The Blood Road

10

The JCB towered over the opened grave, glistening in the drizzle. Its claw thick with dark-brown earth.

Logan inched closer.

One of their three-person Scene Examination team peered down into the pit, hands on her knees. ‘You ready?’

Her two colleagues hunched at the bottom of the hole, fiddling with thick tie-down straps. Then the bigger of the two stood and gave her the thumbs up, his white oversuit clarty with dirt.

She passed the signal on to the digger driver and the JCB’s engine growled again – the arm lifting over the hole. A chain with a hook on the end of it dangled from the claw.

Clarty the Examiner reached up and fastened the straps onto the hook, before he and his filthy friend scrambled out of the grave.

‘OK.’ The scene examiner in the clean suit pointed a few graves down. ‘If we can all retreat to a safe distance, please.’ She ushered Logan and Rennie to step away from the hole, and all five of them gathered around a shiny black headstone – like a chunk of kitchen worktop with gold lettering on it: ‘NOW ANNOYING THE ANGELS’.

She took off her facemask and raised her eyebrows at Logan. Shirley, from Chalmers’ garage that morning. ‘This your first exhumation?’

‘Third.’

Rennie leaned against the headstone. ‘I’ve never done one before. It’s kinda like Burke and Hare, only with a JCB. And in daylight. And not Edinburgh. Or 1828.’

Everyone stared at him.

The tips of his ears went a darker shade of pink. ‘Sorry.’

Shirley raised a hand to shoulder height and pointed at the sky. Then made small circles with her finger, the other hand held flat just beside it.

A deeper growl and the digger’s arm went up, slow and steady.

She smiled at Logan. ‘And, as if by magic…’

A mud-covered shape rose from the grave. It wasn’t a standard wooden coffin – a chunk of dirt fell off exposing what looked like wickerwork. One of those trendy woven-from-sustainable-materials biodegradable jobs.

It cleared the lip of the grave and kept going … five, maybe six foot into the air … and that was when the bottom gave way. The remains cascaded down into the pit. Bones and chunks of stuff and plastic bags swollen with internal organs. Everything slithery and glistening and dark. As they spattered back into the earth, the stomach-clenching stench of rotten meat exploded out from the pit and everyone recoiled, coughing and gagging.

Rennie slapped both hands over his nose and mouth. ‘Aw… God!’

Shirley hurled her facemask to the ground. ‘Low-carbon-footprint, saving-the-planet, eco-friendly, recycling bollocks!’

A purple nitrile glove appeared over the lip of the grave, its fingers dark and slimy with mud. It dumped a chunk of … was that a pelvis? It was. It was a pelvis, still partially encased in stinking…

Nope.

Logan backed away even further from the grave as a handful of finger bones joined the pile of yuck on the filthy tarpaulin they’d spread out beside the hole.

A muffled voice rose from the grave. ‘Oh for… Urgh, I’ve stood in it!’

‘Yeah…’ Shirley grimaced at Logan. ‘This is going to take us a while.’

Logan patted her on the shoulder. ‘It’s all yours. Give us a shout when you’ve got everything back at the mortuary.’

‘Will do.’

As he walked away, down the hearse road, Shirley’s voice took on that irritating over-the-top enthusiastic tone kids’-TV-show presenters always used. ‘Come on, guys, I know it’s horrible, but we can do this!’

The reply from the grave was a bit more to the point: ‘Sod off.’

Rennie started the pool car’s engine. ‘Let’s never do that again. Exhumations are horrible.’

Logan fastened his seatbelt and waved at Mr Scrotumface from the Council. ‘Look at him: standing there in his high-viz jacket and woolly hat, presiding over his empty car park like an impotent gnome.’

The man glowered back at them.

‘Told you, he needs his bonking chits filled out in triplicate.’ Rennie pulled out of the space. ‘Back to the ranch?’

‘No. We’re off to see Bell’s widow.’

He launched into song. ‘The wonderful widow of Bell.’

‘And if we’re lucky, she’ll be able to give you a brain.’

Aberdeen faded in the rear-view mirror as Rennie took the second exit and accelerated up the dual carriageway. Fields. Fields. And more fields. All of them a drab sodden green.

Logan’s phone dinged in his hand.

TS TARA:

Yuck! Cthulhu caught a mouse in the kitchen! It’s still alive! She’s torturing it!

