Authors: Stuart MacBride
The manky little Fiat made a horrible grinding noise every time Logan tried to put it into third. He mashed the clutch to the floor and shoved the gearstick into place, pretending he couldn’t smell something burning. Heading back along the dual carriageway towards the Horrible Haudagain roundabout, next stop: FHQ, to find somewhere quiet to hide until his shift was over.
The radio hissed and crackled, never latching onto any station for more than three or four minutes at a time. It gave a burst of static, then music – Katrina and the Waves, ‘Walking on Sunshine’. Logan’s stomach lurched, his mouth filling with warm saliva. Heart pounding. He stabbed the off button and the radio was silent.
Jesus…
He rolled down the window. Cold air, laced with drizzle and exhaust fumes.
Deep breaths.
Just a song. Nothing to worry about. Just a song.
When his mobile phone rang he flinched. Logan checked the display: DI Steel. His thumb hovered over the off button…then he hit pick up, holding it to his ear as he pulled into a little layby off the dual carriageway with half a dozen small
industrial units in it. Majestic Wines, Pizza Hut, that kind of thing.
‘Where the hell are you?’
Logan killed the engine. ‘You said get out of your sight.’
‘Just…bloody…’ A
pause, then,
‘I want you back at the ranch; we’re going round to Steve Polmont’s place.’
‘I’m stuck in Bucksburn.’ Which was a lie. ‘Can’t you take somebody—’
‘Bucksburn? What the cock-flavoured buggery are you doing in Bucksburn?’
‘You told me to go see the Diddy Men, remember?’
Another pause.
‘Just get your scarred arse back here and pick me up.
Now!’
‘You’re a bloody idiot, you know that, don’t you?’
Logan just shrugged. Outside the car windows, King Street was a study in miserable grey. People clomped along through the drizzle, collars up, mouths down. A few of the more optimistic ones huddled beneath umbrellas: the misty rain just soaked them from the shoulders down.
DI Steel wrestled with the passenger door, winding her window down. ‘And could you no’ have got a decent pool car?’
‘You said come pick you up, I picked you up.’
‘Smells like old lady farts.’ She dug out a cigarette and lit it, then shoogled the pack at Logan.
‘Danby still throwing a wobbly?’
‘What do you think? Lucky he didn’t have you kicked you off the case.’ She dug a sat-nav out of her bag and fiddled some sort of clip thing onto the back, then huffed a smoky breath onto the suction cup and stuck it to the windshield. Where it promptly fell off again. ‘Buggering hell…you ever clean this thing?’
She breathed on the windscreen, fogging up a patch, then scrubbed at it with the sleeve of her jacket. This time, the sat-nav stuck. ‘Nicked it out of lost-and-found.’
‘Would a map not have been—’
‘Bloody GSM trace on Polmont’s mobile came back with latitude and longitude, OK?’ She switched the thing on and poked away at the screen, pale-yellow tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. ‘Straight on at the roundabout.’
Logan drove them through the Bridge of Don and out past the Exhibition and Conference Centre, rain shimmering on its bizarre curvy glass bridge and fake airport control tower. Following the green arrow on the sat-nav’s screen.
‘So, what do we know about Polmont?’
Steel pulled a face. ‘Came to me through a DI in Edinburgh who owes me a couple of favours. Polmont was his chiz on another Malk the Knife building site – got themselves half a million in cocaine, twenty illegal immigrants, and one thousand cartons of smuggled cigarettes.’
‘Well.’ Logan shrugged. ‘At least you know he’s sound.’
‘Aye…’ Steel picked a flake of ash off her trousers. ‘Sort of.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Polmont’s got a bit of a drink problem.’
‘He’s a bloody alki, isn’t he?’
Scowl. ‘What, you want to swap tips?’
Logan ignored that. ‘He’s probably off on a bender somewhere. That’s why you can’t get him – too pissed to answer the phone.’
‘Oh, don’t be so—’
‘This is another wild bloody goose chase, isn’t it?’
‘Just shut up and drive.’
Logan put his foot down and the manky Fiat rumbled and rattled up to fifty along the dual carriageway.
