The Missing and the Dead (10 page)

Arran Court. A single row of terraced houses: white harling walls, slate roofs; the occasional block of dark wood connecting upper and lower windows. The street was hidden away in Fraserburgh’s winding knot of cul-de-sacs. Surrounded by the back gardens of other buildings. A small patch of green sat opposite, lit by the yellow glow of a concrete lamp post. A handful of cars parked in front.

Logan counted the doors off, and stuck the patrol car in front of number twenty-six.

Three middle-aged women formed a clot by the garden gate. Two of them sitting on the low wall between it and number twenty-five. The third pacing back and forth, leaving cigarette trails in the street-lit air. All of them in pyjamas and dressing gowns.

Peaked cap on, out into the night. Logan clunked the car door shut and marched over. ‘Does anyone have keys?’

The woman with the cigarette stopped pacing and stared at him. Face souring. ‘You think we’d be standing here like lumps if we did?’

‘How about relatives? Or maybe a carer?’

One of the wall-sitters shook her head. ‘Her daughter, Sandra, lives three streets over, but she’s in Edinburgh for a thing.’

He stepped through the gate. ‘And you’re sure she’s not gone out somewhere? Night out in Aberdeen? Visiting friends in Peterhead?’

Number three sniffed. ‘She’s got a heart condition. What if she’s dead?’

Logan tried the door handle. Locked.

No lights on inside.

‘OK, let’s try round the back.’ He pointed at Mrs Cigarette. ‘Do you have the daughter’s mobile number?’

She dug a mobile from her dressing-gown pocket, poked at the screen, then held the thing out. ‘Ringing.’

He took it. Stuck it against his ear as he marched to the end of the street and slipped around the side of the last house. A little lane ran between the back of Arran Court and the rear of the next street over. Logan counted his way along the patchwork of wooden fences to number twenty-six as the mobile phone rang. And rang. And rang.

And finally,
‘Hello?’
A woman’s voice, thin and nervous.

‘Is this Sandra Bairden?’

There wasn’t a gate into the back garden. Instead, a seven-foot-tall woven wood screen stretched the length of the garden. It wobbled when he grabbed hold of it.

‘Who is this?’

‘I’m a police officer. I don’t want to worry you, Sandra, but your mum’s neighbours are concerned about her.’

He put one foot on the low brick wall and pulled himself up. A single light was on in the house, shining faintly through a small pane of rippled glass. Probably the bathroom. The garden wreathed in gloom.

‘Oh God … Is it her heart?’

‘Could be nothing at all. We just want to make sure she’s OK.’ He gave the fence another shoogle. Better do it quick before the whole thing came crashing down. Up and over. Thumping down with both feet in a vegetable patch.

‘I … I knew I shouldn’t have left her alone … But it was a work thing and—’

‘Let’s not jump to any conclusions.’ Crunching out through the woody stalks of leeks on parade, the air filled with the sharp scent of fresh onion. Back door. ‘Do you know if your mother keeps a spare key anywhere on the property? Under a plant pot? Something like that?’ He unclipped his torch from the stabproof and clicked it on. Swept the LED beam around the garden.

‘No, definitely not. She’s very security conscious …’
A sob rattled from the phone’s speaker.
‘Please let her be all right …’

One of those ridiculous half-terrier garden ornaments sat by the back door – as if the dog was digging its way through the paving slab down to the house foundations. He nudged it over with his toe. A single key was taped to the underside.

Yeah, because that was the
last
place a burglar would look.

He pinned the phone between ear and shoulder, picked the key up and slipped it into the back-door lock. ‘It’s OK, I’m letting myself in now.’

The kitchen was in darkness. ‘Mrs Bairden? Hello?’

Silence.

‘Oh my God, she’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘Mrs Bairden? It’s the police, are you OK?’ He clicked on the light. Yellow and blue tiles on the walls, grey faux-marble worktop, white units.

Through into the hall.
Click
. Photos on the walls, leading up the stairs: an overweight little girl playing with a big hairy dog, the same girl in school uniform with missing front teeth, then getting older, married, looking more tired and more worn down as she aged.

