Broken Skin

DI Steel helped herself to a Jaffa Cake, mumbling, ‘What about the ligature marks?’ with her mouth full.

‘Looks like thick leather straps with metal buckles. There’s quite a bit of chafing about the edges, so I’d say he struggled a fair bit.’

Steel snorted, sending crumbs flying. ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Someone turns your arse inside out.’

That got her a scowl and a chilly silence. ‘I’ll need to wait for the blood toxicology to come back,’ Isobel said at last, ‘but I found a significant quantity of alcohol in the stomach and partially digested pills as well.’

‘So, whoever it was got him pissed and doped-up first, then strapped him down and buggered him to death with a Wellington boot. And they say romance is dead.’

Isobel’s scowl got twenty degrees colder. ‘Any other startling insights you’d like to share with us, Inspector?’ Steel just grinned back at her and polished off another biscuit. Then the Procurator Fiscal confirmed that they’d be treating this case as murder, before telling them all about her upcoming holiday to the Seychelles. A substantive depute would be in charge while she was away soaking up the sun and cocktails, but they were to try not to break the girl, or there’d be trouble when she got back — looking pointedly at DI Steel. The inspector pretended not to know what she was talking about.

‘Bloody hell!’ Steel said as they ran up the stairs from the morgue to the rear podium car park, sploshing through ankle-deep puddles, making for the back door to FHQ. ‘Why can’t they open the internal door when it’s pishing with rain?’ There was only one indoor route through from the main building to the morgue, but it was reserved for victims’ relatives and the Chief Constable. The rank and file had to brave the weather.

She shook herself like a terrier, then ran a hand through her unruly hair, spraying water onto the linoleum. At forty-three she looked sixty-five — wrinkled, pointy face, saggy neck like a turkey, hair designed to startle old ladies, fingers stained a fetching shade of nicotine yellow. ‘Come on,’ she said, leading the way towards the lifts, ‘you can get the teas in while I have a fag. And get some bacon butties too — I’m starving. Bastard post mortem went on for ages.’

Logan backed into DI Steel’s office, balancing two mugs of tea and a couple of tinfoil parcels on a manila folder. The inspector was standing with her back to the door, staring out of the open window, a cigarette smouldering away between her fingers — completely ignoring the ban on smoking in the workplace — the bitter tang of Benson amp; Hedges curling out into the rain. ‘You know,’ she said, as Logan eased the door closed and dished out the refreshments, ‘oh, ta … sometimes it pisses me off that Fatty Insch gets all the big cases: all the high-profile stuff, like this serial rape thing.’ She peeled open her tinfoil-wrapped buttie, eating and smoking and talking all at the same time. ‘And then I see that shite and think, thank Christ.’

Logan joined her at the window. Down in the front car park there was a clump of outside-broadcast vans. A little knot of cameras and journalists were sheltering under umbrellas in the steady downpour, the occasional flash illuminating the concrete and granite like lightning. ‘Rob Macintyre.’

‘Aye: Robby Bobby “Goalden Boy” Macintyre. Could Insch no’ find someone else to be his bloody rapist? Macintyre’s a local sodding hero.’ She took a huge bite, sending a cascade of white flour spilling down the front of her charcoal-grey suit. ‘Tell you, it’s a PR disaster waiting to happen. Little bugger’s got his publicist working overtime making sure everyone stands up and tells the world what a great guy he is and how he’d never do anything naughty like rape seven women at knifepoint …’ She sucked the last gasp from her cigarette and flicked it out into the downpour. Logan couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked as if she was aiming for the man from Sky News. It was too far down to tell if she got him or not.

She took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. ‘We get a nice, juicy murder and Insch gets a world of shite.’ She shrugged. ‘Still, rather him than us, eh?’

‘I’m getting the media department to run off some “Do you know this man” posters for our body,’ Logan said, ‘and I got the report on his clothes back from Forensics.’

