A tiny mousey, with its twitchy tail and its sniffy nose.
She held her breath as it stared at her, then inched towards what was left of her sammitch – just the crusts, because they were icky.
Soft and fluffy mousey.
Ellie tried to make a smile, but the big red ball in her mouth was all difficult, so she did gentle crooning noises instead. Grubby fingers reaching, reaching…
The mousey looked at her, pointy head on one side as her fingers got closer and closer.
Then she’d got him! She’d got the mousey! And he was all soft and fuzzy and warm and she would call him Whiskers and Whiskers would be her best—
Whiskers squeaked and sank his teeth into her thumb and it stung and it hurt and teeny drops of blood fell out of her thumb and she dropped Whiskers cos he’d bitted her!
Bad mousey!
She snatched her hand away and he tumbled to the floor, scampering back out through a gap in the wooden boards.
He bitted her…
Her thumb thumped and stung and throbbed and there was nobody to kiss it better.
Ellie slumped against the crate walls as big snottery sobs rattled out of her.
She only wanted a friend.
Everything was horrid and cold and unfair and her thumb hurt and SHE WANTED TO GO HOME!
And outside, in the Scary Room, someone else started crying too – all muffled and sniffy. Then the other someone, till all three of them were snuffling in the darkness. Like little piggies, waiting to be turned into sausages.
8
The letterbox went chlack, and that morning’s Aberdeen Examiner thumped onto the bare floorboards. Logan bent to pick it up, as the light on the papergirl’s bike faded through the rippled glass.
He held his mug against his chest, its warmth seeping into the bare skin. Probably should have put on a bit more than jammie bottoms, but hey-ho.
A noise mumbled out from the bedroom upstairs.
Logan took a sip of coffee and unrolled the newspaper, heading back through into the living room.
The Examiner’s front page carried a big picture of DI Bell’s crashed hire car, beneath the headline ‘“SUICIDE COP”’ FAKED OWN DEATH’.
A grunt. ‘“By Colin Miller.” Of course it is.’
Logan tossed the paper onto the couch and kept going to the open patio doors. Had another sip of coffee.
Twenty past seven and the sky was a dirty shade of charcoal, the first rumours of dawn catching at the horizon. A thin drizzle misted its way across the gloomy expanse of grass and weeds and bushes and trees. Going to be an absolute nightmare getting all that whipped in to shape. No point worrying about it now, though – had the house to do first.
He scratched at his checked jammie bottoms and yawned – a proper jaw-cracking one – then sagged. ‘Pfff…’
Cthulhu sat right at the edge of the veranda, on a little stump of log, just out of reach of the rain. Logan wandered over and squatted beside her. Tried to ignore the popping sounds his knees made. Goosebumps rippled his bare arms as he rubbed the fur between her ears. Soft and warm. She mrowped.
‘Don’t start – I’ve taken my pills, OK? Did it first thing, so Tara wouldn’t see.’ He smiled. ‘What makes you think that? Was it the sleeping together? Of course I like her.’
Cthulhu turned big dark eyes on him.
‘Well, yes, I know she snores, but so do you.’ More between-the-ear rubbing. ‘That’s very true, she is less of a nutjob than my usual.’
A stretch, then Cthulhu thumped down from her perch and sashayed back into the living room.
‘Yes, OK. You’re right: “so far”.’ Logan stood. ‘But we can always—’
‘Logan?’
He turned and there was Tara, wearing one of his old baggy hoodies. Bare legs poking out from underneath. Her hair was …huge. Haystack huge.
She yawned. Shuddered. ‘Who are you talking to?’
‘Cthulhu. She likes you.’
‘Are you not cold?’ Tara’s finger was warm as it traced its way down his chest to the collection of twenty-three shiny lines that criss-crossed his stomach. ‘This is a lot of scar tissue for one man.’
‘I was dead for five minutes on the operating table, if that makes me sound windswept and interesting?’
‘Makes you sound like a zombie. Or a vampire.’ She narrowed her eyes and poked him with the finger instead. ‘You better not be the sparkly kind!’
‘So technically you’ve had sex with a dead person. You dirty necrophiliac pervert.’
She poked him again. Then stole his coffee, padding across the bare floorboards to where Cthulhu waited at the kitchen door – one paw up on the wood. Expectant.
Logan cleared his throat. ‘I have to head off soon. Got an exhumation organised and a couple of widows to talk to. You can stay here and keep Cthulhu company if you like? There’s a spare key by the kitchen door.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Why, Inspector McRae, are you giving me a key to your house?’
