm spot. Then looked out of the window, face turned away from him. ‘I would’ve done it sooner, but there was everything else going.’

Logan undid his seatbelt. ‘I know the feeling. But next time, do me a favour and hand whatever it is to me in person. Put it right in my hand.’

A nod, still not looking at him. ‘Yes, Guv.’

‘In Grampian CID you only ever stick something in someone’s in-tray if you’re avoiding them, or you’re dumping something unpleasant on them and don’t want caught holding it. Think “Pass the Parcel”, only the prize is an exploding jobbie.’

He climbed out into the afternoon, phone buzzing away silently in his pocket, vibrating against his ribs like an angry wasp. ‘Come on: you can give me the short version on the way.’

The dove-grey sky matched the granite buildings, the breeze tumbleweeding an empty crisp packet and a carrier-bag across the grass. Definitely getting colder. Logan followed the path behind the Old Brewery, taking a shortcut under the concrete Tetris block of the Taylor Building.

Chalmers dug her hands into her pockets. ‘First half of the book isn’t a diary. It’s more like some sort of slavish recreation of-’

‘The Fingermen’s dittay books. It’s a prop from the film, she stole it.’

‘Oh. . You knew.’ A little sag, then Chalmers brought her chin up again. ‘The second half isn’t her handwriting — doesn’t match the slash-fiction we found. It’s still her, but it’s like she’s trying to make her writing look like whoever did the first part.’

Across a car park wedged in between the buildings, the yellow hatching of a box junction flaking away and scarred with potholes.

‘There’s loads of angst-ridden poetry, a bit of moaning about how no one understands her, how she hates the way the medication makes her feel, quite a lot about how she loves Anthony Chung more than oxygen. . Blah, blah, blah. Standard teenager stuff.’

‘She’s eighteen.’

‘There’s nothing in the book about her planning to run away, or where she’d go if she did.’

They marched past Coopers Court, warm for a moment in a beam of sunlight, the concrete lump of a building acting as a windbreak.

‘What about the mysterious Stacey. .? ’

‘Gourdon, Guv. Stacey Gourdon. Still no sign.’

Not good news: if Agnes was prepared to necklace some random tramp, she wasn’t exactly going to bake cookies for the woman screwing her boyfriend. And it wouldn’t be Anthony’s fault, would it? No, it’d all be Stacey Gourdon’s.

Be lucky if they found her in one piece, never mind alive.

‘Get on to the hospitals. See if Ms Gourdon is lying in A amp;E somewhere.’ Logan stepped to one side, allowing a young woman on a skateboard to trundle past, blonde hair down to the small of her back, ragged saggy jeans low enough to show off a pair of red pants and a ‘DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL’ tramp stamp. ‘If you were eighteen, running away from home, what would you take with you? ’

Chalmers’s brow wrinkled. ‘Toilet bag, makeup, hairdryer, Mr Trousermonkey, favourite clothes. .’

‘What about your diary? ’

‘No way I’d leave that behind. My mum was like the Spanish Inquisition on a bad day, nothing was safe.’

‘ Exactly . And we know Agnes’s mother’s. . Hold on, “Mr Trousermonkey”? ’

‘Mum made him from a pair of dad’s old trousers, when I was wee. He’s tartan.’

Up ahead, the ninja chickens were poncing about outside the psychology building, doing their martial arts poses for anyone daft enough to pay any attention.

Logan ignored them, making for the glass doors instead. ‘OK, so forgetting your dad’s appalling dress sense for a minute, you wouldn’t leave your diary. How about a big bag of weed? ’

‘Never smoked it, Guv. I don’t put drugs into my body.’

‘Does Guinness not count then? ’ He held the door open for her. The glass was almost obscured by posters for university am-dram productions of Gilbert and Sullivan and worthy plays, ‘DRUMMER WANTED’ ads, and coming attractions for the film club’s slash-horror season.

‘Maybe Agnes didn’t know she was going to run away? Spur of the moment? ’

Possible. . ‘Then why didn’t she sneak back in and take the important stuff? ’

Up the stairs to the first floor.

‘Maybe she can’t? Maybe Anthony Chung won’t let her? ’

Maybe. .

The receptionist put the phone down, then peered at them with watery eyes, a twitchy smile uncomfortable on her face. ‘Dr Goulding will see you now.’

Logan led the way into an office crammed with books on three walls, four large scrawl-covered whiteboards filling the other. The furniture was a collection of minimalist chrome, glass and black leather. A coffee table sat in the middle of the room, littered with publications: Psychology Review, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, European Journal of Behavior Analysis , and the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology .