The Missing and the Dead (48 page)

‘I only went in for teabags.’ Wishart’s shoulders slumped. ‘Can I at least eat my carryout?’

‘Sorry.’ Logan clicked the plastic tops back on the containers. ‘But I’ll do you a deal. You show me everything you’ve squirrelled away here, tell us what you did with the rest of it, and I’ll make sure the Sheriff knows you cooperated.’

Tufty lowered the last cardboard box into the Big Car. A brass sextant poked out of the top, nestled amongst old gramophone records and rolled-up maps. He stepped back and closed the boot. ‘That’s the lot.’

‘Good.’

Tony Wishart was squeezed into the back seat with his bag of frozen sweetcorn, and a stack of boxes full of historical memorabilia. Paintings, bowls, vases, a medical bag from the Crimean War, pens, pipes, photographs, books … A full-sized porcelain bust of some long-dead man in a naval uniform sat on the passenger seat, held in place by a set of fluorescent-yellow limb restraints.

‘Sure you’re OK to walk, Sarge?’

‘It’s two minutes up the road. Go.’

Tufty climbed in behind the wheel.

Logan stood on the pavement as the Big Car pulled away. OK, so Tony Wishart wasn’t exactly Hannibal Lecter meets Professor Moriarty, but at least the good people of Pennan, and other points north, would get their antique knick-knacks back.

King Kong clunked the front door shut and locked it. Pocketed the key. ‘That’ll put a dent in the unsolved burglaries.’

‘How’s the leg?’

He glanced down at the hole in his trousers, where a scabby knee showed through. ‘My own silly fault for rugby-tackling him.’ King Kong stepped to the kerb. ‘You filling in for Davey Muir again?’

‘For my sins.’ Logan picked up the carrier bag from behind the garden gate, then they set off up the street, hands behind their backs, feet swinging out with metronome regularity. Not walking: proceeding.

They’d barely made it halfway up the street before Logan stopped. Popped the carrier bag on a garden wall, and dug out the printouts again.

‘Sarge?’

He handed them to King Kong. ‘What am I not seeing?’

Frown. Scowl. Peer. ‘No idea. Missing person, maybe? Stolen car? You recognize any of the registrations?’

‘No.’ He stuffed them back in his pocket and picked up the bag again. ‘But there’s something.’

Logan paced away from the kitchen area, then back again, phone pressed hard against his ear. ‘What do you mean, “he’s not there”?’

‘Went home for the night.’

The Fraserburgh station canteen was deserted except for Logan, the TV – on mute – and the howl of the microwave.

Useless, half-arsed, lazy, lying little tosser.

‘He was supposed to get me DNA results for close of play!’

‘What can I say? He went home for the night. His shift starts at nine tomorrow morning, so feel free to call up and shout at him then. Me? I’ve got work to do.’

Logan jabbed his finger at the disconnect button. Stood and glowered at the TV.

Why could no one do their bloody job?

Just as well he hadn’t told Helen about chasing up the lab results. Wouldn’t exactly have showered himself in glory there.

The microwave’s drone climaxed with a ping and Logan dug the plastic containers out with scorched fingertips. ‘Ooh, hot, hot, hot …’ He clunked them all onto one plate, grabbed a fork and hurried back to the canteen table.

‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

Couldn’t even get five minutes to himself.

He sank into his seat. ‘Bang away.’

‘You’ve got a lookout request on the go for a Charles “Craggie” Anderson. He’s been spotted buying pile cream from a chemist’s in Peterhead.’

‘That’s a good trick – they found his body on Saturday morning, up in Orkney. So unless it’s a ghost, it’s
probably
someone else.’ Logan creaked the tops off the containers, letting out a waft of oriental steam. ‘Can you cancel the lookout request?’

‘Will do.’

He stuck the Airwave handset back on the table.

Licked his lips.

The spare ribs were almost too hot to touch – silky and spicy and meaty and … God’s sake.

‘Sarge.’ Tufty settled into the seat opposite. ‘Ooh, prawn crackers!’ He helped himself.

Logan sooked the sauce from his fingers and dropped the naked bone onto the plate. ‘Should you not be off home? Shift ended twenty minutes ago.’

Crunch, crunch, crunch. ‘Wanted to make sure you got the intel. Martyn Baker’s talked to his solicitor, and now he’s sitting in Interview Two, waiting to no-comment everything.’ Little flecks of prawn-cracker dandruff drifted their way down Tufty’s black T-shirt. ‘You want me to sit in on the interview? There’s never anything on the telly, Sunday nights.’ Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Another bone got denuded and dumped. ‘OK, but only because I’m not sending you home with the Big Car.’ He sooked his fingers clean again, and produced the printouts. Tossed them across the table to Tufty. ‘You recognize anyone or anything there?’

He helped himself to another prawn cracker. Crunched his way through a frown. ‘Is it this?’ He pointed at a blue Kia, driving up Mid Street towards the Kenyan Bar. ‘Number plate’s a bit fuzzy, but it could be the one got nicked from Peterhead? Was on the Monday briefing slides.’

‘You remember a number plate from Monday?’

Crunch, crunch, crunch. ‘It’s easy: you make them into words. This one looks a bit like, “Moontihum”. Want me to run it through the system?’

‘Thanks.’

Tufty scribbled the Kia’s registration, make, and colour down in his notebook. Then paused. Looked up, his eyebrows knitted together as if something dramatic had suddenly occurred to him. ‘Sarge?’

‘What?’

‘Can I have a rib?’

A little burp worked its way up Logan’s throat, bringing with it the taste of kung po king prawns with special fried noodles and honey chilli ribs.

Martyn Baker fidgeted on the other side of the interview table. ‘No comment.’

‘I only asked you how you’d describe your voice, Martyn. I’m not trying to trip you up.’

‘No comment.’

Logan gave Tufty the nod.

He placed the small baggie of weed on the table with a flourish. ‘I am now showing Mr Baker the container of cannabis weed I discovered on his person when I searched him this afternoon.’

Logan gave it a poke. ‘Not a huge amount, is it, Martyn? Thought a big-time dealer from down south would have more on him.’

‘No comment.’ It looked as if he’d been at his spots in the cell. Two were now all swollen and red, one an empty crater plugged by a dark-red scab.

‘Are you planning on expanding into all of Aberdeenshire, or is it just the bit around Banff?’

‘No comment.’ He scowled out from beneath his heavy eyebrows. ‘And I’m not expanding nothing nowhere. I’m up on holiday with me bab and me kid. Three of us been here for weeks.’

‘How do you know Colin “Klingon” Spinney and Kevin “Gerbil” McEwan?’

‘No comment.’

‘How do you know Francis “Frankie” Ferris?’

‘No comment.’

‘So was this wee bag a sample or something? Are you drumming up business?’

‘No comment.’ His fingers wouldn’t sit still, they skittered back and forth along the edge of the scarred tabletop.

‘All right.’ Logan dug into the folder and came out with a little cardboard box. The form printed on it was filled out in blue biro – where the phone had been seized, by whom, where, and when. Maggie had managed to spell his last name wrong again. He opened the box, took out the big Samsung. ‘This is your phone. Remember it? We confiscated it because you were using it while driving.’

Baker licked his lips. Kept his eyes on his twitchy fingers. ‘No comment.’

‘When we send it down to get analysed, what do you think we’re going to find? Lots of little secrets and deals, I’m betting. Lots of …’

Baker’s head drooped, then his shoulders quivered. Once. Twice. Three times. Then a sob burst free. Followed by a moan. Little drops of water exploded between his trembling fingers.

Bit extreme.

Then again, maybe he’d finally realized that he was going down for attempted murder.

Logan tapped on the table. ‘Something you want to tell us, Martyn? We know it all anyway, might as well put your side of the story.’

Martyn Baker seemed to get three sizes smaller, his back hunched, shoulders up around his scarlet ears, hands curled against his chest. ‘Wasn’t meant to happen. Was only meant to be a warning …’

‘Kind of heavy-handed for a warning, wasn’t it?’ Battering someone with a baseball bat didn’t exactly reek of subtlety.

‘Meant to be a
warning
. Stay the hell off our turf. I didn’t want it to … It was an accident.’

An accident. With a baseball bat?

‘Are you kidding? How do you accidentally—’

‘Bullet must’ve, I don’t know, bounced off something. I wasn’t aiming for her, I swear.’ He looked up with bloodshot eyes. ‘On my little girl’s
life
, it was an accident.’

Bullet? OK, not exactly what was expected.

Tufty opened his mouth to say something, so Logan kicked him under the table.

‘Ow!’

A warning finger.

Tufty shut his mouth again.

Baker’s head fell. ‘I didn’t mean to shoot her. Had to go lie low for a bit, far, far away from civilization and that.’ His shoulders rose and fell. ‘Told Elsie to chuck some stuff in a bag while I fetched Mandy from her nan’s. We piled in the car and just drove. Got the hell out of it.’ A sniff. ‘Then the telly said she was an undercover cop.’