‘Why did I have to come to Edinburgh …?’

‘Mrs Bairden? Hello?’

Up to the landing.

Light seeped out under the bathroom door, the drone of an extractor fan, muffled by the door.

Logan knocked. ‘Mrs Bairden? Are you in there?’

He tried the handle. Locked.

‘I’m so stupid …’

Another knock. ‘Mrs Bairden?’ He stuck his ear against the door. Was that a voice? Barely audible under the extractor fan’s incessant buzz. ‘Mrs Bairden, I’m coming in.’

Logan pulled a handful of change from his trouser pocket. Took a two-pence piece and slotted the edge of it into the little twiddly thing beneath the handle. Twisted it left till the lock went clack.

The door swung open, revealing a small bathroom clarted in pink floral tiles. A salmon-coloured suite. And a very pale old lady – naked in the bathtub, surrounded by filthy water. Thin grey hair. Sunken cheeks. One shoulder hunched. The left side of her mouth drooping.

Logan stuck the mobile phone on mute. Popped it on the pink cistern, next to the Spanish flamenco-dancer toilet-roll cosy. And knelt beside the bath. Put two fingers against Mrs Bairden’s neck.

Then grabbed his Airwave and called for an ambulance.

‘… join us after the break when Josie and Marshal have to decide who’s—’

Logan poked the remote and the voice-over idiot on the TV was replaced by canned laughter on some mediocre sitcom.

The Fraserburgh station canteen was empty, except for him and the furniture. The blinds on the round window pulled tight, jaundiced light seeping through from the street outside.

His cheapo lentil soup wasn’t too bad with a good slug of chilli sauce – pilfered from the back of the cupboard. The bottle had ‘ERIN’S ~ HANDS OFF YOU THIEVING SODS!’ printed across it in angry black Sharpie letters. As if that was going to do any good.

Leave food lying about in a police station and you deserved everything you got.

A bleep from his Airwave.
‘Anyone in the vicinity of Cruden Bay, we’ve got reports of an IC-One male threatening to commit suicide …’

He ripped a chunk off the slice of toast and dipped it in the soup. Butter made round shiny slicks on the surface.

A dog-eared copy of the
Aberdeen Examiner
lay open on the table in front of him. Big two-page spread about the first day of Graham Stirling’s trial. ‘
FAMILY’S AGONY OVER “SICK CLAIMS”
’ and a big photo of Stephen Bisset, taken before Stirling got his hands on him. A smiling, unremarkable man, in a blue jumper and white shirt. Side parting and a cheesy grin. Holding a baby in his arms. His teenaged kids stood at his shoulders, with matching eyes, smiles, and long black hair: ‘H
APPY
F
AMILIES
: L
EFT
T
O
R
IGHT
D
AVID
(17), S
TEPHEN
(41), B
ABY
D
AVINA
(3 M
ONTHS
),
AND
C
ATHERINE
(14)’.

Logan flipped the page to an opinion piece about a woman who’d scalded her husband with chip fat. Had another dunk of toast in his soup. Scanned an article about the drive-by execution of three gang members down in Liverpool. Another about a member of the Scottish Parliament caught thrashing out a ‘private member’s bill’ in the women’s toilets after hours.

His Airwave bleeped, then DCI Steel’s gravelly tones ground out of the speaker.
‘Laz? Where the hell are you?’

Great – couldn’t even eat his cheapo soup in peace.

He thumbed the button. ‘Busy. What do you want?’

‘How come I can’t find anything in this warren you call a police station? Where are the marker pens?’

A spoonful of lumpy lentil. ‘Hector nicks them all.’

‘Who the hell is Hector? I’ll kick his bum for him.’

‘Too late for that: he died years ago.’

‘Hilarious. Where’s the damn pens?’

‘And now he haunts the corridors of Banff station, terrifying probationers and anyone foolish enough to venture upstairs after dark … Wooo-oooo-ooohhhh-ooo!’

Silence.

He crunched on a mouthful of toast.

‘You finished?’

