Broken Skin

jog. Keepin’ fit fer the match Saturday. I didn’t rape anyone.’

Jackie got as far as, ‘You had a knife-’ before Insch told her to shut up. His bulk loomed into the frame, leaning on the tabletop with both fists, his bald head glinting in the overhead lights, obscuring Macintyre from the camera.

‘Yes you did, Rob — you followed them, you jumped them, you battered them, you raped them, you carved up their faces-’

‘It wasnae me!’

‘You took trophies, you daft sod: necklaces, earrings, even a pair of knickers! We’ll find them when we search your house.’

‘I never did nothin’, OK? Get that intae your fat, thick heid. I NEVER RAPED NOBODY!’

‘You really think you’re going to walk away from this? We don’t need your confession, we’ve got enough on you-’

‘iKnow what? I’ve had enough of cooperatin’ with the police. I want tae see ma lawyer.’

‘We’ve been through all this: you get to see a lawyer when I say so, not before!’

‘Aye? Well you might as well send out for more coffee then,’ cos it’s gonnae be a long night. And I’m no sayin’ anythin’ else.’

And he didn’t.

3

Rob Macintyre’s arrest had come too late to make the first edition of the Press and Journal — Aberdeen’s local paper — but it was on the Scottish bit of the early-morning TV news. A dour-faced newswoman stood outside Pittodrie football stadium in the dark, talking to a small knot of shivering fans. Asking their opinion on the whole superstar-striker-as-marauding-rapist thing. God knew how the BBC had got onto the story so quick.

The supporters, all dressed in bright-red, replica AFC football tops, backed their hero all the way: Macintyre was a good lad; wouldn’t do anything like that; it was a fit-up, the club needed him … And then it was on to a house fire in Dundee. Logan sat in the lounge, yawning, drinking tea and listening to some lopsided freak from Tayside Police telling the public how important it was to check the batteries in their smoke alarms. And then the travel, weather, and back to the London studio. An entire country’s news squeezed into eight minutes.

Logan’s unidentified male wasn’t due to be post mortemed till ten am — nearly three hours away — but there was a shedload of paperwork to be filled in first.

He finished his tea and went to get dressed.

The morgue at FHQ shone with an antiseptic fervour. Sparkling white tiles covered the walls and floor, glinting cutting tables sat beneath polished extractor fans, the room lined with pristine work surfaces. Logan changed into the compulsory white over suit with hood and blue plastic booties before pushing into the sterile area. The guest of honour was already laid out, flat on his back in all his pasty, bloodstained glory while an IB photographer clicked and flashed his way around the body, documenting everything as another technician used sticky tape to remove any trace evidence he could find. A slow-motion dance complete with disco strobe.

Doc Fraser was slumped over one of the other cutting tables, a copy of the P amp;J spread out on the stainless-steel surface in front of him. He looked up, saw Logan walking in and asked him for an eight letter word beginning with B.

‘No idea. Who’s SIO?’

The pathologist sighed and started chewing on the end of his pen, ‘God knows; I’m just corroborating today. The Fiscal’s about somewhere, you can ask her if you like. No one tells me anything.’

Logan knew the feeling.

He found the Procurator Fiscal out in the viewing room, pacing back and forth, looking as if she was talking to herself until he saw the little Bluetooth headset attached to her ear. ‘No,’ she said, fiddling with a palmtop computer, ‘we need to make sure the case is airtight. I don’t want to be fielding questions when I’m working on my tan. Now what about those Bridge of Don burglaries? …’ He left her to it.

It wasn’t long before the answer lurched through the morgue doors, hauling at the crotch of her SOC coveralls and coughing as if she was about to bring up a lung. DI Steel, their senior investigating officer. A five- foot-nine, wrinkly, middle-aged disaster area, smelling of stale cigarette smoke and Chanel Number Five. ‘Laz!’ she said, grinning as soon as she clapped eyes on Logan, ‘This no’ a bit fresh for one of your corpses? Thought you liked them a bit more ripe?’

Logan didn’t rise to it. ‘He was found outside A amp;E last night, bleeding to death. No witnesses. Something horrible’s happened to his backside.’

‘Oh aye?’ The inspector raised an eyebrow. ‘Medical horrible, or “I was hoovering naked and fell on a statue of Queen Victoria” horrible?’

‘Queen Victoria.’

Steel nodded sagely. ‘Yeah — I wondered why they gave me this one. We about ready to get started? I’m bursting for a fag.’

Doc Fraser looked up from his crossword, pulled the pen out of his gob and asked Steel the same question he’d asked Logan. The inspector cocked her head on one side, thought about it, frowned, then said, ‘Buggered?’

‘No, it’s got an S in it. We’re waiting for Dr MacAlister.’

DI Steel nodded again. ‘Ah, it’s going to be one of those post mortems.’ She sighed. ‘Come on then, Laz: let’s hear it.’ So Logan talked her through the statements he’d taken last night while the victim was in surgery, then the paperwork that had come down from the hospital with the body. ‘What about the CCTV?’ she asked when he’d finished.

‘Nothing we can use. The car’s number plates are unreadable — probably covered with something — driver wore a hooded top and baseball cap.’

‘Ah, thug chic. Got a make on the car?’

‘Fusty-looking Volvo estate.’

Steel blew a long, wet raspberry. ‘So much for an easy case. Well, maybe Madame Death can tell us something, presuming she ever bloody gets here!’ Ten minutes later and the inspector was threatening to start singing Why Are We Waiting?

Dr Isobel MacAlister finally lumbered into the morgue at twenty past ten, looking flushed. She ignored DI Steel’s derogatory round of applause and cry of ‘Thar she blows!’ and scrubbed up, needing help to get into her cutting gear, the green plastic apron stretched tight over her enormous stomach.

‘Right,’ she said, clicking on the Dictaphone, ‘we have an unidentified male — mid to late twenties …’

It was weird watching a heavily pregnant pathologist at work. Even weirder: the thing growing in her womb could have been Logan’s, if things had turned out differently. But they hadn’t. So instead of being filled with paternal pride, he was standing here watching Isobel slice up yet another dead body, feeling a strange mix of regret, and relief. And then nausea as she got her assistant to heft out the corpse’s urogenital block for her.

They finished with tea and biscuits in the pathologists’ office, with Isobel sitting behind the desk and complaining about the heat, even though February was putting on its usual performance outside the window, hurling icy rain against the glass.

‘Looks like something pretty big’s been repeatedly forced inside him,’ she said, checking her notes, ‘between four and five inches in diameter, and at least fourteen inches long. The sphincter’s extensively damaged and the lower intestine was torn in four places. He lost too much blood, pressure dropped, heart stopped. Death was due to severe shock. There was nothing the hospital could have done.’ She shifted in her seat, trying to get closer to the desk, but her pregnant bulge got in the way. ‘Some of the burn marks on the torso have a crust of wax, but there’s half a dozen cigarette burns too. Most of the contusions are superficial.’