The Missing and the Dead (55 page)

Chin up, shoulders back. He slipped behind the partition with all its notices and posters, and up to the desk.

An old woman sat on one of the plastic seats in the hallway on the other side of the opening. Her big heavy coat glistened with water, a pair of rubbery ankle boots poking out from her tweed skirt on chicken-bone legs. What looked like a Tupperware box nestled in her lap.

Great. There was going to be something dead in there. Something dead and very smelly.

Lovely.

Logan’s shoulders dipped a bit. ‘Can I help you?’

She looked up and smiled with all her dentures. ‘I wanted to say thank you.’ It took a bit of effort, but she levered herself upright and squeaked her rubber over-boots across the damp tiled floor. ‘You killed them all. It’s wonderful.’

He shrank back from the hatch. ‘I did?’

‘All the rats. You beat them to death with your truncheon and they’ve never come back.’

OK …

But at least now he knew who she was. ‘Mrs Ellis. It was my pleasure.’

‘I’ve slept like a baby these last two nights and I wanted to say thank you.’ She held out the box in her trembling claws. ‘For you.’

There was a dead rat inside, wasn’t there? A big, stinky, dead rat.

Logan forced a smile. ‘Thank you. You shouldn’t have.’
Really
.

‘Nonsense! I’ve won prizes with these – my mother’s secret recipe.’ A wink rearranged the lines on her face.

Crispy rat. Great.

Try to look pleased. ‘Thank you.’

‘You deserve them.’

The Big Car drifted around back onto Rundle Avenue, windscreen wipers screech-and-groaning their way across the glass. Nicholson sniffed. ‘Nothing doing the day.’

‘Probably too early.’ Logan shook his head. ‘But thing is: it wasn’t full of dead rats, it was a big box of cheese scones. Can you believe that?’

‘Well …’ A frown worked its way across Nicholson’s face. ‘I once caught the guy who assaulted a mother of three, and she baked me a cake.’

‘Sometimes, people are lovely.’

‘All units, be on the lookout for a Julian Martin, IC-One female, thirty-two. Apprehension warrant for making indecent images of a child.’

Not all of them, obviously.

They made a left onto Tannery Street again.

‘You sure you’re all right, Sarge? Back of your head looks like a hairy aubergine.’

Logan’s fingers reached up and stroked the bruised lump. A line of scabs marked the path of whatever it was he’d been brained with. Still stung like a hundred tiny wasps. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Come on: if it was me or Tufty who got thumped, you wouldn’t let us back to work for a week.’

A shrug. ‘Yeah, well, maybe
your
commanding officer is nicer than mine.’

Nicholson hunched over the steering wheel, peering left and right. ‘Rain’s not helping, is it? Not even druggies want to be trudging about in this.’

‘Probably not. Call it quits: we’ll try again later.’

She turned the car around. Back onto Rundle Avenue. Up to the end of the road.

The lights were off in the house Martyn Baker had been staying in. The curtains drawn. Would his girlfriend hang around for a bit, or take the kid and head back down the road to Birmingham? Assuming the opposing gang didn’t go after her as retribution for what Baker had done.

That was the trouble with drug wars, no one fighting them ever gave a toss about the collateral damage.

Right onto Golden Knowes Road.

Nicholson slammed on the brakes. ‘Not
again
!’

A billboard stood in the field, on the other side of the fence: ‘B
ANFF
H
EIGHTS
~ E
XCLUSIVE
D
EVELOPMENT
O
F
E
XECUTIVE
V
ILLAS
~ C
OMING
S
OON
.’ A happy family stood in front of an architect’s drawing of a boxy house. Only someone had spray-painted a big purple willy over the whole thing.

Logan reached forward and pressed the ‘999’ button, setting the siren and flashing lights going. ‘Foot down, Janet, we’ve got a master criminal to confront.’

They left the Big Car’s blues on, spinning their accusatory light outside the Lovejoy household. That’d get the neighbours’ curtains twitching.

Rain peppered the living-room window, the drops gathering together and running like tears. Inside, the fake-gas fire was hot enough to make toast. The place was laden with doilies and lace thingies, porcelain clowns and glass vases full of silk flowers. Plates decorated with painted teddy bears on the walls.

