Shatter the Bones (26 page)

‘You’re
married
, remember?’

The inspector’s mouth became a hard thin line. ‘Since when is it any of your bloody business what—’

‘You
really
need me to answer that?’

Pink flushed up her cheeks. Then she looked away. ‘I’m just having a bit of fun, OK? It’s no’ like I’m going to shag her or anything.’ Steel stuck both hands against her forehead, pulling the wrinkles away. Sighed. ‘Susan says she’s
still
no’ ready. Been nearly a year. A
year
, and she’s still won’t… I’m only fucking human, Laz.’

‘Just… Just don’t do something you’re going to regret.’

‘Aye.’ She patted him on the arm. ‘Thanks.’

Logan stepped out into the bustle of Union Street: the rumble of buses, the wailing screech of seagulls, that idiot with the ‘JESUS!’ sign singing some sort of hymn in a broken falsetto. The streets were still wet from the last downpour, shining in the evening light.

He sidestepped a teenager with a cigarette dangling out the corner of her mouth, a mobile phone clamped to her ear, and a wee kid strapped into a buggy.

‘Yeah… Yeah, I know, but he’s a total wanker, so what can you do?’ Click-clacking on too-high heels.

Logan glanced back through the Athenaeum’s windows, and there was DI Steel, back at the bar, with her arm around the buxom party girl.

Christ’s sake…

You know what: he wasn’t her mother. If she wanted to screw everything up, she was on her own.

‘You’re a big baby, there’s nothing to see.’ Samantha settled back on the couch.

‘You sure?’ Logan peered at his right arm… ‘There, that’s a bruise.’

‘That’s dirt.’ She clapped her hands, once. ‘Come on then, let’s see the other one.’

He slipped the shirt all the way off and turned around. The little square of wadding was frayed, the surgical sticky tape peeling and dirty around the edges. ‘Should it not stay—’

‘Can’t believe you’re still wearing that.’ She bounced off the couch, grabbed the wadding and tore it off.

A sudden sting of ripped out hair. ‘Ow!’

‘There.’ She nodded. ‘Looks good – told you the Reverend was an artist. You happy with it?’

‘Steel says they’re investigating the IB, in case any of you lot kidnapped Alison and Jenny?’

‘It suits you. Very minimalist.’

‘Can’t see it myself. Criminal masterminds? Half your team couldn’t tie their shoelaces without adult supervision.’

‘Let it breathe a bit: the redness will go down quicker. And for your
information
, we could run rings round you CID carpet-shaggers.’

He sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘Did you know Alison McGregor was a horror when she was young?’

‘Well …
duh
. Everyone knows. Then she met Doddy, and he swept her off her feet and she got pregnant, and vowed to put her life back on track for her husband and her little girl. Très romantic.’

‘Found a big pile of love letters when we searched her house on Friday.’ Logan picked at a tuft of thread, sticking up from one of the sofa’s seams. ‘Does it bother you?’

‘What?’

‘That I’ve … well, I’ve never written
you
any?’

‘Oh dear Jesus, no. I read the bloody things when Bruce brought them back to the lab last week.’

‘You
read
them?’

‘Who do you think put them back in the bottom drawer? Someone had to check her mail for threats, or secret lovers.’ She clasped her hands to her chest. ‘“Oh how the embers of my heart burn with the heat of a
million suns
!” Pffff… “Million suns.” I’d have more respect for the man if he’d said he burned with the heat of a summer’s day in Banchory. Or a bag of chips.’ Samantha tilted her head on one side, and stared at him. ‘If you
ever
write something like that at me, I’m going to kick you in the nuts and leave. Understand?’

‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning—’

‘Anyway,’ she pointed at his arm, ‘that means a hell of a lot more to me than some cheesy moon-in-June bollocks.’

She unfastened the thick leather belt from her jeans, popped the top button, unzipped the zip, then pulled her T-shirt up. ‘So…’ There was a little patch of wadding, not much bigger than a beer mat, stuck to her stomach, just beside her bellybutton. She peeled the sticky tape off. ‘What do you think?’

It was the number twenty-three, reversed out of a circle made up of squiggles. The ink was black, the skin slightly swollen, angry red fading to pasty-Scottish-white. It sat not far from the topmost spines of the tribal spider thing that reached all the way down to her knee; equidistant from a teddy bear with an axe in its chest, and a sort of bramble-twined rose.

‘Twenty-three?’

‘Yup. Call it a reply to the love note on your arm. See,’ she pointed at the squiggles, ‘now I’ve got twenty-three little scars. Just like you.’

Logan put a hand against his own stomach. Squinched up one side of his face. ‘Thanks … I think.’

