Broken Skin

leadership with a cigarette.

‘Thanks for your help.’ Logan peeled off his coat and tried wringing the alcohol from the sodden sleeves, already starting to feel a little light-headed from the fumes. ‘He breaks in about three in the morning, bypasses the alarm with a set of crocodile clips, only the rope he’s using to lower himself in through the skylight breaks. He falls about eighteen feet, smashes his mobile phone, breaks his leg and lies there in agony. Then realizes he’s surrounded by bottles of DIY anaesthetic-’

Steel laughed, bellowing out a cloud of secondhand smoke that ended in a coughing fit. ‘Christ,’ she said when it had all settled down again, ‘think I weed myself a little bit …’

‘Owner turns up at half eight to open up and do a stock take, only before he can enter the alarm code he’s being pelted with pinot grigio and sweet sherry.’

The inspector doubled up, slapping her thigh and hooting with laughter as Logan told her how Tony Burnett had only done it to get back his passport — security against a loan from Ma Stewart to cover his losses on the Hennessy Gold Cup.

‘Brilliant,’ she said, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘Silly bugger could have just gone got himself a replacement passport, but he goes and does a Mission Impossible in Oddbins instead!’ And she was off again.

It didn’t look like much from the outside, which just went to show: sometimes you could judge a bookies by its cover. J Stewart amp; Son — Bookmakers est. 1974 — was the sort of place that gave old men and their phlegm somewhere to hang out drinking tins of special till the last race was run and it was time to go home for their tea. The betting shop’s name was purely ornamental: J Stewart Snr was long dead, and the ‘ amp; Son’ had run off to London with a marine biologist called Marcus. So now it was just Donna ‘Ma’ Stewart: sole proprietor, widow, and one of Logan’s first-ever arrests.

The place wasn’t quite empty: there was a handful of auld mannies in bunnets and anoraks, fidgeting uncomfortably under the NO SMOKING signs as the horses for the Sparrows Offshore Handicap Hurdle from Ayr jerked and pirouetted to the starting line on half a dozen widescreen televisions bolted to the wall.

Ma Stewart was behind the counter, draped over some shiny celebrity gossip magazine, one fat cheek supported by a beringed hand as she flicked through the pages, giving Logan and Rickards a perfect view of pasty, wobbling cleavage. Ma’s ratty grey hair was swept up on top in a bun, the chain for her glasses glittering against a violently colourful blouse. She didn’t look up till they were standing at the counter. ‘Afternoon, what …’ and then she recognized Logan and beamed at him. ‘Sergeant McRae! How lovely! You don’t come round nearly often enough! Have you eaten?’ Turning to bellow through the back, ‘Denise! Get the kettle on, and see if we’ve still got any pizza left.’

A muffled, ‘A’m busy!’ came from the open doorway behind the desk.

‘Get the bloody kettle on, or I’ll make your Michael look like a bloody pacifist!’

‘A’ right, a’ right …’

And the matronly smile was unleashed on Logan again. ‘There we go. What can we do for you? You’re looking lovely by the way; you got some sun, didn’t you? Hasn’t the weather been dreadful!’

Logan knew Ma Stewart wasn’t a day over sixty, but she looked anything between fifty and a hundred and three in that strange, ambiguous way fat old ladies have. The wrinkles smoothed out from the inside by layers of subcutaneous lard. He tried not to cringe as she lent across the desk and pinched his cheek. ‘Honestly,’ she tutted, ‘you’re nothing but skin and bone. That woman of yours isn’t feeding you properly! Marcus is just the same with our Norman, it’s all tai chi and no tatties.’

‘I need to speak to you about Tony Burnett, Ma.’

‘And who’s your little friend?’ She turned the smile on Rickards who stammered and stuttered.

‘Oh, a shy one! We like him! Denise! Where’s that bloody tea?’

‘Coming! Fuck’s sake …’

‘Anyway, I was just saying the other day that we don’t get enough policemen in these day. Oh it’s not like it was when my Jamesy was alive, we-’

‘We’ve asked you not to confiscate passports as collateral, Ma.’