Classy.

‘Well?’ Logan folded his arms and did his best loom. ‘Is that what you want, Geoffrey? Because that’s what’s going to happen.’

The wee sod sat in the middle of the couch, knees together, fingers coiled into the strings of his hoodie. Head down. Shoulders hunched. Sniffing. Biting his bottom lip. Tears running down his freckled cheeks. One trainered foot jerked and twitched on the Turkish rug. Not so much as a peep out of him about class struggle or the workers controlling the means of anything.

Apparently it was only OK to be a Marxist when his mum wasn’t watching.

A bit more looming. ‘Is – that – what – you – want?’

Geoffrey shook his head, setting the mop of red curls bobbing. He made a choked mumbly noise, but if there were words in there they were inaudible.

His mum thwacked him on the back of the head. ‘Don’t sit there snivelling; answer the nice policeman!’

‘I’m … I’m … I’m sor— sorry.’ So now it was hiccups as well.

One last loom. ‘No more painting willies on things, or we’re going to come back here and you’re off to prison.’

‘Plea— please don— please, I’m— sorry …’

‘Right.’ He hooked a finger at Nicholson. ‘We’re off, but we’ll be watching you.’

Geoffrey’s mum hit him again. ‘Say thank you to the nice policeman for not sending you to the jail.’

‘Than— thank — you …’

Nicholson stopped and looked back at the house. ‘You know, if my parents called me “Geoffrey Lovejoy” I’d probably spray-paint willies all over the place too.’

‘Will you get your finger out and unlock the doors? It’s bucketing.’

They ducked into the Big Car and thumped the doors shut.

Rain drummed on the roof, bounced off the bonnet.

She started the engine. ‘Sarge, these—’

‘Shire Uniform Seven, safe to talk?’

Logan pressed the button. ‘Stab away.’

‘It’s Tango Bravo One Two, guess what we found?’

Nicholson pointed at the handset, raised an eyebrow. ‘Who’re they?’

‘Traffic car, out of Mintlaw.’ He pressed the button again. ‘What have you got?’

‘One large black removal van, with “Magnus Hogg and Son, Moving Families Home Est 1965” down the side. Parked on the High Street in New Aberdour.’

The rain picked up pace. Thumped on the roof. Spattered against the windscreen. Danced back from the pavement.

An old man trudged past, wrestling with an unruly umbrella.

Logan gave it a count of ten, then: ‘Are you actually going to tell me, or am I supposed to be psychic now?’

‘Psychic?’

God’s sake …

‘What happened when you searched it?’

‘We didn’t. It’s still parked there. We’re waiting for the driver to appear. So if you hurry …?’

A grin cracked across Logan’s face. ‘Thanks.’ He biffed Nicholson on the shoulder. ‘Blues-and-twos – and put your foot down, we’re going to New Aberdour.’

Trees and hedges made a green blur outside the Big Car’s windows as Nicholson hammered along the coastal road. The windscreen wipers thumped back and forth across the glass.

‘All units, be on the lookout for a blue Transit van towing a caravan in the Peterhead area, believed to contain a stolen Labrador …’

Logan snatched at the grab-handle above his door, as the Big Car cleared a hump in the road and took to the air for a heartbeat. Then battered down onto the tarmac again. ‘This isn’t the Dukes of Hazard!’

Nicholson didn’t look round. ‘You want to get there in time, or don’t you?’

‘Calamity Janet rides again.’

A small ding sounded somewhere inside Logan’s stabproof vest, followed by a buzzing sensation in his ribs. That would be a text message coming in. He pulled out his phone and checked the screen.

Got an address for you

Alison hay – was alison anderson – 19 rooks crescent, tiverton, devon

Mobile number to follow

You owe me, right?

Say what you liked about Colin Miller; he might be a chubby Weegie shortarse, but he knew how to dig up info.

Logan punched the number for the Mintlaw traffic car into his Airwave. ‘Tango Bravo One Two, from Shire Uniform Seven.’

Whatever the response was, it was inaudible over the siren. Logan poked the button to switch it off, leaving the lights going.

‘Say again?’

‘I said, “Safe to talk”.’

‘Is the van still empty?’ They went airborne again, slinging his stomach up into his ribs and then down again.

