Logan McRae Crime Series Books 4-6: Flesh House, Blind Eye, Dark Blood. Stuart MacBride

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СКАЧАТЬ least DI Insch had calmed down a bit by the time Logan emerged from the post mortem. Whole bodies were bad enough, but Brooks … Logan shuddered. It was like some sort of horrible jigsaw puzzle.

      All the chairs in the inspector’s office were occupied – DI Steel in one, the Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of CID in the other. Everyone waiting for Logan’s edited highlights.

      ‘Preliminary report won’t be out till the end of the day, but there’s a lot of bruising to the head, stomach, thighs and chest – he’d been repeatedly beaten. Looks like Brooks was held somewhere for about forty-eight hours before he …’ Logan tried to think of a tactful way to put it, ‘before he was thrown off the roof.’

      Silence.

      ‘Sorry, sir.’

      The inspector’s voice was a low rumble: distant thunder getting close fast. ‘Wiseman.’

      ‘We’re doing door-to-doors in the tower blocks, going through the Castlegate CCTV—’

      ‘That’s why he didn’t turn up. At the pub. Wiseman had him …’ Insch’s face had gone beyond its normal angry red, into a previously undiscovered shade of trembling purple. Breath hissing out between clenched teeth. ‘Get the IB round to his house. I don’t care if they have to tear it apart, I want—’

      The DCS placed a hand on the inspector’s arm. ‘David, I need you to go home. Let us handle this.’

      Insch got as far as. ‘Don’t you—’

      ‘Before you say it: I know. I worked with Brooks too. We’ll get the bastard responsible, but you need to go home. If Professional Standards find out you’ve ignored your suspension they’ll go ballistic.’

      Insch was on his feet. ‘You can’t send me—’

      ‘I can, and I am. Go home, David. Have a pint for Brooks. Come in tomorrow and we’ll discuss your caseload.’

      ‘But—’

      ‘That’s an order, Inspector.’

      Drizzle. It drifted down from a battleship-grey sky, slowly seeping its way into everything, making the IB team miserable as they searched Ex-DCI Brooks’ back garden. Logan stood at the conservatory door, watching them get wet.

      On the other side of the high back wall, a development of nasty yellow-clad houses sat cheek-by-jowl with one another. Brand new and ugly in comparison to the stately granite buildings they’d been thrown up behind. McLennan Homes strikes again.

      If he stood on his tiptoes, Logan could just make out pairs of uniformed officers going door-to-door in the vague hope that someone might have seen something.

      A grumpy figure in a mud-smeared SOC suit trudged up to the conservatory, snapped off her latex gloves, dragged out a scabby handkerchief, and made horrible snottery noises. ‘Bugger all,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘No hair, no fibres, no prints. We know he came over the back wall – got two goodsized indentations in the flowerbed, but nothing we can get a decent cast from. Best guess is he had plastic bags on over his shoes – that’d explain why there’s no muddy footprints in the house.’

      The hanky came out for another performance.

      ‘OK, finish it up and I’ll get Rennie to stick the kettle on.’

      She sniffed. ‘Looks like a professional job.’

      ‘Get your team in out of the wet. We can—’

      ‘Sir?’ A panicked shout from the front of the house. ‘Sergeant McRae?’

      Logan knew it had been too good to last. The only surprise was that it’d taken the Insch this long … He turned and marched through the spotless conservatory; the bombsite lounge with its overturned furniture, smashed ornaments, and bloodstains; then out into the hall, where DC Rennie was trying to stop DI Insch from storming into the house.

      ‘It’s OK,’ Logan tapped the constable on the shoulder. ‘Why don’t you go see to the teas?’ He let Rennie squeeze past, then stepped forwards to block the entrance. ‘Inspector?’

      ‘I was out walking Lucy, and I spotted the IB van.’ Insch gestured at the grubby transit parked in Brooks’ drive with ‘ALSO AVAILABLE IN WHITE’ finger-painted in the filth. Behind him, his ancient Springer Spaniel sat on the wet grass, legs akimbo, slowly absorbing the drizzle.

      ‘What can we do for you?’

      The huge man glowered at him from the threshold. ‘You can let me in for a bloody start.’

      ‘Sorry, sir, this is an active crime scene.’

      Insch rested a fat finger in the middle of Logan’s chest. ‘Remember I’m going to be back in charge again tomorrow, Sergeant. You might not want to go pissing me off right now. Step aside.’

      ‘I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.’

      Insch’s finger withdrew two inches, then rammed forward into Logan’s chest. ‘Suspended or not, I am your superior officer. And I swear to God, if you don’t get out of my bloody way—’

      ‘What, you’ll punch me in the face? Again?’ Logan looked down at the cast-iron digit, then up at the inspector. ‘Sir, I know he was your friend. And I know you want to catch whoever did it. But do you think you could try fucking trusting me for five minutes and let me do my job?’

      Insch actually backed off a step.

      ‘Look, we’ll be finished here soon. An hour tops. We’ll have to leave someone outside till we can get the back door boarded up. But if you’re a friend of the family you’ll have a key. You can let yourself in.’

      The inspector turned away, watching as his decrepit spaniel embarked on a vigorous ear-scratching campaign. There was a pause, then, ‘I don’t have a key.’

      ‘Wait here.’ Logan ducked back into the hall and picked a likely candidate from the pegboard above the telephone, then tried it in the Yale lock. Perfect fit. He held it out to Insch. ‘Brooks must have given it to you a while ago, just in case he had to go away. So you could water the plants.’

      The inspector stuck out a vast paw, and Logan dropped the key in it. Insch turned without a word and marched away down the garden path, taking his stinky, soggy old dog with him.

       21

      It was half past four before the joiner turned up to board up Brooks’ back door. Logan watched him nailing the huge sheet of plywood into place, doing his best to ignore the man’s rambling moan about all these Eastern Europeans coming over here and undercutting honest tradesmen like him. Then asked if Logan needed any jobs doing on the QT for cash …?

      Logan did one last circuit of the house, making sure the IB hadn’t left anything behind, then stepped out into the rainy night and locked the front door.

      A lone rocket screeched into the dark orange sky, exploding СКАЧАТЬ