A long, silent pause. Then, ‘Well, tell me what they said for God’s sake, can you no’ see I’m busy?’ She settled back behind her cluttered desk, put her feet up, and lit another cigarette, blowing a long stream of smoke at the ceiling.

‘Right.’ Logan opened the manila folder and skimmed through it, making for the conclusions at the end. ‘Blah, blah, blah, here we go: they think the blood in the clothes and blanket are all from the same person — blood type matches, but the mobile DNA thing’s on the blink, so we’ve had to send samples off to Dundee to be sure. They’re pretty certain it’s all his though.’

‘Genius.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘They tell us anything we don’t already know?’

‘They got fibres from the blanket he was wrapped in, so if we get a suspect they can run a match, but-’

‘But bugger all that’ll help us actually find out who he is.’

‘Interesting thing is the list of clothing.’ Logan handed over the report and the inspector pursed her lips, reading, then rereading it.

‘Come on then, Miss Marple,’ she said after the third time through, ‘dazzle me with your brilliance.’

‘Trousers, sweatshirt and blanket. No socks, no underwear, no jacket. No personal effects — no keys, no coins, not even an old hanky. He’s been naked and someone’s dressed him as quickly as possible, emptied his pockets, bundled him into the car and-’

‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Steel threw the report back across the table at him. ‘Of course he was bloody naked, you don’t bondage someone up and bugger them to death fully dressed, do you?’

‘Oh. Well, no, I suppose …’

She watched him squirm for a moment, then grinned. ‘See, this is why they pay me the big bucks.’

‘Anyway,’ he could feel a blush creeping up his cheeks, ‘the killer probably wrapped him in the blanket to keep blood off the car seats, but the thing was soaked through. The back seat will be saturated.’

‘Which is no sodding good to us unless we find the car. Get the labs to see if they can do something with the number plate on that surveillance tape. And set up a briefing: couple of dozen uniform, some CID, you know the drill. And we’ll need a HOLMES suite, and an incident room, and …’ She frowned. ‘Anything I’ve forgotten?’

Logan sighed — as usual he was going to be left doing all the work. ‘Press release.’

‘Bingo!’ She beamed. ‘Press release. And while you’re at it, see if they can get us a slot on the news as well — we’ll stick up the victim’s face, you ask people to phone in, and I’ll chat up that girl does the weather …’ The inspector stared off into the distance for a happy moment, then snapped back into the here and now. ‘I’ve got some calls to make.’ She made wafting gestures, ‘Go on, shoo, out, run along, go. Bugger off.’

Logan picked up his half-drunk cup of tea and left her to it.

4

Three twenty-nine pm — the car park round the back of Brimmond Hill. Alpha Nine Six scrunched to a halt between two huge waterlogged potholes, windscreen wipers going full-tilt in the rain. The top of the hill was lost in the low cloud, the gorse, heather and bracken battered and dripping. The driver pulled on the handbrake. ‘What do you think?’

‘Rock, paper, scissors?’

‘OK … one, two three … shit.’ Scowling out of the windscreen at the downpour. ‘Best of three?’

‘No.’

‘OK, OK … bloody hell …’ The driver cracked the door open, letting in the roar of the rain, drowning out the constant background chatter of the radio. He pulled on his waterproof jacket, turned the collar up, pulled his hat down low over his ears, and jumped out of the car, swearing as he ran across to the burnt-out wreck opposite, trying to avoid the puddles.

The patrol car window wound halfway down, and the PC in the passenger seat shouted, ‘Well?’

Grumbling, the driver clicked his torch on and peered into the blackened shell. There wasn’t much left: the skeletal remains of seats, their wire frames caked with lumps of grey and black ash; dashboard reduced to a buckled sheet of sagging metal; the tyres a slough of vitrified rubber. All the glass was gone. He ran the torch’s beam round the inside, just in case. Anything in there was long gone. ‘Nothing. Just a crappy old Volvo no one loves any more.’

Steel was back at her office window, peering out at the cluster of journalists and TV cameras far below when