The Missing and the Dead (38 page)

‘Went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.’

‘That’s the Owl and the Pussycat.’ He pulled another chip from the pile and waved it at the view outside the windscreen. ‘We got thrown off the scent because Jack Simpson said Klingon’s supplier had a Newcastle or Liverpool accent. But the Candlestick Maker’s not a Geordie or a Scouser, he’s a Brummie – Simpson was too doped up and concussed to tell the difference. Martyn Baker’s our guy.’

Steel polished off the last of her chips. ‘Aye, well done, Miss Marple. Shame there’s sod all you can do with it. Porter and her crew will have got there on day one. He’ll be under surveillance till he gets his next shipment, then
boom
, they come down on him like the Fist of God.’ A sniff. ‘You really want to get in the way of that? ’Cos they’ll squish you into mush if you do.’

True.

‘Anyone in the vicinity of King Edward? We’ve got reports of a break-in …’

Logan took another bite, but the burger didn’t taste as good as it had a minute ago. Could’ve been at home eating steak instead … Still, it was miles better than the tin of lentil soup waiting for him back at the station. ‘The fact that they’re watching Martyn Baker doesn’t stop him being an accessory to Jack Simpson’s beatings.’

‘Aye, good luck with that.’ She reached over and helped herself to a couple of Logan’s chips. ‘Laz, you and me are on a sinking ship, adrift on the Sea of Jobbies. If we’re getting a lifeboat big enough for two, it’ll have to be a different case. What else you got on?’

‘Not counting your murdered wee girl at Tarlair Outdoor Swimming Pool? Only other big thing’s the Cashline Ram-Raiders.’

‘Hmm …’ Steel narrowed her eyes at the horizon and chewed the rest of the way through her burger in silence, with the odd pause to swig down a mouthful of Diet Coke.

‘What if we got Jack Simpson to ID the three of them from a VIPER line-up? I know we’ve got video of Klingon and Gerbil. And there has to be one on file for Martyn Baker.’

‘Don’t be daft. Told you: they won’t let you anywhere near Baker.’ She dipped into Logan’s chips again, so he handed the whole container over. She wolfed down a couple. ‘Tell me about these Ram-Raiders.’

‘Going by past experience, it’s probably a gang up from down south.’ He stuck the last wedge of burger in his mouth. ‘They get themselves a van, or a minibus, and they go on a wee tour of wee towns, boosting cash machines from wee shops. Take the lot back down south and break them up away from …’ He wiped his face with the napkin. Frowned out at the rolling surf. ‘Hold on, if they’ve got Martyn Baker under surveillance, why did they let you vandalize his car this morning?’

‘Told you: it was like that when I found it.’

‘But we
searched
him. What if he was carrying product? We would’ve arrested—’

‘And you’d have got your bum handed to you on a stick, soon as you got back to the station.’

The traffic was beginning to pick up. Not that rush hour was much to write home about in Sandhaven. Two cars going one way, a tractor going the other.

‘All units, cancel that lookout request on the green Audi estate. Been found wrapped around a signpost on the B9025.’

Steel polished off the last of the chips, then dabbed up the remaining dribbles of special sauce with a fingertip. ‘What kind of wee shops are they hitting?’

‘All Co-ops. Well, except for that place in Fraserburgh: Broch Braw Buys.’

‘Interesting.’ She licked the fingertip clean, then wiped her hands on her trousers and dug out her phone. Made greasy prints on the screen. ‘Hold on. … Aye, Andy? It’s Roberta. … Yeah, still stuck with the Mire’s Bunnit Brigade. … Really?’ She laughed, setting a crevasse of wrinkly cleavage jiggling. ‘Listen, Andy, you’re in charge of the Cashline thing, right? Anyone looked at it being an inside job? Maybe it’s someone from the Co-op, or whoever it is supplies the cash machines?’

A removal van grumbled past on the road, ‘B
LOO
T
OON
S
HIFTERS
~ T
OUGH
E
NOUGH
T
O
S
HIFT
Y
OUR
S
TUFF
!’ stencilled down the side with a cartoon of a haddock carrying a packing case.

Steel nodded. ‘Uh-huh. … Yeah, thought so. Never mind, worth a try. Give Dawn a big wet kiss and a grope from me, OK? … Yeah, you too, Andy.’ She hung up. Pursed her lips at the phone for a second. Then thumped Logan on the arm. ‘Told you it was a stupid idea.’