Rennie overtook a mud-encrusted flatbed truck. ‘You ever met Bell’s wife before?’

‘Barbara?’ Back to thumbing out a reply on his phone. ‘Only at the funeral.’

Good. Serves the insulation & wire eating monsters right. Make sure you tell her she’s a good girl!

SEND.

‘Babs was in the am-dram group DI Insch used to run. I saw her in that musical version of Shaun of the Dead they put on. She was the mother. Very convincing.’

‘Hmm.’

Ding.

Oh God she’s eating it now!!!!

Rennie let out a long sigh. ‘It’s got to be hella weird, doesn’t it? Your husband kills himself, only he doesn’t really, and two years later someone else kills him again, but for the first time.’

Ding.

It’s like something off a horror movie!!! She’s eating the brains! THE BRAINS!!!!

‘I mean, put yourself in her shoes: he’s been hiding away somewhere sunny all that time and she’s been stuck here in Aberdeen with the drizzle and the cold, thinking he’s dead.’

Ding.

The only bits left are the tail, some revolting looking green kidney bean thing, & the bits of head she didn’t eat! I’m going to barf!

Another sigh from the bleached-blond philosopher behind the wheel. ‘That’s the kind of thing that’ll really screw you up.’

The housing estate could have been any new-build one in Aberdeenshire. Identical houses on an identical road with identical speedbumps and identical driveways. Tiny patches of miserable soggy grass masquerading as lawns. Trees that would probably still look like twigs for years to come. Four-by-fours parked on bricked-over front gardens. Grey harling with fake-stone details.

Three houses down, the road was packed with outside broadcast vans and journalists’ cars. No way through. A lone uniformed PC stood outside the front door, two down. Holding the mob at bay.

Rennie pulled into the kerb. ‘Pffff… Maybe we should come back later, when they’ve all got bored and sodded off?’

‘Don’t be so damp.’ Logan climbed out into the rain and strode along the pavement on the other side of the road, skirting the scabby Saabs and fusty Fiats parked half-on-half-off of it. Keeping his head down.

Didn’t work though.

He’d barely made it level to the house when someone spotted his uniform and they all crowded in on him. Shouting over the top of each other.

A curly blonde weather-girl-made-good type forced her way to the front. Pekinese perky. A red-topped microphone in her hand. ‘Inspector? Inspector, Anne Darlington, BBC: is it true you suspect DI Bell of murder?’

A ruddy-faced man who looked as if he’d fallen off the back of a tractor. Sounded like it too: ‘Come on, min, oor readers have a right to know what’s goin’ oan here. Have you got a suspect yet or no’?’

An androgynous woman in a shabby suit and short-back-and-sides. Deep voice: ‘Angela Parks, Scottish Daily Post: are you aware of the rumours that DI Bell was involved in people trafficking in Spain?’

A well-dressed short bloke with a bushy beard – like an Ewok off for a job interview at a bank. English accent: ‘Phil Patterson, Sky News: why won’t Police Scotland come clean about DI Bell’s previous whereabouts? What are you hiding?’

Anne Darlington pushed past him. ‘Police Scotland exhumed a body this morning – is that connected to this case?’

Angela Parks shoved her iPhone in Logan’s face, a red ‘RECORDING’ icon glowing in the middle of the screen. ‘Is it true that DI Bell was stabbed during a drug deal that went wrong?’

Logan kept his chin up and his face forwards, pushing through them, not slowing down. ‘We are pursuing several lines of inquiry and I can’t say any more than that at this juncture.’

Rennie struggled on at his shoulder. ‘’Scuse me. Pardon. Sorry. Oops. ’Scuse me…’

Anne Darlington pushed her microphone in front of Logan again. ‘Was DI Bell under investigation at the time of his alleged death?’

‘Fit’s the deal, min? Fit lines of inquiry are ye followin’?’

Another eight feet and they reached the relative safety of the tiny porch – more an extension of the garage roof than anything else.

‘Inspector, was it a drug deal gone wrong or not?’

The PC at the door opened it, shifting to one side so Logan and Rennie could squeeze past, hissing out the side of her mouth as they did. ‘It’s like a swarm of sodding leeches.’ Then stepped forward with her arms extended, blocking the way. ‘All right, you heard the Inspector: everyone away from the house. Let’s give Mrs Bell some privacy.’