All the way out to Balmedie the fields were a soggy patchwork of green-brown, bordered by pale-grey drystane dykes. The occasional flock of sheep breathing clouds of steam into the cold, damp air. And then they got to the signs saying, ‘W
ORKS
E
NTRANCE
A
HEAD
’, ‘S
LOW
V
EHICLES
T
URNING
’, ‘N
O
A
CCESS
T
O
B
EACH
’.
It hadn’t taken the local press long to nickname Donald Trump’s development ‘Trumpton’. A vast swathe of coast was due to disappear under the bulldozers: two golf courses, five hundred houses, a four-star hotel, and nearly a thousand holiday villas. Which kind of put McLennan Homes’ four hundred semi-detacheds into perspective.
Three hundred yards further on a huge billboard sat at the side of the road – ‘M
C
L
ENNAN
H
OMES
, B
UILDING
A B
ETTER
T
OMORROW
F
OR
Y
OU
’. Photo of a smiling nuclear family holding hands and staring mistily off into the distance. Very aspirational. Or it would have been if someone hadn’t spraypainted a big blue penis onto one of the kids.
Logan slowed the car. According to the sat-nav, Steel’s map coordinates were off to the left. The Fiat juddered to a halt on the grass verge.
He peered across and through the passenger window at the site entrance – a high chainlink fence, the gates held open with dented oil drums. ‘S
ITE
P
ATROLLED
B
Y
G
UARD
D
OGS
’, ‘N
O
E
NTRY
T
O
U
NAUTHORIZED
P
ERSONNEL
’, ‘D
ANGER
O
F
D
EATH
’, ‘W
ARNING
: R
AZOR
W
IRE
’. A rutted mud track led away into Malk the Knife’s development.
Logan checked the sat-nav again. ‘You sure you got those coordinates right?’
‘Course I’m sure.’ She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. ‘Maybe they’ve got caravans for people living on site?’
‘Maybe…’
Logan eased the car through the gates. The muddy track bumped and slithered under the Fiat’s wheels, taking them closer to the rumble of heavy machinery, the beep-beep-beep of something backing up.
Steel pointed through the windscreen. ‘Over there.’
He pulled up beside a long Portakabin with ‘S
ITE
O
FFICE
’ stencilled on the side, trying to aim for a bit that didn’t look like the battle of the Somme.
‘Right.’ Steel flicked her cigarette butt out of the window. ‘If anyone asks, you and me are debt collectors. I’m the boss, you’re the hired muscle. Still a chance we can salvage this cock-up, so no telling anyone you’re a cop, understand?’
She pulled the sat-nav off the windscreen and they clambered out into the drizzle.
‘Which way?’
She frowned at the little screen, trying to shield it from the rain with her coat, then did a slow three-sixty. Stopped. And pointed out across the churned-up earth.
No caravans, no Portakabins, not so much as a three-man tent.
Steel took a step forwards, but Logan grabbed her arm.
‘Maybe we should call for a search team. IB. Pathologist. If Polmont’s—’
‘Don’t be so wet.’ She shook herself free and stomped off into the mud.
Logan swore, then followed her.
The going was tough, thick clogs of brown-black earth sucking at his shoes, dirty water oozing in through the lace holes, soaking into his socks. And then his foot disappeared into a puddle, right up to the shin. ‘Fuck…’ Cold and wet, the trouser leg sticking to his skin. He limped after Steel, cursing all the way.
She came to a halt about two hundred yards from the high chainlink fence that surrounded the site, then turned around a few times. The earth here was firmer – still covered in weeds and grass, the vegetation looking pale and unhealthy.
Logan squelched up beside her. ‘Hope you’re bloody happy, my feet are—’
‘Where the hell is he?’ She turned around again, then peered at the sat-nav.
‘—socks are sodden and my trousers are all covered in—’
‘Will you shut up moaning about your bloody feet! He’s supposed to be
here.
’
Logan snatched the sat-nav from her – the display read, ‘Y
OU
H
AVE
R
EACHED
Y
OUR
D
ESTINATION
’.
Welcome to the middle of nowhere.
‘Well, at least we know he’s not stuck in some shallow grave.’
Steel grabbed the sat-nav back. ‘Oh yeah, tell me Sherlock, how—’
‘Look at the ground. It’s not been disturbed.’ He pointed at the little black rectangle in Steel’s hands. ‘What are those accurate to, ten, fifteen feet? And the GSM’s about a hundred…’
Logan looked out across the tufts of yellowy grass and dark-green weeds. ‘Give him a ring.’