‘Lending. On the condition that you don’t turn out to be a complete nutjob.’
A smile made little dimples in her cheeks. ‘I promise nothing.’
Logan hurried through the rear entrance to Bucksburn station, shaking the rain from his peaked cap. No sign of anyone as he walked down the corridor, past closed office doors.
Water rippled the stairwell windows, distorting the romantic view of the station car park – almost empty – and the main bulk of the building itself. Two storeys of rectangular brown-and-grey blockwork, devoid of character or charm. Like a miserable primary school, only without the swings and roundabouts.
His phone dinged at him and he hauled it out.
HORRIBLE STEEL:
Hope you’re happy with yourself, McRae. We had to spend the night watching kids’ TV instead of dinner and a shag! I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!!!
He thumbed out a quick reply on his way up the stairs:
Tough. I was busy.
His footsteps echoed back at him – still no sign of anyone – through the doors at the top and into another empty corridor. Ten to eight on a rainy Saturday morning and the place was like the Mary Celeste… At least that meant he might actually get some work done for a change, free from the distraction, whingeing, and general all-round pain-in-the-backside-ishness of his fellow officers.
Logan punched in the door-code and let himself into the Professional Standards office. Stopped. Suppressed a little groan.
So much for the Mary Celeste.
Rennie was slouched in his chair, surrounded by his file-box battlements, staring at the ceiling tiles as he swivelled left and right.
Logan stripped off his fleece and hung it on the coatrack. ‘Thought you were taking Donna swimming?’
‘Guv.’ Rennie snapped upright.
‘You’re an idiot; it’s Saturday morning. Go home.’
A frown. ‘You didn’t hear?’
Logan sank into his own chair and powered up his computer. ‘Get the kettle on. And there better be some of those Penguins left.’
‘Yeah, but…’ Rennie grabbed a sheet of paper from his in-tray and hurried over. Held it out. ‘It’s DS Chalmers.’
He didn’t bother suppressing this groan. ‘What’s she done now?’
Sobbing howled out of the living room in jagged painful stabs. He was just visible, through the open door, hunched up on the floor in the corner of the room slumped against a set of DVD racks. A slightly chubby man, going bald at the back, arms wrapped around himself. Face buried in his knees, shoulders shaking.
Logan eased the door shut.
A uniformed PC stood at the other end of the hall, talking into the Airwave handset attached to her shoulder. ‘…no, Sarge, no sign of forced entry I can see, but the SE haven’t finished with the back garden yet.’
Past her, a patrol car sat at the kerb, its lights flickering blue and white in the rain.
Logan stepped through the plain door and into the garage again.
It probably hadn’t been big enough to park an actual car in to start with – ‘Executive Family Homes’ being developer-speak for ‘Tiny Rabbit-Hutch Houses You Can’t Swing A Cat In’ – but it definitely wasn’t big enough now. Lorna Chalmers and her husband had filled the garage with metal shelving, leaving a four-foot-wide path down the middle. Tins of beans, soup, tomatoes, fruit, and sweetcorn. Semi-transparent boxes of crockery, others of spices, towels, clothes, cleaning products, and unidentifiable things. Various items of kitchen gadgetry, still in the original boxes. Cartons of washing powder, rice, macaroni-and-cheese mix, cereal… As if they’d tried to pack their lives away out here.
And Lorna Chalmers had finally succeeded.
She was halfway down the space between the shelving units, the toes of her socks grazing the concrete floor. Scuffing the fabric as her body turned in the draught that slipped in beneath the garage door. A thick electrical cord made a makeshift noose around her neck, the other end tied to the exposed rafters above. Arms slack by her sides. Eyes open. Mouth too. Face covered in scrapes and the faded remains of bruising on waxy yellow flesh.
The hard clack of a camera’s flash caught a bluebottle as it landed on her bottom lip. Then wandered inside.
Definitely dead.
9
Logan leaned against the open doorway as a couple of scene examiners got Lorna Chalmers down. One hugged her around the middle while the other clambered up onto a chair, holding a pair of snips. Their white SOC suits rustled and crumpled.
Snips took hold of the electrical lead in her other hand. ‘You ready?’
Hugs kept his head as far away from Chalmers’ remains as possible without letting go. ‘Gawd… Soon as you like, Shirley. She reeks of booze!’