‘What? Not my fault. He’s the station ghost, and every time a pen goes missing, it’s Hector’s fault. Try the old VIPER room on the top floor, next to the shower room. There’s usually a box up there.’

‘When you getting back? I need to go round all the registered stots, fiddlers, nonces, and paedos in the area.’

‘So? You’ve got every spare body in the northeast: go visiting. Knock yourself out.’

‘
Need me some local knowledge.’

‘Your team—’

‘Are a bunch of numpties. Wouldn’t trust them to interview their bums for love bites. So …?’

More soup. ‘Depends if I get free later. I’ll let you know.’ Ha, no chance. ‘Got to go.’

Another dollop of stolen hot sauce. Definitely improved the taste.

The door opened behind him. ‘Sarge.’

He looked back over his shoulder and gave a one-spoon salute. ‘Syd. How’s the menagerie?’

A shrug. ‘Enzo’s OK, but Lusso bit Dino. Right on the bum.’ Constable Fraser’s black, police-issue fleece was frayed around the collar and sleeves, the thick leather dog lead draped across his shoulders and clipped together behind his back. Like BDSM braces. Black-and-white checked ‘POLICE’ baseball hat on his head, the brim worn and hairy on one side. The less than subtle waft of
Eau de Labrador
. ‘Don’t know what he’d been doing, but he probably deserved it.’

Logan stared at him. ‘Your dog
bit
Deano? He bit Constable Scott? When did this happen?’

‘What?’ Syd curled his top lip, pulled his chin back into his neck. Then the frown slipped from his face. ‘Ah, OK, no, not Deano,
Dino
. D.I.N.O. My Alsatian. He likes to wind the other two up.’

Thank God for that. Logan hissed out the breath he’d been holding. The paperwork would’ve been horrendous.

Syd clumped over to the kitchen that took up one corner of the large room. Stuck a Tupperware box in the microwave and set it humming.

‘I need a car over to Market Street, Macduff. Reports of an elderly woman in distress wandering the street.’

Nicholson’s voice barked out of the Airwave handset.
‘Roger that, Control – on my way.’

Logan went back to his soup. ‘You not out searching Tarlair?’

‘Nope. You cancelled that drugs op, so me and Enzo ended up checking suspicious packages down the post office. Got three lots of coke, two of resin, and a teeny-tiny bit of heroin. Probably has a street value of eight pounds fifty, but every little helps.’

Ding
.

Syd went rummaging in the cutlery drawer and carried the Tupperware back to the table. Pulled out the chair two down from Logan and settled in. Creaked the top off the container. The smell of rich Indian spices wafted out, covering the one of wet dog. ‘Know if they’ve ID’d the girl yet?’

‘MIT’s handling it. Think they’d tell me?’

‘Probably not.’ A fork dug into the curry, pulled out a mound of chickpeas and onion. ‘What’s happening with your warrant? Me and the hairy loons were looking forward to that.’ He took off his baseball cap, exposing a swathe of shiny scalp, fringed with close-cropped grey. ‘Got nothing special on tomorrow, if you’re up for it?’

‘Can’t – got the Stirling trial. Maybe Wednesday? Assuming they’ll give me the bodies with this Tarlair thing going on.’ A spoonful of lentils helps the bitterness go down. ‘Surprised they’ve not got you out there sniffing round the swimming pool too.’

‘No one ever calls in the dogs as a first resort.’ Another forkful of chickpeas. ‘More fool them.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Another handset bleep.
‘Control to Bravo India One, safe to talk?’

Syd pointed at the TV. ‘You watching this pish?’

‘Just on for the company, to be honest.’

The Duty Inspector’s voice yawned out of the speaker:
‘Go ahead.’

‘Cool.’ He grabbed the remote and went spinning through the channels. ‘You hear about Barney Massie? Up running that fatal RTA in Kirkwall, when he gets a challenge on his team’s expenses.’

‘Co-op in Aberchirder’s had its front window panned in and the Cashline machine taken.’

A groan came from the Airwave.
‘Not another one …’
A sigh. A pause. Then the Duty Inspector was back.
‘OK. I’ll be right over.’