Anne Darlington stayed where she was. ‘If you didn’t bury DI Bell in that grave two years ago, who did you bury?’

Phil Patterson was right behind her. ‘Was DI Bell involved in organised crime? Is that why—’

Rennie thumped the front door shut, cutting the rest of it off. ‘Now I know how rock stars feel. Only without the ever-present threat of group sex and free drugs.’

The hallway was an antiseptic-white colour with a single family photo next to the light switch. DI Bell, his wife and their two children at the youngest’s graduation ceremony. Everyone looking very proud and alive.

A door was open at the end of the hall, murmured voices coming from within.

Logan stepped into a gloomy little living room. The blinds were down, shutting out the rain and the media, but a standard lamp cast just enough light to see the dark patches on the walls where pictures must have hung for years, leaving nothing behind but the unfaded wallpaper and a capstone of dust. Most of the shelves were empty too, as if they’d had a clear-out recently. The only thing left was a single photo in a black frame: Mrs Bell and her husband. Her in a blue frock and him in his dress uniform, taken at some sort of official ceremony.

She was sitting on the couch now, by the electric fire, bottom jaw twitching as if she was trying to work something out from between her teeth. Eyes focused on the fake flames.

But Barbara Bell wasn’t the only one in here.

Sitting in the armchair opposite was a wee hardman in a well-fitted suit. Broad shouldered with a good haircut, even if his head was going a bit threadbare on top. Colin Miller. A trio of gold chains glinted around his neck, signet rings on over his black-leather-gloved fingers. And standing behind him: an older lady in a safari-type waistcoat – its pockets bulging with photographic equipment. A huge Cannon DSLR hanging around her neck.

Last, but by all means least: a young male PC, face covered with a moonscape of pockmarks, sitting in the other armchair. He struggled to his feet. ‘Inspector. I know this isn’t—’

Logan pointed at Miller. ‘Colin. Should you not be outside with the rest of your lovely Fourth Estate mates?’

A grin, followed by a Glaswegian accent so strong you could have stood on it. ‘Laz, my man, you’re lookin’ well, but. We’ve been expressing our sympathy to poor Barbara here. Haven’t we, Debbie?’

The photographer nodded, one side of her mouth clamped shut as if there were a fag poking out of it. ‘Terrible shame.’

Logan stood in front of the couch. ‘Mrs Bell?’

She didn’t even look at him. Just made a shooing gesture, batting away an invisible fly. Saggy and defeated.

He nodded. ‘Well, I’m sure everyone would like a nice cup of tea. Colin, why don’t you lend a hand?’ Then marched from the room, thumping Rennie on the way past. ‘You too.’

Rennie filled the kettle at a Belfast sink that was far too big for the small kitchen. Colin Miller leaned back against the working surface, crossing his arms and smirking.

Logan gave him a loom. ‘How the hell did you get in here?’

‘Easy, Tiger.’ He held up his hand in self-defence – some of the fingers stiff and twisted in his black leather gloves. ‘That any way to talk to an old friend?’

‘She’s just discovered that her husband died. Again. Bad enough you splashed it all over the front page this morning – she doesn’t need—’

‘Speaking of suicides,’ he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper, ‘a wee birdy tells us you’ve got another deid copper on your hands.’

‘I mean it, Colin: leave Barbara Bell alone!’

‘So did Lorna Chalmers really kill herself, or did she do a DI Ding-Dong Bell? Enquiring minds and all that.’

Logan backed off a step. ‘Who told you about Lorna Chalmers?’

‘Cos, see, it’s no’ hard to put two and two together, is it? Babs is sitting there in her gloomy wee living room and even she knows what’s coming. Her beloved deid husband killed someone to take his place in the grave.’

‘I’m going to count to three, then you either tell me who told you about Lorna Chalmers or I hurl you out of here on your arse.’

A grin slashed its way across Miller’s face. ‘That the quote you want me to use when this is all over the Examiner’s front page tomorrow? Cos I’m cool with that.’

The kettle rumbled to the boil and clicked off.

Silence.

Logan glowered at Miller. Miller grinned back at him.

Then Rennie broke the moment by hauling a bunch of mugs out of a cupboard and clattering them down by the kettle.

Miller shrugged. ‘It’s no’ goin’ all that well for Northeast Division, is it? You can’t find Ellie Morton, DI Bell turns up not-dead-but-dead-again, and now DS Lorna Chalmers tops herself.’ He tried on a casual, innocent voice: ‘You were investigating her for something, weren’t you?’

