Stuart MacBride - Close to the Bone

‘Unless it was sheep? ’

She unhooked the pepper-spray from her utility belt and handed it over. Then snapped out her extendable baton. ‘You want the front or the back? ’

Thistles and nettles bound together around the side of the property. All spiky and stingy. Logan fiddled with the pepper-spray. ‘Think I’ll. . take the front.’

Sim sagged slightly. ‘Poop.’ Then she straightened up and waded her way through the undergrowth, elbows up at shoulder height, keeping her hands out of the danger zone.

Grass and broken dandelions squeaked under his shoes as he picked his way to the front door, hauling on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.

A scrunching crash sounded from the other side of the house, followed by, ‘Oh. . pooping, bum-pooping poop!’

Logan peered in through the front window. The glass was thick with dirt, but there was enough light to see a mildew-speckled front room, the wallpaper peeling away in one corner and stained with damp. No furniture, just marks in the swirly seventies-style carpet where it used to be. The other front window was pretty much the same.

He tried the key in the lock. Opened the door. And stepped into a dank corridor that smelled like mouldy bread.

The house was in a much worse state than the first one they’d tried — a bungalow with a DIY jungle gym out the front. No wonder they’d had trouble selling it.

A staircase led almost straight up, ladder-style to a small landing, but down here there was a bathroom clarted in rust and mould, the two empty front rooms, and a tiny kitchen. Half the units were missing their doors, the other half had them hanging off. Big black stains spread across the ceiling.

Talk about a fixer-upper.

There was another crunch, then more ridiculous pseudo-swearing, and finally Sim’s face appeared at the kitchen window, cheeks flushed, mouth set into a hard line, a strand of sticky willy clinging to the brim of her bowler like a length of furry string.

Logan hauled open the back door and let her in.

She was covered in bits of greenery, sticky geordies all up her trousers, bits of bracken, green stains on her knees and elbows, scarlet scratches on the back of her hands and one cheek. She scowled at him. ‘Not one word.’

The corners of his mouth twitched, but he got it under control. ‘I’ve done downstairs. No sign of anyone.’

Back to the front hall.

The stairs creaked as they climbed, the balustrade wobbling every time it was touched. There was no way Anthony Chung and Agnes Garfield would have holed up here. Not with so many other, cleaner, less. . diseasy properties to choose from.

At the top of the stairs was a small landing with a row of knee-high cupboards built into the angle of the roof, just visible in the gloom of a filthy Velux window. Two doors led off into what had to be attic bedrooms.

Sim stopped on the top step. ‘Can you smell something? ’

Logan stood where he was, sniffing. Whatever it was, it was sweet: floral. Not heavy enough to be cloying, but completely out of place in a tiny house that was rotting away inside.

He put one gloved hand on the doorknob to the first bedroom, turned, and let it swing open. Inside, a single bed sat against the back wall, the plaster on the coombed ceilings disintegrating, showing the lathe beneath.

Door number two. . The knob turned, but the door stuck. He pushed harder and a ripping noise — like two bits of Velcro being separated — came from around the door frame. Duct tape.

And then the smell fell out of the room on top of them, curdling its way into Logan’s throat and lungs, filling his nose with the stench of spoiled meat. His throat constricted, stomach lurching. ‘Oh Jesus . .’

The room was every bit as tiny as the first, but instead of the single bed, there was a Ring Knot marked out on the floorboards in black wax. The body was male, its stomach and chest bloated with gas, naked skin peppered with green and orange mould — covered in tiny purple slits, all the hair shaved off. Just like Anthony Chung.

Blood made dark pools on the floorboards, disappearing through the cracks. . That must be what made the dark stains on the kitchen ceiling downstairs.

Sim slapped a hand over her mouth and nose. ‘Jeepers!’

Logan hauled the door closed again. Took his phone out with trembling fingers. And called it in.

Insch’s dark baritone growled out of the phone. ‘ What exactly are you playing at? ’

Logan perched on the end of the garden wall, one hand shielding his eyes from the pale golden sun. ‘I’m kind of in the middle of something, so. .? ’

The Manky Mystery Machine sat on the overgrown gravel drive, its back doors hanging open while white-suited SEB techs humped boxes into the house. A cordon of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape snaked in the breeze. Two patrol cars blocked the rutted track up to the property, Logan’s rusty old Fiat parked behind them in the gateway to a field of luminous-yellow oilseed rape.

‘ Do you have any idea how much money it costs to keep a production like this running? Because- ’

‘Want to cut to the chase? ’

A pause. ‘ You arrested Morgan Mitchell .’

Logan stared up at the slate-coloured clouds. Sighed. ‘I did not arrest her. She assaulted someone.’

‘ Let her out. ’

‘She assaulted someone.’

‘ Logan, it. . ’ He took a deep breath. ‘ What if I get the other party to drop the charges? ’

‘Don’t think your star will be too happy with that — she did it on purpose so she could spend a night in the cells. I believe the term you used was, “Method-acting nutjobs”? ’

‘ I’m haemorrhaging money here, Logan. I can’t afford to have one of my main actresses banged up in Craiginches for a month! ’

PC Sim clambered over the barbed-wire fence just beyond the end of the beech hedge, waved at him, then picked her way past the parked patrol cars.

‘Ms Mitchell’s up in front of the Sheriff tomorrow. I’ll see if I can get you an early morning slot.’

‘ I’m serious, this is- ’

‘It’s the best I can do. She assaulted someone, she got arrested. I’m not bypassing the whole criminal justice system as a favour for you or anyone else.’

Silence.

Sim stopped right in front of him, then picked the little round lumps of stickie geordies from her trouser legs.

‘ I didn’t mean you should break the law. ’

‘I’ve got to go.’ Logan hung up and stuck the phone away. ‘Well? ’

Sim sighed. ‘You should see their house, it’s huge . Great big kitchen and a built-in machine for making coffee and everything. I had a latte.’

Logan pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Do we have to have “the talk”? ’

‘Husband’s in London on business, but I spoke to the wife and the daughter. Didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything. The steading faces away from the house, and I checked the views from all the windows — you could hold an orgy in the front garden here and no one would know. As long as you kept the noise down. . Ah.’

Logan opened his eyes again. ‘What? ’

Sim pointed down the track, where a Porsche Cayenne, a Mercedes, and a dented pool car lumped and bumped their way through the potholes. ‘Cavalry’s here.’

Isobel peeled back her white SOC suit’s hood. Her fringe stuck to her shiny forehead, cheeks glowing bright pink as she snapped off her gloves and puffed out a long breath. ‘I’d estimate two, three days at most. In this heat it’s difficult to be sure, but trapped up there with the door and window taped shut. .’ She lowered herself onto the bonnet of the patrol car, rubbing at her pregnant bulge. ‘Pfff. . MO appears identical to the Anthony Chung case.’