‘Yeah, what
was
I thinking?’ He finished off his Fanta. ‘Think they’ll keep hitting Co-op stores?’

‘Suppose we could stick a bunnit in every Co-op in the northeast. That’d do it.’

‘Do you have any idea how thin we’re stretched as it is? Where are we supposed to find the bodies?’

‘There is that.’

A minibus drove past with its windows down. Everyone in the back was wearing a black-and-white striped football shirt, as if they were all referees off on a jolly. The words, ‘One-Nil! One-Nil!’ Dopplered by, battered out on the wings of far too much lager and not enough tune.

Logan’s Airwave bleeped. He wiped his hands on a napkin. ‘Safe to talk.’

‘Sarge? Deano.’

‘What you still doing on, Deano? Shift ended an hour ago.’

‘Had to break into an auld wifie’s house. Daughter was convinced the old girl was dead at the bottom of the stairs.’

‘No?’

‘Nah, drunk as a badger. Found her in the downstairs bog, all covered in sick.’
The clunk of a door closing, muffled out of the handset’s speaker.
‘Listen, turns out the auld wifie’s husband did six years for abusing wee girls. Ran his own photography business. You know the sort of thing: come get glamour shots of your kids. “Oh, don’t worry, you can leave wee Jeanie with me, and I’ll be done by the time you’ve finished your shopping.” Kind of thing.’

Logan crushed the empty Fanta can and dropped it into the bag his burger had come in. ‘At it again, is he?’

‘Not unless it’s from beyond the grave. Died last year. His shop caught fire with him in it.’

At least that was something.

‘And …?’

Sitting in the passenger seat, Steel indulged herself with a post-Wimpy e-cigarette, blowing malformed vapour rings at the windscreen.

‘And no one’s going to hire a paedo photographer, so when he got out of prison he started taking pics for competitions. Got some of them up in the house.’

‘Deano, I’m losing the will to live here.’

‘Fifth place in the
Aberdeen Examiner
portrait competition from four years ago. It’s Neil Wood, cooking eggs in his B-and-B. Two years ago, it’s third place for a photo of Charles “Craggie” Anderson standing alongside his ship in dry dock. Our missing person’s got his portrait up on a paedo’s wall, Sarge.’

And Neil Wood wasn’t the only one who disappeared just before that wee girl’s body turned up.

Logan propped his pilfered notepad open against the steering wheel, and frowned at the short list of names doing lateshift in Banff that evening. Big Paul, Penny, Kate, and Joe. Of the four of them, Joe had the lowest shoulder number so the most time served. Logan called him on the Airwave. ‘Shire Uniform Seven. You there, Joe?’

‘Aye, Sarge. Safe to talk.’

Outside, Steel scuffed up the steps to her hotel with her phone clamped to her ear and her fake cigarette waving about like a conductor’s baton.

The wind was getting up, making her shirttails flap as she disappeared inside.

Logan pressed the button again. ‘Where are you?’

‘Castle Street. Me and Penny’s doing the rounds.’

‘Good. What about the others?’

‘Kate’s off to Fraserburgh for the night, and Big Paul’s away following up on a couple of tractor thefts around Portsoy.’

Nice and low-maintenance. Got to love it.

‘Do me a favour – nip back to the ranch when you’ve got a minute and run a full PNC on a misper for me: Charles “Craggie” Anderson. All his details are on the briefing slide. Go digging. I want to know if there’s any soft intelligence out there about him.’

A pause.
‘Am I looking for anything in particular?’

‘Yes, but I’m not prejudicing your enquiries.’

‘Then I’ll go digging.’

‘Thanks, Joe.’

He hooked his Airwave back in place. Stuck the notepad on the passenger seat. According to the dashboard clock, it was gone ten past six. Time to patrol.

‘All units, please be on the lookout for one Mark Lee, outstanding apprehension warrant for assault.’

Logan climbed into the Big Car and tossed his cap into the back.

The old woman stood at the front door of her tiny cottage, watching as he pulled away. One arm wrapped around herself, the other giving a small half-hearted wave. Holes in her cardigan, holes in the ancient slippers on her feet.

He called it in. ‘That shed break-in in King Edward: looks like they got away with a lawnmower, strimmer, and a chainsaw. Victim’s got no idea when it happened – any time over the last three weeks.’

‘Got that. Shed was locked?’