Logan let out a long, slow breath. ‘You shot the undercover officer in Liverpool, and you ran away to Banff to hide.’

‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t. It was an
accident
.’

Holy mother of fish. ‘Where’s the gun?’

‘Was meant to be a couple of shots in the air, you know, to scare them.’

‘Martyn, what did you do with the gun? We—’

A knock on the interview-room door.

Oh for …

Logan’s head dipped. Whoever was out there, they couldn’t have timed it worse if they’d tried. He curled his hand into a fist and pressed it against his leg. Kept his voice calm. ‘Constable Quirrel: go see who it is.’

Tufty scraped his chair back and scurried off to the door. A clunk. Some murmuring. Then he was back, lips an inch from Logan’s ear, voice low. ‘Sarge, it’s a DCI McInnes and he looks like someone’s taped his bits to an angry Rottweiler.’

Logan kept his eyes on Martyn Baker. ‘Tell him I’m busy.’

‘Yeah … He’s kinda insistent. And really,
really
angry.’

‘Fine. Interview is suspended at eighteen-hundred. Sergeant McRae leaving the room.’ He stood. Pushed a blank notepad across the table. ‘Maybe you’d like to write it down, Martyn. Get it all on paper. Might make you feel better.’ Logan stepped out into the corridor, closed the interview-room door behind him.

McInnes took up as much space as possible, arms raised, hands curled into claws. The creases either side of his mouth looked as if they’d been carved with a chainsaw, his features dark and flushed, teeth bared in a vicious smile. But his voice was remarkably calm. ‘What, exactly, do you think you’re doing, Sergeant?’

‘I’m interviewing my suspect, so—’

‘Did I, or did I not, tell you to stay away from Operation Troposphere? Because I’m pretty certain I did.’

Logan pulled his shoulders back. ‘I carried out a routine stop-and-search and found Class B drugs. I was doing my job.’

‘No, you were trying to screw with me and my operation.’ He stepped closer. ‘You arrested that man, dragged him over here from Banff, and told everyone to keep it a secret from me. Did you
really
think I wouldn’t find out?’ The smile got even less pleasant. ‘You’ve got no idea what you’re doing, have you?’

‘What, because I got the Candleman before you? Sounds like I know
exactly
what I’m doing.’

One eyebrow went up. ‘Candleman? What the hell is a “Candleman”?’

‘The guy who supplied Kevin McEwan and Colin Spinney?’

McInnes laughed. A proper full-on belly laugh that left him panting and wiping his eyes. ‘Not Candleman, you idiot,
Candy
Man. The supplier’s called the Candy Man. And that isn’t him.’

Oh … Logan stared at the ceiling. ‘The Candy Man.’ So he’d spent the last day and a half chasing a ghost that didn’t even exist. Thank you, Jack Simpson.

Idiot.

‘You thought you were screwing with Operation Troposphere. I told you to stay the hell away from every
one
and every
thing
to do with it, and you went ahead and arrested Martyn Baker anyway.’

Logan shook his head. ‘You just said he didn’t have anything to do with Klingon or Gerbil, so—’

‘Yeah, but you thought he
did
.’ McInnes took another step. Now he was close enough that his breath was warm against Logan’s cheek. It stank of cigarettes and extra-strong mints. ‘You thought he did and you picked him up anyway, even though you knew I’d told you not to. You did your best to screw me and my operation over.’ The creases either side of McInnes’s mouth deepened. ‘You really think I’m going to let that go, Sergeant?’

Of course he sodding wasn’t.

‘It had
nothing
to do with your case.’

‘You screwed up.’ The Detective Chief Inspector poked him in the chest. ‘And you know what? I wouldn’t have found out if you hadn’t tried to cover it up.’ McInnes turned on his heel, and sauntered away down the corridor. ‘I told you, you were on your last warning, McRae. What happens now: you’ve only got yourself to blame.’

Great.

Logan sank back in his chair and put a hand over his eyes. For some reason, the temporary viewing suite had developed a distinctly cheesy smell. Like a big block of Stilton, abandoned in a small car on a hot day. ‘Well, how was I supposed to know Jack Simpson got it wrong?’

On the other end of the phone, the backshift Duty Inspector puffed out a sigh. Still sounding as if he had a bag of marbles stuffed up each nostril.
‘He was off his face on heroin and getting battered to death at the time. How accurate would
you
be?’