Close to the Bone

anything without her say-so. And I’m guessing forensic anthropologists don’t come cheap.’

‘About the same as a decent childminder.’ A scowl. ‘Or a thieving au pair.’

‘What do I look like, made of money? ’ DCI Steel’s voice echoed around the office. ‘DNA’s still our best bet — you don’t get bumped off like that in a mob hit and not be dirty.’

‘But a forensic anthropologist-’

‘No. N.O. spells: “shut up and stop bugging me about forensic anthropologists.”’ She slumped back in her office chair. ‘Take the sodding hint.’

‘But Isobel-’

‘I don’t care if the Ice Queen wants raspberry ripple ice cream with brown sauce and gherkins, we’re waiting for the DNA.’ Steel scrubbed at her face with her hands. ‘He’ll be in the system.’

Ah well, can’t say he hadn’t tried.

‘What about Reuben? ’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘What about him? ’

For God’s sake. ‘Have they picked him up yet? ’

‘Do you really think I’ve no’ got more important things to worry about than who punched you on the bloody nose? You probably deserved it.’ She held up a hand, thumb and forefinger squeezed tightly together. ‘Hell, I’m this far away from doing it myself!’

‘Thanks. Thanks for the support. Really appreciate it.’ Logan marched out of her office and slammed the door behind him. ‘Cow.’

‘I heard that!’

Of course she did. Ears like a bloody vampire bat. He stuck two fingers up at the wood.

The corridor funnelled the noise from the main CID room, open-plan muttering and barely controlled chaos. Greasy coils of garlic, salami, and cheese tentacled through the air carrying with them the ghosts of pizzas past. His stomach gurgled.

Somewhere, deep within his head, someone was doing a Steve McQueen impersonation from the Great Escape, hurling that bloody baseball against the walls of the cooler. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

He turned his back on the siren scent and slouched through to his own office instead. A lanky figure with sticky-up blond hair was draped all over the visitor’s chair, feet up on Logan’s desk. Eyes closed, head back, mouth hanging open, making little grunting noises.

Logan opened one of the filing cabinet drawers, then slammed it shut.

‘Gaaah!’ DS Rennie jerked upright in his seat, eyes like nervous pingpong balls, jittering feet sending a pile of forms scattering to the carpet. ‘I’m awake, I’m awake.’

‘What are you still doing here? ’ The old office chair creaked as Logan settled into it. ‘You were snoring.’

Rennie stretched: arms up to the ceiling, legs hovering an inch over the tabletop. ‘You’ve been ages. .’

‘Post mortem.’ What the hell happened to his desk? The whole thing was covered in other people’s paperwork. Why did every lazy sod in CID think this was the perfect place to dump their crap? ‘Now get your bloody feet off my desk.’

‘Sorry, Guv.’ Rennie screwed the palm of one hand into his eye socket, yawned again, shuddered, then sagged in the chair like someone had stolen all of his bones. ‘Went through all the witness statements and CCTV footage from the jewellery heist: three males, all in their late teens — early twenties. Local accents. Initial getaway car from the scene was a VW Golf.’ He hunched his shoulders and dug his hands into his armpits. ‘Cold in here.’

Logan picked the forms up from the floor, added them to the rest, then started separating them out into piles for whoever touched them last. ‘Number plate? ’

‘Fake. Well, not fake-fake — they’d nicked it off a blue Citroen Berlingo in Mannofield.’ Another yawn. ‘Bet you a fiver they abandoned the Golf and torched it before going on in a second car. So we’ll get nothing off it, even if we can find. .’ He blinked at Logan, then frowned. ‘What? ’ Brushed a hand across his cheek. ‘Have I got pizza on my face? ’

‘We found a burned-out VW Golf in the Joyriders’ Graveyard: reported stolen Saturday morning — last seen by the owner, Friday tea-time. It was still warm.’

‘Plenty of time to get to the jewellers, cut the alarm cables, get in, tie up the proprietor and his bit on the side, rob everything, then sod off into the night.’

Logan took a biro from the mess on his desk and tapped it against his chin. ‘Interesting.’

‘Ooh,’ Rennie sat forward in the chair. ‘Maybe your victim’s one of the team? Someone got greedy, or they thought he was a snitch? ’

‘Would explain the gangland execution, wouldn’t it? ’

A knock at the door, then DS Chalmers stuck her head in. ‘Guv? ’ A huge grin split her face, teeth all small, pointy, and glinting. ‘We just got DNA back: it’s a match.’

Looked as if DCI Steel was right after all. There’d be bacon flapping its way past the window any minute now. ‘Get on to the PNC, I want-’

‘Criminal record? ’ She held up a manila folder.

‘And-’

‘Current address? ’ She placed a printout in the middle of Logan’s desk, then stood back, showing off her happy little teeth. ‘And there’s a pool car waiting outside for us.’

Cocky, ambitious, and efficient. Maybe not such a bad combination after all.

Chalmers took them out through the city limits, heading north on the Inverness road, sitting in the outside lane of the dual carriageway, doing eighty, with the blue flashers going. ‘. .and you’d think he’d be a bit more grateful, wouldn’t you? At least now he knows where his precious Range Rover is. But he was a complete arsehole about it.’

Logan watched the fields go by, fluffy white sheep and big rectangular cows polka-dotting the swathes of almost luminous green. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘OK, so it’s a burned-out hulk, but he’ll have third-party fire and theft, won’t he? Don’t know what he’s moaning about, really. Just because we haven’t got a clue who stole it in the first place. .’

‘Right.’ A fortress of pine trees flanked the dual carriageway for a minute, needles shining in the sunlight, the earth below wreathed in brambles and sharp-edged shadow. And then more fields. Aberdeenshire at its bucolic best, sliding by outside the car while DS Chalmers jumped from topic to topic in a perpetual-motion monologue.

‘. .and I know blow’s never really that difficult to get hold of, but it’s everywhere right now. Cannabis as far as the eye can see: Inverness, Aberdeen, Ellon, Keith, Peterhead, it’s like a plague. .’

‘Mmm. .’

Down the hill to Blackburn, through the roundabout, and on. The sky was a blanket of sapphire blue, streaked around the edges with misty white. Warm in the car. Logan blinked. The army ants had all congregated in the bridge of his nose, and now the little sods were having a hoedown. In clogs.

‘. .can’t believe the SPSA are still fiddling about and re-organizing stuff. Honestly, can you think of a single person who’s actually in favour of all this? Nothing but cost-cutting pirate bollocks — not surprising the SOCOs are all grumbling about industrial action. .’

Sodding Isobel and her ‘analgesics’. Might as well have downed a couple of kiddie Aspirin for all the good they were doing. Should’ve taken some of the proper painkillers from the caravan: the ones that made the world go all fluffy, warm, and soft. Like sleeping on a giant kitten.

‘. .just have to look at this guy — we get a hit on his DNA, but nothing on the fingerprints. You know why? Because they can’t leave well enough alone, that’s why. If it’s not broken, poke and fiddle with it till it is. Honestly. .’

‘Hmm.’ Might be nice to move further out of town. The caravan was OK, not that much smaller than the flat, and it was all on the ground floor — which was a bonus. And the view wasn’t bad out over the fields, and trees, and the River Don. Just had to ignore the sewage treatment plant directly opposite. Other than that it was OK. Be nice to have a bigger place though.

‘. .continual budget cuts. I bet we could catch half the neds in the area if we just stuck a couple of cameras