A click and the body dropped, but didn’t sag.
So still in the throes of rigor mortis, then.
Snips – Shirley – jumped down from the chair and helped her colleague wrestle Chalmers into a body bag. She zipped it up and backed off, waving a hand in front of her face. ‘Pfff… You weren’t kidding.’
Logan shook his head and turned away.
Shirley shouted after him. ‘Hoy! You SIO then?’
‘Nope.’
‘You’re Senior, you’re an Officer, and you’re Investigating. Sounds like SIO to me.’
Logan kept going. ‘Yeah, nice try. But the answer’s still no.’
Logan leaned his forehead against the bedroom window, breath making a foggy crescent on the glass.
Outside, the duty undertakers wheeled their shiny grey coffin down the driveway, then lifted it into the back of their shiny grey van. The name of the firm was picked out in discreet white letters, ‘CORMACK & CALMAN ~ FUNERAL DIRECTORS’ above the words ‘PRIVATE AMBULANCE’, but other than that there was nothing to indicate that Lorna Chalmers’ remains were on the way to the mortuary.
What a bloody waste…
‘Guv?’
‘Mmm?’ Logan turned, and there was Rennie waving at him from the bedroom doorway.
‘I know you don’t want to be SIO, but do you think … maybe…?’ He raised his eyebrows and mugged it up a bit.
‘You want to be SIO?’
‘Come on, Guv, got to be good practice, right?’ Rennie shrugged. ‘For the old CV? Even if it’s only a suicide.’
‘You know it’s mostly paperwork, right?’
‘And maybe people would say, “You remember that police officer who hanged herself? DS Rennie was the SIO on that. Did a bang-up job. Let’s give him something exciting to be in charge of next time!”’
Logan puffed out a breath. ‘I suppose I can ask. But no promises.’
Swear to God, the little sod did a wee jig. ‘Cool biscuits!’ Then stopped and pointed over his shoulder. ‘Oh, and you might want to come see this.’ He led the way across the hall and into a bathroom barely big enough for the bath, sink, and toilet that had been squeezed into it. Nearly every flat surface was littered with assorted shampoos and conditioners and body butter and talc and moisturisers. A small mountain of empty toilet-roll middles lay slumped against the loo brush.
Rennie opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, exposing a huge stash of pill tubs, boxes, and blister packs that all seemed to have Lorna Chalmers’ name on them. He pulled out a white box with a pharmacist’s label stuck to the front. ‘Tranylcypromine sulphate: Emma was on this stuff after Donna was born, they’re antidepressants. And so are these: Venlafaxine hydrochloride, and Nortriptyline, and Moclobemide too. And yes, you should be impressed that I managed to pronounce all that.’ He returned the first box to the cabinet, then pulled out another one and frowned at it. ‘Not sure what Aripiprazole is though.’
Good old Aripiprazole, banishing visions of dead girlfriends and other assorted hallucinations for nearly two years now.
Logan took the packet off him. ‘It’s a second generation – or atypical – antipsychotic. Possible side effects include anxiety and suicidal thoughts.’
‘Really?’ Rennie raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh. Right. Wow.’
Logan replaced the box and shut the mirrored door. Stepped out onto the landing again.
Rennie followed him. ‘Her husband says there was a “sort of fight” yesterday. She stormed off, he didn’t hear her come back. Look at this.’ A smartphone appeared from Rennie’s pocket and he held it out. A text message sat in the middle of the screen. ‘Had his phone on to charge, so he didn’t get her text till an hour ago. Came down and found her.’
Logan accepted the phone, reading the message out loud. ‘“I’m sorry. I just can’t take it any more. I can’t.” Sent at ten thirty last night.’ He scrolled down to the earlier text messages. ‘Long time to be left hanging there.’
‘I had a snoop round.’ Rennie hooked a thumb over his shoulder at another small bedroom. ‘Someone’s definitely sleeping in this one: got loads of women’s things in it. Lipsticks and jars of stuff. Women’s underwear in the chest of drawers. Women’s clothes in the wardrobe. No man things.’
A chain of yesterday’s texts swept up onto the screen.
BRIAN:
I can’t wait to see you today!
STEPH:
I miss the touch of your strong hands on my body! Searching and probing my most intimate secret places.
BRIAN:
I miss the warmth of your tongue on my neck. The hot swell of your bosom against my bare chest.
STEPH:
I miss your hardness deep inside me. Thrusting. Thrusting!