Nope. But then that meant the insurance company could weasel out of paying for what had been nicked. ‘Yeah, they popped one of the windows in. It’s boarded up now.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

He took the back roads, past fields and lonely farmhouses, turned amber and gold in the sunlight. A herd of sheep glowed like bronze statues against a field of emeralds.

Trees and hedges blurred by the windows.

‘Anyone in the vicinity of Cruden Bay, we’ve got reports of a fight outside the Golf Club …’

With any luck, they’d have stopped by the time a patrol car got there from Peterhead. The last thing they needed tonight was more people in the cells, taking up space till the courts opened for business on Monday morning.

Stubby’s voice growled out of the speakers.
‘Roger that, Control. Show Sierra Two One responding.’

Past the big graveyard on the outskirts of Macduff, the rows of the dead cold beneath the sun-warmed grass. Plenty of space for more to join them.

God, that was cheery.

Logan twisted his Airwave out of its clasp and thumbed Joe’s shoulder number into the keypad. ‘Joe, safe to talk?’

Silence.

Then,
‘Sorry, Sarge, we’re doing a stop-and-search.’

‘OK. I’m on my way back to the station. Wanted to know if you’d found anything out. Give me a shout when you’re free.’

‘Will do.’

The River Deveron was a sheet of beaten copper at the side of the road, glittering its way to the North Sea.

Why was Broch Braw Buys the only non-Co-op hit by the Cashline Ram-Raiders? It wasn’t as if it was anything special – just another wee shop. Maybe there was some sort of personal connection? A grudge against the owner? It wasn’t the first in the series, so it wasn’t as if they were getting their eye in. Or maybe it was simply an easy shop to hit?

Might be worth popping past tomorrow when it was open and having a word with the owner. See if he’d made any enemies in the last few months.

Probably a waste of time, but you never knew …

Around, over the bridge, past the Spotty Bag Shop, and along Carmelite Street.

A gaggle of women in short skirts and high heels clacked and cackled their way along the pavement. They all wore pink Stetsons, except for the one in the middle who had a white veil and learner plates on. They cheered and waved as Logan drove past.

Give it a couple of hours and at least one of them would be face-down in a pub toilet, or being sick in a bus shelter.

‘Shire Uniform Seven from Control, safe to talk?’

He hit the button. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Got a Sergeant Creegan for you from Kirkwall station.’

There was a
click
, then a man’s voice came from the Airwave’s speaker, sounding a lot more Inverness than Orkney.
‘Hullo? Yes, are you the one who put a lookout request on the
Copper-Tun Wanderer
? Cause we’ve found it.’

‘Great. Thanks. Is the skipper there: Charles Anderson?’ Logan eased past the much smaller, much older graveyard opposite Banff’s little Tesco supermarket. Ancient lichen-flecked headstones, squeezed in cheek to jowl. No more room for the dead.

‘Ah … Yes, and no.’

‘So he’s not there?’

A troupe of lads in tight jeans, tattoos, and numbered T-shirts lurched across the road, two of them holding up a bloke in a kiss-me-quick porkpie hat. All of them singing ‘Flower of Scotland’ with the complete lack of skill and self-awareness that comes free with lots and lots of booze. Looked as if the stag do had headed out a lot earlier than the hen night. Eight o’clock and they were already lurching.

‘We found the boat on the rocks, off the coast of South Ronaldsay. There was a fire on board, looks like Friday night. It’s pretty much a hulk now, everything burnable’s burned. There’s not much left of the wheelhouse, or Mr Anderson.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Very. Looks like part of the roof came down on him.’

At least with Steel’s monkeys back off to Aberdeen, there were plenty of parking spaces in front of the station again. Logan reversed into the one by the front door.

‘OK. Well, thanks for letting me know.’ Not exactly a great result, but at least they could stop looking for him now. Mind you, with Anderson dead, they might never find out what happened to the wee girl they’d hauled out of the water at Tarlair.

The stag party must’ve been on their way to the Ship Inn, because they lurched along the road on the other side of the public car park. Skirted a woman, standing on her own by the wall that separated the road from the bay. Their rendition of ‘Flower of Scotland’ segued into a chorus of wolf whistles and blown kisses as they passed her.

She turned to watch them go, then went back to staring out across the water.

‘Suppose he’d just had enough. Happens sometimes with fishermen. They want to go out like Vikings.’