Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

Sim went back to the hollowed out Xbox and rummaged about. ‘Nope. Couple of tins of resin, some pills, but nothing old-fashioned like a diary. Kids these days are all electronic.’

Too much to hope for. ‘Right, confiscate the drugs, the laptop, and any phones you can find.’

She clicked the top back on the Xbox. ‘Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky? ’

There was always a first time.

The mortuary was quiet: no shrieking bone-saw, no music playing in the cutting room, no roar of the extractor fans whisking away the stench of death. Just the sound of Mrs Chung breathing — jagged, gasping, as if she was about to pass out — clutching onto her husband’s arm like a life raft. Adrift in a sea of fear and pain.

Logan cleared his throat. ‘Are you sure you want to do this? ’

She nodded, setting a couple of tears free to sparkle against her cheeks in the dimmed lighting.

‘Because you don’t have to. Remember the photos I showed you: he’s been very badly-’

‘No.’ The words came out strangled and choked: ‘I need to see my baby. .’

‘OK.’ Deep breath.

He gave the nod and Rennie pressed the button. The curtains slid open, revealing Anthony Chung’s remains.

They’d done the best they could — covered up everything below his chin with white ruffled fabric — but there was nothing they could do about his face.

Anthony’s mother paled. Her whole body shuddered. Then her eyes bugged and she slapped both hands over her mouth, turned and scrambled out of the room. Rennie hurried after her.

‘He’s. .’ Raymond Chung swallowed, staring down at the ruined features. ‘What did they do to his eyes? ’

‘It’s just the decomposition. Remember, we went over this in the family room? It’s natural: they’re one of the first things to go.’

‘Right. . Decomposition. .’ He blinked a couple of times, sweat glistening on his forehead.

‘Mr Chung? ’

He licked his lips, then his Adam’s apple bobbed, as if he was forcing something down. ‘There’s something sticking out. On his neck.’ Raymond Chung’s finger traced a circle on the glass. ‘There. The tattoo? ’

It was barely visible through the blackened discolouration of the skin, but three jagged spikes poked out from the edge of the sheet drawn up under the body’s chin.

Raymond Chung bit his lip. ‘Can you. . Can you ask them to lower the sheet? ’

Logan pressed the button on the intercom. ‘Can we get the sheet lowered a bit on the left? ’

On the other side of the viewing window, Miss Dalrymple stepped from the shadows, dressed in a clean set of surgical scrubs, and gently pulled the fabric down exposing the ghost of a tribal tattoo, broken up by tiny cuts.

Raymond Chung closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the glass. ‘It’s him. It’s Anthony.’

‘Are you sure, because there’s no tattoo on the photos we’ve-’

‘I know my own son!’ His shoulders quivered. ‘He got the tattoo the day before he went missing. He said it would impress Agnes. .’ Raymond Chung wrapped his arms around himself. ‘Please, just. .’ A shuddering breath. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

Rennie backed into the room, balancing two coffees on the lid from a box of copier paper with one hand, and holding a blue folder in the other, a glossy magazine trapped in his armpit. He placed the makeshift tray on the corner of Logan’s desk and sank into the visitor’s chair. ‘Poor woman nearly turned herself inside out.’ He dipped into his jacket and produced a couple of chunky Kit Kats.

‘Can’t really blame her.’

Rennie unwrapped one of the biscuits, bit into it, took a slurp of his coffee, then slumped back with his magazine: Heat , with yet another photo of Nichole Fyfe and Morgan Mitchell on the cover. The pair of them posing in their leather Fingermen getup with shiny swords and handguns. ‘CLOSER THAN SISTERS ~ NICHOLE AND MORGAN SPILL THE BEANS ON GUYS, GUNS, AND GETTING THE PERFECT MOVIE-STAR BODY!’

Logan creaked the top off his coffee. ‘Comfortable? ’

‘Not bad, thanks.’ He flipped through the pages, little bits of Kit Kat sticking to his chin as he chewed. Then stopped, mouth hanging open. ‘Ooh, Matron !’ Rennie held up the centre spread — Nichole and Morgan in bikinis, posing on Balmedie Beach. ‘See if I wasn’t married. .’

‘She’d still have nothing to do with you.’ Logan fired up his email. No sign of any threatening or weird fan mail from William Hunter’s web person yet.

‘Nah, I’d be a good influence on her.’ He turned the magazine the right way round again and smiled down at the photo. ‘Keep her on the straight and narrow.’

There were half a dozen or so memos from Steel, a reminder from the ACC about not talking to the press, and four warnings from Internal Services about what would happen if they caught whoever it was who kept jamming up the third-floor toilets with packing peanuts.

Delete.

Rennie took another bite of Kit Kat. ‘Guthrie bet me twenty quid she’d knifed someone when she was thirteen. Silly sod.’

Logan looked up from his email. ‘She knifed someone? ’

‘Course she didn’t. Her boyfriend battered the crap out of someone with a cricket bat when he was fifteen, but worst she ever did was a spot of unlawful removal and some shoplifting from WHSmiths. Nicking cars and Bounty Bars. Not exactly Moriarty, is it? ’

Hmph. He went back to deleting things. ‘You’re not supposed to do PNC searches on people to settle bets. Lucky I don’t report you.’

‘Ah. . Well, it wasn’t really a-’ Rennie’s phone rang somewhere deep in his pocket. ‘Saved by the bell.’ He dragged it out, pressed a button, then stuck it to his ear. ‘Yeah. . Uh-huh. . Right. . OK, I’ll tell him.’ Then he hung up and polished off the last of his Kit Kat.

‘Tell me what? ’

Rennie grinned, smears of chocolate sticking to his teeth. ‘They’ve found a hole. .’

Logan peered over the edge of the hole at the dark, damp earth down below. ‘And they didn’t see anyone? ’

Rennie settled his backside against a lichen-covered tombstone and yawned. ‘Groundskeeper says it could’ve happened anytime in the last four weeks. Since the cutbacks, he only comes in once a month.’

The graveyard mouldered away behind a six-foot-high stone wall, circling a crumbling granite church — its walls streaked green with moss beneath the rusting gutters. Brambles ran rampant around the outskirts, tumbling barbed-wire tendrils reaching out to engulf the nearest graves. Silver-haired dandelions nodded their heads, going bald in the breeze. A butterfly bobbing above the long damp grass.

One and a half walls were all that was left of the church, a corner of thick granite blocks, the mortar crumbling away. Give it another hundred years and there’d be nothing left but a pile of rubble overgrown with weeds.

The hole was about three feet long, and four deep, surrounded by docken spears and violent-fuchsia rosebay willowherb. Soil made a sprawling heap along one side.

‘And there was definitely a body in here? ’

‘Difficult to tell, apparently. When the church burned down in fifty-two it took most of the local records with it. Half the headstones in this section are knackered or missing.’

Logan crouched down; a cascade of dirt spiralled down into the earth. The smell of mouldy bread greeted him. ‘Looks like we’ve got spade-marks on the hole. Should be able to match them if we can find the shovel.’

Another yawn. ‘You think it’s really her? Agnes Garfield? ’

‘Mentally unstable woman stops taking her medication, kills abusive boyfriend.’