Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

‘Hello? ’

‘ Logan, I hear it went well. Did you sort everything out with the McLeods? ’

‘Simon says he wants to make peace, but you know what will happen if he gets his hands on whoever’s running the rival operation.’

‘ They’re primitive people, Logan. They believe in Old Testament vengeance. But Reuben tells me you know who’s stealing the McLeods’ cannabis? ’

‘I know who was stealing it. He’s dead.’

Reuben stuck his foot down and the Transit lumbered across the lights on Westburn Drive. ‘Lucky. Means Creepy can’t get hold of him.’

‘He was tortured to death by his girlfriend.’

‘ Really? Now that is fascinating. And you’re sure it was his girlfriend? ’

The lumpy concrete bulk of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary loomed above the surrounding buildings.

‘Who else would it be? ’

‘ Ask Reuben .’ A pause. ‘ Now, would you do me a favour and put me on speakerphone? ’

Logan frowned at the mobile’s shiny interface, then pressed the bit on the screen that looked like a loudhailer.

Wee Hamish’s voice crackled out of the speaker, only just audible over the Transit’s diesel drone. ‘ You know, it does my old heart proud to see the pair of you working together. Logan and Reuben: a team, looking after my city. It gives me a lot of comfort to know it’ll be in good hands when I’m gone. Thank you both .’ Then Wee Hamish hung up.

Logan passed the phone back. ‘He said to ask you who else would’ve tortured Anthony Chung to death.’

‘Did he now. .’ Reuben took them right onto Westburn Road — next stop Accident and Emergency.

‘What happened to making Wee Hamish proud? ’

A grunt. ‘Think you’re getting off that lightly? You and me: we’re not finished by a long shot.’

Brilliant. So much for bonding over a job well done. Well, half done. Kind of.

Maybe Samantha was right? Maybe the only way Reuben was ever going to go away and leave him alone was at the bottom of a shallow grave? Or banged up for a twenty stint in Barlinnie? Slightly more difficult to arrange, but at least no one would have to die. Who hadn’t died already. .

‘Who tortured Anthony Chung? ’

A smile twisted its way through Reuben’s scars. ‘Word is, the new kids on the block got themselves an enforcer who’s a card-carrying psycho. Gets off on maximum pain.’

‘You’re saying he was done by his own enforcer? What kind of-’

‘Think it’d be the first time one partner got greedy and the other one didn’t like it? ’

Fair point. But there was no way Agnes Garfield didn’t kill Anthony Chung. Not with the magic circle on the floor, and the pricking knife she used on him, and the one she stabbed Dildo with. .

It had to be her.

Didn’t it?

Rowan huddles in the undergrowth on the wrong side of a chainlink fence. Don’t breathe. Don’t move.

The Raptor is gone, pootling away in his little Peugeot, his happy grandchildren in the back eating prawn cocktail crisps.

Why? Why would a Raptor punish witches like that? And not even ask any questions, just beat and pound away to an old song from the sixties. He hammered the Witch’s knees until they looked like bone-flecked mince, then had a sausage in a bun and a cup of tea, laughing with Betty and chatting about going to the Algarve for the school holidays.

And all the while, the Witch lies twitching on the ground behind the Burger and Baps van, bleeding into the dirt.

He barely moves when the ambulance arrives. Not even when the paramedics stand over him in their green jumpsuits, staring and swearing at the mess where his knees should be.

Betty stands to one side, sipping on a mug of something, lying to a police officer. No, she didn’t see anything. No, the man didn’t order anything from her. The first time she knew anything was wrong was when she went to check the gas bottles, and found him lying there. She’s round and small, too small for that deep rumbling voice, malevolent pulses of green and black oozing out of her like sound waves.

Rowan chews the skin around her left pinkie until the salty-copper tang of blood sparks at the end of her tongue.

It was her job to find and save the Witch, and instead he’s forever out of her reach. His soul is forfeit.

She’s failed.

The Transit van growled away, trailing a cloud of diesel exhaust behind it. Logan hauled Dan Fisher off the pavement and into one of the low-tech porters’ chairs reserved for hospital use. Just an oversized dining-room chair with four slightly wonky wheels bolted onto the legs.

Fisher moaned behind the gag, beneath the stained pillowcase.

Logan removed them both.

Underneath, Fisher’s face was pale and greasy. Shock.

A gentle slap on the cheek made him blink, his voice wet and creaky. ‘Please, I don’t know. .’

‘You’re at A amp;E. Dan? Dan, can you hear me? ’

The automatic doors into the hospital creaked open, and one of the two uniforms stationed at ARI stuck his head out. ‘Guv? That you? You OK? ’

‘I don’t know anything. .’

Logan hunkered down beside the chair. ‘Where is he, Dan? Anthony Chung’s partner? Where do they keep the stuff? Where do you pick it up from? ’

Fisher blinked at him, both pupils contracted to tiny pinholes in the watery blue iris. ‘It hurts. .’

‘I know it does, Dan, but I need you to tell me how to find whoever’s running Anthony Chung’s operation.’

‘I don’t-’

Logan grabbed him by the collar. ‘I saved your life, you little prick! If it wasn’t for me, you’d be working your way through a pig’s digestive system right now. So tell me where I can find him!’

‘Guv? ’ The uniform put a hand on Logan’s shoulder. ‘Is everything OK? ’

Fisher rocked his head to the side, until he was staring at the PC. ‘I don’t know, I. . I just pick the stuff up when I get a text message. Different place every time.’

Logan pulled his face back around. ‘But the same mobile number? ’ They could do a GSM trace, find out-

‘No: codeword. “Moderator”. . Same codeword, different mobile.’

So much for that.

Logan stood. ‘Better get him inside.’

‘Yes, Guv.’ The uniform grabbed the chair’s handles and wrestled the wheelie-chair through the automatic doors and into A amp;E.

The doors hissed shut again, leaving Logan’s reflection staring back at him from the glass. Would’ve been nice to head back to FHQ with enough information to break a drug ring. . It might have distracted them from the complete cock-up at Ma Stewart’s that morning.

Logan peered through the window to the intensive therapy unit. Dildo lay on a hospital bed, flat on his back, face hidden behind an oxygen mask plumbed into the wall.

A uniformed PC sat in a plastic chair outside the ward, head buried in a thick textbook, lips moving as he frowned his way down the page. Overhead lighting sparkled back from a fist-sized bald patch.

Logan stopped in front of him. ‘Anything? ’

‘I can’t understand a bloody word of this.’ He held the book up: Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason . Nurse Claire strikes again. ‘Apparently I can’t prove the chair I’m sitting on exists, because I only think it exists because my bum tells me it does and I can’t empirically trust my bum to tell the truth. .’

‘That what it says? ’

‘Far as I can tell, one of the great philosophical minds of the eighteenth century thinks my arse is a liar.’

‘I wouldn’t stand for that, if I were you.’

A short doctor with dark-purple bags under her eyes and a distinct list to the left, limped out of the ITU, let the door swing shut behind her, then leaned back and rested her head against it. Sighed at the ceiling tiles.