There was more of the same, each one more flowery than the last.
‘God, it’s like a bargain-basement Mills and Boon.’ Logan stepped back into the master bedroom again. Slid the door to the fitted wardrobe all the way across.
It was full of men’s clothes: no dresses, skirts, or high heels. Nothing feminine at all.
He pointed at the bedside cabinet. ‘Have a squint in there.’
Rennie did. ‘Man socks, man pants, man hankies. No lady things.’
Logan nodded. Slid the wardrobe door closed. ‘Then I think it’s time we had a word with the grieving husband.’
A tiny conservatory clung to the side of the tiny living room – its doors closed, trapping inside a small herd of clothes horses draped with washing.
Brian had moved himself to the couch, sitting there as if someone had rammed their hand down his throat and ripped out everything inside him. He kept his eyes on his knees, as Logan handed him a mug of tea.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
He didn’t look up. ‘It’s… I never…’
Logan put a bit of steel in his voice. ‘Mr Chalmers, someone assaulted your wife yesterday. Twice. I want to know who.’
‘I don’t… I didn’t see her. She went out before I got up and—’
‘Would you say Lorna was happy at home?’
Oh, he looked up at that. ‘What? I…’ Pulled his chin in. ‘Hey, no, wait – I didn’t do that! I would never do that!’
‘And yet Lorna texted you a suicide note at half ten last night, but you didn’t call the police till after seven this morning.’
‘No!’ Looking from Logan to Rennie. Bottom lip trembling. ‘I told your constable—’
‘Constable?’ Rennie folded his arms. ‘I’m a detective sergeant.’
Brian blinked at the pair of them, getting smaller. ‘Sorry. It… I was recharging my phone. I didn’t check it till I got up!’
The central heating gurgled.
Rain pattered on the conservatory roof.
‘I didn’t!’
‘Really?’ Logan loomed over him. ‘Are you expecting us to believe your wife was hanging there for nine hours and you didn’t notice?’
Rennie put a hand on Logan’s arm. ‘Guv?’
‘We didn’t… She has her own bedroom. It’s the antisocial hours. We decided it’d be better if we didn’t wake each other up.’
‘Who’s Stephanie?’
Brian flinched as if he’d been slapped. ‘I don’t…’
‘Don’t you?’ Logan held up the phone again, reading from the screen. ‘“The milk of your passion fizzes inside me like finest champagne.” If that helps jog your memory?’
‘Oh God.’ Brian wrapped his hands around his head.
‘You said there’d been “a sort of fight”.’
‘You don’t know what it was like. She was never here. Not properly. Even when she was physically in the room, she was somewhere else. I was…’ Deep breath. ‘Stephanie is… I met her at work. She’s the account manager. We… Her husband isn’t there either. We were lonely.’
Logan stepped back. ‘And Lorna found out you were having an affair.’
The heating gurgled. The rain fell.
Brian shrugged. ‘Steph was here yesterday afternoon. We were in the bedroom when her car alarm went off. Someone had smashed the windscreen and the garage door was lying wide open. It’s… It’s not like Lorna and me had a sex life of our own, is it? We don’t even sleep in the same room any more!’ He ran a hand across his face. Bit his lip. ‘I was going to ask Lorna for a divorce next week, once we’d got her birthday out of the way. It would’ve been Wednesday.’
And with that, Brian dissolved into tears again.
The garage looked strangely empty without Chalmers’ body hanging there. Like a living room after the Christmas decorations had been taken down… Now the only sign that she’d ever been there were the scuff marks on the concrete floor – tiny tufts of fabric stuck to the rough surface where her socks had dragged across it.
Logan turned and stared at the shelving unit by the door. Chalmers’ glasses sat on a shelf next to the dishwasher tablets. Her shoes were on the shelf below lined up side by side.
Rennie pointed at them. ‘Why do people do that? Why take off your shoes and glasses before topping yourself?’
The glasses were cold to the touch. Surprisingly heavy. ‘Suppose it’s like getting ready for bed.’
‘See if it was me? If I was crossing the great dark veil? I’d want to see where I was going.’
Logan put the glasses back on their shelf. ‘Her husband’s having an affair; she’s about to be suspended; she’s on antidepressants; she’s sacrificed having a family for her career, but her career’s going nowhere.’
‘And I wouldn’t want to tread in anything either.’
‘She’s getting into fights…’
Rennie nodded. ‘Sounds like she had a proper, full-on, card-carrying meltdown.’