She pulled her T-shirt back down again. ‘You don’t like it.’

‘No, it’s not that… I…’ He frowned. ‘I just … can’t decide if it’s a really sweet gesture, or a little creepy.’

Samantha grinned. ‘Can’t a girl be both?’

‘Dunno, she’s no’ looking that good.’

‘Course she’s not – she’s got a fever, you idiot.’

Hot. Far too hot. Jenny forces her eyes open. Cold. And Hot. And the light stabs her head like a sharpened pencil. The room starts to twirl. Dirty ceiling, scribbled-on walls, a bare light bulb that swims across a dirty sky…

So thirsty.

‘Well? What the hell are we supposed to do?’

The monsters are in the corner, all crinkly and white. Like ghosts made of paper.

‘So, do we call a doctor, or what?’

Her lips crack and burn. ‘Mummy…’

‘Don’t be a dick, Tom.’

‘Who’re you calling a dick,
Sylvester
?’

‘Mummy…?’ Her head thumps and whumps.

‘It’s OK, darling, Mummy’s here. Shhh…’

A cool hand strokes Jenny’s forehead. ‘Thirsty.’

‘Use your heads.’ This monster isn’t like the other ones. He has pointy horns and a red swishy tail. And when he steps on the floorboards little circles of fire sprout into life. ‘How the fuck are we supposed to explain this to a doctor? “Oh, you know those two off the telly who’ve been kidnapped? Well, guess what we found…”’

‘Where’s bloody Colin when you need him?’

Mummy raises her voice. ‘She needs water.’

The monsters stop arguing. ‘Yeah, right. Sylvester, get her a bottle or something…’

‘He’s not answering his phone. Why isn’t he answering his bloody phone? I said he was fucking unreliable, didn’t I, David? Didn’t I say he was a big fat fucking liability?’

‘Here, it’s pretty cold. You maybe shouldn’t let her drink it all at once, or she’ll puke.’

Mummy’s face ripples into view. Her eyes are pink, so is her nose. She sniffs, wipes a drip away with the back of her hand. ‘Here, sweetie, try and take little sips…’

The hard plastic shape presses against Jenny’s lips and she gulps. Cold, wet, soothing – spreading out inside her. A frozen octopus reaching all the way from her elbows to her knees.

‘We got to do something, what if she dies?’

‘She’s not going to fucking die.’ DAVID leaves a trail of fiery feet across the floor. ‘Here: the useless tosser’s left his medical bag. She just needs more antibiotics or something.’

The water goes away. Jenny reaches for it, but her hands wobble and flap. Two balloons filled with sausages…

‘Shhh… It’ll be OK, sweetie, it’ll be OK. Mummy promises.’

‘Found some Fluc… Fluc-lox-acillin,’ sounding it out, ‘that’s right, isn’t it?’

‘How much do we give her?’

‘I dunno. Can you overdose on antibiotics?’

‘God’s sake, Tom.’ DAVID sighs, his shoulders hunching. ‘You’ve got an iPhone, Google it.’

‘Right… OK. Yeah. Here we go – got it. Flucloxacillin… How much does she weigh?’

‘The fuck does that matter?’

‘Dose depends on how much she weights: thirty milligrams per kilo. She’s about, what – nineteen, twenty kilos?’ He fiddles with a needle and a little glass bottle, then squirts a little arc into the air, just like on the television. ‘Right … who’s going to do it?’

SYLVESTER backs away. ‘Nah, that’s Colin’s job.’

‘Yeah, but Colin’s no’ here, is he?’

‘Give me the bloody thing.’ DAVID holds out hand. ‘Does it go into a vein or muscle?’

‘Erm…’ He looks at the shiny flat thing again. ‘Either.’ Mummy’s voice wobbles. ‘Please don’t hurt her…’

‘You want another fucking lesson?’

She flinches back. ‘Didn’t think so. Hold the kid’s arm still.’

Jenny watches the shiny needle. It glints and sparkles in the sunshine. Out on the beach. A picnic with egg sandwiches, sausage rolls and Daddy. He lifts her up onto his shoulders and charges into the sea, laughing. Mummy waves from the sand.

The scratchy bee stings.

The bear crinkled its top lip. ‘What? Do I look like your fuckin’ mother?’ Its face was half fur, half scar tissue, the skin twisted into a permanent sneer.

Logan sneaked a look at the fridge. ‘I don’t know where it is.’