‘Especially with the Cheltenham Gold Cup coming up; you could have a sweepstake down the station!’

‘The passports, Ma …’

A short woman with a black eye pushed through from the back room, carrying a tray with four teas on it and what looked like reheated pizza slices. ‘I’ve no milk, so it’s that evaporated stuff from a tin or nothin’.’

They took their tea and microwaved spicy American in Ma’s office: a small room out back, the walls and ceiling lined with varnished tongueand-groove wooden floorboards like a homemade sauna. Ma Stewart had a thing for little porcelain figurines of Scottie dogs, and photos of her grandchildren: the whole place was festooned with them. A little old-fashioned transistor radio sat on a high shelf, dribbling music into the potpourri-scented room as they ate. ‘Have you been watching that Celebrity Pop Idol?’ said Ma, taking a big bite of reheated pizza. ‘I never would have thought that coloured man off the news had such a lovely voice.’

Logan tuned her out. She was always a nightmare to deal with. Not obstreperous, just … nice. And completely bloody oblivious. And how on earth did she find enough time to dust all these nasty wee china dogs? He looked around the room. Maybe they should just … There was a plain brown box sitting the floor by Ma Stewart’s desk, right next to Logan’s feet; the top open just far enough for him to make out the words Lesbo Nurses. He picked it up, and emptied it out onto the desk. It was a pick-and-mix of hardcore porn, and right at the bottom a copy of In Deep Sheep: Five and other ‘animal husbandry’ titles.

‘Oh Ma, not again!’

‘What?’ She dabbed at her scarlet lips with a pristine hanky. Logan settled back in his seat and stared at her, his bit of pizza solidifying on its paper plate. ‘Oh, all right!’ she said at last. ‘So sometimes I sell a few naughty movies to people who can’t get out on their own. Where’s the harm in that? Half these poor old dears can’t even get it up, never mind do anything else!’ She leaned forward, exposing her cleavage again, tapping on the desk with a bright-red nail. ‘If I can help spark the flames of their wrinkly ardour, I will. It’s my public duty. Not like it’s illegal or anything.’

Logan groaned. ‘Yes it is! You have to be a licensed sex shop to sell R-eighteen movies! And this stuff …’ he poked the cover of Farmyard Frolics, ‘isn’t legal anywhere.’

‘You’re not eating your pizza … You want some cake? We’ve got some Battenburg — Denise’s other half works in a baker’s and we get all sorts in here-’

‘Ma: the DVDs. Where did you get them?’

An exasperated breath sent the pale cleavage heaving. ‘Can we not come to some sort of arrangement? I mean, I didn’t know it was against the law! I would never-’

‘Where!’

She pouted. ‘You used to be such a nice young man … Are you sure you don’t want some cake?’

The search team Logan had called in from FHQ made bulls in china shops look like ballet dancers, much to the distress of Ma Stewart, who stood at the epicentre of destruction shouting, ‘Be careful with that! It’s a family heirloom!’

‘Everything’s a family bloody heirloom,’ muttered a PC, sticking one of the millions of china dogs in a cardboard box.

Ma turned pleading eyes on Logan. ‘Oh, do make them be careful!’

‘Find anything yet?’

Rickards pointed at a pair of cardboard boxes sitting on top of a cleared desk. ‘Movies. Nothing too filthy, just the latest blockbusters, all stuff still in the cinema.’

Logan gave Ma Stewart a chance to explain herself and she puffed up like a prize pigeon. ‘It’s for my old folks,’ she said with her nose in the air. ‘They can’t get out to the pictures, so I bring the magic of Hollywood to them. There’s nothing wrong with that!’

‘You know how long you can get for pirating movies? Kill someone you’d be out sooner. The Federation for Copyright Protection are like the Gestapo, only without the winning sense of humour.’

‘I didn’t pirate anything. I’m providing a service to the community-’

‘Have you checked the computers?’