‘Yup.’ Logan walked out into the hall. No point wasting any more time here. Still had to figure out what Chalmers knew about Ellie Morton’s disappearance. He opened the front door. Paused on the threshold. ‘Do me a favour: soon as we hit the station, have a word with the CCTV team and see if they can place her car anywhere. Find out where she went yesterday. Maybe we can dig up who she spoke to.’
‘Guv.’
Logan hurried down the driveway, shoulders hunched against the rain, Rennie trotting along behind him.
Pale faces gazed out at them from the surrounding houses. The nosy ghosts of suburbia, haunting the lives of their neighbours. Feeding on their tragedy.
He clambered into the PSD pool car and checked his watch. A little after nine. ‘Probably got time to pick up coffee on the way to the cemetery. If we’re quick.’
Rennie clunked his door shut and sat there, looking up at the house. ‘Guv… Not being funny or anything, but back there, with the husband, was that not a bit … harsh?’
‘Good.’
‘No, but what if he makes a complaint?’
‘Brian Chalmers was screwing around on his wife. A wife he knew was on antidepressants. He was going to ask for a divorce the day after her birthday.’ Logan fastened his seatbelt. ‘So yes: I gave him a hard time. What do you think I should’ve given him, biscuits and a cuddle?’
Rennie started the car. ‘Sure you weren’t just punishing him because you feel guilty about what happened to her?’
Idiot.
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘So, let’s get this straight,’ Rennie turned, voice and face deadpan, ‘being investigated by Professional Standards had nothing to do with her topping herself.’
The little sod might have a point.
‘Oh … shut up and drive.’
Hazlehead Cemetery stretched down towards the Westhill road. They’d made an effort to lay this bit of it out in long sweeping curves, but there was a lot of ground to fill. Space for thousands more bodies.
And soon, there would be space for one more.
A bright-yellow JCB sat by a bend in the road that wound through the middle of the cemetery – presumably so the hearses could deliver their passengers to their allotted spots. The digger hunched over one of the graves. Like an expectant beast. Growling.
Logan and Rennie stood beneath a row of trees, on the very edge of the cemetery. Not that they provided a lot of shelter from the thick drifts of pewter-grey drizzle that coated everything with a sheen of cold and damp. But at least it was somewhere to drink their coffee.
Next to the JCB, three SOC-suited figures were busy erecting a Scene Examination tent – big enough to plonk over the grave when it was excavated.
Rennie sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘You ever had a shot on a digger? I’d love that. Gouging huge great clods out the surface of the earth… Oh, ho. Clap hands, here comes Charlie.’
A man in a brown suit and council-issue tie worried his way up the hearse road towards them, clutching his fluorescent-yellow waterproof jacket shut. Woolly hat jammed low over his ears, a scowl pulling his jowls into a disappointed-scrotum shape.
His glasses were all steamed up too. ‘Closing the cemetery… I don’t see why this couldn’t have been done last night!’
Logan had another sip of lukewarm coffee. ‘Health and safety.’
‘There are people wanting to visit their loved ones and they expect the council to facilitate that. If you’re a bereaved relative, what are you going to think about all this?’
Logan leaned over to one side, looking across the cemetery to the car park. Its only occupants were the PSD pool car, Scene Examination’s grubby white Transit, the duty undertaker’s discreet ‘PRIVATE AMBULANCE’, and the battered rattletrap Mr Scrotumface had arrived in. Other than that, the place was deserted. Logan stood up straight again. ‘Please don’t let us stop you comforting them. We’ll let ourselves out.’
‘Hmmph!’ An imperious sniff, then he turned and marched off into the drizzle again, nose held high. Walking as if his buttocks were tightly clenched. Presumably to stop the stick from falling out.
Rennie sidled closer, keeping his voice down. ‘Bet he’s the kind of guy who can’t get it up unless he’s filled out a requisition in triplicate to boink his girlfriend.’
Logan’s Airwave handset gave four bleeps. He answered it. ‘McRae. Safe to talk.’
‘Bet he’s a riot in the bedroom too.’ Rennie put on a droning nasal voice. ‘Tonight, Jean, you’ll observe that we’re departing from our usual missionary position due to roadworks on the A944 outside Dobbies Garden Centre.’
Down by the JCB, one of the white-oversuited figures waved at them. Then her voice crackled out of the Airwave’s speaker. ‘That’s us ready.’