A smile. Not a
nice
smile, an I’m-going-to-bite-your-fucking-face-off smile… ‘You better hope that’s—’

The bear’s tummy started singing. ‘Shite…’

‘Jenny’s toe has to go back in the fridge.’ Logan blinked. Darkness. Blink. The pale green glow of the alarm-clock-radio turned the bedroom monochrome. The room had a funky, spice-garlic-and-bleach post-coital smell, socks and pants thrown about the place like a Roman orgy.

‘Urgh…’ Did the Romans wear pants under their togas?

His mobile was ringing.

‘Bloody…’ It took two goes to grab the thing.

Samantha grumbled and shifted in her sleep, mouth open just enough to expose the tip of her tongue and her top teeth. A snort. Smack, smack. Mumble.

Logan stabbed the button. ‘
What
?’

Yawn. He ground his right fist into his eye socket.

Silence.

Typical – that’s what he got for handing out his CID business card to every smack-head junkie tosspot in the north-east of Scotland.

‘I’m not running a sex line for mimes here. You either say something, or I’m hanging up in: five, four, three, two—’

‘Fuckin’ gave you the chance…’

Logan held the phone out and squinted at the little screen. ‘U
NKNOWN
N
UMBER
’.

‘Who is this?’

‘Consequences… You know? Everything has fuckin’ conse quences.’

‘Yeah, very funny. Now who the hell is…’ He frowned. ‘Shuggie Webster. It’s
you
, isn’t it? Next time I—’

The line went dead.

‘Please…’ Trisha Brown slumps back against the radiator. ‘Please…’

Just that little movement sends sharp flashes of pain racing up her left leg, like some fucker’s twisting screws into the broken bone.

Don’t look at it.

But it’s like a car crash, you know? Gotta look. Gotta see the blood and that.

Oh Jesus… The bit between her knee and her ankle is one huge fuck-off bruise, a lump, big as a scotch egg, sticking out the side. She wants to reach out and touch it, or pick at the scabbed bite marks on her ghost-white thighs. But she can’t, not with both hands cuffed above her head. Naked and shackled, on display like meat in a butcher’s shop.

She looks away.

It’s a basement, or a garage, something like that. Boiler for the central heating, big chest freezer. Washing machine. Shelves with tins and shit on them. No windows, just that fucking buzzing strip-light that he never turns off.

Her whole body
aches
and
stings
and
burns
. Cold and hot at the same time. Something deep inside her, torn and bleeding. Dirty.

She blinks back a tear. All that time down Shore Lane, making a bit of cash to keep herself in gear – and her little boy in them wee frozen pizzas he likes so much – and she never felt dirty before. Not like this.

How’s Ricky supposed to manage now? Stuck with his bloody smack-head grandmother. Trisha thumps her head back against the radiator. The cool metal sounds like a muffled bell or something. She does it again. Harder. Grits her teeth. Slamming her head into the thing – at least if she knocks herself out it won’t hurt any more.

It doesn’t work.

‘Maybe I should go off on the sick?’ DS Doreen Taylor stared into her coffee, spreading out the red-and-silver foil wrapper from her Tunnock’s Teacake on the canteen table, smoothing it to a shine with the back of her finger.

‘Ah…’ Bob nodded. ‘Women’s problems, eh?’

She didn’t look up. ‘
No
. I just don’t know if I can take another day with that sanctimonious git-bag Superintendent Green.’ She sat up straight. ‘There, I said it.’

Logan smiled. ‘“Git-bag”?’

‘Well, he is.’ The foil square was perfectly mirror smooth. She scrumpled it up into ball. ‘You know that Finnie and Bain are worried SOCA are going to take over the McGregor investigation?’

Bob nodded. ‘They’ll be all over us like Gary Glitter in an orphanage.’

‘Don’t be disgusting.’ She dropped the foil ball in his empty mug. ‘And they’ve no intention of taking over. I heard Green talking on his mobile last night – they won’t touch this case with a bargepole. We’ve got nothing to go on: no leads, no witnesses, no forensics. If they move in they’ll be just as stuck as we are.’

‘Ah…’ Logan stuck his mug back on the table. Winced slightly. His right arm ached – one huge mess of blue and purple and green where Shuggie Webster had pounded his fist into it. ‘So when the deadline comes round on Thursday morning, and we’ve got no choice but to hand over the ransom money, they don’t want to be the ones in charge.’

Doreen slumped over her coffee. ‘Exactly: they point the finger at us for messing everything up, we get the blame, and they take over as soon as we get Alison and Jenny back.’

‘Dirty bastards.’ Bob stabbed the table with a finger. ‘We do all the sodding about, and they swoop in and interview the only witnesses we’re likely to get.’ He raised one cheek off his seat, squinted an eye shut, then sighed. ‘Right, I’m off.’