‘What?’
‘Call him on his mobile.’
She did, standing there with her phone clamped to her ear. ‘It’s ringing…’
Logan stood as still as he could, ears straining. A faint metallic warble was coming from somewhere over to his left. He turned and marched towards it, but the sound of his squelching through the waterlogged grass was loud enough to block it out. And then the warbling stopped.
Steel pointed at the mobile in her hand. ‘Voicemail.’
‘Call him again.’
This time Logan crept across the uneven ground, the ringing getting louder with every careful step.
‘Voicemail again.’
He found it on the third go: a scuffed and battered Nokia lying in a patch of greasy nettles at the edge of a burn. He snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and picked the phone up, just as it stopped ringing. The casing had been broken at one point, then stuck back together with black electrical tape.
Steel appeared at his shoulder. ‘Is it his?’
Logan stared at her. ‘It rang when you called it, what do you think?’
Scowl. ‘I’ll do the sarcasm, thank you very much.’ She stuck out a hand. ‘Gimmie.’
‘Gloves.’
‘I’ll bloody “gloves” you in a minute. Give me the damn phone.’
She went stabbing through the phone’s menu with her thumbs. ‘See what he’s got listed as home…It’s an Aberdeen number.’ She pressed another button, and stuck the phone to her ear. Listened for a bit. ‘No answer. So he’s no’ here, and he’s no’ at home.’
‘Probably still pissed.’ Logan offered her an evidence bag, but she just stuck the phone in her pocket and marched back towards the building site.
Logan shook his soggy foot and squelched after her.
The rain was beginning to pick up, the thin, leeching drizzle giving way to pattering globs of ice-cold water that kicked ripples across the dirty puddles.
Logan followed Steel down an embryonic street: bare foundations on one side, part-built homes on the other. Wooden skeletons, with blue plastic sheeting stretched between the uprights. A couple were being skinned with pale orange brick, a radio blaring out
Northsound One
as two teams of brickies built up the next layer.
Further down, half a dozen looked nearly finished – some even had doors and windows. The one at the far end had a big ‘S
HOW
H
OME
’ sign out front, a garage twice the size of the others, and a slightly surreal-looking bright green lawn. No way that could be natural. Probably Astroturf or something like that. A pair of gardeners were planting shrubs and trees around it, hacking out holes in the rubble with a pickaxe.
Bugger that for a job.
Logan stopped in the middle of the muddy street. ‘Where do you want to start?’
Steel dug her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. Her
nose had gone a fetching shade of pink. With a not so fetching drip on the end. ‘Where do sparkies work?’
‘Well…you wouldn’t want to run electrical cables till you’d got the roof on and the place was watertight, would you?’
She shrugged and stomped through the rain towards the little clot of completed houses.
A battered, red Berlingo van was parked outside one of them. It had a crap illustration of Robert Burns on the side, and the words, ‘M
C
R
ABBIE’S
F
AMILY
E
LECTRICALS
, “Y
OUR
L
OCAL
B
RIGHT
S
PARKS
”’. The address and phone number were for Stirling. So much for being ‘local’.
Someone had keyed the paintwork, permanently engraving ‘S
CABBY
’ in front of the company name.
The front garden was a mess of rubble and debris, the concrete path littered with clumps of mud. Steel bumped the front door open with her shoulder, hands at her sides, not touching anything. Inside, the house was an exposed framework of raw pine, the outer walls stuffed with pink Rockwool insulation waiting for their skin of plasterboard. The entryway was carpeted in a layer of flattened cardboard boxes, the brown surface rippled with dirty water and muddy boot prints.
Someone was singing upstairs: a surprisingly tuneful rendition of ‘Let Me Entertain You’, complete with ‘Wakka waaaaa, weeeeeeee-wahhh…’ guitar solos. Steel nodded and Logan took the lead, up the bare wooden stairs and onto the chipboard landing.
The singer was hunched on top of a folding ladder in what was probably going to be a bedroom, wearing a padded orange boilersuit with that same crappy Robert Burns illustration on the back, tightening the chuck-less bit on a cordless drill. A brief pause for the chorus, then he stuck the huge drill bit against the nearest upright and screeched through it.