‘DS Rennie, make sure one of those mugs has extra spit in it.’

‘All right, all right. Easy, big man. Me and Debbie got all we need from Babs already. Was only hanging about to be nice to the poor dear. Keep her company and that.’ Miller pushed himself upright. ‘She’s all yours.’

Logan settled back on the couch as Rennie laid out four mugs of milky tea on the coffee table.

The thump of a closing door came from the hall and Family Liaison Officer McCraterface stepped into the room again. ‘That’s them gone now.’

Logan smiled at Mrs Bell. ‘Barbara, you didn’t have to speak to them.’

She flexed her hands into fists. ‘He lied to me.’

‘Of course he did, he’s a journalist.’

‘He left a bloody suicide note!’ Mrs Bell bared her teeth at the electric fire. ‘I memorised it. I thought I’d done something. Two bloody years and I thought… I thought if only I’d done something. If only I’d noticed how depressed he was. If only I’d got him some help!’ She picked up one of the mugs and hurled it at DI Bell’s photo. Knocking it flying, the mug shattering. Tea exploded across the wall. ‘And he wasn’t even dead! He was living it up in the sunshine, drinking sangria and shagging some Spanish tart!’

Logan shook his head. ‘Barbara, we don’t know that.’

‘Oh, we bloody well do! Mr Miller got someone to track down Duncan’s new family in Villaferrueña.’

Wonderful. The wee sod never mentioned that.

Mrs Bell ground her fists into her lap. ‘Duncan and his Spanish tart have a one-year-old son. I thought he was dead and he’s been making bloody babies!’ She snatched up another mug and hurled it to join the first. Another sharp-edged shattering and beige tea sprayed the wall.

Rennie grabbed his tea before it went flying too.

Logan took out his notebook. ‘We need to ask you some questions about what happened two years ago.’

She was still scowling at the tea-drenched wallpaper. ‘I boxed up all his crap. Did it last night, soon as they told me he hadn’t really killed himself.’ A sniff. She wiped at her eyes. Voice brittle. ‘I’ve been keeping this house like some sort of bloody shrine. Like he’d magically come back from the dead and everything would be fine again. I’m such a bloody idiot.’ Her whole face crumpled.

‘Can you remember him talking about a case he was working on at the time? Maybe something that was preying on his mind?’

‘Well, you know what? I’m happy he’s dead. I’m glad someone stabbed him. I hope they get away with it!’

11

Logan was last in line, barely able to see over the top of his large cardboard box. At least it wasn’t that heavy. He followed the FLO and Rennie out through the front door and into a lightning storm of camera flashes.

‘Inspector? Anne Darlington, BBC.’ Her blonde curls bounced as she fell into step, dragging a cameraman after her. ‘Inspector: is it true you’ve uncovered the identity of the individual who died in that caravan two years ago?’

Logan shifted his box, turning it into a cardboard shield between himself and the rampaging hordes of the media. ‘Please get out of the way.’

The Ewok man – Patterson? – jogged alongside as they hurried towards the pool car. ‘Is this case linked to the recent suicide of Detective Sergeant Lorna Chalmers?’

The thin androgynous one hadn’t gone away either. ‘Angela Parks, Scottish Daily Post. Will there be a public inquiry into the handling of DI Bell’s alleged suicide? Were you involved in the investigation?’

Rennie plipped the locks and they stuffed their boxes in the back of the car.

Anne Darlington tried to block Logan’s way. ‘Why won’t Police Scotland respond to any of our questions, Inspector? What are you trying to hide?’

The teuchtery one shoved himself to the front of the scrum. ‘Yer DS Chalmers was working on the Ellie Morton case – fit did she discover that led her to kill hersel’?’

The Family Liaison Officer put a hand against the teuchter’s chest. ‘Come on, back up please.’

Logan pushed around to the passenger side, Angela Parks close on his tail.

‘Is the Ellie Morton case connected to the disappearance of Stephen MacGuire this morning?’

Anne Darlington grabbed at his arm, but he blocked her with the passenger door. ‘Inspector, do you have an ID for the body, or don’t you? It’s a perfectly simple question: yes, or no?’

‘It’s an ongoing investigation.’ And inside.