‘No sign of them yet, but three men went into the baker’s opposite a minute ago, and there’s a fourth outside with a big black umbrella – on his phone, having a fag.’

Sounded as if the whole gang was there.

‘Is your car marked or unmarked?’

‘We’re buck-naked the day. Blending right in.’

‘Perfect. With any luck they’ll hang around till we get there. Who else you got in the area?’

Nicholson jabbed the brakes, changing down to rally their way into a gorge and round a hairpin bend, accelerating up the other side.

‘Sierra One One’s approaching from Sandhaven. Tango Bravo One Four’s on its way from Strichen.’
Which didn’t leave a lot of ways to escape the place.

‘OK, shout if anything happens. We’ll be there in … call it ten.’

A ping and a burr announced the arrival of Colin’s second text message. It contained the promised mobile phone number. Logan selected it and made the call.

A small voice barked in his ear.
‘Hello? Yes? Hello? Yes?’

‘Hello, can I speak to your mummy?’

‘I has a fire engine.’

‘That’s great, I has a police car.’

Nicholson threw it around another corner, pressing Logan up against his door.

‘I has a fire engine, and a tiger, and the Tooth Fairy gave me a whole pound for—’

‘All right, sweetie, that’s enough.’
There was some crackling, probably the phone being confiscated.
‘Can I help you?’

‘Is this Alison Hay, formerly Alison Anderson?’

A sigh.
‘Look, I’m not giving any more interviews, so please, leave me and my family—’

‘My name’s Sergeant Logan McRae, Police Scotland. We were investigating your ex-husband’s disappearance.’

The Big Car nipped onto the wrong side of the road for just long enough to pass a people carrier, and end up right in the crash zone of a massive tractor coming the other way.

Logan’s hand tightened around the grab handle, eyes wide, something solid jamming his throat. Nicholson wrenched the wheel and they jerked back into the left lane before the tractor turned them into police pâté.

Oh God …

It rumbled past, hauling up a thick mist of road spray behind it. The world went opaque for a second, then the wipers caught it.

‘Craggie isn’t missing any more, he’s dead. To be honest, he died years ago. We want to move on.’

Might be best to close his eyes.

‘I can understand that, and I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to ask about what happened five years ago. It’s important.’

A pause. Then another sigh. A scrunching noise muffled her voice.
‘Sweetie, go play in the living room for a bit. Mummy needs to talk to the man.’
Then she was back.
‘Andrew …’
She cleared her throat.
‘Sorry, it’s been a long time since I’ve said his name.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘He’d run around the garden like a mad thing. We got him a plastic sword and a shield and he’d be Spartacus, or Bilbo, or whoever it was this week. Fighting dragons and skeletons. We always told him to stay away from the far field, because of the cliffs, but …’
Silence.
‘I only turned my back for five minutes. I was making tattie and leek soup for tea, and …’
A small hissing noise escaped from the handset.
‘We found his sword and shield. We’d been looking for Andrew for hours, and there they were, lying against the drystane dyke at the edge of the far field.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘They called the Coast Guard, and they searched the cliffs and the rocks, but there was nothing. Andrew … They told us he’d been swept out to sea.’

Logan’s stomach lurched against his lungs again as Nicholson took them over another bump at speed. ‘Did Charles say anything?’

‘Say anything?’
She gave him a small bitter laugh.
‘That’s all he’d talk about. How it wasn’t right. Andrew wasn’t dead, he was missing. There wasn’t a body, how could he be dead? Someone must’ve snatched him.’

‘But there wasn’t any proof?’

‘He was obsessed. Put posters up everywhere, adverts in the newspapers, handed out fliers at football matches and the supermarkets, till they told him to move on. Two years I made allowances, I lived with it, because he was grieving. But do you know what?
I
was grieving too.’

Logan sneaked a peek. Fields and trees hammered past, Nicholson put her foot down to overtake a plumber’s van. He closed his eyes again. ‘Did he ever find anything? Ever connect anyone to Andrew’s disappearance?’

No reply.

‘Ms Hay?’

‘I remarried. We’ve got a little girl. Andrew’s dead and I don’t want to speak about it ever again.’ Click.
She’d hung up on him.