The Parks woman wasn’t giving up. ‘There’s been a string of child abductions in the last two weeks, hasn’t there? Are they linked to Ellie Morton?’

He hauled the door shut with a thump and snibbed the lock.

Rennie clambered in behind the wheel and started the engine. ‘Gah… It’s like something off The Walking Dead!’

Anne Darlington knocked on the window. Voice muffled by the glass. ‘Yes, or no, Inspector?’

Logan fastened his seatbelt, talking to Rennie out the side of his mouth, so they couldn’t film it. ‘Drive. And if you accidentally run over three or four of the bastards on the way, that’s fine with me.’

‘Done.’ But as soon as he put the car in gear, the horde backed away, cameras filming, flashguns flashing, recording Rennie’s three-point turn for posterity. Then Darlington primped her hair and launched into a piece to camera.

Rennie grimaced, accelerating down the road. ‘Well, that was fun.’

‘Bloody Colin Bloody Miller!’ Logan pulled out his phone and poked at the screen. Listened to it ring. ‘Pick up, you rancid little…’ A click. ‘Colin? Why the hell didn’t you tell me you’d tracked down DI Bell’s Spanish family?’

Miller tutted a couple of times, then, ‘You used to be a lot more polite on the phone.’

‘You should’ve told me he had another family in Villafff…weren…’

‘Villaferrueña. It’s a middle-of-nowhere teeny-wee village. Population about a hundred and fifty? Boring. You’d love it.’

‘This is an ongoing investigation!’

‘Aye, and you can read all about it in tomorrow’s Aberdeen Examiner. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m away to that nice butcher in Rosemount to pick up some steaks for tea. You know how Isobel loves a good slab of meat when she’s been post-morteming all day, but.’

‘Colin!’

A laugh rattled down the phone. ‘I know stuff you don’t. If you want to play quid pro quo at some point, you know where to find us.’ Then the connection went dead. He’d hung up.

‘Damn it.’ Logan lowered his phone.

Rennie looked across the car at him. ‘We could get a warrant?’

‘Yes, because we’ve done such a great job of that recently.’ Logan shook his head. ‘You know what? Not my case: not my problem. DCI Hardie can deal with it.’

The identikit houses and identikit streets drifted past the car windows as Rennie made for the dual carriageway again. ‘Guv? That reporter– the one who looks like a really thin bloke – she said, “was the Ellie Morton case connected to Stephen MacGuire going missing?”’

‘And?’

‘Who’s Stephen MacGuire?’

Good point.

‘No idea.’ Logan pulled up a web browser on his phone and thumbed in the name. Set it searching.

A link to the Clydebank Herald and Post website came up and he followed it. Waiting for the page to load. ‘Here we go.’ The headline ‘FAMILY’S FEAR FOR MISSING STEPHEN’ filled the screen. Scrolling down revealed a photo of a small blond boy, smiling a gap-toothed smile. Lots of freckles. A dark-purple birthmark spread itself across one cheek and along the side of his nose.

‘“Stephen MacGuire, brackets four, went missing from outside his East Kilbride flat at half past eight this morning.” Blah, blah, blah. “‘A wonderful little boy who lights up every room he walks into,’ said his distraught mother, Janice, brackets twenty-three.”’

Rennie nodded. ‘Any word of a stepdad?’

‘No, but the mother’s partner says, “Stephen would not just wander off, I am sure someone must have taken him.”’

‘There you go – it’ll be him. The partner.’

‘“We are desperate to get our beloved son home. Please, if you have any idea where Stephen is, get in touch with the authorities before it is too late.” Why do newspapers have to make everyone sound like robots? “Before it is too late.” Who talks like that?’

Another nod. ‘It’s always the mum’s new bloke.’

Logan put his phone away. ‘Don’t see how a kid getting abducted in East Kilbride has anything to do with a wee girl snatched from Tillydrone.’

‘All that “Stranger Danger” stuff is a waste of time. We’d be better off teaching kids to run away from their stepdads.’

‘…appealing for any information on missing four-year-old, Stephen MacGuire. Stephen was last seen outside his home on Telford Road at eight thirty-two this morning…’

God, it was a lovely day. Not so nice back home with its wind and rain, of course, but out here? With the mighty Cairngorms rising on either side of the road, purpled with heather? The majestic Scottish sky a bright saphire blue? The sun shining down on natives and tourists alike? Who wouldn’t love this?